Well-being, Personal Wholeness and the Social Fabric [1° ed.] 1443898589, 9781443898584

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Well-being, Personal Wholeness and the Social Fabric

Well-being, Personal Wholeness and the Social Fabric Edited by

Doru Costache, Darren Cronshaw and James R. Harrison

Well-being, Personal Wholeness and the Social Fabric Edited by Doru Costache, Darren Cronshaw and James R. Harrison This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Doru Costache, Darren Cronshaw, James R. Harrison and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9858-9 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9858-4



TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables and Figures ........................................................................ viii Part One: Diagnosing Well-being in the Body Politic Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2 Introducing Well-being, Personal Wholeness and the Australian Social Fabric: Ancient and Modern Perspectives James R. Harrison Part Two: Wholeness in a Fractured World: Theological Perspectives on Well-being Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 32 A Markan Vision of Well-being Michele Connolly Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 55 Being, Well-being, Being for Ever: Creation’s Existential Trajectory in Patristic Tradition Doru Costache Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 88 Meaning and the Well-being of Our Souls Peter Laughlin Part Three: When the Social Fabric Unravels: Gathering up the Loose Threads Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 110 Australia’s Moral Compass and Societal Well-being Wendy Mayer



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Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 132 Personal and Community Well-being: A Wesleyan Theological Framework for Overcoming Prejudice David B. McEwan Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 154 Social and Personal Well-being under Late Capitalism: Laudato Si’ and the Character of Interconnectedness Robert Tilley Part Four: The Disintegration of Personal Wholeness: Pathways Back to Well-Being Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 184 Grace and Nurture: Connecting and Engaging through Music in Dementia Care Kirsty Beilharz Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 209 “Laughter is the Best Medicine”: St. Paul, Well-being and Roman Humour James R. Harrison Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 241 Pilgrimage—A Personal Journey towards Spiritual Well-being Neil Holm Part Five: Personal Wholeness, the Leader and Their Community: Meeting Mutual Needs Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 266 Reimagining Faith-based Leadership for the Greater Good Darren Cronshaw et al. Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 297 The Dance of Wounded Souls: Improving Leadership Well-being and Effectiveness Stephen Smith and Murray Bingham



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Part Six: The University, City and Well-being: Trajectories from Medieval Times to the Present Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 324 Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople and the Crisis of the Modern City Mario Baghos Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 355 The Medieval University and the Concept of Well-being Yvette Debergue Contributors ............................................................................................. 372





LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 4-1 Lonergan’s Worlds of Meaning ................................................ 95 Table 5-1 Moral Foundations .................................................................. 120 Table 5-2 The Metaphors that Inform SF and NP Morality and their Entailments .............................................................................................. 126 Table 5-3 The SF and NP Narrative Frames............................................ 127 Figure 12-1 Leader Health and Sustainability Map ................................. 306 Figure 12-2 Leader Health Sustainability: Grouping and Mapping......... 309 Figure 13-1 .............................................................................................. 340 Figure 13-2 .............................................................................................. 346



PART ONE: DIAGNOSING WELL-BEING IN THE BODY POLITIC

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCING WELL-BEING, PERSONAL WHOLENESS AND THE AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL FABRIC: ANCIENT AND MODERN PERSPECTIVES JAMES R. HARRISON

In discussing well-being and the social fabric, a pressing question is what definition of “well-being” should be adopted for our study and under what discipline should we investigate the concept. We could, for example, begin with the WHO-5 Well-being Index. 1 This questionnaire consists of “5 simple and non-invasive questions”. 2 It is designed to investigate the “subjective well-being of the respondents” and has research applications for clinical practice as a useful screening tool for depression and for the comparison of well-being between groups.3 But to adopt a sharply focused psychological approach to well-being overlooks the different approaches to well-being in antiquity and its contribution to the Western intellectual tradition. Further, the clinical focus of the questionnaire means that it will not capture the wider social and cultural dimensions of personal wellbeing, the focus of this volume in an Australian context. So rather than adopt an overly precise definition of well-being from the outset that

 1

For an assessment of the effectiveness of the WHO questionnaire, see Christian Winther Topp, Søren Dinesen Østergaard, Susan Søndergaard, and Per Bech, “The WHO-5 Well-being Index: A Systematic Review of the Literature”, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics 84 (2015) 167-76. DOI: 10.1159/000376585, accessed 9 September, 2015. 2 The questionnaire asks respondents to rate from 5 (“All of the time”) to 0 (“At no time”) how they felt over the last two weeks regarding these five statements: (a) “I have felt cheerful and in good spirits”, (b) “I have felt calm and relaxed”, (c) “I have felt active and vigorous”, (d) “I woke up feeling fresh and rested”, (e) “my daily life has been filled with things that interest me”. 3 Topp, Østergaard, Søndergaard, and Bech, “The WHO-5 Well-being Index”, 174.

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generates our entire approach in this interdisciplinary volume, we will introduce readers to a variety of disciplinary approaches to well-being and its definition, drawing from past and present paradigms. This introduction will discuss the Jewish and Graeco-Roman understandings of “well-being” so that we can understand better what voices from antiquity said on the issue. If we properly situate the early Christian and patristic perspectives on human welfare in their historical context, we are more likely to hear better the distinctive contributions of believers to ancient conceptions of human flourishing. In terms of the contemporary context, the modern scholarly literature on “happiness”, which draws upon ancient eudaimonic language and (in some cases) the virtue theory of antiquity, will be explored as well. This will throw light on how traditional and modern theologies of well-being intersect with contemporary concerns. We will confine our investigation to the “happiness” literature dating from the year 2000 onwards, given the explosion of research in the area. Additionally, a brief exploration of “social” well-being in contemporary Australia will be undertaken, focusing upon (a) Australian measures of well-being, (b) indigenous and regional perspectives on the issue, and (c) a series of institutional approaches to human flourishing (i.e. the family, educational, workplace and ecclesiastical contexts). While this overview does not exhaust or represent all Australian engagements with well-being in our diverse, pluralist, multicultural and increasingly secular country, it nonetheless provides an aperture through which we can view where many Australians are currently situated in terms of their personal and communal happiness and how the Christian tradition, ancient and modern, engages that. It is hoped that the perspectives aired on well-being in Australia in this introduction to the book will spark flashes of recognition among readers from other countries. Last, we will conclude by looking at the outbreak of (what I would term) a “cancer of the Australian soul”, which, I will argue, is diminishing our capacity as a historically compassionate people to respond to international crises and mass movements of refugees in a way that enhances well-being in Australia and South-East Asia more widely.



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Graeco-Roman and Jewish Concepts of Well-being The Graeco-Roman concept of eudaimonia: Socrates and Aristotle In the Graeco-Roman world the concept of personal and communal wellbeing is linked to eudaimonia (İ੝įĮȚȝȠȞȓĮ: “prosperity”, “happiness”, or, possibly, “human flourishing”; İ੝įĮȓȝȦȞ: “with a good spirit” [or “destiny”], “fortunate”).4 In the ancient mind, human virtue (or “excellence”: ਕȡİIJȒ) and happiness are intimately connected. The moral excellences are “the psychological basis for carrying out the activities of a human life well”. 5 This produces the fruits of personal happiness for the morally worthy, but mediocre and even deleterious results for individuals occur when a life is lived imprudently without the proper moral restraints and discipline. It is important to realise, however, that ancient philosophers, in contrast to modernity, spoke of “happiness” as the consistent, disciplined, active exercise of virtue in the soul, as opposed to the ephemeral experience of happy emotions espoused in modern popular culture. Furthermore, as Richard Parry observes,6 “ancient moral theory is agentcentered while modern moral theory is action-centered”. As Parry elaborates, … ancient moral theory explains morality in terms that focus on the moral agent. These thinkers are interested in what constitutes, e.g., a just person. They are concerned about the state of mind and character, the set of values, the attitudes to oneself and to others, and the conception of one’s own place in the common life of a community that belong to just persons simply insofar as they are just.7

Two brief case studies of the Greek philosophers Socrates and Aristotle will demonstrate this.

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For a general discussion of eudaimonia, see Øyvind Rabbås, Eyjólfur K. Emilsson, Hallvard Fossheim, and Miira Tuominen, eds., The Quest for the Good Life: Ancient Philosophers on Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), passim. 5 Richard Parry, “Ancient Ethical Theory”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/ethics-ancient/>, accessed 10 September, 2016. 6 Parry, “Ancient Ethical Theory”. 7 Parry, “Ancient Ethical Theory”.

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Greek moral philosophers conceived the goal of human beings and happiness itself as “godlikeness”, which was achieved through the emulation of the deity, a sentiment found in Plato and Aristotle (Plato, Theaet. 176a5-e4; Tim. 90c; Aristotle, Eth. nic. 10.7.1117a12-b34). 8 Indeed, Plato considers virtue to be the most important constituent of happiness in the soul (Resp. 580b-c; cf. 441d-e; 442c; 442b-d; 443d), rebutting the proposition of the sophist Thrasymachus that conventional morality, including the virtue of justice, stymied the strong man from achieving eudaimonia (Resp. 338d). However, while the predecessors of the moral philosophers—spanning the period from Homer, Hesiod, Solon, Pindar, Xenophanes and Heraclitus 9 —worked tentatively towards this ethical ideal, they did not demonstrate the largely anthropocentric viewpoint of their philosophical successors. In the view of the Greek predecessors to Socrates, happiness was not secured by intellectual excellence alone because the favour of gods was not entirely at the prerogative of human beings. The early Greek poets and tragedians espoused a fatalistic view of happiness, viewing “as something beyond human agency, controlled by luck and the gods”.10 Nor was the idea of intellectual excellence as a good of the soul clearly articulated in this earlier period, being rather an idea that developed over a period of time.11 By contrast, Socrates, as depicted by Plato, 12 presents happiness as more subject to human control. 13 He argues that eudaimonia is experienced when the just and virtuous man places moral considerations ahead of all other things by acting virtuously and justly (Plato, Apol. 28bC; Crito 49a-b). The pattern of justice lived out by the virtuous ensures the

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Parry, “Ancient Ethical Theory”. For discussion of the evidence, see Svavar Hrafn Svavarsson, “The Quest for the Good Life: Ancient Philosophers on Happiness”, in The Quest for the Good Life, ed. Rabbås, Emilsson, Fossheim and Tuominen, 28-47, at 35-46. 10 Shigehiro Oishi, Jesse Graham, Selin Kesebir, and Iolanda Costa Galinha, “Concepts of Happiness Across Time and Cultures”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39.5 (2013): 559-77, at 561. 11 Svavarsson, “The Quest for the Good Life”, 47. 12 On eudaimonia in Socrates, see N. Reshotko, “Socrates and Plato on ‘Sophia, Eudaimonia’, and Their Facsimiles”, History of Philosophy Quarterly 26.1 (2009): 1-19; C. Bobonich, “Socrates and Eudaimonia”, in The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, ed. D. R. Morrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 293-332; Don Adams, “Sophia, Eutuchia and Eudaimonia in the Euthydemus”, Apeiron 47.1 (2014): 48-80. 13 Oishi, Graham, Kesebir, and Costa Galinha, “Concepts of Happiness Across Time and Cultures”, 561. 9

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stability of the city as opposed to its moral decline (Resp. 443a-b). Virtue, therefore, is necessary for happiness (Gorg. 470e), as is the quality of moderation for the proper running of the household and city (Charm 171eí172a). Furthermore, perfecting the soul in virtue leads to a healthy psychological self-esteem (Apol. 29d-e, 47e-48a). Moreover, precisely because nobody knowingly does bad (Meno 78a-b), virtue is based on knowledge (Euthyd. 280b-d, 281b-c). Wisdom is sufficient for the experience of genuine happiness (Euthyd. 279a-c, 281d-e, 282a-b). But, as C. Bobonich points out, there are gaps in the thinking of Socrates regarding eudaimonia. For example, Socrates does not provide any detailed account of what is actually “good” for human beings. 14 Later writers in the Greek ethical tradition would fill in this lacuna by subjecting human nature to a more rigorous analysis than Socrates (e.g. the Stoic depiction of the rationality of the human mind).15 But how does Aristotle build upon the eudaimonic views of Socrates? In the case of Aristotle,16 the Nichomachean Ethics is the work that sets out best the philosopher’s understanding of eudaimonia. Happiness is the supreme good, motivating all human actions, intellectual investigations, and crafts (Aristotle, Eth. nic. 1049a). The happy life— whether that is understood as a life of political activity, the pursuit of philosophical study, or the enjoyment of bodily pleasure—is regarded as an end in itself (Eth. nic.1097a-1097b) and represents the supreme psychological good for its recipients (1098b). In Aristotle’s ethics, a disciplined life steers between the extremes of behaviour, which were understood as either a state of excess or deficiency. 17 The disciplined pursuit of the ethical mean is essential lest vice becomes an accustomed habit or virtue deteriorates into excessive behaviour. A disciplined moral

 14

Bobonich, “Socrates and Eudaimonia”, 330. Bobonich, “Socrates and Eudaimonia”, 331. 16 On eudaimonia in Aristotle, see J. C. Dybikowski, “Is Aristotelian Eudaimonia Happiness?” Dialogue 20.2 (1981): 185-200; R. Heinaman, “Eudaimonia and Selfsufficiency in the Nicomachean Ethics”, Phronesis 33.1 (1988): 31-53; R. Heinaman, “Rationality, Eudaimonia and Kakodaimonia in Aristotle”, Phronesis 38.1 (1993): 31-56; M. A. Young, Negotiating the Good Life: Aristotle and the Civil Society (Hants: Aldershot, 2006); J. Yu, “Aristotle on ‘Eudaimonia’: After Plato’s ‘Republic’”, History of Philosophy Quarterly 18.2 (2001): 115-38; G. Frölich, “Die aristotelische ‘eudaimonia’ und der Doppelsinn: vom guten Leben”, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 54 (2012): 21-44; C. Capuccino, “Happiness and Aristotle’s Definition of Eudaimonia”, Philosophical Topics 41.1 (2013): 1-26. 17 Aristotle, Eth. nic. 2.2.7; 2.6.12-14, 20; 2.7.4; 2.9.1; 3.7.13; 4.1.1, 24; 4.4.4-5; 4.5.1, 15; 4.8.5; 5.1.1-2; 5.3.1, 12; 5.4.7. 15

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life, lived out under providence and exhibiting piety towards the god(s), fosters lasting harmony and happiness within the household and the polis. In sum, for Aristotle the highest virtue is located in the best part of the soul (Eth. nic. 1177a). As the philosopher writes (Eth. nic. 1098a): … the function of man is to live a certain kind of life, and this activity implies a rational principle, and the function of a good man is the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed it is performed in accord with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, then happiness turns out to be an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.

Notwithstanding, Aristotle still underscores the importance of friends, health and resources in fostering eudaimonia. Happiness, therefore, is not entirely an intellectual exercise performed in the soul of the virtuous. As Aristotle observes, “Nevertheless, it is evident that eudaimonia stands in need of good things from outside, as we have said; for it is impossible or difficult to do fine things without resources” (Eth. nic. 1099a).18 However, in contrast to Aristotle on this issue, subsequent philosophical movements such as the Epicureans and the Cynics/Stoics depict happiness as involving detachment from bodily and external goods, placing one’s psychological state under the control of the will of the individual. More could be said on the understanding of Graeco-Roman happiness in other philosophical movements and individual thinkers of antiquity (e.g. the Cyrenaics, Pyrrhonian skeptics, et al.), but sufficient space has been devoted here to demonstrate that the Greek philosophers gradually moved towards locating virtue and its corollary, happiness, in the human soul, with or without the necessity of further external resources (including the help from the gods) apart from the human will to facilitate this. But what understanding of well-being emanates from the Jewish world in antiquity? And how is this different from happiness in the Graeco-Roman world?

Shalom and the Jewish Understanding of Well-being It is often stated that the Hebrew word shalom (“peace”) encapsulates the Jewish understanding of well-being. Surprisingly, little attention has been paid to shalom in Old Testament theologies, the place where one would



18 Oishi, Graham, Kesebir, and Galinha, “Concepts of Happiness Across Time and Cultures”, 561.

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expect the term to be discussed.19 Moreover, the Hebrew word berakah (“blessing”) is an equally viable alternative for the happiness attached to a long life and enjoyment of God’s good creation,20 a word also discussed by Old Testament theologians. 21 Nevertheless, several authors have discussed shalom and have come to a comprehensive understanding of its theological and social import. 22 Their conclusions can be summarised thus:23 x Healey speaks positively about shalom as wholeness (Ps 34:14), physical and social health (Pss 4;8; 73:3; Mic. 3:5; Zech. 8:12; Mal. 2:5) and completeness (Gen. 1:31; 2:2);24 x von Rad views shalom as a “comprehensive” term, strongly emphasising material welfare (Judg. 19:20; 1 Sam. 16:5; 2 Sam. 18:28; Ezr 5:7), as well as covenantal (Num. 25:12; Ezek. 34:25; 37:26; 54:10), prophetic (Isa. 48:18; 54:13; 57:19; Jer. 6:5, 16),

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For discussion, see Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. Toward an Old Testament Theology (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 1978), 178-181; C. Westermann, Elements of Old Testament Theology (Atlanta: John Knox, 1978), 113-14. 20 See E. Jacob, Theology of the Old Testament (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971; Fr. orig. 1955), 179; Westermann, Elements of Old Testament Theology, 115-17. 21 E.g. W. Zimmerli, Old Testament Theology in Outline (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1978), 64-69; H. D. Preuss, Old Testament Theology Volume 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 179-83; W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 341-42, 528-31. 22 See G. von Rad, “Shalom in the OT”, in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Volume II: ǻ-Ǿ, ed. G. Kittel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 402-06; H. Beck and C. Brown, “Peace”, in Dictionary of the New Testament Vol. 2, ed. Colin Brown (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1971), 776-83; P. D. Hansen, “War and Peace in Hebrew Scripture”, Interpretation 38 (1984): 341-62; P. B. Yoder, Shalom: The Bible’s Word for Salvation (Newton, KS: Faith and Life, 1987); W. Brueggemann, “Peace (Shalom) in the Old Testament”, in The Meaning of Peace: Biblical Studies, ed. P. B. Yoder and W. M. Swartley (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 16-48; J. P. Healey, “Peace (Old Testament)”, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary Volume 5: OíSh, D. N. Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 206-07; W. M. Swartley, Peace: Living towards a Vision (St Louis: Chalice, 2001); W. M. Swartley, “Peace”, in The Westminster Theological Wordbook of the Bible, ed. D. E. Gowen (Louiseville/London: John Knox, 2003), 354-60; idem, The Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 27-34. 23 We will omit Hansen (“War and Peace”) who posits differences between the royal and exilic views of shalom in the Hebrew tradition. 24 Healey, “Peace (Old Testament)”, 206.

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x

x

x

x

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messianic and eschatological perspectives on the restoration of the world and its inhabitants (Isa. 9:5 [Eng. 9:6]; Zech. 9:9-10);25 Westermann argues that shalom is a “statal” term, denoting soundness and wholeness of human community, including wellbeing and welfare because all things have been and will continue to be placed in order between God and his people;26 Kaiser proposes that Old Testament eudaimonism is experienced when the wise man studies the divine plan and order in all things (Eccl 3:1í5:20; 16:9; 19:21; 20:24; 21:2), with the result that he fears God (Eccl 3:17);27 Brueggemann writes that shalom is never the private property of a few but rather leads to the emergence of a community of peace (Num. 6:22-27), where righteousness (Ps 72:7; Isa. 48:18; 54:1314; 60:17) and justice (Isa. 59:8) are performed;28 Yoder emphasises the moral quality of shalom that upholds the divine order of human life by standing against oppression, fraud and deceit (Gen. 44:17; 2 Kgs 5:19).29

Whatever interpretative differences exist between the authors above, an overall consensus about shalom has emerged. Shalom is holistic and communal happiness lived out before God, moral and material in its scope, reflecting the divine order of things. While it is acquired as a soteriological gift of God’s grace (1 Kgs 2:23; Isa. 52:7; Pss 35:27; 85:10-13; 122:6; Eccl 2:24; 3:13; 5:18-20; 8:15; 9:9; Isa. 43:7; Jer. 29:11), it is nonetheless appropriated through wise and just living, both individually and communally. The difference between the Jewish and Graeco-Roman worlds over what constitutes well-being could not be sharper. In Jewish thought shalom and well-being are located in the divine ordering of the world and in God’s soteriological acts, as opposed to the Graeco-Roman notion of the human will instilling the moral virtues in the soul. Now that we have established the ancient conceptions of well-being that have informed the Western intellectual tradition, what does modern scholarly literature say about happiness? What traditions inform its worldview and what continuity is there with the world of antiquity?

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von Rad, “Shalom in the OT”, 402, 406-08. Westermann, Elements of Old Testament Theology, 117. 27 Kaiser, Jr. Toward an Old Testament Theology, 179, 181. 28 Brueggemann, “Peace (Shalom) in the Old Testament”, 7, 19-20. 29 Yoder, Shalom, passim. 26

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Modern Literature on Happiness Modern scholarly literature on happiness up to and postdating 2001 has concentrated around two foci of discussion: the “hedonic” and “eudaimonic’ approaches to well-being. In the case of the hedonic approach, we are referring to human happiness that interprets well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance, whereas the eudaimonic approach concentrates on the meaning and self-realisation in human beings, with well-being emerging when a person is functioning fully.30 It is important, however, to distinguish the modern eudaimonic approach from the versions of antiquity, outlined above. As we have seen, in the ancient understanding of eudaimonia, human flourishing was equated with the active exercise of virtue and was the primary way to happiness. Indeed, according to Aristotle, hedonic happiness was an ideal that enslaved its adherents to the passions if unwisely pursued.31 For the modern person, however, meaning and self-realisation do not necessarily involve the pursuit of virtue and its establishment in the soul as Sophocles and Aristotle understood it: it is more to be understood in light of modern psychological theory as opposed to traditional virtue ethics. But the idea that one should be living in accordance with their daimon, or true self, does have resonances with psychological theories of “personal expressiveness”, “human actualisation”, and “self-determination”. 32 Furthermore, there are continuities between Aristotle and the modern eudaimonic and hedonic approaches. We see this in the modern recognition that the pursuit of the true self might be aided by external factors (e.g. money, social class, attachment, relatedness).33 The modern hedonic approach of popular and academic psychology is indebted to the thought of the Greek philosopher from North African Cyrene, Aristippus (435í356 BC), who argued that pleasure is the end or goal of life. Happiness is the sum of particular pleasures (Diogenes

 30

For a discussion of the technical literature up to 2001, see Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-being”, Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 141-66. See also Veronika Huta and Richard M. Ryan, “Pursuing Pleasure or Virtue: The Differential and Overlapping Well-Being Benefits of Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives”, Journal of Happiness Studies 11.6 (2009): 735-62. 31 See Aristotle, Eth. nic 2.3.10; 7.14.4-7; 10:3.8-13; 10.5.3-5 on the limits to and dangers regarding profligate pleasure. 32 Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials”, 146-47. 33 Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials”, 152-55.

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Laertius 2.87-88) as opposed to the relentless accumulation of undefined pleasures (Diogenes Laertius 2.90). In the view of the school of Aristippus, bodily pleasures provide greater gratification than mental pleasures. The other chief representative of the hedonic viewpoint in antiquity is Epicurus (341í270 BC). However, while Epicurus argues that pleasure is the ultimate good (Letter to Menoeceus 128-129), nonetheless he suggests that the soul and body had to be free from disturbance (ataraxia: 128). So freeing oneself from bodily pain and mental distress was an important aspect of the pursuit of pleasure (Letter to Menoeceus 131-32). In sum, there are differences in emphasis between ancient hedonic theorists, depending on whether one included the mind in the accumulation of pleasure or not. There exists, however, a major difference between modern psychological approaches and Aristippus’ version of the hedonic theory in antiquity. Modern hedonic theory has “tended to focus on a broad conception of hedonism that includes the preferences and pleasures of the mind as well as the body”.34 In sum, as Ryan and Deci observe, “Happiness is thus not reducible to physical hedonism, for it can be derived from attainment of goals or valued outcomes in varied realms”. 35 Thus, when pleasure is differentiated from pain as a goal, hedonistic psychology is provided with an “unambiguous target of research and intervention, namely maximizing human happiness”. 36 By contrast, modern hedonic theory has more in common with the view of Epicurus. His recognition that both the body and the mind had to be involved in the quest for pleasure has a peculiarly modern psychological ring about it. Thus, given the enduring significance of ancient eudaimonic and hedonic approaches to pleasure, it is hardly surprising that modern psychological literature continues to engage with the Graeco-Roman worldview of happiness. 37 Gratifyingly, a recent publication has also

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Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials”, 144. Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials”, 144. 36 Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials”, 144. 37 See M. Joseph Sirgy, The Psychology of Quality of Life : Hedonic Well-being, Life Satisfaction, and Eudaimonia (New York, NY: Springer, 2012); Daniel C. Russel, Happiness for Humans (Oxford: Oxford Unversity Press, 2012); Kachana Kamtekar, Virtue and Happiness: Essays in Honour of Julia Annas (Oxford: Oxford Unversity Press, 2013); Alan S, Waterman, ed., The Best Within Us: Positive Psychology Perspectives on Eudaimonia (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2013). 35

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brought Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist traditions regarding happiness into the dialogue about human flourishing, providing further insight into the impact that eastern traditions are making upon notions of well-being in popular western culture.38 But an important question still remains: how do the ancient hedonic and eudaimonic traditions of well-being and happiness intersect with the Jewish and early Christian understanding of human flourishing? And what difference do they make to modern psychological approaches to happiness? The Graeco-Roman world-view certainly brought the god/s into discussions of happiness, seeing virtue as an emulatory striving towards godlikeness in the non-material soul. But for the Old Testament Jew, as we have seen, true wisdom and happiness are more found in the submission to the divine order of all things, holistically conceived, materially and spiritually. The early Christians, informed by the soteriological narrative of the crucified and risen Messiah, find true happiness and personal freedom through their cruciform death to self (Mark 8:34; 2 Cor 4:10-12) and the enslaving allurements of the world (Mark 8:36-38) by serving others without partiality as an expression of their indebtedness to Christ’s love (Mark 10:44-45; Rom 13:8-10). In this life of selflessness believers are empowered by the newness of the Spirit (Rom 7:6b), experience the renewal of their identity communally in the image of God (Rom 8:29; Col 3:10), and enjoy the fullness of life offered to them by the risen Christ (John 10:10). It is worth pondering whether such a countercultural message has acquired any credence among the popular heirs of the western moral tradition, namely, the modern psychologists. In a fascinating study of self-centredness, selflessness and happiness, Dambrun and Ricard have argued that modern psychological theories such as the Self-Determination Theory, founded to some extent on ancient theories of happiness, can sometimes enshrine “a self-centered orientation”. Dambrun and Ricard sum up their disagreement with the modern psychological consensus thus: Rather than focusing on psychological qualities that foster happiness, the present model takes into account the nature of the self, and the self based psychological processes that are basic to our psychological functioning. We argue that our psychological functioning is determined by the structure



38 Guy Fletcher, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-being (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 40-80.

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of the self, and that authentic happiness can be obtained when selflessness, rather than self-centeredness, occurs.39

We are seeing here something of the countercultural paradox underlying Jesus’ logion in Matthew 10:39: “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it”. The writer to the Hebrews also reminds us that, in light of his post-mortem prospect of the restoration of joy, Jesus endured the cross for the sake of his dependents, scorning its shame (Heb 12:3).40 The selflessness at the core of happiness and well-being is as confronting to the modern world as it had been for Graeco-Roman society. But, as R. F. Baumeister has argued, 41 the psychological search for self has increasingly become a “problem” for researchers, given the many historical shifts in self-definition processes over the years, the very real problem of self-deception, and the failure of modern society to provide meaning and purpose for the individual’s notion of self. Nevertheless, Baumeister was confident that researchers could overcome some of these methodological problems. But the paradigm of an other-centred selflessness as the basis for well-being, grounded in the believer’s new identity in Christ and in humanity’s status as the image of God, provides an important alternative paradigm for social and psychological thought and transformation. The research of Dambrun and Ricard points in the right direction by acknowledging those psychological studies that “seem to indicate that intrinsic religiosity and spirituality could favor selflessness”.42 Having surveyed the various understandings of well-being in the western intellectual tradition, we turn to how well-being is understood in contemporary Australia. What pressures are eroding well-being in our personal, family, work and civic lives?

 39

Michaël Dambrun and Matthieu Ricard, “Self-Centeredness and Selflessness: A Theory of Self-Based Psychological Functioning and Its Consequences for Happiness”, Review of General Psychology 15.2 (2011): 138-57, at 152. 40 See the famous study of O. Cullmann (“Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?” in Immortality and Resurrection. Death in the Western World: Two Conflicting Currents of Thought, ed. Oscar Cullman et al. [New York: MacMillan, 1965], 9-53), comparing the vastly different ways that Socrates and Jesus faced death, explained in each case by their different understandings of the status of the body and the afterlife. 41 See the intriguing article of R. F. Baumeister, “How the Self Became a Problem: A Psychological Review of Historical Research”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52.1 (1987): 163-76. 42 Dambrun and Ricard, “Self-Centeredness and Selflessness”,150.

14

Chapter One

Australia, Well-being, and the Social Fabric Australian Measures of Well-being Several major studies have been written in the last decade on how Australians measure and understand well-being and happiness,43 including the establishment of a well-being framework for the oversight of the economy by the Treasury of the Australian Government.44 Further, in a research partnership between Australian Unity and the Australian Centre on Quality of Life at Deakin University (Geelong, Victoria), Australians are interviewed regarding their satisfaction with their personal lives and the quality of national life in Australia from an economic, social and environmental viewpoint. The Australian Unity Well-being Index reports have been archived since April 2001, having put out by now three editions (2001-2004; 2005-2014; 2015-). 45 In what follows we will briefly summarise the results of the most recent well-being report in Australia (2015: n. 42 supra). The Third Edition (2015) of the Australian Unity Well-being Index report (“What Makes Us Happy?”) addresses the issue from the perspective a PWI Index (Personal Well-being Index) and a NWI Index (National Well-being Index). In the case of the PWI Index, Australian Unity approaches personal well-being from the psychological theory of homeostasis, which asserts that people have an inbuilt mechanism of

 43

See Clive Hamilton and Emma Rush, “The Attitudes of Australians to Happiness and Social Well-being”, The Australia Institute, Webpaper September 2006: http//www.tai.org.au/sites/defualt/files/WP90_8.pdf, accessed 13 September, 2016. See also Robert Cummins, “What Makes Us Happy?” Third Edition, 2015, Australian Unity: http//www.australianunity.com.au/about-us/news.../what-makesus-happy, accessed 14 September, 2016. Additionally, note Lynne Casey and Rachel Pui-Tak Liang, “Stress and Well-being in Australia Survey 2014”, Australian Psychological Society, October 2014: https://www.psychology.org.au/.../2014-APS-NPW-Survey-WEB-reduced.pdf, accessed 13 September, 2016. 44 See Stephanie Gorecki and James Kelly, “Treasury’s Well-being Framework”, Economic Roundup 3 (2012): http//www.treasury.gov.au/...3/.../Treasury8217sWell-being-Framework, accessed 14 September, 2016. 45 See http//www.australianunity.com.au/about-us/well-being/auwbi, accessed 13 September, 2016. See R. Cummins, “What Makes Us Happy?” (Melbourne: Australian Unity, 2014): http//www.australianunity.com.au/.../What%20Makes%20Us%20Happy%202015. ashx, accessed 13 September, 2016.

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15

recovery that allows them to return to their normal level of well-being after disruptive events in their lives. 46 Consequently, in an Australian context, the PWI Index fluctuates little, having remained from 2010-2015 around 76% in terms of personal contentment. 47 For Australians, the golden triangle of happiness consists of (a) strong personal relationships (including family relationships with children and mother-in-laws), (b) financial control (the necessity of a comfortable level of income), and (c) sense of purpose (the significance work and volunteerism, graceful ageing, the connectivity of social media, good health, wise time usage, place of residence, the future, etc.).48 However, the NWI Index is much more volatile, ranging from 5565%.49 The national issues raised by the Australian Unity report are (a) satisfaction with the economy and business, (b) satisfaction with national security, (c) satisfaction with the government. 50 The fluctuations in the Australian sense of well-being that occurred in these Indexes from 20052015, owing to local and international economic and political events, are not worth pursuing here. We turn to three fundamental areas for the establishment of social well-being in the period discussed above: namely the family, the school, and the workplace.

Well-being: Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Family Experience Indigenous Experience A revised 2010 report of the AMA (Australian Medical Association) makes some pertinent comments on the health and well-being of Australia’s aboriginal and Torres Strait islander children and young people. The history of dispossession and intergenerational poverty has placed these children at great risk in terms of well-being due to unemployment, overcrowded and inadequate accommodation, and geographical isolation affecting the quality of food, health, goods, and services:

 46

Cummins, “What Makes Us Happy?” 4. Cummins, “What Makes Us Happy?” 6. 48 Cummins, “What Makes Us Happy?” 8, 12-33. 49 Cummins, “What Makes Us Happy?” 6. 50 Cummins, “What Makes Us Happy?” 34-37. 47

16

Chapter One Parenting skills are likely to have been influenced by the effects of disadvantage. Family risk factors may include a high proportion of single parent families, mental health problems and substance abuse, having a father in gaol and early exposure to violence.51

Consequently, both Liberal and Labor Federal Governments have intervened in the Northern Territory from 2007 onwards to extricate indigenous and Torres Strait islander children at risk of sexual abuse and other forms of mistreatment in families.52 This policy recalls the “Stolen Generations” of indigenous children removed by the Australian Governments from 1906 to 1969, though each generation of government authorities saw its policies as well intentioned, rightly or wrongly, for the welfare of the children. Insufficient progress has been made in the Northern Territory. The recent Northern Territory Juvenile Detention Royal Commission announced by Prime Minister Turnbull into the abuse of detainee children, including the teargassing of six boys in an isolation unit at the Don Dale Detention Centre at Darwin, amply shows this. Brooke Prentis, the Aboriginal spokesperson for the Christian justice organisation Common Grace, spoke recently on the radio station Hope 103.2, saying the following about racism in youth detention: We’ve known about this for years. As Aboriginal Christians, we’re continually working with families who have children in juvenile detention as well as in the adult prison system, providing caring and support and love for those families. And [this abuse] is not just in the Northern Territory: every state is affected by this and we carry our own horror stories and personal experiences.53

 51

See https://ama.com.au/.../developmental-health-and-wellbeing-australia’s-childrenand-young-people-revised, accessed 15 September, 2016. On the link between the health gap and indigenous imprisonment, see AMA 2105 Report Card on Indigenous Health: https://ama.com.au/.../2015%20Report%20Card%20on%20Indigenous%20Health_ 0.pdf, accessed September 5, 2016. 52 For the period 2013-2014, see “Child Protection and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children CFCA Resource Sheet—September 2015”: https://aifs.gov.au/.../child-protection-and-aboriginal-andtorres-strait-islanderchildren, accessed 15 September, 2016. 53 See http//www.hope1032.com.au/.../aboriginal-racism-youth-detention-what-can -i-do/, accessed 15 September, 2016. On the well-being of indigenous peoples generally, see “Review of the Social and Emotional Well-being of Indigenous Australian Peoples”, Australian Indigenous Health InfoNet 2015, Edith Cowan University: http///www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/other-health.../mental.../our-review, accessed 15 September, 2016.

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We should also remember in this regard the impact that incarceration has on adult indigenous family members, frequently leading to the suicide of the indigenous detainee, creating enormous distress for the remaining family members. The frequency of such explained and unexplained deaths during incarceration—whether by suicide, 54 the use of excessive police force during imprisonment, or the dereliction of duty of care during the incarceration—led to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1987-1991 and its ensuing 339 recommendations. Though its recommendations are still valid today, very few of them have been implemented. Last, the perpetration of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait women is an endemic problem in our nation. Our indigenous women incur higher rates and more severe forms of violence compared to other groups of females living in Australia. This is even more distressing when one remembers the chilling statistics regarding the relentless violence exacted against women, indigenous and non-indigenous, in our nation. On any week a minimum of one woman per week is killed by her partner or expartner; one in three over the age of 15 has experienced physical violence; one in five has suffered sexual violence; one in four has been subjected either to physical and sexual violence or emotional abuse by their partner, past or present. 55 This has provoked national and individual campaigns against domestic violence. For example, from 2010 the Australian Government has implemented two national plans to reduce violence against women and their children.56 At an individual level, the courageous



54 The issue of indigenous youth suicide in the Kimberley region of Western Australia has also reached a flashpoint at the time of finalising this chapter, with rates of suicide being seven times higher than the national avergae and three times higher than the national indigenous average. The issue has been well documented in various studies for several years, with seemingly little progress being made by successive Australian governments in addressing this unfolding tragedy. 55 See http//www.ourwatch.org.au/Understanding-Violence/Facts-and-figures, accessed 15 October, 2016. 56 See Janet Phillips and Penny Vandenbroek, “Domestic, Family, and Sexual Violence in Australia: An Overview of the Issues”, http//www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/...Library/.../ViolenceAust, accessed 15 October, 2016. For the two Australian Government plans regarding violence, see Plan 1 at https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/08_2014/national_plan1.pdf and Plan 2 at https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/09_2014/dss012_14_book_ta gged_reduced.pdf, both accessed 15 October, 2016.

18

Chapter One

2015 Australian of the Year, Rosemary Batty, became an anti-violence campaigner when her 11-year-old son Luke was bludgeoned to death with a cricket bat by his mentally disturbed father, Greg Anderson, in the presence of Rosemary on the evening of 12th February 2014 during a cricket training session at an oval in Tyabb, south-east of Melbourne.57 In sum, we should not deceive ourselves about the overall well-being of family life in Australia. Too many Australians, indigenous and nonindigenous, groan under the terrible weight of inconsolable loss in the face of the suicide of family members and the experience of domestic violence.

Non-Indigenous Experiences A major 2011 study by the Australian Government found that the parents’ employment circumstances made an impact of significance upon parent and child well-being. It was intriguing to see the subtle differences that parental employment made in different family scenarios. Apart from the negative impact on well-being caused by insecure employment, inflexible hours, and poor job control, the report also found that Some features of jobs affect mothers but not fathers, or vulnerable parents but not those living with more favourable socioeconomic circumstances, and so on. Some features of jobs show direct links to children, while other pathways are indirect, through their impact on parents.58

The more that unreasonable work pressures and negative employment experiences could be minimised, the more likely to flourish were the children of parents disadvantaged by difficult work contexts in particular. In terms of relationships and the emotional welfare of Australian families, recent research from the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre and Western Sydney University has demonstrated that increased online activity between older generations, parents and children can actually help to improve social and family relationships. As Associate

 57

See Rosie Batty (with Bryce Corbett), A Mother’s Story (Sydney South: HarperCollins, 2015). 58 See Parent and Child Well-being and the Influence of Work and Family Arrangements: A Three Cohort Study. Social Policy Research Paper No. 44 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Familes, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, 2011), 99: https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/05.../sprp_44.pdf, accessed 15 September, 2016.

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19

Professor Amanda Third summed up the research findings, “People are using the internet to improve their families’ wellbeing, for information on parenting, for social and political knowledge and activism, and to follow cultural and artistic interests”.59 The positive role of the social media, of course, is not without its drawbacks. One only has to think of the resilience now required by our young people to overcome the deleterious impact of internet trolls upon their emotional well-being. The ministry of the church, however, with its unique message of personal empowerment through divine grace, can help family life in this regard.60 Finally, Australian regional families are facing enormous pressures, with farmers committing suicide due to the despair caused by years of sustained drought, the intractable results of climate change, as well as the decline of traditional export markets, changes in government policy regarding the farming sector, increasing production costs and the ever mounting debt owed to the banks by property owners in the farming community.61

 59

See “Australian Families Embace Technology to Improve Well-Being and Relationships”: http//www.uws.edu.au/.../australian_families_embrace_technology_to_improve_w ellbeing_and_relationships, accessed 15 September 2016. The 2012 study of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare on the social and emotional welfare of children is a methodological study on how to detect appropriate research indicators of social and emotional well-being and will not be pursued here. See http// www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=10737421524, acessed 15 September, 2016. 60 See J. R. Harrison, “Developing Personal Resilience in a Dangerous Virtual World: Historical, Social Biblical and Theological Perspectives”, in Teaching Theology in a Technological Age, ed. Y. Debergue and J. R. Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015), 86-112. 61 See “Position Statement: Responding to Suicide in Rural Australia”, Suicide Prevention Australia, September 2008, reviewed April 2010: https://www.suicidepreventionaust.org/.../SPA-Suicide-in-RuralAustralia%5B1%5D.pdf, accessed 15 September, 2016. Additionally, see Kairi Kõlves, Allison Milner, Kathy McKay, and Diego De Leo, “Suicide in Rural and Remote Areas of Australia”, Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention, Brisbane, 2012: https://www.griffith.edu.au/__.../Suicide-in-Ruraland-Remote-Areas-of-Australia.pdf, accessed 15 September, 2016.

20

Chapter One

Well-being: From School to Work Place A student “well-being policy” is de rigeur at state government level throughout Australia,62 as well as at the local school level state by state. Considerable thought has been given to promoting the health and wellbeing of indigenous students in Australian primary and secondary schools, though sustained success has been patchy nationally.63 State governments have also formulated policies for the well-being of students with disabilities, 64 aided by the commencement of the National Disability Scheme in Australia. The implementation of policies for the well-being of people with disabilities has profound theological warrant, given the detailed attention accorded to people with disabilities in the gospel traditions of the early Christians.65 Another important issue of educational well-being that continues to gather considerable momentum is the safety of LGBT students and staff. When the “marriage equality” legislation is eventually passed in Australia—whether by plebiscite or parliamentary vote, as case may be, with all the polls indicating the legislation’s success—attention to the well-being of LGBT students in schools and universities will continue to



62 For example, “Student Well-being”, Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, NSW Government, May 2015: wellbeingaustralia.com.au/.../2015/.../student_wellbeing_litreview_v6.pdf, accessed 15 September, 2016. See also Catherine A. Simmons, Anne Graham, and Nigel Thomas, “Imagining an Ideal School for Wellbeing: Locating Student Voice”, Southern Cross University, 2015: http//www.epubs.scu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2133&context=educ, accessed 15 September, 2016. 63 For example, Brenda Dobbia and Virginia O’Rourke, “Promoting the Mental Health and Well-being of Indigenous Children in Australian Primary Schools”, Kids Matter Australian Primary Schools Mental Health Initiative, University of Western Sydney, 2011: https://www.kidsmatter.edu.au/.../promoting-mental-healthwellbeing-indigenous-children.pdf, accessed 15 September, 2016. 64 For example, see “Well-being for Schools: Supporting Students with Disability”, NSW Department of Education: see https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/wellbeing/.../supporting-students-with-disability, accessed 15 September, 2016. 65 See L. Gosbel, “The Poor, the Crippled, the Blind, and the Lame”: Physical and Sensory Disability in the Gospels of the New Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming). In an Australian context, see also A. Pickard and M. Habets, eds., Theology and the Experience of Disability: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Voices Down Under (London and New York: Routledge, 2016).

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21

be developed by policymaking in the same way that it has been overseas.66 Already in the public media, there is considerable debate regarding homophobia and the well-being of LGBT students and staff in schools, with diverse viewpoints and approaches being aired. In terms of policy, Graham Gallasch has posted on the web a discussion paper on how Lutheran schools should be thinking theologically and pastorally about homophobia in Australian Lutheran schools.67 By contrast, the Australian Christian Lobby has recently campaigned against the national antibullying programme sponsored by the Safe Schools Coalition, which is designed to prevent homophobia and discrimination in schools. In contrast once again, the Principal of the private Anglican girls’ school Kambala (Sydney) has spoken out against parental complaints about the hiring of some gay teachers, vigorously asserting that it is an inclusive school. These examples demonstrate how public, private and denominational educators in Australia are addressing the issue of the well-being of LGBT students, staff, and their families in different ways. Given the dramatic changes that have occurred in Australian views regarding marriage equality over the last 20 years, it is likely that the Safe Schools programme will continue to shape Australian educational policy and attitudes to the LGBT community. Whatever theological differences may continue to exist among Australian religious groups over the issue of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and intersex status, all educators, religious and secular, must nonetheless continue to owe the debt of love to all the students and staff under their care (Rom 13:8-10). Last, we will briefly touch on the issue of work stress and well-being, having noted above how this impacts on family life. Well-being in Australian work-life has been looked at from the perspective of health,68

 66

See “Responding to Harassment of LGBT Youth in Schools: Snapshots from Three Trend-Setting Countries”, Advocates for Youth, Washington DC, 2010: http//www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/.../snapshots_v2.pdf, accessed 15 September, 2016. 67 See Graham Gallasch, “A Discussion Paper: Lutheran Schools and Homophobia”: www.lutheran.edu.au/.../Conference%20Papers/.../Gallasch%20G.pdf, accessed 16 September, 2016. 68 See Guide to Promoting Health and Well-Being in the Workplace, ACT Government: http//www.healthierwork.act.gov.au/.../Guide_to_Promoting_Health_and_Wellbei ng_in_the_Workplace_3.pdf, accessed 15 September, 2016.

22

Chapter One

mental health,69 caring,70 depression, harassment and bullying,71 to name but a few approaches. Christian organisations are not immune from the same authoritarian and vindictive behaviour in their operations and, because of the prevalent “indispensability” syndrome in ministry, an unrealistically heavy work-overload can easily lead to significant health problems and psychological issues.

The Church and the Well-being of Refugees: Welcoming the Outsider In a report published in 2008 by the Australian Psychological Society on the well-being of refugees resettling in Australia,72 the stated aim was “to provide a broad overview of the concerns related to refugee mental health and well-being within the Australian context”.73 The pre-migration trauma and post-migration mental health of refugees is explored. In the report, time is proposed to be a great healer of the psychological dislocation and trauma incurred by refugees. Notwithstanding, where there have been experiences of trauma (“human rights violations, threats to life, traumatic loss, dispossession and eviction”) prior to resettlement, these have a significant impact upon mental health.74



69 See As One Working Together: Promoting Mental Health and Well-being at Work, Australian Government, Australian Public Service Commission: www.comcare.gov.au/__.../working-together-mental-health-wellbeingaccessible.pdf, accessed 16 September 2016. 70 Natalie Skinner and Barbara Pocock, The Persitent Challenge: Living, Working and Caring in Australia in 2014, Centre for Work and Life, Univeristy of South Australia, 2014: http://www.unisa.edu.au/Documents/EASS/CWL/Publications/AWALI_2014_nati onal_report_final.pdf, accessed 16 September 2016. 71 See Peter Butterworth, Liana S. Leach, and Kim M. Kiely, The Relationship between Work Characteristics, Well-being, Depression and Workplace Bullying: Summary Report, Centre for Research on Ageing, Health and Wellbeing, The Australian National University under commission from Safe Work Australia June 2013: www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/.../Wellbeing-depression-bullying-summaryreport.pdf, accessed 16 September 2016. 72 K. E. Murray, G. R. Davidson, and Robert D. Schweitzer, Psychological Wellbeing of Refugees Resettling in Australia: A Literature Review Prepared for the Australian Psychological Society (August 2008): 1-28. See https://www.psychology.org.au/assets/files/refugee-lit-review.pdf, accessed 12 September, 2016. 73 Murray, Davidson, and Schweitzer, Psychological Well-being of Refugees, 3. 74 Murray, Davidson, and Schweitzer, Psychological Well-being of Refugees, 7.

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23

But post-migration stress (the refugees’ incompatibility with the host culture, worldview and language; host community reactions to refugees; the incompatibility between western psychotherapy and refugee beliefs about mental health, etc.) can be just as dislocating as pre-migration stress.75 Furthermore, Claimants seeking asylum must face a number of challenges and obstacles when they enter Australia, including restrictive government policy and negative community opinions and reactions, which are unique to their uncertain status.76

The problem is compounded by the negative socialisation experience of mandatory detention,77 exacerbating the impact of pre-migration trauma.78 If one adds to the mix the problems of refugees in navigating the educational system, access and equity to refugee services, etc., there is real need for intervention by private agencies, groups and individuals other than just the government if refugees are to be helped to recover and adjust to a new society.79 How have Australian churches helped in fostering the well-being of refugees in their new country? 80 Three brief examples will have to suffice.

 75

Murray, Davidson, and Schweitzer, Psychological Well-being of Refugees, 8-9. Murray, Davidson, and Schweitzer, Psychological Well-being of Refugees, 10. 77 See R. Rothfield, ed., The Drownings’ Argument. Australia’s Inhumanity: Offshore Processing of Asylum Seekers (Bentleigh: Labour for Refugees, 2014). For the pdf of the collected essays, see http//www.australianchurchesrefugeetaskforce.com.au/.../The-DrowningsArgument_TXT_3pp-3.pdf, accessed 13 September, 2016. 78 Murray, Davidson, and Schweitzer, Psychological Well-being of Refugees, 1012. 79 Murray, Davidson, and Schweitzer, Psychological Well-being of Refugees, 1314. 80 In speaking about well-being and Australian churches, it needs to be immediately acknowledged, with deep shame before God, that several Australian Christian denominations, like other denominations overseas, have violated the well-being of young people in their care by sexually abusing them. The Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission, begun in 2015 by the Federal Government and still not completed at the time of writing this chapter, has uncovered an horrific trail of sexual misdemeanours perpetrated by church staff against minors. Many of these cases, where the perpetrators are still alive, will result in criminal prosecution, with claims for victim compensation. A series of steps must be taken by church authorities: (a) heart-felt repentance before God; (b) sincere public apologies, nationally and locally; (c) a refusal to cover up abuse or shield its 76

24

Chapter One

First, at a legal and political level, some churches recently have provoked the ire of the Immigration and Border Protection Minister, Peter Dutton, when they offered sanctuary to 267 asylum seekers, all of whom the High Court of Australia had ruled must return to offshore detention centres.81 Second, at a local level, Monica Short’s study of how three rural Anglican churches (two from Bendigo, one from Mildura) engaged people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds is revealing. It found that building a genuinely respectful multi-ethnic and multicultural community involved (a) treating people with dignity and respect, (b) listening to and identifying with them, (c) using and valuing the gifts that they bring to the community, (d) diversifying team leadership to reflect the new multi-ethnic realities, and (e) considering how ministry needs change from first to second generation migrants.82 As the report states regarding the process, Engagement upholds people’s well-being and develops social capital. The three churches in this report affirmed and utilised the skills of migrants in their congregations and promoted people from CALD backgrounds abilities within the local communities. Participants consider that a consequence of this emerging multi-ethnic social capital is the connecting of churches to local communities.83

Third, Interserve Australia’s CultureConnect, in seeking to facilitate Christian ministry among people of minority backgrounds, published online “Seven Habits of a Refugee-Welcoming Church”. 84 This also included the “Welcome Dinner Project” which sought to bring ordinary Australians into contact with new arrivals to Sydney around the kitchen

 perpetrators from church discipline and legal prosecution in the courts; (d) childcare staff screening and training for all ministry involving minors; and (e) the extension of ongoing care for the victims and prompt payment of any compensation claims. Only then will churches begin to extend again the holy and compassionate ministry to minors that Christ requires of his servants (Mark 9:3637; 10:13-16; Matt 18:2-6, 10). 81 See https://www.theguardian.com/australia.../high-court-upholds-australias-rightto-detain-asylum-seekers-offshore, accessed 13 September, 2016. 82 M. Short, Three Anglican Churches: Engaging People from Culturally and Lingustically Diverse Backgrounds (Sydney: Bush Church Aid Society, 2015). The report may be downloaded at http// www.bushchurchaid.com.au/.../three-anglicanchurches.../gjp8js, accessed at 12 September, 2016. 83 Short, Three Anglican Churches, 8. 84 See interserve.org.au/blog/seven-habits-of-a-refugee-welcoming-church/, accessed 13 September, 2016.

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25

table for dinner and conversation in local homes. While the examples above are more relational in their impact and highly localised, they represent “onshore” the compassionate Australian “human face” that must be added to the current “offshore” processing of asylum seekers, with all its inherent cruelty, as well as our increasingly xenophobic reaction to the migration of particular people groups to our country by the normal application process.85 We turn now to what I propose is a crisis in wellbeing for the Australian soul that is being created by our offshore processing policy.

Well-being and the Cancer of the Australian Soul: Boats, Refugees, and the Ticklish Question of Mercy The geographical separation of land and sea in Australia has created a mythology of continental “insularity”, which the early British settlers and later Anglo-Saxon migrants perceived to be axiomatic. 86 What emerged was a tight control of the country’s borders because Australia’s boundaries naturally coincided with its landmass. Historically, this resulted in the Colony of Victoria passing the Chinese Act, which limited the number of Chinese immigrants, on 11 June 1855. After the Federation of the Australian colonial states in 1901, the first Parliament of Australia passed the Immigration Restriction Act. This resulted in the now infamous “White Australia” policy, which intentionally favoured immigration from certain European countries to Australia. The fear of the “outsider” and of the invasion of Australian borders by “ethnic” groups other than the dominant Anglo-Celtic, Judeo-Christian white population remained deeply ingrained for decades.87 But, with immigration and the gradual advent of



85 See Julian Burnside, “Australians Are Xenophobic”, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 9, 2009: http//www.smh.com.au/federal.../australians-are-xenophobic20091105-hzix.html, accessed 13 September, 2016. 86 S. Perera, Australia and the Insular Imagination: Beaches, Borders, Boats, and Bodies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2009), 8-10, 31-51. This section draws on three paragraphs from James R. Harrison, “‘Who is the “Lord of Grace”’? Jesus’ Parables in Imperial Context”, in Border: Terms, Ideologies and Performances, ed. A. Weissenrieder (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 383-417, at 384-85. 87 See G. Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Annandale: Pluto, 1998); M. Dixson, The Imaginary Australian: AngloCelts and Identity, 1788 to the Present (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1999); P. Mares, Borderline: Australia’s Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001); A. Burke, In Fear of Security: Australia’s Invasion Anxiety (Annandale: Pluto, 2002).

26

Chapter One

multi-culturalism in the late 1950’s and 1960’s, the arrival of Vietnamese boat-refugees on the Australian continent in the 1970’s and 1980’s received a (largely) compassionate response among everyday Australians.88 However, with the successive prime ministerial elections of Howard (1996-2007), the “revolving door” of Rudd and Gillard (2007-2013), and Abbott (2013-15), Australian attitudes towards boat people violating the country’s territorial borders had again hardened. Even with the arrival of a new Liberal Prime Minister (Malcolm Turnbull 2015-), another example of the continuously revolving door of Australian party politics, nothing had changed. There is virtually no difference between the Liberal-National Coalition and Labor parties on the issue currently, with each party positioning itself as “tougher” than the other on issues of “border” protection and “asylum” seeker claims. During the Howard era, the Liberal-National Coalition, with Labor party support from 2001-2007, intercepted and deported asylum seekers arriving by boats in Australian territorial waters to Pacific island nations, as opposed to processing their claims to refugee status onshore in Australian detention centres. The “Pacific Solution”, as the policy was called, nominated the offshore detention sites of Christmas Island, Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, and the island nation of Nauru. Although this policy violated Australia’s international law obligations,89 Prime Minister John Howard famously stated in his 28th October 2001 election policy speech: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. The ensuing Labor Government (2007-2013) initially abandoned the “Pacific Solution”, though without fundamentally changing Australia’s border policing policies. But, with the increasing arrivals of refugee boats in Australian territorial waters, the Gillard Government capitulated to public pressure and revived the “Pacific Solution” on the 18th August 2012.90 Finally, with the election of the Liberal-National Coalition government in 2013, headed by Prime Minister Abbott, “Operation Sovereign Borders” began on the 18th September of the same year, with the result that maritime arrivals of asylum seekers were turned back in covert operations

 88

See N. M. Vo, The Vietnamese Boat People, 1954 and 1975-1992 (Jefferson: McFarland and Co., 2005). 89 See R. Mansted, “The Pacific Solution—Assessing Australia’s Compliance with International Law”, Bond University Student Law Review 3/1 (2007): 1-11. 90 See M. Grewcock, “Back to the Future: Australia’s Border Policing under Labor 2007-2013”, State Crime Journal, 3.1 (2014): 102-25.

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by the navy from Australian territorial waters to international waters, forcing them back to the land of their voyage’s origin and ending within months the people smuggling trade to Australia. Offshore detention and processing centres for refugees still continue at Papua New Guinea and Nauru, with a new agreement struck in September 2014 for the resettlement of asylum seekers from Australia’s offshore detention centres to the impoverished country of Cambodia. It is a country with a terrible record for protecting the human rights of asylum seekers, and, as a Buddhist nation, is hostile towards Muslims, the faith to which many of the asylum seekers subscribe.91 Furthermore, the other offshore detention sites have their own human rights abuses, particularly in relation to the physical and mental health of the detainees, many of whom are children, with the result that many detainees either self-harm or commit suicide. The denigration of asylum seekers in the political language of the Liberal Coalition government is also carefully calculated to demonise them: they are “illegals” or “queue jumpers”, not having applied to come to Australia by the normal immigration processes, but rather arriving mostly without proper documentation, as opposed to the “genuine refugees”. The most significant event regarding the offshore processing of refugees to occur under the brief of the current Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has been the closing down of the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre by the Government of Papua New Guinea (PNG). This occurred when the High Court of the country decided that the detaining of refugees on the island was unconstitutional. The PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has requested the Australian Government to relocate the refugees, clearly indicating that the well-being and resettlement of the 854 male detainees at Manus Island was the responsibility of Australia. With unflinching resolve on the issue, Peter Dutton, Australia’s minister for immigration and border protection, has reaffirmed that “no one from Manus Island Regional Processing Centre will ever be settled in Australia”,92 even though 98% of the detainees processed so far have been confirmed as refugees. In total contrast to Australia, many European countries have thrown open their borders to 50 million refugees, the greatest mass movement of dislocated peoples across the continent since

 91

See A. Warbrooke, “Australia’s ‘Pacific Solution’: Issues for the Pacific Islands”, Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies 1.2 (2014): 337-48. 92 See http://www.minister.border.gov.au/peterdutton/Pages/MANUS-REGIONALPROCESSING-CENTRE.aspx, accessed 8 September, 2016.

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World War 2. But the Australian government continues to pretend that it has been merciful by “stopping the boats”. The social reality is vastly different. The Guardian has published 2000 leaked Nauru files from 20132015 that reveal the dysfunction and cruelty characterising the Australian offshore asylum seeker detention centre, perpetrating a culture of relentless assaults, sexual violations, child abuse and self-harm at the site. 93 In being “merciful” in stopping the boats, the Australian government has been unspeakably cruel to the powerless. In his 2015 Palm Sunday address on a walk for justice and refugees in Perth, Tim Winton, arguably Australia’s greatest living novelist and a Christian believer, stated: “something foul is festering in the heart of our community, something shameful and rotten”. 94 “We hide it from ourselves”, Winton continues. Furthermore, we are complicit in letting “others” (i.e. the Australian Government) hide a dark and dirty secret from us. In spiriting offshore boat peoples approaching our shore, either by turning back their boats or by relocating them to detention centres outside of Australia, the Australian Government conveniently hides from us our xenophobia about those who would seek asylum in our country. But this institutional deception has indelibly scarred the victims of our offshore processing system and has unleashed a deadly cancer in our nation’s soul. As Winton concludes, Jesus said: “What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world only to lose his soul?” And I wonder: What does it profit a people to do likewise, to shun the weak and punish the oppressed, to cage children, and make criminals out of refugees? What about our soul as a people? We’re losing our way. We have hardened our hearts. I fear we have devalued the currency of mercy. Children have asked for bread and we gave them stones. So turn back. I beg you. For the children’s sake. For the sake of this nation’s spirit. Raise us back up to our best selves. Turn back while there is still time.95

In view of the crisis of Australian well-being outlined in the previous sections, this collection of essays, written by the faculty and doctoral candidates of the Sydney College of Divinity (SCD), seeks the welfare of Australia and, more widely, the flourishing of the international

 93

See https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/nauru-files, accessed 8 September, 2016. 94 See http://www.smh.com.au/.../tim-wintons-palm-sunday-plea-start-the-soul searching-australia-20150328-1ma5so.html, accessed 8 September, 2016. 95 See “tim-wintons-palm-sunday-plea-start-the-soulsearching-australia”.

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community, many of who call the land “down-under” home. The thirteen essays in this book, with one exception, were delivered at the same-named SCD conference in 2015. The perspectives offered are interdisciplinary and ecumenical, reflecting the scholarship tradition of the SCD consortium. The authors themselves come from Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Charismatic, Churches of Christ, Greek Orthodox, and Nazarene backgrounds. Each chapter summons us to find our identity and well-being in a merciful God, the “Rock of Ages” (Isa. 26:4). In an Australian context, the antiquity of this eternal God precedes the sacred silence of Uluru and the dreamtime myths of our indigenous peoples. God brought the first Australians to our shores 50,000 to 65,000 years ago (Acts 17:26);96 he also brought the Irish and English convicts as “boat peoples” to the (then) Dutch-named land of New Holland, which, as far as England was concerned, became a site for “offshore” detention in order to relieve the overcrowded jails and convict hulks in the mother country; and he now brings refugees from war-torn countries and politically repressive regimes to our shores so that they might experience the same mercy he has accorded us (Acts 16:27). At a more general level, “well-being” studies focus on the welfare of the world and its inhabitants, bringing holistic and transformative perspectives to bear. The Christian faith has been a powerful contributor to this tradition over the centuries. Human beings, made in the image of God, are called to live transformed lives through the Spirit of Christ in communities of grace and reconciliation for the benefit of others, caring for our planet in the expectation of God’s new creation being established through the returning Christ in the future, whilst calling its human inhabitants to pursue justice and mercy in social relations for all peoples and classes. What difference does the study of well-being from an ecumenical Christian perspective make? The results of this SCD interdisciplinary volume are rich, diverse, and insightful. The authors engage issues of fundamental relevance to our well-being: the role of humour; music in dementia care; the urban crisis; student resilience; the value of pilgrimage; communal peace; our moral compass; overcoming prejudice; the social good of vocation; integrated leadership; the malaise of Late Capitalism and the importance of interconnectedness. Finally, some of the studies adopt theological, patristic and biblical perspectives in

 96

See H. Reynolds, Aboriginal Sovereignty: Reflecting on Race, State and Nation (Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 1996); B. Attwood, Telling the Truth About Aboriginal History (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2005); S. Webb, The First Boat People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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considering the social good in relation to justice and the atonement, the rational creation, and healing. Easily overlooked in our cynical century, the social dynamism of early Christianity remains undiminished.

Conclusion This essay has attempted to set out the context of well-being in its GraecoRoman and Jewish and early Christian context, unfolding the ensuing collision of cultures in the western intellectual tradition. We have noted how the inheritors of the ancient hedonic and eudaimonic traditions, the modern psychologists, still feel the reverberations of collision between the Christian understanding of well-being being grounded in an other-centred selflessness and the consensus in the psychological literature that the self must be self-determined, personally expressive, and humanly actualised. From there we explored in detail the modern Australian experience of well-being, though, by way of addition, it would be worthwhile to consider historically important Australian expressions of well-being in colonial Australia such as mateship. It would be interesting to see to what degree mateship still retains its highly masculine and military culture, as well as its misogynist leanings, in the modern Australian context and whether, as a prized value in our society, it still has the same vital importance it once had in our now highly multicultural society. 97 Notwithstanding the strong sense of well-being in Australian society at a popular level, we have exposed a deep malaise that eats away at our ability to flourish as a nation: the welfare of our indigenous peoples; our cruelty to asylum seekers in offshore detention; our increasing sense of xenophobia; the explosion of domestic violence in families and the widespread presence of suicidal despair; and in the case of some churches, our sexual abuse of the most vulnerable. There are many more dimensions to this malaise that we could mention. But it is hoped that this ecumenical and interdisciplinary collection of essays by Australian Christian academics will highlight other important areas of well-being that need to be carefully considered and will point to how we can regather some of the unravelled threads of our social fabric.

 97

See M. Dixson, The Real Matilda: Women and Destiny in Australia, 1788-1975 (Ringwood: Penguin, 1976); B. Harris, “Of Tall Poppies, Mateship and Pragmatism: Spirituality in the Australasian Context”, Stimulus 16.3 (2008): 1620; Nick Dyrenfurth, Mateship: A Very Australian History (Brunswick: Scribe, 2015).

PART TWO: WHOLENESS IN A FRACTURED WORLD: THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON WELL-BEING

CHAPTER TWO A MARKAN VISION OF WELL-BEING MICHELE CONNOLLY

The Gospel of Mark, speaks of “well-being” principally through the Greek verb to “save,” ıǙDžǔ. At the climactic scene of the Gospel where Jesus dies, onlookers taunt him as the one who saved others yet who cannot save himself (Mark 15:29-31). This apparent paradox is, however, resolved by the fact that while Jesus is indeed not able to save himself from physical death, he dies in integrity to his identity as Son of Man and thus he does “save” the most essential element of himself and his role in the world. The Gospel of Mark prepares its reader to tolerate the paradox of 15:29-31 by threading through its narrative from the beginning not only the expression “save”, but also other terms such as “Son of Man”, “authority”, “power”, and “to be able [to do something]”. Strongly concentrated in the early part of the Gospel, these terms provide the backdrop for the story of Mark 3:1-6 where Jesus heals the man with a withered hand. In this story, Jesus’ action as Son of Man in “saving” a man is shown to be directly linked to his death. When Jesus dies as the Son of Man he saves his integrity and indeed the whole world.

Introduction Close to the moment of Jesus’ death in the Gospel of Mark we hear the following scene: 29

Those who passed by derided him [Jesus], shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!” 31 In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself.”

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(Mark 15:29-31)1

This scene sums up what this Gospel has to say about “well-being,” “personal wholeness” and “the social fabric”. Mark’s summation is a powerfully ironic paradox, presented with all the authority of the custodians of Jesus’ own religious tradition in their last address to him and evaluation of him before he dies. It is therefore a climactic statement that seeks to have the apparent contradiction it names resolved. The paradox is that despite the fact, asserted without contest, that in his public career Jesus had been able to “save” other people from various afflictions, in his own ultimate distress he was unable to save himself. The obvious implication of those mocking Jesus is that his saving others is of little consequence if he cannot do it for himself. In this chapter I will show how this contradiction between the ability to save others but not himself is central to the Christology of this Gospel, that is, to its theology of Jesus. Implicit in this theology is its soteriology, its understanding of who Jesus is and what his acts of “saving” mean. One of the principal ways in which the Gospel of Mark expresses its theological understanding of Jesus is by its use of an existing Jewish theological title, that of “Son of Man”. This is only one title used to identify Jesus in the Gospel but it significantly colours the other titles that are used, namely “Messiah / Christ”, “Son of God” and “Son of David”.2 In order to show how the title “Son of Man” is used in the Gospel of Mark to account for the paradox of the non-self-defending saving agent of God I will move through a number of steps. First I want to assert that the Gospel of Mark has a coherent theological understanding of the life, ministry and paschal progress of Jesus of Nazareth. But second, I stress that the Gospel communicates this 1

Biblical translations used in this paper are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible. 2 Of these three titles for Jesus in the 10 and Gospel of Mark the first two are found across the Gospel while the third occurs only in a small cluster in Mark 10 and 12. For “Christ” referring explicitly to Jesus, see Mark 1:1; 8:29; 14:61; 15:32; other references indirectly using this title with regard to Jesus are Mark 9:41; 12:35; 13:21. Jesus is referred as “Son of God” in Mark 1:1; 1:11; 3:11; 5:7; parabolically in 12:6; indirectly in 13:32, by the euphemism “Son of the Blessed” at 14:61, and finally explicitly but ironically at 15:39. Jesus is referred to as “Son of David” as he approaches David’s city, Jerusalem, in Mark 10:47, 48 and as he debates his identity in the precincts of the Temple of Jerusalem in 12:35, 36, 37.

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theological understanding by the dynamism of its literary genre, namely narrative. Finally, third, I will spend most of the paper demonstrating how the Gospel employs the various devices of its genre to persuade the reader that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s vindicated Son of Man whom they should resolutely follow on the way to the cross, trusting that in this way alone lies true, enduring well-being, personal wholeness and a healthy social fabric.

Mark’s Theology of Well-being Effected by Jesus, the Son of Man Paradox and its Resolution The Gospel of Mark has a coherent theological understanding of the life, ministry and paschal progress of Jesus of Nazareth. A very significant part of this theology is constructed around Jesus’ action to bring well-being to God’s creation, in what might be termed the “100-fold yield” (Mark 4:20; 10:29-31). One of the main ways in which the Gospel of Mark speaks of well-being is its frequent use of the verb ıǙDžǔ, sǀzǀ, “I save”. The use of this word across the Gospel of Mark slowly builds towards a paradox at its final, climactic scene, where Jesus, who is acknowledged as having saved others, is declared incapable of saving himself. The paradox thus asks to be resolved, in the form of an answer to the question: “Can Jesus, the saviour of others, save himself?” My response to the paradox is that in one sense Jesus does not save himself while in another sense he does. In the first sense, Jesus does not save himself physically, because he dies. It is very important that Jesus’ death is one-of-a-piece with his public career of proclamation of the gospel, and is thus intrinsically related to his action to save others. In the second sense, Jesus does save himself because he dies out of integrity to his relationship with God, as the one who faithfully endures in that relationship despite persecution, even to the point of death. This stance that Jesus adopts, of faithfulness through persecution, is named in the Gospel of Mark by means of the title that Jesus is portrayed as claiming for himself, the Son of Man.

Paradox and Resolution in Markan Apocalyptic Theology What the Gospel of Mark conveys about the issues of wellness, personal wholeness and the social fabric is that God desires all of God’s creation to

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be alive, well and thriving here and now. The Gospel portrays Jesus of Nazareth, God’s beloved Son with whom God is well pleased, as empowered with the Spirit from heaven (1:9-11) so that he can restore broken bodies to full vigour, banish illness and evil spirits, feed the hungry and bring rampaging nature into calm peace. This power operative in Jesus is the power of the Creator God who alone can forgive sins (2:9-12) but which Jesus demonstrably is able to do, provoking from observers the amazed response: “We have never seen anything like this!” (2:12). It is also the power that belongs to God who at Creation “assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth” (Prov 8:27-29). When Jesus calms the storm on the lake as only someone with this divine power could, his disciples ask, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41). The power of God given to Jesus to bring God’s creation alive, here and now, is available freely, generously and merely for the asking. For the first-century CE Mediterranean person, Jesus’ power is thus different from magic, which was not available freely but always involved a commercial transaction.3 Lack of faith can impede Jesus’ power but it is denied to no one who earnestly seeks it. It is a selfless power, committed solely to causing God’s creation to flourish. Again, this contrasts with the function of magic in the first-century Mediterranean world, which was often resorted to for selfish reasons, to manipulate or harm others.4 If there is any secondary purpose to the healings and other marvels Jesus performs, it is to show that the reign of God is indeed present among the people and that it makes possible the unimaginable hundred-fold yield promised in parabolic mode by Jesus (Mark 4:8). To achieve its purpose, this power of God operative in Jesus has no option but to contest with other powers entrenched in the world for the freedom of individuals and whole cultures. In Mark’s story-world, which expresses the worldview of Jesus’ historical and cultural context, the quintessential form of these oppressive powers is Satan himself who seeks to possess, exploit and destroy God’s creation, principally human beings.5 3

See John P. Meier A Marginal Jew: Rethinking The Historical Jesus. Vol 1. (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 540, 546. 4 Meier, A Marginal Jew, 540, 546. 5 See the many stories in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus casts unclean spirits out of people whom the spirits have “possessed”: the man in the synagogue at Capernaum (1:21-27); the Gadarene demoniac occupied by a “Legion” of unclean

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The active presence of evil in the world and its intentions are so taken for granted in the Markan story-world that it is never fully explicated in this Gospel. The drama of the narrative by which Mark theologises the life and paschal event of Jesus arises out of this contest of powers between the creative force of God and the drive of evil towards exploitation and destruction of life. This sense of a contest between powers for life and powers for death belongs to a world of thought operating in the New Testament period, known as apocalypticism. This worldview was expressed in a range of Jewish literature dating from the post-exilic period through the Seleucid persecutions of the Jewish people in 167-164 BCE during which the Book of Daniel was written, into the time of Jesus and well beyond.6 Literature expressing this worldview is called an “apocalypse”, described in an enduring definition by John J. Collins as … a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.7

The purpose and thus the content of these apocalypses varies from one context to another but as Collins writes, it is possible to generalise that “they serve to exhort and console their addressees … [in the case of] Enoch and Daniel aris[ing] out of a cultural crisis precipitated by Hellenism and aggravated by the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes.”8 spirits (5:1-20); the little daughter of the Syrophoenician woman (7:24-30); the boy possessed by a deaf and dumb spirit (9:14-29). There are also general notices showing not only Jesus (1:32-34; 3:9-12; 6:54-56 for general healing) but also his disciples (see 3:13-15; 6:7, 13), once Jesus has empowered them to do so, casting out unclean spirits. 6 See John J. Collins, “From Prophecy to Apocalypticism: The Expectation of the End,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism: Vol 1. The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity, ed. B. McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein (New York: Continuum, 1998), 129-61, which discusses this history in detail. More recently, see John J. Collins, ed., The Oxford Book of Apocalyptic Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 7 Collins, “From Prophecy to Apocalypticism,” 146. See also John J. Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979): 9 for the original statement of this definition. 8 Collins, “From Prophecy to Apocalypticism,” 147.

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The consolation that apocalypses offered was that they envisaged a long-term view of religious history—an eschatology—in which those suffering on account of faithfulness to their Jewish faith would be vindicated by God. The very clear example of this argument from close to the time of Jesus is the Book of Daniel. In the final vision of this book, Daniel is promised: Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. (Dan 12:2-3)

These people who “will shine like the stars” are those who have endured persecution, described as “a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence” (Dan 12:1). Earlier in the Book of Daniel, these persecuted yet vindicated people were likened to a mysterious figure called a “Son of Man”. In Daniel 7, two parallel scenes are presented in sequence, the conferral of all “dominion and glory and kingship”, on the Son of Man by an “Ancient of Days” in vv. 2b-14, and the similar conferral of “kingship and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven … on the people of the holy ones of the Most High” (Dan 7:27).9 Reflecting on arguments put forward by Dale C. Allison about the Son of Man, Francis J. Moloney speculates that either Jesus or his first followers would have come to see that the title “Son of Man” most aptly identified what God had done for the world in the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Moloney argues that if it can be accepted that in Daniel 7:13-14 Judaism had come to the idea of a “corporate personality for the nation”, then the figure of “‘one like a son of man’ unifies the believing yet suffering nation”.10 This sets up the possibility that for the first generation of Christian believers, “the expression ‘one like a son of man,’ used to describe the holy ones of Israel in Daniel 7, becomes ‘the Son of Man’ in the person of Jesus”.11 The benefit of using this title that already existed in Judaism is that it addressed grievous suffering with hope. The particular long-term view of religious history or eschatology of apocalypticism is as Dale Allison writes, “… first

9

For the full argument outlining the steps of this historical speculation see F. J. Moloney, “Constructing Jesus and the Son of Man,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 75.4 (2013): 730-5. 10 Moloney, “Constructing Jesus,” 736 11 Moloney, “Constructing Jesus,” 736.

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of all hope in God: it knows the divinity as the only power which can bring about eschatological reversal and redemption.”12 But this power of God is not used to protect God’s beloved agent from the human consequences of God’s engagement with this world, with its social fabric. That is, Jesus does not miraculously avoid or retaliate against human psychological and physical violence with counteracting violence. Instead, trusting in an extraordinary way in his identity as Son of Man, Jesus endures the ultimate violence of death by legally imposed execution, to underwrite with his own personal integrity the authenticity of the saving power of God he had proclaimed in the world.

The Importance of the Markan Literary Dynamism Before I show how the Gospel of Mark establishes and resolves the paradox of Jesus saving others but not himself, it is important to stress that I will make my case by focusing on the way that the Gospel communicates its theological understanding by the dynamism of its literary genre, namely narrative. This matters because the theology that is constructed in this way depends not on a logically argued discursive exposition of ideas but on the dramatic impact made by the portrayal of a human scenario in which as much is conveyed by the interaction of characters as by any theological statements they make. The meaning of any such statements is markedly conditioned by the way that Gospel narratives depict human encounter with the divine. It is important therefore to attend to elements of narrative construction, such as the sequencing of the plot, the credibility of characters and hence the moral weight of their behaviour or speech, and the rhetorical play on memory effected by such literary devices as repeated word patterns, irony and symbolism. All of these things accumulate to persuade the audience of the Gospel of Mark that it is in finally not saving himself that Jesus saves others.

How the Markan Narrative Persuades that God Desires our Well-being In the remainder of this paper I will demonstrate how the Gospel employs the various devices of its genre to seek to persuade the reader that Jesus of 12

Dale C. Allison, Jr., Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 176, cited in Moloney, “Constructing Jesus,” 730.

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Nazareth is God’s vindicated Son of Man whom they should gladly follow on the way to the cross.

Paradox and Resolution in Jesus’ Speech and Actions The Gospel of Mark prepares for the paradox presented in 15:29-31 and its resolution by streaming a number of ideas like threads throughout the Gospel’s narrative plot. These threads run alongside one another and come together on occasions that show their inter-relationship.13 Hearing these ideas in close connection in the Gospel narrative, we associate them together and recognise that they interact with one another. Two occasions where some of these ideas come together are the story of Jesus healing the withered hand of a man, in Mark 3:1-6, and the account of the crucified Jesus being taunted by the religious authorities of the Jerusalem Temple, in Mark 15:29-31, where the paradoxical statement of Jesus’ ability to save others yet not himself, is made. Since both these events focus directly on the chief character of the narrative, Jesus as the Son of Man, they carry intense meaning. The death of Jesus in integrity to his relationship with God as Father and to his identity as Son of Man resolves the paradox in a doubly satisfying way. The first reason that the resolution is so satisfying is that it is true to everything that Jesus has said about himself as Son of Man throughout the Gospel. The second reason that Jesus’ inability to save himself despite having saved others is satisfying is that it is consonant with his ways of acting throughout the Gospel. It is organic with his salvation of others. That is, the speech and actions of the principal character of the narrative enable this paradox to be resolved. With regard to the first reason, namely Jesus’ speech about himself, we find a number of important instances that contribute to the sense that in his death, Jesus is true to himself. These instances include Jesus’ use of the Son of Man title to designate himself, his triple prediction of his suffering, death and resurrection, and his paradoxical teachings that it is necessary to lose one’s life in order to save it and that the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Taking these in turn, Jesus’ use of the Son of Man title, which he alone uses in this Gospel and only with reference to himself, appears across the Gospel. It 13 See Appendix A for a table that sets out these terms as they occur in the course of the Gospel narrative.

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first appears very early in the Gospel, in Mark 2:10 and is used throughout, until it is the last thing Jesus affirms directly about himself, in his trial before the Jewish high priest, at Mark 14:61-62.14 In the three Passion Predictions made in the central section of the Gospel, Jesus uses the title “Son of Man” when he declares plainly that he will suffer, be killed, and after three days will rise again. After the first and third of these Passion Predictions, Jesus is depicted teaching his disciples as they respond negatively to his very challenging prediction of his own death and resurrection. After the first Passion Prediction, against which Peter, the disciple leader, reacted vigorously, Jesus insists: “… those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:35). Here in fact, is Jesus’ own apocalyptic resolution to the paradox: that in losing his life on the cross, he nevertheless saves it since in doing so he remains in authentic relationship with God. After the third Passion Prediction, Jesus teaches an entirely new paradigm of power, saying that “… the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). In this saying, Jesus interprets his resolution to the paradox, as he expresses “giving one’s life” in terms of serving others and in terms of becoming a ransom price for them. The second reason that Jesus’ death resolves the paradox about his power to save others but not himself is seen in his many actions, saving people he encounters in the course of his kerygmatic ministry. These actions embroil Jesus in controversy in his culture, so that, in a variety of ways, he loses his life as he restores life to others. When Jesus heals the leper but can then not go openly amid society he takes on the social isolation of the leper (Mark 1:40-45); when he eats with tax collectors and sinners he acquires their social shame (Mark 2:14-17); when he touches the corpse of the little daughter of Jairus he attracts her lack of ritual purity to himself, compromising his claim to be acting with the power of God (Mark 5:22-24a; 35-43). This process is seen very clearly in the story of Mark 3:1-6, where Jesus as Son of Man exercises the power to heal, in what is considered by some characters of the narrative to contravene the Sabbath laws. As a result of the human interaction that occurs in this event between Jesus and the religious authorities who silently deplore Jesus’ saving act, those authorities, the Pharisees and Herodians, make a pact together to destroy Jesus (Mark 3:6). 14

See Appendix A.

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Thus, from very early in the Gospel, Jesus’ eventual death is linked intrinsically to his saving action as the Son of Man, enabling well-being in a part of God’s disabled creation. In bringing life to the man with the withered hand, Jesus jeopardises his own life.

Markan Terms that Build and Resolve Paradox The Gospel draws the listener into the drama of this paradox by the frequent repetition of a small number of highly significant words. The paradox of Jesus as the one who saves others but not himself is created by Markan play on the Greek word closest in meaning to “well-being,” namely ıǙDžǔ (sǀzǀ, “I save”). But this word of salvation is used against a backdrop of other language in Mark that very strongly enriches the meaning of “save.” Three terms construct this backdrop: the title Jesus uses for himself that most closely relates to his non-self defending death on the cross, “Son of Man;” the noun ਥȟȠȣıȓĮ, exousia, “authority”; the words for power, in both the substantive form įȪȞĮȝȚȢ, dunamis, “power” and the verb įȪȞĮıĮȚ, dunasai, “to be able (to do something)”. Mark strongly resists his words being reduced mechanistically to absolute meanings but there are some patterns in the way he uses these terms across the structure of the narrative that reinforce his meaning. Noting these patterns we can account for the way in which the Gospel persuades its audience that although he does not and cannot save himself, Jesus nevertheless saves others, bringing well-being into his world.15 x

੒ ȣੂઁȢ IJȠ૨ ਕȞșȡȫʌȠȣ, the Son of Man

Turning first to the Christological title, Son of Man, we can observe some well-known facts. The title is used fourteen times in the Gospel of Mark, always by Jesus about himself.16 It is used across the Gospel, and nearly always with overtones of conflict and hostility to the work Jesus does. Jesus uses it at the first time in the Gospel that serious opposition to him surfaces, when he insists on his authority to forgive sins (2:1-12, v. 10). He uses it for the final time at the trial scene with the Jewish authorities, to qualify and confirm his identity as the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One (14:61-62). Here, Jesus confirms that he is indeed the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One but he declares that he fulfils those identities as the Son 15

See Appendix A in which the placement of these terms in the Markan narrative sequence is set out schematically. 16 See Morna Hooker, The Gospel of Mark, 89.

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of Man. In Jesus’ day this figure of the Son of Man was already known in Jewish circles. It was expressed very clearly in the book of Daniel 7:13-14 as a mysterious figure who has been vindicated by God because of his endurance of suffering under oppression, out of faithfulness to God.17 In the dynamic of this Greek narrative, the Jewish trial in which Jesus declared his identity as Son of Man functions as the penultimate recognition scene where Jesus’ true identity is finally, explicitly confirmed in speech.18 The ultimate recognition scene comes when, as a consequence of this trial scene, God’s beloved son is executed by the Romans (15:2439). It is in that scene that Jesus’ ability to save is both confirmed and denied, by the leaders of Jesus’ own religious tradition (15:30-31). In between these two outer appearances of the Son of Man title, it is used one other time to refer to Jesus’ present activity in his public ministry and three times to insist on his future vindication. However, the title is used mostly and from the centre of the Gospel onwards, to name the identity in which Jesus will engage with the suffering that this gospel portrays as organic to his relationship with God as beloved son and with the mission of proclaiming the Reign of God that flows from that relationship.19 This identity is foundational to all that Jesus does in this Gospel, including bringing into effect the well-being that God desires all creation to enjoy. x

ਥȟȠȣıȓĮ, Authority

The first time that Jesus uses the title “Son of Man” he argues that he has “authority” on earth, to forgive sins. This authority that Jesus wields has already been publicly acclaimed by admiring crowds at the synagogue in Capernaum, who marvelled at Jesus because he “taught with authority”. 17

See Moloney, “Constructing Jesus,” 730-5. “Recognition” is a term used by Aristotle in the Poetics, X-XI, in his discussion of the role of plot in narrative. For Aristotle, recognition is paired with reversal and joined by suffering to make three components of plot (Poetics XI, 8-13). In the process of recognition the true identity of a character is revealed, while in reversal, the tendency of events in the plot is turned around. For Aristotle “The finest recognition is that which occurs simultaneously with reversal, as with the one in the Oedipus” (Poetics XI, 31-33). Quotations and references are taken from Stephen Halliwell, ed. and transl., Aristotle: Poetics (Cambridge, MA; London, UK: Duckworth, 1995). 19 See Appendix A in which all the Son of Man reference in the Gospel of Mark are listed using different fonts to indicate the various meanings. 18

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The word ਥȟȠȣıȓĮ (authority) is used twice in this scene (vv. 22, 27), forming an inclusio around the depiction of Jesus casting an unclean spirit out of a man. “What is this?” the crowd exclaims. “A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him” (1:27). But Jesus pushes this publicly acknowledged fact to a new level when he claims not much further on in the narrative that he has authority on earth to forgive sins, an outrageous claim because the custodians of Jesus’ own religious tradition, present in the event, knew that “[No one] can forgive sins but God alone” (2:7). In this claim to authority we hear at least two dimensions of the word ਥȟȠȣıȓĮ, namely its meaning as “the right to control or govern over [something]” but also “the domain or sphere over which one has authority to control or rule”.20 That is, Jesus claims the right to govern over the forgiveness of sins, in the domain of earth. It matters that Jesus’ authority is so clearly established early and that it will continue to be reinforced throughout the narrative, culminating in Jesus refusing to give an account of his authorisation, other than his ability to command the unseen powers of the world and to out-think his opponents verbally (11:28-33). It is worth noting that this word is used in the Gospel of Mark with reference to no one other than Jesus, except for a fictional householder in a parable Jesus invents (13:34-36). So the Markan audience comes to associate Jesus with having a unique authority. It is an authority that Jesus is able to confer on others, that is his disciples, to whom he gives the power to cast out unclean spirits, noted twice in the gospel (3:15; 6:7). On the basis of this authority, associated with the Son of Man, Jesus exercises power to save in this gospel. x

įȪȞĮȝȚȢ, Power, and įȪȞĮıĮȚ, To Have Power To Do

The Gospel uses yet another word and its cognate verb to further name Jesus’ power to act in the world. The noun įȪȞĮȝȚȢ (power) and its related verb įȪȞĮıĮȚ (to have power to do something) have a more complex usage in Mark than does ਥȟȠȣıȓĮ (authority). First, the verb įȪȞĮıĮȚ names ordinary mundane powers of people and things other than Jesus, such as the capacity of people to hear the word of God in parables (4:33) or the speculation that expensive ointment used to anoint Jesus’ body could have

20

See Louw-Nida Semantic Domains, ##37.35 and 37.36, accessed via BWW9.

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been sold to make a donation to the poor (14:5).21 Second, the verb names the everyday things that people cannot do, ranging from the social inability of wedding guests to fast while the bridegroom is with them (2:19) to the capacity of earthly bleach to whiten garments (9:3).22 Of particular interest in this list is the inability of Satan, emphasised by quadruple declaration in the voice of Jesus, to stand against himself (3:23, 24, 25, 26). Jesus makes this statement in a highly polemical context, in order to disavow intensely that he operates for Satan as his lieutenant. Satan’s inability stands in contrast to the list of things that this verb says Jesus cannot do. All Jesus’ inabilities arise from the consequences of his ministry, such as not being able to go into a town openly after he has cleansed a leper or his inability to escape notice in the region of Tyre and Sidon, to culminate finally in his ironic inability to save himself.23 Against the foil of these meanings of the verb įȪȞĮıĮȚ, we hear all that Jesus has the power to do. Jesus can heal a leper (1:40-45); forgive sins (2:1-12); plunder the strong man’s house, having first tied him up (3:2227); and through prayer, cast out a violent, dumb spirit from a boy (9:1429). Except for the plundering of the strong man’s house (i.e., the abode of Satan) it is the narrator’s voice that asserts Jesus’ ability to do these things. 21

The full list of the uses of įȪȞĮıĮȚ to name the powers of people or things other than Jesus is: Mark 4:33—the capacity of people to hear the word of God; 8:4— question as to how to feed so many people; 9:39— the capacity of people acting in Jesus’ name to speak ill of him; 10:38-39— the capacity of James and John, sons of Zebedee, to drink the cup Jesus will drink; 14:5—speculation that ointment could have been sold and money given to the poor; 14:7—the capacity to show kindness to the poor; 4:32—capacity of the birds of the air to make nests. 22 The full list of the uses of įȪȞĮıĮȚ to name the lack of power of people or things other than Jesus is 2:4—inability of people to bring a paralysed man to Jesus through the crowd; 2:19—inability of wedding guests to fast while the bridegroom is with them; 3:23, 24, 25, 26—impossibility of Satan standing against Satan, of a kingdom divided against itself to stand; 5:3—inability of anyone to restrain the Gadarene demoniac; 6:19—inability of Herodias to kill John the Baptist; 7:15, 18—inability of anything going into a person from outside a person to make that person unclean; 9:3—inability of earthly bleach to clean whiter than the garments of Jesus transfigured; 9:28—inability of Jesus’ disciples to cast out an evil spirit from a boy. 23 The full list of the uses of įȪȞĮıĮȚ in the Gospel of Mark to name the things that Jesus cannot do is 1:45—Jesus’ inability to go openly into a town after touching a leper; 3:20—inability of Jesus and his disciples to eat because of the crowds; 6:5— inability to do a deed of power because of disbelief; 7:24—inability to escape notice in the region of Tyre; 15:31—inability to save himself.

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It is Jesus’ voice that declares what he is doing to Satan, having said four times what Satan cannot do. Why this matters for the question of what the Gospel of Mark says about well-being is that all these features of the presentation of Jesus build his credibility as the one who brings well-being for God’s suffering creation into the world in a conflict that will cost him utterly.24 From the beginning of the Gospel, conflict between Jesus and Satan has driven the narrative. Immediately after Jesus is baptised in the water and the Spirit and named as God’s beloved son (1:9-11), he is driven into the wilderness to be put to the test by Satan (1:12-13). It is Jesus who comes back from that confrontation with the initiative and all Satan’s agents know it. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God”, screams the possessed man in the synagogue at Capernaum (1:24). Chapters later another possessed man shouts at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me” (5:7).

x

ı૶ȗİȚȞ, sǀzein, To Save

But Jesus has come, if not to torment, then certainly to dispossess Satan’s hold on the world by comprehensively banishing his agents from their strangleholds in human beings. In the worldview of ancient apocalyptic eschatology that permeates the narrative, the real conflict in which Jesus engages is with the spiritual forces of evil personified in Satan. In this worldview all forms of evil or harm to human beings in the world are seen as physical manifestations of the great conflict being fought in heaven between the spiritual forces of life and good on the one hand and of death and evil on the other. It is precisely the role of the Son of Man to endure whatever is necessary in order to defeat these forces of evil and restore God’s creation to full life. The Gospel of Mark shows Jesus healing many people. The healings occur densely in the opening chapters of the Gospel, tapering off as Jesus approaches Jerusalem. All of these healings “save” people in the sense that they release them from harm, or, in the words of Antoinette Clark Wire, 24

On Mark’s view of what Jesus’ mission costs him see the fine Commentary on the Gospel of Mark by B. Byrne, A Costly Freedom: A Theological Reading of Mark’s Gospel (Collegeville, MN: the Liturgical Press, 2008).

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they enable “a marvelous [sic] breakthrough in the struggle against oppressive restrictions on human life” whether in terms of oppression by unclean spirits, social prohibition or debilitating physical need.25

Mark 3:1-6: Jesus Saves the Man with the Withered Hand In a number of these healing stories, Mark uses the verb ı૶ȗȦ, “to heal,” or “to enable well-being”, to name what Jesus does. In the first of these stories, at Mark 3:1-16, which follows immediately Jesus’ claim to be the Son of Man with authority over the Sabbath (2:28), the healing of a man’s hand provokes deadly hostility to Jesus, propelling him forward on the trajectory to his death. The story concludes a sequence of conflict stories that began with the healing of a paralysed man in 2:1-12.26 Back in the synagogue on the Sabbath, in the presence both of suspicious Pharisees, and of a man with a withered hand, Jesus is confronted with a situation that he chooses to turn into a test case of his self-proclaimed authority to act as “Son of Man, Lord of the Sabbath”.27 This is one of the many “lose– lose” situations in which Jesus finds himself, where he will be condemned for action and discredited for failure to act. 25 See Antoinette C. Wire, “The Structure of the Gospel Miracle Stories and Their Tellers,” Semeia, 11 (1978): 109. The full citation is, “Miracle stories … share a basic structure …. The whole miracle story is in the first place an affirmative statement, not a question or command; a narrative of specific events, not a description, analysis or deduction. The narrative tells a marvelous breakthrough in the struggle against oppressive restrictions on human life: ƒ Exorcisms tell the overthrow of arbitrary, violent and total oppression; ƒ Controversy miracles the exposé of moral and social restriction; ƒ Provision stories a break in the oppression of want and human resignation to it; ƒ Demand stories the initiative that breaks out of physical and psychological impotence. This structure might be mapped in terms of a circle burst open or a mold broken. The narrative tells only liberation from the bonds; it gives no analysis or proposed reconstruction.” 26 See Joanna Dewey, “The Literary Structure of the Controversy Stories in Mark 2:1-3:6,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 92.3 (1973): 394-401 for a treatment of the literary structure that holds these stories together. 27 See Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, 1st ed. (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1999), 248 for the comment that the verb ʌĮȡİIJ੾ȡȠȣȞ exploits the ambiguity of the verb to suggest that the Pharisees “observed” Jesus as intently as they think he should “observe” the Sabbath.

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Commentators agree that technically, while work was not permitted on the Jewish Sabbath, later rabbinic literature allowed an exception in the case of a threat to life.28 However, all agree that whatever the cause of this man’s withered hand was, it was not a threat to his life.29 I think Joel Marcus is right when he says that Jesus, seeing himself as engaged in apocalyptic war, regards all encounters with God’s crippled creation as in fact life or death situations. Echoing Deut 30:15, Jesus constructs the situation as a choice between making life and dealing out death. We see this when he challenges his Pharisee opponents, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” (Mark 3:4). 30 As Marcus argues, ... if Jesus is “the holy one of God”, whose holiness implies the apocalyptic destruction of demons and disease (cf. 1:24), then his Sabbathday healing of the man with the paralysed hand is a fulfilment rather than an infraction of the commandment to “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy” (Exod 20:8; cf. Neh 13:22).31

As the story’s concluding verse informs the reader, Jesus’ challenge to the Pharisees and his action in healing the man, even without doing any physical action that could be considered Sabbath-violating work, leads to their collusion with a group called the Herodians in order “to destroy him”.32 They re-appear together in Mark 12:13, still seeking to trap Jesus, this time in his talk. Although they do not succeed, Jesus is eventually betrayed by one of his own, arrested, hurriedly tried, condemned and 28

Pace R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing; Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 2002), 149-150, who argues that Jesus’ behaviour in healing would have been already regarded as a violation of the Sabbath code. See Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), 70, fn. 121, where he states that rabbinic debate over the question of whether someone may “save” someone in genuine danger of death, on the Sabbath is too late to be helpful in discussing Mark 3:1-6. 29 See R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark, 149-150; Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of Mark, 70; and Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8, 248 for their comments that the man’s life was not in fact in danger so that Jesus could have delayed till the Sabbath was over. 30 See R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark, 150 for this reference to Deut 30:15. 31 J. Marcus, Mark 1-8, 252-3. 32 See Marcus, Mark 1-8, 253 for the explanation of Jesus’ cleverness in working the miracle without doing work. On the topic of how the linguistic form of the term IJ૵Ȟ ਺ȡ૳įȚĮȞ૵Ȟ (Mark 3:6) reveals the political identity of this group, see France, The Gospel of Mark, 151.

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executed. The trajectory that began at Jesus’ baptism, impelled by reactions to Jesus’ most fundamental act, which has been to “save”, to bring well-being into the world, leads to him being fixed to a cross. In that situation, it is true in a cruelly ironic way that he cannot save himself.

Mark 15:29-21: The Son of Man Who Saves Others Does Not Save Himself Yet in his very endurance, living his last moments into this ultimate confrontation with evil, Jesus does “save” himself as truly as he has saved others. Jesus has lived his identity as the Son of Man to its fullest, with integrity. He “saves” this identity, living it to its full potential including death under duress, thereby underwriting all the experience of well-being and hope for the social fabric that he had enacted and proclaimed in his ministry. In this way he opens the possibility of Christian faith in the Son of Man vindicated in Resurrection, the complete realisation of the wellbeing and wholeness of God’s creation not just for individuals but for all, in the great social renewal that is the Reign of God.

Conclusion The Gospel of Mark confronts its readers with the paradox that the Jesus who is able to provide “well-being” for others by “saving” them, restoring them to health, cannot save himself. This paper has shown that from very early in the Gospel, the narrative prepares readers to understand that Jesus’ entire project does not implode on the cross. Because of the way we have been led to understand Jesus as the suffering and vindicated Son of Man, whose authority and power draw from a source larger than the resources of evil, the Markan reader can dare to trust that the well-being Jesus makes available, not only to individuals but to all those who believe, has not been lost but will continue to operate in the world. All of these things accumulate to persuade the audience of the Gospel of Mark that it is in finally not saving himself yet being true to his identity as Son of Man that Jesus saves others.

3

2

1

Mark ਥȟȠȣıȓĮ, exousia

੒ ȣੂઁȢ IJȠ૨ ਕȞșȡȫʌȠȣ ho huios tou anthrǀpou

15: confers authority to expel demons

10: Son of Man to have on earth, authority to forgive sins 28: Lord of the sabbath

22: Jesus teaches with authority 27: a new teaching with authority

Authority

Son of Man įȪȞĮȝȚȢ, dunamis,

Power

40: to make a leper clean 7: ? to forgive sins?

įȪȞĮıĮȚ, dunasai

To Be Able (to do)

Appendix A: Well-being in the Gospel of Mark What Jesus, the Son of Man, Can Do

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4: lawful to save life or kill?

To Save, Make Well ı૶ȗİȚȞ, sǀzein

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8

6

5

4

Mark

50

Well-being

38: come in glory

31: to suffer, be killed, after 3 days, rise again *

x

Son of Man

Well-being

7: gave the 12 authority over unclean spirits

Authority

2: deeds of power by his hands 5: disbelief—no deed of power

30: power goes out from Jesus

Power

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27: to plunder the strong man’s house

To Be Able (to do)

35: save / lose, life for Gospel

56: all who touch are healed

34: faith has made well

23: lay hands on, to make well 28: if I touch, I will be well

To Save, Make Well

10

9

Mark

33: to be handed over to the chief priest and to the Gentiles, to be

31: to be betrayed, killed, after 3 days rise again *

with the holy angels 9: to rise from the dead 12: as it is written, to suffer & be treated with contempt

Son of Man

Authority

Power

A Markan Vision of Well-being

22: plea: if able, help exorcise! 23: exclamation: if able!! 29: thro’ prayer, to exorcise

To Be Able (to do)

26: if not the rich, who can be saved?

To Save, Make Well

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13

11

Mark

52

45: has come not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many

mocked and scourged and put to death and after 3 days rise again *

Son of Man

28: source of his authority? 29: counter-? over authority 33: will not tell his authority

Authority

Power

Chapter Two

To Be Able (to do)

13: who endures to the end, saved 20: if the Lord had not cut short the days, no one saved

52: faith has made well

To Save, Make Well

15

14

Mark

26: to come in clouds with great power and glory 21: goes as is written of him 21: woe to the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed 41: betrayed, at the hour 62: seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven

Son of Man

Authority

Power

A Markan Vision of Well-being

31: not able to save himself

To Be Able (to do)

30: “Save yourself!” 31: he saved others

To Save, Make Well

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References Allison, Dale C., Jr., Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010. Byrne, B. A Costly Freedom: A Theological Reading of Mark’s Gospel. Collegeville, MN: the Liturgical Press, 2008. Collins, John J. “From Prophecy to Apocalypticism: The Expectation of the End.” In The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism: Vol 1. The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity, ed. Bernard McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein, 129-61. New York: Continuum, 1998. Collins, J. J. “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979): 1-19. Dewey, Joanna. “The Literary Structure of the Controversy Stories in Mark 2:1-3:6.” Journal of Biblical Literature, 92 (3, 1973): 394-401. France, R.T. The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing; Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 2002 Hooker, Morna. The Gospel According to St Mark. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993 Marcus, Joel. Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. 1st ed. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1999. —. Mark 8-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New Haven, CN; London, UK: Yale University Press, 2009. Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Vol 1. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Moloney, Francis J. "Constructing Jesus and the Son of Man." Catholic Biblical Quarterly 75 4 (October 2013): 719-38. —. The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002.

CHAPTER THREE BEING, WELL-BEING, BEING FOR EVER: CREATION’S EXISTENTIAL TRAJECTORY IN PATRISTIC TRADITION DORU COSTACHE

Alongside representing the cosmos as creation called to immortality, several Greek fathers of the Church sketched a triadic trajectory of the human and angelic creation. Whilst, by the Creator’s will, the destination of all created being is endless existence, for the rational creation being and being for ever are not only gifts of God: they are also talents to be increased. For the Church fathers whose thought is analysed herein, the rational creation is called to qualify being/existence by choosing to live well or virtuously. In turn, virtuous living amounts to acquiring existential wholeness or—etymologically speaking—the state of being saved. The rational creation, either human or angelic, achieves well-being in the present age and eternal well-being in the ages to come. In considering passages from Clement, Dionysius, and Maximus this paper aims to emphasise the interest of the patristic tradition in well-being, and to infer from this tradition wisdom to guide contemporary experience.

This chapter considers the views of three fathers of the Church who, alongside representing the cosmos as brought into being through creation and called to reach charismatic immortality, sketched a triadic trajectory of the rational creation, angelic and human. Thus, Clement the Alexandrian in the second century, the author known as Dionysius the Areopagite around the turn of the sixth, and Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century believed that humans and angels alike had to progress from mere existence or being to well-being and eternal being. For all three, whereas being and the endless existence were gifts of God, the rational creation had to cultivate these gifts by choosing to live well. In turn, to live well or achieve well-being entailed a life according to nature and its divine principles, which ultimately amounted to living virtuously. For our

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authors, however, virtuous living meant more than living to acquire moral rectitude. It entailed the attainment of existential wholeness or— etymologically speaking—the state of being saved.1 More importantly, in choosing virtue and a theocentric life, the rational creation achieved wellbeing in the present age and secured its eternal well-being in the endless ages to come. In considering passages from Clement’s Exhortation to the Gentiles and Miscellanies in conjunction with The Pedagogue, the Dionysian Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and The Divine Names, and Maximus’ Chapters on Love, The Book of Difficulties, and Questions and Doubts, I aim to emphasise the interest of patristic tradition in well-being and to infer from this tradition wisdom to guide and inspire contemporary experience. The three fathers indeed shared similar views and were aware of the stances of their predecessors. Nevertheless, herein I am not interested in tracing the classical antecedents of Clement’s views. Instead, my analysis will make obvious that this creative early Christian thinker trail-blazed for Byzantine fathers such as Dionysius and Maximus, who, in turn, referred to him with utmost reverence. Alongside making obvious the consistency of patristic tradition, my chapter contributes an understanding of well-being as entailing salvation, and of salvation as a state of health and wholeness conditioned by God’s grace, mystical regeneration, and one’s ethical achievements. In so doing, it brings important correctives to a certain narrative of well-being within the political space (with which I shall not deal in any particular detail), in selfish and materialistic terms.

Clement the Alexandrian The first Alexandrian writer who produced a solid body of Christian literature is Clement.2 He studied philosophy in Athens, Syria, Palestine, 1

According to Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ninth edn, revised by Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), ıȦIJȘȡȓĮ means not only “deliverance”, “safety”, “preservation”, and “salvation”; it means likewise “bodily health” and, more generally, “well-being”. 2 For the biography of Clement, see Catherine Osborne, “Clement of Alexandria”, in The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, vol. 1, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson (Cambridge University Press, well-being), 270-82, esp. 270-1; Ronald E. Heine, “The Alexandrians”, in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge:

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and Alexandria, embracing Christianity under the guidance of Pantaenus. Pantaenus was headmaster of a philosophical school3 in the great city of Alexandria. Himself leader of a school of Christian philosophy, Clement’s intellectual undertakings observed pedagogical criteria, specifically the principles of classical paideia,4 from the viewpoint of which he presented Christ as the Teacher par excellence whose wisdom had to be delivered in three stages—from initiation to training and then mature instruction. 5 Scholars agree that the major works of Clement illustrate the same curricular stages, although not all agree on the writings of the third category. 6 What matters is that this layered approach of sorts is found throughout his writings, including in relation to the topic under consideration. For instance, in the apologetic tract Exhortation to the Gentiles he depicted the economy of Christ’s revelation as unfolding in three steps, which corresponded to as many stages of human experience. In referring to the gospel in terms of a “new song”,7 Clement stated the following: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 117-30, esp. 117-8; Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. 2 (Westminster: Christian Classics Inc., 1986), 5-6. 3 Osborne, “Clement of Alexandria”, 270, 276; Quasten, Patrology, 4-5. 4 See Peter Gemeinhardt, “In Search of Christian Paideia: Education and Conversion in Early Christian Biography”, Zeitung für antikes Christentum 16:1 (2012): 88-98, esp. 89; Heine, “The Alexandrians”, 119; Werner Jaeger, “Paideia Christi”, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 50:1-2 (1959): 1-14, esp. 5-6. For a Clementine sample of adherence to the classical principles of holistic education, which included theology, geometry, agriculture, philosophy, and well-being, see Miscellanies 6.8.65.6 in Clément d’Alexandrie: Les Stromates—Stromate VI, ed. Patrick Descourtieux, Sources chrétiennes 446 (Paris: Cerf, 1999), 192-4. 5 The Pedagogue 1.1.1.1-3.3 in Clément d’Alexandrie: Le Pédagogue, Livre I, ed. Henri-Irénée Marrou, trad. Marguerite Harl, Sources chrétiennes 70 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1960), 108-12. See also Miscellanies 5.10.66.2-4 in Clément d’Alexandrie: Les Stromates—Stromate V, Tome I, ed. Alain Le Boulluec, trad. Pierre Voulet, SJ, Sources chrétiennes 278 (Paris: Cerf, 1981), 134. Below, all translations from the Greek are mine. 6 For recent appraisals of Clement’s curriculum in scholarship see Osborne, “Clement of Alexandria”, 274-6; Bogdan Gabriel Bucur, Angelomorphic Pneumatology: Clement of Alexandria and Other Early Christian Witnesses, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 95 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 11-24. 7 For more on this matter see Doru Costache, “Worldview and Melodic Imagery in the Alexandrian Tradition and Certain Patristic Antecedents”, in Alexandrian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Doru Costache, Philip Kariatlis, and Mario Baghos (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 282-321,

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Chapter Three This is the new song—the revelation that now shines towards us—of the Logos who was in the beginning and pre-existed. […] In the beginning, he was the one who, as demiurge, bestowed the power of life (IJઁ ȗોȞ) after [our] moulding. Now manifested [through the incarnation], as teacher he taught [us] how to live well (IJઁ İ੣ ȗોȞ) so that as God he bestows [on us] later the power to live forever (IJઁ ਕİ੿ ȗોȞ).8

Taking as a term of reference the gradual self-disclosure of the Logos, Clement sketched in these few lines a whole theological narrative of human destiny according to which the life (IJઁ ȗોȞ) of humankind, its wellbeing (IJઁ İ੣ ȗોȞ), and eternal life (IJઁ ਕİ੿ ȗોȞ) were entirely conditioned by the love of God. The above text conveys this message through the symmetry between the economy of the Logos as Demiurge, Teacher, and God, and humankind’s being, well-being, and immortality. In the light of this symmetry, our passage depicts the triple activity of the Logos incarnate, Christ, as graciously providing for the human race to advance from merely living to the fullness of life or to live well and forever. When collated with the passages analysed below, from Miscellanies, the same symmetry, particularly the parallel between Christ as teacher and the human well-being, suggests that advancement is conditioned as much by the gifts of Christ as by the human being’s humble acknowledgement of esp. 307-10; idem, “Meaningful Cosmos: Logos and Nature in Clement the Alexandrian’s Exhortation to the Gentiles”, Phronema 28:2 (2013): 107-30, esp. 122-8; Leonardo Lugaresi, “Canto del Logos, drama soteriologico e conoscenza di fede in Clemente Alessandrino”, in Dal logos dei Greci e dei Romani al logos di Dio: Ricordando Marta Sordi, ed. Roberto Radice and Alfredo Valvo (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2011), 243-76; Annette von Stockhausen, “Ein »neues Lied«? Der Protreptikos des Klemens von Alexandrien”, in Ad veram religionem reformare: Frühchristliche Apologetik zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit, ed. C. Schubert and A. von Stockhausen, Erlanger Forschungen A 109 (Erlangen: Universitätsbibliothek, 2006), 75-96. 8 Exhortation 1.7.3 in Clément d’Alexandrie: Le Protreptique, deuxième édition revue et augmentée par Claude Mondésert, SJ, Sources chrétiennes 2 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1949), 61. The imagery of the Logos as teacher was later developed within Clement’s Pedagogue. See also Paul M. Blowers, “Entering ‘This Sublime and Blessed Amphitheatre’: Contemplation of Nature and Interpretation of the Bible in the Patristic Period”, in Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: Up to 1700, vol. 1, Brill’s Series in Church History 36, ed. Jitse M. van der Meer and Scott Mandelbrote (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 147-76, esp. 150. Maximus understood the Clementine stages of existence cosmologically and not only anthropologically. See his Chapters on Knowledge 1.3,5 (PG 90, 1084AB, 1085A).

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these gifts and submission to the wisdom of the Lord. So interpreted, the pedagogical criterion of Clement, referred to above, emerges with clarity: one achieves well-being if one heeds the guidance of Christ, the supreme teacher of all.9 This aspect transpires clearer still in a related statement within The Pedagogue, where Christ’s exhortatory teaching stirs in the listeners the yearning for salvation and the future life.10 Looking closer at the three stages, the outline of Clement leaves no room for confusion in maintaining that one cannot reduce human existence to a life spent in the narrow horizon of biology, materialism, and mortality. A human being cannot just exist. It should become more than it is or better itself by challenging and overcoming its existential shortcomings. A human being should strive to achieve a holy life and transcend mortality 11 or, as Clement says elsewhere, to become from a beast human and from a human being a god12—tasks that require direction from the Logos incarnate who both bestows life and trustworthily guides all to perfection. These notes lead us to the topic of well-being. In highlighting the teaching ministry of 9

See A. N. Williams, The Divine Sense: The Intellect in Patristic Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 49. According to Paul M. Blowers, Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 65, Clement presented Christ as mystical Pedagogue within a scriptural context and as Logos who teaches through the cosmic order. For the importance of divine pedagogy in the Christian experience according to Clement and other early Christian authors, see Dragos Andrei Giulea, Pre-Nicene Christology in Paschal Contexts: The Case of the Divine Noetic Anthropos, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 123 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 201-2. 10 The Pedagogue 1.1.1.3 (SC 70, 110). The words “salvation” and “future life” in the phrases “calls to salvation” (ਥʌ੿ ıȦIJȘȡȓĮȞ ʌĮȡİțȐȜİȚ) and “engendering a desire for this life and the future one” (ȗȦોȢ IJોȢ Ȟ૨Ȟ țĮ੿ IJોȢ ȝİȜȜȠȪıȘȢ ੕ȡİȟȚȞ ਥȖȖİȞȞ૵ıĮ) correspond to what Exhortation terms as well-being or “good life” (IJઁ İ੣ ȗોȞ) and eternal life or “to live for ever” (IJઁ ਕİ੿ ȗોȞ). 11 This understanding is sharply articulated in Prophetic selections 31.1, where we read that truly happy is not one who extended his/her life, but the one who “by living well has taken the initiative to become worthy of the eternal life” (મ Ȗİ țĮ੿ įȚ੹ IJઁ ȗોıĮȚ İ੣ ਫ਼ʌોȡȟİȞ ਕȟȓ૳ IJȠ૨ ȗોȞ ਕİ੿ ȖİȞȑıșĮȚ). Eclogae propheticae in Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 3, 2nd edn, ed. L. Früchtel, O. Stählin, and U. Treu, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 17 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1970). 12 Miscellanies 7.6.95.1-2 in Clemens Alexandrinus: Stromata Buch VII-VIII, ed. Otto Stählin, Ludwig Früchtel, Ursula Treu, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 15 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1970), 67. See also Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 126.

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Christ, it appears that Clement construed well-being or “living well” or even “having a good life” (IJઁ İ੣ ȗોȞ), complexly, as a state of existential integrity and moral worthiness. 13 For him, İ੣ ȗોȞ was neither the Epicurean “good/beautiful life”14 nor the modern “standard of living”—the degree of wealth and material comfort available to a person or community. Well-being represented a state of wholeness and wholesomeness conditioned by ethical choices and “well-doing” or “active beneficence”, as Bucur had it,15 which were in turn based on axiological criteria whose source was the divine wisdom or the teaching of the Logos. Without the pedagogical dimension being obvious, the Alexandrian reiterated a similar perception in Miscellanies where he affirmed, “he who made us partakers of being and life (IJȠ૨ İ੅ȞĮȚ IJİ țĮ੿ ȗોȞ) likewise made us partakers of reason (ȜȩȖȠȣ), meaning for us to live at once rationally and well (ȜȠȖȚț૵Ȣ IJİ ਚȝĮ țĮ੿ İ੣ ȗોȞ)”.16 The sentence introduces a new term, IJઁ İ੅ȞĮȚ, which literally means “the fact of being or existing” or simply “to be” and which is a synonym for IJઁ ȗોȞ, “to live”. We shall discover below that this new, philosophically-sounding term was preferred by later Church fathers. The complementarity of the above sentence and the passage from Exhortation is inescapable. Whereas the previously analysed text highlights the input of Christ to humankind’s teleological journey from merely being to eternal life mediated by well-being, the passage under consideration draws the necessary conclusion in relation to human activity, which was only alluded to in the text from Exhortation. Thus, life is a 13

On the connection of virtue and the fullness of life or well-being, see Peter (Panayiotis) Karavites, Evil, Freedom, and the Road to Perfection in Clement of Alexandria, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 43 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1999), 65, 162, 167. 14 Clement ridiculed the Epicurean notion of “living beautifully” (țĮȜ૵Ȣ ȗોȞ) in Miscellanies 2.21.127.3 in Clément d’Alexandrie: Les Stromate— Stromate II, ed. and trad. Claude Mondésert, SJ, Sources chrétiennes 38 (Paris: Cerf, 1954), 129. However, he favoured the same phrase within a different context. See Miscellanies 6.4.38.6 (SC 446, 136). Elsewhere he employed a variant of the phrase, IJઁ țĮȜ૵Ȣ ȕȚȠ૨Ȟ. Miscellanies 6.6.47.3 (SC 446, 156). 15 On the importance of virtuous, altruistic deeds in the Clementine outline of holy life, see Bogdan G. Bucur, “Hierarchy, Eldership, Isangelia: Clement of Alexandria and the Ascetic Tradition”, in Costache, Kariatlis, and Baghos, Alexandrian Legacy, 2-45, esp. 15-6. 16 Miscellanies 5.1.6.3 (SC 278, 32). For a brief reference to the significance of living “rationally and well”, see Eric Osborn, Clement of Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), n.1 at 155.

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given as well as a duty for human beings, who are called consciously and deliberately to shape their own existence. Elsewhere in the Miscellanies, Clement summarised this task in imperative terms: ȝİȜİIJ઼IJİ ȗોȞ, “exercise living”.17 In the excerpt under consideration, this task amounts to the call for human beings to attain well-being through exercising their rational faculties in agreement with the divine Logos, or Reason, by choosing well or indeed the good—a choice which translates as “living at once rationally and well” (ȜȠȖȚț૵Ȣ IJİ ਚȝĮ țĮ੿ İ੣ ȗોȞ).18 It seems that for Clement there was no way to construe well-being without the lens of the ethical behaviour and that the latter was intimately connected with rationality and the ability to discern values. Here, the theme of well-being intersects once again with Clement’s pedagogical concerns. Indeed, when one connects the above lines and the previously analysed passage, from Exhortation, the result is that one needs to learn from the supreme Teacher, Christ, the fundamentals of the rational or virtuous lifestyle which secures spiritual and somatic health, and also the fullness of life as immortality. This understanding is similarly articulated in The Pedagogue, where the Alexandrian depicted Christ’s ministry as training and therapy leading to human betterment. 19 We shall see below that, albeit without this pedagogical dimension, later Church fathers addressed time and again the notion of human well-being as ethically conditioned. The lines of interest suggest furthermore that for human beings life as such or mere existence cannot suffice. Life should be qualified, reworked, shaped by personal choice according to standards higher than the common interest in material pursuits; in short, it should be enhanced as well-being. To convey this message, Clement did not shy away from drawing on the ancient wisdom of Socrates, who, according to our Alexandrian, “held that more important than to live is to live and die well” (ʌȡઁ IJȠ૨ ȟોȞ IJઁ İ੣ ȟોȞ

17

Miscellanies 5.14.106.1 (SC 278, 200). Miscellanies 5.1.6.3 (SC 278, 32). The same understanding occurs in the phrase IJઁ țĮȜ૵Ȣ ȕȚȠ૨Ȟ … ȞȠȝȓȝȦȢ ਥıIJ੿ ȕȚȠ૨Ȟ țĮ੿ IJઁ İ੝ȜȩȖȦȢ ȕȚȠ૨Ȟ țĮIJ੹ ȞȩȝȠȞ ਥıIJ੿ ȕȚȠ૨Ȟ... (“to live beautifully is to live legally and blessed living is to live by the [divine] law”). Miscellanies 6.6.47.3 (SC 446, 156). See Osborn, Clement of Alexandria, 235-7. 19 The Pedagogue 1.1.1.4 (SC 70, 110). See particularly the phrases “he promises first of all the healing of the passions within us” (țİijȐȜĮȚȠȞ IJ૵Ȟ ਥȞ ਲȝ૙Ȟ ʌĮș૵Ȟ ਫ਼ʌȚıȤȞȠȪȝİȞȠȢ IJ੽Ȟ ੅ĮıȚȞ) and “his goal is to better the soul” (IJઁ IJȑȜȠȢ Į੝IJȠ૨ ȕİȜIJȚ૵ıĮȚ IJ੽Ȟ ȥȣȤȒȞ ਥıIJȚȞ). 18

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țĮ੿ IJİșȞȐȞĮȚ IJȚșȑȝİȞȠȢ)20 and hoped to receive as a reward for his rational deeds “the principle of another, eternal life” (ਙȜȜȠȣ ȕȓȠȣ ਕȧįȓȠȣ ਕȡȤȒȞ).21 Thus, Socrates anticipated Clement’s conviction that human life cannot be reduced to merely existing. The attainment of well-being and an honourable end secured one’s personal fulfilment and the defeat of death—the first and last mark of human incompleteness. Of course, and apart from the Socratic paradigm, Clement could not have entertained the thought that human beings achieve the fullness of life and immortality on their own. One should consider the Socratic illustration together with the proviso encountered in Exhortation, namely, that it is Christ as God who bestows on human beings “the power to live forever” (IJઁ ਕİ੿ ȗોȞ).22 In short, when combined with the example of Socrates the above Clementine line depicts well-being, or “living well” (İ੣ ȗોȞ and İ੣ ȟોȞ) as entailing a rational or virtuous conformity to the Logos and as conditioning human wholeness, including our being forever. Divine grace, the teaching of Christ, and the human virtuous efforts were instrumental for achieving these existential goals. One more point is in order before proceeding to our next patristic witness. It is noteworthy that Clement construed well-being in holistic terms, without reducing it to ethical accomplishments. This understanding is reiterated elsewhere in Miscellanies with reference to thanksgivings yet without the vocabulary of well-being or living well. Here is the text: The thanksgiving (İ੝ȤĮȡȚıIJȓĮ) is not offered just for the soul and the spiritual goods (Ƞ੝ț ਥʌ੿ ȥȣȤોȢ ȝȩȞȠȞ țĮ੿ IJ૵Ȟ ʌȞİȣȝĮIJȚț૵Ȟ ਕȖĮș૵Ȟ); it is [offered] likewise for the body and the bodily goods (ਥʌ੿ IJȠ૨ ıȫȝĮIJȠȢ … țĮ੿ IJ૵Ȟ IJȠ૨ ıȫȝĮIJȠȢ ਕȖĮș૵Ȟ).23

20

Miscellanies 5.2.14.1 (SC 278, 46). Mark the Attic, high-style ȟોȞ instead of ȗોȞ as an expression of reverence toward Socrates. Clement referred to a similar idea, without recourse to Atticisms, in relation to the answer of an Indian sage (see țĮȜ૵Ȣ ȗોȞ ȕȠȣȜȩȝİȞȠȚ Į੝IJઁȞ ਲ਼ țĮȜ૵Ȣ ਕʌȠșĮȞİ૙Ȟ). See Miscellanies 6.4.38.6 (SC 446, 136). 21 Miscellanies 5.2.14.2 (SC 278, 46). 22 Exhortation 1.7.3 (SC 2, 61). 23 Miscellanies 5.10.61.5 (SC 278, 126). Further down in the same book, Clement utilised eucharistic imagery in discussing the stages of Christian initiation. See Miscellanies 5.10.66.2-4 (SC 278, 134). The eucharistic grounding of the Christian ethos was likewise cherished by Clement’s contemporary, Irenaeus of Lyon. See his Against Heresies 2.18.5.114-5 in Irénée de Lyon: Contre les Hérésies, Livre IV,

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Thanksgiving or the eucharist is the hallmark of the ecclesial experience and, since it constitutes a proportionate answer to the love of God, the most rational expression of one’s commitment to Christ’s guidance. In acknowledging the spiritual and bodily blessings, thanksgiving discloses the holistic, comprehensive aspect of the ecclesial mindset. Immediately relevant is that psychosomatic well-being or, literally, the spiritual and bodily goods (IJ੹ ਕȖĮșȐ),24 represent the object of a grateful acknowledgment of God’s care; concurrently, these goods are quantifiable on an existential level where they register as a state of well-being. In contrast with the passages analysed above the statement of interest does no longer refer to well-being as conditioned by the acquisition of moral rectitude; the eucharist simply acknowledges well-being as a divine gift bestowed on the human being as a whole,25 soul and body, mind and heart. In proposing this understanding, our text closes the circle by returning to the theocentric dimension of the Clementine thinking espoused in Exhortation and, possibly, to the references—scattered throughout the corpus—to teaching and wisdom as therapeutic to the human being wounded by the passions.26 To conclude this part, in the light of the rich phraseology (ȜȠȖȚț૵Ȣ ȗોȞ, IJઁ țĮȜ૵Ȣ ȕȚȠ૨Ȟ, ȞȠȝȓȝȦȢ ȕȚȠ૨Ȟ, IJઁ İ੝ȜȩȖȦȢ ȕȚȠ૨Ȟ) employed within the Clementine corpus and its ideatic context, it is obvious that the Alexandrian construed well-being, İ੣ ȗોȞ/ȟોȞ, both as “living virtuously” and as “having a good life” or experiencing wholeness. In highlighting these two sides of well-being, he pointed out that on a human level merely living is not an option: in fact it amounts to a betrayal of one’s mandate to embrace salvation and to attain holiness and immortality. This representation Tome I, ed. Adelin Rousseau, Bertrand Hemmerdinger, Louis Doutrelleau, and Charles Mercier, Sources chrétiennes 100 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1965), 610. 24 Miscellanies 5.10.61.5 (SC 278, 126). Williams, The Divine Sense, 71-2 points out a similar Clementine perception in relation to the baptismal restoration of the body. 25 Karavites, Evil, Freedom, and the Road to Perfection, 141, connects this gift with baptismal regeneration. Nevertheless, Clement seems to have included the whole array of virtuous experiences when he spoke, elsewhere, of “training into well living by way of the body” (see ੒ įȚ੹ ıȫȝĮIJȠȢ ȝİȜİIJȒıĮȢ İ੝ȗȦȓĮȞ) as a prerequisite for the attainment of “living well” (İ੣ ȗોȞ) and the eternal existence (İੁȢ ਪȟȚȞ ਕȧįȚȩIJȘIJȠȢ). Miscellanies 4.4.18.3 in Clemens Alexandrinus: Stromata Buch I-VI, ed. Otto Stählin, Ludwig Früchtel, Ursula Treu, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 15 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985), 256. Mark the association of the body with both ascetical practices and the notion of well-being. 26 See The Pedagogue 1.1.3.2-3 (SC 70, 112) and Miscellanies 5.11.68.4 (SC 278, 138).

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of well-being encompassed furthermore the aspect of divine gift bestowed on human beings as well as the aspect of divine pedagogy to which human beings had to submit in order to achieve this goal. On these notes, I turn to the next witness, the author known to the Byzantine Church as Saint Dionysius the Areopagite.

Dionysius the Areopagite Currently, scholars believe that the anonymous author behind the alias Dionysius the Areopagite, a name borrowed from the Athenian convert of St Paul (Acts 17:34), was a Hellenised Syrian who wrote at the end of the fifth or in the early sixth century. 27 Equally familiar with the Platonic tradition, including its later, Proclean developments28 and the early Greek Christian theology,29 sensitive to the metaphorical worldview of the Syrian tradition, 30 liturgically inclined, and deeply familiar with monastic spirituality,31 Dionysius produced an important corpus of writings whose impact on the medieval culture of the Christian East and West is unique.32 Not much can be gleaned from these writings in terms of their author’s 27 Eric Perl, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite”, in The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, vol. 2, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 767-87, esp. 767; Paul Rorem, “Dionysius the Areopagite”, in Patrology: The Eastern Fathers from the Council of Chalcedon (451) to John of Damascus (+750), ed. Angelo di Berardino, trans. Adrian Walford (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co Ltd, 2006), 45-53, esp. 45. 28 István Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Platonic Theology”, in Proclus et la Théologie Platonicienne, ed. A. Ph. Segonds and C. Steel (Leuven and Paris: Leuven University Press and Les Belles Lettres, 2000), 491-532; Andrew Louth, Denys the Areopagite (London and New York: Continuum, 1989), 20-4. 29 Perl, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite”, 768; Louth, Denys the Areopagite, 78, 89-90, 114-5. 30 Rorem, “Dionysius the Areopagite”, 45-6; Alexander Golitzin, Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, ed. Bogdan G. Bucur, Cistercian Studies 250 (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications and Liturgical Press, 2013), 15-24, 329-60. 31 Golitzin, Mystagogy, 25-8, 305-8; Louth, Denys the Areopagite, 29-31, 52-75. 32 On the impact of Dionysius, see Rorem, “Dionysius the Areopagite”, 53; idem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 29-38, 73-83, 118-26, 167-75, 214-25; Louth, Denys the Areopagite, 111-27; Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, tr. Brian E. Daley (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 49-50.

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circumstances, at least not directly. Except for some cracks in the painted wall of this forged identity, 33 the author carefully cultivated his pseudonymity by introducing himself as familiar with the apostles and a friend of their disciples.34 If the identity of the author remains shrouded, the very pseudonym together with various features of the Dionysian teaching make possible the reconstruction of the author’s purposes. It seems that not unlike the actual Dionysius one of his goals was to make available for the Athenian intelligentsia of his time the treasures of Christian theology. To that end, and walking in the footsteps of the early Christian apologists, including Clement the Alexandrian whom he mentioned by name,35 Dionysius adopted the contemporary philosophical idiom by which he presented elements of the Christian tradition in ways that were potentially appreciated by his targeted readership. Against this backdrop, similarly to Clement’s undertakings Dionysius drew the theological contours of another grand narrative of created existence—a framework within which he presented the whole of the cosmos, visible and invisible, as depending on God in order to exist and reach perfection, and as moving asymptotically toward the neighbourly yet ever elusive Trinitarian God.36 It is within this context that he reiterated the theme of well-being, which he consistently articulated, philosophically, as IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ, a terminology already encountered in Clement where it played a marginal role.

33 Such as references to persons living toward the end of the first century and later, like Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, and Clement the Alexandrian, and much later ecclesial realities, like monasticism. For references to Ignatius and Clement, see On the Divine Names 4.12.10, 5.9.11 in Corpus Dionysiacum, vol. 1 (= CD 1): Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita: De divinis nominibus, ed. Beate Regina Suchla, Patristische Texte und Studien 33 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990), 157, 189. For a reference to Polycarp, see Letter 7.1 in Corpus Dionysiacum, vol. 2 (= CD 2): Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita: De coelesti hierarchia, de ecclesiastica hierarchia, de mystica theologia, epistulae, ed. Günter Heil and Adolf Martin Ritter, Patristische Texte und Studien 36 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991), 165. For references to monasticism, see Letter 8 (CD 2, 171-92). 34 Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Platonic Theology”, 516-9; Louth, Denys the Areopagite, 1-2, 10-4. 35 See On the Divine Names 5.9.11 (CD 1, 189). 36 See Golitzin, Mystagogy, 121-32; Perl, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite”, 774-7.

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For instance, a chapter on “hierarchy” as a factor of existence and sanctification, within On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy,37 refers to the Holy Trinity as the source and centre of all created being. Here is the relevant passage. [As] the source of life (ਲ ʌȘȖ੽ IJોȢ ȗȦોȢ), the essence of goodness (ਲ Ƞ੝ıȓĮ IJોȢ ਕȖĮșȩIJȘIJȠȢ), and the one cause of [created] beings (ਲ ȝȓĮ IJ૵Ȟ ੕ȞIJȦȞ ĮੁIJȓĮ), the Trinity [is] the origin of this hierarchy, from which out of [divine] goodness [created] beings [receive] both existence and well-being (țĮ੿ IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ).38

Analogous to the first Clementine text reviewed above, 39 the passage establishes a direct connection between God and God’s creation, the main difference consisting in that Dionysius preferred to expand the perspective beyond the anthropological horizon of the Alexandrian, to include the cosmos in its entirety. Granted, Clement was not insensitive to the cosmological framework either;40 it just happens that in order to achieve his pedagogical and missionary aims he had to address the three stages of existence exclusively on a human level. That said, this detail signifies a deeper difference between the two patristic approaches. Whereas Clement decidedly defined well-being in a complex manner, as an ethical achievement as well as in terms of existential fullness, Dionysius seems to have understood it primarily in terms of an ontological wellness secured by the provident God41—along the lines of the last Clementine passage analysed above.42 More specifically, for Dionysius and within this context well-being (IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ) seems to have amounted to the strengthening of 37

For overviews of this work, see Rorem, “Dionysius the Areopagite”, 49; idem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 91-117. 38 On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 1.3.6-8 (CD 2, 66). 39 Exhortation 1.7.3 (SC 2, 61). 40 See Costache, “Worldview and Melodic Imagery”, 296-310; idem, “Meaningful Cosmos”, 115-22, 124-5; Paul M. Blowers, “Doctrine of Creation”, in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 906-31, esp. 913, 918. 41 See Golitzin, Mystagogy, 112-3; Perl, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite”, 7702. 42 Miscellanies 5.10.61.5 (SC 278, 126). Here, Dionysius could have likewise rehearsed Athanasius’ notes on the Logos that brings the unstable nature of the creation to firmness. Against the Gentiles 41.14-26 in Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. Robert W. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 114.

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creation’s existence, its being brought to firmness and fullness by being providentially liberated from the danger of falling into chaos and nonbeing. To articulate this perspective, Dionysius returned to the Clementine theocentric aspect of the creation in that he stated that out of sheer goodness (see ਲ Ƞ੝ıȓĮ IJોȢ ਕȖĮșȩIJȘIJȠȢ) the Trinity was the source (ʌȘȖȒ) and the cause or origin (ĮੁIJȓĮ)43 of all created existence and its well-being. A passage from On the Divine Names44 conveys the same view concerning the Trinitarian God as source of being and well-being in a clearer fashion. There, the notion of well-being is endowed with richer nuances and receives various terminological articulations. From this [divine] cause of all (ʌȐȞIJȦȞ ĮੁIJȓĮȢ) [spring forth into being] the noetic and intellectual essences of the godlike angels together with the natures of the souls and the entire cosmos […]. At any rate, the most holy and oldest [heavenly] powers that exist truly (੕ȞIJȦȢ Ƞ੣ıĮȚ) [i.e. in a way superior to lower, material beings] are established as though in the porch of the Trinity-above-essence, having both their being and the godlike being (țĮ੿ IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ IJઁ șİȠİȚį૵Ȣ İੇȞĮȚ) in relation to it [i.e. the Trinity] and within it. […] It is by the same principle that the [human] souls and all the other [created] beings receive their being and well-being (țĮ੿ IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ). They exist and are well (țĮ੿ ਩ıIJȚ țĮ੿ İ੣ ਩ıIJȚȞ) because of the One who pre-exists [any] being and well-being (IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ)— in whom they exist and are well (੕ȞIJĮ țĮ੿ İ੣ ੕ȞIJĮ), from whom they have their beginning, in whom they are guarded, and in whom they have their limit.45

The passage sketches a comprehensive worldview, a hierarchically organised cosmos of seen and unseen beings, all of which have their origin and purpose in God the Trinity. Like a temporal cartographer, here Dionysius mapped the history of creation from beginning to end—or, as Perl had it, in its movement of procession and reversion46—once again representing it as divinely conditioned. Nothing that is brought into being 43

On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 1.3.6-8 (CD 2, 66). On the Trinity as source of the hierarchy within this passage, see Golitzin, Mystagogy, 165-6. 44 For overviews of this work, see Rorem, “Dionysius the Areopagite”, 50; idem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 133-66. 45 On the Divine Names 5.8.1-12 (CD 1, 186). For a general discussion of the context yet without reference to the topic of well-being, see Rorem, PseudoDionysius, 153-5. 46 Perl, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite”, 773-7. See also Blowers, Drama of the Divine Economy, 164-5.

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through creation has an origin extraneous to God; nothing created could exist without divine support; nothing created has any other goal of existence than God, the divine source of all visible and invisible creation (see ਥȟ Į੝IJȠ૨ ਕȡȤȩȝİȞĮ țĮ੿ ਥȞ Į੝IJ૶ ijȡȠȣȡȠȪȝİȞĮ țĮ੿ İੁȢ Į੝IJઁȞ ʌİȡĮIJȠȪȝİȞĮ). 47 Within this grandiose theocentric depiction of reality, being and well-being are inseparable, and both are divinely granted. Of immediate interest is that well-being is associated with divine likeness. In a strange way, the latter does not entail a spiritual dimension, not directly anyway, but rather represents another designation of the ontological durability of the creation. We shall see below that in several passages Maximus adopted this very meaning in relation to the image of God. More specifically, in being divinely endowed the firm existence of created beings brings them closer to God’s own perfection, making them godlike or deiform—as signified by the phrase IJઁ șİȠİȚį૵Ȣ İੇȞĮȚ48 which in one instance replaces the usual IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ and its equivalents (see İ੣ ਩ıIJȚȞ, İ੣ ੕ȞIJĮ). 49 This use of well-being seems to correspond to the Clementine notion of immortality. Apart from this immediate ontological denotation, the phrase IJઁ șİȠİȚį૵Ȣ İੇȞĮȚ may yet suggest spiritual transformation, which makes sense in the case of the superior beings, namely, the heavenly hosts, with reference to whom the phrase is employed.50 If so, then the well-being of the heavenly powers refers to their unshaken existence (see ੕ȞIJȦȢ Ƞ੣ıĮȚ)51 and their divine configuration or spiritual transformation (see șİȠİȚį૵Ȣ), both made possible by their proximity to the divine (see ȠੈȠȞ ਥȞ ʌȡȠșȪȡȠȚȢ IJોȢ ਫ਼ʌİȡȠȣıȓȠȣ IJȡȚȐįȠȢ ੂįȡȣȝȑȞĮȚ).52 Within this context Dionysius did not bother to explain whether the aspect of transformation involves an ethical contribution on the part of the creation together with being divinely effected. What is clear is that for him being and well-being were gifts imparted by God to the heavenly hosts. Nevertheless, given that human souls and the other created beings are 47

On the Divine Names 5.8.11-12 (CD 1, 186). On the Divine Names 5.8.6 (CD 1, 186). 49 On the Divine Names 5.8.9-10 (CD 1, 186). 50 For a comparative analysis of the Clementine and Dionysian angelologies, with emphasis on the aspect of gradual transformation of the lower ranks into higher ranks, ending in deification, see Bogdan G. Bucur, “Clement of Alexandria’s Exegesis of Old Testament Theophanies”, Phronema 29:1 (2014): 61-79, esp. 6872. 51 On the Divine Names 5.8.4 (CD 1, 186). 52 Lit. “are established as though in the porch of the Trinity-above-essence”. On the Divine Names 5.8.4-5 (CD 1, 186). 48

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granted their being and well-being “by the same principle” (țĮIJ੹ IJઁȞ Į੝IJઁȞ ȜȩȖȠȞ),53 one can infer that the mode in which the lower beings (see Įੂ ਫ਼ijİȚȝȑȞĮȚ … țĮ੿ Įੂ ਩ıȤĮIJĮȚ)54 receive these qualities is analogous to the way the holier and more venerable heavenly hosts (Įੂ ʌĮȞȐȖȚĮȚ țĮ੿ ʌȡİıȕȪIJĮIJĮȚ įȣȞȐȝİȚȢ)55 are partakers of the same. It seems, therefore, that the lower creations receive being and well-being as gifts, too. Elsewhere, however, Dionysius complemented this picture by pointing out that the rational creation—angelic and human alike—was called to salvation or deification as its final term, 56 a goal which could not be attained without the input or cooperation of the created beings. This other context is relevant to the above both given the correspondence between the topic of deification and two phrases in the passage earlier quoted in full, referring to the deiform creation and its end in God,57 and because here the personal contribution of the rational creation is better emphasised. The text of interest, found only several lines below the previous excerpt from On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, consists in perhaps the most celebrated sentence of the whole Areopagetica. Here is the text: “deification is assimilation and union to God, as much as possible” (ਲ į੻ șȑȦıȓȢ ਥıIJȚȞ ਲ ʌȡઁȢ șİઁȞ ੪Ȣ ਥijȚțIJઁȞ ਕijȠȝȠȓȦıȓȢ IJİ țĮ੿ ਪȞȦıȚȢ).58 The sentence points out that to attain the goal of created existence, namely deification, one has to maintain fellowship with God, or union, and become godlike, where likeness or assimilation represents an existential dimension which entails

53

On the Divine Names 5.8.8-9 (CD 1, 186). On the Divine Names 5.8.6-7 (CD 1, 186). 55 On the Divine Names 5.8.4 (CD 1, 186). Bucur has referred to two similar passages in the Dionysian Letters 8.1 and 9.3, where Christ bestows being and wellbeing on both angels and humans. See Bogdan G. Bucur, “Foreordained from All Eternity: The Mystery of the Incarnation According to Some Early Christian and Byzantine Writers”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 62 (2008): 199-215, esp. 201. 56 See ਲ ȜȠȖȚț੽ ıȦIJȘȡȓĮ IJ૵Ȟ țĮș’ ਲȝ઼Ȣ IJİ țĮ੿ ਫ਼ʌ੻ȡ ਲȝ઼Ȣ Ƞ੝ıȚ૵Ȟ. On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 1.3.10-11 (CD 2, 66). 57 Created beings are bestowed upon with a “godlike way of being” (IJઁ șİȠİȚį૵Ȣ İੇȞĮȚ) and “have their limit” in God (İੁȢ Į੝IJઁȞ ʌİȡĮIJȠȪȝİȞĮ). On the Divine Names 5.8.6,11-12 (CD 1, 186). 58 On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 1.3.12-13 (CD 2, 66). I am grateful to Adam Cooper for the suggestion to translate ਕijȠȝȠȓȦıȚȢ by “assimilation”, more precise than my original preference for “likeness”. For a brief analysis of the passage within its context, see Golitzin, Mystagogy, 250-2. 54

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progress in contemplation and a loving adherence to the good.59 Pertinently, Golitzin pointed out that within this context deification entails a dynamism of participation in God on behalf of the rational creation.60 The point on the active participation of the creation to the process of deification is crucial for the understanding of the Dionysian concept of hierarchy. In earning perfection by way of their ethical achievements in faithfulness to God, the deified rational creations become hierarchies or mediators of perfection to others, who are situated on lower ranks of worthiness. This matter is discussed in another passage from On the Divine Names, which constitutes my last paradigm for well-being in Dionysius. The text returns to the understanding of well-being as bestowal of durability on the created rational beings 61 yet together with the theme of acquiring goodness or, possibly, virtue. But let us have a closer look at this passage: Having from it their foundation, continuity, protection, and a trove of goods, [that is] from the very goodness [of God], and desiring it, they have both being and well-being (țĮ੿ IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ). And in being stamped by it in the form of the good (ਕʌȠIJȣʌȠȪȝİȞĮȚ țĮ੿ ਕȖĮșȠİȚįİ૙Ȣ), as much as possible, out of goodness (ਥț IJਕȖĮșȠ૨) they communicate these permeating gifts from it [i.e. divine goodness] to those under them, as required by the divine establishment.62

Once again, Dionysius depicted here the total dependence of the creation on God, the latter designated as “foundation, continuity, protection, and a trove of goods”,63 and by the attribute of goodness.64 The passage focuses, however, on the goodness achieved in communion with God by those who have become godlike—“stamped by it in the form of the good 59

On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 1.3.13-19 (CD 2, 66). This is but a simplified version of the triadic pattern of purification, illumination, and perfection, which underlies the Dionysian view of the spiritual progress. See Rorem, PseudoDionysius, 22, 58-9, 64, 108-11; Louth, Denys the Areopagite, 40-42, 47, 52, 54, 65. 60 Golitzin, Mystagogy, 184. 61 See Įੂ ȞȠȘIJĮ੿ țĮ੿ ȞȠİȡĮ੿ ʌ઼ıĮȚ țĮ੿ Ƞ੝ı઀ĮȚ țĮ੿ įȣȞ੺ȝİȚȢ țĮ੿ ਥȞ੼ȡȖİȚĮȚ. On the Divine Names 4.1.6-7 (CD 1, 144). 62 On the Divine Names 4.1.12-17 (CD 1, 144). For a general discussion of the context yet without reference to the topic of well-being, see Rorem, PseudoDionysius, 148-53. 63 ੆įȡȣıȚȢ Į੝IJĮ૙Ȣ ਥțİ૙șȑȞ ਥıIJȚ țĮ੿ ıȣȞȠȤ੽ țĮ੿ ijȡȠȣȡ੹ țĮ੿ ਦıIJȓĮ IJ૵Ȟ ਕȖĮș૵Ȟ. On the Divine Names 4.1.13-14 (CD 1, 144). 64 See ਥț IJોȢ ਕȖĮșȩIJȘIJȠȢ ਩ȤȠȣıȚ. On the Divine Names 4.1.12-13 (CD 1, 144).

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(ਕȖĮșȠİȚįİ૙Ȣ)”65—a goodness which they divinely manifest in behaving like God, namely, in a good or generous way (see ਥț IJਕȖĮșȠ૨). 66 Dionysius represented this chain of generosity as a communication of being and well-being from God to those who reached the godlike state, and from the latter to “those under them” (IJĮ૙Ȣ ȝİș’ Įਫ਼IJȐȢ)67 or still on the way to perfection. Within this context therefore, well-being is not only associated with acquiring ethical goodness and godlikeness; it is more so linked to the exercise of generosity and has a communitarian meaning. Dionysius’ notion of well-being is therefore richer than Clement’s, since it refers to ontological stability, spiritual transformation, ethical achievement, and a relational or mediatory dimension. Additionally, even though at times he adopted a chronological viewpoint in depicting the order of creation, unlike Clement who used the threefold pattern Dionysius has consistently discussed being and well-being as simultaneous aspects of the created existence. It is likely that for this reason he did not need explicitly to address the eternal being, which was possibly implied by his encompassing notion of well-being—the latter corresponding to the state of being deified in the here and now, and for the ages to come. The last witness to which I shall refer, Maximus, adopted an intermediary viewpoint in this matter, sometimes using the Clementine chronological outline whilst in other instances the Dionysian approach to the complexities pertaining to the created existence in the here and now.

Maximus the Confessor Maximus (d. 662), whose background is uncertain yet who marked his age by his wisdom, holiness of life, and a martyr’s end, 68 is widely acknowledged as the greatest Byzantine theologian. Being an original thinker with tremendous insights into various areas, from theology to philosophy, from exegesis to the liturgy, and from asceticism to 65

ਕʌȠIJȣʌȠȪȝİȞĮȚ țĮ੿ ਕȖĮșȠİȚįİ૙Ȣ. The construction seems to correspond to the phrase IJઁ șİȠİȚį૵Ȣ İੇȞĮȚ in On the Divine Names 5.8.6 (CD 1, 186). 66 On the Divine Names 4.1.17 (CD 1, 144). 67 On the Divine Names 4.1.16 (CD 1, 144). On this, briefly, Rorem, PseudoDionysius, 151. 68 For more recent biographies, see Pauline Allen, “Life and Times of Maximus the Confessor”, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, ed. Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 3-18; Andrew Louth, “Maximus the Confessor”, in Patrology: The Eastern Fathers, ed. Angelo di Berardino (quoted above), 135-53, esp. 135-6.

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contemplation, he achieved a complex synthesis of earlier trends within the Christian and classical tradition.69 In so doing he has become a point of reference for further developments in Late Byzantium. There is practically no significant Byzantine author after his time who has not drawn on his varied contributions, one way or another. Of interest is Maximus’ predilection for the representation of reality and the human experience by way of trilogies or triadic patterns, 70 in which matter he must have followed in the footsteps of Clement and Dionysius, whom, according to von Balthasar, he genuinely admired.71 Among the many triadic patterns 69

See Marius Portaru, “Classical Philosophical Influences: Aristotle and Platonism”, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, 127-48; Marcus Plested, “The Ascetic Tradition”, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, 164-76; Ysabel de Andia, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor”, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, 177-93; Louth, “Maximus the Confessor”, 140, 148-52; von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 56-73. 70 On the various Maximian trilogies, see Torstein T. Tollefsen, “Christocentric Cosmology”, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, 307-21, esp. 313; Doru Costache, “Living above Gender: Insights from Saint Maximus the Confessor”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 21:2 (2013): 261-90, esp. 269-72; Philipp Gabriel Renczes, Agir de Dieu et liberté de l’homme: Recherches sur l’anthropologie théologique de saint Maxime le Confesseur (Paris: Cerf, 2003), 182-5; Louth, “Maximus the Confessor”, 150; Jean-Claude Larchet, La divinisation de l’homme selon saint Maxime le Confesseur (Paris: Cerf, 1996), 165-74; I. P. Sheldon-Williams, “St Maximus the Confessor”, in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge, London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1967, reprinted 2007), 492-505, esp. 493-7; Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1965), 332-7; St. Maximus the Confessor: The Ascetic Life and The Four Centuries on Charity, trans. and notes Polycarp Sherwood (Westminster, MD and London: The Newman Press and Longmans, Green and Co., 1955), 48-9, n.152 at 259; Polycarp Sherwood, The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus the Confessor and His Refutation of Origenism, Studia Anselmiana 36 (Rome: Herder, 1955), 103-16. 71 See von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, n.18 at 371 (for Clement), 34-5, 58 (for Dionysius). Maximus referred to both earlier fathers, together, in Book of Difficulties 7.24. See Maximos the Confessor: On Difficulties in the Church Fathers – The Ambigua, vols 1-2, ed. and trans. Nicholas Constas, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2014) vol. 1, 106-8. Louth, Denys the Areopagite, 115 mentions the influence of Dionysius on Maximus with reference to the triad “being—well-being—eternal being” but provides no evidence that Dionysius used this pattern.

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which pervade the Maximian corpus perhaps the most significant, and immediately relevant to my purposes, is the familiar Clementine outline of the three aspects of existence, 72 namely, being, well-being, and eternal being, which the saint rendered in the words and (mainly) through the lens of Dionysius. In what follows I consider the employment of this trilogy in two Maximian writings produced in different times and places: the early work Chapters on Love73 and the mature Book of Difficulties.74 My analysis will end with a brief reference to a spurious Maximian compilation pertaining to the genre of “questions and answers” and currently known, improperly, as Questions and Doubts.75 Several passages from the third part of Chapters on Love address the three aspects of existence from the viewpoint of participation theory or the relationship between God and the rational creation. For instance, ch. 23 establishes that there is a connection between God, who is “eternal, infinite, and boundless” (ਕȧįȓȠȣ țĮ੿ ਕʌİȓȡȠȣ țĮ੿ ਕȠȡȓıIJȠȣ) and the created beings on which God gracefully bestows (see ȤĮȡȚıĮȝȑȞȠȣ) “being, wellbeing, and eternal being” (IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ ਕİ੿ İੇȞĮȚ).76 The chapter does not discuss the significance of the three divine attributes—eternity, infinity, and boundlessness—with reference to the three aspects of the created existence. That said, it seems to suggest that the three divine attributes signify perfection whereas the aspects of the created existence reveal its incompleteness and necessary dynamism or the fact that the creation is, as it were, a work in progress. Neither does the chapter directly engage the nature of the relationship between God and the creation except 72 For an analysis of this trilogy as it features within various Maximian contexts, see Larchet, La divinisation de l’homme, 165-74. 73 For overviews of this work, see George G. Berthold, “Christian Life and Praxis: The Centuries on Love”, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, 397413; Louth, “Maximus the Confessor”, 138; Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor, 101-2. 74 For overviews of this work, see Constas, “Introduction”, in Maximos the Confessor: On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, vii-xxxii esp. viii-x; Louth, “Maximus the Confessor”, 139-40. 75 The proper title of this Maximian writing is Questions and Answers. For insights into the original, unappended, version of this work, see Louth, “Maximus the Confessor”, 138-9. 76 Chapters on Love 3.23.2-3 in Massimo Confessore: Capitoli sulla carità, ed. Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, Verba Seniorum 3 (Roma: Editrice Studium, 1963), 152. For an overview of the broader group of chapters, 21-33, where the passages of interest are located, see Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor, n.150 at 258-9.

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by pointing to the former as the source of the latter’s existence. The “how” of this connection is nevertheless discussed in the next couple of passages. Thus, together with depicting well-being as goodness and wisdom, ch. 24 details the way in which the three aspects of existence become available to the rational creation (see ਲ ȜȠȖȚț੽ țĮ੿ ȞȠİȡ੹ Ƞ੝ıȓĮ).77 The rational and intelligent existence participates (ȝİIJȑȤİȚ) in God the holy by its being (IJ૶ İੇȞĮȚ), its aptitude for well-being (IJૌ ʌȡઁȢ IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ ਥʌȚIJȘįİȚȩIJȘIJȚ) or goodness and wisdom, and by the grace of eternal being (IJૌ ʌȡઁȢ IJઁ ਕİ੿ İੇȞĮȚ ȤȐȡȚIJȚ).78

The topic of this passage is not the complexity of the creation’s existence. Maximus presented here the aspects of being, well-being, and being for ever as given. In turn, he was more interested in these three aspects as ways in which the rational creation participates in God79 and resembles God. Looking more closely at the text, one discerns the ontological and ethical dimensions encountered in the earlier fathers. The ontological aspect is represented by being (İੇȞĮȚ) and eternal being (ਕİ੿ İੇȞĮȚ). Given that it exists and is destined for a continuous existence through the ages, and in spite of its natural deficiencies, the creation is somehow godlike or more precisely durable. Of course, durability represents a charismatic (see ȤȐȡȚIJȚ) intensification of creation’s existence, 80 the outcome of its participation in God’s own stability. This is an optimistic appraisal of created nature, in which Dionysian echoes reverberate with clarity. Furthermore, the passage identifies well-being (İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ) with “goodness and wisdom” (ਕȖĮșȩIJȘIJȩȢ IJȑ … țĮ੿ ıȠijȓĮȢ) 81 which are ethical and intellectual achievements of a personal nature, and which, therefore, point to a contribution on the part of the rational creation towards its own betterment—an aspect partially emphasised by Clement and less by Dionysius. To sum it up, ch. 24 submits that the rational creation participates in God both in that it exists and exists forever, and by replicating the divine attributes of goodness and wisdom, which signify 77

Chapters on Love 3.24.1 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). Chapters on Love 3.24.1-3 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). 79 Maximus reiterated the aspects of existence and movement as creation’s participation in God in Difficulty 7.16 (Constas, vol. 1, 96). 80 In the words of Archbishop Stylianos the creation is led “from ontological mortality to charismatic immortality”. See his “The Sacredness of Creation”, Phronema 5 (1990): 5-13, here 8. 81 Chapters on Love 3.24.2 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). 78

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personal perfection. This message is further nuanced in ch. 25. Here is the text: In bringing into existence (İੁȢ IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ) the rational and intelligent nature, out of an extreme goodness God shared [with it] four of the divine qualities for its support, maintenance and preservation, namely, being, being forever, goodness and wisdom (IJઁ ੕Ȟ, IJઁ ਕİ੿ ੕Ȟ, IJ੽Ȟ ਕȖĮșȩIJȘIJĮ țĮ੿ IJ੽Ȟ ıȠijȓĮȞ). For the [rational] creation to become through participation (țĮIJ੹ ȝİIJȠȣıȓĮȞ) what God is by nature (țĮIJ’ Ƞ੝ıȓĮȞ), two of these [qualities] have been supplied to the essence and two to the deliberative aptitude. More specifically, [God communicated] being and being forever (IJઁ ੓Ȟ țĮ੿ IJઁ ਕİ੿ ੕Ȟ) to the essence (Ƞ੝ıȓ઺) [of the rational creation] whereas goodness and wisdom (IJ੽Ȟ ਕȖĮșȩIJȘIJĮ țĮ੿ IJ੽Ȟ ıȠijȓĮȞ) to its deliberative aptitude (ȖȞȦȝȚțૌ ਥʌȚIJȘįİȚȩIJȘIJȚ). And so [the rational creation] is said to have become in the image and likeness of God—in the image of [God’s] being and being forever in that it exists (੪Ȣ ੕Ȟ) and exists forever (੪Ȣ ਕİ੿ ੕Ȟ) […] and in the likeness [of God’s] goodness and wisdom in that it is good (ਕȖĮșȩȢ) and wise (ıȠijȩȢ). These [qualities the rational creation] has by grace (țĮIJ੹ ȤȐȡȚȞ) whereas [God possesses them] by nature (țĮIJ੹ ijȪıȚȞ). Thus, all rational nature (ʌ઼ıĮ ijȪıȚȢ ȜȠȖȚțȒ) is in the image of God yet in the likeness only those who are good and wise (ȝȩȞȠȚ Ƞੂ ਕȖĮșȠ੿ țĮ੿ ıȠijȠȓ).82

The passage develops the theme of ch. 24 by drawing a clearer line between natural and personal attributes. Before addressing this matter, it is worth pointing out that apart for the first occurrence of the ontological aspect (see İੁȢ IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ) here the usual Dionysian terminology for being and being forever (IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ and IJઁ ਕİ੿ İੇȞĮȚ) leaves room for words of Platonic resonance (IJઁ ੓Ȟ and IJઁ ਕİ੿ ੕Ȟ) which nevertheless have the same meaning83 and perhaps echo the excerpt from On the Divine Names 5.8.84 Noteworthy is likewise the absence of the term well-being, which is substituted, in tune with the identification operated within the previous chapter, by goodness and wisdom (see IJ੽Ȟ ਕȖĮșȩIJȘIJĮ țĮ੿ IJ੽Ȟ ıȠijȓĮȞ and ਕȖĮșȠ੿ țĮ੿ ıȠijȠȓ).85 It is of further note that ch. 25 introduces, alongside the philosophical concepts of being, being forever, goodness, and wisdom 82

Chapters on Love 3.25.1-12 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). This is not the only terminological variation. Further down one finds IJઁ ਫ਼ʌȐȡȤİȚȞ used as an alternative for IJઁ ੓Ȟ and IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ. Chapters on Love 3.27.6 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). 84 On the Divine Names 5.8.1-12 (CD 1, 186). 85 Chapters on Love 3.25.3-4,11-12 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). 83

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(IJઁ ੕Ȟ, IJઁ ਕİ੿ ੕Ȟ, IJ੽Ȟ ਕȖĮșȩIJȘIJĮ țĮ੿ IJ੽Ȟ ıȠijȓĮȞ),86 the scriptural notions of image and likeness (țĮIJ’ İੁțȩȞĮ țĮ੿ ੒ȝȠȓȦıȚȞ ĬİȠ૨). 87 This juxtaposition of scriptural and philosophical vocabulary points to a complex framework within which Maximus assessed the constitution of the human being, whereby he delineated the spheres of being (Ƞ੝ıȓĮ) and person (signified by the phrase ȖȞȦȝȚțȒ ਥʌȚIJȘįİȚȩIJȘȢ, “deliberative aptitude”). Similar to Dionysius, for Maximus nature represented what was divinely bestowed upon the human being, namely, existence and durability. In turn, the person had to freely choose88 the right path and thus acquire goodness and wisdom or moral and existential perfection. In the text of reference, the two spheres, of nature or what is given and of person or what has to be achieved,89 are signified by the distinction between being in the image and being in the likeness of God, respectively. Insofar as it exists and continues to do so forever, the rational creation is in the image of God—a created replica of God’s ontological perfection, which status has nothing truly glorious about it. As Maximus pointed out at the end of the passage, “all rational nature is in the image of God yet in the likeness only those who are good and wise”. In turn, the rational creation becomes “in the likeness of God” insofar as it acquires goodness and wisdom, albeit through participation in grace (see țĮIJ੹ ȝİIJȠȣıȓĮȞ, țĮIJ੹ ȤȐȡȚȞ)90—which is its true glory and, even in the absence of the word proper, constitutes its well-being. It follows that, for the rational creation, to be and to exist 86

Chapters on Love 3.25.3-4 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). Chapters on Love 3.25.7-12 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). Bucur, “Foreordained from All Eternity”, 204, discovered a similar stance in Book of Difficulties. 88 For notes on free will and choice in Maximus, see Ian A. McFarland, “The Theology of the Will”, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, 51632; Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor, 55-63. 89 The same understanding is reiterated in ch. 27. The text reads, “For these [rational beings] to exist forever or not to exist at all (IJઁ ȝ੻Ȟ ਫ਼ʌȐȡȤİȚȞ ਕİ੿ ਲ਼ ȝ੽ ਫ਼ʌȐȡȤİȚȞ) rests with the power of the Creator, whereas to participate in the latter’s goodness and wisdom or not to participate (IJઁ į੻ ȝİIJȑȤİȚȞ IJોȢ ਕȖĮșȩIJȘIJȠȢ Į੝IJȠ૨ țĮ੿ IJોȢ ıȠijȓĮȢ ਲ਼ ȝ੽ ȝİIJȑȤİȚȞ) lies with the will of rational beings”. Chapters on Love 3.27.6-9 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 156). In the same vein, ch. 13 reads: “Whether the rational and intelligent essence exists forever or not at all (IJઁ … ਕİ੿ İੇȞĮȚ ਲ਼ ȝ੽ İੇȞĮȚ) lies with the will of the one who made all things good. However, whether they are either good or careless (ਕȖĮș੹ … ਲ਼ ijĮ૨ȜĮ) rests with the will of things created, according to their choice”. Chapters on Love 4.13.1-3 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 198). Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor, n. 155 at 259-60 refers to this distinction in terms of ontological and moral characteristics. 90 Chapters on Love 3.25.7,10 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 157). 87

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forever as givens or natural gifts do not suffice. Existence should be qualified and intensified by personal emulation of God’s perfection through goodness and wisdom. Once again, we find in Maximus the same understanding of well-being which we discovered in the earlier fathers, particularly Clement—as defining human experience in terms irreducible to the notion of merely existing. I turn now to a series of passages from the Book of Difficulties, beginning with one in ch. 10 which, along the same lines, draws a sharp line between what depends on God and what depends on the human will with reference to the three aspects of existence. Difficulty 10 is the longest chapter of the writing and focuses on holiness, particularly the way the saints perceive reality;91 it is from this vantage point that it considers the theme of interest. Here is the relevant text: … God made all things […] and brought us into existence by establishing our being, well-being, and eternal being (İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ ਕİ੿ İੇȞĮȚ). Of these, the two extremities [i.e. being and eternal being] depend exclusively on God as their cause, whereas the midpoint [i.e. well-being] hangs on our free choice and movement (ȖȞȫȝȘȢ IJİ țĮ੿ țȚȞȒıİȦȢ). [It is only] due to this [midpoint] that the extremities truly matter and without the presence of this [intermediary] term their designation [as extremities of existence] would be useless, not being connected by the good (IJઁ İ੣). Therefore there is no other way to bear and preserve the truth about the extremities than to include well-being (IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ) between the two extremities for the purpose of moving forever towards God (IJૌ ʌȡઁȢ ĬİઁȞ ਕİȚțȚȞȘıȓ઺).92

Together with reiterating the standard triadic structure of created existence, indirectly the passage endorses the conclusions to which the analysis of Chapters on Love led us, namely, that the rational creation is not a passive object of the divine will and plan. The text does not explicitly mention the rational creation yet the fact that the latter is its

91

For summaries of this chapter see Doru Costache, “Gender, Marriage, and Holiness in Amb.Io. 10 and 41”, in Men and Women in the Early Christian Centuries, ed. Wendy Mayer and Ian J. Elmer, Early Christian Studies 18 (Strathfield: St Paul’s Publications, 2014), 351-71, esp. 352-3; Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996), 91-3; Sherwood, The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus, 30-40. 92 Difficulty 10.12.3-14 (Constas, vol. 1, 166-8).

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subject matter results from the emphasis put on the midpoint (ȝȑıȠȞ).93 The midpoint is where the forces of human self-determination or literally “our free choice and movement” (see ȖȞȫȝȘȢ IJİ țĮ੿ țȚȞȒıİȦȢ)94 are at play. The main contribution of the passage under consideration is therefore the unequivocal statement that what gives meaning to existence is the way human will shapes it, not the fact that its beginning and completion depend on God’s generosity. And whilst this conclusion could be inferred from Chapters on Love, too, here the saint went as far as to assert that without the midpoint, that is our free choice and efforts, the extremities (ਙțȡİȢ)95 of being and being forever would entirely lose their significance. A neutral existence is impossible for the rational creation, which has to decide whether it takes sides with God or against God. An endless movement (ਕİȚțȚȞȘıȓĮ) 96 which is not oriented godwards would be a waste—an asymptotic way back to chaos and nothingness. By attaining well-being in their “free choice and movement” within the course of this life human beings determine the quality of their endless movement in the ages to come. It emerges that by thinking in terms of an ethical qualification of existence—as adherence to the good—the Confessor did not believe in the value of merely living, be that even forever. A passage from Difficulty 7 anticipates this very train of thought, moreover disclosing the logical outcome of the above considerations. The seventh chapter constitutes a treatise on the universe as moving in the parameters established by the Logos, according to the triadic pattern of beginning, midpoint, and purpose—or creation, movement, and rest.97 The relevant text employs the familiar terminology of being, well-being, and eternal being, with an important twist in relation to the latter. Here it is: … given that the rational beings are created then they altogether move. Through the fact of being (įȚ੹ IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ) they move according to their nature (țĮIJ੹ ijȪıȚȞ) from the beginning; [in turn] by [achieving] well-being (įȚ੹ IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ) [they move] towards their goal due to their free choice (țĮIJ੹ ȖȞȫȝȘȞ). The goal of the movement of things in motion is to reach eternal

93

Difficulty 10.12.6,12 (Constas, vol. 1, 168). Difficulty 10.12.7 (Constas, vol. 1, 168). 95 Difficulty 10.12.5,8,11,13 (Constas, vol. 1, 166-8). 96 Difficulty 10.12.13 (Constas, vol. 1, 168). 97 See e.g. Difficulty 7.6,9-10 (Constas, vol 1, 80, 84-6). For an analysis of this chapter see Sherwood, The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus, 21-9. For a brief reference to the trilogy being—well-being—eternal being in Difficulty 7, see Tollefsen, “Christocentric Cosmology”, 313. 94

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well-being (IJઁ … ਕİ੿ İ੣ İੇȞĮȓ) which coincides with the beginning of being (IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ) and with God who—as beginning and purpose (੪Ȣ ਕȡȤ੽ țĮ੿ IJȑȜȠȢ) [of all creation]—is the giver of being (IJȠ૨ İੇȞĮȚ) and generous distributor of well-being (IJȠ૨ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ).98

The passage depicts the creation as from the outset in motion and as dynamically striving to reach its divinely designated goal of being well forever—or rather reaching God who is the beginning and the purpose (੪Ȣ ਕȡȤ੽ țĮ੿ IJȑȜȠȢ)99 of all things. Alongside the theme of participation in God discussed by Chapters on Love, this seems to be another articulation of the Maximian optimistic ontology. Here, the prospect of the creation’s divine participation features, however, within a teleological framework and is not given by design. Another familiar theme is God’s active involvement throughout the existence of the rational creation as a gracious distributor of being and well-being; our text ends in precisely those terms (see ੒ țĮ੿ IJȠ૨ İੇȞĮȚ įȠIJ੽ȡ țĮ੿ IJȠ૨ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ ȤĮȡȚıIJȚțȩȢ).100 Also familiar is the reiteration of the understanding that created existence, particularly the rational creation, is conditioned by natural parameters (see IJ੹ ȜȠȖȚț੹ … țȚȞİ૙IJĮȚ ʌȐȞIJȦȢ, ੪Ȣ ਥȟ ਕȡȤોȢ țĮIJ੹ ijȪıȚȞ įȚ੹ IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ) 101 and personal choices, and that well-being entails a free commitment to God (see ʌȡઁȢ IJȑȜȠȢ țĮIJ੹ ȖȞȫȝȘȞ įȚ੹ IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ țȚȞȠȪȝİȞĮ).102 One aspect is entirely new within this passage though, at least terminologically, adding to the already rich nuances encountered above. It is the qualification of being forever as “eternal well-being” (IJઁ ਕİ੿ İ੣ İੇȞĮȓ) 103 in the case of the rational creation which freely chooses to walk the virtuous path in the grace of God. This matter should be given further consideration. The text employs the vocabulary of well-being (IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ), possibly retaining the message of Chapters on Love 25 which speaks of goodness and wisdom; the association of these passages is in fact endorsed by their shared reference to the free choice which conditions well-being. That said, Difficulty 7 points out that in choosing well—in other words by living 98

Difficulty 7.10.1-6 (Constas, vol. 1, 86). Difficulty 7.10.6 (Constas, vol. 1, 86). 100 Difficulty 7.10.5-6 (Constas, vol. 1, 86). 101 Difficulty 7.10.1-2 (Constas, vol. 1, 86). 102 Difficulty 7.10.2-3 (Constas, vol. 1, 86). For an analysis of free will in Difficulty 7, see Adam G. Cooper, “Spiritual Anthropology in Ambiguum 7”, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, 360-77, esp. 366-8. 103 Difficulty 7.10.4 (Constas, vol. 1, 86). Bucur, “Foreordained from All Eternity”, 204, noticed the use of this phrase in To Thalassius 60. 99

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virtuously and acquiring wisdom—one qualifies or gives a certain contour to the experience of being forever. For a good and wise person (see ਕȖĮșȠ੿ țĮ੿ ıȠijȠȓ from Chapters on Love 25),104 or one that cultivates well-being in the here and now, it is no longer a matter of merely surviving forever; it is to experience the fullness of existence—well-being—for all the ages to come. Here our passage crosses paths with Difficulty 10 which, we have seen, highlights the tremendous significance of the midpoint or rather the achievement of well-being in the here and now—an achievement which conditions the rational creation’s being forever as an endless godwards movement (ਲ ʌȡઁȢ ĬİઁȞ ਕİȚțȚȞȘıȓĮ) in future ages.105 “Heavens” or the Kingdom of God is therefore the exclusive destination of the saints, who experience the fact of being forever as eternal well-being precisely due to attaining well-being—goodness and wisdom—in the present life. This conclusion corrects the brief note of Sherwood who interpreted well-being exclusively in eschatological terms,106 as something to be reached in the afterlife. Further down in Book of Difficulties, more precisely in ch. 42, which primarily focuses on the topic of the three births (natural, baptismal, and resurrectional), 107 in addressing the triple aspect of existence Maximus adopted a decidedly soteriological perspective. He pointed out how by choosing wrongly humankind has caused a rift between its “principle of being and the principle of well-being” (IJȩȞ IJİ IJȠ૨ İੇȞĮȓ … ȜȩȖȠȞ țĮ੿ IJઁȞ IJȠ૨ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ)108 and so made necessary the salvific intervention of God. The antidote for separation and division (IJȠȝ੽Ȟ țĮ੿ įȚȐıIJĮıȚȞ) 109 was Christ’s “incarnation and bodily birth” (ıȐȡțȦıȚȢ … țĮ੿ ıȦȝĮIJȚț੽ … 104

Chapters on Love 3.25.3-4,11-12 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). Difficulty 10.12.13 (Constas, vol 1, 168). 106 Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor, 49. Nevertheless, Sherwood was right to point out the eschatological message of the chapter as a whole. See Sherwood, The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus, 29. 107 See Difficulty 42.1.2-3 (Constas, vol. 2, 122). For a summary of this chapter see Sherwood, The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus, 56-61. 108 Difficulty 42.32.28-9 (Constas, vol. 2, 184). 109 Difficulty 42.32.29 (Constas, vol. 2, 184). For a more elaborated rendition of the fall as a factor of division and salvation as an antidote, see Difficulty, 41 (Constas, vol. 2, 102-20). See Doru Costache, “Mapping Reality within the Experience of Holiness”, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, 378-96, esp. 37990; Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 373-427; idem, Man and the Cosmos: The Vision of St Maximus the Confessor (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 80-91. 105

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ȖȑȞȞȘıȚȢ)110 for our sakes, followed by the baptismal and resurrectional rebirths, by which, in renewing fallen humankind’s call to divine adoption and in remaking it by grace (see țĮIJ੹ ȤȐȡȚȞ ıȦIJȘȡȓĮȢ țĮ੿ ਕȞĮțȜȒıİȦȢ ਵ … ਕȞĮʌȜȐıİȦȢ) he saved our race. 111 Primarily represented as a rift between being and well-being, for Maximus the fall did not signify a mistake that stirred the wrath of God. Rather, the fall amounted to an existential failure, a loss of well-being, wholeness, and wholesomeness for humankind. This being the case, salvation could not have consisted in redemption and reconciliation either. Instead, salvation represented a healing process—the retrieval of human integrity through the restitution of our capacity for well-being and, through the latter, “the principle of eternal being” (ʌȡઁȢ IJઁȞ IJȠ૨ ਕİ੿ İੇȞĮȚ ȜȩȖȠȞ).112 This restitution amounted to a renewed possibility for human beings to defeat death and live forever, or to “be born to immortality and an unchanging existence” (İੁȢ ਕșĮȞĮıȓĮȞ ȖİȞȞȫıȘȢ IJઁȞ ਙȞșȡȦʌȠȞ țĮș’ ੢ʌĮȡȟȚȞ ਕȞĮȜȜȠȓȦIJȠȞ).113 It is noteworthy that Maximus has not presented this restitution of opportunities only in terms of what Christ achieved on, and in, our behalf. Earlier in the same chapter, he discussed the three aspects of existence in connection with the three births as ways in which human beings incrementally appropriated salvation or the wholeness restored for them by Christ. After pointing out that human beings experience a triple birth (IJȡȚıı੽Ȟ ȖȑȞȞȘıȚȞ) by which they share in being, well-being, and being forever (İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ țĮ੿ ਕİ੿ İੇȞĮȚ)114 the relevant passage nuances the matter as follows: [The three births are, respectively,] the bodily one (IJ੽Ȟ ȝ੻Ȟ ਥț ıȦȝȐIJȦȞ) […] by which we receive being (IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ); the baptismal one (IJ੽Ȟ į੻ ਥț ȕĮʌIJȓıȝĮIJȠȢ) by which we bountifully take up well-being (IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ); and the resurrectional one (IJ੽Ȟ į੻ ਥȟ ਕȞĮıIJȐıİȦȢ) by which we are graciously recreated and transformed in order to be forever (țĮș’ ਴Ȟ ʌȡઁȢ IJઁ ਕİ੿ İੇȞĮȚ įȚ੹ ȤȐȡȚIJȠȢ ȝİIJĮʌȠȚȠȪȝİșĮ).115

110

Difficulty 42.32.22-3 (Constas, vol. 2, 184). Difficulty 42.32.25-7 (Constas, vol. 2, 184). Bucur, “Foreordained from All Eternity”, 205, found another relevant christological stance in To Thalassius but without the sacramental dimension. 112 Difficulty 42.32.29-31 (Constas, vol. 2, 184). 113 Difficulty 42.32.34-5 (Constas, vol. 2, 184). 114 Difficulty 42.12.2-4 (Constas, vol. 2, 142). 115 Difficulty 42.12.4-11 (Constas, vol. 2, 142). 111

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The text circumscribes the three aspects of existence to the personal sphere. It does no longer discuss humankind’s beginning in general as having its source in creation; instead, it addresses the matter of one’s actual birth and therefore states that we exist or have our being (IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ) through the somatic event of the natural birth. But, possibly because of the rift between being and well-being discussed above, our natural birth is an involuntary event, inaugurating an existence marked by corruption and death.116 For this reason, Christ offers salvation or well-being (IJઁ İ੣ İੇȞĮȚ) in the form of the baptismal rebirth (see IJ੽Ȟ į੻ ਥț ȕĮʌIJȓıȝĮIJȠȢ), which is undertaken personally and, for mature recipients, voluntarily. The emphasis on Christ’s sacramental input complements the Maximian understanding of well-being as ethically conditioned by free and right choices, 117 commitment to a godwards movement,118 and the acquisition of goodness and wisdom.119 Looking at the overall understanding of the saint against the soteriological backdrop of Difficulty 42, the two perspectives, sacramental and ethical, converge in the notion of well-being. The victory of Christ—which primarily consists in the unification of being and wellbeing,120 and amounts to the healing of human nature—is sacramentally communicated to the recipient of baptism and then appropriated on a personal level in the form of virtue and wisdom. Maximus returned somewhere else to the fact that the human being has to appropriate personally the grace of wholeness restored to us by Christ. The passage of interest, from Questions and Doubts, does not utilise the vocabulary of the three aspects of existence yet points out how one can heal oneself in three steps. The symmetry of the two approaches is beyond doubt. Here is the text. First of all, by way of ascetic praxis (įȚ੹ IJોȢ ʌȡĮțIJȚțોȢ) I heal (ੁ૵ȝĮȚ) my own [bodily] members, then the senses so that they healthily (ਫ਼ȖȚ૵Ȣ) grasp the sensible things, and thirdly I complete [the healing process] by the

116

This involuntary aspect becomes even more apparent in the contrast between Christ who freely undertook human birth and the human race that is subject to the animal law of procreation, from which Christ has liberated it. Difficulty 42.4.15-30 (Constas, vol. 2, 126-28). 117 Difficulty 7.10.2-3 (Constas, vol. 1, 86). 118 Difficulty 10.12.13 (Constas, vol. 1, 168). 119 Chapters on Love 3.25.3-4 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). 120 Difficulty 42.32.27-8 (Constas, vol. 2, 184).

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contemplation of divine knowledge (IJૌ șİȦȡȓ઺ IJોȢ șİȓĮȢ ȖȞȫıİȦȢ) and so attain wholeness (IJઁ IJȑȜİȚȠȞ).121

The optimism of the above text is overwhelming in relation to the capacity of the human being to work towards its spiritual recovery and fulfilment. When we connect this passage and the previous ones, two aspects become readily obvious. On the one hand, it is Maximus’ conviction that full restoration was at hand for all baptismally regenerated persons. On the other hand, his belief that only those who ascetically walked the path of goodness and wisdom—in other words who lived well, virtuously or rationally—achieved well-being. Well-being or, verbatim, wholeness or perfection (see IJઁ IJȑȜİȚȠȞ) 122 is therefore graciously offered as well as personally appropriated. By way of this association comes to light, once again, the synergetic message conveyed by passages such as Chapters on Love 3.25 and Difficulty 7.10. Looking more closely at the above text, it shows that to embrace the ascetic life or to walk the path of virtue entails a profound transformation of one’s life, which results in healing, the renewed capacity to contemplate, and the attainment of wholeness. To acquire virtue is indeed therapeutic, much like the salvation wrought by Christ, which virtue appropriates and internalises. Similar to what we discovered earlier,123 this transformation is deliberate, personally operated by one who undertakes the ascetic path of healing. Of interest is that the spiritually wounded person is able to overcome the fallen condition and reach fulfilment, provided the human being wills it and stays the course of the ascetic life. To wrap this matter up, it is noteworthy that although the passage under consideration does not use the typical vocabulary of wellbeing this notion still transpires in terms of the ascetic praxis and contemplation, which corresponds to the rational or virtuous lifestyle that results in goodness and wisdom,124 and as wholeness, which corresponds to the concepts of “being well forever” and the endless movement towards God,125 encountered in the previously analysed texts. Well-being is, within this context, both a proper way of life, rational—that is according to the Logos—and an existential state of wholeness. In the views of Maximus, 121

Questions and Doubts 71.8-11, in Maximi Confessoris quaestiones et dubia, ed. J. H. Declerck, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982), 54. 122 Questions and Doubts 71.11 (Declerck, 54). 123 See Difficulty 7.10.2-3 and 10.12.7 (Constas, vol. 1, 86, 168). 124 Chapters on Love 3.25.3-4 (Ceresa-Gastaldo, 154). 125 Difficulty 10.12.13 (Constas, vol. 1, 168).

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this achievement had cosmic ramifications. Thus, and to return briefly to Book of Difficulties, he was convinced that the well-being achieved in the here and now by the willing person conditioned not only the shape of one’s being forever—it conditioned the eschatological state of the universe. In his own words, … since the nature of the visible realities (IJ૵Ȟ ijĮȚȞȠȝȑȞȦȞ ਲ ijȪıȚȢ) received being through creation (IJઁ İੇȞĮȚ țĮIJ੹ ȖȑȞİıȚȞ) for the human being’s sake, it is together with the latter that it will graciously (ȤȐȡȚIJȚ) receive the power of natural incorruptibility (IJઁ țĮIJ’ Ƞ੝ıȓĮȞ ȝ੽ ijșİȓȡİıșĮȚ).126

Here, Maximus’ cosmological mindset determined a generalisation of the wholeness achieved at the human scale. Due to the principle of the microcosm that recapitulates the macrocosm or the part that summarises the whole, the achievements of the saved human being extend—globally— to the universe in its entirety.127 And so, as he had it elsewhere, the grace of well-being traverses all the regions, beginning with the human being who appropriates God’s salvation to end by overwhelming the whole of the creation in the eschatological events of the resurrection of all.128 The wealth of well-being-related topics discussed by Maximus surpasses the musings of the earlier authors. The Confessor managed to integrate theology, cosmology, anthropology, and ascetic spirituality within a complex and harmonious synthesis; all these circumscribed by a consistent soteriological and sacramental perspective construed from a teleological vantage point. For him, created existence, both human and cosmic, shared the same destiny. Indeed, as much as the human person’s ongoing existence in the ages to come was qualified by its way of life in the here and now, that much the future of the universe was conditioned by the attainment of well-being or wholeness on the part of the human person. More than the earlier fathers, Maximus articulated well-being at once as a gracious gift of God, commitment to the virtuous life, and the outcome of these, namely, a state of restoration, health, and wholeness. The key 126

Difficulty 42.32.35-7 (Constas, vol. 2, 184). See Costache, “Mapping Reality”, 381-5; von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 1736, 199-200; Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor, 48. 128 The Mystagogy 7.540-75, in Maximi Confessoris: Mystagogia, cum versione Anastasii Bibliothecarii, ed. C. Boudignon, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 69 (Turnhout and Leuven: Brepols, 2011), 33-5. 127

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concept in his construal of well-being seems to have been human freedom or our capacity for deliberation and choice, a capacity which, in his eyes, had to be exercised rationally—that is in accordance with divine wisdom—by way of an ascetic way of life.

Wisdom for Today For the representatives of the patristic tradition on which this chapter has focused—Clement, Dionysius, and Maximus—human life, as well as the life of the angels, was irreducible to either merely existing or the gifts which God generously bestows on the rational creation in the here and now. In their views, life and more generally created existence had an eternal destination: immortality. Nevertheless, being forever was conditioned, in the case of the rational creation, by wise choices and a corresponding lifestyle adopted in the course of this life. A blessed, full existence for the ages to come could have been secured only by the attainment of well-being in the here and now. Notwithstanding that our temporal categories do not apply to angelic beings, it appears that for one author, Dionysius, the same was valid for the angels who had to persist in their theocentric movement in order to better themselves and reach perfection. Of greater relevance is the way the three Church fathers have discussed these matters with reference to human beings. The latter faced the inherent weaknesses of their psychosomatic and mortal nature as well as the consequences of the fallen, passionate life, which further limited their aptitudes and obscured the truth about the glorious destination of humankind. This is the point where the message of the first patristic witness, Clement, comes into play. For him, human forgetfulness could not have been remediated without heeding the guidance of God’s Logos, the incarnate Wisdom, Jesus Christ, the universe’s creator and the distributor of life immortal. Although the pedagogical dimension of the Clementine approach was not matched by the later fathers studied here, both Dionysius and Maximus shared in the Alexandrian’s conviction that by living a rational or virtuous life human beings cooperated with the grace of God and thus achieved well-being. All three Church fathers were agreed that the attainment of well-being required a number of factors— from the grace and guidance of God to rational choices and from the virtuous life to the consistency of human beings in their godwards strive. The agreement of the three patristic witnesses referred likewise to the understanding of well-being as wholeness. Above all, and apart from the

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variations which we have noticed in their views, all three were agreed that the rational creation and particularly the human being could not have been content with merely living. Life was a call and a task, having to be saved and fulfilled. For the attainment of a full life or well-being, one had to draw on the sacramental sources of renewal, cultivate communion with God and obedience to Christ, and undertake a virtuous, ascetic lifestyle— for the benefit of more than one person. Indeed, completely opposite to all selfish drive, one’s attainment of well-being or wholeness, or the fact of being saved, presupposed one’s becoming generous, godlike, to the extent of sharing that state of fullness with the human neighbour as well as the broader neighbourhood of God’s creation. The principles outlined by the three fathers, which remain largely foreign to contemporary culture, constitute the traditional alternative to the current—narrow, selfish, and environmentally unaware—understanding of well-being in certain quarters, together with the innumerable existential issues generated by our irrational drives and untamed passions. The retrieval of these traditional principles may prove to be the beginning of another Copernican turn, able to secure the well-being of humankind as a whole and its cosmic environment, not only of a privileged few.

Select Bibliography Allen, Pauline, and Bronwen Neil. The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor. Oxford University Press, 2015. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor. Translated by Brian E. Daley. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003. Blowers, Paul M. Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Bucur, Gabriel. Angelomorphic Pneumatology: Clement of Alexandria and Other Early Christian Witnesses, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 95. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009. Costache, Doru, Philip Kariatlis, and Mario Baghos, eds. Alexandrian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. Golitzin, Alexander. Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita. Edited by Bogdan G. Bucur. Cistercian Studies 250. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications and Liturgical Press, 2013.

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Larchet, Jean-Claude. La divinisation de l’homme selon saint Maxime le Confesseur. Paris: Cerf, 1996. Louth, Andrew. Denys the Areopagite. London and New York: Continuum, 1989. —. Maximus the Confessor. London: Routledge, 1996. Osborn, Eric. Clement of Alexandria. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Rorem, Paul. Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Young, Frances, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth, eds. The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

CHAPTER FOUR MEANING AND THE WELL-BEING OF OUR SOULS PETER R. LAUGHLIN

In a world in which we strive and yet often fail to make meaning for ourselves, what is needed is an encounter with an established world of meaning that functions to provide the necessary ground for an experience of wholeness. Drawing from the work of Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan, this paper contends that the acceptance of a world rightly constituted by meaning is foundational to the experience of well-being. In addition, the biblical world of meaning—particularly as it is expressed through the imago Dei and conceptions of salvation—provides a natural framework for encountering this constituted world. The result may rightly be called “conversion” but at its heart is the adoption of a new world of meaning, a world that invites us to experience wholeness for ourselves.

The Search for Well-being It is a mark of its enduring complexity that despite over 2000 years of philosophical and sociological reflection, the notion of human well-being still eludes comprehensive understanding. 1 Such is the current state of affairs that Dodge et al lament that “the question of how wellbeing should be defined (or [even] spelt) still remains largely unresolved”.2 And such uncertainty means that the definitions which are proffered tend to be “blurred” and “overly broad” to the extent that they do little to provide a 1

V. La Placa, A. McNaught, and A. Knight, “Discourse on Wellbeing in Research and Practice”, International Journal of Wellbeing 3.1 (2013): 116-25; Rachel Dodge et al., “The Challenge of Defining Wellbeing”, International Journal of Wellbeing 2.3 (2012): 222-35; Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Wellbeing”, Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 141-66. 2 Dodge, “The Challenge of Defining Wellbeing”, 222.

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coherent framework for the development of community well-being.3 The implied problem is that if we cannot define what well-being is, or at least agree on what constitutes it, then how can we create a community in which it is fostered?4 Reflection, of course, has not been limited by a lack of an agreed definition. There is a universal desire for the “good life” that motivates philosophers, sociologists, psychologists and theologians to ask not only what constitutes such a life but how one might live to enjoy it. Two terms can be highlighted as representative of the bulk of the approaches— hedonism and eudaimonism. 5 Equating well-being with hedonism or happiness has a long history. As early as the 4th Century BCE, Aristippus argued that the goal of life was to experience the maximum amount of pleasure and that happiness resulted from its pursuit.6 Over the centuries his reflections were taken up and advanced by many others but the fundamental thesis has remained the same.7 Well-being occurs when life’s circumstances are such that predominantly positive affects are known and experienced. Negative affects, those things in life that make us feel unhappy or sad are to be minimised in order for well-being to be fostered. This approach still has much currency today, not just amongst sociologists but in the prevailing culture of the Western world. Indeed, the West depicts well-being in terms of wealth, health and pleasure, each of which is considered necessary for achieving the “good life”. 8 It is well documented, of course, that above a certain threshold more income does not mean more happiness but such facts rarely get in the way of unfettered

3

Dodge, “The Challenge of Defining Wellbeing”, 222. “Obviously, this debate has enormous theoretical and practical implications. How we define wellbeing influences our practices of government, teaching, therapy, parenting, and preaching, as all such endeavors aim to change humans for the better, and thus require some vision of what ‘the better’ is”. Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials”, 142. 5 Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials”, 142-43. 6 T. H. Irwin, “Aristuppus Against Happiness”, Monist 74. 1 (1991): 55. 7 For the contributions of others such as Hobbes and DeSade, see Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials”, 144. 8 Maureen Miner and Martin Dowson, “Spirituality as a Key Resource for Human Flourishing”, in Beyond Wellbeing: Spirituality and Human Flourishing, eds. Maureen Miner, Martin Dowson, and Stuart Devenish (Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2012), 7. 4

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desire. For good or ill, the hedonic approach to well-being is fundamental to contemporary Western society.9 The second philosophical category—the eudaimonic—focuses on meaning and self-realisation as the ultimate goals for life. This is classically the understanding that Aristotle came to, having dismissed hedonic happiness as a vulgar ideal, functioning as it did to enslave humans to their own desires. 10 On the contrary, he argued that true happiness is found in the expression of virtue—that is, in doing what is worth doing. And it is easy to see that well-being is more than just happiness. I might engage in an activity that gives me pleasure in the moment (drinking a glass of wine), but such activity might not yield an outcome that produces personal well-being (especially if I overindulge). Moreover, human history is replete with examples of individuals who were intensely unhappy at various times in their lives but it was those unhappy experiences that led directly to later periods of personal growth and development.11 The fact of the matter is that subjective happiness is not equivalent to well-being; the concept is far more complex and sophisticated for such a reduction. Eudaimonia then endeavours to place the focus on well-being away from positive emotions to a sense of satisfaction that arises from a life well lived.12 This is why eudaimonia is often translated as “flourishing” because the English term better captures the organic aspect of what it is to live a life of well-being as opposed to a discrete determination of life at any given point in time. Importantly, flourishing conveys the idea of a life that is blossoming, growing beyond itself in order to reach its full potential. Australian theologian Stuart Devenish describes it in this way: A person who is flourishing can be described as someone engaged in the process of living vigorously, and whose biological, psychological, emotional, intellectual, social, economic and political parts are integrated 9 As Hamilton and Denniss note, “our entire political and social structure is oriented towards a single goal: maximisng the rate of GDP growth”. Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss, Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005), 193. 10 Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials”, 145. 11 Miner and Dowson, “Spirituality as a Key Resource”, 11. 12 “Wellbeing is more than just happiness. As well as feeling satisfied and happy, wellbeing means developing as a person, being fulfilled, and making a contribution to the community”. Dodge, “The Challenge of Defining Wellbeing”, 225. Also, Miner and Dowson, “Spirituality as a Key Resource”, 11.

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into a functioning whole. Each component part works cooperatively to produce a convivial, self-aware, productive individual. 13

A flourishing life is therefore one that develops holistically, is able to function healthily in all aspects and goes on to contribute positively to the well-being of the community at large. If this understanding of flourishing has any weight at all then it becomes impossible to determine if a life is flourishing on the basis of positive emotion alone. What is required is a judgement or understanding that encompasses all the experiences of a life thus lived. Absolutely, positive emotions such as happiness are an important element in the consideration of such a judgement, but it must be the whole of life that is evaluated in order to come to a determination of well-being. So how then do I determine if my life is flourishing? What framework for evaluating life experiences can, or should, I intend? From the outset it should be pointed out that everyone does have an underlying framework for which to make such a judgement. Even the answer to the simple question, “How are you?” presupposes a framework by which we are capable of judging our life circumstances as either “good” or “bad”. Often that framework is unconscious, simply imbibed from the culture in which we live. Whether its expectations of health, prosperity, freedom, justice, opportunity or leisure, life is either “good” or “bad” on the basis of what we corporately expect or desire. We might not be able to articulate exactly what the good life is, nor indeed even know why it is the “good life”, but there is an underlying hope that “we’ll know it when we feel it”. Such an expectation is not altogether misplaced but the problem, as we’ve seen, is that determining a flourishing life cannot be based on a momentary emotional state. Even if we do come to realise that we’ve achieved the “good life” and feel it to be so, how does one hold on to that feeling? How does one go on to live the good life when feelings are fleeting and emotions unstable? Lasting judgements of a flourishing life must be made on broader grounds. In what follows, there are three elements that I wish to suggest here that will help us in our understanding of how well-being or human flourishing is to be correctly judged. Firstly, there is the need to explore 13

Stuart Devenish, “The Contribution of Spirituality to Our Understanding of Human Flourishing: The Perspective of Christian Theology”, in Beyond Wellbeing: Spirituality and Human Flourishing, eds. Maureen Miner, Martin Dowson, and Stuart Devenish (Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2012), 51.

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how the world we live in is a construct of meaning and that meaning itself functions to ground our judgements of well-being. Second is that the Christian faith offers a world of meaning in which there is an invitation to transformation. And thirdly, we are drawn into a community of relation through transformation that allows us to judge authenticity—and therefore what it is to flourish—in life. These three elements, it will be argued, provide a basis for which human flourishing can be both determined and fostered.

Meaning as Grounds for a Flourishing Life At this point it will be helpful to introduce the constitutive role that meaning plays in grounding well-being. Certainly, scholarly discussions on well-being make frequent reference to the importance of finding meaning in life and the value of participating in something that has meaning outside of ourselves.14 But meaning is far more than something we find value in; it is actually a lens by which we understand what is real, true, valuable and authoritative for our lives. In other words, it is a defining framework by which we understand ourselves, our culture, and our place in the world. To help explain why this is so we turn to the work of Bernard Lonergan who has perhaps more than most reflected on how meaning is an intended act by which we create the world in which we choose to authentically live. We can see how meaning plays a fundamental role in the establishment of our world by some simple examples. An obvious one is that of language, for without intended meaning speech is just sound and words are merely a collection of characters. But when those particular sounds and collection of characters are given a meaning they become understandable and comprehensible by all those who share in that meaning. Thus in broad terms, meaning constitutes a level of reality in the human life, a reality that moves beyond the example of language to our self-understanding and our place within the community. Indeed, the creation of community is itself an achievement of common meaning and therefore the point can be made that meaning is constitutive of our social reality and hence determinative of our actions.15 But before we get too far ahead of ourselves we need to take our 14

Martin E. P. Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Wellbeing (New York: Free Press, 2011), 17. 15 Bernard Lonergan, “Existenz and Aggiornamento”, in Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan, S. J., ed. Frederick E. Crowe (New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1967), 245.

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point of departure from Lonergan by dividing the known world into three. The first is described as the world of immediacy; the second as the world mediated by meaning; and the third as the world constituted by meaning.16 It is axiomatic that there exists a world that is outside and beyond the individual. Lonergan defines this world as a world of immediacy: it is the world of immediate experience for it contains what there is to be known through empirical study, of what can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled, and felt.17 It is, in other words, the world of the senses, the world that is known by the infant, the world—as Lonergan was wont to put it— of the “empty head”.18 This world is simply given; its existence remains independent of the subject. This is, however, not the only world in which we live. Beyond the world we see, is the world that we mediate through meaning. To enter this world requires a cognitive act that moves us from what is known through sense experience to that which is known through the conjunction of experience, understanding and judgement. As Lonergan describes it: In entering the world mediated by meaning one moves out of one’s immediate surroundings towards a world revealed through the memories of other men, through the common sense of community, through the pages of literature, through the labors of scholars, through the investigations of scientists, through the experience of saints, through the mediation of philosophers and theologians.19

16

Lonergan, “Existenz and Aggiornamento”, 243-44. In addition one can consult the following: Bernard Lonergan, “Dimensions of Meaning”, in Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan, S. J., ed. Frederick E. Crowe (New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1967), 232-45; Bernard Lonergan, “The Origins of Christian Realism”, in A Second Collection, eds. William F. J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell (Philadelphia, PA: Westminister, 1974), 240f; Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1972), 28, 76f. 17 Bernard Lonergan, Philosophy of God, and Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1973), 1. 18 Lonergan, “Existenz and Aggiornamento”, 243. This last comment is not to denigrate that which can be known through the senses but is designed to draw attention to the world of immediacy’s defining characteristic: that there is no “perceptible intrusion from insight or concept, reflection or judgment, deliberation or choice”. 19 Lonergan, “Dimensions of Meaning”, 253.

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This is clearly a much larger world for its content surpasses that of the immediate physical realm to include that which is, as Lonergan phrases it: intended by questions, organised by intelligence, described by language, and enriched by tradition. 20 In other words, what is real in the world mediated by meaning is more than our immediate experience but includes that which is also known through the cognitive acts of understanding and judging.21 The third world that Lonergan describes is not only mediated but also constituted by meaning. This is certainly related to what we have just discussed but also transcends it, since meaning is not just mediated but is, in fact, constituted through its acts. “Beyond the world we know about is the further world we make”, writes Lonergan, a world constituted through the human act of intended meaning. 22 The example of language has already been given but language is not the only feature of human life that is constituted by meaning. Other examples abound including those of money, property, governments and marriages. None of these are mere products of nature nor do they exist outside the realm of human understanding.23 In the world of immediacy, for example, a ten dollar note is just a piece of coloured paper or plastic, but in the world constituted by meaning it has a fiscal value and can be exchanged for material goods. Of course, the precise exchange value of the note is also subject to acts of meaning as anyone who has ever experienced the effects of inflation knows only too well. Another example that Lonergan gives is that of a court of law. A physicist, chemist, and engineer might enter a court of law but even after making all sorts of measurements and calculations there is no way they could declare that it was, in fact, a court of law. All they can conclude is 20

Lonergan, “The Origins of Christian Realism”, 241. The addition of these cognitive activities is crucial because the world mediated by meaning is fundamentally insecure. It does not remain constant for it is continually subject to both positive and negative change. For every fact there is just as much fiction, besides truth there is error, and honesty is often bedevilled by deceit. Yet this does not mean that the world mediated by meaning is just an abstraction: it remains real. But its criteria of reality are dependent upon the operations of both understanding and judgement. 22 Lonergan, “Dimensions of Meaning”, 253-54. 23 In contrast to the world of immediacy which requires no human institution for its existence. See John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1995), 2. 21

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that it is a building of certain dimensions with characteristics appropriate to its design.24 What actually defines it as a court of law is the community intention that this particular building would be used for the express purpose of applying the rule of law to members of the community according to the accepted code of conduct. A code, we might add, which is itself constituted through a corporate act of meaning. Therefore, what is meant through various acts of meaning becomes real for the community and is, in fact, constitutive of the community. The community is thus defined by the way it intends meaning. Lonergan again: Community is not just an aggregate of individuals within a frontier, for that overlooks its formal constituent, which is common meaning … Such common meaning is doubly constitutive. In each individual it is constitutive of the individual as a member of the community. In the group of individuals it is constitutive of the community.25

Hence it should come as no surprise that the key feature of the world constituted by meaning is human agreement, a collective intentionality in which the boundaries and frameworks of authentic living are agreed upon.26 World Of Immediacy Mediated by Meaning Constituted by Meaning

Description The world of the senses The world we experience through intended acts of meaning The world we create through intended acts of meaning

Table 4-1 Lonergan’s Worlds of Meaning The designation of “three worlds” is clearly of heuristic value only, for one does not physically move out of one world in order to move into another but simultaneously experiences all three. However, the distinction is important because it emphasises the constitutive role of meaning in the formation of the community. As individuals we live in a world of immediacy, but when we come into contact with others there is the potential to form a community to the extent that there is an accepted set of

24

Lonergan, “Existenz and Aggiornamento”, 244. Lonergan, Method in Theology, 356–57. 26 The term is from Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, 23-26. 25

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meanings and values that is able to be shared by those concerned. 27 Meaning is thus constitutive of the community and its content defines, controls and characterises the community itself. Thus authentic existence within a community is defined by one’s acceptance and judgement that such a constituted meaning has value for me. It is a willingness to submit to that constituted meaning, to take its intended values on board as my own and to begin to live a life in conformity to it. This has an important bearing on how we understand the concept of well-being or a flourishing life. For along with the usual taxonomy of the physical, psychological, social, economic and environmental factors, there is the added and more fundamental concern of what the community intends well-being to be within each of these areas. More particularly, my search for well-being is going to depend on how well my life corresponds to the intended meaning of the community. If I am achieving the goals of life as the community intends then my sense of well-being will be enhanced. On the other hand, if my experience of life falls short of those intended goals then a sense of well-being will be absent. To some degree we intuitively already recognise this, though we may not understand why. But it should be clear that a flourishing life is determined on the basis of the particular world of meaning that a community intends for it is only within that world of meaning that expectations of what constitutes the good life are determined.

Flourishing within the World of Meaning of the Christian Faith One result of this discussion is that there is no such thing as a “flourishing life” which is independent of the community in which we find authenticity. This also means that if one transitions from one community to another then what constitutes the “good life” also has the potential to change. The obvious question is whether all concepts of a flourishing life are equal or whether some produce a better experience of “flourishing” than others. From a theological perspective the latter must be affirmed but not because one human construct is necessarily better than another but because there exists a divine world of meaning which encompasses the whole of creation. Existing within a created world, all of humanity— regardless of our separate and corporate acts of intended meaning—also 27

Lonergan, Method in Theology, 298. See also Lonergan, “Existenz and Aggiornamento”, 245.

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live in a world constituted by God and we participate in the unfolding of the divine narrative. Human flourishing in such a context takes on a particular hue as it reflects what it means to live within that divine world of meaning. Helping to ground our understanding of this world of meaning are two biblical arcs.

Humanity is Created in the Image of God The first is the fundamental assertion that humankind is created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27). For at the end of the creation story we find this affirmation declared: “And God saw all that he had made and behold, it was good, very good” (Gen. 1:31). And despite all that might have followed, that fundamental approbation at the dawn of creation has never been withdrawn.28 We have value, worth and the possibility of well-being because God created us to live a life that reflects, however imperfectly, the divine image. And that life comes through the impartation of the divine breath (nephesh), a breath which can mean interchangeably “life, soul or mind but also living being, creature, person and self”. 29 It is this enlivening and activating breath, or spirit of God that functions to bring life to the dust of the earth. Just as the prophet Ezekiel saw, the dry bones sprang to life only once the spirit of God had blown from the four winds to breathe upon them (Ezek. 37). This divine origin of life, spelled out in terms of divine activity, serves foremost as an “affirmation of the ontological and sacred status of human life” but it also functions to assert that human life is always a participation in the divine.30 As Moltmann writes, It is generally said that life here on earth is nothing but a finite and mortal life. To say this is to allow human life to be dominated by death. But that is a reduced life. In fellowship with the living God, this mortal and finite life, here and now, is interpenetrated by God and hence it immediately also becomes a life that is divine and eternal.31 28

Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian Traditions (Springfield, IL: Templegate Publishers, 1980), 11. 29 Ian Ramsey, “The Theology of Wholeness”, in From Fear to Faith: Studies of Suffering and Wholeness (London: SPCK, 1971), 80. 30 Nicolaas Vorster, “The Value of Human Life: Contradictions and Inconsistencies in the Debate, and an Evangelical Response”, Ecumenical Review 59. 2–3 (2007): 366. 31 Jürgen Moltmann, The Living God and the Fullness of Life, trans. Margaret Kohl (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2016), 73.

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Thus, being brought to life by the breath of God means that each human life has the potential to share in the divine life through fellowship with God. Or to put it another way, there can be no genuine flourishing life that lies outside of God’s eternal, life-giving presence.32 Of course, the reality is that human life is mortal, it is finite and the concept of a flourishing life must always be held in tension with the final reality of death. As Thomas Hobbes tellingly reminded us, the experience of the human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.33 And as “fallen” creatures who have to deal with the ambiguity that comes from the existence of moral and natural evils, there can be no viable theological notion of human flourishing that does not take into account the ordinary realities of the human life.34 But, as Moltmann says, to therefore allow death to dominate the experience of this present life is to negate the possibilities of flourishing in the here and now. On the contrary, being created in the Image of God means that humanity has the incredible potential to share in the divine life, the mortality of our own life notwithstanding. Moreover, as a functional as well as ontological category, the Imago Dei also points towards humanity’s relation to all other living creatures and to the earth as a whole. Reflecting on this notion Zachary Hayes writes, Human beings are intimately interwoven with the rest of the created order. The role of humanity is to live in such a way that the loving creativity of God will become manifest within the created order through human relations with other humans and with the non-human world.35 32 In his 2008 address to the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, David Kelsey draws our attention to the urgent need for theologians to “develop conceptual and argumentative strategies by which to show that, properly understood, human flourishing is inseparable from God’s active relating to human creatures such that their flourishing is always dependent upon God”. David H Kelsey, “On Human Flourishing: A Theocentric Perspective”, (Yale Center for Faith and Culture, 2008),1. http://yale.edu/sites/default/files/ david_kelsey_gods_power_and_human_ flourishing_0_0.pdf. 33 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (London: Andrew Crooke, 1651), 78. 34 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Creation and Humanity, A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World (Grand Rapids, MN: Eerdmans, 2015), 427. 35 Zachary Hayes, The Gift of Being: A Theology of Creation, New Theology Studies (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 26.

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Hence, fulfilling its created purpose to image God requires that humanity be in relationship one with another. We were created to be in community for “it is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). Thus humanity’s potential to experience a flourishing life is bound up in an ability to be in relation with others, both human and divine. Indeed, God’s action in walking in the garden in the cool of the day (Gen. 3:8) demonstrates the value of relationship to human well-being and the participatory nature of the flourishing life. Such an emphasis on the importance of community is to be expected since the Imago Dei requires that all human relationships also be understood within a Trinitarian context. As a mutual communion of being, characterised by self-giving and other-receiving love, the Trinity models well-being in community through its own inner-relations. 36 The great church Father Augustine made the point many years ago that if we behold love then we see the Trinity, not only because God is love (1 John 4:8) but because God cannot love without someone to love.37 That love, expressed as it is through the mutual indwelling (perichoresis) of the Triune persons, points towards the being-in-relation nature of true personhood; 38 a personhood that must be characterised by love both for self and the other. While not reflecting on this matter from a theological perspective, Smith and Davidson point out that it is interesting that social scientists do not often write about love. They say this is “odd” because we know [...] from both developmental psychology and our own human experience, that people only flourish when they are loved by others. A person growing up in the context of purely instrumental, rational, exchange-oriented relations would and could not be a happy, healthy person. He would be stunted, perhaps psychologically and relationally pathological. Love creates the conditions for real life, growth, learning, and thriving.39

36

Dan W. Dunn, Offer Them Life: A Life-Based Evangelistic Vision (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013), 79. 37 De Trinitate 10.14. 38 This is not a contentious point: it has long been recognised in both Eastern and Western traditions that to be a person is to be in-relation. See Neil Ormerod, The Trinity: Retrieving the Western Tradition, Marquette Studies in Theology, no. 48 (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2005), 99f. 39 Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson, The Paradox of Generosity: Giving We Receive, Grasping We Lose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 97-98.

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And we can add that the reason why love has such a role in the experience of human flourishing is because being in the image of God means that love is the way that we truly experience our own personhood. Eastern Orthodox theologian, John Zizioulas argued in his influential book Being as Communion that it is only in community (koinonia) with one another that we can fully realise our relational potential and thereby become fully persons.40 In other words, to actualise true fellowship brings fulfilment to humanity’s created intent. As Zizioulas notes, Love is a relationship, it is the free coming out of oneself … it is the other and our relationship with him that gives us our identity, our otherness, making us “who we are” i.e. persons; for by being an inseparable part of a relationship that matters ontologically we emerge as unique and irreplaceable entities. This therefore is what accounts for our being, and being ourselves and not someone else—our personhood.41

Our experience of well-being is therefore dependent upon the mutual exchange of love between one another. For far from being an isolated entity in which the troubles and woes of this world must be borne alone, each individual can take up the invitation to koinonia and therein find the path to true flourishing in the context of community. This lies in stark contrast, of course, to the general consensus in the Western world that flourishing and well-being come through self-focused grasping and the fulfilment of self-actualisation. But the Imago Dei immediately rules out such an approach because we are not created to flourish independently. Hence there is thus no such thing as an independent flourishing life. Wellbeing is inextricably linked to community.42 The theological assertion that humanity is created in the image of God yields two important elements for human flourishing. The first is that being created by God we have the opportunity to share in the divine life here and now through fellowship with God. And, secondly, flourishing can only occur through the fulfilment of ourselves as beings-in-relation, expressed most suitably through the self-giving act of love. What can be 40

John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church, with a foreword by John Meyendorff, Contemporary Greek Theologians, no. 4 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985). 41 John D. Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution”, in Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act, ed. Christoph Schwobel (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 54. 42 David H. Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 77.

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concluded then is that a flourishing life is ultimately effected through a grounding in the love of God and shared invitation to experience the divine.43

Divine Redemption as the Gateway to Human Flourishing With the telling of humanity’s “fall”, the biblical narrative quickly turns from the promise of a flourishing life that participates in the divine to one that is cut off from God and in desperate need of redemption. The second biblical arc is therefore the divine response to the breakdown that follows the creation story as humanity descends into chaos, disharmony and brokenness. For far from being at peace with God and the world as originally intended, the human life becomes a struggle for existence as the experience of suffering, loss, pain, and death breaks in to destroy all that once was. It is, as Galadrial says in the movie adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, “[t]he world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost, for none now live who remember it”.44 But the Biblical story reveals that God is not content to let humanity take its destructive course unchecked. God acts, first through the calling of Abraham and then the nation of Israel, but ultimately through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That salvation, which is divinely wrought, is like the light of the dawn that bursts forth upon the darkened world (Ps 27:1; 112:4). It functions to bring life, strength, wholeness, justice and well-being to all of humanity and it does so through three distinct biblical narratives: (1) as liberation from powers of brokenness and injustice; (2) as restoration of harmony with God; and (3) as restoration of harmonious human relationships. In modern Protestant theologies the emphasis tends to be placed on the second of these functions but salvation is not just about the forgiveness of sins but safety and well-being in life as well. 45 It extends to every 43

As LaCugna notes, “since God is perfectly personal and relational, and since we are created in the image of God … we will be most like God when we live out our personhood in a manner that conforms to who God is”. Catherine Mowry LaCugna, “The Practical Trinity”, Christian Century 109.22 (1992): 682. 44 Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (New Line Cinema, 2001). 45 Terrence Fretheim, “Salvation in the Bible Vs Salvation in the Church”, Word and World 13.4 (1993): 364.

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dimension of life that was damaged by sin and all that prevents humanity from fulfilling its created purpose. This is why the Old Testament story places such priority on the first sense (liberation). Right relating to God can only occur once the brokenness, the alienation, and indeed the exile of the human life is overcome. As Israel was divinely enabled to flee from Egypt so too each human life needs to experience its own exodus story. Indeed, salvation is all about deliverance—from enemies, from danger, from illness, from injustice, from violence, and from death.46 This hope of deliverance appears time and time again in Israel’s literature both in thankful remembrance of past acts and in strident prayers for future intervention (e.g. Pss 13; 17; 20). In fact, rescuing the people of Israel from danger and oppression is one of God’s covenant obligations, the fulfilment of which is climatically seen in Zechariah’s song (Lk 1:68-79). Here the prophecy is given that Jesus will be the source of national deliverance for all God’s people. Indeed, God has “remembered his holy covenant” and has sent a deliverer for his people, as was promised, so that they can be “saved from [their] enemies” (Lk 1:72, 74). Salvation therefore encompasses more than just forgiveness and right relating to God but “deliverance from anything inimical to true life”.47 And deliverance from such horrors requires a transfer into a state of safety and well-being, a transfer which is encapsulated in the corresponding offer of shalom.48 Importantly, shalom reflects more than just a general concept of peace. It is an “iridescent” word with many levels of meaning in Hebrew Scripture but it nonetheless does have a “base denominator”—well-being, wholeness, and completeness. 49 Often appearing in connection with inquiries as to one’s own welfare (Gen 29:6; 37:14; 42:27) shalom incorporates anything necessary for life to be in order, whether that be safety, health, prosperity, contentment or positive relationships. It is in fact 46

E. A. Martens, Plot and Purpose in the Old Testament (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1981), 39; Brenda B. Colijn, Images of Salvation in the New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 122. 47 Fretheim, “Salvation in the Bible”, 364-65. The other two senses of salvation follow from and depend upon this one. “Because God acts to deliver, people are then free to respond to God and restore harmony in their relationships with God and to live at harmony with one another”. Ted Grimsrud, Instead of Atonement: The Bible’s Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013), 28-29. 48 Colijn, Images of Salvation in the New Testament, 122. 49 Willard M. Swartley, Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids, MN: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 27.

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the partner to divine deliverance, a blessing in which God acts to “sustain life, empower persons and ensure a state of wellbeing”.50 And as we might expect, this state was not meant for the individual alone but for the whole community—young and old, rich and poor, powerful and dependent. Salvation is thus not an escape out of this world but an experience of this world. It may have its ultimate consummation in the age to come but it must always be understood in the context of a human community en route to a restored and healed world.51 And this is exactly what the coming of the Kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus entails. This hope for a restored and healed world was not relegated to the future, a divine promise as it were for the faithful few to await. Rather, in Jesus, the Kingdom of God breaks in to the here and now with power and great might. As Mark terms it, the coming of the Kingdom is good news (1:14) for its arrival ushers in the defeat of evil in all its forms. The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised (Mt 11:5). And beyond the defeat of evil, the coming of the Kingdom also brings with it the potential for human flourishing. “I have come”, says Jesus, “that you might have life and have it to the full” (Jn 10:10). And the various miracles of Jesus are an indication that whatever else the Kingdom of God might mean it at least conveys that God actively participates in the restoration of human life. Carroll notes: The fundamental meaning of Jesus’ mighty deeds of healing and exorcism is this: God wills human wholeness—in its physical, psychological, and social dimensions—and in Jesus’ ministry God’s will is accomplished in concrete terms, for the sovereign rule of heaven is exerting itself.52

In some sense then the miracles themselves are not the point inasmuch as they direct our attention to a larger reality. Through the coming of the Kingdom, God is working to bring wholeness, healing, restoration and well-being to all of creation. These two biblical arcs, salvation and the Imago Dei, serve to illustrate the divine world of meaning that is encountered through the Christian faith. More, of course, could be said but the purpose here is to demonstrate 50

Martens, Plot and Purpose in the Old Testament, 39. David J. Bosch, “Salvation: A Missiological Perspective”, Ex Auditu 5 (1989): 151. 52 John T. Carroll, “Sickness and Healing in the New Testament Gospels”, Interpretation 49.2 (1995): 135. 51

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how human flourishing is grounded in divine activity rather than in direct human effort. Being created in the image of God means that the potential for human flourishing is encountered through divine participation and the experience of being in-community. Likewise, the purpose of salvation is the overthrow of all that which prevents human flourishing and to once again open a way for humanity to live the life that was divinely intended. And God has ultimately done just that in Christ and the coming of the Kingdom (2 Cor 5:21). Individual wholeness, social shalom, and even ecological health are all now potential realities for those who live by the Kingdom ethic.53

Embracing a New World of Meaning as an Invitation to a Transformed Sense of Well-being The somewhat lengthy title to our final (and perhaps mercifully brief) section endeavours to bring together the various elements of our discussion. The key question is how does one adopt a new world of meaning in which a judgement of well-being is redefined? To begin with it must be emphasised that the world of meaning that grounds the Christian faith is not exclusive but openly invites encounter from all. What is on offer is a world of meaning in which the idea of human flourishing is not based on the fleeting physical and emotional experiences of the present, nor in the vain hope of a future self-actualisation, but in the unchanging truth of God’s relational wholeness for all humanity. In this context, human flourishing is not dependent upon one’s ability to achieve a state of well-being but to receive it as a divine gift. This gift may be supernatural but it is not otherworldly. The Christian faith has always articulated the offer to draw from the overflow of divine superabundance as a resource for human life in the here and now. The biblical narratives of deliverance, healing and even resurrection life are visible expressions of that overflow.54 The point is that such superabundance must be encountered if it is to be received and that encounter occurs when one’s existing world of meaning collides with the divine world of meaning revealed in the Biblical narrative. That encounter occurs primarily through contact with another, an embrace as it were of two individuals coming together in koinonia. All such encounters are at once both opportunity and challenge. There is an opportunity to understand the other, to learn from them and to mutually build upon the relationship. But there is also challenge for it is possible in 53

Seyoon Kim, “Salvation and Suffering According to Jesus”, Evangelical Quarterly 68.3 (1996): 203. 54 Devenish, “The Contribution of Spirituality”, 53.

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the embrace to encounter a world of meaning that has the potential to supplant my own. If that occurs then my understanding of what constitutes an appropriate community changes, authentic existence within that community changes and one can undergo an existential crisis. The result in our context is a new and transformed understanding of human flourishing, one that is now judged according to the biblical world of meaning. Christianity, of course, calls this existential crisis conversion, and it draws us into a community in which authentic living and well-being are redefined. To describe the coming together in koinonia as an “embrace” is to deliberately invoke the language and discussion of Miroslav Volf’s important work, Exclusion and Embrace. 55 The fruitfulness of Volf’s insights are well known and I hope to draw upon those here through an analysis of how an encounter of two constituted worlds of meaning can provide greater insight to the embrace process. The embrace itself is a symbol for the mutual reciprocity that occurs when two people come together in a dynamic relationship. It consists of four moments and each moment is like a step in a dance that moves consecutively forwards but the dancers are still able to go back and forth as the music demands.56 The four moments are: 1. A commitment to koinonia, to decide from the outset that the other is important, that we need to make space within ourselves for the other to enter. That such an encounter is not wasted time and the belief that the well-being of both will benefit. In essence this is a commitment to love that reflects the Imago Dei. 2. The second moment of the embrace is perhaps counter-intuitive but it is to wait. This moment of waiting is important because it provides time and space for the other to respond. In entering into the embrace both are confronted with a challenge to their existing worlds of meaning, a challenge that is also an invitation to transformation. 3. If the offer is accepted then the other will move into the embrace and we can move into the space that they have created. This is the point at which the two constituted worlds of meanings collide. It is the moment of existential crisis, the time at which the other must 55

Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996). 56 I am indebted here to Neil Holm, “Practising the Ministry of Presence in Chaplaincy”, Journal of Christian Education 52, no. 3 (December 2009): 32-33.

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decide for themselves whether to accept the meaning that is constituted by the Christian worldview. This is the moment of transformation and the point at which a new judgement of wellbeing can begin to occur. 4. The embrace concludes and we metaphorically step back. As a result of the embrace, even if no apparent change (i.e. conversion) is immediately evidenced, there will be a difference because we have encountered one another at the point at which existential authenticity is defined. This can only enrich us, even if the other is not yet willing to finally judge for themselves the new world of meaning that was presented. This process of embrace is one of encounter and re-encounter. There is an invitation to assess, contemplate, evaluate and determine what to make of each other’s world. And this invitation is not a once off—it is a process that takes time and commitment to see through to the end. The reality is that the embrace process is messy, time consuming and often flows back and forward as the various worlds of meaning are confronted. But as beings-in-relation that actualise our true potential only in community, it is through this encounter that transformation has the opportunity to take place. Thus, the divine world of meaning that is revealed through the Christian Scriptures not only invites a renewed understanding and judgement as to what human flourishing is, but also how one achieves a flourishing life. That invitation is encountered through moments of embrace with other Christians where participation in Kingdom life is both offered and demonstrated. If such an offer is accepted, then a new framework for judging well-being is adopted and the person enters into a new community in which a flourishing life is redefined.

Conclusion An important conclusion to draw from this metaphorical reflection is that any transformation of the other is only ever going to be as effective as the genuineness of the Christian’s grounding in the biblical world of meaning. This is why the Church must be embedded in a kingdom ethic, overflowing in love with a genuine offer of compassion to all it encounters. And if Jesus’ way reveals what matters most in God’s kingdom, then it is kindness, respect, care, justice, love and shalom that

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defines what it is for humans to flourish. 57 To not be engaged in such practices is to undermine the very effectiveness of koinonia, for it is only the power that comes from an authentic being-in-relation that the invitation to transformation carries any weight at all. Ultimately, of course, all transformation is a work of the Spirit who offers a flourishing life through participation in the divine life. Whether it be relationships, social structures, judgements of well-being or even creation itself, God never ceases to act in such a way as to restore the world to its created intent.

Select Bibliography Colijn, Brenda B. Images of Salvation in the New Testament. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010. Devenish, Stuart. “The Contribution of Spirituality to Our Understanding of Human Flourishing: The Perspective of Christian Theology”, In Beyond Wellbeing: Spirituality and Human Flourishing. Edited by Maureen Miner, Martin Dowson, and Stuart Devenish, 49-64. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2012. Dodge, Rachel et al. “The Challenge of Defining Wellbeing”. International Journal of Wellbeing 2.3 (2012): 222-35. Grimsrud, Ted. Instead of Atonement: The Bible’s Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013. Kelsey, David H. Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. —. “On Human Flourishing: A Theocentric Perspective”. Yale Center for Faith and Culture, 2008. http://faith.yale.edu/sites/default/files/david_kelsey_gods_power_and_ human_flourishing_0_0.pdf. Lonergan, Bernard. “Dimensions of Meaning”. In Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan, S. J., Edited by Frederick E. Crowe, 232-45. New York: Herder and Herder, 1967. —. Method in Theology. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1972. Miner, Maureen, and Martin Dowson. “Spirituality as a Key Resource for Human Flourishing”. In Beyond Wellbeing: Spirituality and Human Flourishing. Edited by Maureen Miner, Martin Dowson, and Stuart Devenish, 5-31. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2012. Moltmann, Jürgen. The Living God and the Fullness of Life. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Geneva: WCC Publications, 2016.

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Grimsrud, Instead of Atonement, 75.

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Ryan, Richard M, and Edward L Deci. “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Wellbeing”. Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 141-66. Seligman, Martin E. P. Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Wellbeing. New York, NY: Free Press, 2011. Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996. Zizioulas, John D. “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution”. In Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act. Edited by Christoph Schwobel, 44-60. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995.

PART THREE: WHEN THE SOCIAL FABRIC UNRAVELS: GATHERING UP THE LOOSE THREADS

CHAPTER FIVE AUSTRALIA’S MORAL COMPASS AND SOCIETAL WELL-BEING WENDY MAYER*

Daily, Australians are bombarded by government and media about “border security”, the “threat of terror”, the war against “criminal bikie gangs” at the same time as laws are changing towards the favouring of imprisonment, welfare is being cut, volunteerism across Australia is in decline, and domestic violence is on the increase. What this article argues is that what we are seeing is a shift in the moral compass of Australians. The fundamental question is: why? What will be argued is that how these public issues are framed, the responses that have been implemented, and the effects, are all ideologically (that is, morally and emotionally) driven rather than rational. We have long known that Labor favours welfare, the LNP small business, wealth-generation and the reduction of welfare, but the subconscious basis of these approaches and their entailments have yet satisfactorily to be teased out. Most theories are predicated on the basis of secularisation and its premise that humans make rational decisions that are in their own self-interest. Recent work in the area of moral cognition, social psychology and the neurosciences suggests that the conversion of youth to radical Islamist doctrines, the increase in domestic violence, our approach towards “boat people”, and our response towards crime are all interconnected and symptoms of the same relatively simple, subconscious neurological mechanisms. These findings are not deterministic, but allow us to explain what appears irrational in the decisions that individuals and society make. This research raises large questions about tolerance/intolerance, welfare, secularisation, attitude towards crime, the nature of the connection between religion and morality, and societal health, with profound implications for not just public policy, but also economic decision-making, law-making, and Australian politics. *

The research on which this article is based was conducted in the Centre for Early Christian Studies, Australian Catholic University and also in the Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies, University of South Africa, where the author is a Research Fellow. She is also a Research Associate at Sydney College of Divinity.

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The theory that I set out in this chapter, with what I believe are large implications for Australian societal well-being, is one that has a particular origin. Four years ago, as it was becoming increasingly clear that Australia was not immune from the global impact of religious conflict, 1 I began research on the question of what generates such conflict in the first place. At that time, the bulk of research across all disciplines on the question was focused on its extreme: violence. 2 Very little work was being done on tracing what causes such radicalisation in the first instance—that is, the early stages of radicalisation and how to identify them—or on the theoretical underpinnings of the phenomenon—in particular, the precise role of religion in religious conflict. The latter is a question that shapes the very way we view the problem and its solution, yet is rarely posed.3 Is it 1

The concern for Australian society and its government of the reach and influence of radical Islam has been demonstrated in multiple incidents since then, including the shooting of a New South Wales police civilian employee by 15-year-old Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad in 2015 (www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-03/nswpolice-headquarters-gunman-was-radicalised-youth/6825028), and the arrest after year-long monitoring of 18-year-old Tamim Khaja by NSW police in May 2016 on the basis of a suspected imminent terrorist act (www.abc.net.au/news/2016-0517/teenager-arrested-for-allegedly-planning-a-terrorist-act/7421072). For an overview of the CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) initiative launched in 2010 see www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary _Library/pubs/rp/rp1415/Quick_Guides/Extremism (published February 10, 2015). Similarly concerning is the related rise in Australia of Islamophobia and antiMuslim political parties. See, e.g., Oliver Murray, “Far-Right-Wing Parties After your Vote on Election Day”, April 26, 2016 (www.news.com.au/finance/work/ leaders/farrightwing-parties-after-your-vote-on-election-day/news-story/dea024a91 1e4e5bf2d8d6bb6fbd1f0b0); and Tom King, “Explainer: Australia’s Tangled Web of Far-Right Political Parties”, The Conversation, August 11, 2015 (theconversation.com/explainer-australias-tangled-web-of-far-right-political-parties45619). All articles were accessed June 16, 2016. 2 See Wendy Mayer, “Religious Conflict: Definitions, Problems and Theoretical Approaches”, in Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to the Rise of Islam, ed. W. Mayer and B. Neil (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 1-19, esp. 1-2. This focus is shared by the Australian Government (as indicated in n. 1), and continues to dominate research on the phenomenon. See the activities of, among others, The Colloquium on Violence & Religion (violenceandreligion.com) and The Center for Research on Extremism (www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/). 3 Again, the lens through which the question is viewed, when it does arise, tends to be that of violence. See, e.g., William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).

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religion that is responsible for—that is, the root cause of —what we perceive as religious conflict? 4 If it is the case that religion is not responsible or is not the primary cause, should we stop using labels like “religious conflict” or “religious extremism” as misleading and misdirecting when it comes to seeking out solutions? At the time that I began this project it had, for the most part, been assumed that not just religion but a particular kind of religion was at fault, with blame cast in particular on monotheist religions or so-called “religions of the book”— that is, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.5 This has led me to engage with the history of religion as a concept, 6 and with the theory of religion, 4 The perceived role of religion varies depending on the discipline from within which the issue is assessed. For the view from within sociology that religious conflict is not sui generis and that “many putatively religious conflicts are fundamentally similar to other conflicts over political power, economic resources, symbolic recognition, or cultural reproduction”, see Rogers Brubaker, “Religious Dimensions of Political Conflict and Violence”, Sociological Theory 33.1 (2015): 1-19, doi: 10.1177/0735275115572153. On the other hand, within political science scholars have been scrambling since 9/11 to reintroduce religion as a significant social variable into social, political, and international relations theory. See Jonathan Fox and Schmuel Sandler, “The Question of Religion and World Politics”, in Religion in World Conflict, ed. Jonathan Fox and Schmuel Sandler (London-New York: Routledge, 2006), 1-10, at 5-6, 10; and Klaus-Jürgen Nagel and Ferran Requejo, “Nationalism and Religion: Friends or Foes?” in Politics of Religion and Nationalism: Federalism, Consociationalism and secession, ed. Ferran Requejo and Klaus-Jürgen Nagel (New York-London: Routledge, 2015), 1-11. 5 In situating the roots of religious violence and intolerance in monotheism, the work of the Egyptologist Jan Assmann has been particularly influential. See, e.g., Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); idem, Die Mosaische Unterscheidung oder der Preis des Monotheismus (München: Hanser Akzente, 2003); idem, Monotheismus und die Sprache der Gewalt (Wien: Picus Verlag, 2006); and more recently the essay, “Monotheismus und Gewalt”, January 29, 2013 (www.perlentaucher.de/essay/monotheismus-und-gewalt.html; accessed June 16, 2016); and, for a sample of critiques of his views, Joachim Losehand, “‘The Religious Harmony in the Ancient World’: Vom Mythos religiöser Toleranz in der Antike”, Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 12 (2009): 99-132, at 111112; Jan Bremmer, “Religious Violence and its Roots: A View from Antiquity”, Asdiwal. Revue genevoise d’anthropologie et d’histoire des religions 6 (2011): 7179; and René Bloch, “Polytheismus und Monotheismus in der paganen Antike: Zu Jan Assmanns Monotheismus-Kritik”, in Fremdbilder-Selbstbilder. Imaginationen des Judentums von der Antike bis in die Neuzeit, ed. René Bloch et al. (Basel: Verlag Schwabe, 2010), 5-24. 6 The existence of “religion” before the Reformation is a major topic of discussion at present, led by scholars such as Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a

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particularly the sociology and cognitive science of religion.7 At the same time, two other projects in which I have been engaged have been contributing to this same area of research from completely different and less self-evident perspectives. My primary research focus is the period of late antiquity, 8 with a particular interest in early Christian preaching. Inspired by a conundrum posed by Brent Shaw in his book Sacred Violence, I have been working to explain how what seem to be perfectly ordinary (that is, not hate-filled or polemical) sermons in the past had the capacity over time to radicalise their audiences.9 As Shaw observed, while exploring some hundred or more sermons in Latin generated by the Donatist side in a protracted and violent North African religious dispute between two groups with no real doctrinal difference, the impact of these sermons on the two parties can be demonstrated historically.10 At the time, he struggled, however, to explain how the language of this “huge mountain of normative ordinariness”,11 on the surface little different from Modern Concept (New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 2013); and Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Bellknap Press, 2012). See further Russell T. McCutcheon, “The Category ‘Religion’ in Recent Publications: Twenty Years Later”, Numen 62 (2015): 119-141. 7 For an overview of the cognitive science of religion (CSR), its key scholars and theories, see Aaron C. T. Smith, Thinking About Religion: Extending the Cognitive Science of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion (London-New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). For an overview of sociology of religion as a field, see Bryan Turner, “The Sociology of Religion”, in The SAGE Handbook of Sociology, ed. Craig Calhoun, Chris Rojek, and Bryan Turner (London: SAGE Publications, 2005), 284-301. 8 As an historical period late antiquity has been variously defined. The latest view extends its chronological definition from the second to the eighth century CE. Its geographic boundaries, originally confined to the former Roman empire, have also recently been exploded. See the definition proposed by Studies in Late Antiquity: A Journal (www.ucpress.edu/page.php?q=sla), accessed June 16, 2016. 9 For the first fruits of this research see Wendy Mayer, “A Life of Their Own: Preaching, Radicalisation, and the Early Ps-Chrysostomica in Greek and Latin”, in Apocryphal and Patristic Literature between Orient and Occident. A Tribute to Sever J. Voicu, ed. Francesca P. Barone, Caroline Macé, and Pablo Ubierna (Turnhout: Brepols), forthcoming; and idem, “Preaching Hatred? John Chrysostom, Neuroscience, and the Jews”, in (Re)Visioning John Chrysostom: New Theories and Approaches, ed. Chris L. De Wet and Wendy Mayer (Leiden: Brill), forthcoming. 10 Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 409-440. 11 Shaw, Sacred Violence, 436.

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that of the sermons of the “Catholic” opponents, mobilised hatred against the latter to the point of violence. This phenomenon has obvious implications for the present, not just in relation to Islamic preaching and radical websites, but the less obvious impact of newspapers, television, and social media. The third angle that has provided an unexpected contribution is research I have been conducting on the reception of socalled “popular” Graeco-Roman moral philosophy within this same body of preaching, with its particular view of the interrelationship of the bodymind-soul and the very real therapeutic—or harmful—impact of speech or rhetoric on the human person.12 As Christopher Gill has recently argued, that branch of ancient philosophy approximates very closely to modern cognitive behavioural therapy. 13 As Brett Ingram argues, there are also lessons to be learned in marrying recent findings concerning how emotional rhetoric affects the listener’s brain with the ancient conception of rhetoric as both healing drug and poison.14 It is these three seemingly disparate areas of research from which the core components of my theory derive and that set me on the path of pursuing the intersection between morality, cognition, and language and its deep-historical societal implications. By deep-historical, I mean that the 12

See Wendy Mayer, “The Persistence in Late Antiquity of Medico-Philosophical Psychic Therapy”, Journal of Late Antiquity 8.2 (2015): 337-351; idem, “Shaping the Sick Soul: Reshaping the Identity of John Chrysostom”, in Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium: Studies Inspired by Pauline Allen, ed. Geoffrey D. Dunn and W. Mayer (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 140-164; and idem, “Madness in the Works of John Chrysostom: A Snapshot from Late Antiquity”, in The Concept of Madness from Homer to Byzantium: Manifestations and Aspects of Mental Illness and Disorder, ed. Hélène Perdicoyianni-Paléologou (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert Editore, 2016), 349-373. 13 Christopher Gill, “Philosophical Therapy as Preventive Psychological Medicine”, in Mental Disorders in the Classical World, ed. W. V. Harris (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 339-360. The potential utility of this research becomes more evident when we observe that in the ancient to late-ancient world both moral philosophy and religion were conceived of as a politeia or way of life. Regarding the former see esp. Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. M. Chase (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), original ed., Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1981). This holistic conception, quite different from the postEnlightenment insistence on the separation of politics and religion, is both indicative of a long-standing relationship between these two domains, and aligns closely with the way in which contemporary Islam, in Indonesia, for example, views itself. 14 Brett Ingram, “Critical Rhetoric in the Age of Neuroscience” (PhD diss., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2013).

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mechanisms to which I refer can usefully explain certain societal shifts in past and present with equal facility. As I set out the components of my theory and its neuroscientific and cognitive underpinnings, it is important that the reader bear in mind that this is a theory that addresses the macro level—that is, broad societal trends. At the micro level—the level of a specific small group or individual—one could argue in detail and with some disagreement about the contributing impact of culture and other cognitive processes and societal factors. At the macro level, however, this theory offers a potentially useful explanation for the correlation between some observable recent trends in Australian society—the off-shore detention of “boat people”, the rise in domestic violence, the increasing gender wage gap, the emergence of new right-wing political parties, overcrowding of prisons, heightened bullying in schools and the workplace, and the spread of Islamophobia, to name but a few. It also raises some challenging questions about solutions. The first point to be made is that when I speak about morality, I am not referring to ethics or moral philosophy—that is, defining or determining what actions are right or wrong—but am concerned with moral psychology and cognition—why and how we make decisions, largely unthinkingly, about what is good or bad in the first place.15 The principles I discuss here are in themselves neither right nor wrong—they simply describe the way we think—although they each have specific entailments that could be labelled pro- or antisocial. Societal well-being, we assume here, is aligned with behaviour that is prosocial, whereas antisocial behaviour is aligned with societal harm. The second point is that in talking about moral cognition, we adopt a growing consensus over the past two decades within the neurosciences concerning the embodied mind and the interconnectedness of cognitive and physical brain processes.16 One of the 15 Morality in this sense is described in the literature as social-functional; that is, values and their associated emotions that are “concerned primarily with the preservation of social relationships” in that they function to bind groups together for mutual benefit. On this point see Jacob K. Farnsworth, Kent D. Drescher, Jason A. Nieuwsma, Robyn B. Walser, and Joseph M. Currier, “The Role of Moral Emotions in Military Trauma: Implications for the Study and Treatment of Moral Injury”, Review of General Psychology 18.4 (2014): 249-262, dx.doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000018, at 251. 16 So, for instance, in cognitive linguistics the process via which we think about abstract concepts metaphorically is rooted in the mapping of abstract ideas onto basic everyday physical experiences. See Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn. 2010), 18 and 86-88.

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most important implications, in addition to how language is received by the brain and processed at the preconscious level, is the consensus that moral decision-making occurs at the preconscious or gut level and that we rationalise such decisions after the fact.17 This finding—that emotion has primacy in moral decision making, although not dictatorship18—calls on us to abandon modern, post-Enlightenment ways of thinking about religion and society, particularly the secularisation thesis, which assigns religion to the private domain and defines it in a very restricted way, and the assumption of the primacy of reason. 19 This has very particular implications for current governments that deny the relevance to the present of historical studies, as these findings suggest that it is precisely to the preEnlightenment past and to societies until now labelled “primitive” that we should look in order to understand the social implications of an embodiedmind perspective.20 It is no coincidence, for instance, that Brett Ingram, in arguing for the incorporation of the findings of brain studies into contemporary critical rhetorical theory, points to the renewed relevance of the ancient Greek view of language as causative of real changes in the material world, in that the ideational and corporeal were seen as part of an integrated circuit composed of the body, the word, and the world. As he goes on to argue: If we dismantle this circuit and isolate just one of these parts for the purpose of making claims about the nature of human events [as the bulk of contemporary social theorists have done], we are left with a limited interpretive apparatus through which to perceive and evaluate those events.21

17

On the dual-processing model of cognition that has become the consensus, see the overviews in Steve Clarke, The Justification of Religious Violence (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 75-81; and in Joshua D. Greene, “Beyond Pointand-Shoot Morality: Why Cognitive (Neuro)science Matters for Ethics”, Ethics 124.4 (2014): 696-706. 18 This is the position of Jonathan Haidt, “Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion”, in The Believing Primate: Scientific, philosophical, and theological reflections on the origin of religion, ed. Jeffrey Schloss and Michael J. Murray (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 278-291. 19 Until the first decade of the twenty-first century these principles were foundational for most theorists from within the sociology of religion. See Turner, “Sociology of Religion”. 20 This is the case argued in Wendy Mayer, “Theorizing Religious Conflict: From Early Christianity to Late Antiquity and Beyond”, in Reconceiving ‘Religious Conflict’, ed. Chris L. de Wet and Wendy Mayer (London: Routledge, forthcoming). 21 Ingram, “Critical Rhetoric”, 180.

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The point he makes, that the language in which public ideas are communicated has a real impact on the brain, is significant. Similarly, the finding that the Age of Reason is an illusion calls into question our reading of religion and its social role. One of the questions that my own research is raising is whether we should not in fact see religion in both past and present as something that is experiential rather than institutional, that is, as something that is much more amorphous and holistic and that more closely approximates the self-perception of Greco-Roman moral philosophy.22 A third point concerns the relationship between morality and religion and the role each plays in pro- and antisocial behaviour. Whereas scholars of religious violence concerned with the current global rise in religious intolerance are focused on the nature of religion and its role, neuroscientific research and experimental psychology are suggesting that those questions are only minimally relevant. There is nothing inherently good or bad about religion per se, just as in evolutionary terms religion is not special. 23 Moreover, while “it is perfectly possible to be moral without religious

22

On Graeco-Roman moral philosophy as “a way of life”, see n. 13. Viewing religion as concerned not with belief but rather with praxis or emotions offers another dimension in which pre-Enlightenment conceptions and current neuroscientific research are coming into alignment. 23 The latter is the conclusion of Smith, Thinking About Religion, 10-11; 10: “I think the available evidence demonstrates that human cognition drives social engagement and identification where religion reveals a prototypical but not unique expression. In my view, the evidence decisively presents religion as a socially advantageous practice. But, does religion possess something distinctive and more powerful than other social formations that encourage solidarity and group identity such as nationality, ethnicity or kin connections? To summarise ... I think that human minds are susceptible to religious content, but no more so than other culturally prolific activities that also engage emotion, memory, belonging and belief. ... While I acknowledge some convergence pressures upon cultural activities, they lead towards more generic tendencies such as the ability to hold belief sets, rather than a predisposition to hold religious beliefs. Religious cognition is not a unique domain, but a generic domain incorporating social relationships between agents. Although some evidence suggests that religious content will be attractive to human minds, it is not inevitable. In fact, religion is not sustained by natural cognitive mechanisms alone; the structure of cultural reinforcement remains essential”. His position is not universally held, but aligns with the results emerging from research in moral psychology. For the view that there is something special about religion in evolutionary terms, see, e.g., Graham Ward, Unbelievable: Why We Believe and Why We Don’t (London, I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

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beliefs”24—a view that Australia, a society that views itself as primarily secular and a-religious, would endorse—morality, which sits beneath social systems such as religion, politics and economics, is, on the other hand, essential to binding groups together by mitigating against selfishness.25 The key point here is that if what binds groups together at the fundamental level is morality, then morality equally lies at the heart of what breaks groups apart or sets them against each other. This is precisely the point that the moral psychologist Joshua Greene makes in his book Moral Tribes,26 and offers one of the most persuasive explanations as to why all religions can inform both pro- and antisocial behaviours.27 As he argues, from an evolutionary perspective our brains are wired for in-group favouritism and ethnocentrism. Our basic morality in this respect serves cooperation by enforcing beneficial social norms. It is about solving what he calls the problem of “me versus us”. But whereas our gut emotional reactions serve inner group cooperation, once multiple groups come into play there is a reversal in morality. When we encounter the problem of “us versus them”, the gut reactions that were socially beneficial are no longer

24 Ilkka Pyysiäinen, “Servants of Two Masters: Religion, Economy, and Cooperation”, in Religion, Economy, and Cooperation, ed. Ilkka Pyysiäinen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 1-34, at 11. See further Smith, Thinking About Religion, 10; and Ryan McKay and Harvey Whitehouse, “Religion and Morality”, Psychological Bulletin 141.2 (2015): 447-473; supported by Wilhelm Hofmann, Daniel C. Wisneski, Mark J. Brandt, and Linda J. Skitka, “Morality in Everyday Life”, Science 345, No. 6202 (September 2014): 1340-1343. 25 See Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, “Planet of the Durkheimians. Where Community, Authority, and Sacredness are Foundations of Morality”, in Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification, ed. John T. Jost, Aaron C. Kay, and Hulda Thorisdottir (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 371-401. 26 Joshua D. Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them (New York: Penguin Books, 2013). 27 That even religions traditionally viewed as individualistic and prosocial can give rise to antisocial behaviours was demonstrated in The Fundamentalism Project conducted by Martin Marty and Scott Appleby in the 1980s and 1990s. For the published results, see the five volumes Fundamentalisms Observed; Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance; Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education; Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements; and Fundamentalisms Comprehended, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, 1993, 1993, 1994, 1995).

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trustworthy and become problematic.28 As Chris Mooney writes in summary of Greene’s research: “From an evolutionary perspective, morality is built to make groups cohere, not to achieve world peace”.29 One of the profound implications of this finding for how Australia regulates itself and for governmental decision-making, particularly in a multicultural context in which religion is tied to ethnicity in the public consciousness, 30 is that conflict between different social, and particularly ethnically-based, groups should be predicated as the norm, not the exception. That is, we need to begin from the assumption that inter-group hostility is the default and concentrate on developing policies that, acknowledging this social truth, help to mitigate this. This brings me to my fourth point, that only when as a society we understand what the basic preconscious moral foundations are, their agency and how the public language that we use reinforces or weakens them, can we understand their social entailments and begin to work with or mitigate them. The relatively new discipline of Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), based on experimental work in both western and non-

28 Greene, Moral Tribes, 4-5: groups share some core values; each group’s philosophy is woven into its daily life; each group has its own version of moral common sense; they fight, not because they are immoral, but because when they come into competition, they view the contested ground from very different moral perspectives. He labels the inter-group conflict that can result “the tragedy of commonsense morality”. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), 219-366, describes this as “morality binds and blinds”, concluding (366): “[Morality] binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say”. 29 Chris Mooney, “6 Surprising Scientific Findings About Good and Evil: Harvard’s Joshua Greene on the Evolution of Morality and Why Humanity May, Objectively, be Getting Better in the Long Run”, Dec. 13, 2013, www.motherjones.com/print/240996, accessed July 2, 2016. 30 See e.g. the following extract from the political party One Nation’s statement on immigration: “Australians have the right to a cohesive society and deny immigration to anyone who does not abide by our law, culture, democracy, flag or Christian way of life. Australians have been tolerant and welcome new migrants coming to find a new homeland. We don’t want or need migrants bringing their problems, laws, culture and opposing religious beliefs on us”. Accessed July 24, 2016. http://www.onenation.com.au/policies/immigration. Italics added.

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western countries, identifies five moral foundations that have an evolutionary basis and that serve to bind groups together (Table 5-1).31 Care / harm

Fairness / cheating

Loyalty / betrayal

Authority / subversion

Sanctity / degradation

Adaptive challenge

Protect and care for children

Reap benefits of two-way partnerships

Form cohesive coalitions

Forge beneficial relationships within hierarchies

Avoid contamination

Original triggers

Suffering, distress, or neediness expressed by one’s child

Cheating, cooperation, deception

Threat or challenge to group

Signs of dominance and submission

Waste products, diseased people

Characteristic emotions

Compassion

Anger, gratitude, guilt

Group pride, rage at traitors

Respect, fear

Disgust

Relevant virtues

Caring, kindness

Fairness, justice, trustworthiness

Loyalty, patriotism, selfsacrifice

Obedience, deference

Temperance, chastity, piety, cleanliness

Table 5-1 Moral Foundations (adapted from Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 146, fig. 6.2) These five foundational ways of viewing the world are held to be intuitive. Intuitive here does not mean innate, but refers rather to a preconscious gut emotional response that is subsequently rationalised. 32 Our most basic 31 For the article in which MFT is set out in full, see Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, Sena Koleva, Matt Motyl, Ravi Iyer, Sean P. Wojcik, and Peter H. Ditto, “Moral Foundations Theory: The Pragmatic Validity of Moral Pluralism”, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2013): 55-130. These five are not the only moral foundations or intuitions, but are considered the most important ones “for explaining human morality and moral diversity”. See Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph, “The Moral Mind: How Five Sets of Innate Intuitions Guide the Development of Many Culture-Specific Virtues, and Perhaps Even Modules”, in The Innate Mind, vol. 3: Foundations and the Future, ed. Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, and Stephen Stich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 385. 32 See Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment”, Psychological Review 108.4 (2001):

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moral concepts, it is thought, are acquired experientially in childhood. These intuitive concepts—such as light is good, dark is bad; good is up, bad is down; good is pure/clean, bad is dirty/rotten—tend to be universal, acultural and deep-historical. 33 The facts that the five foundations are intuitive and thus part of our unconscious “commonsense”; that the moral judgements we make on the basis of these five foundations are strongly associated with emotion;34 and that, although we can change our intuitive moral judgements through conscious reasoning, we are more likely not to,35 helps to explain why, when these pre-conscious moral foundations are involved, human behaviour can seem difficult to shift as well as irrational and counterintuitive.36

814-34; and idem, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), 32-60. 33 See George Lakoff, The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and its Politics (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), 93-99. Regarding the pan-human nature of the moral foundations, see Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 14445. 34 The characteristic emotions are of particular interest in that they correlate with the automatic, intuitive response that occurs before rationalisation. Rationalisation then usually occurs within the conceptual framework of the corresponding moral foundation. On this point see the summation of their work on disgust in Paul Rozin, Jonathan Haidt, and Clark R. McCauley, “Disgust”, in Handbook of Emotions, edited by M. Lews, J. M. Haviland-Jones, and L. F. Barrett (New York: Guilford Press, 3rd edn., 2008), 757-76. The characteristic emotions are: compassion (care/harm); anger, gratitude, guilt (fairness/cheating); group pride, rage at traitors (loyalty/betrayal); respect, fear (authority/subversion); disgust (sanctity/degradation). See Table 5-1. 35 This phenomenon is addressed from the perspective of the relationships between emotion/intuition and reason by Haidt (n. 32), but can also be approached from the perspective of the limitations of neural plasticity and the agency of emotional rhetoric in strengthening neural circuitry associated with particular moral intuitions. Regarding the latter, see Ingram, “Critical Rhetoric”, 45. 36 Long before experimental moral psychology confirmed it, the rhetorician Kenneth Burke argued this case on the basis of his work in the 1920s and ’30s with the US Bureau of Social Hygiene. Stimulated by his exploration of the link between drugs and crime, he developed his theory of internal “piety”. This enabled him to explain the “psychic disturbance” that accompanies a radical shift in a person’s central unifying beliefs, since any new orientation will seem “impious” if it fails to connect to the old orientation. The latter, even when self-destructive, can be remarkably resistant to change. This, he argued, is because any change in orientation must first “address a set of deeply-engrained social behaviors, habits, and beliefs”. See Jordynn Jack, “‘The Piety of Degradation’: Kenneth Burke, the Bureau of Social Hygiene, and Permanence and Change”, Quarterly Journal of

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While there is some variation in the labelling as Moral Foundations Theory has progressed, the five foundations identified are: care/harm; fairness/cheating; loyalty/betrayal; authority/subversion; and sanctity/degradation. 37 Purity, triggered by the emotion of disgust, is particularly significant as it supplies the basis for the contagion discourse promoted not just by terrorist and nationalist groups, but by our own and other western governments in their response to waves of unsolicited immigration. 38 It drives the desire to close and police borders and, in Australia, to isolate “boat people” in detention camps or quarantine them in off-shore processing centres. 39 There is also a correlation between the increasing prominence in public and private discourse of purity language and the escalation of war.40 The Speech 90.4 (2004): 446-68, dx.doi.org/10.1080/0033563042000302180, esp. 45051. 37 Variants to the last four are: fairness/reciprocity; ingroup/loyalty; respect for authority/subversion; authority/respect; purity/sanctity. See McKay and Whitehouse, “Religion and morality”, 454-455; and Jonathan Haidt, “Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion”, The Edge, 9.21.07, accessed September 5, 2014, http://edge.org/conversation/moral-psychology-and-the-mis understanding-of-religion, revised and published under the same title in The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion, edited by Jeffrey Schloss and Michael J. Murray (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 278-291. 38 For recent studies of public media in which the language of immigrants or refugees as contaminants, parasites, or as diseased or infecting agents is prominent, see Maciej Paprocki, “Infecting the Body Politic? Modern and Post-Modern (Ab)use of Immigrants are invading pathogens metaphor in American sociopolitical discourse”, in Cognitive Linguistics in the Making, ed. Kinga RudnickaSzozda and Aleksander Szwedek, Warsaw Studies in English Language and Literature 17 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014), 211-30; Andreas Musolff, “Dehumanising Metaphors in UK Immigrant Debates in Press and Online Media”, Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3.1 (2015): 41-56, doi: 10.1075/jlac.3.1.02mus. For the agency of the parasite metaphor in genocide when married with the concept of the nation as a body to be cured of disease, see Andreas Musolff, “What Role do Metaphors Play in Racial Prejudice? The Function of Antisemitic Imagery in Hitler’s Mein Kampf”, Patterns of Prejudice 41.1 (2007): 21-43, doi: 10.1080/00313220601118744. 39 Also prominent in the treatment of “boat people” by the Australian government and media is the fairness/cheating foundation. The discourse of “illegal” immigrants and “queue-jumpers” taps into and hardens the conceptualisation of immigrants who come by boat as frauds and cheats. Immigrants in this category are thus undeserving of compassion (which would invoke the care/harm foundation). 40 This was a feature in the Chechnyan conflict. See Aleksandar Pavkoviü, “Chechnya: The Islamization of a Secession”, in Politics of Religion and Nationalism:

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five moral foundations are pan-human; culture expresses the degree to which emphasis is placed on each of the five foundations.41 What Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues found in their experiments is that progressives placed strong emphasis on the first two foundations, whereas conservatives placed more equal emphasis on all five.42 This led Haidt to propose that “there are two common ways that cultures suppress and regulate selfishness, two visions of what society is and how it ought to work [...] the contractual approach and the beehive approach”.43 In the contractual (= progressive) approach the individual is the fundamental unit of value; in the beehive (= conservative) approach, it is the group and its territory. This model further led Haidt to describe care/harm and fairness/cheating as individualising foundations, in that they generate virtues and practices that protect individuals from each other and allow them to live in harmony as autonomous agents who can focus on their own goals; and loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion and sanctity/degradation as binding foundations, because the virtues, practices, and institutions they generate function to bind people together into hierarchically organised interdependent social groups that try to regulate the daily lives and personal habits of their members.44 In political terms, the first is exemplified in liberal democratic systems, the second, in its extreme form, in fascism. The hivist approach promotes a classic ingroup bias, 45 and becomes stronger when a community or group feels under threat. More importantly, neither approach to social cohesion is good or

Federalism, Consociationalism and Secession, ed. Ferran Requejo and KlausJürgen Nagel (New York-London: Routledge, 2015), 93-105. 41 Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 144-45. 42 See Haidt and Graham, “Planet of the Durkheimians”, esp. fig. 1. The greater the degree of conservatism, however, the greater the emphasis on the last three. The language of “progressives” and “conservatives” derives from modern political theory. We retain it here for convenience. 43 Haidt, “Moral Psychology”. 44 Ibid. 45 The entailments can be both pro- and antisocial in that ingroup bias and outgroup derogation are not reciprocal. On this point, see the classic article by Marilynn B. Brewer, “The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love or Outgroup Hate?” Journal of Social Issues 55.3 (1999): 429-44; and the review of the current state of research, Jim A. C. Everett, Nadira S. Faber, and Molly Crockett, “Preferences and Belief in Ingroup Favoritism”, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 9 (February 2015), article 15, doi: 10-3389/fnbeh.2015.00015.

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bad in itself. Both have pro- and antisocial entailments. 46 The most significant finding is that groups that place strong emphasis on either set may work towards the same prosocial goals, but, as a result of the different moral foundations that drive the group, disagree strongly on the best way to achieve them. 47 It is also critical to keep in mind that this model is descriptive. It is also ideal and expresses in reality in multiple variants. When an expansive range of historical evidence is taken into account, on the other hand, all five moral foundations, in varying degrees of emphasis, can be seen to underwrite all forms of social organisation. The purity foundation, for instance, can be seen as operative in ancient societies and their religions from at least the first millennium BCE.48 When linked with ingroup loyalty, it can be one of the most socially problematic.49 Before concluding, some final pieces of theory regarding language, morality and cognition need to be mentioned in brief. These concern the moral biconceptualism (“progressive-conservative”) of the human brain,50 46 In The Righteous Mind and “Planet of the Durkheimians” Haidt, himself originally a contractualist, in fact advocates the hive approach to some degree as having greater prosocial benefits than cultural progressives allow. This assertion has received criticism from political and social justice theorists due to a confusion of ethics with social-functional morality. For an example, see Matthew Kugler, John T. Jost, and Sharareh Noorbaloochi, “Another Look at Moral Foundations Theory: Do Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation Explain LiberalConservative Differences in ‘Moral’ Intuitions?” Social Justice Research (published online November 16, 2014), doi: 10.1007/s11211-014-0223-5. 47 Greene, Moral Tribes, 4-5, makes this same point. See n. 28. 48 The work of Yitzhaq Feder is rapidly demonstrating this point. See Yitzhaq Feder, “Contagion and Cognition: Bodily Experience and the Conceptualization of Pollution (tum’ah) in the Hebrew Bible”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 72.2 (2013): 151-67; “Defilement, Disgust and Disease: The Experiential Basis of Hittite and Akkadian Terms for Impurity”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 136.1 (2016): 99-116; “Purity and Sancta Desecration in Ritual Law: A Durkheimian Perspective”, in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law, ed. Pamela Barmash (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). See also Thomas Kazen, “The Role of Disgust in Priestly Purity Law: Insights from Conceptual Metaphor and Blending Theories”, Journal of Law, Religion and State 3.1 (2014): 62-92. 49 Haidt and Joseph, “The Moral Mind”, 384, describe this pairing as capable of producing “horrific violence and oppression”. 50 See Lakoff, The Political Mind, 69-73, 108-110, 119. Lakoff discusses this with explicit reference to the political domain, but social-functional morality lies equally underneath politics, economic ideology, and religion. On this latter point, see Spassena P. Koleva, Jesse Graham, Ravi Iyer, Peter H. Ditto, and Jonathan Haidt, “Tracing the Threads: How Five Moral Concerns (Especially Purity) Help

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how language and neural binding works,51 the effect on neural binding of empathy versus fear,52 and the role in the pre-conscious mind of moral conceptual metaphors. Closely related to the research of Haidt, Greene and other moral psychologists is the work over the past twenty-five years of the cognitive linguist George Lakoff and his successors. Building on his now famous work with Mark Johnson on how metaphors inform the way we think, 53 Lakoff identified two family-based conceptual models for Nation operative at the preconscious level in polarising individuals between a liberal and conservative bias within politics. These he labelled Nurturant Parent (NP) and Strict Father (SF) morality, respectively, demonstrating that in terms of government structure and policy each has very particular social entailments.54 Each is associated with a number of very basic preconscious moral metaphors that result in particular automatic moral judgements (Table 5-2).

Explain Culture War Attitudes”, Journal of Research in Personality 46.2 (2012): 184-94, doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2012.01.006. 51 The role of language, especially emotional political rhetoric, in activating and entrenching neural circuits associated with particular moral concepts and modes of thought, in the process weakening others, is discussed at length in Ingram, “Critical Rhetoric”. 52 For how empathy can inhibit strong hivist moral neural bindings, see Lakoff, The Political Mind, 101-104. The work he references is that of Joshua Greene et al.: e.g., Joshua D. Greene, Leigh E. Nystrom, Andrew D. Engell, John M. Darley, and Jonathan D. Cohen, “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment”, Neuron 44 (2004): 389-400. Much of this research is discussed in more popular terms in Greene, Moral Tribes, passim. On the activation of the norepinephrine circuit in the brain by fear, anxiety and anger, and the link between emotional pathways and the dramatic event circuitry (the narrative patterns or frames we use to make sense of the world), see Lakoff, The Political Mind, 27-28, 40-42, 93-94. The more these negative emotional pathways are evoked, the greater the reduction in the capacity to notice (deliberative awareness). 53 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), but see also the second edition (2003), with updated Afterword, 243-76. 54 See George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996, 2nd edn 2002). The two models are described in full at pp. 65-140. For a summary, see Lakoff, The Political Mind, 77-83. As Lakoff points out, these are conceptual models of idealised family life mapped onto conceptual models of idealised national life that may or may not have any correlation with reality. They are about the way we think about the world, not descriptive of the world itself.

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Strict Father Morality Core Concept Moral Strength: Being Good is Being Upright Being Bad is Being Low Doing Evil is Falling Evil is a Force (internal/external) Morality is Strength Entailments • The world is divided into good and evil • To remain good in the face of (“stand up to”) evil, one must be morally strong • One becomes morally strong through selfdiscipline and self-denial • A person who is morally weak cannot stand up to evil and so will eventually commit evil • Moral weakness is thus a form of immorality • Self-indulgence (the refusal to engage in selfdenial) and lack of self-control (the lack of selfdiscipline) are thus forms of immorality Associated Concepts Moral Bounds: Morality is Following a Path Immorality is Deviating Morality is Staying within Boundaries Immorality is Transgression Moral Authority: Morality is Obedience Immorality is Disobedience Moral Essence: Your behaviour reveals your essence, which in turn predicts your future behaviour Moral Health: Morality is Health Immorality is Disease Morality is Purity Immorality is Rottenness Moral Wholeness: Moral wholeness entails an overall unity of form that contributes to strength Immorality “erodes/ruptures” moral standards/values

Nurturant Parent Morality Core Concepts Morality as Empathy: Do unto Others as They would have You do unto Them Morality as Nurturance: Morality is Caring for the Vulnerable Immorality is Not Caring/Causing Harm Entailments • Moral action requires empathy • Moral action involves sacrifices • Helping those who need help is our moral responsibility • One cannot care for others unless one takes care of oneself • Nurturing social ties (society) is as important as caring for individuals

Associated Concepts Moral Fairness: Morality is Fairness Immorality is Unfairness/ Cheating Morality as Happiness: Morality is Happiness Immorality is Misery

Table 5-2 The Metaphors that Inform SF and NP Morality and their Entailments (based on Lakoff, Moral Politics, 71ff)

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Each activates in the brain a very particular preconscious narrative frame (Table 5-3).55 The SF Narrative

The NP Narrative

The strict father is the moral leader of the family, and is to be obeyed. The family needs a strict father because there is evil in the world from which he has to protect them—and Mommy can’t do it. The family needs a strict father because there is competition in the world, and he has to win those competitions to support the family— and Mommy can’t do it. You need a strict father because kids are born bad, in the sense that they just do what they want to do, and don’t know right from wrong. They need to be punished strictly and painfully when they do wrong, so they will have an incentive to do right in order to avoid punishment. That is how they build internal discipline, which is needed to do right and not wrong. With that discipline, they can enter the market and become self-reliant adults, they can go off on their own, start their own families, and become strict fathers in their own households, without any meddling by their own fathers or anyone else.

Parents can be two parents with equal responsibilities without gender constraint or one parent of either gender. Their job is to nurture their children and raise them to be nurturers of others. Nurturance is empathy, responsibility for oneself and others, and the strength to carry out those responsibilities. This is opposite of indulgence: children are raised to care about others, to take care of themselves and others, and to lead a fulfilling life. Discipline is positive; it comes out of the child’s developing sense of care and responsibility. Nurturance requires setting limits, and explaining them. It requires mutual respect—a parent’s respect for children, and respect for parents by children must be earned by how the parents behave. Restitution is preferred over punishment—if you do something wrong, do something right to make up for it. The job of parents is protection and empowerment of their children, and a dedication to community life, where people care about and take care of each other.

Table 5-3 The SF and NP Narrative Frames (cited from Lakoff, The Political Mind, 77-78, 81.56)

55

Of significance for disentangling the popular subconscious equation of Islam with terrorism (“all Muslims are terrorists”; “Islam is jihad”; “Australia is a Christian [Christianity=peaceful] nation”) is Lakoff’s point that all religions express in both an SF and NP form. In the case of Christianity this expresses in the Protestant distinction between Law and Gospel or the difference between the moral codes of the Old and New Testaments. See Lakoff, Moral Politics, 245-262, who offers a brief analysis of two polar interpretive frames based on the central metaphor God is Parent.

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Of particular interest is the potency of the Morality is Strength/Immorality is Weakness concept within SF morality, and the entailments for the justice system of the SF and NP moralities when they inform politics.57 Allied with these descriptive models for explaining current political ideology in the United States is a significant discussion concerning the preconscious impact of conceptual frameworks in political rhetoric and how by directly addressing the opposition’s framework in rational argument one subconsciously reinforces the concepts in the listener’s brain, rather than weakening them.58 The SF/NP Morality model and MFT offer different ways of talking about and viewing morality and the brain, but have considerable crossover.59 As McAdams et al. were able to show, Lakoff’s thesis “that political ideology is rooted in different metaphors that people internalize regarding family life” and that of the moral psychologists “that political ideology reflects deeply ingrained moral intuitions” are 56

As Lakoff, Moral Politics, 67, points out in the SF model the Strict Father is conceptual and functionally not gender exclusive: “there are many mothers, especially tough single mothers, who function as strict fathers”. 57 On retributive justice as the entailment of SF morality, restitutive justice of NP morality, see Lakoff, The Political Mind, 78-81. Merit (huge salaries or bonuses for CEOs, Vice Chancellors and politicians) and punishment (strict laws, imprisonment, detention) are essential components of the SF model, which places a strong emphasis on competition, hierarchy, authority, discipline and obedience. Similarly, welfare is viewed as encouraging moral weakness; poverty is the result of ill-discipline. He originally characterised SF morality as the morality of reward and punishment (Lakoff, Moral Politics, 67). In NP morality justice is less about punishment than empowerment and providing support and resources to restore the individual to a capacity to contribute back to society, since the emphasis is on “empathy, responsibility for oneself and others, and the strength to carry out those responsibilities” (Lakoff, Moral Politics, 81). However, note that Lakoff (ibid.), views restitutive justice as doing something right to make up for doing something wrong. 58 On neural competitiveness, the cost of neural plasticity and the role of repetition in strengthening neural binding see the discussion and literature cited in section 3.3, Mayer, “Preaching hatred?” 59 SF and NP morality, for instance, exemplify two of a number of possible moral tribes in Greene’s model. See Greene, Moral Tribes, 1-27. Similarly, the work of Greene and his colleagues on conceptions of moral responsibility supports Lakoff’s thesis about the agency of the concept of Moral Strength in engendering a more punitive approach to justice. See Azim F. Shariff, Joshua D. Green, Johan C. Karremans, Jamie B. Lugari, Cory J. Clark, Jonathan W. Schooler, Roy F. Baumeister, and Kathleen D. Vohs, “Free Will and Punishment: A Mechanistic View of Human Nature Reduces Retribution”, Psychological Science (June 10, 2014) 8 pages, doi: 10.1177/0956797614534693, accessed July 30, 2016.

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complementary and speak to similar neural mechanisms. 60 Even though their sample group was religious and comprised practising Christians, more recent work on the primacy of morality over religion and the realtime study of Hofmann et al. argue for the independence of these findings from religion.61 What is of particular interest with regard to Australia is that, on the one hand, we can observe fairness/cheating, purity and ingroup loyalty discourse informing Australian political rhetoric of the past decade about asylum-seekers (“queue-jumpers”, “a threat to our prosperity”), while on the other we can observe Strict Father morality underlying political rhetoric and decision-making by the recent Newman government in Queensland and the Abbott (now Turnbull) government federally, the entailments being an overburdened court and prison system, the stripping of citizenship from and threatened prosecution of persons engaged in the conflict in Syria, the persistent cutting of welfare programs, the creation of a paramilitary border force, and the perception of Australia’s ageing population, remote aboriginal communities and welfare recipients as burdens on society. If we look back through Australian history, we can see these same subconscious moral mechanisms lurking behind many political decisions with socially harmful consequences that were widely accepted and endorsed as moral and just at the time, such as the White Australia policy and the Stolen Generation. This body of research has significant implications for how we as a nation and as political and religious bodies work together for the wellbeing of an increasingly racially and culturally complex Australian society. Australian political ideology may not be explicitly religious. The neurosciences require us, however, to acknowledge that it is inescapably, if largely unconsciously, morally-informed. Recognising on which moral foundations emphasis is currently being laid empowers us as either policymakers or social critics to assess the societal costs/benefits and entailments. This research also challenges us to recognise the power of the words we use—whether in political rhetoric, public or social media—to feed into and subconsciously reinforce these foundations and the implicit moral frameworks that they engender. We need to ask ourselves, for instance, whether a gross upward trend in domestic violence, a growing

60 Dan P. McAdams, Michelle Albaugh, Emily Farber, Jennifer Daniels, Regina L. Logan, and Brad Olson, “Family Metaphors and Moral Intuitions: How Conservatives and Liberals Narrate Their Lives”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95.4 (2008): 978-90, doi: 10.1037/a0012650. 61 See nn. 24 and 50.

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gender wage gap, 62 an unquestioning acceptance of the punishment of asylum-seekers, and the rise of Islamophobia are not all interconnected and indicative of a moral shift towards the right, 63 resulting from a sustained public rhetoric that whips up fear. This same body of research helps to explain why a growing body of Australians view these social developments as just, and why over time the numbers who describe them as unjust, or remain confused and uncertain fluctuate. It also offers explanations for why it is difficult to reach agreement on what is good or socially healthy for Australia and why our governments make political decisions—such as the continued imprisonment as opposed to rehabilitation of aboriginal males on alcohol-related or drug-use charges in Western Australia—that as often go against Australia’s economic and societal best interests. What this research calls upon us to do is to abandon the illusion that we are reasoned and objective decision-makers. It also calls on us to disentangle morality from religion, requiring us to acknowledge and unpack the morality that subconsciously drives us as a nation. Only when we do so can we recognise the social entailments and ask ourselves if we are willing to accept them. Agreement that a particular entailment or set of entailments is socially harmful and that we should set out to address it comes with a requirement that we monitor and reframe the language that we publicly use, in order to weaken the subconscious moral thinking that underpins negative behaviours and strengthen that which underpins behaviours that we agree are prosocial. In short, when Malcolm Turnbull in 2015 called for a cultural change in the attitude towards women to the point that domestic violence comes to be viewed as un-Australian, he was both promoting a nurturant view of what it means to be a moral society and reframing the loyalty foundation in light of the care/harm foundation (patriotism = non-violence, care for others). In order to effect that change, what he requires is what a change in Australian culture would be indicative of—an underlying fundamental shift in the moral compass of Australia as a nation.

62

On the agency of the Moral Order or Great Chain of Being metaphor in promoting gender discrimination and the oppression of women and people of other races, see Lakoff, Moral Politics, 98-99. 63 That the language of “left” and “right” to describe morally-based ideological positions has conceptual validity is argued by Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Graham, and Craig Joseph, “Above and Below Left-Right: Ideological Narratives and Moral Foundations”, Psychological Inquiry 20 (2009): 110-19, doi: 10.1080/10478400903028573.

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Select Bibliography Greene, Joshua D. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. New York: Penguin Books, 2013. Haidt, Jonathan. “Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion”. In The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion. Edited by Jeffrey Schloss and Michael J. Murray. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, 278-291. —. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Vintage Books, 2012. Haidt, Jonathan, and Jesse Graham. “Planet of the Durkheimians. Where Community, Authority, and Sacredness are Foundations of Morality”. In Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification. Edited by John T. Jost, Aaron C. Kay, and Hulda Thorisdottir. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, 371-401. Ingram, Brett. “Critical Rhetoric in the Age of Neuroscience”. PhD dissertation. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2013. Jack, Jordynn. “‘The Piety of Degradation’: Kenneth Burke, the Bureau of Social Hygiene, and Permanence and Change”. Quarterly Journal of Speech 90.4 (2004): 446-468. Kövecses, Zoltán. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2010. Lakoff, George. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996, 2nd edition, 2002. —. The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and its Politics. New York: Penguin Books, 2009. McKay, Ryan, and Harvey Whitehouse. “Religion and Morality”. Psychological Bulletin 141.2 (2015): 447-73.

CHAPTER SIX PERSONAL AND COMMUNITY WELL-BEING: A WESLEYAN THEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR OVERCOMING PREJUDICE DAVID B. MCEWAN

This chapter argues that the spiritual and the social in well-being are interrelated and interdependent. Relationships are essential for individual and corporate flourishing. In the Christian community the love of God shared and experienced is the basis for spiritual welfare. In this regard, the theological and pastoral wisdom of John Wesley enables us to embrace and befriend the stranger, allowing us to overcome the fear of the “other” that arises from prejudice. Wesley believed that the “peacemaker” identified by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is precisely the type of person a multicultural and multi-faith society needs if there is to be genuine community. The obstacles raised by prejudice can only truly be overcome by forming actual friendships, not simply by gaining better information; it is a matter of the heart rather than the intellect that is critical in making a difference in social relationships.

Introduction Since 1948 the World Health Organisation has defined health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not simply as the absence of disease or infirmity.1 In recent years we have seen the rise of organisations and groups established to promote this vision of health under the label of “wellness”. Many wellness groups add spirituality to this definition, making it a holistic and multidimensional concept, with all the 1

Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948.

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aspects clearly interdependent. One of the critical elements in wellness for both personal and community flourishing is relational health. In Australia healthy relationships are under pressure from a wide range of factors, including domestic violence, child abuse, bullying and wide-ranging prejudice against those of a different social, economic, racial or religious background. Prejudice flourishes in an atmosphere of ignorance and distrust, whether that ignorance is due to personal choice or simply the lack of accessible and reliable information. This chapter focuses on the interrelationship of two critical components of well-being, the social and the spiritual. Working within a Christian framework, it explores how these two elements may be harnessed to overcome, or at least diminish, prejudice through enhancing our personal and community experience of wellness. We begin by defining and then briefly examining the various dimensions of wellness according to a number of influential popular websites, before turning our attention to the contribution that can be made by the Christian faith (specifically from a Wesleyan theological perspective). This has implications for our relationships with each other and how we deal with prejudice and the damage it causes to ourselves and to the community. After considering some of these relational implications, we examine how prejudice is intimately linked to our encounter with the “stranger” and the fear this so often brings. The final section of the chapter explores how the Christian practice of hospitality is the antidote to prejudice, and ways this can be exercised in the daily life of ordinary Australians who are intentional about being a “person of peace”.

The Definition/Dimensions of Wellness The term wellness has been understood in a wide range of ways and they have not always been complementary. In 2006 the World Health Organization published a review of glossary terms that defined wellness: Wellness is the optimal state of health of individuals and groups. There are two focal concerns: the realization of the fullest potential of an individual physically, psychologically, socially, spiritually and economically, and the fulfillment of one’s role expectations in the family, community, place of worship, workplace and other settings.2 2 B. Smith, K. Tang, and D. Nutbeam, “WHO Health Promotion Glossary: New Terms”, Health Promotion International, 21:4 (2006): 340, quoted in “Definitions of Wellbeing, Quality of Life and Wellness”, Faisal Barwais (28/02/2011), http://nwia.idwellness.org/2011/02/28/definitions-of-wellbeing-quality-of-life-andwellness/, accessed 11/09/2015. See also F. Oort, “Using Structural Equation

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The National Wellness Institute of Australia (NWIA) describes wellness as the active process through which the individual becomes aware of all aspects of the self and makes choices toward a more healthy existence through balance and integration across multiple life dimensions.3 The Live Life Well web site says it “emphasises the whole person through the integration of the body, mind, and spirit”.4 Most of the groups consulted nominated “between 6 to 8 factors that influence wellness, and they include such areas as the emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social and spiritual dimensions of life”.5 Each of Modelling to Detect Response Shifts and True Change”, Quality of Life Research 14:3 (2005): 587-598, quoted in http://nwia.idwellness.org/2011/02/28/definitionsof-wellbeing-quality-of-life-and-wellness/ accessed 18/09/2015. See also B. Lindström and B. Henriksson, “The Essence of Existence: On the Quality of Life of Children in the Nordic Countries”, International Journal of Social Welfare 5:2 (1996), 117-118; F. Oort, M. Visser, and M. Sprangers, “An Application of Structural Equation Modelling to Detect Response Shifts and True Change in Quality of Life Data from Cancer Patients Undergoing Invasive Surgery”, Quality of Life Research 14:3 (2005): 599-609. 3 See “Definitions of Well-being, Quality of Life, and Wellness”, “National Wellness Institute of Australia”, accessed 11/09/2015, http://nwia.idwellness.org/defining-wellness/. A similar point is made by “American National Wellness Institute”, “National Wellness”, accessed 11/09/2015, http://www.nationalwellness.org/?page=Six_Dimensions; “University of California, Riverside”, “Wellness”, accessed 11/09/2016, https://wellness.ucr.edu/seven_dimensions.html. 4 See “Live Life Well”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://livelifewell.co/category/wellness/. 5 See “University of New Hampshire”, “Social Wellness”, accessed 10/09/2015, http://www.unh.edu/health-services/ohep/social-wellness lists 8 factors: emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social and spiritual. “Curtin University”, “Your Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://hr.curtin.edu.au/wellness/your_wellness/index.cfm lists 7 dimensions of wellness: physical, emotional, spiritual, social, environmental, occupational, and intellectual accessed 18/09/2015. “University of California Riverside”, “Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, https://wellness.ucr.edu/social_wellness.html, includes social, emotional, spiritual, environmental, occupational, intellectual and physical wellness. “Live Life Well”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://livelifewell.co/category/wellness/wellness_life/wellness_aspects.php, has 9 aspects: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, intellectual, financial, occupational, and environmental “Etan Z”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://www.seekingwholeness.com/terms-definitions/the-eight-dimensions-ofwellness, has 8 dimensions of wellness: emotional, environmental, intellectual, occupational, physical, social (including interpersonal and multicultural), spiritual, and vocational.

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these dimensions acts and interacts in ways that contribute to the overall quality of life, both personally and relationally.6 Of particular importance is the way that we live together in community and how this influences not only our own personal wellness, but that of the group as a whole. According to the Curtin University HR Department, social wellness is the positive effect people have on your mental and physical well-being. It is based on experiencing positive relationships with family, friends and colleagues, how well you interact with your community, and how your network of relationships supports your quality of life.7 In a similar vein, the University of California Riverside defines it as the ability to relate to and connect with other people in our world.8 They strongly emphasise that people are more likely to flourish if they hold to these tenets: it is better to contribute to the common welfare of our community than to think only of ourselves; it is better to live in harmony with others and our environment than to live in conflict with them.9 The University of New Hampshire lists a number of critical components that they consider must be present for people and communities to experience social wellness. This includes being able to build relationships with others, deal appropriately with conflict and connect to a positive social network. People need to be true to themselves as they engage with other people in the community, no matter the situation being faced. This requires valuing diversity and treating others with respect as the person continually works at maintaining and developing friendships and social networks. They must be able to create appropriate boundaries within their relationships; that actually encourages communication and builds trust, so that they are able to resolve the conflicts that inevitably arise. Finally, people need to have a supportive network of family and friends.10 Curtin University says spiritual wellness is often referred to as the degree to which our personal values, beliefs, principles, morals and/or 6

See “University of California, Riverside”, “Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, https://wellness.ucr.edu/social_wellness.html. 7 See “Curtin University”, “Your Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://hr.curtin.edu.au/wellness/your_wellness/index.cfm. 8 See “University of California, Riverside”, “Wellness”, accessed 11/09/2015, https://wellness.ucr.edu/seven_dimensions.html. 9 See “University of California, Riverside”, “Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015 https://wellness.ucr.edu/social_wellness.html. 10 See “University of New Hampshire”, “Social Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://www.unh.edu/health-services/ohep/social-wellness.

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religious beliefs provide a purpose for, and operate harmoniously in our lives.11 According to the University of New Hampshire, the human spirit is the most neglected aspect of our selves. A strong spirit helps us to survive and thrive with grace, even in the face of difficulty. This involves finding meaning in life, and living a life that reflects our values and beliefs.12 While none of the websites consulted dealt with religious belief explicitly, many of them did point out the value of meditation and reflection. The Christian faith clearly deals with the matters listed by the websites, and does so in a holistic framework, including a long tradition of prayer, meditation and spiritual renewal.

The Path to Social Wellness The clear implication from the understanding of wellness given above is that the health of a society is intimately related to the health of the persons in the society and vice versa; you cannot have a healthy society if the people in it are disconnected from each other by cultural or religious prejudice caused by ignorance and fear. For people to improve in social wellness, they must see the value of living in harmony with others, actively working at positive, interdependent relationships with each other by developing healthy personal and social behaviours. It requires a willingness to actively seek out ways to explore diversity by interacting with people of other cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs.13 According to the Live Life Well website, the art of social wellness is tied to the art of social communication. 11

See “Curtin University”, “Your Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://hr.curtin.edu.au/wellness/your_wellness/spiritualwellness.cfm; “Life Live Well”, “Spiritual Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://livelifewell.co/category/wellness/wellness_spiritual/wellness_spiritual.php; “Seeking Wholeness”, “The Definition of Spiritual Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://www.seekingwholeness.com/terms-definitions/the-definition-ofspiritual-wellness; “Move Toward Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, “What is Wellness?” http://movetowardwellness.com/what-is-wellness/spiritual-wellness. 12 See “University of New Hampshire”, “Spiritual Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://unh.edu/health-services/ohep/spiritual-wellness. 13 “University of California, Riverside”, accessed 18/09/2015, https://wellness.ucr.edu/social_wellness.html. See also “Seeking Wholeness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://www.seekingwholeness.com/terms-definitions/thedefinition-of-social-wellness; Paul Bizjak, “Move Toward Wellness”, “What is Spiritual Wellness?” accessed 18/09/2015, http://movetowardwellness.com/whatis-wellness/social-wellness.

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Human beings tend to survive and thrive better in groups than in isolation. We are deeply influenced by others, and we learn about the world around us through experiences that we share with other people.14

All forms of social communication (speech, text, image, action), whether in a face-to-face encounter or via some type of technology (such as email, texting, or video chat like Skype), expose us and make us vulnerable to others in a range of ways. As with so many other things in life, social wellness requires effort and skills that can be developed and cultivated over time. We need to learn the social skills to develop a good support system as we pursue deep, meaningful, positive interactions and relationships with others. This is not limited to fostering a general connection with those around us at the moment: social wellness also requires cultivating a range of intimate and supportive relationships throughout life.15 The Live Life Well website adds the caution that it is nearly impossible to achieve perfect relationships because humans are flawed creatures, with brain–emotional imperfections. In the light of this fact, they identify trust as one of the most important parts of any healthy relationship. Without trust, the relationship will be unstable and shallow. If there are misunderstandings and conflicts without trust many will withdraw or limit their involvement with others. Trust between two people needs to be earned and not simply expected. Building trust in a relationship is about being honest, dependable, trustworthy and loyal.16 This is where the Christian faith can make a strong and positive contribution to the formation and development of a healthy society. The personal and community resources that come to us through Jesus Christ and the long heritage of the Christian church are invaluable in fostering such trustworthy relationships. Given the importance of both social and spiritual wellness for human flourishing, we turn now to a specifically Wesleyan framework for engaging with the social realities we face in Australian society today. 14 “Live Life Well”, “The Art of Social Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://livelifewell.co/category/wellness/wellness_social/wellness_social_the_art.ph p. 15 “Live Life Well”, “The Art of Social Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://livelifewell.co/category/wellness/wellness_social/wellness_social.php. 16 “Live Life Well”, “The Art of Social Wellness”, accessed 18/09/2015, http://livelifewell.co/category/wellness/wellness_social/wellness_social.php

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A Wesleyan Theological Framework John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism, believed that God’s essential nature is love and that all other aspects of his nature and character must flow from, and be in harmony with, this core affirmation. This is seen in the Trinitarian life of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, where each person of the Godhead relates intimately to the others in an eternal communion of love.17 Consequently, if human beings are created in the image of God, it must mean that we too are persons who are intended to live in communion with each other, not in social isolation or alienation. For to this end was man created, to love God; and to this end alone, even to love the Lord his God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. But love is the very image of God: it is the brightness of his glory. By love man is not only made like God, but in some sense one with him ... Love is perfect freedom ... Love is the health of the soul (emphasis mine), the full exertion of all its powers, the perfection of all its faculties.18

It was this belief that gave him the confidence that he had correctly understood the nature of the Christian faith: According to [the Bible] it lies in one single point: it is neither more nor less than love—it is love which “is the fulfilling of the law”, “the end of the commandment”. Religion is the love of God and our neighbour. ... This love, ruling the whole life, animating all our tempers and passions, directing all our thoughts, words, and actions, is “pure religion and undefiled”.19

Love is a relational quality and it is the relationship of holy love that defines the essence of human personhood.20 In Wesley’s sermons on the 17

John Wesley, The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984-), Vol. 4: Sermons IV, Albert Outler, ed., (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987), 556 (hereafter cited as Works). See also John Telford, ed., The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, 8 vols. (London: Epworth Press, 1931), 6:136 (hereafter Letters (Telford)). In one of his last sermons (“On the Wedding Garment”, March 1790) Wesley returned to the theme of the love of God and its transforming power, and it marked the close of the theological explication that had begun with “The Circumcision of the Heart” in 1733; see Works, 4:139-48. 18 Works 4: 356. 19 Works 3: 189. See also Works, 2: 462-63, 470; 3: 22, 99, 117, 292-307; 4: 57, 66-67; 23: 38, 125. 20 Works 4: 355. See also: Works 1: 184, 581.

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Sermon on the Mount he observes that religion is not just a matter of the heart because the images of “salt”, “light” and “city” imply an outward life with others: “Christianity is essentially a social religion, and that to turn it into a solitary one is to destroy it”.21 He goes on to explain this further: “When I say this is essentially a social religion, I mean not only that it cannot subsist so well, but that it cannot subsist at all without society, without living and conversing with other men”.22 We need other people if we are to become truly meek, make peace or do good, etc. In the light of this, he warned his people: “let love not visit you as a transient guest, but be the constant ruling temper of your soul”.23

Love and Relationships Very early in the development of the Methodist movement, Wesley defined what he understood to be the essential qualities of a Methodist: A Methodist is one who has “the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him”; one who “loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength”. … And he accordingly “loves his neighbour as himself”; he loves every man as his own soul. His heart is full of love to all mankind, to every child of “the Father of the spirits of all flesh”.24

This love was not just an emotion or feeling, it involved attitudes, actions and intentions. The content of this love is then defined by God’s nature and activities, particularly as they are revealed to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.25 We are then able to experience this divine love through a relationship with Christ, and that love then flows into every other relationship we have. It is important to note that to receive and return God’s love is to be formed by that bond: Loving relationships in this context are inherently transformational; you cannot remain the same if you are in genuine, loving connection with another because of an authentic desire to please them through shared 21

Works 1: 533. Works 1: 533-34. See also Wesley, Works 1: 537. 23 Works 3: 422. See also pp. 425-26. 24 Works 9: 35, 37. 25 Wesley paints a picture of this life of Christ and consequently that of the Christian in a series of sermons under the general title of “Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount”. Of particular importance are the sermons dealing with the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-12). See Works 1: 473ff. 22

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Accordingly, Methodists are to do good to all people without discrimination, and this involves providing for their physical, spiritual and relational needs.27 They were to treat rich and poor alike, and to be especially careful about not neglecting, or treating with less respect, the poor.28 Wesley believed that God will not excuse a deficiency in some duties simply because we do well in others: “performing our duty to God will not excuse us from our duty to our neighbour [emphasis mine]; that works of piety, as they are called, will be so far from commending us to God if we are wanting in charity…”.29 He went so far as to say that caring for others was vital: Thus should he show his zeal for works of piety; but much more for works of mercy; seeing “God will have mercy and not sacrifice”—that is, rather than sacrifice. Whenever, therefore, one interferes with the other, works of mercy are to be preferred. Even reading, hearing, prayer are to be omitted, or to be postponed, “at charity’s almighty call”—when we are called to relieve the distress of our neighbour, whether in body or soul.30

Being involved in the lives of others was not always a positive experience and was easily neglected because it requires a personal decision to begin and maintain a friendship, especially when there are difficulties to be overcome. Wesley was very conscious of this and admitted that: “indeed it is hard for any to persevere in so unpleasing a work unless love overpowers both pain and fear”.31 It is significant that he recognises how authentic Christian love makes the person vulnerable to the words and actions of the “neighbour” and this can easily bring personal hurt and distress. The response can then so easily be withdrawal or hostility. There is nothing automatic about relationships and every relationship has to be worked at, including those within the Christian church. 26

David B. McEwan, The Life of God in the Soul: The Integration of Love, Holiness and Happiness in the Thought of John Wesley (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2015), 4. 27 Works 9: 72. 28 Works 10: 211. 29 Works 1: 493. 30 Albert C. Outler and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds., “On Zeal” in John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991), 469. 31 Works 2: 314.

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Encountering the “Other”: Prejudice and the Stranger The two dimensions of social wellness and spiritual wellness come together when considering a Christian response to the prejudice commonly displayed in a multicultural and multi-faith community. Australia is certainly a diverse nation in terms of ethnicity, language and religion. For example, the city of Logan in SE Queensland (where I pastor) has 217 ethnicities represented in its 305,110 residents.32 About 26% of the population was born overseas, and 11% came from non-English speaking backgrounds.33 Some 12.8% of the population do not speak English at home.34 In terms of religion, the largest single group is Christian (31.4%), with both Islam and Buddhism being less than 1% each.35 With such diversity, ethnic and religious tensions between the longer-established residents and the newcomers, between the dominant culture and the minority ones, can be found within the city. This same point can be made for almost all Australian communities, whether large or small, urban or rural. Kent Brower reminds us: Heretofore dominant societies are under threat as power is eroded through the impact of globalisation and migration. Socially constructed assumptions about shared history and shared experience no longer convince. In these circumstances, boundaries become more prominent and social cohesion is diminished. Visible minorities in particular are “othered”. They then choose an identity that isolates them even further from what was once the host culture.36

This is certainly true for communities in Australia as we continue to debate our “story”, and particularly the place of the original inhabitants, the role of the United Kingdom as a coloniser, and the subsequent migration from all parts of the globe that has dramatically increased the diversity of our 32 Accessed 23/09/2015, http://www.logan.qld.gov.au/about-logan/living-inlogan/statistics-and-facts. The largest ancestry groups represented are, in order, English, Australian, Aboriginal, Irish, Scots and German. Then we have Maori, New Zealander, Samoan and Chinese. 33 Largest change in birthplace countries of the population are New Zealand, India, Philippines and Myanmar. Accessed 23/09/2015, http://profile.id.com.au/logan/birthplace. 34 Accessed 23/09/2015, http://profile.id.com.au/logan/language. The largest language group is Samoan. 35 Accessed 23/09/2015, http://profile.id.com.au/logan/religion. 36 Kent Brower, “Living as Holy People in a Post-Christian Age”, The Frederick Coutts Memorial Lecture, 21 August 2015; private paper, 12-13.

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nation. How then might we foster genuine loving relationships between such a diverse range of peoples and communities from a Christian perspective?

The Fear of the “Other” and Estrangement: Dealing with Prejudice In John Wesley’s correspondence we see how much he was concerned with faithful relationships and ministry in the local community and one of his deepest convictions is that love for God and love for neighbour are interdependent; you really can’t have one without the other. The “neighbour” is not limited to those who share a common relational network or even community space, it embraces the whole human race, including those with whom we have no natural affinity and those who would do us harm. Much of his correspondence dealt with theological and pastoral issues that may not seem to have much relevance for us today. However, if we substitute a different ethnicity, culture, language, religion, or sexual orientation for the theological or pastoral issue in Wesley’s correspondence, the importance of his words for our situation is readily apparent. Wesley recognised that good people would always hold differing opinions on a wide range of Christian beliefs and practices, including matters of doctrine, worship practice and lifestyle. In many areas we find common ground across the denominational spectrum but in others we are divided, sometimes amicably and sometimes not. This easily leads to separation and a failure to cooperate for the greater welfare of the community. Wesley noted how this is clearly demonstrated by the wide range of opinions on the meaning and application of the Bible, … especially with respect to those parts thereof which less immediately relate to practice. Hence even the children of God are not agreed as to the interpretation of many places in Holy Writ; nor is their difference of opinion any proof that they are not the children of God on either side. But it is a proof that we are no more to expect any living man to be infallible than to be omniscient.37

Different interpretations lead to different judgements and actions, which in turn impacts our relationship with others, and what we believe about them

37

Works 2: 102.

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or how we act towards them. Does this then mean that all our relationships are destined to be unhealthy? Wesley’s answer to these problems can be illustrated through the Methodist controversy with the Calvinists that reignited in 1770. He told Joseph Benson that very little is done in the world by clear reason: “Passion and prejudice govern the world, only under the name of reason”.38 However, he recognised that to simply focus on reason, logic and argumentation was to ultimately fracture the church. He told Richard Conyers, an evangelical Anglican vicar, that if the Calvinists and the Arminians were to be reconciled, then God must first change the hearts of the Calvinists.39 We could add that God might also need to change the hearts of the Methodists! In other words, irrespective of who believed their belief and practice was “right”, the only real way to reconcile such bitterly divided groups was to change the heart—which is concerned with love and healthy relationships—rather than winning an argument. For how far is love, even with many wrong opinions, to be preferred before truth itself without love? We may die without the knowledge of many truths and yet be carried into Abraham’s bosom. But if we die without love, what will knowledge avail? 40

Wesley did not think that all Christians would agree with him theologically, either in methodology or doctrinal opinions, but this did not necessitate a break in Christian fellowship.41 He acknowledged that: … although a difference in opinions or modes of worship may prevent an entire external union, yet need it prevent our union in affection? Though we can’t think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt we may.42

Further, Wesley noted that many problems arose because of misunderstandings rather than actual disagreements.43 He thought that you 38

Letters (Telford) 5 :203. Works 23: 43. 40 Works 1: 107. See also Works 9 :84-85; 26 :223; Letters (Telford) 4 :158. 41 See Works 19: 152-53, 281; 26: 419; Letters (Telford) 4: 244; 5: 98. 42 Works 2: 82. See his plea for co-operation amongst evangelical clergy in Works 7: 736; 11: 321; 21: 444, 54-61; Letters (Telford) 3: 182-83; 4: 216. 43 Works 1: 451-52. This was from “The Lord our Righteousness”, written in 1765 to deal with the increasingly bitter disputes between the Calvinists and the Arminians over the nature and relationship of justification, imputed and imparted 39

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could differ in opinions and expressions and still exercise the same faith and experience the same love of God: It is true believers may not all speak alike; they may not all use the same language ... But a difference of expression does not necessarily imply a difference of sentiment. Different persons may use different expressions, and yet mean the same thing.44

This does not mean ignoring differences or pretending they don’t exist; nor does it mean being one thing in public settings and another in private conversations. It should be a central feature of Christian (let alone Wesleyan) spirituality today that we keep the primary focus on love and relationship by looking for ways to work together rather than focusing on the inevitable differences of opinion and looking for ways to separate. This can be illustrated from a series of letters he wrote to the Reverend Gilbert Boyce (a Baptist pastor) dealing with the issue of strongly held opinions, especially on the mode and conditions for baptism. These had become a source of division within the Church, and therefore harmed both its witness and its fellowship. Wesley believed that a difference of opinion between himself and Boyce need not cause a break, even though neither was likely to change his views. He affirms that God’s primary focus is our salvation, and “To this immediate end of renewing each soul in love, and the whole mind which was in Christ, he has pointed out several means, many of which we cannot use, at least not fully, without joining together”. Elsewhere Wesley says that he does not believe the “mode of baptism” is “necessary to salvation”, or even baptism at all (otherwise the Quakers are damned) and trying to persuade someone of a particular mode of baptism is poor employment. It is far better “by the grace of God, in persuading them to love God with all their hearts, and their neighbour as themselves”.45 In a similar vein, he told Mrs. Turner: righteousness. Wesley admitted this was a critical issue which lay right at the heart of Christianity and all Christians surely ought to agree here—see pp. 450-51. See also Letters (Telford) 3: 371-88. The public nature of the dispute within Methodism can be traced back as far as 1740; see Works 19: 174. 44 Works 1: 454. See also Works 11: 73. On his positive approach to Roman Catholics, see Works 20: 200. For further background on Wesley’s approach to Roman Catholicism, see David Butler, Methodists and Papists: John Wesley and the Catholic Church in the Eighteenth Century (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1995); David M. Chapman, In Search of the Catholic Spirit: Methodists and Roman Catholics in Dialogue (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2004), 6-43. 45 Works 26: 425-26.

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The kingdom of God is not opinions (how right so ever they be), but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost … Shall we for opinions destroy the work of God, or give up love, the very badge of our profession? Nay, by this shall men know that we belong to the Lover of Souls, to Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.46

He was adamant that we ought to love people even when they hold (in his opinion) erroneous views.47 His decision to break with Calvinistic Methodism was not initially over their “opinions” but over the divisions they caused in the societies (a clear demonstration of a lack of love). Wesley was content for both Arminians and Calvinists to be Methodists as long as they did not engage in bitter disputes that led to separation.48 The same attitude was seen in his break with the Moravians in London who upheld the doctrine of stillness.49 Wesley strongly affirmed: “It is the glory of the people called Methodists that they condemn none for their opinions or modes of worship. They think and let think, and insist upon nothing but faith working by love”.50 When he asks about how the work of God is progressing in a place, his key questions are: “Do they love one another? Are they all of one heart and soul? Do they build one another up in the knowledge and love of our Lord Jesus Christ?”51 I believe his advice has an application well beyond the inter- and intra-church disputes of his own day (or even of our day), and offers a genuine framework for dealing with prejudice in a wide range of situations.

Welcoming the “Other”: The Practice of Hospitality As we have seen, one of the great hindrances to forming any new relationship or deepening a casual friendship is prejudice. One of Wesley’s correspondents, Miss March, had told him about her poor relationship with several local preachers because of her prejudice. In reply Wesley said: 46

Letters (Telford) V: 339. He shared with her the example of his own relationship with George Whitefield and Richard Hill, both staunch Calvinists; see Letters (Telford) V: 340. 47 Works 26: 198. 48 See Works XIX: 184-89, 231-32, 332-33; 20: 66-68, 118, 30, 306, 18, 81-82, 456, 66; Letters (Telford) V: 90. See also his letters to John Newton in Letters (Telford) 4: 297-300; 5: 7-8. 49 See, for example, Works XIX: 191. 50 Letters (Telford) VII: 190. For Wesley’s understanding of opinions in relationship to essential doctrines, see Works XXV: 573; 26: 160. 51 Works 25: 582.

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Chapter Six If one grain of prejudice be in my mind, I can receive no profit from the preacher. Neither in this case can I form a right judgement of anything a person says or does. And yet it is possible this prejudice may be innocent, as springing from the unavoidable weakness of human understanding.52

He sees prejudice as a being harmful to her relationships because she has already formed an unfavourable judgement about the possibilities of the connection and that prevents an openness to them making a positive contribution to her life. This will inevitably lead to discounting or rejecting their words and actions, and often attributing hostile motives to their stance. Notice here the critical link between what we understand about people and our subsequent response to them. According to Wesley, such prejudice is not in itself inherently evil; it only becomes so when we wilfully persist in it by rejecting further knowledge.53 For Wesley, the core issue in prejudice is our imperfect knowledge of the “other” (whether God or neighbour), and consequently we speak and act in ways that harm the relationship—sometimes unintentionally and sometimes deliberately. This limited or faulty knowledge can be overcome through formal and informal learning opportunities and by personal engagement with the individual or group concerned. It is the refusal to be open to change that does the damage and robs both parties of a potentially richer future together. We see this in a letter to Lady Maxwell where Wesley explained that while prejudice is common to all, it will not damage a relationship unless it becomes fixed in the mind, and this is not changed simply by an increased understanding as it also involves the heart. He believed we cannot be prejudiced against any that we love till that love declines.54 Accordingly, he wrote to Henry Moore and advised him that the only way he can fix his troubled relationship with Arthur Keene is to “conquer him by love”.55 He gives similar advice to Mrs. Bradburn: “Look kindly on them that have wronged you most. Speak civilly, yea affectionately, to them; they cannot stand it long … I have set my heart upon you being a happy woman and overcoming all your enemies by love”.56 When defending against personal attacks Wesley said that “those who plead the cause of the God of love, are to imitate Him they serve; and however provoked, to use no other weapons

52

Letters (Telford) VI: 113. Letters (Telford) VI: 113. 54 Letters (Telford) IV: 317. 55 Letters (Telford) VIII: 63. See also Letters (Telford) VIII: 22. 56 Letters (Telford) VII: 307. 53

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than those of truth and love, of Scripture and reason”.57 Wesley’s advice is needed even more when we are dealing with people from a different culture, race, religion, or language group. Our modern electronic communication systems carry the danger of removing us from actual physical connection with the “neighbour” and we rely on the media for our “information” about the beliefs and practices of the “other”. Various media give us pictures, sound bites and brief text messages that are disconnected from the full reality of the person or group, and always reflect the perspectives and prejudices of author, broadcaster, blogger or texter. To the degree that their presentation aligns with our own perspectives and prejudices, we are confirmed in our friendship, indifference, fear or hostility. We, then, speak and act accordingly, especially when we actually meet a person from this community. It is very easy to say you love humanity in the abstract, or even to say you love someone who is at a distance; the real test is what happens when you meet face-to-face. We can “love” the poor and dispossessed refugees overseas quite easily when seen on TV or other media, but what happens when we meet them on our street, shopping centre, workplace or our local church? We can easily talk about loving those who are “different” as long as they live, work or worship somewhere else; what happens when they become neighbours? In a recent blog Rebecca Florence Miller writes: “We are, all of us, racists. This is a human problem, of course, the problem of ‘otherizing’ one another”.58 Very few people, let alone those who are Christian, freely admit to racial, cultural, lifestyle or religious prejudice and it is often only when we are confronted by the physical presence of the “other” that we become strongly aware of all the negative feelings they stir up and expose. Sometimes it is much easier to allow the government or church regulations to set up “barriers” that exclude the stranger, and thereby limiting genuine love and friendship. The challenge is to become open to forming new 57

John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley. 14 vols., 3rd ed., ed. Thomas Jackson. London: Wesleyan Methodist Book Room, 1872, reprint, (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1979), 10: 413. Wesley himself did not always observe this; see Outler, n. 86, on his rather strong and personal condemnation of Augustus Toplady in Works XXII: 474. 58 Rebecca Florence Miller, “Patriots (Not Pinheads) and the Right Side of History: Racism and Self-Justification”, September 15, 2015, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rebeccaflorencemiller/2015/09/patriots-notpinheads-and-the-right-side-of-history-racism-and-self-justification/, accessed 15/09/2015.

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relationships in the community and workplace, as well as deepening our existing ones. Our struggles to do this because of prejudice, misunderstanding, and faulty judgement uncover the true state of our heart and just how passionate we really are about loving God and neighbour. If love is the key to reconciliation and flourishing relationships, we need to be intentional about countering personal and community prejudice. The only real answer to exclusion is hospitality and Edwina Hine reminds us that Hospitality was to be the mark of the early Christian Church as well as the modern Church. Hospitality is not just a token optional extra, it is a core identity marker. For members of the church, hospitality should be a way in which they we are contrasted with the surrounding community. Hospitality is not to be shown just to powerful persons and visitors to create beneficial networks, we should be focused on hosting and helping those who do not have the means to show kindness in return”.59

Mary Jo Leddy believes that “A people who have been shaped by the biblical tradition … are called to welcome the stranger as we would welcome God in our midst”.60 As Christians, we would not want to limit welcoming God into our lives just at mealtimes, so the biblical understanding of hospitality is not merely hosting a meal but about welcoming the stranger into every area of life, both personally and communally. Perhaps Wesley’s most extended pastoral correspondence was with Miss J. C. March, a woman of wealth and education who struggled to associate with the “poor” in her community because of her deeply-held prejudice about them. Wesley had told her that she would not progress in her own spiritual life without a hands-on ministry to them. However, not the poor as a “project” but the poor as real friends. She struggled with this requirement because she was rich and refined, and the poor were “offensive” to her. She was quite willing to pay for others to minister to them, or to have limited contact herself, but not to go amongst them on a 59

Edwina Hine, “Welcoming the Stranger: The Relationship of Terrorism, Immigration and Hospitality”, 4 February, 2015, http://andjustincase.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/welcoming-stranger-relationshipof.html accessed 18/09/2015. See also Erin Goheen Glanville, “Beyond Debt and Economy: Reclaiming Prophetic Hospitality for Refugees”, Case Magazine 38 (2014): 10-14. 60 Mary Jo Leddy, At the Border Called Hope: Where Refugees Are Neighbors (Toronto: Harper Collins, 1997), 275, quoted in Glanville, “Welcoming the Stranger”, 11.

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regular basis and actually cultivate a friendship. It is in this context that Wesley tells us her to engage with the poor as friends and members of the body of Christ, not merely as objects of her prayers and charity: I have found some of the uneducated poor who have exquisite taste and sentiment; and many, very many, of the rich who have scarcely any at all. But I do not speak of this: I want you to converse more, abundantly more, with the poorest of the people, who, if they have not taste, have souls, which you may forward in their way to heaven. And they have (many of them) faith and the love of God in a larger measure than any persons I know. Creep in among these in spite of dirt and an hundred disgusting circumstances, and thus put off the gentlewoman. Do not confine your conversation to genteel and elegant people. I should like this as well as you do; but I cannot discover a precedent for it in the life of our Lord or any of His Apostles.61

He allows that this is not “natural” to her and certainly not her “preference”—any more than it was for Wesley himself. He urged her to persevere in the face of her dislike because it would take time and effort to cultivate a new set of social and communication skills that would enable her to relate to the poor with integrity. It is the depth of love experienced that gives the person a resilience in the face of discouragement, willing to persevere in the face of initial rebuff and work through the vulnerabilities exposed by the develop relationship. It is vital to see that friendships must involve genuine, lasting connections in the everyday routines of life at work, at school, at play and in the local neighbourhood, not just at special events or on special occasions. If we are to persevere in establishing and then building a relationship with the stranger, we need to be deeply convinced of the value of living in harmony with others on a personal and community level. It takes deliberate intention to build bridges of friendship that enable genuine and inclusive community rather than building barriers to exclude and isolate them. It is always more comfortable to disengage from those who are different (and we can always find “good reasons” to do so), but it inevitably leads to the ghettoisation of the stranger, and that only further fuels misinformation, distrust and fear, if not outright hostility.

61

Wesley, Letters (Telford) VI: 206-7.

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The Importance of Being a Person of Peace From the sources consulted, it is apparent that living in a harmonious community promotes well-being for both the individual and the community. A start can certainly be made by being positive in the casual relationships of life—the person serving in a shop, the person next to us on the train, sharing small talk while waiting in a queue, sharing a compliment about service received. However, real change takes much more than this and we need people in our communities who are willing to give the time and energy required to make a lasting difference. It means that we must be committed to actively seek ways to nourish a personal relationship with all who form part of our social, work, school and sporting networks, as well as our local community. This means that we must be actively involved in reaching out to the “stranger”, genuinely offering them hospitality and cultivating the relationship without the hidden agenda of seeking to make them Christian, and then discarding them if they prove to be unresponsive. Wesley explicitly makes the point that the only genuine and lasting motive that will enable such a life of actively seeking and building relationships with the stranger is the love of God experienced and shared without discrimination. While social and communication skills are immensely valuable, without the motivation of love, they can easily become depersonalised encounters. For Wesley, it requires the spiritual resources freely given by God to all who will receive them to enter into such relationships, not merely good intentions or a sense of duty prompted by personal or community standards. In his opinion, you cannot separate the quality of a person’s spiritual life from the quality of their social life. It is by a physical, shared relationship, walking and talking together, sharing experiences and meals together, and serving together that enables the barriers of “otherness” and fear to be broken down. We need to act with a clear intention to build bridges rather than walls, and this is made explicit in the picture of the “peacemaker” taken from his exposition of Matthew 5:9 (“Blessed are the peacemakers”). The peacemaker is one that being filled with the love of God and of all mankind cannot confine the expressions of it to his own family, or friends, or acquaintances, or party; or to those of his own opinions; no, nor those who are partakers of like precious faith; but steps over all these narrow bounds that he may do good to every man; that he may some way or other manifest his love to neighbours and strangers, friends and enemies.62 62 Works I: 518. This is one of a series of 13 sermons on “The Sermon on the Mount”; see Works I: 466-698.

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This emphasises that the nature of divine love inherently excludes particularity and insularity, and consequently a person experiencing this love could do no other than share it with equal generosity. Since the Sermon was directed to all the followers of Christ, Wesley expected that it would be true for all Christians and not just a gifted group of them. As we see from the preceding material, he recognised that actually engaging and fostering such relationships was never automatic. The “peacemaker” is one who intentionally moves beyond relationships with those who share a common bond to engage with those who are from a very different background, and may even be hostile. It is a “stepping over” the boundaries set by custom, culture, race, religion or language to foster a friendship, rather than waiting for the “other” to come to them in their environment. Their clear intention is to build supportive networks, seeking to contribute to the welfare of the community and not merely their own comfort. Such a person clearly values diversity and is not threatened by the inevitable times of misunderstanding and conflicting ideas that will arise. Given the real differences that exist between people of different backgrounds, such hospitality involves finding healthy ways to deal with conflict so that the inevitable problems do not become barriers to maintaining and further developing the friendship. If love fills the heart, then we will seek to do this by offering forgiveness and actively seeking reconciliation. We will value the welfare of the “other” and not just our own, being willing to forgo some of our own preferences in order to foster the relationship (and this is equally true for our judgements of communities and organisations).

Conclusion The interrelationship and interdependence of the spiritual and the social in wellness is clearly upheld by the sources consulted. We need relationships with others if we are to flourish personally and corporately, and the resources to develop such relationships are intimately tied to our spiritual welfare. For those of us in the Christian community, it is explicitly the love of God experienced and shared that enables us to embrace the risk of befriending the stranger and motivates us to overcome the fear of the “other” that arises from prejudice. The theological and pastoral wisdom of John Wesley provides a rich framework for such a venture, and his advice “to the people called Methodists” still has relevance and practical application for us today. The love of God is inclusive, embracing and hospitable, and we are to be no less. However, this does not make it an automatic response on our part. All human relationships carry risk, and

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none more so than with people or communities that are very different from our own. To engage with them, to seek to build bridges of reconciliation rather than walls of exclusion, requires deliberate choice and action, even as it is the love of God that provides the motivation and resource. Wesley believed that the “peacemaker” identified by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is precisely the type of person a multicultural and multi-faith society needs if there is to be genuine community. Difference and diversity are a fact of life; it is what we do with them that is of prime importance. In such a setting, healthy friendships require time as well as opportunity. It takes time to establish and then demonstrate trustworthiness when the initial stance is distrust. People need to be disposed to try and see things from the perspective of the other so that the points of conflict do not lead to instant rejection and a withdrawal to our “safe community”. It requires a genuine receptivity to the ideas and values of the “stranger” and not an automatic rejection of everything that is different; if people don’t feel they can make a contribution to our life and to our community, then the engagement will remain superficial and patronising. The obstacles raised by prejudice can only truly be overcome by forming actual friendships, not simply by gaining better information; it is a matter of the heart rather than the intellect that is critical here. To build trust requires a willingness to be vulnerable, to be open to the other, before it is returned by the person or group with whom we are seeking to build a genuine friendship. It is love alone that will be able to keep connection and genuine friendship in the face of sharply different perspectives on life, enabling us to live together, work together, and play together even in the face of real differences and strong disagreements.

Select Bibliography Butler, David. Methodists and Papists: John Wesley and the Catholic Church in the Eighteenth Century. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1995. Chapman, David M. In Search of the Catholic Spirit: Methodists and Roman Catholics in Dialogue. Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2004. Glanville, Erin Goheen. “Beyond Debt and Economy: Reclaiming Prophetic Hospitality for Refugees”. Case Magazine 38 (2014): 10-14. Lindström, B., and B. Henriksson. “The Essence of Existence: On the Quality of Life of Children in the Nordic Countries”. International Journal of Social Welfare 5:2 (1996), 117-18.

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McEwan, David B. The Life of God in the Soul: The Integration of Love, Holiness and Happiness in the Thought of John Wesley. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2015. Oort, F., M. Visser, and M. Sprangers. “An Application of Structural Equation Modelling to Detect Response Shifts and True Change in Quality of Life Data from Cancer Patients Undergoing Invasive Surgery”. Quality of Life Research 14:3 (2005): 599-609. Outler, Albert C. and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991. Telford, John, ed. The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley. 8 vols. London: Epworth Press, 1931. Wesley, John. The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984). Edited by Albert Outler. Nashville: Abingdon, 1987.

CHAPTER SEVEN SOCIAL AND PERSONAL WELL-BEING UNDER LATE CAPITALISM: LAUDATO SI’ AND THE CHARACTER OF INTERCONNECTEDNESS ROBERT TILLEY

With debates over the Anthropic Principle, the increasing use of the term the “Anthropocene Age” to describe the period in which we live, issues such as climate change through to the advocacy of movements like Transhumanism, the role and status of humanity in the universe is a subject that is no longer simply the provenance of theology but is being discussed in the sciences and the ecological movement as well. What had once seemed to be rather rarefied subjects of discussion now are having an impact on politics and economics, especially at a global level. How are we to conceive of the well-being not just of people but also of animals and the earth—indeed, even of the cosmos itself? Such questions will prove problematic for modern thinking because answering them will necessitate a return to the subject of metaphysics. However, the exclusion of metaphysics has been a sine qua non for Modernity, especially in the field of politics and economics. But exactly what kind of metaphysics will emerge for this task? It is to this question that Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ speaks. The aim of this paper is both to clarify these matters and to press Francis’ insights further, doing so by way of a biblical cosmology wherein creation is a temple of God, earth is its Holy of Holies, and humanity is its priest.

Introduction We might begin with a thought experiment, an imaginary scenario to clarify the topic at hand. Imagine that you are a sentient being that has just come into existence perched, as it were, at the very edge of the universe

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looking inwards, billions of light years from earth. Conveniently so, you are also very long lived. You begin to travel with no destination in mind. As you journey through the universe you see many spectacular things: flashing meteors destroying whole planets; stars beginning to implode; stars that crunch down into a miniscule size; stars that become black holes; stellar explosions that seem to shake the universe itself! You journey through not just galaxies but constellations of galaxies! After a few million years or so these things, big as they are, spectacular as they are, no longer impress. One day, however, you are fascinated to see, far off in the distance, a planet of many colours. As you draw nearer, its beauty increases. Compared, that is, to all those rather ordinary dull-coloured planets you have become used to. As you draw closer your fascination grows. Then you land. Now imagine your utter astonishment when you see your first tree! “What is it?” you ask yourself, for you have never seen a life-form before in all your journey. But if one tree were not enough you see there are other trees, as well as flowers and grass. There are even things that move of their own volition: insects crawling and flying. One tree was enough to put in the shade (if you’ll pardon the pun) all those supernovas and to make the “infinite reaches of space” seem altogether insignificant— but many trees and flowers and insects! You then see your first animal, and it fills you not just with wonder but with fear as well for it is utterly unlike anything you have come across these many millions (or billions) of years. You explore some more and you see first a man, then a woman, then men and women, then whole towns of them, whole cities! What utterly fantastic place is this that you have chanced upon? Stunned and openmouthed you wander around. Even if you could speak what would you say? If you came to know our literature, then you would find the language you needed and you would say that you have found the Garden of Eden. You might even conclude that we are gods or something like a god, the very image of one perhaps. And you would not be far from wrong for, as this chapter explores, earth is the cosmic holy of holies! Your wonder might soon give way to an altogether different feeling, one of terror. You see how we abuse this Eden and each other and you ask yourself, “How is this possible? How can these gods act so wickedly towards each other, abuse those creatures under their care, and set out to

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destroy this place full of life and colour? How is it that they are so blind to what they are doing? Stranger still, how is it that they are not just blind but are blind to being blind?”

The Problem Stated If there is one question that affects us all it is the nature of the ecology of the commonwealth in which we live. What constitutes the system in which both the individual and the state will operate in an optimum way to the benefit of all concerned? How are we to conceive of the interconnectedness of the personal and the social and how will that shape the way we think about how the government and the economy should run? In recent years this question has become more complicated, for it is now argued that animals and the environment should also be included in these considerations and not just as lesser partners, as it were. The stronger and increasingly popular form of this position holds that just as there can be no real and neat division drawn between the individual and the social, nor can such a division be drawn between us and the rest of creation: everything is inextricably interconnected. An ontological egalitarianism now informs discussion on global (even cosmic) interconnectivity, especially so when this discussion turns on the well-being of all concerned—to an ecology that has an increasingly universal scope. This turn to a more universal ecology represents a profound change in the way in which politics and economics are to be thought about for it represents a return to the discipline of metaphysics. This is no minor issue; indeed it represents an implicit challenge to the modern project and that at it very roots. The problem is that metaphysics was a discipline that had, for all intents and purposes, been excluded from having any authoritative say in the realms of power and policy decisions in our global and secular world. The exclusion of metaphysics (especially any that has a transcendent and teleological character) has come to define the idea of a secular state proper. Discussion about the well-being of society and the state has come to be informed by anti-essentialist principles, in which the ostensible integrity of the autonomy of the individual is balanced by the authority of the state.1 Those positions that have any authority in the secular sphere have revolved around differing forms of utilitarianism versus a variety of deontological arguments in which appeals are made to 1

On the rejection of essence, see G. Mallett, Essentialism (Albany: SUNY, 1991).

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the mutually recognised authority of scientific findings. These are often expressed in statistical form, and/or to commonly held notions of empathy and affection. This may be something of a caricature, but one will look long and hard in the secular domain to find powerful arguments that are predicated upon the nature or essence proper of what it is to be human. In general, the only appeal made to a universal principle is the assertion that the freedom of an autonomous agent is the ideal by which a state should be guided in its regulatory laws.2 Now the arguments are changing and consequently it is not only human beings that are in the frame but animals and the environment as well. The question that needs now to be addressed is this: what kind of metaphysics will define the nature of the interconnectedness of all things, and how will this guide us in making decisions concerning the well-being of humans, animals, the environment and the cosmos? It is these issues that Pope Francis has addressed in his encyclical Laudato Si’. The pontiff located ecological matters within the context of a return to a specifically theological and yet universal cosmology, appealing to a general but not exclusively Christian audience. It is an exercise in natural theology that finds its fuller explanation and justification in the revealed and dogmatic theology of the Christian faith. The remainder of this chapter engages with Francis’ encyclical: clarifying where we are today on the issue, indicating how we might respond to the pope’s challenge in this period of late capitalism, and referring to a specifically biblical cosmology.

Late Capitalism It is always wise to clarify one’s terms and we will begin by defining what is meant by “capitalism”. First, it is not a synonym for doing business at a 2

The literature on this is vast but by way of a representative sample see: R. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni. Pr., 1977); idem, Justice for Hedgehogs (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2013); M. Nussbaum Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2013); J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). For an overview and, to my mind much neglected, critique of this political and ethical philosophy, see R. S. Devane, S. J., The Failure of Individualism (Dublin: Richview, 1948), and more recently C. Holloway, The Way of Life: John Paul II and the Challenge of Liberal Modernity (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008).

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profit or for the way in which markets operate: these are things that have and can operate outside of a capitalist economy. “Capitalism” refers to the value attached to money, thereby becoming abstracted from money and being informed by a logic that is self-referential and self-fructifying. This is oriented to an ideal of self-referential production (whether or not this ideal is realisable).3 The principal way in which this has been expressed (and denounced) has been labelled “usury”, the broader definition of which is the use of debt to create more capital from what was initially put into play. Whether investment is the same thing as usury, and whether all lending for a return larger than the principal is to be classed as usury, is beyond the scope of this paper.4 Rather what defines capitalism proper in the later stage of its historical development is the dominance of financial vehicles, oriented towards the value attendant upon capital, becoming selfjustifying and self-fructifying.5 There are “epochs” in the historical development in the rise of capitalism, reflecting the growing dominance of capital over other forms of industry, and markets. The beginning of modern capitalism in the mid to late Renaissance emerges in (a) the rise of the urban merchant class and the growing demand for credit, (b) the expansion of mercantile capitalism invigorated by exploration and colonialism, and (c) the progression from industrial to (what is often referred to as) the age of financial capitalism. Literally billions if not trillions of dollars of value can be created or destroyed overnight. This process has been facilitated by the rise of Information Technology (IT) and the development of financial vehicles

3

For an extended discussion on the definition of capitalism see G. Ingham, Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2008). Although he includes in his definition aspects that I would count as being secondary, nevertheless he follows Joseph Schumpeter in saying that speculative financial markets are “specific to capitalism” (ibid., 147). K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation: the Political and Economic Origins of our Time (Boston: Beacon, 2001, fp. 1944), captures well the points made here. 4 On these matters, see N. Jones, God and the Moneylenders (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); O. Langholm, The Legacy of Scholasticism in Economic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); B. McCall, The Church and the Usurers (Ave Maria, Florida: Sapientia Pr. of Ave Maria University, 2013). 5 See C. Franks He Became Poor: The Poverty of Christ and Aquinas’s Economic Teaching (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 49-53. Also see D. Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 years (New York: Melville House, 2012), 260, 360.

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that few have any hope of fully comprehending.6 With this culmination of developments, it is said, we have entered into the age of “late capitalism”. “Late capitalism” has something of a technical meaning in Marxist circles since the 1940s and one that came into prominence through the work of Ernest Mandel in the early 1970s.7 The term carries something of an eschatological sense in that it has been used to denote the final stage of capitalism, in which, having become global, it begins to implode under the weight of its own contradictions, as it were. However, I use the term “late capitalism” to refer to that stage in history in which capitalism draws closer to fully realising its nature, not in the least because it has attained to a global reach that informs the all-encompassing character of its social, political and economic relations. If capitalism does not at this moment define the nature of global interconnectedness, then it is very close to doing so. The term “late capitalism” refers to the way in which the relations that make up the global ecology—the relationships between peoples and between them, the environment, and other creatures—mirror the operation of the financial markets. The result is that the nature of the relationship between the economy and culture is no longer obscured but becomes clear to all. There is little in the foregoing paragraph that sits ill with the definition of late capitalism employed in the aforementioned Marxist theories. The difference, however, is that there is no inevitability about capitalism coming to an end by reason of its inherent contradictions. Rather is it held that if it is to be effectively opposed, it is necessary that we begin by presenting an alternative cosmology to that instantiated in and promulgated by capitalism. Such a cosmology is the biblical theological perspective intimated by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’. But in order to properly understand what the issues are and what the significance is of Francis’ encyclical, we need to grasp something more concerning the nature of our late capitalist age. The relationship between the economy and culture is most clearly expressed in the global dominance of an immanentistic and self-referential logic that is anti-essentialist and which renders all infinitely malleable.8 6 See D. Schiller, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System (London: Allen Lane, 2000); The House of Commons Treasury Committee, Financial Stability and Transparency: Sixth Report of Session 2007-8 (London: The Stationery Office Ltd. 2008), 35. 7 E. Mandel, Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1999, fp. in English 1973). 8 Many commentators refer to this cultural and economic condition as reflecting an epistemological anti-foundationalism that expresses itself in positing all as being

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A basic feature of capitalism is its drive to a global reach, dissolving all barriers and countenancing no borders: it is international in its scope and universal in its application.9 When it is said today that there really is no alternative to capitalism (only differing forms of capitalism, be it civilised, compassionate, or ruthless), it is because globalism is primarily understood by reference to all nations being players in the financial market. “Globalism” is primarily understood in relation to this internationally interconnected community, with an economy defined by a freedom that finds its locus and expression in the movement of capital and its “liquidity”.10 This term denotes the translatability of all things into the value of capital, a process defined and facilitated by the medium of the “virtual”. The term “liquid”, used to carry connotations of water flowing through material channels turning the turbines of industry, has now the sense of an electronic flow through a virtual medium. However, this medium has a minimum of attendant friction and opposition that might naturally characterise any other medium.11 It is this medium that is also said to be the principal means by which the world is united and interconnected. Being virtual, capital is able to realise its self-referential logic, becoming free of any restraints, and thus realise its goal of being

contingent and thus plastic and in a state of endless flux. See J. Gibbens, “Political Philosophy without Foundations and Anti-Foundational Politics”, in Political Issues for the Twenty-First Century, ed. D. Morland and M. Cowling (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 17-20, 39-40. Indeed, this anti-foundationalism/anti-essentialism informs the meaning of pluralism and in turn the meaning of contemporary liberalism in both cultural and economic spheres. Cf. R. Sennet’s The Culture of New Capitalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) with W. Galston’s The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 9 What is called by some “late capitalism” is by others referred to as neo-liberal economics, but the sense is the same: the accent is on the free movement of capital unhindered by any border or barrier whatsoever. See D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 66. See too P. Mirowski and D. Plehwe, The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009). 10 B. Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996). Globalism, Eichengreen writes, is characterised by the “ineluctable rise in international-capital mobility” (ibid., 186). 11 J. Mittelman (The Globalization Syndrome [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000], 126) observes that we now live in “a frictionless world of shared meanings” determined by the market.

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self-fructifying.12 The phenomenon of reflexivity becomes located within and thus determined by the character and logic of the virtual medium. Reflexivity in our relationships, art, markets, and financial speculation becomes increasingly located in the domain of algorithms and, thereby, is brought under the tutelage of the late capitalist economy.13 The same values relating to capital define what is valued in cultural spheres. There is a freedom to be whatever I want to be and, concomitantly, there is no nature proper to the self or sexuality. All is open, all is fluid, and all can be shaped to market and fashion demands. Because the state of all things is “liquid”, the virtual world best captures this and answers to our individual desires. All of this reflects the logic and operation of capital. The operation of capital necessitates the translation of all values into capital value, with the result that they are made “liquid” in the process and thus are able to be subsumed into the economy. Consequently, liquidity is promoted in everything from music to architecture and sexuality.14 In the economy and culture, the value of fluidity is opposed to “essentialism”, associated with dogma, rigidity, closure, and even authoritarianism. The culture and economy are in an inseparable reflexive relationship, knowing each other, preparing the way for the other, and even determining the other. This interconnectedness has become paradigmatic for how ecological matters have come to be understood. In previous epochs it had been argued that capitalism was not only compatible with standard moral values, but also conducive to these moral values. Capitalism came to be seen as not only compatible with freedom, but also necessary for freedom if it were to survive and flourish. In the process moral discourse itself changed. Whereas freedom was understood as answering to the dictates and restraints of morality—in that freedom described the necessary means to live a moral and just life and thereby attain the well-being of the individual and the social commonwealth— increasingly freedom becomes defined by the ability to fulfil an individual’s desires, be they ever so base. The very idea of what constitutes the good life, an orientation towards which one ought direct one’s freedom, has changed. Freedom had the sense of ordering oneself 12

“Money now is endless, capable of infinite multiplication and completely unreal”. It “financialises” the world. S. Das, Extreme Money (London: Portfolio, 2011), 43. 13 See L. Dormehl, The Formula (London: W. H. Allen, 2014). 14 Z. Bauman, Liquid Life (Cambridge: Polity, 2005); W. Simon Postmodern Sexualities (London: Routledge, 1996), 12-14.

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towards a virtuous life, one that was in accord with one’s proper nature as a rational creature. But, informed by an anti-essentialist logic, there is no nature proper to which freedom must answer. Consequently, freedom becomes an end in itself, synonymous with a will defined first and foremost by self-referential autonomy.15 The epochs in the historical development of capitalism can be identified by virtue of the clarity of its appearance: it no longer needs to pretend to be conducive to moral virtue while declaiming upon vice. The true character of capitalism has always been to see if one had not been blinded by the need to apologise for its character. For example, the capitalism of Adam Smith was “obscurantist” in that he argued that a natural empathy and sympathy in people would temper self-interest. We might think that the approach of his contemporaries, Mandeville and Hume, was less obscurantist than Smith’s. Their view was that vice was to be praised because it ensures not only freedom but also prosperity. Vice is good for business, the market, consumerism and the financial markets.16 As capitalism creates greater opportunities for the practice of vice and its indulgence, then it needs no justification or moral apology. So it is that in this late epoch capitalism needs no external justification; it is its own argument, standard of success, and telos. Late capitalism reveals itself as instantiating a thoroughly immanentistic logic. It is the practical philosophy of anti-essentialism and non-transcendence. Hence the character of global interconnectedness is revealed and it informs the way in which we conceive of global ecology. However, it is exactly this view that will increasingly be challenged with the reintroduction of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the arena in which the struggle against capitalism will take place and is currently being fought, as reflected in Laudato Si’.

15 On the history of the rise to dominance of the ideal of autonomy, see J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 16 On Machiavelli, Hobbes, Mandeville, Smith, Hume and others on this matter, see W. Adams, On Luxury (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2012), 147-53; D. Runciman, Political Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 457, 64-9. Runciman argues for hypocrisy being necessary for democracy and freedom. Probably the most boosterish of works arguing along these lines in the recent past is J. Twitchell’s Lead us into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). Twitchell even argues that indulgent consumption is good not only for the economy but for generating meaning (ibid., 45-6).

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Interconnectedness and Ecology “Interconnectedness” has been something of a buzzword since the 1990s and has been used in two apparently disparate disciplines: neo-liberal economics and contemporary environmentalism. “Interconnectedness” is a term that is frequently used to describe globalism. It pertains to how markets and cultures are robustly intertwined and is frequently employed in relation to computer technology. In the environmental movement, it refers to the fragile nature of the ecology of the world, especially in relation to the markets.17 It denotes the way in which things affecting one part of the globe affect all parts of the globe—as with anthropogenic climate change. It is climate change that brings to prominence the idea of interrelatedness in globalism and the environmental movement. Many think that the battle over what should constitute the character of the “global” is being fought. Are we at the dawn of a glorious new stage in capitalism, or are we at its setting? Is it late capitalism or the beginning of a new epoch of what some call “super capitalism”? 18 What will orient our approach to the world in which we live? How will we understand the reach and demands of ecology? “Ecology” might be thought of as a synonym for “interconnectedness” in that it refers to the relations between an organism and its environment (including other organisms). This interconnectedness functions by way of what we might call a reflective and reflexive homeostasis. By this is meant that the ecology of a system tends to a degree of self-regulatory oversight. The system functions with a feedback loop in which information is shared so that the system can ensure its optimum well-being.19 Because each part belongs to a whole, each part represents information that serves to regulate the whole. The meaning of these terms ought to be understood in the

17

On interconnectedness in and between ecology and economy, see T. Morton, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012). The essays in S. Jasanoff and M. Martello, eds., Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance (Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2004). C. Perrings “Ecology, Economics, and Ecological Economics”, Ambio 24.1 (1995): 60-4. 18 R. Reich, Supercapitalism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). 19 An influential book on ecology, which relates it to a closed system operating on a thoroughly immanent feed-back dynamic, is James Lovelock’s Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987 fp. 1979), 48-50, 124-6, 131.

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widest possible sense, but more representing an ideal and not always the actual state of affairs. Although the term “ecology” simply denotes the relationship of organism to environment, it is informed by the notion of an optimum relationship conducive to the mutual well-being of the organism and the environment. Not only is there often talk of balance and harmony, but also of fine-tuning so that everything works just right. The sense is that left alone the environment will work just fine, but when humanity intrudes things go awry. The same language of self-regulation, free of outside interference, is also used to argue for the autonomy of the market, free from State interference, and free to reach its optimum state of well-being. The market has its own specific ecology and functions best when it is left to regulate itself. If it is meddled with, then optimum homeostasis will not be reached. Although ostensibly opposed, in both the economic and environmental camps the logic of immanence informs the idea of interconnectedness. This clarifies the fundamental issue concerning ecology and interconnectedness: are we talking of a closed or open system? What kind of logic attends a closed or open system? How does that logic express itself both culturally and economically? Is the ecological system self-regulating, self-fructifying, or self-explanatory? Is it, in other words, like the operation of capital? Is ecology to be understood by way of an immanent or transcendentally oriented system? If transcendent, what part of the system serves as the locus proper by which what is “other” to the system interacts with the system itself, or does what is “other” act upon each part equally and immediately so? How are we to see the world in which we live and how are we to see truly and accurately? The tragedy might be that we are already blind to being blind.

Laudato Si’ In his encyclical Pope Francis repeatedly returns to the theme of the interconnectedness of all things, doing so in order to give to it a specifically theological character.20 So it is that the interconnectedness of all things expresses the “seamless garment” of God’s creation21 and, if 20 21

On interconnectedness, see by way of example Laudato Si’, paras. 5, 70, and 73. Laudato Si’, para. 9.

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only for this reason, “nothing in this world is indifferent to us”.22 How could anything be indifferent to us if we understand that everything is included together in a “splendid universal communion”,23 a “sublime communion”,24 even a “sublime fraternity”.25 Citing Benedict XVI, Francis writes that “the Book of Nature is one and indivisible”.26 The interconnectedness of all things expresses a natural theology, which reflects something of the nature of God who created all things. What kind of God, then, do we see expressed in the interconnectedness of all things? We will return to this question. There is, however, a more fundamental question that needs first to be answered: why is it that people do not see this reflection of God in all that he has made? It is this conundrum that Francis intimates when he observes that we fail to see the wondrous mystical network of relations that constitutes creation.27 Not only is this blindness incredible but also it is one that has dire ramifications for the ecology of the world or “the Book of Nature”. This failure to see ends up in the division of what is “indivisible”, thereby ripping apart “the seamless garment of creation”. What does this blindness look like? Not as blindness as normally understood, however, for it can be said that every age has its own way of presenting its blindness to itself as if it were absolute clarity. To borrow the famous phrase from the prophet, we might say that for this reason, “seeing they do not see; hearing they do not hear”.28 Something of this paradox, wherein blindness is blind to itself, is captured in Romans when St. Paul writes what would become a central passage in the discipline of natural theology among later Church commentators: “The invisible things of God”, writes Paul, “are clearly seen in the things he has made” (Rom 1:20). How invisible things are clearly seen is a paradox. A paradox, Paul goes on to write, that fallen humanity resolves by collapsing together the glory of God with the glory of created things (Rom 1:21-23). The result is that the vision of what is everywhere present is obscured.

22

Laudato Si’, para. 2. Laudato Si’, para. 220. 24 Laudato Si’, para. 89. 25 Laudato Si’, para. 221. 26 Laudato Si’, para. 6. 27 Laudato Si’, para. 20. 28 Isa 6:10; Matt 13:10-15; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; John 12:39-40. 23

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Creation is to reflect God, but when humankind confuses God with creation, creation only reflects itself in the estimation of fallen human beings. This is expressive in the human desire for the same. Paul writes that this desire is expressed in same-sex relations, as well as in the long litany of sins that are destructive of human communion, which were particularly evident in the Christian community in Rome.29 Implicit in Paul’s argument is the proposition that the obscuring of the revelation of God in creation is attributable to humanity. Although being the locus of creation’s reflection upon itself, we suppress God’s revelation in creation, thereby denying its own proper nature. Our desire for the same orients creation away from its proper goal to reveal and know God. We collapse God and creation together so that they become one, and thus make them amenable to being shaped and manipulated in accordance with our desires. Thus do we strive to make all “liquid”, free from any sense of essential determination. It is the dominance of and the desire for the same that informs our blindness to being blind. But how does this blindness express itself today? Following Laudato Si’ we can say that it looks like a false representation of interconnectedness. The locus of our blind spot is the understanding of interconnectedness informed by those concepts instantiated in late capitalism. Why do we not see the true mystical and theological reality of interconnectedness? The answer is that we tell ourselves that globalism expresses the true character of interconnectedness: ironically, however, this mistaken conclusion actually obscures interconnectedness. Francis writes that under the influence of a technocracy informed by the language of maths we have fallen under the spell of economic calculus.30 By reason of a critical naivety we have succumbed to a blindness expressed in the idea that our technology and its products are neutral; for this reason we give them free

29

Rom 1:24-2:3. Hence in 12:1-18; 13:8-14; 14:1-21; 15:1-7 Paul presents the way in which the Church communion ought to be, the way it ought to look, and thereby how it will witness to the nature of God as creation was meant to do. 30 Laudato Si’, para. 11. By “technocracy” Francis refers to economism, by which is meant the notion that all things ought to be understood by being defined by economic matters. In a technocracy the economy is itself defined by, as well as aided and abetted by, the dominant forms of technology which happen to be today those associated with IT. Francis’ employment of the term is telling, for what it tells us, I would argue, is that he has been influenced in his thinking by Benedict XVI, as the topic of technocracy was one that Benedict returned to many times from at least the 1980s onwards.

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rein, not exercising proper critical oversight.31 We give ourselves over to an atomising method that separates and divides, that abstracts from the whole and, having done so, goes on to judge the value and meaning of the parts by reference to utility and the concomitant demands of the market.32 From this arises a culture of consumerism.33 All created life becomes subject to a “throwaway culture”, seen in the devaluing of human life by the prevalence of abortion.34 As St. John Paul II expressed, created life is subject to a “Culture of Death”.35 We live in an interconnectedness that is constituted by a matrix of relations defined by, and answerable to, the demands of a “deified market”.36 God is collapsed into the same, here, in this instance, into the economic system, a global system of speculative finance entwined with the technology of the “digital world”.37 This global system obscures being because, in misrepresenting the nature of our interconnectedness, being is no longer informed by a “sublime communion” and mutual dependency.38 Rather the market-made God defines the value of being. The effect of this is that the wholeness and beingness of creation is fragmented; it loses its unity and becomes a collection of isolated individual things, the value and meaning of which depends on and answers to the global market.39 The interconnectedness that constitutes contemporary globalism can be summed up by what Francis calls a “stifling immanence”.40 In order to overcome this condition we need to take a “leap towards the transcendent”.41 This is a leap that only humanity can take and, in so doing, will bring creation back to itself and, through a proper understanding of its

31

Laudato Si’, para. 107. Laudato Si’, para. 123. 33 Laudato Si’, paras. 184, 230. 34 Laudato Si’, paras. 16, 22. 35 Laudato Si’, para. 213. 36 Laudato Si’, para. 56. Among other things this market is marked by dissolution of the public realm via privatisation (para. 45) and an increasing inequitable distribution of wealth and resources (para. 46). It is also a state of affairs in which speculative finance overwhelms the real economy and the growth of the real market (paras. 20, 109). Francis writes that the “techno-economic paradigm may overwhelm not only our politics but also freedom and justice” (para. 53). 37 Laudato Si’, para. 47. 38 Laudato Si’, para. 86. 39 Laudato Si’, paras. 33-34, 210, 219, 229-30. 40 Laudato Si’, para. 119. 41 Laudato Si’, para. 210. 32

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createdness, back to God.42 Contrary to what some environmentalists say, humanity is not a dangerous intrusion into the ecology of the earth: rather humanity is the hope and summit of creation.43 Humanity is the locus proper of the interconnectedness of all creation, a point to which we will return in respect of the Anthropic Principle. Francis reiterates what Catholic theology has always taught, namely that humanity has the chief place in the universe.44 This position, however, is not informed by the authority that worldly power aspires to: it is fundamentally different from self-serving arbitrary rule. It is not the kind of power attendant upon a selfregulating, self-oriented system. Rather it is an authority that, in deferring to God who is ontologically other to creation, has the power to represent and thereby to be responsible for creation.45 In arguing for this position, Francis appeals to Scripture and to Genesis’ reference to the creation of humanity in the Image of God.46 But, because he has written an encyclical to all peoples, not just Christians, he does not spend as much time on this. Just as Francis contrasts a true and false interconnectedness, he also contrasts a true to a false “anthropocentrism”. Yes, humanity is the summit of creation, but this entails the greater responsibility for the well-being of creation, while a false anthropocentrism, one often allied to a misuse of science and technology, is informed by “unrestrained delusions of grandeur”.47 It ends up “prizing technical thought over reality” and, thereby, treats everything as mere facts subject to the determinations of 42 Laudato Si’, para. 83. Technocracy, argues Francis, sees no intrinsic value in human beings and none in lesser beings either. There can be no renewal of relationship with nature without the renewal of humanity itself (para. 118). Throughout the encyclical Francis is often subtly opposing those environmental views that see humanity as being the problem per se and which thereby gives strength to treating humanity, not least the unborn, with contempt. In other words, ultimately the “radical” environmental movement ends up supporting the very throwaway culture it claims to oppose (see for example paras. 48-50, 90-1). 43 Laudato Si’, paras. 15, 48-50, 60, 65, and 90. 44 Laudato Si’, paras. 15, 43, 81, 90, 119, and 205. 45 Laudato Si’, paras. 78, 83, and 220. 46 Laudato Si’, paras. 65-77. Francis argues that due to the fall the dominion given to humanity has been perverted such that while our authority to have dominion is meant to be conducive to harmony, it has instead become a source of conflict (paras. 66-7: a conflict that is first and foremost between humans and, thereby, involves all that we have dominion over. In our attempt to create harmony, relying on our own devices, we create a world of violence and exploitation thereby creating even more disharmony. 47 Laudato Si’, paras. 114-16.

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“utility”, able to be “hammered into useful shape” (here Francis is quoting from Roman Guardini).48 “When human beings fail to find their true place in this world, they misunderstand themselves and end up acting against themselves”.49 As St. Paul intimates, the problem of blindness devolves upon the way in which we understand ourselves, and, concomitantly, what our status is in respect to the rest of creation. Something of the foregoing informs a good deal of discussion in the more theoretical reaches of contemporary science, not least in physics and cosmology, discussion which often revolves around what is referred to as the Anthropic Principle (hereon, AP).50 Here we come to the heart of Laudato Si’ even though Francis does not mention the AP by name.51

The Status of Reflexivity and the Anthropic Principle Pascal wrote that the eternal silence of the infinite reaches of space terrified him, if only because they rendered humanity and its entire works insignificant. In light of recent advances in our knowledge of the cosmos we might think that Pascal’s sentiment has been vindicated. But there is something a little too glib in Pascal’s confession. We might reply by way of a Chestertonian paradox: we are small but not insignificant for our significance rests precisely in our knowing we are small in comparison to the infinite reaches of space.52 However great the wide expanse of space and the billions of galaxies therein, we alone know of these things and are suitably struck with wonder. A similar point could be made in response to Xenophanes’ well-known quip. He said that if oxen and horses had hands and could draw, then they 48

Laudato Si’, para. 115. Roman Guardini was quite a favourite of Benedict XVI and this (among other reasons) makes me suspect that the latter had not a little input into Laudato Si’. 49 Laudato Si’, para. 115. 50 The Anthropic Principle ought not to be confused with discussions on anthropogenic caused climate change. 51 Francis does not mention the major Catholic figure who looms large in contemporary theological engagements with the Anthropic Principle, namely Teilhard de Chardin. 52 C. S. Lewis observed in “Dogma in the Universe” (in idem., God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 41-2) that “The silence of the eternal spaces terrified Pascal, but it was the greatness of Pascal that enabled them to do so”.

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would draw their gods to look like oxen and horses. We think of God in human terms by reason of, to borrow from Nick Bostrom’s critique of the AP, an “observation selection effect”.53 We forget that we select from only a specific subset of all the cosmos (if not of all the cosmoses) in this case, a subset that answers to the “givens” informing us as the observer. Whatever we see, we only ever see something of ourselves. This is especially so in respect of our place in the cosmos and in matters divine. Xenophanes’ quip implies that oxen and horses would make the same mistake. Perhaps so. But it might be wise to let oxen and horses answer for themselves. What Xenophanes and we ourselves forget is that it is we that are using animals as a foil to our pretensions: not only do we reflect critically on ourselves in relation to God but also in relation to animals and the cosmos. We, who are self-reflexively critical, hope thereby to gain a truer view of the universe even if this means that we diminish ourselves in our own eyes. It is our ability to be self-reflexively critical that can both raise us up above all else and then bring us crashing down. There is in us an imperative to know the truth, to know if we are blind. The question is if on this imperative hangs the ecology of the cosmos. The issue turns on what our status is in respect of the cosmos and how this relates to the reflexive nature of our consciousness. It is a question that has, since at least the 1970s, made itself felt in the areas of physics and cosmology. Both of these were disciplines once felt to be reliably secular, in the sense outlined above. This brings us to the AP proper. Fundamental to the AP is the question of the status of reflexivity in respect of its place and role in the cosmos. By “reflexivity” I do not mean “reflectivity” (although the former can include the latter), for reflectivity can be understood as immediate and static reflection requiring no sentient cognition at all. “Reflexivity” is the ability of a system to treat itself as an object of its own cognition, an ability that can be said to reach its height in consciousness.

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N. Bostrom, Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2002). What might constitute a variation on Bostrom’s argument is that given recently by Markus Gabriel in his book Why the World Does not Exist (Cambridge: Polity, 2015). As I understand Gabriel’s argument, his point is that the term “world” is per se a misleading category to employ for we take it to mean a real thing when it simply expresses our conceptual parameters. Perhaps both Bostrom’s and Gabriel’s arguments are merely more contemporary variations on Kant.

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The basic issue for the AP is whether or not consciousness is structurally continuous with the universe by way of the universe’s origin and material constitution; more controversially, whether or not this continuity entails a teleology of some sort. In what way is the continuity between cosmos and consciousness to be understood? Can the nature of consciousness, as defined by the character of reflexivity, tells us of the history and the nature of the rest of the universe? Can we go a step further and say that the universe is “just so” in order for there to be a consciousness that can reflect upon the universe? Furthermore, is there a sense in which everything in the universe is how it is, evolves how it has, in order that it can reach a point where, through us, it can reflect upon itself and know itself, even shape itself?54 Are we not only the universe knowing itself but also the universe beginning consciously and intelligently to shape itself?55 The more one pushes the AP the more the question of teleology begins to be felt. It is here that many who are sympathetic to the AP leave the field, for with the question of teleology comes the debate over Intelligent Design (hereon ID). This chapter does not rehearse the ID debate or its permutations within the AP, except to note that although in both the question of teleology makes itself felt, it is rare that a very basic issue concerning teleology is raised or addressed. If there is a teleological dynamic operative in the cosmos, is it one that is explainable by way of the cosmos as a closed system, or does this dynamic necessitate an explanation oriented to that which is ontologically other to the cosmos, namely to God? To put this in the language of this chapter: is the 54

See the essays by M. Slezak, “Was the Universe Created for Us?” and Douglas Heaven “Does Consciousness Create Reality?” New Scientist 29 April 2015. 55 The AP is a rather controversial issue in the sciences. It has also given rise to many different forms ranging from the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP), through to the Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP), to the Participatory Anthropic Principle (PAP) and many other forms besides. The term “the Anthropic Principle” was introduced by Brandon Carter in a paper delivered in 1974. However, as some commentators have pointed out, the concept had been around for some time prior to Carter’s paper. J. Barrow and F. Tipler (The Anthropic Cosmological Principle [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986]) gives an overview of the various positions and argues for what might be called a strong position. M. Frayn (The Human Touch [London: Faber, 2006]) argues for a very strong position. However, P. Davies (The Goldilocks Enigma [London: Allen Lane, 2006]) takes a more middle position. The references to the weakness or strength thereof refers not to the merits or otherwise of the arguments involved but to the status accorded to consciousness in respect of the constitution of the cosmos.

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homeostatic system that is the ecology of the cosmos self-referential, one that finds its height in reflexive consciousness, or is it other-referential, and likewise finds its height in reflexive consciousness? Depending on the position we take, how will this shape our understanding of consciousness (and thereby of ourselves) and our place within the cosmos? Does the homeostatic harmony of the cosmos require consciousness if it is to reach its ideal state, a consciousness which finds its locus in us? Are we central to the ecology of the cosmos and hence the locus proper of its interconnectedness by reason that we are the locus proper of reflexivity? Are we necessary for the “homeostatic optimum” of the universe to be reached? We might come at these questions from another angle by considering another factor crucial to most if not all discussions on the AP and ID. However, this not a topic that is as controversial as those two disciplines are. I refer here to the theory of emergence, which in more theoretical literature is tied to the discipline of systems ontology. “Emergence” refers to a dynamic that though not explainable by way of a reductive approach nevertheless is explainable by way of immanent forces.56

Emergence Although the idea of emergence can be found in many scientific disciplines, for our purposes it is best explained by way of the debates on the philosophy of consciousness. One of the better known contemporary philosophers on consciousness is John Searle who, though himself an atheist, has roundly critiqued other atheists who, like Daniel Dennett, think that the mind and things subjective are reducible to the biological “machinery” of the brain. John Searle argues that mind is not nothing-but-brain; mind and brain are not one and the same thing. The mind cannot be reduced to the biological machinery of the brain. However, mind does arise from the 56 For an overview on this topic, see H. Morowitz, The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Morowitz has his own take on the matter and argues for emergence involving the coming-to-be of both an immanent God and transcendence in the course of this process of cosmic evolution (ibid., 199). Cf. L. Randall, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World (London: Bodley Head, 2011).

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brain, which is to say that mind emerges from the brain. The “matter” that makes up the mind is different from the “matter” that makes up the brain, though they are in real continuity, even causal continuity, one with another.57 The matter that is mind and the matter that is brain are two different albeit continuous systems. In order to grasp the sense of this we need to think of it in terms of “systems ontology”. A system can emerge from a lower system and yet it is, somehow, something more than what it emerged from: it is a different system. The principles that explain the lower system can, to some degree, explain the higher system, but they will fall short, whereas the higher system can explain the lower system from which it emerged. To speak of lower and higher systems is to speak of a hierarchical order. This raises the question as to what constitutes the measure that establishes the status of a system. In light of the arguments concerning the AP and emergence theory, the least controvertible (and least controversial) answer is that the status of a system consists in its explanatory power. It can explain those systems out of which it arose better than those systems can explain themselves. The hierarchical system is informed by rising levels of explanatory power. It is not too difficult to see that this explanatory ability finds its locus proper in consciousness, particularly in its ability to reflect upon itself and upon its role in the cosmos. Consequently, it can be terrified by its place in the immensity of space and can trace out the path of its emergence from previous systems that were not conscious. It can even reflect critically upon what all of this might mean, hence the debates over the AP. Concomitant with this explanatory power is the power to conclude that when one sees the higher system, one also sees those systems out of which it arose. There is a hierarchy of explanatory power by reason that each system represents what it emerged from and this power of representation finds its height in consciousness. Consciousness, because it is able to reflect on all else, can bring to perfection the process of emergence. “Emergence” is a position that has much in common with those arguments associated with Holism in that it might be said that the basic governing principle is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. But, as with any holistic system, the question soon arises as to the necessity or not of teleology, a question that has arisen more recently in theories of 57

See J. Searle, The Rediscovery of Mind (London: MIT, 1992). Searle’s argument is largely directed at those who would argue for an “ontology” that precludes what we might call “subjectivity” and is not addressing emergence in and of itself.

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emergence.58 The issue can become obscured when the idea of “convergence” is treated as synonymous with emergence. “Convergence” seems to favour a teleological “take” on emergence, as exemplified in Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point cosmology. However, to return to our argument, does the principle of emergence require teleology or can higher systems, including consciousness, arise unbidden, as it were, from nonconscious, less complex and less structured (even chaotic) systems? Our intention is not to try to answer these questions but to use them to clarify what is often absent from these debates and what is not seen. If there is a teleological principle operative, is it self-reflexively immanent, or oriented towards participating in something transcendent? And, given that self-reflexivity finds its locus in consciousness, which in turn finds its expression in us, how are we to envisage the place of humanity in the ecology of the cosmos? We will return to Laudato Si’ by way of a specifically biblical and theological understanding of the issues clarified.

The Priest of Creation A neglected aspect of Christian theology (especially in the West) has been the role of humanity, not only understood as the covenantal representative of creation but also in terms of the role of priesthood. Humanity is the mediator between God and the rest of creation. It might be argued that this neglect has had ramifications for our understanding of the Incarnation in respect of its cosmic import. Francis is arguing that it has contributed to our blindness regarding our unique position in creation and, as a consequence of this, it has lessened our sense of responsibility for creation. The priesthood of humanity is presented in the first chapter of Genesis by way of the narrative structure replicating something of the architecture of a temple. In much of the Ancient Near East (ANE) the temple was seen as a microcosm of the macrocosm.59 There is a correspondence in structure 58

See T. Deacon, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012). Deacon has courted controversy not over his arguments regarding emergence per se, but that he wants it to include a kind of immanent teleological principle in which things that do not exist shape and orient things that do. On the cosmic and quantum workings of emergence probably the most famous name is that of David Deutsch: The Beginning of Infinity (London: Allen Lane, 2011), 108-11, 124. 59 See J. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 120-1. Robert R. Murray (The Cosmic Covenant [London:

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between the cosmos and the temple, with the temple serving as the locus by which the heavens and the earth are “joined”. The idea of the temple being the “join” is expressed in different ways, but the basic concept is that the temple is the locus of the well-being, even integrity, of the cosmos, not least in terms of its unity and fertility.60 To put it in our terms, the temple is the locus within the system that serves to establish and preserve the integrity of the system. This is the import of a temple being the microcosm of the macrocosm. The basic structure of a temple is one constituted in hierarchically ordered grades, so that the higher one goes (or “deeper” insofar as the vertical is translated into the horizontal axis), the holier the place becomes, until one enters into the inner-most sanctum, the holy of holies, where the image of the god is found. Genesis 1 presents both the temporal order of the creation of the cosmos and, thereby, the structure of the cosmos in terms of a temple.61 Both space and time are liturgical in character.62 The reader proceeds through the text as the high priest would proceed through the temple into the holy of holies. There is a series of separations: light from dark, waters above from waters below, waters from dry land, and so forth, until the reader enters into the most sacred place of all and sees what all creation converges upon. The fundamental paradox to the Pentateuch is that although the Mosaic Law forbids the making of an image of God, right at the beginning of the Pentateuch, in Genesis 1:26-28, God himself makes an “image” of God, namely humanity. Thus, both in a temporal and spatial fashion, Genesis 1 presents the act and product of creation as one that emerges through a series of separations until all converges upon humanity. Narrative structure serves to reveal how humanity, being the image of God, is the pinnacle of creation and, being in the “holy of holies” of

Sheed & Ward, 1992], 71) writes: “This belief in the correspondence of heaven and earth provided the theoretical basis for temples in most if not all of the ancient Near East”. 60 See G. J. Wightman, Sacred Spaces: Religious Architecture in the Ancient World (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 25-6. 61 J. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009). 62 F. Gorman, Jr., The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in Priestly Theology (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990); P. Jenson, Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Conception of the World (Sheffield: JSOT, 1992); J. Scholer, Proleptic Priests: Priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Sheffield: JSOT, 1991).

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creation, humanity serves as the priest of creation. Humanity is presented as being the covenantal representative of creation.63 Humanity is the locus of the unity of creation and thus of its integrity—which is to say, its ecology. The principal dynamic that informs liturgy and covenantal representation in the Bible is that of recapitulation. That which goes before is summed up in, and represented by, that which comes after, insofar as it has been divinely delegated to represent the former. The best example of this dynamic is the order of the biblical covenants: from Adam through to Noah, Abraham and Moses (and Aaron), and from there on to David. All of these have been recapitulated and perfected within the new covenant whose head is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is thus presented as being the image of God. For this and other reasons there grew in the Church an increasing sense of the participation of all the cosmos in Jesus. In the sinless, glorified, and ascended human body of Jesus, all creation has been taken up and made to participate in God (as the Eastern church puts it, all creation has been “divinised”).64 It is through the sinless humanity of Jesus that all humanity and, thereby, all creation is saved and perfected—not first and foremost through his deity as if the Incarnation were ultimately extraneous and unnecessary. Rather it is through Jesus’ humanity that we are brought to participate in his deity: there is a hierarchical order of approach to God, one which answers to that order which we have touched upon above in respect of the cosmos as a temple.65 The cosmos is as a temple and in the holy of holies humanity is the priest of creation. But the priest of the priests of creation is the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ. His body is the place in and by which all creation is once again ordered and oriented to that which is ontologically other to creation, namely God.

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A. Nesteruk, The Universe as Communion: Towards a Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Theology and Science (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 198-9, 216; L. Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 132-40; J. Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World (London: T&T Clark, 2011), esp. Chapter 7 “Proprietors or Priests of Creation?” J. P. Williams (Denying Divinity [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 110-11) notes in respect of St. Maximus the Confessor that “man as microcosm exemplifies all the divisions of the cosmos, and by a process of uniting them within himself engages in a cosmic unification”. 64 J. Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 120-5, 285-7. This theme of recapitulation in Christ finds its clearest expression in St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.18.1; 4.6.2; 5.21.1. 65 Daniel Keating, Deification and Grace (Ave Maria: Sapientia, 2007), 11-3.

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In him are all things redeemed, summed up and perfected, and also in him is all creation recapitulated.66 It would not be too difficult to have this biblical-theological concept of creation fit with the doctrine of emergence (and convergence) associated with the stronger versions of the AP. But biblical theology goes further for it informs the whole cosmic system with a teleological and transcendental orientation, with the result that all things properly find their perfection through humanity. These are exactly the things that are excluded per se from scientific, political, economic, and ecological discussions. These ideas are the very things that the modern concept of “secular” brackets out as having no authoritative say in matters of global interconnectedness. This is because they would compromise the concept of “freedom” that is integral to both cultural and economic liberalism. The concept of freedom, as it is deployed in capitalism, is predicated upon a closed system. It is predicated on an immanently oriented dynamic, which is defined as a selfregulating homeostatic loop. Whatever else the AP points to, how we understand ourselves will impact on how we understand the cosmos in which we live. Anthropology is at the heart of all knowledge, including how we think we ought to live and treat our environment. The basis of ecology is anthropology—but is this a secular or a theological anthropology, and, if the latter, what kind of God are we talking about? Basic to biblical anthropology is transcendence: being the image of God, we defer to that which is other to us for our proper identity and to that which is other to all creation.67 An image only has its proper identity, its ontological integrity, insofar as it images that which is other to it. If all creation converges upon humanity, then it does so in order to open up onto that which is other to humanity and all creation. Humanity is the means by

66

Eph 1:10, 22-23; 3:10-11; 4:10. Also Rev 22:13. We might note as well the first two chapters of Hebrews in which the author argues against any concept of the Incarnation being angelic in nature. The author insists upon it being truly human (Heb 2:10-18), which is related to the fact that the Son of God bears the “very stamp” of God’s nature and is the one through whom all creation came into existence and is upheld (Heb 1:2-3). 67 C. T. Yu, “Covenantal Rationality and the Healing of Reason”, in Reason and the Reasons of Faith, ed. P. Griffiths and R. Hütter (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 223-40.

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which creation can participate in God. Thus, as Francis writes, humanity is “called to lead all creatures back to their creator”.68 If humanity orients itself away from God, then this turning away from God results in a turning away from its own nature. As we have seen, it falls away from what is other into what is the same—it falls away from being. It loses the paradox that is of the very essence of creation, as we saw St. Paul observe. Creation, then, is not a closed system: rather it is open and the locus of this openness is humanity; in other words, we are the microcosm of the macrocosm. The dynamic of emergence and convergence appears to find its height in humanity. In sum, immanent forces cannot exhaustively explain the fine-tuning of the forces and ratios constituting the nature and dynamics of the cosmos. Here, however, is the temptation that when succumbed to brings a profound blindness. Having fallen from its proper estate, humanity looks back to “the same”. We look to those lesser systems from which we emerged and think that they can tell us who and what we are. But slowly everything becomes dark, until finally we find ourselves abandoning the very idea of truth and giving ourselves instead over to our base appetites. For a long time now, capitalism has been the most efficient means of answering to these appetites. In turning away from that which it images, humanity increasingly loses the ability to understand itself. This is expressed in the way that humanity readily reduces itself to series of immanent principles, thereby losing the ability to reflect critically upon itself and thus upon anything else in creation. There is a diminishing ability for reflexivity, resulting in a state of diminished consciousness. As mentioned, we not only become blind, but we become blind to being blind. Following Francis’ biblical argument that creation speaks of God and, pre-eminently, humans are the image of God, we might ask what exactly is the nature of this God and how is God’s nature reflected in creation? The answer again turns upon interconnectedness. Humanity is constituted in and as communion. This tells us of the nature of God whom humanity images: it is the Trinitarian God of the 68

Laudato Si’, para. 83. Francis also writes how this takes place primarily through the Eucharist (which of course is the body and blood of Jesus), hence creation is oriented towards its “divinisation” (paras. 235-6).

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creeds. The “divine Persons”, writes Francis, “are subsistent relations, and the world, created according to the divine model, is a web of relationships”.69 So it is that “the Trinity has left its mark on all creation”, so much so writes Francis citing St. Bonaventure, that “each creature bears in itself a specifically Trinitarian structure”. We are prevented from seeing this because our “gaze” has become so very “partial, dark and fragile”.70 Quoting St. John Paul II, Francis writes that if we contemplated “with wonder the universe in all its grandeur and beauty”, we would end up praising “the whole Trinity”.71 If we properly understood ourselves we would see that we image the Triune Godhead and, seeing something of this, also see that the very interconnectedness of all things, the very beingness of all things, speaks of the same God. Then we would find ourselves developing what Francis calls a “spirituality of…global solidarity”.72 This solidarity has its foundations in its deferral to God, not in its deferral to global capital and the play of self-referential immanence.

Conclusion If the universe in its infinite reaches is silent, as Pascal lamented, then it is so because we are not giving the universe the voice with which to praise God. The silence of the universe testifies not to the lack of meaning of the cosmos but to our failure to fulfil our priestly duties, which in turn means that the command of Psalm 148 that all creation praise God cannot be met. The silence of space is thus a witness against us. Jewish and Christian commentators held that the Garden of Eden was the holy of holies of creation: the most holy part of the cosmos-astemple.73 It was this that the temple in Jerusalem was to mirror. Both Eden and the holy of holies of the temple were said to be places of fruitfulness and over-flowing abundance. This is a sign of the glorious ecology that fulfils the commandment to be fruitful and multiply.74

69

Laudato Si’, para. 240. Laudato Si’, para. 239. 71 Laudato Si’, para. 238. 72 Laudato Si’, para. 240. 73 G. Beale, “Eden, the Temple, and the Church’s Mission in the New Creation”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48.1 (2005): 5-31. 74 Gen. 1:22, 28. 70

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The cosmic traveller, referred to at the beginning of this chapter, being well acquainted with the infinite reaches of space, would be in a good position to compare our world with the rest of the cosmos. He would have no doubt that this planet is the holy of holies of the cosmos, its inner-most sanctum. Nevertheless, he would have no answer to why it is we are so blind. That is for us to answer, and Laudato Si’ helps us. It helps us to see that we are the locus of the interconnectedness of all things and that, for this reason, how we understand ourselves will have an impact on all other creatures, the planet, and the entire cosmos. Laudato Si’ details a metaphysic and cosmology different from that which our world currently suffers under. Its aim is to have us see our unique status and thereby acknowledge our profound responsibility for the well-being of the cosmos. Any activism that does not have the right metaphysic and cosmology will simply succumb to the logic and dynamic of immanence so well instantiated in capitalism. This explains how ostensibly opposed movements such as environmentalism and capitalism end up serving each other. In short, activism, without the correct theory to inform it, will ultimately serve the interests of that which it affects to oppose. It will be blind to being blind.

Selected Bibliography Barrow, J. and Tipler, F. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Beale, G. “Eden, the Temple, and the Church’s Mission in the New Creation”. Journal of the Evangelical Society 48.1 (2005): 5-31. Bostrom, N. Anthropic Bias. New York: Routledge, 2002. Davies, P. The Goldilocks Enigma. London: Allen Lane, 2006. Heaven, D. “Does Consciousness Create Reality?” New Scientist April 29 2015. Mandel, E. Late Capitalism. London: Verso, 1999. Morowitz, H. The Emergence of Everything. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Nesteruk, A. The Universe as Communion. London: T&T Clark, 2008. Perrings, C. “Ecology, Economics, and Ecological Economics”. Ambio 24.1 (1995): 60-4. Schiller, D. Digital Capitalism. London: Allen Lane, 2011. Searle, J. The Rediscovery of Mind. London: The MIT, 1992. Slezak, M. “Was the Universe Created for Us?” New Scientist 29 April 2015.

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Thunberg, L. Microcosm and Mediator. Chicago: Open Court, 1995. Walton, J. Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2011. Zizioulas, J. The Eucharistic Communion and the World. London: T&T Clark, 2011.

PART FOUR: THE DISINTEGRATION OF PERSONAL WHOLENESS: PATHWAYS BACK TO WELL-BEING

CHAPTER EIGHT GRACE AND NURTURE: CONNECTING AND ENGAGING THROUGH MUSIC IN DEMENTIA CARE KIRSTY BEILHARZ

Healthy lifestyle, cognitive engagement, good nutrition and creative expression have been linked to a lower incidence of dementia, while a history of depression, mild cognitive impairment, high fat diet and hypertension are amongst the factors that increase risk of dementia in ageing. The foundation for a healthy lifestyle that reduces the risk of dementia needs to be established earlier in life; however, music has an important role in contributing to quality of life (such as joy and calming, emotional engagement, connection–communication and expression, cognitive stimulation, managing agitation, and encouraging moderate interactive movement) in aged and especially in dementia care, facilitating carer and family relationships, and spiritual well-being. Music can foster identity, self, and embodied feelings without contingency on memory, and can assist people with dementia and their carers in sustaining wholeness and meaningful relationships and experiences beyond cognitive decline and disintegration of verbal communication. Spiritual well-being in a whole-person model of wellness is one of the areas least well addressed under a conventional medical model, and for a person losing memory and verbal articulation of their identity, preserving personhood, dignity and the hope of salvation are essential components to positive ageing and the dementia journey.

Introduction The ubiquity of dementia in an ageing population affects everyone— socially, spiritually, economically—and impacts the daily lives of people living with dementia as well as their carers.1 Dementia is the third leading 1 Dementia is a terminal disease with average life expectancy from diagnosis to death being 5 years. An estimated 1.2 million people are involved in the care of a

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cause of death in Australia and there is no cure. It is estimated that currently approximately 332,000 people are living with dementia in Australia and this number is growing. In the United States, it is estimated that (in 2015) 5.3 million Americans had dementia, the majority of whom are women, and over 65 years of age, and that Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias will cost the US $226 billion.2 Maximising quality and meaningfulness of life for those people and their carers, often a spouse or child, relating to people in terms of their abilities (rather than incapacities or pathologies), and caring for all members of our community—especially those in need or who are marginalised—are foundational to the remit of the Christian church, and to nurturing the wholeness of the community. This chapter draws out the key arguments and research evidence for embedding musical engagement in residential dementia care3 and looks at the Christian mandate and spiritual needs underpinning its implementation. Music provides a doorway for connecting, especially for people who may be emotionally isolated, depressed, sedentary, or unable to communicate verbally. Music has the potential to provide awakening, stimulating and emotional experiences, after procedural and semantic memory has declined: music can tap deep memories of significant life events, and it can also move people emotionally without depending on memory. When language cognition and verbal communication have declined, people who no longer speak or comprehend conversation can often still person with dementia. Dementia is the third leading cause of death in Australia and there is no cure. It is estimated that currently approximately 332,000 people are living with dementia in Australia, and by 2050, if no cure is found, this number is estimated to reach 900,000. By 2050, it is estimated that the number of Americans living with dementia will be 13.8 million. In 2013, it was estimated that there are approximately 44.4 million living with dementia worldwide, and already 62% of those people living in developing countries, with the fastest growth occurring in China, Southern Asia and the western Pacific region. http://www.alz.co.uk/research/statistics Alzheimer’s Association UK. Accessed 27.07.2015. The number of people younger than 65 (early onset) diagnosed with dementia is also growing. Worldwide annual revenue from Dementia Care exceeds company revenue of the world’s largest companies, Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobile, chiefly servicing the affluent in first-world countries, with lower income earners reliant on informal care arrangements. 2 http://www.alz.org/facts/Alzheimer’s Organization USA website. Accessed 27.07.2015. 3 Concepts learned from dementia care are also relevant in caring for people with isolating disabilities and impaired communication that affect personhood.

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sing music, even recalling lyrics. In addition to synergies with other modalities, such as affecting the taste of food, stimulating appetite, promoting movement or balance and confidence through participatory activities, music adds a conduit for carers and family members to share experiences “in the moment” and build their relationship with the person with dementia. Music can serve an important role in the journey for both the person in care and their carer and the family members by creating lasting shared experiences. Music has been applied in mood elevation, revitalisation, and to assist in managing difficult behaviours by reducing anxiety, aggression, pain and depression, and may further lead to a reduction in pharmacological prescription of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medications.4 Music can assist compliance in eating, grooming, bathing and other routines. Specific strategies have been explored in relation to rhythmic entrainment to assist walking motility and fluidity of movement in Parkinson’s Disease and Huntington’s Disease.5 The pragmatic strategies described in this chapter (such as individualised listening playlists, participatory group activities, as well as interactive bespoke musical instruments and interfaces designed for non-specialist use by residents with their everyday carers) align with the HammondCare’s mission in action, e.g. listening and relating, enabling choice, tailoring care individually, partnering with family and friends, nurturing the whole person, and being creative and innovative.6 This chapter is structured in three sections, discussing music in relation to: well-being and quality of life; spiritual needs and wholeness; and implementation in relation to the model of care.

4

D. P. Seitz, S. Brisbin, N. Herrmann, M. J. Rapoport, K. Wilson, S. S. Gill, J. Rines, K. L. Clair, and D. Conn, “Pharmacological Treatments for Neuropsychiatric Symptoms of Dementia in Long-term Care: A Systematic Review”, International Psychogeriatrics/Ipa, 25.2 (2013): 185-203. doi:10.1017/S1041610212001627. 5 For people with Huntington’s Disease, entrainment to tempo clicks can assist walking and movement. Rhythmic music of a steady tempo serves the same purpose in Parkinson’s Disease. 6 HammondCare is an independent Australian Christian charity. HammondCare’s mission is to serve people with complex health or aged care needs, regardless of their circumstances.

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Well-being and Quality of Life Emotional Connection, Visceral Responses, and Awakening Dementia affects communication and expression in ways that can baffle family members, defeat verbal communication, cause distress to the person with dementia, and lead to isolation from loved ones, friends, and community. That music is enriching and helpful in aged care, especially for people with dementia, is unequivocal in the literature. 7 “Music for those who love it is so important that to be deprived of it would constitute a cruel and unusual punishment”.8 Furthermore, music does not depend on rational understanding or concrete interpretation to convey emotional experience.9 “The beauty of music has the ability to speak where words fail” (Robert Gupta).10

Communication, Shared Experiences, and Awakening The memory of people with dementia is gradually eroded, starting with episodic and semantic memory,11 which manifests in lack of concentration, 7 J. B. Barber, “Music for Dementia and Parkinson's Disease in the Elderly”, Lifelong Engagement with Music: Benefits for Mental Health and Wellbeing, ed. Nikki S. Rickard and Katrina McFerran (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science, 2013), 253-74. doi:10.1017/S0144686 06005228. 8 Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind (New York, NY: Random House Publishing Group, 1992), ix-x. 9 Music and speech are separately represented in the two hemispheres of the brain, as well as considerably overlapped, with the result that a person who is unable to speak may still be able to sing, because language and logic are chiefly processed in the left hemisphere, whilst music is chiefly appreciated in the right hemisphere. Storr, Music and the Mind, 35. 10 Robert Gupta TED talk Between Music and Medicine. Accessed 27/5/14. https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_gupta_between_music_and_medicine# 11 Procedural memory relates to remembering how to do things and enables us to develop skills and habits to engage in tasks and procedures. This kind of memory can be retained even if the brain is damaged, e.g. musicians can often recall how to play music after brain damage and destruction of semantic memory. Episodic memory relates to the “subjective experience of explicitly remembering past incidents”. Semantic memory refers to concepts and facts, not related to personal experience, e.g. names, places, mathematical equations. So while aspects of procedural memory can function without memory of our history or sense of who we are, it is difficult to find meaning and understanding of who we are in the present if we cannot process the past. Dementia in all its forms eventually leads to profound loss of episodic memory and identity construction. John Swinton,

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forgetfulness, anxiety, making mistakes in familiar tasks, forgetting people and events. Eventually the language centre of the brain is affected causing aphasia 12 in which a person cannot comprehend meaning in syntax nor verbally communicate. Noisy environments and bustling activity may be confounding, spatial orientation is difficult, and changes in environment can be confusing and upsetting. Consequences of disintegrating communication can include isolation, asocial or difficult behaviours (from the perspective of others), and the inability to convey pain, express choice, feelings or wishes. [In the presence of music] those who have been silent or less communicative may begin to talk and become more social; those who have been sad and depressed may feel happier; those who have been less mobile may become more physically active.13

Music can facilitate the experience of doing something together with others, i.e. belonging to a community.14 Accompanying personal memories come motor memories and response, such as movement and dancing, contingent upon the person’s motility and balance. 15 Therefore dance motions, however limited, or active communal participation, e.g. drumming or playing accessible instruments extend this potential of embodiment and reconnection. This is the impetus for developing tailorDementia: Living in the Memories of God (Grand Rapids, MN: Eerdmans, (2012), 204, and Daniel Schachter, Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1997), 17. 12 Aphasia is a disturbance of the comprehension and formulation of language caused by dysfunction in specific brain regions. This language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to losing the ability to speak, read, or write, and is very common in dementia. 13 www.musicandmemory.org (2013) “Making the Case for Personalized Music: A Guide for Elder Care Professionals”, USA. Accessed 14.04.14. 14 O. McDermott, M. Orrell, and H. M. Ridder, “The Importance of Music for People with Dementia: The Perspectives of People with Dementia, Family Carers, Staff and Music Therapists”, Aging and Mental Health 18.6 (2014): 706-16; Hanne Ridder and Mette Ochsner, “How Can Singing in Music Therapy Influence Social Engagement for People with Dementia?” in Insights from the Polyvagal Theory: Voicework in Music Therapy: Research and Practice, Vol. 11, ed. Felicity Baker and Sylka Uhlig (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2011), 130-46. 15 C. Holmes, A. Knights, C. Dean, S. Hodkinson, and V. Hopkins, “Keep Music Live: Music and the Alleviation of Apathy in Dementia Subjects”, International Psychogeriatrics 18 (2006): 623-30. doi:10.1017/ S1041610206003887; M. Irish et al., “Investigating the Enhancing Effect of Music on Autobiographical Memory in Mild Alzheimer’s Disease”, Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders 22 (2006): 108-20.

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made musical interfaces and “instruments” that are optimised for people with dementia. Music need not be familiar to have this connective effect and it does not need to be highly emotive to elicit a response. Sacks hypothesises that music is probably not only cortical but also sub-cortical, so that even a diffuse cortical disease like Alzheimer’s allows music to be listened to, enjoyed, and responded to.16 “Music is part of being human, and there is no human culture in which it is not highly developed and esteemed”.17 Listening to familiar music with family can further trigger nostalgic memories of important events and feelings, 18 and create an additional modality of relation between family members, a method of sharing an emotional and embodied experience, and an aid to non-verbal communication and expression.

The Carer’s Experience For care staff, music gives a way to connect with, and give pleasure to people with advanced dementia who are often the most difficult to reach. Listening to personalised music is adaptable to people restricted by immobility, dialysis, ventilators and otherwise bed-bound but equally can be used to motivate and encourage movement and motility amongst those able to stand, balance, dance or sway while seated in a chair. Rhythmical entrainment of motions to a musical beat, such as foot and hand-tapping are signs of engagement and attentiveness. Other advantages of a more attentive, cooperative and receptive mood elicited by music are a boost to staff morale19 reinforcing the person-centred care model which is integral to commitment to quality care for people with dementia.20

16

O. Sacks, “The Power of Music”, Brain 129.10 (2006): 2528-32; T. Särkämö, S. Laitinen, M. Tervaniemi, A. Numminen, M. Kurki, and P. Rantanen, “Music, Emotion, and Dementia: Insight from Neuroscientific and Clinical Research”, Music and Medicine 4.3 (2012): 153-62. 17 O. Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (New York, NY: First Vintage Books Edition, Random House, 2007, updated 2008), 385. 18 M. D. Schulkind, L. K. Hennis, and D. C. Rubin, “Music, Emotion, and Autobiographical Memory: They’re Playing Your Song”, Memory and Cognition 276 (1999): 948-55. 19 www.musicandmemory.org (2013) “Making the Case for Personalized Music: A Guide for Elder Care Professionals”, USA. Accessed 14.04.14, p.4. 20 L. A. Gerdner, “An Individualized Music Intervention for Agitation”, Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association 3.6 (1997): 177-84.

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Cognitive and Memory Stimulation There are many different forms of dementia and individuals experience a range of severity and needs. When communication is difficult, clinical studies show that music, and musical memory, access different regions in the brain from verbal and language cognition. People who are unable to talk may nonetheless be able to sing, and people who find conversation and television confounding may still experience an emotional response and memory response to music.21 “‘Feeling with the body’ is as close as anyone can get to resonating with another person”.22 “Our brains are hard-wired to connect music with long-term memory” and for people with dementia, “music can tap deep emotional recall”23 such as memory of associated events, first love, lyrics, and can enable the listener to focus on the present moment while regaining a connection to others. As Sacks observes, “The past which is not recoverable in any other way is embedded, as if in amber, in the music, and people can regain a sense of identity …”24 21

H. M. O. Ridder, “When Dialogue Fails: Music Therapy with Elderly with Neurological Degenerative Diseases”, Music Therapy Today, 5.4 (2004), online publication, http//musictherapyworld.net. 22 Storr, Music and the Mind, 24, referring to John Blacking, A Commonsense View of all Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), vi-viii, 60. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrZXz10FcVM YouTube Video Gladys Wilson and Naomi Feil. Accessed 22.04.14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fyZQf0p73QM YouTube Video of ‘Henry’ responding to his favourite Cab Calloway songs. Accessed 22.04.14. 23 www.musicandmemory.org (2013) “Making the Case for Personalized Music: A Guide for Elder Care Professionals”, USA. Accessed online 14.04.14. Further, see M. Brotons and P. Pickett-Cooper, “The Effects of Music Therapy Intervention on Agitation Behaviors of Alzheimer’s Disease Patients”, Journal of Music Therapy 33 (1996): 2-18. Therapeutical singing increases alert responses (e.g. A. Clair, “The Effect of Singing on Alert Responses in Persons with Late Stage Dementia”, Journal of Music Therapy 33.4 [1996]: 234-47) and playing of personal significant songs stimulates images and recollections (e.g. C. M. Tomaino, “Working with Images and Recollection with Elderly Patients”, in Music Therapy in Dementia Care, ed. D. Aldridge, [London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2000], 195-211). Additionally, see H. Crystal, E. Grober, and D. Masur, “Preservation of Musical Memory in Alzheimer’s Disease”, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 52.12 (1989): 1415-16. 24 Sacks, Musicophilia, 373. Music is valuable because musical perception, musical sensibility, musical emotions, and musical memory can survive long after

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Music functions to activate feelings, imagination, engagement,25 calm, enlivenment, and above all, a sense of identity. And the mood engendered by singing can last for a while.26 Musical powers and tastes outlast other forms of recognition.

other forms of memory have disappeared. See A. Cowles, W. W. Beatty, S. J. Nixon, L. J. Lutz, J. Paulk, K. Paulk, and E. D. Ross, “Musical Skill in Dementia: A Violinist Presumed to Have Alzheimer’s Disease Learns to Play a New Song”, Neurocase, 9.6 (2003): 493-503; L. L. Cuddy and J. Duffin, “Music, Memory, and Alzheimer’s Disease: Is Music Recognition Spared in Dementia, and How Can It Be Assessed?” Med Hypotheses 64.2 (2005): 229-35; H. Crystal, E. Grober, and D. Masur, “Preservation of Musical Memory in Alzheimer’s Disease”, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 52.12 (1989): 1415-16. 25 Music-stimulation groups positively influence speech ability and fluency of speech (M. Brotons and S. M. Koger, “The Impact of Music Therapy on Language Functioning in Dementia”, Journal of Music Therapy 37.3 [2000]: 183-95), improve active participation and engagement (M. Brotons and P. Pickett-Cooper, “Preferences of Alzheimer’s Disease Patients for Music Activities: Singing, Instruments, Dance/movement, Games, and Composition/improvisation”, Journal of Music Therapy 31.3 [1994]: 220-33; idem, “The Effects of Music Therapy Intervention on Agitation Behaviors of Alzheimer’s Disease Patients”, Journal of Music Therapy 33 [1996]: 2-18; M. Christie, “Music Therapy Applications in a Skilled and Intermediate Care Nursing Home Facility: A Clinical Study”, Activities, Adaptation and Aging 16.4 (1992): 69-87; N. Hansson et al., “A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Differing Types and Difficulty of Music Activities in Programming for Older Adults with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders”, Journal of Music Therapy 33.2 (1996): 93-123; A. S. Lauvland, O. Kleppa, and R. H. Johansen, Jeg gikk mieg over sjø og land. Stimulering av aldersdemente gennem sang og musikk [Oslo: INFO-banken, 1992]), affective responses (C. Korb, “The Influence of Music Therapy on Patients with a Diagnosed Dementia”, The Canadian Journal of Music Therapy 5.1 [1997]: 26-54), and reality orientation (J. Riegler, “Comparison of a Reality Orientation Program for Geriatric Patients With and Without Music”, Journal of Music Therapy 17 [1980]: 26-33, at 32). In Playalong improvement in recall, mood, and active participation is seen (Lord and Garner 1993). Additionally, see H. Yamaguchi, Y. Maki, and T. Yamagami, “Overview of Non-pharmacological Intervention for Dementia and Principles of Brain-activating Rehabilitation”, Psychogeriatrics 10 (2010): 206-13. doi:10.1111/j.1479-8301.2010.00323.x. 26 Sacks, Musicophilia, 379.

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Behaviour Management and Quality of Life Depression and Isolation It is widely agreed that music causes increased arousal in those who are interested in it: that is, “a condition of heightened alertness, awareness, interest, and excitement; a generally enhanced state of being”. 27 While extreme states of arousal may be undesirable or unpleasant, milder degrees of arousal are “eagerly sought as life-enhancing”28 and meet a craving if stimuli are lacking in our environment. According to Storr, there is a closer relation between hearing and emotional arousal than between seeing and emotional arousal.29 Music has also been shown to break through depression30 and allow a depressed person to regain feelings from which they had been alienated. Bridging the Cartesian gap between mind and body, as music can, enables people to experience the full complement of life’s creaturely human feelings.

Agitation, Anxiety, Non-Compliance Greater calm and reduced agitation can eliminate, or reduce, the need for anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medications (of significant benefit to quality of life). 31 Reduction in distressing and difficult behaviour can 27

Storr, Music and the Mind, 24-25. Storr, Music and the Mind, 25. 29 Storr, Music and the Mind, 26. 30 H. Chu, C.-Y. Yang, Y. Lin, K.-L. Ou, T.-Y. Lee, A. P. O’Brien, and K.-R. Chou, “The Impact of Group Music Therapy on Depression and Cognition in Elderly Persons With Dementia: A Randomized Controlled Study”, Biological Research for Nursing 16.2 (2014): 209-17; C. Ballard, D. Neill, J. O’Brien, I. G. McKeith, P. Ince, and R. Perry, “Anxiety, Depression and Psychosis in Vascular Dementia: Prevalence and Associations”, Journal of Affective Disorders 59.2 (2000): 97-106; E. Chemerinski, G. Petracca, F. Manes, R. Leiguarda, and S. E Starkstein, “Prevalence and Correlates of Anxiety in Alzheimer’s Disease”, Depression and Anxiety 7.4 (1998): 166-70; J. Hoe, G. Hancock, G. Livingston, and M. Orrell, “Quality of Life of People with Dementia in Residential Care Homes”, British Journal of Psychiatry 188 (2006): 460-64; S. Ashida, “The Effect of Reminiscence Music Therapy Sessions on Changes in Depressive Symptoms in Elderly Persons with Dementia”, Journal of Music Therapy 37 (2000): 170-82. 31 H. M. O. Ridder, B. Stige, L. G. Qvale and C. Gold, “Individual Music Therapy for Agitation in Dementia: An Exploratory Randomized Controlled Trial”, Aging 28

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improve the general happiness of a person with dementia, as well as the management by care staff.32 Substantial research has proven that music is helpful in reducing agitation during grooming and mealtimes.33

and Mental Health 17.6 (2013): 667-78; B. Guthrie, S. A. Clark, and C. McCowan, “The Burden of Psychotropic Drug Prescribing in People with Dementia: A Population Database Study”, Age and Ageing 39 (2010): 637-42. doi:10.1093/ageing/afq090; J. Cohen-Mansfield and J. Mintzer, “Time for Change: The Role of Non-pharmacological Interventions in Treating Behavior Problems in Nursing Home Residents with Dementia”, Alzheimer’s Disease & Associated Disorders 19.1 (2005): 37-40; D. A. Forbes, S. Peacock, and D. Morgan, “Nonpharmacological Management of Agitated Behaviours Associated with Dementia”, Geriatrics and Aging 8.4 (2005), 26-30. 32 T. Ueda, Y. Suzukamo, M. Sato, and S. Izumia, “Effects of Music Therapy on Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis”, Ageing Research Reviews 12 (2013): 628-41, doi:10.1016/j.arr.2013.02.003. 33 R. Johnson and C. Taylor, “Can Playing Pre-recorded Music at Mealtimes Reduce the Symptoms of Agitation for People with Dementia?” International Journal of Therapy and Rehabilitation 18 (2011): 700-10; D. Thomas, R. Heitman, and T. Alexander, “The Effects of Music on Bathing Cooperation for Residents with Dementia”, Journal of Music Therapy 34 (1997): 246-59; A. Raglio, G. Bellelli, D. Traficante, M. Gianotti, M. C. Ubezio, D. Villani and M. Trabucchi, “Efficacy of Music Therapy in the Treatment of Behavioral and Psychiatric Symptoms of Dementia”, Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders, 22.2 (2008): 158-62; J. Cohen-Mansfield and N. Billig, “Agitated Behaviours in the Elderly: A Conceptual Review”, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 34.10 (1986), 711-21; A. Ledger and F. Baker, “An Investigation of Long-term Effects of Group Music Therapy on Agitation Levels of People with Alzheimer’s Disease”, Aging & Mental Health 11.3 (2007): 330-38; H. C. Sung and A. M. Chang, “Use of Preferred Music to Decrease Agitated Behaviours in Older People with Dementia: A Review of the Literature”, Journal of Clinical Nursing 14 (2005): 1133-40; P. Tabloski, L. McKinnon-Howe, and R. Remington, “Effects of Calming Music on the Level of Agitation in Cognitively Impaired Nursing Home Residents”, The American Journal of Alzheimer’s Care and Related Disorders and Research 10.1 (1995): 10-15; M. Zare, A. A. Ebrahimi, and B. Birashk, “The Effects of Music Therapy on Reducing Agitation in Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease, A Pre-Post Study”, International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 25 (2010): 1306-10; L. A. Gerdner and E. A. Swanson, “Effects of Individualized Music on Confused and Agitated Elderly Patients”, Archives of Psychiatric Nursing 7 (1993): 284-91; M. L. Cooke, W. Moyle, D. H. Shum, S. D. Harrison, and J. E. Murfield. “A Randomized Controlled Trial Exploring the Effect of Music on Agitated Behaviours and Anxiety in Older People with Dementia”, Aging and Mental Health, 14.8 (2010): 905-16.

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Synergies Music facilitates life-improving synergies in dementia care: such as encouraging movement, motility; creating an environment for socialisation; improving balance (important in fall prevention and confidence). Assistive music can be helpful for specific conditions, such as rhythmic entrainment to enhance gait and fluidity of movement in Parkinson’s and Huntington’s Diseases.34 Music can reduce anxiety that is linked to wandering, pacing and falls.35 Music has been found to stimulate appetite and improve food appreciation.36 Certain music has been shown to improve flavour, enjoyment, sociability, and it can be therapeutic in stimulating eating in cases of malnutrition and anorexia, and reducing mealtime agitation for people with dementia. A developing area of exploration is the efficacy of music intervention in pain management, which has been found not only to distract or create diversion, but also to genuinely reduce pain perception by stimulating dopamine production in the brain.37 34

J. B. Barber, “Music for Dementia and Parkinson's Disease in the Elderly”, in Lifelong Engagement with Music: Benefits for Mental Health and Wellbeing, ed. Nikki S. Rickard and Katrina McFerran (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science, 2013), 253-74; M. H. Thaut, R. Miltner, H. W. Lange, C. P. Hurt, and V. Hoemberg, “Velocity Modulation and Rhythmic Synchronization of Gait in Huntington’s Disease”, Movement Disorders 14.5 (1999): 808-19. 35 L. M. Gill and N. C. Englert, “A Music Intervention’s Effect on Falls in a Dementia Unit”, Journal for Nurse Practitioners 9. 9 (2013): 562-67. 36 L. McHugh, S. Gardstrom, J. Hiller, M. Brewer, and W. S. Diestelkamp, “The Effect of Pre-meal, Vocal R-creative Music Therapy on Nutritional Intake of Residents with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias: A Pilot Study”, Music Therapy Perspectives 30.1 (2012): 32-42. 37 http://www.brainfacts.org/sensing-thinking-behaving/senses-and-perception/arti cles/2013/a-dose-of-music-for-pain-relief/ Accessed 2/6/14. See also G. Bernatzky, M. Presch, M. Anderson, and J. Panksepp, “Emotional Foundations of Music as a Non-Pharmacological Pain Management Tool”, Modern Medicine. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Review 35 (2011): 1989-99; A. J. Blood and R. J. Zatorre, “Intensely Pleasurable Responses to Music Correlate with Activity in Brain Regions Implicated in Reward and Emotion”, Proceedings of the National Academies of Science of the United States of America 98.20 (2001): 11818-23; D. H. Bradshaw, C. R. Chapman, R. C. Jacobson, and G. W. Donaldson, “Effects of Music Engagement on Response to Painful Stimulation”, Clinical Journal of Pain. 28.5 (2012): 418-27; D. H. Bradshaw, G. W. Donaldson, R. C. Jacobson, Y.

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Spiritual Needs and Wholeness Selfhood and Loss of Self Storr refers to the phenomenon of music as “mental furniture”, i.e. the music that plays in our head un-summoned. It could be argued that if someone is accustomed to having one’s “mental furniture” present and stoked from time to time, then to remove its stimulus is also to lose something stable, familiar and comforting. In the view of Schopenhauer, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud and Jung, 38 amongst others, the metaphysical quality of music permeating inner life (inhabiting spiritual vitality, as it were) also imbues it with power to create meaning and passion. Nietzsche went so far as to say that music made life worth living.39

Identity, Personality and Individuality Music has been presented in participatory and collaborative scenarios, i.e. in groups, and in personalised playlists of music selected in collaboration with the resident or family. Understanding musical tastes can nurture rapport and individuality. Individually-tailored, personalised music listening fosters: 1. A sense of self and identity that is not contingent on memory, and a valued personal identity and character expressed through musical taste; 2. An embodied response to music, feelings and sensations evoked by memory, predominantly drawing on emotional response;

Nakamura, and C. R. Chapman, “Individual Differences in the Effects of Music Engagement on Responses to Painful Stimulation”, The Journal of Pain 12.12 (2011): 1262-73; M. Roy, I. Peretz, and P. Rainville, “Emotional Valence Contributes to Music-Induced Analgesia”, Pain 134.1-2 (2008): 140-7; M. Roy, A. Lebuis, L. Hugueville, I. Peretz, and P. Rainville, “Spinal Modulation of Nociception by Music”, European Journal of Pain 16.6 (2012): 870-7; V. N. Salimpoor, M. Benovoy, K. Larcher, A. Dagher, and R. J. Zatorre, “Anatomically Distinct Dopamine Release During Anticipation and Experience of Peak Emotion to Music”, Nature Neuroscience. 14.2 (2011): 257-62. 38 Storr, Music and the Mind, 173. 39 Storr, Music and the Mind, 166.

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3. Agency—control and choice for the resident, the ability to influence their environmental conditions and sense of “home”; 4. Stimulation of memories of significant events, associations and creating a comforting feeling of familiarity. Musical favourite playlists “tap deep memories not lost to dementia and can reawaken [older people], enabling them to feel like themselves again”,40 also encouraging conversation and socialisation. Oliver Sacks in Musicophilia,41 and Donna Cohen in The Loss of Self,42 write about the benefits of music in the context of identity because dementia is most tragically often associated with a disintegration of identity. 43 While impairment of language, subtler and deeper powers such as judgement, foresight and the ability to plan, and eventually some aspects of selfawareness are affected, this does not constitute loss of self.44 Human memory is very complex and cannot be regarded as completely analogous to a computer retrieval system. Memory is a collage, both subjective and objective, influenced by internal and external cues (such as location, scenery, smells, sounds, etc.). 45 Furthermore, memory is held both by the individual, and partially by one’s community, (and all of it 40 www.musicandmemory.org (2013) “Making the Case for Personalized Music: A Guide for Elder Care Professionals”, USA. Accessed 14.04.14. 41 Sacks, Musicophilia. 42 D. Cohen and C. Eisdorfer, The Loss of Self (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2002); Sacks, Musicophilia, 371; Cohen and Eisdorfer discuss the sensitive relationships between doctor, family and patient, and the need to consider the interests of individual family members. See also http://www.nordoff-robb ins.org.uk/content/what-we-do/research-and-resources/resources 43 Augustine goes so far as to say the Trinity is embodied in traces (of virtues) left behind in memories and experiences of artefacts, namely that “knowing God” is an existential embodied experience. Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, trans. E. Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2012, 2nd ed.), 382. This view of embodied experience has been modernised by phenomenologists. Especially Jean-Luc Marion and Trevor Hart argue that cognitive and spiritual experiences are inseparable from the lived experience of the sensing body. Memory loss is often an indicator of Alzheimer’s Disease, which may progress to a profound amnesia. Sacks, Musicophilia, 372. 44 According to Sacks (Musicophilia, 372-9), essential character, personality and personhood, and the will for survival, along with indestructible forms of memory, persist even in very advanced dementia. 45 BBC Radio 4 online stream, “In Search of Ourselves: A History of Psychology and the Mind” (Man, machine and memory). Accessed 19.05.2014.

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held by God). 46 For some, memories can be retrieved or catalysed by listening to individually significant music, and music that family and community have shared. Swinton also suggests that the Holy Spirit works in the person with dementia in ways we cannot know (the Mystery). 47 Comfort can be found in God’s unchanging love (that does not abandon us). Not death, life, loneliness, dementia, forgetfulness, anxiety, confusion, wordlessness, “nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).48

This gives assurance that nothing, not even cognitive impairment, or memory loss and diminution of personal awareness, reduces God’s love revealed in the sacrifice of his Son, Jesus Christ. For the person with dementia and the carer, “living in the moment”, enjoying the present and the time available, are ways to appreciate and live, rather than to lament time or memories lost.

Spiritual Identity, Value, and the Whole Person Christianity helps us understand a whole person and view people made in the image of God, with bestowed worth due to who they are (mother, father, spouse for example) and who they have been (remembered contributions, qualities, values, talents, skills worth), valuable in his creation (a mimesis of God himself in some degree [Imago Dei], and designed by him with lifespan, life experiences, and life challenges in his control, part of God’s immutable greater plan), and a person with equal opportunities, rights, will and dignity to other human creatures.

Christian Love Swinton’s practical theology of dementia is based on being loved “for who I am” and inseparable from God.49 Who we are is Christianly more to do 46

John Swinton, Dementia: Living in the Memories of God (Grand Rapids, MN: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 221. 47 Swinton, Dementia, 223. 48 NIV. 49 Swinton, Dementia. Swinton’s book is written for Christians and is firmly located in that worldview, and his goal is not for faith to be therapeutic or to help people cope better. Many aspects of identity (as elsewhere discussed) can be

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with our relationship with God than human superficial and ephemeral expressions of individuality. Rather, we belong to God, we are loved by God, we are adopted children in his family, we were predestined and redeemed, and we are in a relationship with the Creator and his incarnation due to the indwelling Holy Spirit. There is a special intimacy, faithfulness, and steadfastness (to be found in the relationship with God) when family and friends may be deterred by the realities of sickness and suffering (Psalm 38:11) or an individual may feel lost and deserted, and seeks to be heard, recognised, and acknowledged by God.50 Only God knows human identity that is divinely shaped, wholly and truly, according to Jeremiah 17:7-10: “But blessed are those who trust in the LORD and who have made the LORD their hope and confidence … I, the LORD, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve”.

Memories of God, Belonging, Presence and Community Theologically, we can assert that: x All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and therefore we are all equal in deserving divine judgement, but all who believe in his name are also equally justified, atoned for and sanctified. x God keeps hold of his faithful. John 10:28-30: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one”. We are given personal identity by God (Psalm 139).51 We have bestowed worth by being his creatures, made in his image, and living in his Creation, eroded by dementia or moods and character traits can appear to change. We have seen the potential role of music in reinforcing a sense of self for the individual by reiterating personal taste in music, facilitating expression, and feeling emotions, and the agency afforded by control aspects of the environment and choices of the resident in aged care. 50 It’s Still Me, Lord … is a DVD focused on spirituality and dementia produced by Caritas (Care Charity of the Roman Catholic Church in England). http://www.csan.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Dementia-DVD-info101209.pdf Accessed 28.07.2015, cited in Swinton, Dementia, 4. 51 Swinton, Dementia, 1.

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irrespective of our creaturely limitations. Swinton criticises a common assumption: [Much] theology (and, indeed, much of our worship activity) hinges on the assumption that the theologian is addressing an individuated, experiencing, cognitively able self, perceived as a reasoning, thinking, independent, decision-making entity … assumed to have the potential to know and to understand certain things about God … who is available at an intellectual level through … revelation, prayer, observation, and other forms of selfconscious spiritual experience. Knowledge of God, sin, salvation, discipleship, sanctification, and justification, are all assumed to relate to a fully cognizant being … who can engage in certain ways of thinking.52

Swinton identifies the assumption behind Paul’s assertion to the Romans (10:10), “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”,53 stating that it “requires a certain level of subjectivity, awareness, and cognitive competence”. 54 For Calvin, knowledge of God and of ourselves is intertwined, requiring that we recognise our dependency, contingency, and location within God.55 Obviously the problem with this understanding is that people with advanced dementia will be lost, hopeless, restless and unable to discover peace in God’s love. Anselm suggests active love of God seeks deeper knowledge of God. Keck posits “prolonged mental deterioration … means that we can no longer presume the existence of the cognitive subject when we are thinking theologically”. 56 However, the Biblical person of Jesus did not confuse the spiritual person, the whole person, and the physiological person (evident in healing physically and forgiving, and by sending demons out of a person). It is commonly understood that physical disabilities do not define a person. Dementia is challenging because it affects relationships with other people, as well as the individual. However, this is where music can be of great utility. While music can unlock deep memories and therefore does serve as a memory trigger, it can also operate as an embodied experience now through which emotions, thoughts, movements are felt. Feelings 52

Swinton, Dementia, 8, 9-10. NIV. 54 Swinton, Dementia, 10. 55 Swinton, Dementia, 11. Likewise Augustine asserts that our heart is unquiet until it rests in God. 56 Swinton, Dementia, 9, citing D. Keck, Forgetting Whose We Are: Alzheimer’s Disease and the Love of God (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 15. 53

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create a sense of presence, awareness, and embodied experience that is immediate, deep and not logical. These encounters may be veiled, complex, opaque, or surprising, but they are real. Western Reformed Theology—ranging from its Biblical origins (which encourages testing and reasoning to understand the reality of God, thereby avoiding conformity to the patterns of the world)57 through to Karl Barth’s post-Heideggerian espousal that engagement with the Bible is crucial to faith—serves to reinforce the idea that the main way of experiencing God is through knowledge, reasoning and his (written) Word (i.e. scripture as revelation). The traditions of Roman spiritual experience and mysticism are more generous towards an existential and phenomenal interface with reality. “Knowledge of God is not simply intellectual”. 58 It necessarily includes the “experiential, practical and transformative”.59 Christianity challenges the epistemology and scripts of the world in that salvation comes through brokenness, strength comes through weakness, and gentleness is an ontological aspect of the Messiah who is God, Christ incarnate. 60 Furthermore, “intellect and human wisdom are perceived as barriers rather than as aids to faith”. 61 Hence the Bible is 57

Romans 12:2. Swinton, Dementia, 17. 59 Swinton, Dementia, 17. James 2:19 differentiates between knowing about God, and knowing God. The latter implies a more direct and involved experience and is not compromised by human cognition. 60 Swinton, Dementia, 18 and Matthew 11:29. See also the Servant Songs of Isaiah 42 (the humble servant); Isaiah 49 (the rejected servant); Isaiah 50 (the persecuted servant); and Isaiah 52-53 (the servant humiliated in death and then exalted). Repeatedly in the Bible, we see the lowliest, the servile, the despicable, the marginalised, and frail uplifted in God’s purposes, e.g. Jacob, Samuel, David, women, Jesus. 61 Swinton, Dementia, 19 and 1 Corinthians 3:19. He takes this idea from Walter Brueggemann, Redescribing Reality: What We Do When We Read the Bible (London: SCM Press, 2009). Breuggemann’s theory is that we make sense of the world according to a variety of explicit and implicit scripts or narratives that connote meaning, such as nationalism, religion, capitalism, psychology for example, that form the epistemology of Western liberal cultures. In contrast, the Christian world view, based in the Bible, calls for a radically different understanding, in which God is sovereign, and humility, weakness and brokenness lead to renewal, revealed in the ontological incarnation of Christ, the Son of God who is God eternal, creator, judge. Breuggemann suggests that dementia, too, will inevitably look different in this distinct paradigm. 58

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“inspirational and hopeful”, as well as “revelatory and transformative”.62 God knew us in the womb and has plans for us to prosper (Jeremiah 29:11), therefore “neurological decline cannot separate us from the love of God … Lives that are touched by profound forms of dementia have meaning and continuing purpose”.63 As people with dementia lose the ability to tell their own stories, and construct narratives that form identity, others such as family members, doctors and nurses, care staff, friends, both overwhelm their stories and reshape them. Karl Barth observes that we know God only in the ways that God chooses to reveal himself. “God is known as God acts”. 64 This revelation is continuous and current. Citing Michael Ignatieff’s Scar Tissue,65 Swinton proposes that dementia is as an illness of selfhood, while the medical profession generally sees a disease of memory function and dis-inhibition with a clear etiology in frontal lobe disintegration evident in scans, and a clear prognosis observable in recognisable symptoms. In the first case, an illness of selfhood calls for recognising and remembering the person, maintaining respect, and creating experiences and feelings: “A person with Alzheimer’s Disease is many more things than just their diagnosis. Each person is a whole human being”.66 Tom Kitwood67 and Steven Sabat are two psychologists influential in re-describing dementia, “to include the significance of love, relationships, and care” 68 and place emphasis on personhood, to counteract a cultural milieu with a propensity towards hyper-cognition (the tendency in Western liberal cultures to isolate intellect, reason, and rationality and to identify these aspects with moral and social significance).69 Sabat’s social 62

Swinton, Dementia, 19. Swinton, Dementia, 20. 64 Swinton, Dementia, 25. 65 Michael Ignatieff, Scar Tissue (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 58-60. 66 Lisa Snyder, Speaking Our Minds: Personal Reflections from Individuals with Alzheimer’s (New York, NY: Freeman, 1999), 123-24, cited in Swinton, Dementia, 90. 67 Tom Kitwood, Dementia Reconsidered: The Person Comes First (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997). 68 Swinton, Dementia, 71-72. 69 Swinton, Dementia, 81, and Stephen G. Post, The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer’s Disease: Ethical Issues from Diagnosis to Dying (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 3. This cultural bias predisposes us to think negatively of dementia and therefore to convey that in relationships with people with dementia. In the worst scenario, hypercognitive cultures create a social 63

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model of self “is constructed within the relational dialectic [that occurs] between the individual and his/her communities”.70 The idea that a person’s worth is linked to what they can do, or what they can do for another, is theologically incorrect, taking its cue from a modern economic model that commodifies relationships as transactional, namely invests in a relationship for outcome, gain or benefit and satisfaction. It is fundamentally un-Christian to marginalise people whose worth is not commodifiable in the worldly paradigm.71 Swinton suggests that worth in a marriage should be modelled on Jesus and the church. The union of man and woman is an icon of Christ and the church because “a man loves his wife as his own flesh”.72 Musically, people participating in music therapy and music ministry to aged people need to have an understanding that their role is principally communicating, listening, interacting and responding, encouraging participation and active components such as singing or moving, rather than performative or entertainment—it is not about giving or receiving but should be focused on sharing, experiencing, and feeling together. Integrating music in aged care must be embedded in the whole-person model of care. John Locke’s pervasive definition of a person has widely influenced modern social thinking: A thinking intelligent Being that has reason and reflecting, and can consider its self as its self, the same thinking in different times and places;

environment in which interpersonal interactions and communications occur that potentially diminish personhood by disempowerment, infantilisation, labelling, stigmatisation, invalidation, objectification, ignoring, withholding, mockery and disparagement. Malignant interactions do not always stem from malicious motivations; however, they may be the consequence of thoughtlessness, lack of insight and lack of awareness of the ramifications of certain attitudes. Swinton, Dementia, 82-83, and Kitwood, Dementia Reconsidered. 70 S. R. Sabat, “Surviving Manifestations of Selfhood in Alzheimer’s Disease”, Dementia 1.1 (2002): 25-36. 71 Rationalist supremacy subjugates persons by assuming a lack of reciprocity in relationships (when it may be merely concealed). This pragmatic definition of personhood further overlooks the love of people related to the person with dementia, who suffer when their loved one is not respected and cared for holistically. 72 Swinton, Dementia, 119.

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which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it.73

Here personhood “is defined in terms of a capacity for self-awareness, identity, continuity of thinking, sense of self over time, consciousness, and above all memory”. 74 This understanding is limited in its reliance on memory for all other capacities of personhood.75 Good person-centred care is relational. 76 This includes ensuring personalised attention and living environment, seeing things from the person’s perspective, sharing decision making and choice, and respectful companionship. Kitwood recognises the centrality of relationships in personhood—recognition, respect, trust, a gift bestowed by others. Ultimately, this understanding is modelled on our relational God and his bestowed gift. For Martin Buber,77 God is not only the God who creates and redeems; God is also a Person, and his revelation of himself was human and relational: fundamentally, to love and be loved.78 Fear of forgetting God can be met with reassurance that God has promised that he never forgets us. “The incarnation, cross, and resurrection of Jesus indicate strongly that God is deeply implicated in both the suffering and the joy of human existence in the world”, and “If our identity is held in and by God, then we can be certain that dementia 73

J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975), xxvii.9, p. 335. 74 Swinton, Dementia, 123. 75 There is an historical link between de-humanisation and taking of life and removal of basic freedoms, which is also leveraged to justify war violence, racial genocide, abortion, euthanasia, incarceration of psychiatric patients, human trafficking, and slavery, etc. This Darwinian rationalism is non-Biblical and furthermore, intelligent thinking animals would qualify as self-aware by this understanding. It contradicts the God-given dominion, naming privilege, and stewardship uniquely gifted to humans in Genesis. In Genesis 1:26 man is given dominion over all the creatures and the earth; in Genesis 2:19 man names all the creatures; in Genesis 2:15 God asks man to tend and look after Creation. 76 Swinton, Dementia, 136. 77 M. Buber, I and Thou (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958) and Daniel S. Breslauer, The Chrysalis of Religion: A Guide to the Jewishness of Buber’s ‘I and Thou’ (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1980), 146. 78 Not necessarily concurrently, in parallel and contiguously. Swinton (Dementia, 195) gives the example of the Anglo-Catholic hymn for Maundy Thursday, “According to Thy Gracious Word”: “According to Thy gracious word, In meek humility, This will I do, my dying Lord: I will remember Thee … And when these failing lips grow dumb And mind and memory flee, When Thou shalt in Thy kingdom come, Jesus, remember me”. Swinton’s book is predicated on being remembered by God and cared for by the Spirit (see especially Dementia, 196).

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does not destroy us now or in the future. That is the promise and the basis for enduring hope”.79

Implementation and the Model of Care A diversity of approaches is necessary for different needs and contexts.

Practical Interventions Personalised Music In HammondCare Residential Care Homes we have introduced personalised music on portable (Apple iPod™) music-player devices for all residents who would like to participate. Family, friends or the guardian work with staff to collate the relevant list of music that a resident has enjoyed. Each person’s music profile comprises a mosaic of his or her tastes, important life events, associations and social groups, and spiritual community, as particular to the individual. 80 Staff are trained in the flexibility of timing and availability of music in response to the residents’ needs and wishes, rather than an institution-centric schedule or routine.

Interactive and Participatory Music Some single-method group initiatives have been successful internationally and locally (e.g. Music and the Brain run by the Alzheimer’s Association in the UK, The Arts Health Institute, based in Newcastle Australia). Various periodic visits by musicians, group choir sing-alongs, social excursions and playing CDs to cottage communities occur across HammondCare sites and those who wish to may participate in chapel services and Christian choir music. The assumption of commerciallydelivered entertainment programs, and even scheduled volunteer activities, despite the unequivocal benefit of participatory activities, is that musical taste is treated as “one-size-fits-all”. Outsourced music services are 79

Swinton, Dementia, 201. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: “only the suffering God can help” (Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge, trans. Reginald H. Fuller [Macmillan Press, London, 1953], 361). God remembers us and is mindful of us (Psalm 8:4). In Hebrews, the adjective for “mindful” derives from the verb “to remember”—despite our insignificance on His scale (Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 221). 80 In 2015, there were approximately 750 people in HammondCare residential care homes in New South Wales.

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inflexible with regard to the scheduling that would offer greater synergies, as well as the significant cognitive, relational, and communicative benefits that come with customisation. Greater benefit from music in personcentred care can be leveraged by a multi-faceted, blended approach integrating a variety of individualisation, context-specificity, regularity and frequency, and a range of individual, communal, active and participatory opportunities that form a natural extension of the personcentred model of care. The social aspect of multi-participant music draws on another capacity of music, namely the ability of shared physical responses to music to draw together groups and create a sense of unity.81 Participatory and interactive individualised music elicits greater engagement than passive listening alone.82 Indeed, the apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:18-21 implores the community “… be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ”, suggesting that singing and music-making is a collective worship experience: a harmonising act of inclusion, oneness, community and communion in the Holy Spirit, embodying the embodiment of the unity of the Church, both a corporate act of thanksgiving and praise and an edifying, unifying imperative.83

Enabling Carers Model of Care – Motivation and Integration HammondCare’s mission is motivated by Christian principles and values expressed in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, i.e. valuing people made in the image of God, loved by God, and treating people with love, compassion, and equity, and especially respect for people who are 81

S. Favilla, and S. Pedell, “Touch Screen Ensemble Music: Collaborative Interaction for Older People with Dementia”, in Proceedings of the 25th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference: Augmentation, Application, Innovation, Collaboration (OzCHI 2013), ed. Haifeng Shen et al. (Flinders University, Adelaide: ACM, 2013), 481-84. 82 T. Särkämö, S. Laitinen, M. Tervaniemi, A. Numminen, M. Kurki, and P. Rantanen, “Music, Emotion, and Dementia: Insight from Neuroscientific and Clinical Research”, Music and Medicine 4.3 (2012): 153-62. 83 ESV.

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marginalised or in need.84 HammondCare stands for compassion as clearly seen and heard in the Gospel records of the life of Jesus and his challenging words in Matthew 25: 35-40, For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? …Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me”.

The “mission in action” encompasses listening and relating, enabling choice, tailoring care, creating a sense of belonging, feeling “at home”, and giving people control. The aim is to partner with family and friends, engage with community, provide access and equity, and nurture the whole person. This mission in action includes committing to serve with passion, to engage creativity and innovation, to communicate well, to value teamwork, and to share responsibility. An important part of music integration is to enable non-specialist everyday care staff to provide music to residents, rather than sporadic interventions reliant on experienced experts or visiting music therapists.85 To leverage long-term benefits of music, its sustained and flexible availability is essential. In particular, individualised music choices aim to enhance the residents’ and care givers’ interaction through sharing time, love, attention, a holistic view and palpable experiences beyond mere pragmatic necessities in the daily routine. The journeys of the carer and family are also important and music can precipitate shared joyful and emotional experiences to treasure and remember, and musical connection can be carried through progressive stages of dementia to create meaningful connective experiences. Even if enjoyed only “in the moment” and fleetingly by a person with dementia, musically facilitated connections are often retained and valued long afterwards by family members and care

84

Currently, 40% of residencies are concessional, and hospital beds are made available to patients regardless of their circumstances. 85 The majority of systematic studies of music and dementia are conducted for short intervention periods by visiting expert music therapists. See A. C. Vink, M. S. Bruinsma, and R. J. Scholten, “Music Therapy for People with Dementia”, The Cochrane Collaboration of Systematic Reviews, 2011, Issue 3. Chichester, West Sussex: The Cochrane Collaboration, John Wiley & Sons. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD003477.pub2.

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staff. Empowering carers along the dementia journey with dignity and assurance is frequently overlooked.

Conclusion This chapter has reviewed the evidence in literature from music therapy, psycho-gerontology, psycho-geriatrics, dementia care, music and medicine, that supports the efficacy of music as a communication, awakening, life improvement, pastoral, and potentially behaviour and anxiety managing intervention. This review reveals the abundance of music therapy studies yet scarcity of music programs that are (a) able to be embedded by general non-music-specialist care staff and (b) on a continual, flexible and sustainable timeline. Whole person care and quality of life clearly include a person’s spiritual well-being and assurance, reinforcing the familiar, stimulating poignant memories, and creating meaningful momentary connections and emotional experiences with carers and loved ones. Music can connect in a number of ways (visceral, spiritual and existential) and therefore it is one conduit for feeling and connection that can endure the dementia journey and evoke significant shared memories for carers and family members. As a non-linguistic mode of connection and comfort, music has potential to preserve personhood and create meaningfulness. A medical model of care does not adequately encompass whole-person well-being and spiritual anchoring in the presence of cognitive and emotional isolation, and even the best physiological health and pain management regimes cannot genuinely address dignity, inclusion, individuality and worth. If grace assures salvation in Christ with no needs of works for the able person, how much more are we dependent on God’s grace and the Church community when cognitive capacity declines? This countercultural, humble dependency is precisely the model that Christ exemplified through his love of the needy and marginalised.

Select Bibliography Barber, J. B. “Music for Dementia and Parkinson's Disease in the Elderly”. In Lifelong Engagement with Music: Benefits for Mental Health and Wellbeing, edited by Nikki S. Rickard and Katrina McFerran, 253-74. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science, 2013.

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Brotons, M., and P. Pickett-Cooper. “The Effects of Music Therapy Intervention on Agitation Behaviors of Alzheimer’s Disease Patients”. Journal of Music Therapy 33 (1996): 2-18. Cohen, D. and C. Eisdorfer. The Loss of Self. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2002. Gerdner, L. A., and E. A. Swanson. “Effects of Individualized Music on Confused and Agitated Elderly Patients”. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing 7 (1993): 284-91. Keck, D. Forgetting Whose We Are: Alzheimer’s Disease and the Love of God. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996. Kitwood, T. Dementia Reconsidered: The Person Comes First. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997. McDermott, O., M. Orrell, and H. M. O Ridder. “The Importance of Music for People with Dementia: The Perspectives of People with Dementia, Family Carers, Staff and Music Therapists”. Aging and Mental Health 18.6 (2014): 706-16. doi: 10.1080/13607863.2013.875124. Epub 2014 Jan 13. Ridder, Hanne and Mette Ochsner. “How Can Singing in Music Therapy Influence Social Engagement for People with Dementia?” In Insights from the Polyvagal Theory: Voicework in Music Therapy: Research and Practice, Vol. 11. Edited by Felicity Baker and Sylka Uhlig, 13046. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2011. Sacks, O. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York, NY: First Vintage Books Edition, Random House, 2007, updated 2008. —. “The Power of Music”. Brain 129.10 (2006): 2528-32. Sixsmith, A. and G. Gibson. “Music and the Wellbeing of People with Dementia”. Ageing and Society 27.1 (2007): 127-45. doi:10.1017/S0144686 06005228. Storr, A. Music and the Mind. New York, NY: Random House Publishing Group, 1992. Swinton, J. Dementia: Living in the Memories of God. Grand Rapids, MN: Eerdmans 2013. Vink, A. C., M. S. Bruinsma, and R. J. Scholten. “Music Therapy for People with Dementia”. The Cochrane Collaboration of Systematic Reviews, 2011, Issue 3. Chichester, West Sussex: The Cochrane Collaboration, John Wiley & Sons. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD003477.pub2. Yamaguchi, H., Y. Maki, and T. Yamagami. “Overview of Nonpharmacological Intervention for Dementia and Principles of Brainactivating Rehabilitation”. Psychogeriatrics 10 (2010): 206-13. doi:10.1111/j.1479-8301.2010.00323.x.

CHAPTER NINE “LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE”: ST. PAUL, WELL-BEING AND ROMAN HUMOUR JAMES R. HARRISON   This chapter argues that for the believer, and society more generally, humour is a complex phenomenon. Its genre, intention, occasion, stereotypes and impact will be properly appreciated and its ambiguities respected. After outlining the Greek and Roman understanding of humour articulated by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian, the chapter focuses on the apostle Paul’s engagement with the Roman conventions of humour. Several case studies will be explored: namely, (a) Plautus’ comedy The Braggart Soldier; (b) the ubiquitous toilet humour; (c) first-century JulioClaudian political humour; and, last, the social and racial stereotypes expressed in the ancient joke book, the Philogelos (“Laughter Lover”). What relevance does Paul’s approach have in our modern world of “kudos trolling” and the satire of Charlie Hebdo? What role does Paul assign humour in personal and social relationships? What, theologically speaking, is its power of healing and injury?

Introduction The adage “Laughter is the best medicine” (cf. Prov. 17:22) captures well the bonding power of laughter for groups of people in their varying moments of tension, intimacy, or surprise. Laughter is assigned social capital in friendships, is esteemed as a desirable quality for potential partners in online dating, and straddles a range of entertainment options (television, film, theatre, stand-up comedy, etc.). Moreover, laughter boosts the physical and emotional health of individuals by defusing stress, triggering the release of endorphins, and enhancing resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. 1 Despite the validity of these



1 Note the health care model, relying on humour and play, of the American “clown” physician, Patch Adams, founder of the Gesundheit! Institute, famously

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psychological and physiological observations, the adage does not plumb the social function of humour, its perceived rationale(s), and its intricate and subtle cultural expressions, which can have both positive and deleterious impacts upon those who wield or hear it. For Christians, the issue is complex. Believers are historically typecast as “humourless Puritans” or dour “ascetics” in lifestyle, or, worse, in the recent opinion of one member of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, they are made in the image of a humourless God. The issue is compounded by the unwillingness of biblical interpreters and exegetes to find humour in the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures because of an intricate web of factors affecting our hermeneutical approach: i.e. uninformed views about humour, views of Scripture and worship, unsophisticated reading strategies, cultural, personality and philosophical factors, etc. 2 This paper argues that for the believer, and people generally, humour is a much more complex phenomenon than initially thought. Close attention has to be paid to its cultural expression, genre, intention, occasion, stereotypes and impact. The question is where to start methodologically in addressing the relationship of Paul’s writings to the ancient rituals of humour. This must be done before we can speak meaningfully about how Paul’s approach to humour can contribute to a robust sense of social and spiritual well-being as much in the present as in the past. At the outset of this article, the theories of ancient comedy in their Platonic and Aristotelian forms are briefly outlined, but it is suggested that the Roman traditions of humour, employed in various rhetorical, inscriptional and visual contexts, better locate Paul’s humour in a world dominated by the Caesars than the arcane Greek philosophical discussions of the artistic genre of Attic comedy. Thus the Roman understanding of humour, articulated by the rhetoricians Cicero (106-43 BC) and Quintilian (35-100 AD), is analysed for their reflections upon the place of humour in the social relations of the Mediterranean basin. The paper then concentrates

 portrayed by Robin Williams in the same-named 1998 film. On the humorous depiction of physicians in antiquity, see P. Schulten, “Physicians, Humour and Therapeutic Laughter in the Ancient World”, Social Identities 7.1 (2001): 67-73. 2 See the insightful discussion of Willie Van Heerden, “Why the Humour in the Bible Plays Hide and Seek with Us”, Social Identities 7.1 (2001): 75-96, esp. 7587. On how Christianity can embrace humour, including a discussion of the belief systems and character traits that would facilitate this transition, see S. Joeckel, “Funny as Hell: Christianity and Humour Reconsidered”, Humor: The International Journal of Humour Research 21.4 (2008): 415-33.

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on the apostle Paul’s engagement with specific conventions of Roman humour. Several case studies will be explored in relation to Paul’s writings: namely, (a) boasting conventions in Miles Gloriosus (The Braggart Soldier), a comedy of the Roman playwright Plautus; (b) expressions of toilet humour (Ostian wall paintings; Roman frescoes of Nilotic dwarves; Ephesian inscriptions from the imperial period); (c) Julio-Claudian political humour (first-century Pompeian wall paintings; Seneca’s The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius); (d) stereotypes—social, intellectual, professional, gender, and ethnic— characterising the ancient joke book, the Philogelos (“Laughter Lover”). What relevance does Paul’s approach have in our modern world of “kudos trolling” and the satire of Charlie Hebdo, with its recent tragic consequences? What role does Paul assign humour in personal and social relationships? What, theologically speaking, is its power of healing? More specifically, does humour in itself heal or does its real dynamic lie elsewhere? I have chosen to concentrate on the Roman traditions of humour instead of exploring the Graeco-Roman world of comedy more generally.3



3 On Roman humour, see M. Beard, Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling and Cracking Up (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2014). See also G. E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy: A Study in Popular Entertainment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952); J.-P. Cèbe, La caricature antique et la parodie dans le monde romain antique, des origines à Juvénal (Paris: Boccard, 1966); A. Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983); A. Corbeill, Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); R. S. Miola, “Roman Comedy”, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy, ed. A. Leggatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 18-31; M. Plaza, The Function of Humour in Roman Verse Satire: Laughing and Lying (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); J. R. Clarke, Looking at Laughter: Humor, Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); H. Vincent, “Is This a Joke? Understanding Humor in Roman Satire”, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 17.2 (2010): 264-275. Discussions of the comedies of Roman playwrights are far too numerous to list here. For an

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At one level, there is a false dichotomy implied here because the Roman playwrights recycled the plots of Greek comedies in Roman garb. Therefore it is always difficult to discern what specifically Roman elements might have been imported into a Greek comic plot that add something new and significant to the comedy as opposed to merely recycling stereotypical plots and characters in a context more congenial for a Roman audience. But I will be arguing that Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus does reflect specifically Roman satiric elements which afford us insight into Paul’s rhetoric in 2 Corinthians 11:16-12:10. More importantly, given the Roman hegemony in the first century AD, it would be unwise to assume that Roman elements of humour had not impacted in some way upon the comic sense of the inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin. Moreover, since we will be focusing primarily upon the evidence of the Corinthian and Philippian epistles, we would do well to remember that Corinth and Philippi were Roman colonies and a Roman approach to the humour articulated in those epistles would therefore be appropriate and more likely to reflect social reality anyway. Finally, Paul’s alertness to a Roman sense of humour might be presumed if we take seriously the evidence of Acts regarding his Roman citizenship (Acts 16:37-38; 22:2528), though this has been hotly contested in recent years. 4 A basic familiarity of Roman citizens with their culture, even if they were living outside of the capital, would be a given. Last, we will also pay attention to the visual evidence as much as the literary evidence, given the widespread illiteracy in the ancient world. The crude and sophisticated expressions of toilet humour, for example, may provide us access to the humour at the base of the social pyramid as much as at its apex.5

Ancient Theories of Comedy: The Difficulty of Situating Paul as a “Comedian” One approach to our topic is to engage with the theories of comedy in antiquity and to see where Paul fits in the spectrum of humour by comparison. Broadly speaking, there is a consistent position enunciated by

 introduction, see M. Fontaine and A. D. Scafuro, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 4 See S. A. Adams, “Paul the Roman Citizen: Roman Citizenship in the Ancient World and Its Importance for Understanding Acts 22:22-29”, in Paul: Jew, Greek, and Roman, ed. S. E. Porter, PAST 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 309-26. 5 On comedy and the elite figures of Plutarch’s Vitae, see S. Xenophontos, “Comedy in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives”, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 52 (2012): 603-31.

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the foundational ancient writers, Plato and Aristotle, on the artistic genre of comedy. 6 Plato and Aristotle establish the basic interpretative parameters for all subsequent writers in antiquity, each congregating around the nexus of “mimetic” and “superiority” theories. At the outset, it is important to realise that humour was different in Plato’s day. Whereas we routinely tease others and crack jokes in diverse contexts and occasions, in the case of the Greeks “the occasions for laughter and mockery were not those of every day life but those of conviviality and festival”.7 In contrast to our “sit-com” and “stand-up” comedy obsessed culture, the performance of comedies was confined to the religious festivals of Dionysius at Athens from the fifth century onwards, though we must not forget the link of comedy with the evolution of the brief satyr plays,8 nor overlook its link with the rituals and sanctuary of the goddess Demeter in Corinth.9 What, then, is Plato’s understanding of comedy? First, in the Republic, Plato (428/427 or 424/423–348/347 BC) contrasts the “ideal”, exemplified by the study of philosophy, and the “imitation” (mimesis) of the ideal, exemplified by the arts of poetry and comedy (Rep. X. 606; III. 394c). 10 Because the “imitative” arts are a semblance of the “ideal”, they are banned from the Republic because they

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Eratosthenes assigns comedy a purely entertainment function (Strabo 1.2.3), as does the Roman playwright Terence (Eun., Prologue; Andr., Prologue). Contra, see the Roman playwright Plautus, Pseud., 560-73; cf. C. D. Hill, A View of Ancient Comedy: Greek and Roman Sources of Comic Theory, unpublished PhD thesis, Florida State University, 1985, 74-92. On Plato’s view of comedy, see W. C. Greene, “The Spirit of Comedy in Plato”, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 31 (1920): 63-123; R. Patterson, “The Platonic Art of Comedy and Tragedy”, Philosophy and Literature 6.1. (1982): 76-93; R. Brock, “Plato and Comedy”, in Owls to Athens, ed. E. M. Craik (Oxford: Oxford University, 1990), 39-49. 7 J. Bremmer, “Jokes, Jokers and Jokebooks in Ancient Greek Culture”, in A Cultural History of Humour, ed. J. Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Cambridge: Polity, 1997), 11-28, at 13. 8 Aristotle omits satyr plays from his list of genres of mimesis performed at the Athenian festivals (Poetics 1447a 13-15). On comedy and the satyr plays, see C. A. Shaw, Satyric Play: The Evolution of Greek Comedy and Satyr Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 9 On figurines of comic actors, animal and human parodies, and grotesques at the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Corinth, see G. S. Merker, The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore: Terracotta Figurines of the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods (Ann Arbor: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2006), 194-199. 10 Hill, A View of Ancient Comedy, 27.

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fall short of the perfection and truth that should characterise the ideal state (Rep. III. 398a).11 The guardians of the Republic, moreover, “mustn’t be lovers of laughter either, for whenever anyone indulges in violent laughter, a violent change of mood is likely to follow” (Rep. III 388e; cf. Leg. 5.732c). Thus comedy must not “represent worthwhile people as overcome by laughter” (Rep. III 388e); nor should the gods be so depicted, as Homer does (Il. 1.599-600), by having them laugh at the disabled god Hephaestus (Rep. III 388e-389a). Indeed, according to Plato, comedy indulges the emotions in a manner that is deleterious for character formation.12 With comedy, as Plato’s Socrates opines, “you are giving rein to your comic instinct, which your reason has restrained for fear you may seem to be playing the fool, and bad taste in the theatre may insensibly lead you into becoming a buffoon at home” (Rep. X 606c). Neither should comedies ridicule citizens or be animated by anger (Leg. 11.935d). Notwithstanding, Plato assigns comedy a positive pedagogic function among the other arts in the Laws (Leg. 7.816d), even if tragedy is superior to comedy (Leg. 2.658d). By contrast, in the Philebus, Plato analyses the emotions aroused by comedy: namely, the combination of the pain of malice with the pleasure of laughter. This occurs in deriding the misfortunes of others, who, as Plato depicts them (48c-49c), exhibit “weak ignorance” because of their self-conceit (48b-50e). 13 We see here in embryonic form the emergence of the “superiority” theory of humour. The object of amusement is ridiculed as “inferior”, whereas the joker and the audience emerge triumphant, experiencing a measure of personal malice and vicarious joy, because they are “superior” to the ridiculed. Modern

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Hill, A View of Ancient Comedy, 30. Plato (Rep. X.65) states regarding the corrupting influence of comedy upon character development: “You are doing the same thing if, in listening at a comic performance or in ordinary life to buffooneries which you would be ashamed to indulge in yourself, you thoroughly enjoy them instead of being disgusted with their ribaldry … By encouraging its impudence at the theatre, you may be unconsciously carried away into playing the comedian in your private life”. 13 On Philebus 48b-50e, see J. L Wood, “Comedy, Malice, and Philosophy in Plato’s Philebus”, Ancient Philosophy 27 (2007): 77-94; M. Miller, “The Pleasures of the Comic and of Socratic Inquiry: Aporetic Reflections on Philebus 48a-50b”, Arethusa 41.2 (2008): 263-89; L. Golden, Aristotle on Tragic and Comic Mimesis (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992); S. Benardete, The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Plato’s Philebus. Translated and with Commentary by Sarah Benardete (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009); E. A. Austin, “Fools and Malicious Pleasure in Plato’s Philebus”, History of Philosophy Quarterly 29 (2012): 125-39. 12

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talk shows such as Jerry Springer’s thrive on this voyeuristic humour and internal glee at other people’s expense, though Springer claims that he is genuinely sympathetic towards those deeply fractured people who inhabit his show week by week.14 Second, Aristotle (384–322 BC) likewise considers comedy to be a mimesis in conjunction with the other artistic forms (epic, tragedy, poetry, music), with each discipline of the arts imitating different things by different means or in a different manner.15 In contrast to the misery of the noble characters of Greek tragedy, Aristotle in the Poetics speaks thus of the non-painful mimesis afforded by the baser comic characters, with a comedy always concluding with a happy ending in contrast to tragedy (cf. Pol. 1453a): Comedy, as we have said, is a representation of inferior people (ijĮȣȜȠIJȑȡȦȞ), not indeed in the full sense of the word bad (țĮIJ੹ ʌ઼ıĮȞ țĮțȓĮȞ), but the laughable (IJઁ ȖİȜ૙ȠȞ ) is a species of the base or ugly (IJȠ૨ ĮੁıȤȡȠ૨). It consists in some blunder (ਖȝȐȡIJȘȝȐ) or ugliness (ĮੇıȤȡȠȢ) that does not cause pain or disaster, an obvious example being the comic mask which is ugly (ĮੁıȤȡȩȞ) and distorted but not painful.16

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On his silver anniversary show, Springer, a spritely 71 year old wearing a tuxedo, said: “Know this, there’s never been a moment in the 25 years of doing our show that I ever thought that I was better than the people who appear on our stage. I’m not better. Only luckier”. (Official Jerry Springer website). While Springer is undoubtedly sincere in what he says, the fact that he wanders among the audience and leaves his guests unprotected on stage, in contrast to other hosts (e.g. Oprah Winfrey; Phil Donohue) who used to sit with their guests, is significant: “The effect of leaving (his guests) alone is to isolate them while the host, however objective he or she may claim to be, is physically and intellectually with the audience, thereby increasing, without any real cause, his or her own credibility with them”. See V. Abt and L. Mustazza, Coming after Oprah: Cultural Fallout in the Age of the TV Talk Show (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997), 96. 15 Aristotle, Pol. 1447a. On Aristotle’s view of comedy, see L. Golden, “Aristotle on Comedy”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 42.3 (1984): 283-90; M. Heath, “Aristotelian Comedy”, Classical Quarterly 39.2 (1989): 344-54; W. Watson, The Lost Second Book of Aristotle’s “Poetics” (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 16 Aristotle, Poet. 1449a 31-36. Duckworth (The Nature of Roman Comedy, 309) limits Aristotle’s “deformity” and “ugliness” to the “moral vices of men”. While moral defects are certainly included under the motif, Duckworth’s view is somewhat truncated. As we will see, Roman humour lambasts physical deformity and ugliness as well. Therefore Aristotle’s text raises acutely for modern audiences

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For Aristotle, the laughable (IJઁ ȖİȜ૙ȠȞ) refers to “any shortcoming, fault and ugliness [that] may be the carrier of comic laughter, on the condition that this phenomenon is socially significant”.17 Hill is probably correct in seeing Aristotle’s sense of the ridiculous as the equivalent of Plato’s “weak ignorance”.18 But, in contrast to Plato, Aristotle does not go as far as suggesting that laughter should be avoided at all costs by the virtuous. Rather Aristotle opts for his famous moral “mean” or middle course in handling humour,19 explaining that the best life is lived under the control of reason. Consequently, he advocates that one must avoid the excesses of “vulgar buffoons, striving after humour at all costs” (Eth. nic. 1128a).20 Last, we turn to the Tractatus Coislinianus, a tenth century manuscript published in 1839 and accepted by some scholars to be a restatement of the Aristotelian tradition, partially or entirely resting on the lost work of Aristotle, Poetics II.21 Irrespective of the debate regarding the Aristotelian

 the relationship of comedy to physical disability. Adam Hills’ British TV show, The Last Leg, is a potent example of how disability and humour intersect for modern audiences. For discussion of the issue, see I. Stronach and J. Allan, “Joking with Disability: What’s the Difference Between the Comic and the Tragic in Disability Discourses?” Body and Society 5.4 (1999): 31-45; D. Reid, E. Kim, H. Stoughton, and R. Smith, “The Humorous Construction of Disability: Stand-up Comedians in the United States”, Disability and Society 21.6 (2006): 629-43; T. Coogan and Rebecca Mallett, “Introduction: Disability, Humor and Comedy”, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 7.3 (2013): 247-53. On pain and laughter, see D. M. Dutsch, Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy: On Echoes and Voices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 92-148. On the ridicule of people with deformities in antiquity, see R. Garland, The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World, 2nd ed. (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2010; orig. 1995). 17 V. Parinska, “Ancient Comedy: Testimony of Sources”, Literatúra 52.3 (2010): 57-62, at 60. 18 Hill, A View of Ancient Comedy, 52. 19 Aristotle (Eth. nic. 1108a 23-26; 1128a 4-b3; Eth. eud. 1234a 4-23) defines wit (İ੝IJȡĮʌİȜȓĮ) as a mean between buffoonery (ȕȦȝȠȜȠȤȓĮ) and boorishness (ਕȖȡȠȚțȓĮ) 20 See D. Gailbraith, “Theories of Comedy”, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy, ed. A. Leggatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5-6. 21 For a translation and commentary on the text, see L. Cooper, An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy with an Adaptation of the Poetics and a Translation of Tractatus Coislinianus (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922), 224-86. For a new translation and argumentation that the text provides the cardinal points of Aristotle’s lost Poetics II, see R. Jenko, Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a

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provenance of the text, the writer, like Aristotle’s Poetics, assigns comedy and mimes to the category of mimetic poetry (Tract. Cois. II [Cooper, The Aristotelian Theory of Comedy, 224]). The mimetic theory of comedy is explained in terms of the emotions in a manner reminiscent of Plato: Comedy is an imitation of an action that is ludicrous and imperfect, of sufficient length, [in embellished language,] the several kinds [of embellishment being] separately [found] in the [several] parts [of the play]; [directly presented] by persons acting, and not [given] through narrative; through pleasure and laughter effecting the purgation of the like emotions. It has laughter for its mother.

Last, there is a clear echo of the Poetics where the text states that “the joker will make game of faults in the soul and in the body” (Tract. Cois. II [Cooper, The Aristotelian Theory of Comedy, 225]). Is any aspect of the thought of Paul locatable within the theories of ancient comedy? The contexts, however, are different, given that ancient Greek comedy at Athens was ineluctably tied to the festival contexts of Dionysius and Demeter, whereas Paul’s letters are occasional products, which, as substitutes for his personal presence, were designed to teach and pastor his small Christian communities of grace across the eastern Mediterranean basin. The worlds could not be further apart. Plato’s idea that comedy was a merely a mimesis of “ideal” forms further underscores the vast differences between ancient comic theory and Pauline mimesis. For the apostle, the believer’s imitation is Christocentric, focused upon on the paradigm of the crucified and risen Christ, the perfect image of God, with the result that believers experience its cruciform imprint in their lives through self-denying discipleship. 22 Once again, a vast ideological gulf separates each mimetic tradition.

 Reconstruction of Poetics II (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984). For a bibliography of scholarship on the Tractatus Coislinianus up to 1996, see O. J. Schrier, The Poetics of Aristotle and the Tractatus Coislinianus, Mnemosyne Supplements 184 (Leiden; Brill, 1998). The existence of Aristotle’s lost text has been made famous in the popular media through Umberto Eco’s medieval murder-mystery novel, The Name of the Rose (Italian orig. 1980; English trans. 1983), which deals with the subversive power of laughter. Jean-Jacques Annaud’s same-named film of 1986, starring Sean Connery, further enhanced the novel’s (and therefore Aristotle’s Poetics) fame. 22 See J. R. Harrison, “The Imitation of the Great Man in Antiquity: Paul’s Inversion of a Cultural Icon”, ed. S. E. Porter and A. W. Pitts, Christian Origins and Classical Culture: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament

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However, there is one intriguing Aristotelian resonance that is worth exploring. The idea that comedy arises from deriding the faults in the bodies of the socially and physically inferior, whether the faults are stigmatised as a disability or ugliness, helps us to see in a different light the public shame and mockery associated with Paul’s sufferings for the gospel, recounted in the peristasis catalogues—or lists of hardships—of the Corinthian epistles. In this regard, we would do well to remember the presence of comic figurines depicting human parodies and grotesques in the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Corinth (supra n. 6). Does Paul trade on the popular derision and ridicule that his bodily sufferings would have evoked in the minds of his Corinthian auditors when debunking the criticisms of his opponents, for example? To cite another example, Paul was acutely aware of the scorn and contempt (Gal 4:14a: Ƞ੝ț ਥȟȠȣșİȞȒıĮIJİ Ƞ੝į੻ ਥȟİʌIJȪıĮIJİ) that his illness (literally, “because of weakness of the flesh” [4:13: įȚૃ ਕıșȑȞȚĮȞ IJોȢ ıĮȡțȩȢ]) could have elicited among his Galatian hosts upon his arrival in Galatia. This was because of its distressing nature and imposition upon them (literally, “your trial in my flesh” [4:14: IJઁȞ ʌİȚȡĮıȝઁȞ ਫ਼ȝ૵Ȟ ਥȞ IJૌ ıĮȡțȓ ȝȠȣ]). Modern Galatians commentators have powerfully argued on the basis of the linguistic evidence that the potential dismissal of the apostle by the Galatians is best understood as a slur from the world of occult practice: it insinuated that Paul must have been demon-possessed because of his illness.23 That certainly was Paul’s perception of how he might have been categorised by the Galatians and other provincial audiences in Asia Minor. But an ancient audience may well have also considered Paul’s disability an occasion for demeaning public ridicule,

 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 213-54. 23 Referring to the magical connotation attached to the apotropaic ritual of “spitting” (ਥȟİʌIJȪıĮIJİ: Gal 4:14a), J. L. Martyn (Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [New York: Doubleday, 1997], 421) states: “Tempted to view the sick apostle as an evil magician temporarily overcome by the malignant powers he normally used to control others, the Galatians could have reacted by spitting, hoping to cleanse their mouths of the unclean odors they inhaled in his presence”. See also See also H. Schlier, “ਥțʌIJȪȦ”, in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament Volume II, ed. G. Kittel and tr. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 448-49; H. D. Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 225; R. N. Longenecker, Galatians (Word: Dallas, 1990), 191-92; J. D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1993), 234; B. Witherington III, Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 311.

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based upon their familiarity with the Platonic and Aristotelian comic tradition which demeaned the disabled. Either way, the Galatians graciously refrained from mocking him, treating the physically incapacitated apostle as if he were an angel or messenger of God (Gal 4:14b: ੪Ȣ ਙȖȖİȜȠȞ IJȠ૨ șİȠ૨).24 Here we see how knowledge of the ancient comic tradition allows us to consider other further fruitful interpretations in reconstructing ancient perceptions of the suffering apostle by his opponents. We turn now to the discussion of comedy found in Cicero (106–43 BC) and Quintilian (AD 35–100), though in plumbing their evidence we will concentrate more on what is socially “laughable” in the minds of everyday Romans rather than on the rhetorical theory and techniques animating Roman comedy.

Cicero, Quintilian and the “Laughable”: The Social World of Roman Humour Cicero Whereas the comments of Plato and Aristotle’s comments on comedy are scattered throughout their writings—though the consensus of recent scholarship is that the Tractatus Coislinianus encapsulates the essence of Aristotle’s lost Poetics II—we have in Cicero (De or. II.54.216–II.71.290; Opt. gen. 25.87-90) and Quintilian (Inst. VI.3.1–VI.3.112) extended reflections on how comedy is to be wielded effectively and sensitively in rhetorical contexts. 25 What is important for our purposes are the social

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See the insightful discussion of Witherington, Grace in Galatia, 311-12. On comedy in Cicero and Quintilian, see F. W. Kelsey, “Cicero as a Wit”, Classical Journal 3.1. (1907): 3-10; M. A. Grant, The Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the Laughable: The Greek Rhetoricians and Cicero, University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, No. 21 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1924); H. V. Canter, “Irony in the Orations of Cicero”, American Journal of Philology 57.4 (1936): 457-64; A. Haury, L’Ironie et l’humour chez Ciceron (Leiden: Brill, 1955); K. A. Geffckin, Comedy in the Pro Caelio: With an Appendix on the In Clodium et Curionem (Leiden: Brill, 1973); M. Volpe, “The Persuasive Force of Humor: Cicero’s Defence of Caelius”, Quarterly Journal of Speech 62.3 (1977): 311-23; Corbeill, Controlling Laughter; S. M. Goldberg, “Quintilian on Comedy”, Traditio 43 (1987): 359-67; F. Graf, “Cicero, Plautus and Roman Laughter”, in Bremmer and Roodenburg, eds., A Cultural History of Humour, 2939; J. J. Hughes, “Invective and Comedic Allusion: Cicero, ‘In Pisonem’, fragment 25

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attitudes that are conveyed through the citations of various genres of humour in the texts. These vignettes of humour provide us a profitable lens through which we can view Paul’s use of humour in a Roman context. We know that there were collections of Cicero’s jokes in antiquity (Quintilian, Inst., VI.3.5, 43-44), among other collections of humour (e.g. Domitius Marsus’ Urbanity, a work on urbane wit [Quintilian, Inst., VI.3.102]; cf. the Philelogus), and other sundry books entitled Concerning the Laughable (De Ridiculus: Cicero, De or. II.53.217 [cf. ʌİȡ੿ ȖİȜȠȓȠȣ: Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.22]). So Paul’s exposure to the routine rounds of Roman humour, with their motifs, would seem assured, let alone their visual expressions, or cruder versions in toilet humour. In the case of De oratore, Cicero initially explores the basic types of “wit” (i.e. irony and raillery: II.54.218-19), illustrating its inventive and skilful use (II.54.220-34), as well as the rules for judging the use of wit (II.57.231-234). Temporarily, Cicero moves onto the general topic of “the laughable” (II.58.235íII.59.247). Here he expands on the nature of laughter, its provenance, its rhetorical appropriateness, its limits of use, and the various objects of wit. Returning to “wit” more specifically, Cicero expands upon the classification of the categories of verbal witticism (II.59.248íII.71.290), outlining in great detail all the rhetorical tricks that an orator like himself would have used in his prosecutions and defences as a lawyer. While this is intensely valuable evidence for the rhetorician’s art, we are more interested in the social attitudes that are evinced through Cicero’s presentation of the risible. First, as was the case with Aristotle, Cicero subscribes to the “superiority” theory, restricting the laughable “to that which may be described as unseemly or ugly” (II.58.236). As he sums up, “objects of laughter are those sayings which remark upon and point out something unseemly in no unseemly manner” (II.58.236). There is, however, a

 9 Nisbet”, Latomus 57.3 (1997): 570-77; M. Leigh, “The Pro Caelio and Comedy”, Classical Philology 99.4 (2004): 300-35; C. M. Miotti, Ridentem dicere vervm: o humor retórico de Quintiliano e seu diálogo com Cícero, Catulo e Horácio (written in Portuguese: = Ridentem dicere uerum: Quintilian´s Rhetorical Humor and Its Dialogue with Cicero, Catullus and Horace; unpublished thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2010); L. G. Perks, “The Ancient Roots of Humor Theory”, Humor: The International Journal of Humor Research 25.2 (2012): 119-32; Beard, Laughter in Ancient Rome, 99-127; D. Waisanen, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Decorum: Quintilian’s Reflections on Rhetorical Humour”, Advances in the History of Rhetoric 18.1 (2015): 29-52.

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sensitivity underlying Cicero’s approach here. Mockery should not be inflicted upon outstandingly wicked criminals—more serious public punishments are called for in their case—and the “wretched” should be spared, unless they are arrogant (II.58.237). The orator should adopt the Aristotelian mean and avoid the danger of the extremes of mimicry or buffoonery (II.59.239). 26 Consequently, a sensitivity towards “popular esteem” is necessary if one is to avoid speaking inconsiderately of the “well-beloved” (II.58.237). As Cicero explains (II.59.2.238-39): Thus the things most easily ridiculed are those which call for neither strong distrust nor the deepest sympathy. This is why all laughing-matters are found among those blemishes noticeable in the conduct of people who are neither objects of general esteem nor yet full of misery, and not apparently merely fit to be hurried off to execution for their crimes; and these blemishes, if deftly handled, raise laughter. In ugliness too and in physical blemishes there is good enough matter for jesting, but here as elsewhere the limits of license are the main question.

Elsewhere Cicero expresses an elitism and political caution that goes beyond a mere sensitivity to “popular esteem” in deciding whether to launch a humorous attack against social equals and the powerful: the orator “will spare friends and dignitaries, will avoid rankling insult; he will merely prod his opponents, nor will he do it constantly, nor to all of them nor in every manner” (Opt. gen. 26.89). Second, Cicero’s humour about the “unseemly and ugly” is not confined to the moral vices of men but regularly includes the physically disabled or those with particular physical characteristics. Sometimes these jokes are cited with Ciceronian disapproval, as is the case with the “short” in stature and “one-eyed” jests (De or. II.50.246), but jibes about the lame (II.41.249), the malodorous (II.41.249), the bald (II.41.250), a cripple (II.45.262), and, last, a man with a twisted body and protruding tongue (II.66.266), are cited as positive and legitimate examples of wit and counter-wit (cf. II.68.276). But, as we would expect, perceived character defects and pretensions are lampooned or celebrated, as the situation demands. Crassus, in a

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Cicero, Opt. gen. 26.89: “… the orator should use ridicule with a care not to let it be too frequent lest it become buffoonery; nor ridicule of a smutty nature lest it be that of low farce; nor pert, lest it be impudent; nor aimed at misfortune, lest it be brutal, not at crime, lest laughter take place of loathing”.

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speech before the assembly, quipped that the general “Memmius thought himself so exalted an individual that, on his way down to the Market Place, he lowered his head in order to pass under the Arch of Fabius” (II.66.267).27 A progressive diminution in family intelligence is cleverly insinuated when the fourth son born into the family of the Metelli, named Gaius, is dismissed with this quip (II.66.267): “… if the mother of Metellus should bear a fifth time, she would have been found to have born an ass”. The humour of a misogynist friend of a husband, however, is given a favourable airing. A man, lamenting the fact that his wife had suicided by hanging herself from a fig-tree, was told by his (presumably married) Sicilian friend: “Do please let me have some cuttings from that tree of yours to plant” (II.69.278). Third, speeches should be “sprinkled with the salt of pleasantry” (Opt. gen. 26.87). Both humour and wit should be used, Cicero states, “the former in a graceful and charming narrative, the latter in hurling the shafts of ridicule”. However, “the work of buffoons in pantomime” and “mimicry” must be avoided at all costs in caricaturing those being derided. In particular, the orator must demonstrate “well-bred” modesty by avoiding all unseemly language and offensive gestures” (De or. II.39.242). Finally, the social costs of an orator producing an inferior rhetorical performance are high, as another jibe demonstrates (II.69.276): In the same group is the remark made by Catullus to a poor speaker who, after resuming his seat with the impression that his concluding remarks had aroused the audience’s pity, inquired of Catullus whether he thought he had been successful in arousing pity; “Oh, yes, and plenty of it”, was the reply, “for I can’t imagine anybody could be so hard-hearted as not to have thought your speech a pitiable performance”.

Quintilian Since Quintilian had read both Cicero’s De Oratore (e.g. Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.7-8 [Cicero, De or. II.58.236]; VI.3.23 [Cicero, De or. II.71.289]) and Tiro’s three volume collection of Cicero’s jests (Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.1-3),28 we will see the reappearance of not only the same rhetorical



27 E. W. Sutton (Cicero, De Oratore Books I & II [London: W. Heinemann, 1942], 400 n. b) comments: “The triumphal arch commemorating the success of Fabius over the Allobroges was the loftiest so far erected in Rome”. 28 Other works of Cicero are cited in Quintilian: Cael. 39.69 (Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.25).

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motifs but also some of the same Ciceronian jokes in Quintilian’s work (e.g. VI.3.48, 55-56, 67-68, 73, 77, 84, 88, 109, 112). However, in contrast to many other writers from Greece and Rome, Quintilian asserts the rules of the employment of comedic art are not the primary dynamic of humour, but rather its nature and opportunity (Inst. VI.3.11). It is a responsive medium primarily, used “to greater advantage in reply than in attack”, with oratorical wit being rare and its rules in no way fixed (Inst. VI.3.1314). Consequently, Quintilian outlines the various names for the types of wit, including their meaning as redefined by him (Inst. VI.3.17-21): namely, urbanitas (possessing an urban resonance), venustus (exhibiting grace and charm), salsus (reflecting the salt of wit), facetus (possessing grace and polished elegance), icocus (serious and non-serious jesting), and dicacitas (the language of banter). Although Quintilian does not want to turn his book into a “common jest-book” (Inst. VI.3.65), he nevertheless inundates his readers with a flood of jokes relating to the application of humour to oratory (Inst. VI.3.23-24), along with their associated rhetorical techniques throughout the rest of the book. We turn now to examples of wit relevant to the social context of Paul. While there are overlaps with Cicero and the wider oratorical tradition, there are occasional distinctive positions taken by Quintilian worth highlighting. First, Quintilian, like Cicero, also appropriates the “salt” metaphor for Attic wit (Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.1-19; cf. Cicero, Opt. gen. 26.87), but extrapolates a wider set of implications than Cicero: wit must season the orator’s language, bring a special relish of its own, and arouse a thirst to hear. Second, as with Cicero (supra, n. 23: Opt. gen. 26.89), ribald and obscene jokes, with their puerile doubles entendres, are to be excised from the orator’s rhetorical repertoire (Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.29, 47). Third, Quintilian reaffirms Aristotle’s and Cicero’s emphasis on humour being preoccupied with deformity and ugliness (Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.8; Cicero, De or. II.58.236). Hence scattered throughout Quintilian’s treatise there are jokes referring to ugliness, 29 disability, 30 sexual impotence, 31 and

 29

Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.32: “… some orators … do not refrain even from jests that may recoil upon themselves. This was the case with Sulpicius Longus who, despite the fact that he was himself surpassingly hideous, asserted of a man against whom he was appearing in a case involving his status as a free man, that even his face was the face of a slave. To this Domitius Afer replied, ‘Is it your profound conviction, Longus, that an ugly man must be a slave?’” 30 Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.77: “Cicero employed this method against Vatinus. The latter was lame and, wishing to make it seem that his health was improved, said

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tallness or smallness of stature. 32 Humorous nicknames categorise opponents as animals and belittle the physique of rivals: for example, “white ass”, “wild horse” and “belt buckle” for a man who was “dark, lean and bent” (Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.57-58). Fourth, jokes stereotype slaves as untrustworthy (Inst. VI.3.50, 93), denigrate philosophical rivals (Inst. VI.3.78), or abuse ungrateful clients (Inst. VI.3.93). In other words, the social and philosophical status quo is reinforced through well-aimed putdowns. However, unlike Cicero, various jokes in Quintilian’s collection illustrate the dramatic change of political culture in imperial Rome that had occurred when the members of the Julio-Claudian house wrested the rule of Rome from the republican aristocratic elites. The personal power of Augustus’ and Claudius’ freedmen inspired genuine apprehension.33 Faced with the timidity of a soldier in presenting a petition, Augustus quipped: “Don’t hold it out as if you were giving a penny to an elephant” (Inst. VI.3.59). Afer, in response to the charge that he was always speaking against Caesar’s freedmen, cautiously retorted: “Yes, but I make little headway” (Inst. VI.3.81). Here we see how humour could helpfully orchestrate the delicate protocols now required for handling the imperial “elephant” in the room and the members of his household. Last, a revealing comment of Quintilian alerts us to the “foolishness” and tactical precariousness of Paul’s rhetorical defence in 2 Corinthians 11:16-12:10: “To make jokes against oneself is scarcely fit for any save professed buffoons and is strongly to be disapproved in an orator” (Inst. VI.3.82). We now turn of several case studies of instances of Roman humour and how they intersect with Paul’s own sense of the comic.

 that he could now walk as much as two miles. ‘Yes,’ said Cicero, ‘for the days are longer.’” 31 Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.64: “I add a third example, although out of respect to its author I withhold his name: ‘You are more lustful than a eunuch …’” 32 Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.66-67. 33 See Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.63 for a joke on the seating privileges of Augustus at the games.

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Plautus, Paul and Roman Boasting Conventions The military and civic inscriptions of the great men of Rome record their personal precedence and family glory, listing in a stylised “course of honour” (cursus honorum) their civic magistracies, priesthoods, military victories and decorations, patronage, supported by reference to ancestral luminaries from the honorand’s house where apposite. 34 This genre culminates in the massive inscription, the Res Gestae of Augustus, placed on his mausoleum at Rome, as well as at various sites in Galatia, which recorded all the accomplishments of his forty-four year rule of Rome (30 BCí14 AD) and his previous accomplishments as a triumvir. The achievements of the great men, military and civic, are recounted in lists, in ascending or descending order of achievement, 35 as the rhetoric and occasion demands, with a special emphasis on numbers, key words (ʌȡ૵IJȠȢ: “first”), and vignettes of career highlights. The boasting culture of the Roman elites, evidenced in the inscriptions of the Scipio family and Duilius at Rome, was transferred seamlessly to the Roman colonies of Philippi and Corinth, as the inscriptions of the Philippian military veterans and Corinthian aristocratic elites underscore. However, this boasting culture did have its comic critics. The famous Roman comic playwright, Plautus, was alert to the ubiquity of the rhetorical conventions of Roman boasting in ancestral and personal glory.36 With delightful conceit, Plautus presents his soldier, Pyrgopolynices, and his accomplice, boasting in a manner similar to Roman inscriptions such as those of Duilius and the Scipios (The Braggart Warrior 40ff).

 34

See W. Eck, “There are No cursus honorum Inscriptions: The Function of the cursus honorum in Epigraphic Communication”, Scripta Classica Israelica 28 (2009): 79-92; L. Maurizi, Il cursus honorum senatorio da Augusto a Traiano: sviluppi formali e stilistici nell’ epigrafia latina e greca. Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 130 (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica/The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 2013). For inscriptional examples from the republican era, see E. H. Warmington, Remains of Old Latin IV: Archaic Inscriptions (London: William Heinemann, 1940), “Epitaphs” §§1-10, “Honorary Inscriptions” §§1-19. 35 The cursus honorum of decurional inscriptions in Roman Italy may appear either in ascending or descending order (M. L. Laird, Civic Monuments and the Augustales in Roman Italy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015], 37), as the rhetoric demands. 36 For discussion of glory in Plautus, see D. C. Earl, “Political Terminology in Plautus”, Historia 9.2 (1960): 234-43.

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Plautus captures perfectly in mock-heroic form the same mnemonic diagrams that characterised the eulogistic inscriptions of the Romans: Pyrgopolynices:

So you remember, eh?

Artotrogus:

Indeed I do, sir. One hundred and fifty in Cilicia ... a hundred in Jugotheevia ... thirty Sardians ... sixty Macedonians—that’s the list of the men you slew in a single day, sir.

Pyrgopolynices:

The sum total being what?

Artotrogus:

Seven thousand, sir.

Pyrgopolynices:

Yes, it should come to that. Your computation is correct …

Artotrogus:

And how about that time in Cappadocia, sir, when you would have slain five hundred men all at one stroke, if your sword had not been dull?

Pyrgopolynices:

Ah well, they were but beggarly infantry fellows, so I let them live.

Artotrogus:

Why should I tell you sir, what the whole world knows— that you are the one and only Pyrgopolynices on earth, peerless in valour, in aspect, and in doughty deeds? All the women love you, sir, and you can’t blame them, when you’re so handsome. Those girls, for instance, that caught me from behind by the cloak, only yesterday.37

In sum, this spoofs the type of self-advertisement that characterised the Roman nobiles in their quest for glory, military and civic.38 It helps us to



37 Plautus, Mil. Glor. 41-47, 52-58. In a letter of Publius Vatinius to Cicero (Fam. 5.10b [December 5, 45 BC]), Vatinius outlines his (largely successful) Dalmatian campaign in a mnemonic diagram similar to the honorific inscriptions: “six towns I stormed by force and captured … This single town, the largest of them all, I have now taken four times; for I took four towers and four walls, and their whole citadel as well, whence I was forcibly dislodged by snow, cold, and rain”. Regarding the popularity of Pyrgopolynices with women, see also the graffito from Pompeii (CIL IV 2145) in the Vico d’Eumachia, a small room of a brothel(?): “Gaius Valerius Venustus, soldier of the 1st praetorian cohort, in the century of Rufus, screwer of women”. Additionally, in the gladiator barracks of Pompeii, note CIL IV 8767: “Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th legion, was here. The women did not know of his presence. Only six women came to know, too few for such a stallion”. 38 On the Roman nobles, see the classic work of M. Gelzer, The Roman Nobility, tr. R. Seager (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969).

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see what provoked Paul regarding human boasting in his letters (e.g. Rom 3:27; 5:3, 4, 11; cf. 1 Cor 1:28-29a; Phil 3:5-11). There are three things to note. First, the pretentious and interminably long name of the soldier (Pyrgopolynices) mocks the boastful additions that Roman generals made to their already very long family names in order to emphasise military career highlights.39 Furthermore, the meaning of the name itself (“Taker of towers”; alternatively, “Fighter of many fortresses”) underscores what a braggart the soldier is.40 Second, the physical beauty of Pyrgopolynices, so alluring to the women, is as important as his deeds.41 Third, the inflated detail about the 500 infantrymen to be killed with one comic stroke of the soldier’s sword not only brings to a culmination the inflated boasting in numbers but also ends the tirade with (potentially) a striking vignette of his bravery—but it is also debunked in the process by the numerical exaggeration. Such climactic vignettes were conventional fare in the inscriptions (e.g. Res Gestae 34.2). Why are these small details important? What criticisms are being made of Paul? How does the apostle respond? In 2 Corinthians 10:10 Paul reports his own distillation of the charges being brought against him as an apostle from unidentified sources (“Some say”). While his epistolary rhetoric is weighty and forceful (2 Cor 10:10a), “in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing”. The attack concentrates on Paul’s physical appearance and rhetoric. While both were indissoluably linked in ancient rhetoric and in Roman boasting,42 there are humorous elements to what is happening here. Paul is probably reporting in adapted words the comic dismissal of the apostle, though with a very serious edge to its invective, aired by the rival apostles in their oratorical attack upon the founding apostle of Corinth. While the terms

 39

For example, see Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus “Africanus” (“Numantinus”); Quintus Caecilius Metellus “Creticus”; Publius Cornelius Scipio “Africanus”; Lucius Cornelius Scipio “Asiagenes”; Lucius Caecilius Metellus “Delmaticus”; Quintus Caecilius Metellus “Macedonicus”; and Quintus Caecilius Metellus “Numidicus”. For details regarding the careers of the Scipio and Metelli families, see S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 40 Duckworth (The Nature of Roman Comedy, 347-50) provides many examples of “tell-tale” names in Plautus and Terence. 41 Note the emphasis on Lucius Cornelius Scipio’s physical beauty as much as his military courage: Warmington, Remains of Old Latin IV, Epitaphs §2: “… whose fine form matched his bravery surpassing well …” 42 For the importance of appearance in rhetorical performance, see B. W. Winter, Philo and Paul among the Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 204, 211-13.

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belong to a much more developed tradition of rhetorical attack, expertly analysed by Larry Welborn and demonstrating the gravamen of the charges brought against Paul,43 I suspect that the rival apostles also used jokes to dismiss the apostle—crisp and incisive one-liners employed in various public contexts. We have already seen how the oratory designed by one orator to arouse the “pity” of an audience was humorously dismissed by another orator as “pitiable” (Quintilian, II.69.276). Furthermore, the physical features of opponents were derided through jokes, nicknames (Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.57-58), and the opportunistic use of other visual media (e.g. Cicero, De or. II.66.266). Paul’s lack of bodily presence in rhetorical delivery would have provided rich comic fare for his opponents.44 In 2 Corinthians 11:16-12:10 the apostle ruthlessly parodies his ancestral inheritance and personal achievements in the grand boasting style of the Scipionic sarcophagal inscriptions and the professional rhetors, with a view to demolishing the invidious comparisons that the Corinthians had begun to draw between himself as an orator and the boastful “superapostles” intruding at Corinth.45 The coinage of the word “super-apostles” (2 Cor 11:5; 12:11; ਫ਼ʌİȡȜȓĮȞ ਕʌȠıIJȩȜȦȞ) is perhaps Paul’s ironic inversion of Roman boasting in elevated names, noted above, as well as his carefully chosen use of a comic nickname, noted above in Quintilian, to sideline the intruders and prick their pretensions.46 Paul’s boasting makes the same use of numbers and stylised lists, but the content is radically different,

 43

L. L. Welborn, An End to Enmity: Paul and the “Wrongdoer” of Second Corinthians BZNW 185 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 102-21. 44 Perhaps in reaction to this physical ridicule of Paul and his rhetoric, later Christian traditions (Acts of Paul and Thecla 3) describe Paul’s physical appearance in the heroic convention of a Christian Heracles (A. J. Malherbe, “A Physical Description of Paul”, in idem, Paul and the Popular Philosophers [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989], 165-70). 45 On Paul’s rebuttal of boasting, see J. R. Harrison, “In Quest of the Third Heaven: Paul and His Apocalyptic Imitators”, Vigiliae Christianae 58.1 (2004): 24-55, esp. 46-55; idem, “The Imitation of the Great Man in Antiquity”; idem, Paul and the Imperial Authorities at Thessalonica and Rome: A Study in the Conflict of Ideology, WUNT I 273 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 211), 201-69. 46 The ironic appellation, ਫ਼ʌİȡȜȓĮȞ ਕʌȠıIJȩȜȦȞ, variously translated (M. J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians NIGTC [Grand Rapids: Eedrmans, 2005], 746), is most likely a Pauline coinage (M. E. Thrall, II Corinthians. Vol. II, ICC [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000], 671), prompted by the self-exaltation of the intruding apostles (V. P. Furnish, II Corinthians, AB [New York: Doubleday, 1984], 490).

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focusing on his apostolic sufferings, humiliations, and abject weakness. Such a strategy, to be sure, shames the Corinthians and the intruders into silence by virtue of the unremitting selflessness of Paul’s ministry, listed for all to see, but as a rhetorical strategy, as we have seen from Quintilian, it was foolishness in the extreme: orators did not make themselves the butt of their own jokes.47 But this is precisely what the apostle does. First, he plays the “fool” of comic mime, adopting the persona from the outset (2 Cor 11:16, 17, 19, 21; 12:11), and, as L. L. Welborn has shown, depicting himself as a series of the comic characters belonging to the travelling mime shows in 2 Corinthians 11:23ff. 48 In other words, Paul indulges in the low grade comedy (i.e. Attic farces, pantomines, buffoonery) that was disavowed by serious orators. Second, Paul chooses a curious vignette to crown his boasting in his weaknesses: his escape down the walls of Damascus in a basket (2 Cor 11:30-33). As E. A. Judge has suggested,49 this is possibly an allusion to the corona muralis, the wall-shaped crown given to the soldier first to storm the enemy’s walls and engage the enemy within the city. Paul’s vignette, by contarst, lets slip a deeply humiliating but pathetically comic secret: he was the first down the wall when the pressure to escape was really on. Even the baoastful Pyrgopolynices (“Taker of towers”) looks good by comparison. Third, in this descending “cursus honorum” of humiliations and disceditable achievements in a Roman boasting context, culminating in his cowardly exit from Damascus, Paul suddenly reverses the direction of the cursus honorum:50 it rapidly ascends once again as Paul, now a figure of pneumatic and apocalyptic power, reveals that he had reached the third heaven in the visionary past (2 Cor 12:1-4).51 But our expectations are once again dashed. With grim humour Paul reveals that he is a “visionless visionary”, who was prevented by God from revealing the supassingly great revelations of Paradise that he had

 47

Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.82. L. L. Welborn, “The Runaway Paul”, Harvard Theological Review 92.2 (1999): 115-63. 49 E. A. Judge, “The Conflict of Educational Aims in the New Testament”, in The First Christians in the Roman World: Augustan and New Testament Essays, ed. J. R. Harrison, WUNT I 229 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 693-708, esp. 706-08. 50 For a Corinthian inscriptional context for this argument, see J. R. Harrison, “Paul and the agǀnothetai at Corinth: Engaging the Civic Values of Antiquity”, in The First Urban Churches. Volume 2: Roman Corinth, ed. J. R. Harrison and L. L. Welborn (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016, 271-326). 51 See Harrison, “In Quest of the Third Heaven”. 48

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received (2 Cor 12:4b). Thus, as an apocalptic visionary, Paul is an abject failure. Furthemore, he is a disabled apostle, robbed of power and reduced to abject weakness by an unspecified bodily ailment (the famous “thorn in the flesh”: 2 Cor 12:7-10). Here Paul exposes himself to the comic ridicule of physical disbility that we have seen was such a prominent tradition in ancient comic theory and in the jibes of Roman orators. This is an extraordinary parody of Roman boasting conventions, as well as an unexpected comic reversal of the expectations of Jewish apocalypticism, by which the apostle derides himself as weak and physically disabled in defiance of the Roman comic conventions for the powerful orator. In so doing, Paul set the foundation for the ultimate triumph of humility as a virtue in Western civilisation, as well as a sympathetic identification with those with a physical disability (cf. Gal 4:13-14).

Paul and Toilet Humour: Getting Down to the Dirty Business of Early Christian Purity Concerns Not all humour was pitched at the high literary level enunciated above. There were lower forms of abuse, such as obscene language52 and explicitly sexual graffiti. 53 Toilet humour and urinating curses were widespread in antiquity, as the Ephesian inscriptions demonstrate. 54 Routinely these inscriptions were entirely banal, as the threefold repetition of “Secundus defecated here” in graffiti found at Pompeii well demonstrates (CIL IV. 5243). 55 Sometimes toilet humour focused on visual humour involving people with disabilities. A wall painting (c. 30-20 BC) from the large

 52

See J. F. Hultin, The Ethics of Obscene Language in Early Christianity and Its Environment (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), 1-111. 53 See M. Panciera, Sexual Practice and Invective in Martial and Pompeian Inscriptions (unpub. PhD diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2001). For examples of sexual invective in the Pompeian graffiti, see http://www.pompeiana.org/resources/.../graffiti%20from%20pompeii.htm. Accessed 10/11/2015. 54 Curses against urinating: IEph 2.567, 568(A.1), 568(A.2), 569. Toilet humour: IEph 2.561(2); 3.456(1), 456(2). 55 See also CIL IV. 10070 (Pottery Shop or Bar of Nicanor, right of the door, Pompeii): “Lesbianus, you defecate and you write, ‘Hello, everyone!’” Additionally, the House of Pascius Hermes, left of the door Pompeii, CIL IV. 5243; cf. IV. 10488): “To the one defecating here. Beware of the curse. If you look down on this curse, may you have an angry Jupiter for an enemy”.

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columbarium (an underground tomb) in the Villa Doria Pamphili estate, situated on the western slope of the Gianicolo Hill (west of the Tiber outside of Rome) and excavated in 1838, is an excellent example. It shows a defecating (farting?) pygmy precariously perched in a boat on the Nile, with a crocodile lurking nearby for an unexpected “snack”.56 This well illustrates how Romans simultaneously laughed at the ethnically exotic and people with disabilities.57 A more interesting social example is the graffito found in the latrine of the gymnasium at Ephesus. Presented in hexameters, the text (IEph II 456.1) runs as follows: Moving with your foot and long raising with the fist of your hand and coughing your heart out, and shaking your whole body from the fingers’ ends, (until) relieving (yourself) you cheered of joy, may your belly never give you pain after you’ve come to my home.

We see here the potential social disaster for the host and the embarrassment for the guest that could be occasioned by food poisoning during hospitality in the host’s home. 58 A similar sense of restrained humour is evinced in the vestibule of the House of Cuspius Pansa at Pompeii: “The finances officer of the emperor Nero says this food is poison” (CIL IV. 8075). But toilet humour occasionally touched on more serious concerns. Several of the famous seven Greek sages (Solon, Thales, Chilon, Bias) are depicted seated in wall paintings in a tavern at Ostia (c. AD 100) with Latin texts above them, dispensing pompous opinions on the refined art of defecation to twenty-four Romans, who are presented in the lower register seated in a latrine-like line. Solon is said to have taught: “Solon rubbed his belly to defecate well”, whereas “Thales recommended that those who defecate with difficulty should strain”, and “The cunning Chilon taught how to flatulate unnoticed”. By contrast, the twenty-four Romans offer

 56

The wall painting may be seen at the National Museum of Rome, Termini. M. J. Versluys (Aegyptiaca Romana: Nilotic Scenes and the Roman Views of Egypt [Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2002], 78-79) also discusses a mosaic, found on the bank of the Tiber in 1879, showing pygmies in three papyrus canoes. One pygmy defends himself against a hippopotamus in the boat in the central scene, with a crocodile nearby attacking the boat. 58 I am indebted to Dr Julien Ogereau for this insight and the translation. 57

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practical advice in Latin on correct bowel movements. 59 “I'm making haste”, one says; another recommends: “Push hard, you’ll be finished more quickly”. The disjunction between the abstract concerns of the philosophers and rhetoricians and the practicalities of real life is therefore highlighted. 60 Where might we find examples of toilet humour in the writings of the apostle Paul? And what function do they have? Do they border on the edge of crudity or not? One example might be Paul’s use of ıțȪȕĮȜĮ (skubala) in Philippians 3:8, having, some scholars allege, the register of “shit” or “crap”. However, J. F. Hultin has recently challenged this conclusion.61 After a comprehensive examination of the ancient evidence he demonstrates that the term does not necessarily have the vulgar tone of the English word “shit” in a wide range of writers: a more neutral translation like “refuse”, garbage”, or “excrement” conveys the register better. In this instance, Paul radically dismissed even his Christian accomplishments—signified by the use of the present tense in verse 8—as much as the “righteousness” he had inherited and achieved personally as a non-believing Jew. Further, the term, even when more politely translated, is still jarring in its context. Paul, in getting down to the “dirty business” of Jewish purity concerns, staked everything on the faithfulness of the crucified and risen Christ and the salvation security of the divine righteousness transferred to him by grace (Phil 3:9-11). Everything else, formerly considered “gain”, is now disposed of as useless rubbish in the “loss” of all things through Paul’s coming to know Christ (Phil 3:7). The imagery of “dogs” (Phil 3:2), employed prior to our skubala reference, recalls the Roman love of derisory humour based on animals, providing comic opportunities for the apostle in describing the Jewish “circumcision” party, real or hypothetical, at Philippi. As scavengers, nondomestic dogs often ranged through the garbage tips of ancient cities, scavenging on corpses and harassing the physically vulnerable in the city (1 Kgs 14:11; 21:23f; 2 Kgs 9:10, 36; Jer 15:5; Luke 16:21), ensuring their impurity in Jewish estimation. The phrase “dead dog” is also used of an

 59

For the translated Latin texts and wall paintings, see http://www.ostiaantica.org/regio3/10/10-2.htm. Accessed 23/02/2015. 60 The seven sages also provided the yardstick for rhetorical skill, as the following Greek epitaph testifies (cited Litfin, St Paul’s Theology of Proclamation, 166): “Titus Phaneus Modestus, a rhetorician, one to be ranked with the seven sages”. 61 See Hultin, The Ethics of Obscene Language, 150-54.

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“utterly worthless and objectionable person” (2 Sam. 16:9).62 Furthermore, in the Mishnah, dogs are mentioned in relation to matters of unclean food (m. Ned. 4:3; m. Bek 5:6; cf. Exod. 22:31) and are sometimes portrayed as animals ready to attack (m. B.M. 7:9; Sanh. 9:1).63 Paul’s radical inversion of Jewish purity concerns, propelled by the implications of the “dog” imagery, must have brought a wry smile to the Philippian auditors of Paul’s letter. The other possible example of toilet humour in Paul is the emasculation reference in Galatians 5:12. Those interpretations which highlight that the emasculation referred to is the emasculation practised by the nearby priests of Cybele are on the right track. Paul is humorously suggesting that the Judaisers may well go the whole way in cutting their private parts and revert to the dominant indigenous “pagan” religion: the difference between the Judaising version of Paul’s gospel and the Cybele cult was negligible.64

Mockery of the Julio-Claudian Ruler: Speaking about the “Elephant” in the Room We have already seen that Romans were careful in their humour when referring to the “imperial elephant” in the room, along with his household retinue. Notwithstanding, to revert to the “toilet humour” motif again, a graffito on the exterior wall of a house from Herculaneum states (CIL IV 10619): “Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here”. But there are more serious humorous references to the imperial house in iconographic parodies and in the literature. First, whereas the Augustan propaganda depicted the ruler as a new Aeneas (e.g. in the Ara Pacis, the Augustan forum, and Virgil, Aen. 720728), the anti-Augustan propaganda parodied this claim through its subversion of Augustan iconography. A wall painting from a house in Pompeii depicts Aeneas fleeing from Troy, carrying his father Anchises

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M. Bockmuehl, The Epistle to the Philippians (London: A&C Black, 1998), 185. P. T. O’Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 353. While there is later rabbinic evidence for the term “dogs” being applied to Gentiles, this evidence needs to be handled carefully, as well as consideration of the Jewish attitude to dogs. See J. R. Harrison, “‘Every Dog Has Its Day’” New Docs 10 (2012): 126-35. 64 See S. Elliott, Cutting Too Close for Comfort: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in Its Anatolian Cultic Context (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2003), 161-163, 235 n. 10; J. R. Edwards, “Galatians 5:12, ” Novum Testamentum 53.4 (2011): 319-37. 63

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and guiding his son Ascanius (the ancestor of the Julian family). A. Barchiesi notes that this image of the founding father of Rome acquired “iconic status” in antiquity, widely reproduced in sculpture, painting, coins, and household utensils such as lamps.65 But this famous image is caricatured in the anti-Augustan iconography of a wall painting from a villa near Stabiae: there each of the three figures, identical in pose to its Pompeii counterpart, is rendered as a dog-headed ape. 66 K. Scott also points to another humorous variation on the theme from Herculaneum, presently in the Museo Nazionale di Napoli, in which three dogs replace the apes just described.67 Second, the work attributed to Seneca (4 BCíAD 65; or ps-Seneca), The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius, is a satire on the old and doddery Claudius making his way up to heaven in order to be apotheosised. He always had been a nobody (Apol. 3: “Nobody ever believed he was quite born”) and there would definitely be “a better man [to] rule in his court” upon his death. 68 Claudius’ extension of the citizenship to the provincials in the Latin West is ridiculed (Apol. 3), as was the “mess” he made of himself listening to the troupe of comedians just before his death—a convenient symbol for his rule over the empire (Apol. 4). Upon arriving in heaven, Claudius mumbles Homeric verse and identifies himself as Caesar, hoping there would be space in the afterlife for his historical works (Apol. 5). There he is jeered for his desire for

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A. Barchiesi, “Learned Eyes: Poets, Viewers, Image Makers”, in The Age of Augustus, ed. K. Galinsky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 286. For a statue group of Aeneas with Anchises and Ascanius, see ibid., 297 Fig. 52. See the altar from Carthage showing Aeneas with Anchises and Ascanius in L. R. Taylor, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (Middletown: American Philological Association, 1931), 170 Fig. 170. 66 P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), Figs. 156 (202) and 162 (209). The official description of the painting at Stabiae at the museum of Naples (K. Scott, “Humour at the Expense of the Ruler Cult”, Classical Philology 27.4 [1932]: 317-28, at 327-28) states: “The monkey with the breastplate has an exaggerated membrum virile, as is also true of the monkey with the pedum” (ibid., 328). 67 Scott, “Humour”, 328. 68 S. M. Braund and P. James (“Quasi Homo: Distortion and Contortion in Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis”, Arethusa 31.3 [1998]: 285-311, at 308) argue that the “Apocolocyntosis celebrates … sending [Claudius’] empty, broken, and ephemeral body to the darkness of the underworld and … welcoming the advent of the beautiful, young, god-like emperor Nero”.

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apotheosis,69 judged by the gods, and roundly rejected (Apol. 8-9). The late emperor’s personal failings are mocked, most notably his arrogant cruelty and his inability to articulate (Apol. 10-11), another case of derision of those with a disability. Claudius eventually descends to Hades (Apol. 13-15), where he is finally handed over to Caligula, who blithely passes him on to one of the judges of Hades to be his law clerk. In the case of Paul, there is no direct case of satiric humour wielded at the expense of the Roman ruler,70 but he does dismiss the earthly gods (the Julio-Claudian rulers) and the heavenly gods (the Greek and Roman pantheon) as “so-called” gods (1 Cor 8:5-6 [v. 5: ȜİȖȩȝİȞȠȚ șİȠȓ]). The assessment of Paul is thoroughly Jewish, but it may have reminded Jewish auditors of the satirical critique of idolatry found in Isaiah 44:9-20 (cf. Deut. 4:8; Ps 115:4-8; Wis 15:15-19; Let. Jer. 3-72).71 Moreover, Paul’s demotion of the Roman ruler to a “servant” (Rom 13:4a, 4b [įȓĮțȠȞȠȢ], 6b [ȜİȚIJȠȣȡȖȠȓ]) appointed by God (13:1b, 2b)—a rare conception in the Pythagorean “kingship” tracts and Graeco-Roman moralists, 72 but a central conviction of the Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism73— would have brought concealed mirth to some Graeco-Roman auditors familiar with the highly inflated status accorded the ruler in the imperial propaganda. 74 Effectively, Paul demythologises the “ruler theology” animating the imperial cult. He wryly deprives the Roman ruler of his pretentious accolades in an ideological “dressing down”, but it does not exhibit the savagery of The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius. This is because Paul’s critique originates from the nuanced approach to Gentile rulers found in the LXX and Second Temple Judaism. Notwithstanding the fact that Paul pinpricks the eastern Mediterranean propaganda about the

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Seneca, Apol. 8: “Is it not enough that he has a temple in Britain, that savages worship him and pray to him as a god, so that they may find a fool to have mercy upon them?” 70 However, see T. L. Carter (“The Irony of Romans 13”, Novum Testamentum 48.3 [2004]: 209-28) who argues that Paul’s overly positive evaluation of the Roman ruler’s authority (Rom 13:1-7) is a case of (satiric?) irony. For discussion of the whole issue, see Harrison, Paul and the Imperial Authorities, 271-323. 71 D. E. Garland, 1 Corinthians BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 374-75. 72 Sthenidas the Locrian speaks of the king as “an imitator and legitimate minister of God (ਫ਼ʌȘȡȑIJĮȢ ਥııİ૙IJĮȚ IJ૶ ș૶)”, while Plutarch refers to the king serving God (Mor. 780D: ਫ਼ʌȘȡİIJİ૙Ȟ șİ૶). See Harrison, Paul and the Imperial Authorities, 284, 291. 73 Harrison, Paul and the Imperial Authorities, 300-08. 74 Harrison, Paul and the Imperial Authorities, 310-11.

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Roman ruler’s quasi-divine status, the apostle nevertheless accords the ruler civic honour (Rom 13:7b: “if honour, then honour”) and affirms his right to impose taxes (Rom 13:7a: “if you owe taxes, then pay taxes”) and to enforce civil order (13:2-4). In other words, the “elephant” in the room (Quintilian, Inst. VI.3.59) is addressed, but without provoking a stampede.

Paul, Stand-up Comedy and the Philogelos Popular jokes in antiquity, found in the third century AD collection called the Philogelos (“Laughter Lover”),75 lambast the stupid (i.e. the “egghead” and “simpleton” jokes),76 ethnic groups (citizens of Abdera, Sidonia, and Kyme),77 professions (e.g. doctors),78 athletes (e.g. the “cowardly boxer”),79 religious figures (the “charlatan prophet”), 80 bungling apprentices, 81 gluttons,82 and misogynists,83 among others. Sometimes racist and sexual jokes intersect in a demeaning manner: “Seeing a pimp procuring for a black prostitute, a wag enquired, ‘How much do you charge for the Night?’” 84 People with disabilities are ridiculed. 85 One example, combining ethnic and disability denigration, will suffice. A joke mocking those who were hunch-backed, or who had a pronounced tumour on their back, goes as follows: “Someone asked a Sidonian fisherman, ‘Have you caught any crabs in that thing on your back?’ He answered angrily, ‘Have you got any in that thing on yours?’”86 In sum, the savage demeaning of people that we see in antiquity has its counterparts in the modern virtual word, but with little of the rhetorical elegance of a Cicero or a Pliny.

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B. Baldwin, The Philogelos or the Laughter Lover (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1983). 76 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §§1-103, 109, 253-256, 258-259, 265. 77 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §§112-127 (citizens of Abdera); 132-133, 135-139 (citizens of Sidonia); 154, 159-160, 161-175a, 176-182 (citizens of Kyme). 78 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §§176-177, 183-186. 79 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §§208-210, 217-218. 80 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §§201-205. 81 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §§119-200. 82 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §§219-226. 83 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §§246-249. 84 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §151a. For further sexually crude jokes, see ibid., §§145, 151b, 244, 245. 85 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §§233, 241, 251. 86 Baldwin, The Philogelos, §133.

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While there were denunciations of obscene language in antiquity,87 the New Testament writings stand out because of their emphasis on upbuilding, truthful and gracious language that does not demean, belittle or abuse. In the case of Paul, the apostle also spends considerable time dealing with inappropriate ways of speaking (Eph 5:3-14; Col 3:8; 4:6), emphasising how believers should avoid abusive and sexually crude speech, filling their mouths instead with grace and wit that creates a thirst for hearing in the audience. 88 At one level, Colossians 4:6 (cf. 1 Peter 3:15) reflects the Attic “salt” metaphors found in Cicero and Quintilian: “Let your conversation be always full of grace (ਥȞ ȤȐȡȚIJȚ), seasoned with salt (ਚȜĮIJȚ ਱ȡIJȣȝȑȞȠȢ), so that you know how to answer everyone”. But Paul’s understanding of ȤȐȡȚȢ (“grace”) is not just confined to the idea of rhetorical “beauty”, “elegance” and “finesse” behind the Roman texts. Behind true humour lies the soteriological grace of God: it offers mercy to the other rather than exploiting and ridiculing; it is an occasion for rejoicing in God’s goodness rather than salacious sniggering; it enables believers to answer the enquirer with the gentleness of God. Furthermore, there is no evidence in the epistles of Paul that the apostle employs puerile or hurtful humour at others’ expense by stereotyping people in the same manner that the jokes from the Philogelos do. 89 Last, İ੝ȤĮȡȚıIJȓĮ (Eph 5:4b: “thanksgiving”), a cognate of ȤȐȡȚȢ, sums up perfectly the difference between the speech of believers and non-believers: God is praised for his character and gifts and gratitude is rendered for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, instead of destroying each other through mutual recrimination.90

Assessing Well-being and Humour The assessment of humour and well-being in St. Paul and in our culture is difficult because of the occasional nature of Paul’s letters and the different expectations, cultural and theological, we have regarding the nature of well-being. In our culture we expect that well-being is sponsored by the

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Hultin, The Ethics of Obscene Language, 12-25. Hultin, The Ethics of Obscene Language, 154-213. 89 In other polemical contexts, Paul can occasionally resort to well-known stereotypes. See G. L. Green’s discussion (The Letters to the Thessalonians [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002], 145-46) of the loaded phrase “hating all mankind” in 1 Thessalonians 2:15b (ʌ઼ıȚȞ ਕȞșȡȫʌȠȚȢ ਥȞĮȞIJȓȦȞ), situating Paul’s polemic within Roman stereotypes of Jews, accentuating their similarities and differences to Paul’s construct. 90 H. W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 658. 88

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humorous banter we have in good company, lifting our spirits and bonding ourselves together as we appreciate the ridiculous and unexpected, causing us to relax in shared delight over a good joke, a clever and unexpected retort, a well-deserved put-down, or experiencing vicarious glee when we are not the person being “bagged” in a comic roast, and so on. By contrast, Paul’s letters are highly rhetorical productions, putting humour to elegant use by establishing the superiority of his theological and social arguments over his opponents, and pinpricking their pretentiousness and perceived credibility in the estimation of his converts. The situations are vastly different. The pleasure of humour that bonds and relaxes relationships communally is explained differently in Paul’s theology. It is initiated and sustained by the corporate joy issuing from the “ridiculous” experience of divine grace: knowing that we have all won the lottery jackpot even though we have lost our tickets and have no proof of newsagency purchase. In this regard, Paul reserves his sharp rhetorical thrusts of humour only for “insiders” within the Body of Christ who needed spiritual correction and reintegration within its fellowship and ministries. I doubt that Paul would have adopted the satirical approach of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, tragically sparking the terrible retribution in Paris on January 7, 2015. Paul directed satire against himself in defiance of the contemporary canons of comedy in the hope that through his selfderision his opponents within the Body of Christ would be shamed into returning to the gospel of Christ the crucified Lord. But for Paul, as far as the unbelieving world outside is concerned, gracious and persuasive speech rather than satirical attack is the strategy for moving “outsiders” towards becoming “insiders” in the Body of Christ. Further, Paul’s drive for increased humanisation in seasoning humour with the grace of Christ meant that not belittling people for the sake of our own vicarious pleasure at another’s pain—a common denominator in trolling activities—is another contribution of Paul to our culture. 91 M. Leone articulates eloquently the nature of internet communication where opinion, however divisive and injurious, is disconnected from the physical and verbal cues of face-to-face exchange in living social communities, as

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See J. R. Harrison, “Developing Personal Resilience in a Dangerous Virtual World: Historical, Social Biblical and Theological Perspectives”, in Teaching Theology in a Technological Age, ed. Y. Debergue and J. R. Harrison (Cambridge; Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015), 86-112.

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opposed to the cyberspace anonymity of “post and counter-post” online culture: Crowds on the Internet are more powerful. Avatars join causes, express solidarity, manifest concern, incite to hate, side with the victims or with their assassins, call for empathy and action, attract to or distract from such or such goal, etc. practically without boundaries. A brutal message written in a web forum and the actual persona of his or her author, living in a space and time, are so distant that only exceptional circumstances recreate a binding connection between them. At the same time, though, the essentially virtual character of the contemporary Internet crowd also generates some disquieting consequences. What kind of opinion is, indeed, one that is radically disconnected from its body?92

It is important to realise that Paul’s use of humour was part of his strategy in helping established communities of faith to grow in Christ together in the large urban centres of the Eastern Mediterranean basin for the purpose of ministry to the marginalised and outreach to the unbelieving. While in the “virtual world” of the first century AD, Paul’s letters may have functioned as substitutes for his presence, Paul’s real desire was to be with his converts personally, or, at the very least, to have his co-workers minister to them on his behalf upon the delivery of the letter to a community. Personal relationship was at the core of his humour and communication. Perhaps Paul’s most original contribution to humour in antiquity was his parody of Graeco-Roman boasting, pinpricking its exaltation of merit and status in a relentless contest for glory, precedence and ancestral fame. Further, those who are weak or suffer with disability, rather than being objects of ridicule, are repositories of divine grace in their weakness. By means of these tactics the apostle carved out a place for humility, mercy and humanity towards the marginalised in the Western intellectual tradition. At this level, Paul’s oratory and humour were vastly different from his comic contemporaries.

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M. Leone, “To Be or Not to Be Charlie Hebdo: Ritual Patterns of Opinion Formation in the Social Networks”, Social Semiotics 25.5 (2015): 656-80.

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Select Bibliography Baldwin, B. The Philogelos or the Laughter Lover. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1983. Beard, M. Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling and Cracking Up. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2014. Bremmer, J. “Jokes, Jokers and Jokebooks in Ancient Greek Culture”, in A Cultural History of Humour. Edited by J. Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, 11-28. Cambridge: Polity, 1997 Fontaine, M. and A. D. Scafuro, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Garland, R. The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World, 2nd edition. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2010; orig. 1995. Harrison, J. R. “In Quest of the Third Heaven: Paul and His Apocalyptic Imitators”. Vigiliae Christianae 58.1 (2004): 24-55. Hultin, J. F. The Ethics of Obscene Language in Early Christianity and Its Environment. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008. Jenko, R. Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984. Joeckel, S. “Funny as Hell: Christianity and Humor Reconsidered”. Humor: The International Journal of Humor Research 21.4 (2008): 415-33. Judge, E. A. “The Conflict of Educational Aims in the New Testament”. In The First Christians in the Roman World: Augustan and New Testament Essays. Edited by J. R. Harrison, 693-708. WUNT I 229 Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Miola, R. S. “Roman Comedy”. In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy. Edited by A. Leggatt, 18-31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Van Heerden, Willie. “Why the Humour in the Bible Plays Hide and Seek with Us”. Social Identities 7.1 (2001): 75-96. Welborn, L. L. “The Runaway Paul”. Harvard Theological Review 92.2 (1999): 115-63.

CHAPTER TEN PILGRIMAGE— A PERSONAL JOURNEY THROUGH WELL-BEING TO TRANSCENDENCE NEIL HOLM

In this account of a personal journey toward well-being, I explore the role of pilgrimage in igniting and sustaining greater depth in my Christian spiritual experience. I reflect on my first encounter with pilgrimage and the manner in which it began a new spiritual journey for me. I explore fictional, anthropological, and other descriptive accounts of pilgrimage. These accounts provide the foundation for an outline of a theological approach to spiritual development. As I describe my growing spiritual development, I engage with theological literature on spiritual development. This engagement will be informed by the notion of pilgrimage as a rite of passage. It will also be informed by developmental processes outlined in the work of St. John of the Cross (3 stage process), Søren Kierkegaard (3 stage process), Vincent Turner (3 stage process), and James Fowler (7 stage process). I describe my subsequent spiritual development through my experience of Celtic Christianity and my recent Camino de Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage. I examine my pilgrimage experience and the more general nature of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is analysed in terms of place pilgrimage, interior pilgrimage, and moral pilgrimage. This analysis is used to consider pilgrimage from a Protestant perspective and the potential contribution of pilgrimage to spiritual development.

Introduction In 1996, I read a novel called Therapy by David Lodge. I had read several Lodge novels previously. I am a Lodge fan. In Therapy, Tubby, the main character, suffered from angst, a deep, nameless unease unhelped by therapy or other activities that induce meaning and a degree of contentment. In the final section, Tubby embarked on a journey to northern Spain in search of a friend walking the Camino. Tubby walked

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little of the Camino himself but his encounter with the Camino became my introduction to pilgrimage. Why did pilgrimage invade my psyche? In what ways did pilgrimage affect me? Words or concepts have an ability to change us. They capture our imagination. They make us their own. They are performative. One day a word “drifts into the fields of our imagination. While we are listening to a story, taking pleasure in a poem, reading the history of some Magellan or Marco Polo, and without asking our permission it works its magical powers on us, summoning us”.1 “Pilgrimage” acted on me. It captured my imagination in 1996 while I read Therapy. From time to time in the months that followed, the image of pilgrimage resurfaced and lingered, drawing out a yearning that dwelt deep in my soul. What was this yearning? In this chapter, I describe a personal journey. I describe my first and more recent encounters with pilgrimage, explore the nature of pilgrimage, and argue that my pilgrimage promoted a profound sense of well-being that led to transcendence.

Well-being What do I mean by well-being? There is no agreed single definition of well-being.2 However, a recent conceptual framework for defining wellbeing differentiated between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.3 Hedonic well-being relates to personal happiness, pleasure attainment, and pain avoidance. A person who experiences hedonic well-being focuses on attaining goals that the person desires or regards as valuable whether these goals are noble and altruistic or ignoble and selfish. Eudaimonic wellbeing relates to meaning and self-realisation. Eudaimonic well-being is more than simple happiness. It encapsulates feelings of self-worth, autonomy and a sense of well-being over the social and natural environment, a balanced perception of reality, a sense of personal growth, 1 Richard R. Niebuhr, “Pilgrims and Pioneers: Our Bodies as Vehicles of Passage”, Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition 9.3 (1984): 7 2 “Wellbeing Concepts”, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed May 27, 2016, http://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/wellbeing.htm 3 Felicia A. Huppert and Timothy T. C. So, “Flourishing Across Europe: Application of a New Conceptual Framework for Defining Wellbeing”, Soc Indic Res 110 (2013): 837–61, accessed 23 March 2016, doi 10.1007/s11205-011-9966-7

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positive inter-personal relationships, and a sense that life is comprehensible, manageable, purposeful and meaningful. Eudaimonic well-being is associated with making an effort and a sense of challenge. Efforts to harmonise hedonic and eudaimonic well-being resulted in various descriptors of well-being that include the following five elements.4 Positive emotion includes happiness, ecstasy, warmth, and feeling that life is pleasant. Engagement involves a sense of being absorbed by or deeply engaged with a task or project. For an engaged person, time passes without realising it. Positive relationships encompass friendships, neighbourly relations, socialising after work, and meeting for coffee. We are motivated to seek and maintain positive relationships. Meaning refers to belonging to and serving something that is bigger than us. We may feel that our life lacks meaning but others may see our lives as full of meaning. Abraham Lincoln felt his life as meaningless while others regarded it as meaningful. Our search for meaning prompts us to join religious groups, political parties, environmental groups, youth groups, or service clubs. It prompts us towards more solitary activities like meditation, reflection, reading, listening, and viewing films. Accomplishment involves pursuing success, winning, achievement, and mastery for their own sake. The phenomenon of “bowling alone” illustrates a desire for accomplishment removed from positive relationships and positive emotions.5

Well-being and Pilgrimage Well-being is more than individual well-being. Human well-being is inseparable from the well-being of all. It entails positive relationships that involve the well-being of others and the environment. Pilgrims allow previously unfamiliar places and living things to affect their being. Engagement enlarges them. “With these increments to our being, we are made new, more thoroughly kin to the earth, its elements, and its peoples”.6 From this point of view, the well-being of the earth and its peoples affects the well-being of individuals. Human well-being or flourishing is maximised when humans fully experience kinship in their formative places and when they experience kinship in wider more distant 4

Huppert and So, “Flourishing Across Europe”, 839. Martin Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Wellbeing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011) 16ff; Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). 6 Niebuhr, “Pilgrims and Pioneers”, 12. 5

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places. This positive and satisfying mutual interdependence or kinship of all creation is an expression of “the kin-dom of God”, which is how some feminist theologians refer to “the Kingdom of God”.7 We experience wellbeing when nature is flourishing, when natural ecologies are flourishing, and when social and political institutions are flourishing.8 A person experiences well-being when they interpret new experiences as welcoming and not threatening. They feel that new experiences invite them to abide. Pilgrims internalise impressions of people and places. They interpret these impressions “as messages of welcome, of belonging, and wellbeing: invitations to abide”.9 Here abide draws on more archaic meanings such as staying, continuing, residing, and remaining steadfast or faithful (Macquarie Dictionary). Pilgrimage experiences or impressions become invitations to engage, to stay within the meanings of these experiences, to continue to engage steadfastly or faithfully with these impressions, and to reflect on these impressions. In Biblical terms, abide draws on pilgrimage imagery: “to turn aside from a journey, to remain in a place or seek shelter. Metaphorically, abide refers to being in God’s care”. It also means, “to be a guest or stranger seeking shelter and protection”.10 In these terms, a person may experience well-being when they gracefully accept hospitality, refuge, or shelter in unfamiliar territory and when they see the unfamiliar as welcoming. That territory may be unfamiliar geographically and/or unfamiliar in psychological or psychic terms. In other words, well-being may be found in a formative or known location when people find that new psychological or psychic aspects of that location are welcoming or invite reflection. Similarly, people experience well-being when they recognise unfamiliar places as hospitable. This becomes particularly true when they become aware of God’s care and hospitality in these unfamiliar settings. To this point, I have used “pilgrimage” to refer to a way of experiencing new places. Before proceeding further, I will examine more closely the meaning of pilgrim and pilgrimage. 7

Cf. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, cited in Barbara J. McClure, Moving Beyond Individualism in Pastoral Care and Counseling: Reflections on Theory, Theology, and Practice (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2011), 215. 8 McClure, Moving Beyond Individualism, 217. 9 Niebuhr, “Pilgrims and Pioneers”, 8. 10 Marianne Blickenstaff, “Abide”, in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 1, ed. Katherine Doob Sakenfeld (Nashville: Abingdon, 2006), 9.

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Pilgrimage My first engagement with pilgrimage occurred in 1996, not because I read the David Lodge novel but because I felt incomplete. For my long-service leave, I planned a trip to the UK. I applied to the Iona Community to join one of their short courses. Although I thought of this trip as a retreat, I now realise that it was a pilgrimage. I went to a special place where Christians had worshipped and served God for nearly 1,500 years. I went to allow God to have an impact on my life. On Iona, I found a community whose values challenged my previous understanding of the Christian life. Members of the Iona Community were committed to four principal spiritual practices: worship, justice, mutuality, and community.11 Worship, as I came to understand, is my response to God when I am aware of God’s presence. At these times, I sense that a holy or sacred presence has entered my ordinary, everyday, profane existence. This presence evokes various worshipful responses: private and personal prayer, confession, silence, and meditation on the being and presence of God or on the words of Scripture or other material that nourishes and uplifts. Worship may involve a deep appreciation of manifestations of God in beauty, grace, and creativity. It may evoke various postures and gestures: kneeling, prostration, folding hands together before the heart or lips as a symbol of obedience, submission, sincerity and repentance, or raising prayer hands in exultation or pleading. Worship is often corporate: a time when fellow believers come together to sing, to discuss, to reflect, and to respond to God. Justice came to mean much more than the application of rules and laws that govern society. It came to mean more than the punishment that comes into effect when societal obligations are broken. Justice came to mean more than giving rights to others. It involved working actively to ensure that others received their rights, or working actively to restore lost rights to others. Justice became inseparable from mercy. Justice included ensuring that others have their needs met: they have their fair share of material goods, rights of participation, opportunities, and liberties. Justice involved peacemaking and reconciliation. Because human flourishing is dependent on a healthy and productive environment and because creation has its own

11 “The Rule”, Iona Community accessed May 27 2016, https://iona.org.uk/movement/the-rule/

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rights as part of God’s Creation, justice also meant working for the benefit of creation. Mutuality was the full expression of fellowship: giving, receiving, and depending on each other. It involved reciprocity, sharing burdens, mutual encouragement, building each other up, and recognising each other as different but equal. In the context of Iona, mutuality meant supporting each other to follow the way of Christ more fully. This included praying for one another, meeting together, and communicating openly with each other. The open communication extended to a willingness to discuss the manner in which partners used their talents, time, money, and the earth’s resources. Community was mutuality writ large. It was the corporate expression of mutuality within the wider Iona Community where members shared their talents, time and money in the corporate life and organisation of the Community. Worship, justice, mutuality, and community as spiritual practices challenged me. As I began to understand the implications of these commitments in everyday life, I realised that this was a radical community. Translation of these commitments into everyday life leads to radical Christians engaged in forms of political witness and action. They work prayerfully and thoughtfully to promote just and peaceful social, political and economic structures. They lobby their own and other nations for renunciation of all weapons of mass destruction. Radical Christians celebrate human diversity. They work actively to combat all forms of discrimination. They engage in creative spiritual practices of prayer, song, silence and sacrament. God used this brief encounter with the Iona Community to affect me deeply. I became aware of new spiritual practices and new and creative worship patterns. This vision of radical Christianity was truly spirit expanding. It enlarged but in no way denied my previous understanding of the Christian life. My visit to Iona was a true pilgrimage: I encountered God in a new way and on my return home, I connected with Wellspring Community, an Australian community inspired by the Iona Community.12

12

http://wellspringcommunity.org.au/

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From an anthropological point of view, pilgrimage is two related ideas. First, pilgrimage is a process of moving from what is familiar. Pilgrims move away from the places and structures that previously defined their lives. They move to what is unfamiliar, less structured, unstructured, or even chaotic. They become like sojourners—“persons living in a place that is not their own, even a foreign country”—whose primary attribute is their landlessness.13 These displaced people have left their land. They have left their place. However, unlike sojourners whose stay is often of long duration, pilgrims do not remain in the unfamiliar settings. They pass through. They return to the original once-familiar setting. Diagrammatically, pilgrimage is an ellipse. It begins, journeys out, reaches destination, and returns to start.14 T. S. Eliot captures some of the essence of pilgrimage: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”. My Iona experience matched this pattern. I went, I was challenged, I returned to the start, and saw the place with new eyes. The second anthropological insight relates to liminality. The period of the pilgrimage when the pilgrim is away from the familiar is the liminal period. Social relationships that develop in the liminal period may be different from the familiar social relationships. These relationships may develop without the benefits or baggage of the attributes that defined the pilgrim in the familiar setting. In many cases, the new social relationships are generally a spontaneous and positive form of democratic fellowship. In these relationships, participants approach each other as equals and as unique individuals. Rank and status do not apply. From this anthropological perspective, pilgrimage is a powerful vehicle to promote well-being and to enhance identity. Pilgrimage connects strongly with familiar place and with new places. Pilgrimage promotes new and positive social relationships. Turner and others argue that pilgrimage always leads to comradeship, life-long friendships, and deep social cohesion based on the immediate and total feeling of affinity, solidarity and togetherness. However, Gothóni provides contrary evidence: some pilgrims maintained a ritualised distance from one another that

13

David Jobling, “Sojourner”, in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible Vol. 5, ed. Katherine Doob Sakenfeld (Nashville: Abingdon, 2006), 314-16. 14 Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).

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accentuated the boundaries between them while others became involved in confrontation.15 Pilgrims are people in motion who are passing through territory that is not their own. They are passing through new geographical territory and/or new psychological/psychic territory. They sense that they are incomplete. They are motivated to seek completion or clarity. They sense that their soul or identity is capable of further growth. Their path toward wholeness or well-being is directed by the “spirit’s compass”.16 For some people, this guidance comes from a spirit of self-actualisation. For others, guidance comes in a more spiritual form and in some cases in the form of the Holy Spirit. These more spiritual motivations lie behind contemporary understandings of pilgrimage as “a journey to a special or holy place as a way of making an impact on one’s life with the revelation of God associated with that place”.17

Labyrinth From a pilgrimage perspective, walking the labyrinth was the most significant spiritual practice offered me by Wellspring Community. A few years after my return from Iona, I experienced serious interpersonal conflict that, despite the deep Christian faith of us both, resulted from a deep ethical disagreement with my boss. In some ways distressed, I felt a deep personal certainty that the position I was taking was right, proper, and God honouring. During this highly emotional time, a nearby Wellspring Community cell group offered a one-day introduction to the labyrinth, a spiritual practice about which I knew almost nothing. The many twists and turns of the labyrinth symbolise the journey through life. A labyrinth offers only one continuous path where the centre is easily seen. It contrasts with a maze that may have many entrances, walls that prevent seeing the path ahead, and various blind alleys that are designed to confuse and frustrate. A labyrinth is designed to reassure and 15 René Gothóni, “Pilgrimage = Transformation Journey”, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, [S.l.], 15 (2014): 101-16, accessed: April 14 2016. https://ojs.abo.fi/index.php/scripta/article/view/512 16 Cf. Niebuhr “Pilgrims and Pioneers”, 7. 17 Craig Bartholomew and Robert Llewelyn, “Introduction”, in Explorations in a Christian Theology of Pilgrimage, ed. Craig Bartholomew and Fred Hughes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), xii.

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to calm. Labyrinth walkers generally experience calm and a quietening of the mind and spirit. Our labyrinth leader explained that many people simply begin the labyrinth journey at their own pace. They make themselves available for a quietening experience. Having found the quietening, they remain in this state for the whole walk. Others allow the quietening to descend and then use the labyrinth as a prayer path. Others enter the labyrinth with a particular question in mind. They hope to open their hearts and minds to new insights, information, and perspectives.18 As I entered the labyrinth, I decided to make this peaceful and prayerful walk a place where, at least in my spiritual imagination, my boss and I could journey together. I understood the labyrinth centre as a place of peace, illumination, and a place of hoped-for reconciliation. The centre symbolised coming into the presence of God. I now recognise this labyrinth as a pilgrimage experience. It followed the journey out–destination–journey home elliptical pattern. I journeyed to a centre I regarded as a special or holy place. I entered the labyrinth with the intention that this experience might have an impact on my life as I journeyed and on our lives when I returned to work. I also believed that there might be some kind of revelation of God associated with that place. I found the experience calming, peaceful, deeply spiritual, and extremely cathartic. The relationship between my boss and me remained unchanged but I was more content, more reconciled to whatever the outcome, and more willing to find a means of reconciliation between us.

Interior Pilgrimage The labyrinth is a form of interior pilgrimage, a symbolic or virtual pilgrimage. People unable to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or other famous pilgrimage sites turned to medieval labyrinths as a substitute. At various times, the journey to Jerusalem was too dangerous and many people were physically unable to make the journey. The twists and turns of the labyrinth replicate the twists and turns of life and of the traditional pilgrimage. The labyrinth centre symbolised Jerusalem, Santiago, or other destinations.

18

http://www.sthilda.ca/labyrinth.html

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For some medieval Christians, “interior pilgrimage” was an expression that incorporated the contemplative or meditative life. Interior pilgrimage contrasted with “place pilgrimage” where monks and nuns focused on being in exile within the place of the cloister and viewing monastic life itself as a pilgrimage of the heart to the “heavenly Jerusalem”. Interior pilgrimage also contrasted with “moral pilgrimage” that focused on obedience, resisting sin, serving others, exercising integrity in business, using personal power and influence for the benefit of others, and serving the community. Moral pilgrimage was a journey of service through life where love of neighbour balanced love of God. Some interior pilgrims became anchorites, monks, and mystics. Like Julian of Norwich, they focused on an encounter with God rather than an encounter with a place. She said that the Lord “showed me my soul in the midst of my heart. I saw the soul as wide as if it were an endless citadel... in the midst of that city sits our Lord Jesus”.19 My labyrinth journey was a pilgrimage in several respects. In addition to its elliptical pattern, it also had aspects of liminality. My idea of symbolically walking the labyrinth with my boss suggested a change in our social relationships. Unconsciously, I sought to create a liminal space where rank and status did not apply, where we were equal and unique brothers in Christ. It was a moral pilgrimage because I walked the labyrinth as a way of resisting the sin that had come between us. It was a way of restoring integrity in our relationship and of using whatever personal power we each had in the service of each other and of the community. Above all, it was an interior pilgrimage because I wanted to expose our souls to the loving, reconciling, and restoring presence of the Lord Jesus. These various perspectives show that pilgrimage looks different from different angles. Therefore, I prefer a multi-faceted definition: Pilgrimage is a journey, in response to a transcendent authority and in response to an inner desire, towards a definite destination that involves transformation for the better, of the soul, of personal relationships, and of the wider world.20 19 Dee Dyas, “Medieval Patterns of Pilgrimage: A Mirror for Today?” in Bartholomew and Hughes, Theology of Pilgrimage, 97-99. 20 Definition is an extrapolation from Derek Tidball, “The Pilgrim and the Tourist: Zygmunt Bauman and Postmodern Identity”, in Bartholomew and Hughes, Theology of Pilgrimage, 196.

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In the next section, I will show how this definition is helpful in the analysis of pilgrimage-like experiences that I observed at Camp Nou, the home of the Barcelona Football Club.

Camp Nou Accompanied by my daughter Alison and grandson Jamie, my recent pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela began in Barcelona. The glory and sense of presence of the Familia Sagrada (Church of the Holy Family) moved me profoundly. Barcelona Cathedral, a beautiful Gothic building, was also impressive in a majestic way. I went to Camp Nou because Jamie was desperate to go. I did not expect to be impressed, nor was I, but the visit proved to be an interesting cultural and even spiritual experience. The Camp Nou Experience was the name given to the high-tech multimedia museum that explored the lore of the city’s legendary home team, FC Barcelona.21 “Lore” was an apt word. Through multimedia, the Camp Nou Experience offered a body of knowledge, anecdotal and popular in nature, on a particular subject. “Lore” derives from an old German word meaning doctrine (moral or religious principle). The question became: what principle or morality was the foundation of the Camp Nou Experience? What lay behind the club motto “more than a club”? In a moral sense, the expression suggested family, community, togetherness. It suggested that this club was much more than a group of people organised for a sporting purpose. The museum pointed to some of the ways it was more than a club. The extensive displays of trophies won by the club in its long history pointed to a moral principle of excellence of achievement that this collectivity had supported and encouraged. The experience allowed visitors access to the normally sacrosanct press box, the players’ tunnel, and the visiting team’s locker room. Above all, visitors could almost reach out and touch the turf of the pitch that they regarded as hallowed ground. The crowd at the edge of the ground was relatively silent, somewhat awed. Some sat contemplatively in the stands. The museum replicated the sense of awe. Visitors stood before a giant poster of various football heroes like Lionel Messi to have their photo taken. This reminded me of 21 “Camp Nou”, in Lonely Planet Discover Spain, accessed May 27 2016, http://bit.ly/LonePlan

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the visit to Barcelona Cathedral where visitors moved around and lit candles in front of the many alcoves housing statues of various saints. At Camp Nou, the great players were saint-like in stature. Many contemporary museums and galleries are full of light. To allow effective multimedia use, the Camp Nou Experience was darkened. This replicated the atmosphere at Barcelona Cathedral. The darkened space added to the sense of awe and enhanced the spiritual element of the experience. There was a spiritual element to the Camp Nou Experience. Some visitors, certainly not all, sensed a spirituality of the place: an awareness of the pantheon of past players, a sense of the presence of present players, or some intimation of awe seemed to touch them. Did Camp Nou offer a noumenal experience? Noumenal refers to that which cannot be known or described but in some way is a reality that, like Plato’s real forms, lies “behind” what we see, touch, and feel. Did Camp Nou release a longing for the transcendental? Did it speak to a need for worship in humans? Did the display of speed, strength, and skill speak to a nascent recognition of and appreciation for the Reality that lay behind? From my brief, two-hour Camp Nou visit, I concluded that for some the experience was a pilgrimage. They journeyed to Barcelona in response to an inner desire to get close to their great heroes of the sport. This desire may stem from a vague sense of the transcendent that lies behind the achievements of their stars. Perhaps they hoped that the ineffable quality that resides within their heroes might transmit to them. They did not necessarily hope to become more skilled players but they sought a greater sense of well-being derived from becoming better human beings in the sport of everyday life. Perhaps unconsciously, they sought to understand what lay behind the actions of those players who genuflected, prayed, pointed to the heavens, or gave some other gesture of religious observance or obeisance before, during, or after games. Others, of course, may have gone simply as tourists seeking to experience the sights of Barcelona and no more. I had gone to Camp Nou as a tourist but it became an important part of my re-engagement with pilgrimage. The Camp Nou Experience raised some questions: why do people like me and those I observed at Camp Nou make pilgrimage? What characterises pilgrimage?

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Light and Life on the Camino Walking the Pilgrims’ Way to Santiago, the Way of St. James, gathered greater significance with the 2001 birth of grandson James (Jamie). I became aware that in 2015 I would turn 70 when Jamie was 13. I had an unformed sense that the Camino had the potential to have a significant impact at an important time of transition in both our lives. As time passed, this sense became clearer and sharper: the Camino could be a waymark for both of us. A waymark serves several purposes. It points the way ahead. It signifies the correct route and reminds us that we are on the right track. It points to the next stage of our journey. It often reminds us how far we have come since we set out and how far we have to go to our destination. Waymarks have Biblical significance: “Set up waymarks for yourself, make yourself guideposts; consider well the highway, the road by which you went” (Jeremiah 31:21 RSV). The prophet Jeremiah who was looking forward to the time when the exiled people of Israel would return home from Babylon wrote these words. He invited the people to set their sights on the way ahead and erect their waymarks. They were to be an authentic people holding onto the central vision grounded in God. Pointing ahead, their waymarks were to be symbols of what was yet unrealised. They were to be used to help them to consider the way ahead, to reflect on where they had been, and to discern the truth.22 As Jamie, Alison and I commenced our pilgrimage in June 2015, I hoped that the Camino would point the way ahead for each of us, that the Camino would point to the noumenal: that which cannot be known or described but in some way is a reality that, like Plato’s real forms, lies "behind" what we see, touch, and feel. What intimations of reality did we see, touch, and feel on this pilgrimage? How did these intimations contribute to my well-being and transcendence? Although our pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela began in Barcelona, we joined Camino Frances, the most popular Camino route, in the city of Leon. Leon is about 300km from Santiago and about 480km from the start of Camino Frances in St Jean Pied de Port in France. Our Camino lasted 15 days. 22 Peter Millar, Waymarks Signposts to Discovering God’s Presence in the World (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2000), xi.

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Understanding individual well-being requires consideration of its relationship with the well-being of others. As pilgrims engage in pilgrimage, they allow previously unfamiliar places and beings to affect their being. The engagement enlarges them. Human well-being or flourishing is maximised when humans experience kinship in wider, more distant places. I believe this was true for Jamie, Alison and me. For instance, one day Jamie asked me, “Have you found yourself?” I wondered what he meant. Did he refer to an experience akin to that of a Greek pilgrim who described his pilgrimage as impossible to translate into words: “it was the kind of experience you can live, not explain—I found myself there, I returned to my roots as a human being. My mind became peaceful. I found myself as a human being”.23 Jamie continued by saying that he wasn’t sure what this meant but he remembered reading about people finding themselves on the Camino. I replied that I was not sure about finding myself. I had found more about myself. I found that I was willing to be a little more spiritually adventurous. I offered Jamie three examples. First, we had teamed up with a Romanian family. Irene, the mother, was the first person I met on the Camino who viewed the Camino as I did. We were Christian pilgrims seeking a deeper spiritual experience through the Camino. Although her English was limited, we were able to share moments of Christian companionship as we walked along. We sang hymns to each other—a challenging experience for me since I lacked confidence in singing. Furthermore, to sing for just one other person is quite intimate. Second, I adopted her discipline of stopping for a few moments of prayer at each church we passed. Few churches were open but I found it a useful discipline nevertheless. At the door of each church, I tried to visualise the people who currently worshipped there, those who had worshipped there in preceding generations, and the panoply of pilgrims who like me had paused there for prayer, peace or refreshment. I gave thanks for their faithfulness, for the prayer that had saturated that place, and for the warmth of Christian community that I hoped had existed and continued to exist in that place. Third, my morning prayer and meditation grew into a more satisfying routine. Although I am not Catholic, I began to use a mobile phone app called iMissal. This app provided a full daily liturgy for the Catholic mass including Bible readings from the Old Testament, Psalms, New Testament, 23

Gothóni, “Pilgrimage = Transformation Journey”, 108.

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and Gospel. I developed a routine of walking for a while each morning by myself until I found a comfortable rhythm, then I opened iMissal and prayed through the complete mass liturgy. The liturgy echoed familiar liturgies but its differences in wording, phrasing, and pattern brought freshness to my worship. Having completed the mass, I opened a little notebook where, before leaving home, I had written the names of people and other matters about which I wished to pray each day. The rhythm of walking, worship and prayer became a potent spiritual experience. In this experience, the beauty of the environment frequently informed and embellished the worship and prayer. As with my prayers for the local church and the passing pilgrim community, the immediacy of place was important. These previously unfamiliar places and beings affected my being. A leading postmodernist theorist, Zygmunt Bauman, contended that pilgrims focused on the future destination. Holding fast to the goal, they determinedly eschewed distraction and instant satisfaction. They devalued the present and lacked appreciation of the immediate. The past behind them, they pressed on toward the goal. This was not true of my experience. A compelling environment, enduring churches, a host of past pilgrims, and legions of local saints illuminated the present, the immediate, and the past to become powerful contributors to my spiritual experience and wellbeing.24

Transcendence, Well-being, and Pilgrimage Transcendent Experience A transcendent experience takes many forms. It may involve cosmic consciousness, a sense of the numinous, or an ecstatic experience. It includes an affective (rather than cognitive) recognition of something ultimate. “It consists in discovering afresh, as if taken by surprise, an uncanny dimension of reality, an uncircumscribed realm to which one feels open. It is an awareness of being in contact with something that lies beyond one’s normal control, power, or understanding”.25

24

Tidball, “Pilgrim and the Tourist”, 191. Louis Roy, Transcendent Experiences: Phenomenology and Critique (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 3. Compare this definition of transcendence with that of Husserl in Neil Holm, “Educating the Net Generation for Transformation and Transcendence”, Journal of Christian Education 54 (2011): 518. 25

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A particular circumstance (seeing a beautiful flower), situation (becoming aware of the passing parade), or incident (sunshine on the chalice) may evoke a transcendent experience. A spiritual or physical discipline may also lead to a transcendent experience. These experiences may occur suddenly and without notice, may vary in intensity, and are usually accompanied by affective states associated with awe, love, beauty, and fecundity. They may reoccur throughout a person’s life. Most often, these experiences are relatively short but for some are more enduring and accompanied by longer-lasting states of serenity and equanimity. Depending on a person’s past experience and their metaphysical or philosophical bent, these experiences may have divine or other religious association. Alternatively, they may have associations of being in harmony or unity with the universe, creation, or all living things. Although these experiences may take the person by surprise and have a possibility of being frightening and alien, a transcendent experience is described always as a positive and pleasant experience.26

Well-being A transcendent experience is a heightened, deepened or expanded experience of well-being. Well-being is composed of five elements. The first is positive emotion. Clearly, a transcendent experience is a positive affective event. The experience is not threatening and it may even be ecstatic. The person feels open to the experience. It feels real. It is fresh, pleasant, and a heightened rediscovery of reality. The second element is engagement. A person feels deeply absorbed and engaged by the experience. It is a pleasantly overpowering experience. The person feels immersed in a new reality. Their attention and consciousness are fully focused. This element connects closely with a “flow” experience. A “flow” transcendent experience is of lesser intensity and is of a transitory nature. Athletes and artists refer to this experience as “being in the zone”. In this state, they are engaged in deep concentration or contemplation within their activity. The work overwhelms them, engulfs them, or totally absorbs them. They become lost in the activity. 26

Jeff Levin and Lea Steele, “The Transcendent Experience: Conceptual, Theoeretical, and Epidemiologic Perspectives”, Explore 1 (2005): 89-90. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2004.12.12.002. I have been unable to find references to negative experiences in the literature.

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Their total focus is on the task. The experience becomes intrinsically rewarding. In sporting terms, the game satisfies, not the winning. In climbing terms, the climb satisfies rather than the achievement of reaching the top.27 The third well-being element is positive relationships. The person feels connected to others. They feel loved and cared for and they love and care in return. In a transcendent experience, the person experiences this element of well-being in a heightened, deepened, or broadened form. They become aware of a relationship with something or someone that is beyond everyday understanding and experience. They may feel connected to God, nature, or other people in an enhanced and remarkable way. Reflecting on their discovery of DNA, James Watson and Francis Crick became aware of a deep relationship with the molecule. The molecule was so beautiful that Watson commented, “Its glory was reflected on Francis and me” and “the rest of my life has been spent trying to prove that I was almost equal to being associated with DNA”. Likewise, Nobel Prize winner biologist Barbara McClintock attributed her success to her patience to hear what her plants said to her and her openness to an empathic relationship with the material. These groundbreaking scientists were open to mysterious energy at the heart of reality. They recognised “the grace of great things”.28 The fourth element is meaning. Meaning is a sense of belonging to and serving an idea, a philosophy, a tradition, or community that is bigger than you. This is clearly part of the transcendent experience and is closely related to the enhanced experience of positive relationships. The fifth element is accomplishment. Accomplishment involves pursuing success, achievement and mastery for their own sake. When people experience transcendence, they have a sense of contact with something that lies beyond their normal control, power, or understanding. They often experience a great sense of accomplishment. They have achieved something of which their previous comprehension had been very limited or non-existent. This experience is closely related to the “flow” experience. In a transcendent experience, these five elements of well-being, never truly discrete, become more harmonious, more highly integrated, and 27

Levin and Steele, “Transcendent Experience”, 90. Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1998) 55, 108-11. 28

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intertwined in complex ways. Transcendence brings well-being into a more complete state of being. These five elements of well-being have been criticised for excluding autonomy as an essential element. An autonomous person exercises choice. They choose activities or plan experiences that are consonant with their own self-understanding. An autonomous person makes and acts on judgements that are well informed and well thought out. An autonomous person forms, revises, and rationally pursues a worthwhile human life. This person makes a choice based on a deep immersion in their own tradition and an understanding of the traditions of others. I sense that autonomy is a foundation for all elements and is embedded in each of them. An autonomous person is more likely to experience positive emotions, to engage deeply with experiences, to welcome positive relationships, to submit to something that is bigger than they are, and to seek intrinsic rather than extrinsic rewards.29 Research points to two kinds of transcendence: green and mature. Green transcendence is a transitory and profound experience of pleasure, frequently described as ecstatic, that results from an event or specific physical or spiritual practice. Mature transcendence lasts well beyond the occasion. It is more than pleasurable. A feeling of serenity and equanimity endures. It often leads to a shift in consciousness or spiritual perception. Transcendent experiences are somewhat common. Gallup poll research in America revealed that since the middle 1970s about one third of those surveyed responded positively to the question: have they “ever had a religious or mystical experience — that is, a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening”. This question seems to tap the green experience. In 1980, other research explored the mature experience: one per cent reported an experience of “awesome emotions, a sense of the ineffable, feelings of oneness with God, nature, or the universe”. This experience included “changed perceptions of time and surroundings, and a feeling of ‘knowing,’ coupled with a reordering of life’s priorities”.30 29

“Centre’s review of Martin Seligman's new book–Flourish”, Centre for Confidence and Wellbeing” accessed 21/04/16 http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/information.php?p=cGlkPTQwMQ; Hanan Alexander, Reimagining Liberal Education (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 127, 130, 137; Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, “The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior”, Psychological Inquiry 11.4 (2000), 227-68 30 Levin and Steele, “Transcendent Experience”, 90.

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My Camino pilgrimage was probably a green transcendent experience. Before we started, I had some anxiety about how I would cope but once we began walking, I began to experience a sense of well-being and contentment. There were times of small elation. There were probably many of these times but a few come to mind. The first was on the outskirts of Leon when I saw my first golden shell that marked the way to Santiago. Later that day, I saw a bronze statue of a pilgrim. In this statue, the weary pilgrim sits leaning back against a tall stone cross with his eyes turned heavenward. I sat beside him in solidarity. As I entered Villar de Mazarife, I saw my first storks and recalled special family occasions when I read stories about storks to my children. Seeing the first wayside stall with items available for a donation of what you could afford moved me deeply. These experiences were more than merely pleasant or enjoyable experiences. They culminated in a transcendent experience because each had a spiritual connection. The golden shell reminded me of the thousands of pilgrims of whom I was now one who had passed this way and whose purpose for hundreds of years (if not so much today) had been to honour and worship God. Likewise, to worship with the weary pilgrim sitting under the cross was a deeply moving spiritual act. Although not ecstatic, it was one of the times on the Camino when I discovered afresh an uncanny and warmly pleasant dimension of reality. I felt open to a boundless and hospitable universe. These and many other similar occasions point to experiences that exemplify and go beyond the first element of well-being, a positive affective event. The “flow” transcendent experience is a form of the second element of well-being, engagement. In my daily “walking worship” discipline, I was “in the zone”. As I walked, I entered a state of deep concentration, meditation, and contemplation. Likewise, I became absorbed by a stainedglass window in a simple chapel near Astorga. Titled “El Fin del Camino” (The End of the Camino / The End of the Road), the window closely resembled Rublev’s icon of The Trinity. The image held me. I simply sat in its presence, entranced. I did not analyse it. I did not think about it. I felt it. I sensed rather than knew its message: the circle of the Trinity encompasses me now on this Camino road, on my pilgrim road through life, and it draws me ever deeper into that circle as I walk the road. Without doubt, I experienced engagement. My experience of engagement or solidarity with the weary pilgrim is hard to separate from the third element of well-being, positive relationships. Although a bronze “lifeless” statue, I felt an empathic

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relationship with him, not in his weariness, but in his devotion. Similarly, as we walked, Alison, Jamie and I moved into a deeper positive relationship than we had experienced before. I learned much about Jamie that I had not known previously. In particular, I discovered that although a very gifted musician, his passion for classical music at age 13 was far deeper than I had known or had even contemplated for one of his age. Outside the family, we formed very positive relationships with the Romanian family described earlier and with several others. Most of these relationships were expressions of well-being but a few moved to the level of transcendence. My experience of singing, praying, and walking with Irene, the Romanian mother, went beyond mere well-being. As we shared these moments of solidarity and fellowship, I became aware of God’s grace. Like Watson, Crick, and McClintock, I sensed the mysterious energy at the heart of reality. I recognised “the grace of great things”.31 This was a special experience. We transcended serious language and cultural difficulties that allowed me enter a place of serenity and equanimity. The fourth element is meaning. Meaning is a sense of belonging to and serving an idea, a philosophy, a tradition, or community that is bigger than you are. My pilgrimage contributed to my well-being because I saw the Camino as another way to engage with the philosophy, tradition, and community expressed through the Christian faith. The Camino offered me the opportunity to experience a Christian tradition and discipline that was particular, extensive, and enduring. In a way, it was a kind of 15-day retreat. It was an invitation to expansive daily prayer, meditation, and reflection. It was a new and fresh way of exploring the meaning of Christianity. It offered the possibility of reinforcing and expanding my understanding of the meaning of Christianity. By observing and participating in what the Christian community does “when it is acting, educating or ‘inducting’, imagining, and worshipping” or engaging in pilgrimage, I hoped to more deeply understand the meaning of Christianity.32 The pilgrimage allowed me to explore the meaning of Christianity in terms of some broad areas of current concern: “the longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships, and the delight in beauty”.33 31

Palmer, Courage to Teach 55, 108-11. Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), xii. 33 Tom Wright, Simply Christian (London: SPCK, 2006), ix. 32

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Although justice is a central aspect of Christianity, it did not occupy much of my thought on the Camino. The depiction of St. James as Matamoros (moor slayer) had the potential to provoke concerns about justice. How could I reconcile ideas of a God of love with a saint depicted as “a knight on horseback, brandishing a sword and trampling Moors underfoot”?34 Although Jamie, my grandson, shared his name, St. James was not the focus of my Camino. Consequently, I chose to ignore or to spend little time exploring this aspect of justice. I walked away from considering the meaning of this violent depiction. I chose not to explore its veracity or whether it was aggressive or defensive.

Conclusion I found constant delight in beauty. The varied splendour of the countryside evoked strong feelings of well-being. Similarly, the magnificence of churches and cathedrals, of elegant buildings designed by Antoni Gaudí, and of simple things such as the design of roof tiles on a house served to remind me of the great creativity and harmony that I believed God had lavished on this earth. At times, I was aware of the exquisite surroundings as we walked through tree-enclosed tunnels. Tramping a path traversed so often by multitudes that it simply sank into surrounding soil intensified the experience. These diverse perceptions and sensations formed a deeper consciousness that I belonged to a great and beautiful tradition that inspired my life with meaning and contributed to a profound sense of wellbeing: a grace-filled life. I remember particularly powerful experiences. In mid-afternoon, near Ribadiso we walked through a wood. Unlike the tunnel experiences, the path and terrain near Ribadiso were flat as the path wound among the trees. The wood, thicker than in other places, was 20 metres or so to the right of the path. A few scattered trees grew in the foreground. Somehow, the wood seemed mystical and in-filled with a luminescence, best described as an aura. Dappled light against the deeper dark of the wood may have created the luminescence. I stopped, arrested, aware, and awestruck by the aura-like beauty. The effect was pure emotion. I had no thoughts of God. I had a sensation of enlargement. My whole being seemed to expand or become fuller or more complete. Rather than finding myself, I felt found. 34 Sophia Deboick, “The Enigma of Saint James”, The Guardian, Saturday 24 July 2010. Accessed 20 May 2016. http://bit.ly/Deboick

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Another powerful experience occurred about 15 kilometres from Santiago at Lavacolla in a small chapel called Iglesia de Benaval. Although I had been in the habit of stopping briefly at churches, I almost did not pause there. Ten or so pilgrims stood around the entrance, more were inside, I was beginning to anticipate the end of the Camino, and I did not want to delay unnecessarily or make my way through the scrum at the entrance. Despite these feelings, I made my way in. Alison and Jamie had often waited for me outside these small chapels but this time they followed. A few others were sitting on the pews. Most were waiting at the back of the chapel for stamps on their Camino “passport”. We sat together on an empty pew. We sat in silence for perhaps ten minutes. I remember focusing on the altar but I have no clear memory of the details. I had no thoughts of Santiago or completion. I was at peace. I was content. I had no thoughts of any kind. I cannot say I felt God’s presence but the following words from Psalm 84:1-4 (HSCB) capture the experience: How lovely is Your dwelling place, Lord of Hosts. I long and yearn for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh cry out for the living God. Even a sparrow finds a home, and a swallow, a nest for herself where she places her young—near Your altars, Lord of Hosts, my King and my God. How happy are those who reside in Your house, who praise You continually. Selah.

When we stood to leave, it seemed as though Jamie and Alison had sensed something, too. Jamie turned to Alison, hugged her, then he hugged me, and then we shared a group hug. In one sense, for me, the Camino ended in this small chapel. Santiago itself was never the true destination. My arrival in Santiago a few hours later was neither euphoric nor despondent. I experienced a quiet satisfaction, a sense of achievement of a long soughtafter goal. The Ribadiso wood and Iglesia de Benaval were my mature transcendent moments. They were my Camino experience of “awesome emotions, a sense of the ineffable, feelings of oneness with God, nature, or the universe”.35 They were the ultimate feeling of well-being. All five elements of well-being were in harmony, integrated, and intertwined. Simultaneously, I felt positive emotion, immersed in a new reality, and surrounded by positive relationships. I felt part of something bigger than 35

Levin and Steele, “Transcendent Experience”, 90

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myself. I experienced a sense of accomplishment in having contact with something that lies beyond my normal control, power, or understanding. I was aware of my kinship with all creation. My pilgrimage was truly a personal journey through well-being to transcendence. As I write this chapter back in my home in Inala, Queensland, Australia, the place from which I began, I complete my latest pilgrimage. I left home. I became a pilgrim. I reflected on and explored the meaning of pilgrimage, well-being, and transcendence. I have returned to where I began. I have reached “El Fin del Camino”. And yet ... a new pilgrimage begins!

Select Bibliography Alexander, Hanan. Reimagining Liberal Education. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015. Deci, Edward L. and Richard M. Ryan. “The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior”. Psychological Inquiry 11.4 (2000): 227-68. Dyas, Dee. “Medieval Patterns of Pilgrimage: A Mirror for Today?” In Explorations in a Christian Theology of Pilgrimage. Edited by Craig Bartholomew and Fred Hughes, 92-109. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Holm, Neil. “Educating the Net Generation for Transformation and Transcendence”. Journal of Christian Education 54 (2011): 5-18. Huppert, Felicia A. and Timothy T. C. So. “Flourishing Across Europe: Application of a New Conceptual Framework for Defining Wellbeing”. Soc Indic Res 110 (2013): 837-61. McClure, Barbara J. Moving Beyond Individualism in Pastoral Care and Counseling: Reflections on Theory, Theology, and Practice. Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2011. Millar, Peter. Waymarks: Signposts to Discovering God’s Presence in the World. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2000. Niebuhr, Richard R. “Pilgrims and Pioneers: Our Bodies as Vehicles of Passage”. Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition 9.3 (1984): 6-13. Palmer, Parker. The Courage to Teach. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1998. Robert D. Putnam. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Roy, Louis. Transcendent Experiences: Phenomenology and Critique. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Seligman, Martin. Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of

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Happiness and Wellbeing. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Tidball, Derek. “The Pilgrim and the Tourist: Zygmunt Bauman and Postmodern Identity”. In Explorations in a Christian Theology of Pilgrimage. Edited by Craig Bartholomew and Fred Hughes, 183-200. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Turner, Victor and Edith Turner. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. Williams, Rowan. On Christian Theology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000. Wright, Tom. Simply Christian. London: SPCK, 2006.

PART FIVE: PERSONAL WHOLENESS, THE LEADER AND THEIR COMMUNITY: MEETING MUTUAL NEEDS

CHAPTER ELEVEN REIMAGINING FAITH-BASED LEADERSHIP FOR THE GREATER GOOD1 DARREN CRONSHAW, ELIZABETH WALDRON BARNETT, NEWTON DADDOW, BRUCE DUNCAN AND FRED MORGAN

Religious leaders in Western countries, historically, held a more central role in society. Today that role is more marginalised by secularism and other influences. How do faith-based leaders reimagine their role and contribution in this contested space? What are ways in which faith-based leaders and their organisations today are serving the common good, locally and globally, including dialogue, compassionate service and advocacy for justice? In a complex and changing world, facing wicked problems, how can faith-based leaders “share wisdom well” as Miroslav Volf urges? The task is not merely for hierarchical or charismatic religious leaders, but for all people of faith. It is also not for any one religious group to work at alone, but leadership and activism for the greater good is necessarily an interfaith project. Pope Francis is calling attention to social justice and global issues such as climate change, but also reminding us that action on these issues is required of all of us, as a collaborative project. Diverse religious and spiritual communities are working together towards harmony and for the common good, harnessing the riches of their wisdom and compassion in mutual respect. The Parliament of World Religions movement has been a catalyst for nurturing this vision and catalysing regional cooperation and local projects. This paper conversationally explores pathways for reimagining faith-based leadership for the greater good, including perspectives from our Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and interfaith perspectives.

1

This chapter was originally inspired and suggested by John Fien and Sam Wilson as a Swinburne Leadership Institute project.

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Introduction Greens Senator Larissa Waters asked in parliamentary question time, on Monday 22 June 2015, if the then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott, being a Catholic and someone who had trained for the priesthood, would listen to Pope Francis’ recent encyclical proclamation on climate change calling for an urgent moral response.2 Pope Francis appeals for greater attention to our common home rather than preoccupation with consumption. He calls for collaboration for sustainable and integral development, suggesting what contribution Christianity may bring alongside awareness of scientific research, human causes of environmental degradation and the need for international and local policy. The statement advocated for the protection of the complex system of our climate, fresh water and biodiversity. Pope Francis grounds these elements in the social ethics notion of the common good—including concern for the poor and future generations. It is a reasoned and thoughtful appeal for dialogue, education, action and “ecological conversion” by one of the world’s best-known religious leaders on the biggest issues facing our world. It deserves attention by Catholics and people of other faiths or none.3 In a strange conflation of controversial topics, another Senator asked if Waters was married (although withdrew that question). Thus one Senator thought marital status was somehow relevant, but others were convinced religion was not. The President of the Senate stated it was not appropriate to refer to a Senator’s religion, so ruled that part of the question out of order. Deputy Government leader in the Senate George Brandis, representing the Prime Minister, responded by suggesting that reflecting 2

“Liberals ‘disgusted’ after Larissa Waters asks if Tony Abbott will listen to Pope on climate change—video”, Monday 22 June, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2015/jun/22/liberals-disgustedafter-greens-larissa-waters-asks-if-catholic-tony-abbott-will-listen-to-pope-onclimate-change-video?CMP=soc_567. This introductory reflection was originally published on the BUV Blog as “Religion and Public Discourse—the Basis for Listening to the Perspectives of Others?”, http://www.buv.com.au/buvblog/entry/religion-and-public-discourse-the-basis-forlistening-to-the-perspectives-of-others 3 Pope Francis, “Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care of our Common Home”, Rome, 24 May 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papafrancesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

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on the religious beliefs of any member of parliament is “disgusting”. It seems the cultural script that religion and politics should not mix is alive and well in Canberra. What is the role, then, of religions and religious leaders in public discourse? Is faith merely a private devotional matter with no relevance for the public world of civic leadership, or is it part of a potentially valuable and values-based contribution? What is the basis of listening to one another’s perspectives—including religious leaders learning from other sectors, and others hearing the perspectives of people of faith? Religious leaders in Western countries, historically, held a more central role in society. Today that role is more marginalised by secularism and other influences. Surveys such as the annual report on trust in global leadership prepared for the Davos World Economic Forum suggest that religious leaders are not trusted as much as they used to be.4 The response of some religious institutions to abuse claims and violent extremism or at least intolerant adversarial perspectives of other groups has tainted community views against religion, and institutional religion is declining in the West. Yet interest in the contribution of spirituality and a transcendent basis for justice and human dignity is growing. In a “post-secular” age, faith-based leaders are caught, as public theologian Elaine Graham suggests, between the “rock” of religious resurgence and the irresistible “hard place” of secularism and institutional decline, or between faithfulness to faith-based traditions and openness to diverse and critical conversation in the public domain.5 The pure secular response is to argue religion has no place in the public square, and that to suggest otherwise is “disgusting” or at least unenlightened. The fundamentalist response is to assert the universal authority of particular religious values. Yale Divinity School’s Miroslav Volf grew up in the former communist Yugoslavia, so knows the pressures of religious pluralism and aggressive secularism. He helpfully argues that faith is malfunctioning 4 See also Samuel Wilson and John Fien, “The Swinburne Leadership Survey: Index of Leadership for the Greater Good” Report (Melbourne: Swinburne Leadership Institute, 2015), accessible at https://www.academia.edu/11977958/Swinburne_Leadership_Survey_2014_Index _of_Leadership_for_the_Greater_Good 5 Elaine Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a PostSecular Age (London: SCM, 2013).

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when it is violent, oppressive and life-destroying, but it is so also when it is apathetic about the condition of the world and does nothing prophetically to help people thrive and to mend the world.6 So without retreating into a private realm of religious devotion on the one hand, or pretending religious organisations have a place of privilege at the centre of society on the other, how do faith-based leaders reimagine their role and contribution in this contested space? In a complex and changing world, faith-based leaders need to be aware of the systems we find ourselves in and maximise the networks we utilise. We live in a world of wicked problems: social inequality is widening and environmental disaster is reaching a tipping point; education systems are archaic and who knows what health epidemic challenges are around the corner. It is no longer possible (if it ever was) to think that any one organisation or group (let alone individual) can come up with appropriate responses, alone. We need to cultivate space where people of all ages, all cultures, all abilities, all stages of faith (or no faith or struggling faith or different faith) can contribute. Richard Hames points in helpful directions of purposeful collaboration to create a future we can hand on to our children with pride. He describes the profound ability to create wisdom through dialogue, and our need to collaborate, since “individual genius is fragile in comparison with the power of collective wisdom”.7 The best leadership postures and responses to the biggest questions we face will harness the interests of government, business, civil society and individuals; will integrate secular and sacred; will put the cause (and the shared interests of multiple stakeholders) ahead of any one organisation;8 and will challenge all of us to be prepared to change our accepted modes of operating. We desperately need fresh approaches to leadership that reflect this “connectedness”. Faith-based 6

Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2011). 7 Richard David Hames, The Five Literacies of Global Leadership: What Authentic Leaders Know and You Need to Find Out (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007); xxii www.richardhames.com; discussed previously in Darren Cronshaw, “Navigating Students and Community Groups towards Discerning a Reconnected Sense of Self and Vocation”, Case Studies of Leadership in a Connected World, 2014 Global Leadership Conference (Swinburne University of Technology and Northeastern University, Melbourne, 14 Nov 2014). 8 Leslie R Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Non-Profits (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012).

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leaders have important contributions to make, including pointing us beyond a purely materialistic and individualistic mindset to recognise our need for deeper meaning and spiritual groundedness, as Hames argues: The need for a spiritual base—of a deeper sense of relatedness to the world around us, and towards each other—becomes more apparent each day. Many people around the world have concluded that the assumptions and beliefs on which current frameworks were built, especially those of production and consumption in the West have become totally incompatible with the objectives we now need to pursue as a global community.9

This resonates with Volf’s appeal for faith-based leaders to “share wisdom well” in ways that help foster human flourishing and the common good. This is not just a one-way flow, but learning together how to see human flourishing not merely as experiential satisfaction or individual success, but living for something larger including compassion for the poor and marginalised and living peacefully in a world of escalating conflict. All of us in the world need wisdom for these big issues. Volf concludes: Jews, Christians, and Muslims (as well as adherents of other world religions) have a common mission in the world. It is not just to roll up their sleeves and collaborate in stemming the relentless and rising tide of human misery, whether that comes in the form of disease, hunger, violated rights, or a polluted environment. The common mission is also to make plausible in contemporary culture that human beings will flourish only when the love of pleasure, a dominant driving force in our culture, gives way to the pleasure of love.10

Our society desperately needs leadership that is focused on the greater good in government, business and civil society. Faith-based leaders have much to contribute to this conversation—both for their role in worshipping congregations and faith-based social service organisations, and also for their thoughtful contributions on the nature of leadership needed in society today. This conviction is the basis of exploring interfaith perspectives to reflect on this chapter’s theme “Reimagining faith-based leadership for the greater good”. As co-authors, we draw on Jewish, Protestant and Catholic traditions, but we also have had conversations with Muslim and Hindu leaders. Our project was inspired, in part, by ecumenical and interfaith conversations in the United 9

Hames, Five Literacies, 162. Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith, 145.

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Kingdom and the “Together for the Common Good” project.11 The agenda is to move beyond the interests of religious organisations and “seek the welfare of the city”.12 What might this look like in Australia?

Mimesis and Modelling: Leadership That Transforms Addressing the contribution of faith-based Leadership in public life invites us to interrogate the origins and traditions of leadership in our particular faith. For example, the Christian tradition hosts a complex contest of leadership templates and traditions. The sources of Scripture from the early Christian movement offer a tangle of subversive, grass roots, idiosyncratic, contextual movements with equally subversive, grass roots, idiosyncratic, contextual leadership. The centuries of political hierarchical Christendom in the West and glacially stable, cultural orthodoxy in the East provide another set of organisational structures and leadership postures. Such divergent systems leave many intriguing, though perhaps irreconcilable suggestions for answering the question of how faith-based leadership might function for the common good. The question of what contribution faith-based leadership may make for the greater good demands that we seek some clarity in the relationship between faith communities and the public square of political, commerce, education, health and the arts. Within this general relationship, the specific role of the leader also requires careful exegesis. In this section, we will devote our attention not to individualistic leadership projections, but to the patterns and cultures of leadership practice. We propose an elucidation of two types of leadership mimesis and a third alternative of leadership modelling, which is deeply rooted in the texts of Christian Scriptures. We want to provoke a critique of the church leadership that has imitated, replicated or even become implicated in historic and contemporary political structures. The contemporary context for this work is located in the jumble of Australian communities and orders that have grown up in the past two 11

Nicholas Sagovsky and Peter McGrail, eds, Together for the Common Good: Towards a National Conversation (London: SCM, 2015); Hilary Russell, A Faithful Presence: Working Together for the Common Good (London: SCM, 2015); http://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk 12 As suggested by David Forrester, “The Scope of Public Theology”, Studies in Christian Ethics 17:2 (2004), 6, drawing on Jeremiah 29:7.

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and a half centuries on the lands of, alongside the peoples of, and as we must confess, with violence against the traditional custodian dwellers on this continent. This is a multi-cultural context in the deepest dimensions of our sociality. The indigenous peoples are many nations; the various European settlements in urban centres and the many rural communities represent another wide set of diverse values and ways of leading. The “Sydney–Melbourne” rivalry is common fodder for friendly jibes, and stand-up comedians, but there is a darker and more powerfully divisive reality that needs attention and truth-telling. The differences between our capital cities and regional centres and rural communities are not just about weather and the quality of coffee, but are embodied in power and principalities—deeply political, cultural and ideological trajectories that have an uncomfortable and misaligned history. In ecclesial orders and the religious world, these histories are also reflected along political, geographical and ideological lines. Within Christendom, the alignment of religious observance and governance with political orders has been rigorously buttressed. Episcopal denominations (in the Australian context, principally Anglican and Catholic) in the traditions of their European antecedents have explicitly imitated the leadership forms and values of elitist hierarchies in which leadership is equated with power and authority and are accompanied by wealth, privilege and property. Leadership is bestowed through a personal and fictive–familial tradition of transference. In the context of Christendom, this has been a successful strategy for church order; its operational methods have been easily comprehensible; mimicry is an ingratiating form of flattery and thus by imitating the culture and methodology of civic rule, the church has made itself palatable to the state. The disadvantage of this relationship is clearly seen in the restrictions churches accept in their capacity to raise a voice of prophetic objection, correction or critique to the governments they mimic. Historically, churches that have adopted parallel leadership structures to hierarchical privilege-based systems forfeit their credibility and have legitimately suffered the same moral flaws of corruption, exploitation and self-interest. The recently created Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is perhaps the flagship of public experience of this corruption, as the stories pour forth of parallel conditions and practices across secular and ecclesial institutions. It is not only the episcopal churches that are beset by the impediments and compromises of leadership mimesis. Alongside the revolutions and

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democracies of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries which birthed new ideologies and structures of government and leadership in civic society, an outbreak of new church movements established mimetic democratic forms of leadership. The “free church” denominations reflect the new ideology of democratic governance. Baptist, Churches of Christ, Methodist, Congregational and Quaker churches are ordered by elected leaders, councils of representatives and collective meetings which vote on “business”. The leadership culture of these communities imitates the democratic leadership culture of the republican capitalism birthed in the seventeenth century and brought to rational maturity during the enlightenment. Inasmuch as an elite, inherited, hierarchical, absolute power culture in the church suffered the moral and functional maladies of its state model, the “low church” democratic ecclesial systems of leadership have not escaped the difficulties of modern government either. Partisanship, the sway of the charismatic, populist leader, backroom lobbying, instability and pragmatic capitalism are common in this strain of the Australian church. Churches of this kind often stand or fall in the eyes of their own members and in society at large on the public persona of their leaders. Thus the Australian church allows itself to be known and evaluated by the public by such incendiary characters as Fred Nile, Tim Costello, John Dickson and Lyle Shelton. To some Christian minds all of these leaders embody strong prophetic voices and they have high approval in different sectors of the church and society, depending on political currents. Each of them is a man of substance, education and integrity. The limitations that we identify in this charismatic mode of leadership are not personal, however, but systemic in that it is not substantially related to the life of religious communities. Despite the diversity of political and theological allegiances among this sample group, their rhetoric and gestures are similar: they take a polemic approach to political issues, seeking legislative solutions to social issues that have “moral” content. Though coming in the neapolitan flavours of our conservative right, liberal left and socialist fringe parties, the essential “politics” of these leaders align not only in parallel with one another, but with the genre of our political candidates. Positively, this creates a manner of familiarity and accessibility to the general public who listen to and observe the work of these leaders, as they speak and act like civic leaders and politicians. This “independent”

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democratised Christian leader has moved away from the tone and style of ecclesial culture, eschewing Christian jargon and theological terms. Nevertheless, this familiarity “breeds contempt” for these leaders, who suffer the same partisan championing and dismissal that politicians do. The golden boy of one set is the enemy of another. Conservatives predictably applaud Lyle Shelton and despise Julie McCrossin (if they appear together for example on Q&A), and progressives the opposite. Frequently Christian contributions to public debate are indistinguishable from party politics. Again, the mirroring of the leadership culture of the State infests Christian leadership with the very problems that faith might be called to counter, not imitate. Both of these problematised transactions of leadership hold some common elements of ethos that disable their efficacy in the contribution of faith-based leadership in society. Firstly, leadership is always construed in individual terms. Individual leaders are identified, authorised and profiled. Secondly, leadership is expressed in words and power, but in these cases rarely in lived action. Thirdly, leadership is expressed in both the posing of questions and the proposal of answers. Offering solutions to problems is the mark of the pragmatism of the low church, just as reiteration of traditional positions is the mark of the power of the high church. Unfortunately, when expressed by an individual leader, such proposals broadcast as “you should do this…”. An exception to this is emerging in the leadership of Jarred McKenna and the “Love makes a Way” movement of Christians seeking more compassionate approaches for people seeking asylum.13 This is a model and almost unique example where words are few and action, symbol and collective presence are the “language” of Christian public faith leadership. The relative absence of an individual representative leader and the power of the gathering image provide a link to the area of faithbased leadership in public life that is often overlooked, but where Christianity’s truest form of existence and expression are embodied in vibrant and transforming life. Both high and low church traditions contain theologies of the people of God as active agents in the work of the kingdom of God. The mimesis of civic fashions of leadership has not only influenced the behaviour, reputation and models of leaders, but also shaped (and in many ways 13

http://lovemakesaway.org.au/

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disguised or disempowered) the behaviour, reputation and model of Christian congregations. Congregations are prone to treating leaders as elected or anointed representatives and thereby divest their own public presence to the profile of the leader. We are not always satisfied with the result, but the belief that the leader ought to be our voice in the public square remains intact, and we most likely seek a new voice to represent us, rather than re-examining the ways in which faith-ing communities can contribute to public life. The demise of Christendom in which cultural participation in a local faith-based community was normative has been lamented widely by leaders and congregants alike. Even some media and political leaders nurse yearnings for a public life in which churches assisted in creating and sustaining moral and cultural norms. The aftermath of the post-war migration away from regular church participation, first by men then whole families in the generation following, reshaped the landscape of leadership, gender and political engagement of the local church community. Many churches were surprised to find themselves on the margins of local and national life. Other faith groups may have always felt on the margins in Australian public life. It is not difficult to see the link between the marginalisation of collective life and the rise of the articulate, persuasive individual leader as the keystone of faith-based public engagement. Putting aside the frameworks of mimetic leadership, we invite a reconsideration of an alternative reading of the participation and contribution of twenty-first century faith communities in public life. Churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious groups across Australia exercise a robust leadership in local communities through the low profile, high impact “alongsiding” with others doing the business of daily life: raising children, planting gardens, seeking healthy routines, forging life-long partnerships, negotiating the twists and turns of physical health and the gullies and crevices of mental illness, learning new languages, discovering viable vocation and purposeful passion. Different religions are inspired differently by their view of God and/or their founder. For Christians, faith-based leadership in the ways of Jesus is a lived and living leadership. Spokesmen are episodically significant, as we have discussed above. But Christian confession of the dimensions and dispositions of faith-based leadership for the public good draws deeply on a diverse but grounded, gathered practice. As we have

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interrogated the mimetic direction of other leadership postures the church has taken historically, attention is appropriately refocused to the modelling and mimesis of Jesus within his discipleship community. One pertinently painful but promising example of the practical outworking of this ethos is seen in the demise of Christian Religious Education (CRE) in Victorian State schools. Once a thriving collaboration of churches, volunteers, schools and communities, with a curriculum that enabled creative and contextual explorations of children’s faith, CRE was an accepted norm in most local primary schools, and a small number of individual students were exempted upon parental request without any fuss. (This was part of the legacy of Christendom in Australia, even though we have never had an established church.) Leadership of the program was held collaboratively at a local school level, with official administration both on the side of the supporting Christian organisation and government department kept to a minimum at the coalface. This is not the place to explore the leadership dynamics and political shifts that led to significant change and dismantling of general trust between the department and the accrediting body for CRE. What is of interest here, given the situation of systemic collapse, are the ways forward that local, informal, community-based initiatives can make in remaining faithful to seeking the well-being of children in their local communities. In lots of interesting, uniquely contextual ways, faith communities are upholding their commitment to the old notion of “parish” with a new vision, regardless of the official systems breaking down. When such expressions of faithfulness and concern transcend and outlast the privileged mechanisms of Christendom, a more prevailing and credible public good can be sought. While there are voices (though mostly in other states) that decry the detractors of legislated programmatic access to government schools for Christian operations, alternative projects are springing to life. If the access had been multi-religious, the accusation of Christian privilege in a public institution would have rung hollow. Instead, it has resonated unhelpfully with a generally anti-religious version of secularism. Phenomenologically this ought not to surprise us. Christianity, with its heritage in the history of the Jewish people, has often known life on the margins and sought to serve society from alongside. Political Christianity appears more dominant (historically) than might be statistically demonstrable. Power has the advantage of being able to project its own shadow larger than life, creating the illusion of greatness, and to determine the terms of “normative” in its own favour in the

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narratives of the past, present and future. More than this, though, theologically, the grass-roots leadership and influence of the people of God, faithful in their collective life in serving their community, and sowers of common good, ought not to surprise us. The call of the people of God was not to dominate or dictate, but to bless from the largess of their own blessing of abundant life in God. The function of leadership for the greater good is asked of all of the people of God as a collective, not thrust upon individuals. The early followers of Jesus were taught to seek the kingdom of God with a child in their midst as their model (Matthew 19:14), not as one who needed to be led herself. The model of Jesus himself of course upsets all notions of leadership being aligned with power. When Jesus had opportunity to grasp or even influence political power he chose a devastating silence. Jesus has plenty to say about injustice and how the public good might be sought, but curiously seemed to “waste” his words on the common everyman and everywoman. To be true to the founder of the church, the place for the entire body of Christ together as one is on their knees with the basin and cloth of a servant: cleansing, purifying, healing, refreshing the world. In working for the greater good of our neighbourhoods and society, Christian tradition does not just seek individual leaders to be “servant leaders”, but suggests that churches sought to collectively assume the posture of servant as an act of leadership and influence for the public good. Other religions may have a similar ethos. But it will be difficult and rare that our political leaders mimic such a leadership posture. Here, then is the possibility of a truly alternative and possibly subversive contribution. The notion of the role of faith-based leadership for the greater good or common good or public good in this stream reminds us what is meant by “public”. Public ought not to be mistaken for the notions of the visible. The “public” pertains, rather, to the community as a whole—all constituents of life together. Public good, therefore, is a good that is sought, not for only the visible, the high profile, the obvious, the squeaky wheels, but for the community as a whole, which will include the invisible, ignominious, the necessarily unbroadcastable. The efficacy of faith-based leadership, whether it is Christian witness or equally the contribution of leaders from other faith traditions, is not dependent on excellent media relations, but rather on faithfulness.

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We have asserted that faith-based leadership for the greater good comes best from a religious group as a whole—whether church, synagogue or mosque—rather than the hired holy person that a religious group puts forward.14 Nevertheless, we recognise and affirm the role of individual leaders in exemplifying and modelling leadership, especially when it points religious groups beyond their own interests, or prophetically calls society towards the greater good. The world’s most recognised religious leader is the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, and the current Pope Francis is pointing the Catholic Church and modelling for other traditions and religions a leadership that is vocal and active for the greater good. The next section explores the nature of his leadership.

Pope Francis: The Secret to His Surprising Leadership? When Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was elected Pope in March 2013, few expected that he would become such a popular and skilful leader of the Catholic Church, and assume such Mandela-like prominence on the global stage, especially after the shock of the unfolding clergy sex abuse crisis. The cardinals in Rome wanted a change from the centralised discipline of Pope John Paul II and the drift in governance during his long illness; and from the extremely erudite but somewhat abstract style of Pope Benedict XVI. Both these popes had strongly developed Catholic social teaching.15 But in recent decades they were not always adept at communicating with the wider culture. Francis has emerged as an astonishing communicator to elites and ordinary people, not just with Catholics but with many others concerned about social issues of our time. What is it about his message and style that makes him such a prominent leader today? He is leading the Catholic Church through an extraordinary process of change by calling everyone to discern how personally we might respond to the hungry and distressed of our world, as Jesus insisted in his Last Judgement parable in Matthew 25. 14

Cf. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1981). 15 Modern papal social teaching began with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum in 1891 and has been vigorously developed, especially since John XXIII. See Bruce Duncan, Church Social Teaching: From Rerum Novarum to 1931 (Melbourne: CollinsDove, 1991); Kenneth R. Himes (ed.), Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004).

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It is a message for the greater good which resonates powerfully not just with other Christians, but with those of other religions, and even of none. Francis in The Joy of the Gospel insisted that work for social justice is at the very core of the Gospel: Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society. This demands that we be … attentive to the cry of the poor and to come to their aid.16

He wants to move the Church beyond the so-called “culture wars” to a more productive engagement with current issues, in collaboration with everyone willing to work together for these goals. He calls for closer engagement with current concerns since “God is to be encountered in the world of today”.17 He links these Gospel values intimately with the search for the true good of every person, whatever their belief or non-belief, since we are all part of God’s creation, and God loves everyone without exception. Francis called for a church “that is unsettled, always closer to the abandoned, the forgotten, the imperfect… Wherever you are, never build walls or borders, but meeting squares and field hospitals”.18 He stresses the need currently to build bridges, not walls, in this struggle to enhance the well-being of humans and of the entire planet and all its creatures.19

16 Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel: Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World, 24 November 2013, #187, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papafrancesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html 17 Antonio Spadaro, “A Big Heart open to God”, America, 30 September 2013, http://americamagazine.org/pope-interview 18 Joshua J. McElwee, “Catholicism can and must change, Francis forcefully tells Italian church gathering”, National Catholic Reporter, 10 November 2015, http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/catholicism-can-and-must-change-francisforcefully-tells-italian-church-gathering 19 Gerard O’Connell, “Aboard Plane Home from Mexico, Pope Francis Responds to Questions on Donald Trump”, America, 18 Feb 2016, http://americamagazine.org/content/dispatches/aboard-plane-home-mexico-popefrancis-responds-questions-donald-trump

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Speak Simply, Use Symbols Francis said he has learnt two valuable things in his life: to speak simply and use symbols. He has modelled leadership and service to those on the margins through symbolic actions including foot-washing and hospitality. His first visit outside Rome was to the refugee island of Lampedusa, saying Mass on an altar made from the timbers of a refugee boat. His first visit outside Italy was to Albania, where Christians and Muslims had shared great suffering under the communist regime. Instead of celebrating the solemn washing of the feet in the Last Supper Mass in a great cathedral, he went to a gaol and washed the feet of two women and several Muslims.20 In 2016, he flew to the Moria refugee camp in Lesbos, in company with the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Ieronymos, praising the Greek people for their generosity, and sending a clear message to the rest of Europe about receiving asylum seekers and refugees. He brought back three refugee families to live at the Vatican as they prepare for resettlement, and these were Muslims.21 From his early years Bergoglio had long been deeply committed to the poor in his country, and enjoyed talking and walking with people in the slums.22 He became familiar with their lives and the straightened conditions which many endured, and this affected his understanding of the Gospel and what God asks of Christians. He became very pastoral in his concern for these people, not finger-wagging or insisting on impractical ideals but encouraging people to do the best they can in their circumstances. He said he prefers a church with muddy feet that is close to the people, and urges clergy to “smell like the sheep”.23 From his first days

20 “Pope washes feet of women and Muslim Man in Maundy Thursday rite”, The Guardian, 18 April, 2104, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/17/popefrancis-kisses-feet-women-muslim-maudy-thursday 21 Helena Smith, “Pope Francis takes refugees back to Rome after Lesbos visit”, The Guardian, 16 Apr 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/16/pope-francis-flies-to-lesbos-tohighlight-humanitarian-crisis-in-europe 22 Elisabetta Piqué, Pope Francis: Life and Revolution (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2014), 47. 23 Pope Francis to recently ordained bishops, Rome, 19 Sep 2013, http://saltandlighttv.org/blog/fr-thomas-rosica/be-pastors-with-the-odour-of-thesheep-present-in-your-people%C2%92s-midst-like-jesus-the-good-shepherd

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as Pope, Francis yearned for a “poor church for the poor” of the world.24 He has commented: “I see clearly that the thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity”, like a field hospital after battle where wounds are tended. “The Church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules”, obscuring the basic message of Jesus’ saving presence.25 This is leadership that avoids the temptation of ecclesiocentrism or preoccupation with doctrinal or worship matters with minimal implications for broader society, but that seeks to actively demonstrate the values and teachings of religion for the greater good.

Discernment and Responsibility A key part of Jesuit spirituality is the practice of the Spiritual Exercises, where people embrace a disciplined process of prayer and reflection to open themselves more fully to how God’s Holy Spirit may be moving in their hearts, with a view to sometimes making life decisions. Francis recognises that God’s Spirit is present in everyone, and that whatever their circumstances all people go through processes of discernment in their lives, wrestling in conscience with yearnings for a good and wholesome life. Pope Francis seeks to help people in often traumatic circumstances inform their consciences and make positive steps in their decision making. He understands that moral conscience develops and matures in these processes of discernment about life experience. Consider the circumstances in the slums where Bergoglio placed some of his best priests and church workers, many of whom were targeted on the grounds that they were communists or subversives because of their work with the poor. Argentina had been through the “Dirty War” when 10,000 or more people were murdered by the military regime, including twenty priests and members of religious orders, eighty-four others who disappeared, along with many hundreds of lay activists and pastoral workers.26 The repression involved torture, disappearances, exile and

24

Joshua J. McElwee, “Pope Francis: ‘I would love a church that is poor’”, National Catholic Reporter, 16 Mar 2013, http://ncronline.org/blogs/francischronicles/pope-francis-i-would-love-church-poor 25 Spadaro, “A big heart open to God”. 26 Austen Ivereigh, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014), 136.

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corruption. Bergoglio hid some people in his Jesuit College, and personally smuggled several out of Argentina.27 In the slums, Bergoglio became familiar with the problems of drug running, prostitution, trafficking of humans, hunger, poverty, inadequate education and healthcare, unemployment and lack of housing, sanitation and potable water. He encouraged groups and networks to tackle these problems. The Argentine financial crisis of 2001-02, the largest ever at that time, plunged the country into prolonged distress, with more than half the people driven into harsh poverty, many losing their life savings as banks collapsed, along with 40,000 businesses.28 As Archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1998 and Cardinal from February 2001, Bergoglio faced these destructive global, institutional forces and became outspoken about the problems with international finance and neoliberal economics.29 His critique of these international economic forces was reinforced by the Global Financial Crisis and its impact on Latin America from 2007. Pope Francis has thus experienced the worlds of poverty, hardship, violence and injustice, and is speaking as a voice for the excluded, poor and marginalised, particularly from the third world. In his encyclical Laudato Si’ on poverty, inequality and the environment, he invited everyone to join this dialogue about human and planetary well-being, listening carefully to informed specialists, of course, but so that this would result in appropriate action.

Young Christian Workers and “See-judge-act” Along with the Jesuit tradition of discernment, another major influence on Bergoglio and Catholics in Latin America was the Young Christian Workers (YCW) movement. YCW was inspired from the 1920s by charismatic Belgian priest, Canon Joseph Cardijn, who was appointed a bishop and cardinal in 1965 and so attended final sessions of Vatican II. YCW spread widely through Latin America and was important in empowering young workers to break out of a sense of fatalism that nothing

27

Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti, Pope Francis: His Life in his own Words: Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio (New York: GP Putnam’s Sons, 2013), 199. 28 Paul Vallely, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 116. 29 Vallely, Pope Francis, 133.

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or little could be done to change social situations—as if one just had to pray for a better outcome in heaven. Cardijn encouraged young workers to come together in small groups to “see” and talk about their concerns and issues, particularly in their factories or work situations. Then they would “judge” by prayerfully considering passages from the Scriptures or Gospels, particularly in the life of Jesus, and reflect on what this had to say to their lives and workplaces. The third part of the process, deciding on concrete action, was extremely important because Cardijn wanted to empower young workers to engage purposefully with their workplaces and life situations, to challenge unjust practices and transform their localities and countries with greater social justice. Individuals felt empowered by the support of a group, and felt less isolated and exposed. Cardijn emphasised the need for workers to develop their consciousness and take responsibility to improve human well-being and challenge injustice. As detailed in Laudato Si’, Francis believes that the work of social transformation is primarily the work of lay people with all their expertise, acting independently on their own initiative, but supported by the moral teaching and encouragement of the Church. Francis insists that God’s Spirit is present in the whole of creation, but God’s concern is particularly focused on those who are marginalised or in distress—the “poor” of the Bible. Francis draws powerfully from the Scriptures, including from the Last Judgement scene in Matthew 25 when God judges people not on fulfilling religious duties or rituals but exclusively on how we have cared for the sick, hungry, naked, the strangers or those in prison: “Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labour is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: it is a commandment”.30 Francis focuses a “God’s-eye” view on human well-being and our responsibilities to others. The Incarnation reflects God’s intense identification with all of humanity, in Francis’ view, whatever people’s religion or even lack of religion. Even atheists can be saved if they are true to their consciences and do what they can to promote human well-being and the good of the planet. In a 2013 homily, Francis insisted that God has redeemed “all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone!” This includes even atheists: “The Lord created us in God’s image and likeness, and … all of 30 “Pope’s Address to ‘Popular Movements”, 9 Jul 2015, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Zenit, https://zenit.org/articles/pope-s-address-to-popular-movements-2/

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us have this commandment at heart: ‘do good and do not do evil.’ God expects us to treat each other as living images of God, with care and respect. Francis said: ‘We must meet one another doing good.’”31 Francis’ invitation is for Catholics to join with other Christians and people of other religions or none, and to find common ground in working for good. Interestingly he does not assert a monopoly on knowing or deciding what Good is, but invites others to lead towards what they discern is for what we are calling in this chapter the greater good: Everyone has their own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as they conceive them … We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good.32

Faiths Finding Common Ground for the Greater Good Francis has developed strong links with leaders of other major Christian Churches, as well as with Muslim and Jewish leaders. Like his predecessors, Francis laments and apologises for the harm the Catholic Church and its members in the past have inflicted on other Christians. As Bishop of Rome and Pastor of the Catholic Church, I want to invoke mercy and forgiveness for the non-evangelical behaviour of Catholics in their relations with Christians of other Churches. At the same time I invite all Catholic brothers and sisters to forgive if, today or in the past, they suffered offences by other Christians.

In response to the great social issues today, Francis believes Christians can work much more closely together: While we are on the way to full communion between us, we can now develop many forms of collaboration to foster the spread of the Gospel. And by walking and working together, we realize that we are already united in the Lord’s name.33 31

“Pope Francis says atheists who do good are redeemed, not just Catholics”, Huffington Post, 22 May 2013. 32 Eugenio Scalfari, “The Pope: how the Church will change”, La Repubblica, 1 October 2013, http://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2013/10/01/news/pope_s_conversation_with_scal fari_english-67643118/ 33 “Pope’s homily at Vespers to conclude Week of Prayer for Christian Unity”, Zenit, 25 January 2016, https://zenit.org/articles/popes-homily-at-vespers-toconclude-week-of-prayer-for-christian-unity/

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Even if we have very different ideas in various religious and philosophical traditions about what finally constitutes the human good, he insists we need to dialogue about the practical good we can achieve, as through the UN Sustainable Development Goals, respecting the consciences of others in their perceptions of the good, and work together as far as possible. He says that in God’s eyes, what finally matters is our care for the sick, hungry and destitute. Francis has been such a significant leader because he is speaking to the real concerns our world is facing, inviting dialogue about the common good for all of us, encouraging participation so that all have a chance to speak and be heard, and urging us to do what we can to address current problems. Francis speaks strongly about poverty, extreme inequality between and within countries, violence and war, and the alarming threats to the environment from pollution and global warming. In the face of these unprecedented challenges to humanity, he is effectively calling for a process of global discernment about what constitutes the human good at this time, and how to preserve the environment to secure the well-being of everyone on the planet, including by abandoning the neoliberal economics which ignores wider social and cultural goods. In all of these things, Francis follows long-established traditions of Catholic Social Thought. But he has communicated them more effectively. Faith-based leadership focused on inter-faith co-operation is centrally important in our globalised, post-colonial world—with its sometimes polarised and radical extremes. Interesting historical foundations underpin contemporary momentum—indeed a proliferation of initiatives as part of a growing movement at international, regional and local levels—that suggest substantial engagement with the “greater good” and hope for the future. The following sections explore international, regional and local initiatives of inter-faith cooperation in leadership for the greater good.

The Parliament of World Religions In 1988 The Council of The Parliament of the World’s Religions formed to gather together religious leaders and communities in Chicago in 1993, as a centenary celebration of the first World Congress of Religions in Chicago. The Parliament had a parallel commitment to assess and to renew the role of the religions of the world in relation to personal spiritual growth and to the critical issues and challenges facing the global community. Thus a major focus of its cooperation has been contributing a

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compassionate and constructive voice from the faith traditions to the pressing social, humanitarian, environmental and conflict resolution challenges facing the world. Catholic theologian Hans Küng was the principle architect for the foundational document, “Declaration Toward a Global Ethic” that was endorsed by these religious and spiritual leaders from around the world.34 Issues in focus included non-violence and respect for life; solidarity and a just economic order; tolerance and a life of truthfulness and equal rights; and partnerships between men and women. The Parliament has not been preoccupied with internal religious matters but has sought to foster cooperative action for compassionate service, environmental concern and social justice advocacy. The subsequent 1999 Cape Town gathering enabled more than 7,000 participants to witness first-hand the role that religion and spirituality had played in ending the system of apartheid that had prevailed until 1990. A keynote document, “A Call to our Guiding Institutions”, invited religion, government, business, education and the media to build new, reliable, and more imaginative partnerships towards the shaping of a better world.35 The display of the International AIDS Memorial Quilt to highlight the epidemic of AIDS in South Africa made an impact and highlighted the role that religious and spiritual leaders can play in facing the critical issues that face the world. Gifts of Service to the World showcased over 300 projects as examples of “the creative, constructive, and transformative power of groups, organizations, and communities that choose to make a difference in the world”.36 Nelson Mandela reminded participants of the contribution of religion to the greater good in his context: Hindus, Moslems, leaders of the Jewish faith, Christians, it was them who gave us the hope that one day we would come out. We would return. And in prisons, the religious institutions raised funds for our children who were arrested in thousands and thrown into jail. And many when they left prison had a high level of education because of the support we got from religious institutions. And that is why we so respect religious institutions and we try as much as we can to read the literature which outlines the fundamental 34 “Declaration Toward a Global Ethic”, Chicago, 4 September 1993, https://parliamentofreligions.org/sites/default/files/TowardsAGlobalEthic.pdf 35 “A Call to Our Guiding Institutions”, 1999 Parliament of the World’s Religions, Cape Town, South Africa, https://parliamentofreligions.org/sites/default/files/CalltoGuidingInstitutions.pdf 36 “Cape Town 1999: Gifts of Service to the World”, http://parliamentofreligions.org/parliament/cape-town-1999/gifts-service-world

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principles of human behaviour like the Bhagavad Gita, Koran, the Bible and other important religious documents.37

The 2004 Barcelona gathering engaged participants with the theme, “Pathways to Peace: The Wisdom of Listening, the Power of Commitment”. Those attending were asked to make a commitment to a “simple and profound act” to work on one of the articulated goals: Supporting refugees world-wide; Overcoming religiously motivated violence; Eliminating international debt in poor countries; and Increasing access to clean water.38 The Melbourne 2009 Parliament primarily focused on “strengthening religious and spiritual communities” by providing a particular focus on Indigenous and Aboriginal spiritualties. The issues of global peace, justice, sustainability and climate change were explored through the lens of Indigenous spiritualties. The Utah 2015 Parliament saw 10,000 people focus on “Reclaiming the Heart of Our Humanity—Working together for a World of Compassion, Peace, Justice, and Sustainability”. Again, the greater good was in focus as participants were called to respond to six declarations related to climate change, the dignity of women, the support of emerging leaders, income inequality, hate speech violence and war and indigenous peoples.39

Charter of Compassion A feature of the Utah gathering was the contribution of Karen Armstrong and the affirmation of the Charter of Compassion inspired by her 2008 TED award and her book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.40 Unveiled in 2009, the Charter was written by representatives of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. It transcends religious, ideological, and national differences and has widespread support 37

“Cape Town 1999: Nelson Mandela’s Speech to the 1999 Parliament”, http://parliamentofreligions.org/parliament/cape-town-1999/nelson-mandelasspeech-1999-parliament 38 “The 2004 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona, Spain”, http://parliamentofreligions.org/parliament/barcelona-2004 39 “Parliament Declarations”, http://parliamentofreligions.org/parliament/salt-lake2015/declarations 40 http://www.charterforcompassion.org/; Karen Armstrong, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (New York: Anchor, 2010).

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from many traditions. It is activating the “Golden Rule” around the world and sees compassion as the principled determination to put ourselves in the shoes of the other; an impulse that lies at the heart of all religious and ethical systems. It seeks to encourage not only compassionate thinking but compassionate action at the centre of religious, moral and political life. The charter has been translated into more than 30 languages and has grown into a global movement with a network of over 350 “Cities of Compassion”. The hope is to “twin” some of these cities, so that a city in the Middle East can twin with one in the USA to exchange news and visits. In 2012, the Islamic Society of North America endorsed the Charter, making its schools “Schools of Compassion” and urging its mosques to become “Compassionate Mosques”.41

Local developments—Melbourne, Australia The Parliament of World Religions has often been a catalyst for local interfaith cooperation. In Melbourne, following the 2009 Parliament, interreligious local government sponsored committees increased from 3 to 23 and now 33 registered groups across Victoria.42 There are also some notable grass roots inter-faith initiatives, such as the “Building Bridges in Schools Program” of the Wellspring Spirituality Centre. This began in 2004 as a creative response to the widespread fear and incidents of violence that occurred around Australia following the 9/11 terrorist attack. Children from Islamic, Sikh and Jewish backgrounds were being verbally and sometimes physically abused because of their different appearance. Dr. Tim McCowan, founder of the program, believed the best antidote to the prejudice and violence arising from ignorance was to provide opportunities for respectful dialogue between young people: In coming together the secondary students of different faiths and values learn key skills of dialogue and share personal experiences. This personal connection and dialogue allows understanding and trust to develop, and the wisdom of varied perspectives is explored. Respect is nurtured and these qualities serve as foundations to negotiate and engage with each other’s

41 “Historic Moments for the Charter”, http://www.charterforcompassion.org/index .php/charter/historic-moments-for-the-charter 42 Gary D. Bouma, “6 Years Ago, the Melbourne Parliament Made Interfaith a Staple of Society”, 2015 http://parliamentofreligions.org/content/6-years-agomelbourne-parliament-made-interfaith-staple-society

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differences and commonalities, and are important for leaders of our country into the future. 43

Westgate Baptist Community Martin West, Deacon for Social Justice and Engagement at Westgate Baptist Community, has quietly and consistently sought to put into practice a congregational commitment to building relationships with other faith communities in the region. The first of a series of congregational activities was “A Peace Picnic”. 44 In September 2013, on the UN International Day of Peace, a barbeque picnic brought together eighty Buddhists, Muslims and Karen (Burma/Myanmar) Baptists. They gathered at the iconic Hanging Rock to eat together, do team building activities and share interfaith prayers. Recent news had focused on the deaths of seventy-five Christians in Pakistan, sixty Shia Muslims in Iraq, and at least sixty Muslims, Hindus and Christians in a shopping mall in Kenya. The intent of the peace picnic was to tell another story: a Christian cooked halal sausages for a Muslim family; Muslims offered food to a Buddhist monk; a newly arrived Muslim refugee and a ten-year-old Karen Christian boy with no common language played soccer; a group of women with hijabs and men with beards ate lunch together; and they walked up Hanging Rock together. Christians and Buddhists listened quietly as Imam Hasin led the Muslims in praying for peace in the world and in Burma. Pastor Newton Daddow led a Christian prayer. Two monks recited prayers for loving-kindness and compassion. Almost everyone involved had experienced the trauma of war and life in refugee camps. As they prayed together, their different faiths became a source of unity instead of division. Later that year a new initiative began “Giving Blood, Creating Shalom”.45 Westgate and Karen Baptists from Werribee began a relationship with the local Sikh community. They visited the Sikh gurdwara in Hoppers Crossing and after observing worship and joining a communal meal, they went together to the local Red Cross Blood Bank. A few weeks after the first event a group from the Sikh gurdwara visited Westgate and 43 Timothy McCowan, “The Building Bridges through Interfaith Dialogue in Schools Program: An Investigation into the Effectiveness of a Model of Interfaith Education” (PhD Thesis, Australian Catholic University, 2013). 44 Martin West, “A Peace Picnic”, Oct 2013 http://www.buv.com.au/buvblog/entry/telling-another-story 45 Martin West, “Giving Blood, Creating Shalom”, Oct 2013 http://www.buv.com.au/buvblog/entry/giving-blood-creating-shalom

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observed the baptism of two of the young people who had visited the gurdwara. West commented: I believe joining compassionate Sikhs in donating blood to save lives testifies to the Jewish rabbi who praised a Good Samaritan. When we first met the Sikh leaders and talked about building a relationship between our communities, we talked about the biblical concept of shalom. Shalom is not just the absence of conflict; it is the presence of positive relationships. We also explained that the Christian bible commands us to welcome the stranger in our land.

Early in 2015 a Sharing our Faith program involved a small group of four Sunni Muslim women, a Baptist, a Catholic, an Anglican, and a Church of Christ woman.46 At each meeting food and drink were bought to share. An opening prayer was Islamic, a chapter of the Qur’an recited by a Muslim women. A closing prayer was led by a Christian. A series of meetings included introductions, Muslim women talking about the Five Pillars of Islam, Christians talking about the centrality of Jesus and the group exploring different ways they worship. One Saturday they met at the Virgin Mary Mosque in Hoppers Crossing to observe worship and share supper. (Yes, the mosque is named after Mary the mother of Jesus.) On Sunday the Muslims paired up with Christians to go to church together. One participant commented: “Hearing Muslims talking about their faith gave me a new perspective”. Two of the Muslim young women said that it was their parents who had strongly encouraged them to join the program: “We attend an Islamic college and socialise with other Muslims, and our parents said it was really important we make friends with Christians and learn about Christianity”. In May 2016 twenty Baptists and Buddhists gathered at Westgate Baptist Community to discuss religious conflict in Burma.47 A prominent Buddhist monk in Karen State, Burma, has built pagodas in front of seven Christian churches, and a mosque and police station. After sixty-seven years of civil war, conflict in Karen State has diminished and religion has ceased to be a source of conflict, and there are peace talks with the Burmese military. Building pagodas in front of churches is raising tensions and fears of renewed religious conflict. Karen Buddhists in Australia say 46

Martin West, “Sharing our faith with Muslims” http://www.buv.com.au/buvblog/entry/sharing-our-faith-with-muslims 47 Martin West, “Karen leaders meet for peace”, May 2016 http://www.buv.com.au/buvblog/entry/karen-leaders-meet-for-peace

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that building pagodas without permission on church land is a violation of basic Buddhist principles, and that the monk U Thuzana does not represent them, or Buddhism. Westgate invited Karen leaders to a meeting where Venerable Moonieinda, abbot of the Karen Buddhist monastery in Bendigo, spoke of his community’s concern that religious conflict will lead to divisions between Karen Christians and Karen Buddhists in Australia. Those at the meeting wrote letters to Buddhist and Christian leaders in Karen State, encouraging them to avoid actions that will cause conflict, and work for peace and friendship between religions, and then Christians and Buddhists prayed for peace.

Priestly and/or Prophetic Leadership? “Religion and politics don’t mix” is a cultural script often quoted by those who want to keep the influence of religion out of politics, or keep religion pure from the perceived distraction of politics. When it was suggested to Melbourne Synagogue leaders that they should make a statement about Australia’s treatment of refugees, as churches have done, one response was “No, let’s stick to spiritual matters”. Part of the tension is the different role of faith-based leaders as priest and/or prophet. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks has explored the biblical basis of leadership including this distinction.48 The priest represents normativity, balance and maintaining the status quo. The prophet offers challenge, critique and subversion of the status quo. Prophets boldly say to others who are misusing their power, “This is what you are doing, and it is wrong”. As we reimagine faith-based leadership we need both priest and prophet. It is not about selecting one over the other for all times and situations. But the standard expectation in Western secular society is that faith-based leaders fulfil a priestly role—epitomised by celebrating weddings and funerals, or conducting worship. People look for leaders who can fulfil a prophetic role, but often look first to journalists, University professors or public intellectuals to bring that challenge, rather than looking to faith-based leaders. Judaism has been a minority religion in most of its history and so has tended to be conservative and interested in maintaining itself. Christianity 48

See e.g., Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (New Milford: Maggid, 2015). Others, such as Walter Brueggemann, have developed similar models in a Christian hermeneutical context.

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in Western countries such as Australia is now also becoming a minority religion, existing on the margins of society rather than operating from a position of strength in the mainstream. The temptation for leaders of minority religions is to be inward looking and preoccupied with survival.

The Imperative of Dialogue It is a religious imperative, and even simply a moral imperative, especially in a multicultural society and multi-religious world like ours, to enter into dialogue with people of other faiths or none. Sacks suggests that it is only due to what we hold in common and our common humanity that gives us a place for conversation and enables us to talk to one another; but our differences since we are not all the same give us something to talk about. This is a real challenge with interfaith dialogue—carrying on a conversation without denying our differences. Faith-based leaders with experience in dialogue can model conversational exploration of important issues with others of divergent opinions, but unfortunately too many religious leaders are interested more in maintenance and talking only with people of their own religion and—even more narrowly—usually only with people in their own denomination or theological bandwidth. Sacks wrote The Dignity of Difference as an extended midrash on the Tower of Babel and Plato. He suggested we are all haunted by Plato’s ghost and are looking for an answer for everything, which is a myth. Sacks maintains that plurality and diversity are part of God’s plan. Instead of reading the story of the Tower of Babel anthropocentrically as a story of judgement, he presents it theocentrically as a story of ordained diversity— that God wants diversity and that it is the challenge of humans to learn to live with it. If we were all the same there would be no challenge; our difference brings our dignity. This is the intrinsic moral dimension to the economics and politics of globalisation. Dialogue is thus not merely about searching for common values but reframing how we view our differences. Reimagining faith-based leadership, therefore, has to include showing dignity to the other and being a force for peace; that is, avoiding the clash of civilisations at global and local levels.49

49

Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2003); also Jonathan Sacks, Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence (New York: Schocken, 2015); Raymond Gaita, A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice (London: Routledge, 2002).

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The Victorian Council for Christians and Jews organised the “Grassroots Dialogue project” in 2015 to broaden dialogue beyond special events. The project took the message of listening respectfully to one another into religious congregations. It trained 12 dialogue partners—Christians and Jews—and sent them on 31 visits to 29 congregations, always with a Jewish–Christian pair, and mostly at times of worship. For some this was radical idea—having a Jew speak to a Christian, and a Christian to a Jew, during a time of worship. The occasional person who responded, “I did not come here for this”, apparently failed to see that “listening respectfully to the other” was itself a prayerful experience. Yet the biggest critical feedback was that congregations needed more time to go more deeply into the dialogue experience. Reimagining faith-based leadership needs to include helping people of faith see people of others faiths (or none) as people of common humanity, and to respect points of difference. Joining with people of other faiths can extend also to shared community service. A member of Temple Beth Israel Melbourne, Rabbi Fred Morgan’s congregation, exercised local community leadership in initiating a food van program. The congregation had been concerned for local homeless people and those struggling with food security, but the synagogue, as much as they would have liked to, was unable to use its own kitchen to prepare meals. The volunteer leader asked the Father Bob Foundation for access to their food van and raised money for the food expenses, and they now operate it every Monday evening, with 50 volunteers. The food is not just for Jews of course, and the volunteers include Jews from the Synagogue and others from the community who were attracted by the vision. Another dimension of faith-based leadership is moving beyond conversation and compassionate service to also advocating for a more just society. Jewish Aid Australia has been renamed as “Stand Up”, but it still reflects a “Jewish commitment to a better world” in the words of their mission statement. Stand Up works with indigenous partnerships, homework clubs, social justice education for youth and children, and refugee support. As well as responding to issues at grassroots levels, Stand Up is adopting a role as advocates for policy changes. Stand Up asked synagogues to open their doors to refugees, as some churches have done, which the synagogues were not able to do for legal reasons. But Stand Up drafted a statement, like some churches have done, and invited Synagogue leaders to sign it. An Orthodox Rabbinic group drafted a similar statement,

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and the two statements have now been amalgamated and signed by at least twenty Jewish leaders. When one leader asked his board to approve his signature on the refugee statement, as is that Synagogue’s policy for any public statement, someone suggested Synagogue leaders should leave the issue alone and focus on spiritual not political matters. Rabbi Fred Morgan’s response was to ask whether any issue is not political? It was not an issue of partisan politics but acting out of a sense of common humanity and out of convictions about Jewish values, in particular the Scriptural mandate to care for the stranger. In the Talmud it is claimed that the Torah mentions thirty-six times “Respect the stranger”, an injunction linked to the experience of the Jews in Egypt. This is an ethical position based on looking at the face of the other person and thus being obligated to act on their behalf, as Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas taught.50 Reimagining faith-based leadership has to acknowledge the humanity of the other, and do so with reference to specific persons not just humanity in the abstract. In the Thatcher era in the United Kingdom, Anglican and other churches produced several reports on poverty and social justice issues. Contributing to this conversation, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, before he was to become Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Synagogue of the British Commonwealth, asserted that Judaism does not hold to any particular economic theory but articulates appropriate goals to set for ourselves and principles for ways of reaching them. Religious leaders, therefore, can adopt a prophetic or critical stance, in essence as a voice “from the sidelines” that asks, “Why are you holding to this theory? Examine your motives”.51 A foundational challenge for faith-based or any leadership is to not only teach but embody values. This is an area faith-based leaders at their best can model for leaders in other sectors, and unfortunately it is also an area that at our worst we can model what not to do. A publicly obvious example of this, of course, is inappropriate responses of religious organisations to child sexual abuse that the recent Royal Commission has been investigating. Rabbi Jack Bloom explains that leaders, even religious 50

Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969). 51 Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “Wealth and Poverty: A Jewish Analysis”, London: The Social Affairs Unit, 1985.

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leaders, are flawed and we are all imperfect, but the challenge of leadership is how to deal with our flaws and symbolically point people beyond ourselves to God and to higher values, in part by seeking to embody those values.52 Reimagining faith-based leadership involves prophetic activism that addresses and engages the world’s complex and wicked problems— climate change, AIDS, global poverty and the global flow of refugees. But any response must also lead with a focus on integrity, authenticity and open-heartedness as well as the wisdom of spiritual leaders—as exemplified by Pope Francis and others. In other words, the leader needs to be credible, honest (not corrupt or self-serving, as we so often accuse political leaders of being), and true to their message in their own behaviour. The prophetic element is also important, but we need to clarify what that means: able to see where society is going and in what ways or areas it is damaging itself; being counter-cultural; being self-critical (at least, to some extent) within and towards one’s own religious-cultural tradition—seeing the flaws in the ways that one’s own tradition expresses itself. The well-known practitioner of interfaith (Jewish–Christian) dialogue Leonard Swidler made this important point in his famous reference to “the Dialogue Decalogue”, or also known as the “Ten Commandments of Dialogue”, that a critical approach is necessary not only towards the other’s religious culture but also towards one’s own religious culture.53 That’s what Francis is doing, and this is partly why he can be respected apart from the child abuse controversy because he is not identified with the Catholic culture that produced it—despite the fact that he heads the Church that produced it. Instead he is able to exercise leadership on matters including climate change and migration. This is not merely the task of one hierarchical leader or a selection of charismatic leaders, nor indeed the task of any one denominational religious group. In a secular or post-secular context, the challenge for reimagining faith-based leadership for the greater good is for all people of faith, in collaboration with one another and with other groups and individuals active in serving the greater good. 52

Rabbi Jack H. Bloom, The Rabbi as Spiritual Exemplar: By the Power Vested In Me (New York: Haworth, 2002). 53 Leonard Swidler, “The Dialogue Decalogue: Ground Rules for Interreligious, Interideological Dialogue”, http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5464ade0e4b055bfb204446e/t/54e253dee4b0 14cdbc418ef8/1424118750630/DIALOGUE+DECALOGUE+MAY+2011.pdf

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Select Bibliography Armstrong, Karen. Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. New York: Anchor, 2010. Bloom, Rabbi Jack H. The Rabbi as Spiritual Exemplar: By the Power Vested In Me. New York, NY: Haworth, 2002. Duncan, Bruce. Church Social Teaching: From Rerum Novarum to 1931. Melbourne: CollinsDove, 1991. Graham, Elaine. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age. London: SCM, 2013. Hames, Richard David. The Five Literacies of Global Leadership: What Authentic Leaders Know and You Need to Find Out. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2007. Himes, Kenneth R., ed. Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004. Ivereigh, Austen. The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014. Küng, Hans, Christianity and the World Religions. Paths of Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1986. —. A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics. London: SCM, 1997. Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Russell, Hilary. A Faithful Presence: Working Together for the Common Good. London: SCM, 2015. Sacks, Rabbi Jonathan. Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible. New Milford, CT: Maggid, 2015. —. The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2003. —. Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence. New York, NY: Schocken, 2015. Sagovsky, Nicholas and Peter McGrail, eds., Together for the Common Good: Towards a National Conversation. London: SCM, 2015. Volf, Miroslav. A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good. Grand Rapids, MN: Brazos, 2011.

CHAPTER TWELVE THE DANCE OF WOUNDED SOULS:  IMPROVING LEADERSHIP WELL-BEING AND EFFECTIVENESS STEPHEN SMITH AND MURRAY BINGHAM

Providing pastoral care for people in the community or church is a primary function of a ministry leader. This chapter describes Smith’s research into the leadership health and effectiveness of 108 ministering persons in Australia. The investigation found 53 per cent described themselves as “wounded”; that is, struggling to function under a burden of emotional exhaustion. Research participants identified a common values conflict between care of others and care of self as a significant causal factor negatively impacting the quality of leader health and well-being. Through an action-learning approach, participants used structured conversations, storytelling and other participatory techniques to understand better the holistic health issues they faced. Through mutual sense-making, leaders co-generated their own theories of personal transformation resulting in the development of a two-by-two matrix, the Leader Health and Sustainability Map, which was found a useful heuristic device to improve the wellness and effectiveness of ministering persons. The findings of Smith’s study (2012) are supplemented with subsequent research by Bingham (2016) with three additional industry groups using the Leader Health and Sustainability Map.

Leaders as Wounded Souls In general, society believes churches should be safe havens. Like hospitals, they should be places of help and healing yet, by their very nature, they are designed to attract wounded people—often impaired physically, emotionally, psychologically or spiritually. These wounded people are then mixed together with the other people that churches attract—idealists. Idealists give generously, work hard and seek to serve the needs of others—wounded people usually drain others and seek to



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have their own needs met. Almost inevitably, some idealists over-function to meet the needs of others—not knowing that there will always be more needy wounded than available resources. Over time, the result can be that everyone ends up, at least slightly, wounded. Psychologist Archibald Hart goes so far as to say that the church is not designed for the healthy: We invite in everybody, and as a consequence we have a higher proportion of personality disorders than society generally. You should see pastors eyes light up when I describe the different types of personality disorders. They recognise some of their members. People with personality disorders don’t change, but they can be helped through an environment of tough love, one that sets limits.1

The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas once said, “grace does not abolish nature”. That remains true today: regardless of any enhanced spiritual condition, human nature (with all its highs and lows) is a reality for church groups. This is not surprising, as a recent survey of the Australian adult population revealed that almost one in five has one or more common mental disorders. 2 So, while the church is depicted metaphorically in scripture with splendour and perfection, the practical reality is somewhat tarnished. It is not that the ideals and metaphors about churches are necessarily false, but that we fail to recognise they are also emotional systems. 3 It is into this rather complex system that idealists choose to be ministers and leaders. Our humanness allows us to hurt (or help) each other and, as in other people-caring professions, what usually begins with high aspirations, optimism, commitment and selflessness can end up as “despair and disillusionment”.4

1

T. Stafford, “The Church’s Walking Wounded”, Christianity Today 47.3 (2003): 64. 2 S. Henderson, G. Andrews, and W. Hall, “Australia’s Mental Health: An Overview of the General Population Survey”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychology 34.2 (2000): 198. 3 P. Steinke, How Your Church Family Works: Understanding Congregations as Emotional Systems (New York: Alban Institute, 1993), ix. 4 W. Grosch and D. Olsen, “Clergy Burnout: An Integrative Approach”, Psychotherapy in Practice 56.5 (2000): 619.



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As churches are emotional systems, they are, by nature, “anxious”.5 This system is alive and constantly changing as each participant becomes emotionally connected to others.6 Everyone plays a part in the system— influencing, or being influenced by, the anxiety and behaviour of others. Ministers are leaders within this system—either compounding or calming the level of anxiety. Richardson writes: The leader’s main job, through his or her way of being in the congregation, is to create an emotional atmosphere in which greater calmness exists—to be a less anxious presence. “Knowing everything” is not necessarily to be a healthy, competent leader. When you can be a less anxious presence, there is often enough experience and wisdom in the group itself to figure out its own solutions to the challenges it faces. When a leader cannot contribute to this kind of atmosphere, the thinking processes in the group are shortcircuited, and people become more anxious and emotionally reactive and make poorer decisions.7

It is within this emotional system that ministry leaders are made. They are inspired, equipped, motivated, empowered, unleashed—and often broken by their experience. Ministers of religion are not exempt from these hazards. The demanding nature of their work has sometimes made the emotional stress severe, spanning the entire length of their career.8 The result can be compassion fatigue, experienced as an emotional numbness, a sense of hopelessness, a decrease in pleasure, apathy and lack of caring, and a sense of going through the motions. This is common in the organisation because “routinely, over-functioning in the service of others seems to be encouraged in ministry”9 and can result in a “disintegration of self”.10 5 E. Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (New York: Guildford Press, 1985); Steinke, How Your Church Family Works. 6 R. Herrington, R. Creech, and T. Taylor, The Leader’s Journey (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003). 7 R. Richardson, Creating A Healthier Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 67. 8 C. Lee and J. Iverson-Gilbert, “Demand, Support and Perception in Familyrelated Stress among Protestant Clergy”, Family Relations 52.3 (2003): 249–57. 9 S. Pfeil, “A New Understanding of Clergy Compassion Fatigue for Facilitators of Trainings for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct”, Journal of Religion and Abuse 8.3 (2006): 67. 10 Friedman, Generation to Generation, 3.



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The presence of leaders who are wounded—and, therefore, in some way impaired—is very real in the ministry context. This is consistent with a Duke University study of United States (US) pastors by Hoge and Wenger that found: … a significant number of people have been going into seminary as a result of some crisis in their life, and they were on some kind of spiritual quest. They go to seminary and get to the end of their three or four years and are ordained. And they carry that crisis—which is unresolved yet, because seminaries aren’t good at resolving crises and then they get into ministry and of course the baggage is still with them. They come in wounded, and they continue to somehow expect that life in the church is going to help them heal those wounds. And sometimes then they project to their congregation the expectation that they are going to be taken care of by the congregation, while the congregation on the other hand wants to be taken care of by them.11

Participants discussed the difference between being a “wounded soul” and a “wounding soul” (someone who significantly harms others). As these two ideas were linked so closely, the expression “a dance of wounded souls” was used to talk about the dynamics between a wounded leader and the wounded people around them. However, the dilemmas for ministry leaders are that: x as pastoral carers they may perform a range of functions, but the essential product they deliver is themselves. This can be exhausting (emotionally, physically, spiritually) and without a way for renewal they will derail. x as pastoral carers their personalities may drive them to want to help wounded people, but as human need is infinite, they become their own worst enemy, giving too much of themselves away. x as pastoral carers they may fill multiple roles that can be psychologically conflicting. The shift from spiritual leader to administrator, to pastoral carer, to spouse, to crisis manager, to supervisor can be emotionally draining.12 11

D. Hoge and J. Wenger, Pastors in Transition: Why Clergy Leave Local Church Ministry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 164. 12 S. Smith, Leadership Health and Sustainability of Ministering Persons Employed by Churches and Ministries within Churches of Christ in NSW (Sydney: Churches of Christ in NSW, 2009).



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Using Story to Capture an Understanding of Leadership Health To capture a depth of understanding of these dynamics, Smith’s participatory action research into the health and well-being of 108 ministers in New South Wales (NSW) sought to record the health stories of ministering persons.13 Harvesting the experiences of leaders through the collection of their comments, insights and stories was a powerful form of data collection. Through storytelling, reframing, searching for themes, brainstorming and personal reflections, the participants developed their own models of understanding what they were experiencing in order to improve professional practice. All participants stated they were involved in the research because they were interested in improving their practice as leaders. The power of stories as constructed narratives through which we create our own view of the past, present and future is discussed by Coia and Taylor: Stories are interpretations, but they need continual interpreting … our stories become texts of experiences that are interpreted. These interpretations change as our identity changes. The experience may be past, but the meaning or interpretation of the experience is from the present, and this is what is significant. The sense we make of the past is through the stories we tell today … No conversation we have is solely in the present. We draw on our memories of past experiences in order to make sense of the present.14

A story is “any event retold from life which appears to carry some meaning”15 and can be used for “making sense of the experience of the inquiry”.16 Stories are often used to explore, develop and exemplify the culture of an organisation as people engage in storytelling of those who are 13 S. Smith, Savouring Life: The Leader’s Journey to Health and Effectiveness (PhD thesis, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, 2012). 14 L. Coia and M. Taylor, “Co/Autoethnography: Exploring Our Teaching Selves Collaboratively”, in Research Methods for the Self-study of Practice, ed. D. Tidwell, M. Heston, and L. Fitzgerald (London: Springer, 2009), 3-16, at 7-8. 15 P. Reason and P. Hawkins, “Storytelling as Inquiry”, in Human Inquiry in Action, ed. P. Reason (London: Sage, 1988), 89. 16 Reason and Hawkins, “Storytelling as Inquiry”, 100



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seen as fools, heroes and villains within the organisation.17 Reason and Hawkins see stories and storytelling as an emerging paradigm of inquiry: It tends to be co-operative rather than unilateral; to be qualitative rather than quantitative; to be holistic rather than reductionist; to work in natural settings rather than in artificial laboratories. When we start to see storytelling as an aspect of inquiry we discover an important new dimension: inquiry can work to explain or to express; to analyse or understand. This is part of the realm of presentational knowing.18

In Smith’s research 19 the gathering of rich, thick data on leader health through gathering stories was a significant part of the process of data collection. Themes were then identified through group dialogue that identified “touchstone stories”20 that capture the essence of leader health issues in the organisation. Smith’s research involved open forums, semi-structured interviews, email discussions and surveys focused on the central question of improving our practice in developing healthy leaders.21 Groups of 12–20 gathered to share and focus their collective wisdom on the salient themes that were arising. They used the following process: 1. The large group divides into groups of three. 2. Each person gets three minutes to share a personal story of a critical event that has had an impact on their health as a leader (positively or negatively). 3. Each group chooses one story they feel communicates something powerful about leader health in the organisation. 4. Each group shares their chosen story with the larger group. 5. The larger group chooses one story that presents a powerful opportunity for learning to improve practice in leader health. 6. The larger group freely asks questions, shares reflections, analyses themes, maps issues, constructs frameworks and makes meaning.

17

Reason and Hawkins, “Storytelling as Inquiry”, 99. Reason and Hawkins, “Storytelling as Inquiry”, 79. 19 Smith, Savouring Life. 20 M. Boyce, “Collective Centering and Collective Sense-making in the Stories and Storytelling of One Organisation”, Organisation Studies 16.1 (1995): 107–37. 21 Smith, “Savouring Life”. 18



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Subsequent questions were emergent, and collaborative techniques were used to harvest stories as sources of tacit knowledge for mutual learning. Participants made observations and asked reflective questions for discovery. The process was used to capture a sense of the health issues in the organisation. Some stories resonated with the mutual concerns and experiences of group members and the process of discussion, selection, sharing and analysis helped the groups to “collectively centre”22 on the salient issues. In telling stories, participants were encouraged to use four lenses designed to help separate the observational from the interpretive aspects of the stories shared. They also helped participants ask effective questions for mutual learning. The four lenses were: x x x x

What do I observe happening? (A focus on data.) What do I feel about it? (A focus on emotional response.) What do I think is going on? (A focus on cognitive analysis.) What do I want to be different? (A focus on action for improved practice.)

The knowledge sharing that came through stories was powerful because “telling stories about remarkable experiences is one of the ways in which people try to make the unexpected expectable, hence manageable”. 23 When stories were shared in the groups, they were also mapped by participants on giant Post-it notes. Mapping has no hard-and-fast rules; rather, it is a way participants can capture a rich description of their experience.

Developing a Heuristic Model for Understanding and Transformation Through group work in Smith’s action research, participants diagrammed this tension on a two-by-two matrix developed in this project with two dimensions: care of others and care of self, seeing this as a significant causal factor negatively impacting the quality of leader health and well-

22

Boyce, “Collective Centering and Collective Sense-making”. J. Robinson, “Personal Narratives Reconsidered”, Journal of American Folklore 94.1 (1981): 60. 23



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being. 24 In this heuristic model, four quadrants were developed and described. This sense-making process took place over multiple group iterations using whiteboards and giant Post-it notes. These descriptions in group sessions were consistent with states of health in the literature cited following. The quadrants were as follows.

The Sustained Servant (High Care of Self and High Care of Others) This leader is willing to “give all” for what they believe in, but knows that without healthy balance, this is short-term and selfish. They are selfaware, listen to others and build their own accountability systems. Through positive modelling and healthy choices, this leader can help develop sustainability in others. This is the zone of personal “balance”.25

The Self-Focused Spectator (High Care of Self and Low Care of Others) This leader is a constant survivor who thrives in situations in which apparent care for others aligns with self-interest. They always gain in some way when serving others. They avoid transparency, their espoused values

24

Smith, “Savouring Life”. See L. Howe, “Self-differentiation in Christian Perspective”, Pastoral Psychology 46.5 (1998): 347-63; M. Kets de Vries, The Leader on the Couch: A Clinical Approach to Changing People and Organisations (San Francisco: JosseyBass, 2006); F. Minirth, P. Meier, D. Hawkins, C. Thurman, and R. Flournoy, Beating Burnout: Balanced Living for Busy People (New York: Inspirational Press, 1997); J. C. Quick, G. Cooper, J. D. Quick, and J. Gavin, The Financial Times Guide to Executive Health (London: Prentice Hall, 2002); K. Reivich and A. Shatte, The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles (New York: Broadway, 2002); R. Richardson, Becoming a Healthier Pastor: Family Systems Theory and the Pastor’s Own Family (Minneapolis: Augsberg Fortress, 2005); R. Rohr and J. Martos, From Wild Man to Wise Man: Reflections on Male Spirituality (Cincinnati: St Anthony Messenger Press, 1990); M. Seligman, Authentic Happiness (New York: Free Press, 2002); R. Swenson, The Overload Syndrome: Learning to Live Within Your Limits (Colorado Springs: Nav Press, 1998) and idem, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives (Colorado Springs: Nav Press, 2004). 25



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do not always match actions and they tend to create situations in which this seems normal. This is the zone of “narcissism”.26

The Self-Destructive Martyr (Low Care of Self and High Care of Others) This leader is usually driven to “martyrdom” because of an unresolved inner drive (maybe guilt, obligation, inadequacy or perfectionism). They lack self-awareness and avoid accountability, actively working against their espoused goals by not modelling healthy behaviour. They tend to rescue and create co-dependent relationships. This is the zone of “drivenness and compulsion”.27

The Wounded Slave (Low Care of Self and Low Care of Others) This leader feels numb, possibly depressed or burnt out, has disconnected from people around them and lacks energy or motivation to help themselves. They feel trapped and stuck in a pattern of thinking and behaviour

26

See A. Bernstein, Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People Who Drain You Dry (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001); A. Cavaiola and N. Lavender, Toxic Coworkers: How to Deal with Dysfunctional People on the Job (Oakland: New Harbinger, 2000); M. Kets de Vries, The Irrational Executive: Psychoanalytic Studies in Management (New York: International Universities Press, 1984); J. Meloy, “Narcissistic Psychopathology and the Clergy”, Pastoral Psychology 35.1 (1986): 50-55; T. Millon, S. Grossman, C. Millon, S. Meagher, and R. Ramnath, Personality Disorders in Modern Life (New Jersey: Wiley, 2000); G. Simon, In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People (Little Rock: A. J. Christopher & Co, 1996); L. Sperry, Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of the DSM-IV Personality Disorders (Bristol: Brunner-Mazel, 1995); M. Stout, The Sociopath Next Door (New York: Broadway, 2005). 27 See T. Cermack, Diagnosing and Treating Co-dependence (Minneapolis: Johnson Institute, 1986); G. Embleton, D. Axten, V. Blandford, and L. Lavercombe, Freeing Ourselves From Our Family of Origin (New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1996); Friedman, Generation to Generation; Herrington, Creech, and Taylor, The Leader’s Journey; K. Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York: Norton, 1937); M. Kets de Vries, Struggling with the Demon: Perspectives on Individual and Organizational Irrationality (Madison: Psychosocial Press, 2001); L. Sperry, “Determinants of a Minister’s Wellbeing”, Human Development 12.2 (1991): 21-26.



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Figure 12-1 Leader Health and Sustainability Map28

28



Smith, “Savouring Life”.

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behaviour with no way out. They need professional counselling to take healthy next steps. This is the zone of “burnout and depression”.29 The two-by-two matrix is presented in Figure 12-1.

Mapping as a Tool for Health Promotion In the process of developing this map, group members engaged in formulating theories based on the sense they made of their personal experiences. They reported this had therapeutic value for them, which was not anticipated. After drawing the initial diagram and working on descriptions for each quadrant, three key mapping actions were requested of leaders in this context; leaders were asked to indicate: Where do you currently see yourself on the map? Where would your spouse (or close friend) see you on the map? Where would you like to see yourself in one year? These maps became valuable vehicles for personal and organisational transformation. Each tool provided a way for leaders to map their own experience and journey, and dig deeper, through stories, into the issues that were affecting their health, resilience and effectiveness as leaders. This process was transformative and useful in initiating dialogue for improving professional practice. These tools were not empirically tested but were heuristic and found by participants to be trustworthy and authentic. Mapping opens up “knowledge spaces”30 that provide a visual way to see where we are and where we want to go (or, more importantly, who we 29

See E. Demerouti, A. Bakker. F. Nachreiner, and W. Schaufeli, “A Model of Burnout and Life Satisfaction among Nurses”, Journal of Advanced Nursing 32.2 (2001): 454-64; Grosch and Olsen 2000; A. Hart, Coping with Depression: In the Ministry and Other Helping Professions (Waco: Word, 1984); P. Leiter and C. Maslach, Banishing Burnout (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005); C. Maslach, Burnout: The Cost of Caring (Cambridge: Maylor, 2003); B. Rothschild, Help for the Helper: The Physiology of Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma (New York: Norton, 2006); A. Somech and N. Miassy-Maljak, “The Relationship between Religiosity and Burnout of Principals: The Meaning of Educational Work and Role Variables as Mediators”, Social Psychology of Education 6.1 (2003): 6190; S. Virginia, “Burnout and Depression among Roman Catholic Secular, Religious, and Monastic Clergy”, Pastoral Psychology 47.1 (1998): 49-67.



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want to be). This is a simple and powerful form of situational analysis that provokes a fresh way of looking at our own situation within an organisational context. This process can be transformative as “maps are excellent devices to materialise questions”. 31 Mapping allows us to experience the world through our senses and use this external data to build internal representations of the world within us.32 The real situation and the internalised perception are different, as: … a map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. What this means is that our perception of reality is not reality itself but our own version of it, or our “map”.33

The mapping tools developed by participants harnessed the power of the stories and allowed leaders to map their own situation. These tools provided an individualised “map of reality”, providing a construct through which leaders could analyse their sustainable health. Through group processes and online discussion, these maps were shaped by the literature and generalised and sharpened as participants tested their usefulness and applicability. The individual positioning by 72 participants is shown in Figure 12-2. Participants found a significant gap between their current state of selfcare and their desired state of self-care. There was a general sense that these co-researchers believed that they prioritised care for others more than care of self. The mapping process helped leaders to see themselves in the stories of others, and many made statements such as, “I’ve been there”, or “I know what that feels like”. Interestingly, participants were very quick to acknowledge that the perception of those close to them may be very different from how they see themselves (or would like to see themselves).

30 A. Clarke, Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory after the Post-modern Turn (London: Sage, 2005), 30. 31 Clarke, Situational Analysis. 32 A. Korzybski, “A Non-Aristotelian System and Its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics”, Science and Sanity Suppl. 3 (1935): 747-61. 33 Korzybski, “A Non-Aristotelian System”, 58.



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Figure 12-2 Leader Health and Sustainability: Group Mapping34

Subsequent Testing of the Map for Usefulness Bingham’s subsequent research tested the leader health and sustainability map with 320 participants across three additional Australian industry settings: the not-for-profit sector, the public service and aged-care

34



Smith, “Savouring Life”.

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chaplaincy.35 Instead of working with participants in these sectors to refine the map further, he introduced the map as a development tool to raise awareness among leaders and increase effectiveness in their workplaces. This involved working with groups of 5–30 participants around Australia between 2013 and 2016. a. Findings in the Not-for-profit Sector In the not-for-profit sector, most participating leaders were found to have a deep sense of care for others, which originally attracted them to this sector. They described the compelling desire for employment that allowed them to integrate their deep personal values with their professional skills. In the workshops, most of these leaders identified with the description of the third quadrant: the zone of drivenness and compulsion. Many had been working in the faith-based not-for-profit industry for more than 10 years and identified with a core issue that arises in this quadrant: wanting to bring care to people who could not otherwise care for themselves. They reported the demands of their work were causing them to make choices to continue to care for others at the expense of caring for themselves. They connected strongly with the archetype used to capture this quadrant, the self-destructive martyr, using this metaphor in discussions for the remainder of their workshops. After viewing the leader health and sustainability map for the first time, participants also expressed relief, fear and hope: relief that there was a tool that enabled them to put language to how they were feeling; fear at realising they were operating largely in an unhealthy manner and if nothing changed, were heading towards quadrant four, the quadrant of burnout and depression; and, finally, hope because they now had a pathway, albeit a difficult one, to health and sustainability by balancing care of self with care of others. b. Findings in the Public Service In the public service sector, many leaders present identified strongly with the idea of the sustained servant, the fourth quadrant. Their sense of duty 35

M. Bingham, Care of Others vs. Care of Self (Sydney: Robertson and Chang, 2016).



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and obligation to serve the people of the state was a significant contributor as to why they stayed in their roles. One participant captured it this way: “I am a public servant first, and a professional in my career second”. Many of the participants had been working as public servants their entire professional life, and for some this represented 40 years or longer. While acknowledging that they often experienced periods of excess workload, many had developed a balance between caring for others (the people of NSW) and caring for self. Consequently, they understood what it takes to sustain themselves as leaders in the public service. They found all four quadrants of the leader health and sustainability map to be very useful to put language to their experiences and were delighted to use it now as a tool to help others develop a sustainable-servant attitude within the public service. c. Findings in Aged-Care Chaplaincy When the map was introduced to chaplains, many were drawn to quadrants three (drivenness and compulsion) and four (burnout and depression). Interestingly, they saw the main pathway to burnout and depression was via quadrant three. Those who had previously experienced burnout expressed a wish to have seen a map like this years before, as it may have helped them avoid the pain they had experienced. Many said they would have diagnosed themselves within quadrant three and, consequently, would have taken action towards self-care to prevent them moving into quadrant four. There was also a theological reflection among this group regarding quadrant three: that caring for others at the expense of self might be a noble and godly enterprise, citing particularly Christ’s words in Matthew 16:24: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”. Others from the same group argued a different view, quoting Christ’s word from Matthew 32:39: “Love your neighbour as yourself”. Regardless of the argument, the chaplains recognised that self-care was a significant component to longevity in ministry, and therefore identified a preference to operate from quadrant one, as the sustained servant.



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Participant Reflections on Quadrant Three in Light of the Literature The Zone of Burnout and Depression Bratcher cites a survey of 4,665 ministers in the US that found 58 per cent felt their work seemed ineffectual and futile.36 This is consistent with a more recent study in the US that concluded 40 per cent of Lutheran pastors are moderately stressed or suffering depression and burnout. 37 Miner found that one-third of Presbyterian ministers scored at clinical levels of anxiety and burnout. 38 Dr Ian Hay of Griffith University found in his survey of Anglican ministers that 45 per cent were bordering on burnout and 10 per cent felt “empty and depleted”.39 The largest and most recent study in Australia is the National Church Life Survey (NCLS), which in 2011 surveyed 435,000 church attendees in more than 7,000 Australian churches, and over 4,000 ministers across 19 denominations. 40 NCLS 2001 revealed that 56 per cent of ministers surveyed were “borderline” burnt out, 19 per cent were burnt out but “coping” and four per cent were extremely burnt out.41 Thus nearly eight out of 10 ministers had at least some trouble coping with the stresses of their profession. In their book examining burnout in the NCLS, Kaldor and Bullpitt note that differences in faith traditions and beliefs only account for a three per cent variation in these results. 42 Meanwhile, Smith’s research on 108 ministers in NSW found 31 per cent of leaders saying they were burnt out and 31 per cent

36

E. Bratcher, The Walk-on-water Syndrome (Waco: Word Books, 1984), 9. K. Walker, “Empty Pulpit Crisis: Lutherans Try to Overcome Clergy Shortages”, Christianity Today 45.14 (2001): 26-28. 38 M. Miner, “The Human Cost of Presbyterian Identity: Secularisation, Stress and Psychological Outcomes for Presbyterian Ministers in NSW” (PhD dissertation, University of Western Sydney, 1996). 39 P. Richardson, “Letter from Australia: Deciding What Priests are For”, New Directions 7.12 (1995), 8. 40 NCLS, National Church Life Survey (Sydney: NCLS, 2001). 41 NCLS, National Church Life Survey. 42 P. Kaldor and R. Bullpitt, Burnout in Church Leaders (Adelaide: Openbook, 2001). 37



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saying they felt depressed, while 19 per cent believed their spouse was burnt out and 32 per cent believed their spouse was depressed.43 “Burnout” has been defined as “a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion caused by long-term involvement in emotionally demanding situations”. 44 It is characterised by emotional and physical fatigue, and a sense of lowered self-esteem, hopelessness, helplessness, decreased enthusiasm, irritability and entrapment.45 Burnout is generally perceived as a syndrome that results from a misfit between a worker’s job demands and the available resources to do the job.46 These resources can include time, pressure, workload, low quality environmental conditions, a lack of task variety and a lack of control. Maslach asserts that “people work” is at the “heart of the burnout phenomenon”. 47 It has been recognised as an occupational hazard for workers in people-oriented professions. Two European studies found that 25 per cent of nurses experienced burnout, because nurses are repeatedly confronted with people’s needs. 48 Over the years, research has been

43

S. Smith, Leadership Health and Sustainability of Ministering Persons Employed by Churches and Ministries within Churches of Christ in NSW (Sydney: Churches of Christ in NSW, 2009). 44 A. Pines and E. Aronson, Career Burnout: Causes and Cures (New York: Free Press, 1988), 9. 45 A. Pines, E. Aronson, and D. Kafrey, Burnout: From Tedium to Personal Growth (New York: Free Press, 1981). 46 E. Demerouti, A. Bakker, F. Nachreiner, and W. Schaufeli, “The Job Demands– Resources Model of Burnout”, Journal of Applied Psychology 86 (2001): 499-512; C. Maslach and M. Leiter, The Truth about Burnout: How Organizations Cause Personal Stress and What to Do about It (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997). 47 C. Maslach, “Burnout: A Multidimensional Perspective”, in Professional Burnout: Recent Developments in Theory and Research, ed. W. Schaufeli, C. Maslach, and T. Marek (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1993), 19-32, at 23. 48 K. Landau, “Psycho-Physical Strain and the Burnout Phenomenon Amongst Health Care Professionals”, in Hospital Ergonomics, International Symposium Paris, ed. M. Estryn-Behar, C. Gadbois, and M. Pottier (Toulouse: Editions Octares, 1992): 56-72; L. Saint-Arnaud, S. Gingras, R. Boulard, M. Vezina, and H. Lee-Gosselin, “Psychological Symptoms in Hospitals”, in Hospital Ergonomics, International Symposium Paris, ed. M. Estryn-Behar, C. Gadbois, and M. Pottier (Toulouse: Editions Octares, 1992): 118-39.



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conducted in areas such as health care, 49 education, 50 human services, 51 management52 and the military.53 Maslach identifies three dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion (feelings of being emotionally overextended and exhausted by work), depersonalisation (an unfeeling and impersonal response towards the people served or cared for) and personal accomplishment (feelings of competence and successful achievement at work). 54 Severinsson cites Benner and Wrubel’s (1989) research conclusion that “a peculiarly modern error is to think of caring as the cause of burnout, the cure being to protect oneself from caring when, in fact, lack of caring leads to illness, and the return of caring means recovery”.55 The effect of burnout is far reaching—for the individual, family and organisation. Maslach and Leiter go as far as to refer to the effect on the individual of burnout as “erosion of the human soul”.56 They write: Burnout is the index of the dislocation between what people are and what they have to do. It represents an erosion in values, dignity, spirit and will— an erosion of the human soul. It is a malady that spreads gradually and continuously over time, putting people into a downward spiral from which it’s hard to recover.57 49

D. Edwards, D. Coyle and B. Hannigan, “Stress and Burnout in Community Mental Health Nursing: A Review of the Literature”, Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 7 (2000): 7-14 50 E. Ray and K. Miller, “The Influence of Communication Structure and Social Support on Job Stress and Burnout”, Management Communication Quarterly 4.4 (1991): 506-27. 51 C. Maslach and J. Goldberg, “Prevention of Burnout: New Perspectives”, Applied and Preventative Psychology 7.1 (1998): 63-74, at 68; A. Pines, “Burnout”, in Handbook of Stress, 2nd ed., ed. L. Goldberg and S. Brenitz (New York: Free Press, 1998), 368-403, at 386. 52 B. Perlman and E. Hartman, “Burnout: Summary and Future Research”, Human Relations, 35.4 (1982): 283-305. 53 M. Leiter, D. Clark, and J. Durup, “Distinct Models of Burnout and Commitment among Men and Women in the Military”, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 30.1 (1994): 63-82. 54 Maslach, “Burnout: A Multidimensional Perspective”. 55 E. Severinsson, “Moral Stress and Burnout: Qualitative Content Analysis”, Nursing and Health Sciences 5.1 (2003): 59-66, at 60. 56 Maslach and Leiter, The Truth about Burnout, 17. 57 Maslach and Leiter, The Truth about Burnout, 17.



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Maslach and Leiter found that when the job constantly demands more than you can give but provides less than you need, it is a “chronic imbalance”—a mismatch between what the job needs and the values, emotions and resources of the individual. They believe that this “moral erosion” can damage the individual’s integrity, pride and self-respect.58 The families of ministers also bear the burden of this work phenomenon, which affects many aspects of family life.59 Barna’s research on ministers revealed that almost half believed pastoring had been difficult on their families.60 The expectations of ministry life intrude not only on the one employed but also on their children and spouses. The minister can come home from work emotionally exhausted and detached, unable to deal with the day-to-day hassles that arise in the home. 61 They can be shorttempered and irritable—a problem that the family learns to work around rather than to embrace and support. This was seen as one important reason why church workers leave the ministry. Brain’s study of Anglican ministers in Australia found that 44 per cent of all pastors who had been involved in ministry for more than 15 years suffered from burnout, mental breakdown or serious illness.62 He reports that there is an enormous impact on spouses and children. This is obvious, as the entire family system is a part of this same relational network, which includes the local congregation.63 Bishop Brain concludes that: Some level of burnout is inevitable for most church leaders. If a pastor is doing his job—that is, if he is wanting to work hard and he is in a modern church and modern society, where there are lots of conflicting demands— then the possibility of burnout is a given.64

58

Maslach and Leiter, The Truth about Burnout, 66. M. Morris and P. Blanton, “The Influence of Work-related Stressors on Clergy Husbands and Their Wives”, Family Relations 43.2 (1994): 189-95. 60 G. Barna, Today’s Pastors (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993). 61 C. Maslach, Burnout: The Cost of Caring (Cambridge: Maylor, 2003), 139. 62 P. Brain, Going the Distance (Sydney: Matthias Media, 2002). 63 Friedman, Generation to Generation, 13. 64 Brain, Going the Distance, 27. 59



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Another concept aligned with burnout is compassion fatigue, or secondary post-traumatic stress disorder,65 which is: … the reduced capacity or interest in being empathic or bearing the suffering of clients and is the natural consequent behaviors and emotions resulting from knowing about a traumatizing event experienced … by a person.66

Some authors identify an aligned issue they refer to as “rustout”.67 They see rustout as the opposite of burnout—while burnout is overdoing, rustout is underbeing: Rustout is the slow death that follows when we stop making the choices that keep us alive. It is the feeling of numbness that comes from always taking the safe way, never accepting new challenges, continually surrendering to the day-to-day routine. Rustout means we are no longer growing, but at best, are simply maintaining. It implies that we have traded the sensation of life for the security of a paycheck. It often signals the death of self-respect.68

Other factors contributing to the woundedness of leaders identified in the literature are: stage of life issues, 69 unresolved family of origin

65

C. Joinson, “Coping with Compassion Fatigue”, Nursing 92.4 (1992): 116-21; Pfeil, “A New Understanding of Clergy Compassion Fatigue”; Rothschild, Help for the Helper. 66 C. Figley, “Compassion Fatigue as Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder: An Overview”, in Compassion Fatigue: Coping with Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder in Those Who Treat the Traumatized, ed. C. Figley (New York: BrunnerRoutledge, 1995), 1-20, at 7. 67 R. Leider and S. Buchholz, “The Rustout Syndrome”, Training and Development 49.3 (1995): 7-9; M. Leung, J. Sham, and Y. Chan, “Adjusting Stressors—Job-Demand Stress in Preventing Rustout/Burnout in Estimators”, Surveying and Built Environment 18.1 (2007): 17-26. 68 Leider and Buchholz, “The Rustout Syndrome”, 8. 69 R. Gould, Transformations: Growth and Change in Adult Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978); D. Levinson, The Seasons of a Man’s Life (New York: Knopf, 1978) and The Seasons of a Woman’s Life (New York: Ballantine, 1996); G. Sheehy, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life (New York: Ballantine, 1974).



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issues, 70 neurotic dysfunctioning 71 and lack of inner resilience and coping skills.72

Participant Reflections on Quadrant Four in Light of the Literature The Zone of Drivenness and Compulsion In her classic work The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, Horney discusses her perspectives on the internal factors that influence our behavioural patterns.73 She sees “protecting ourselves from anxiety”74 as a major internal driver. While we are all different, we all share basic desires to feel safe, secure, valued, respected and loved in some way. If we think that any of these things is unlikely to continue, we may feel anxious and then make choices or adopt thinking patterns designed to protect us from that anxiety. Horney describes four ways of protecting ourselves from anxiety: (1) we may go to any length to be loved or approved of by others; (2) we may become overly compliant, not risking potential conflict through non-assertive behaviour; (3) we may strive for prestige, power or possessions to assure feelings of security and worth; and/or (4) we may emphasise personal independence and shut ourselves off from other people. Horney believes these elements may be present in various combinations in all of us and not indicate any form of neurosis. However, when they take on a protective function, they have a new significance. She illustrates this with an analogy: 70

Friedman, Generation to Generation; M. E. Kerr and M. Bowen, Family Evaluation (New York: Norton, 1988); P. Steinke, Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times: Being Calm and Courageous No Matter What (Herndon: Alban Institute, 2006). 71 M. Kets de Vries, Prisoners of Leadership (New York: Wiley, 1989) and idem, Struggling with the Demon; T. Millon and G. Everly, Personality and Its Disorders (New York: Wiley, 1985); Sperry, “Determinants of a Minister’s Wellbeing;” and idem, Ministry and Community: Recognising, Healing, and Preventing Ministry Impairment (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000). 72 D. Coutu, “How Resilience Works”, Harvard Business Review 80.3 (2002): 2324; K. Edward, “The Phenomenon of Resilience in Crisis Care Mental Health Clinicians”, International Journal of Mental Health Nursing 14.2 (2005): 142-48; Reivich and Shatte, The Resilience Factor. 73 Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time. 74 Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, 102.



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Chapter Twelve We may climb a tree because we wish to test our strength and skill and see the view from the top, or we may climb it because we are pursued by a wild animal. In both cases we climb the tree, but the motives for our climbing are different. In the first case we do it for the sake of pleasure, in the other case we are driven by fear and have to do it out of a need for safety. In the first case we are free to climb or not, in the other we are compelled to climb by a stringent necessity. In the first case we can look for the tree which is best suited to our purpose, in the other case we have no choice but must take the first tree within reach, and it need not necessarily be a tree; it may be a flag pole or house if only it serve the purpose of protection.75

Being driven to a certain behaviour requires constant energy. It is exhausting. It diminishes the feelings of pleasure that are attainable because they are not so much satisfying as reassuring. It relieves anxiety but does not produce joy. The relief from tension is pleasant, but it is not satisfying in the same way that choosing a behaviour based on free choice is. In this situation, when there are scarce resources and competition for the resources that do exist, some focus on building their own independent fiefdoms. They can control information. They can take control to ensure no one can tell them what to do, thus minimising the threat of destitution and diminishing the anxiety around losing income. A leader may diminish their own anxiety by fortifying their own position.76 So, striving for power is reassurance against helplessness, striving for prestige is reassurance against humiliation and striving for possessions is reassurance against destitution.77

Participant Reflections on Quadrant Two in Light of the Literature The Zone of Narcissism Narcissism is prevalent among ministry leaders. 78 Research by Sperry found that “individuals with a narcissistic pattern are attracted to religious ministries, particularly high visibility ministries and positions of 75

Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, 102. Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, 162. 77 Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, 186. 78 Steinke, Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times. 76



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leadership”.79 Conversely, Meloy found narcissists “are prevalent among members of the clergy precisely because the profession provides strong reinforcement for such personality problems”.80 Narcissistic leaders seem friendly, charming and sincere. However, their undisclosed agenda is to use the people and resources around them to make them look unique, special and important. When people do not acknowledge their superiority, they can become enraged and retaliate. They resist transparency and accountability. They are the centre of their own world, so, whenever the goals of the organisation clash with their own, the narcissist will try to regain control and influence because “a narcissist is a drug addict whose drug is attention”.81 As such, the religious environment provides an opportunity for manipulative leaders to seek the adoration of vulnerable people: Narcissists are noted for their sense of entitlement and subsequent lack of empathy toward others. This makes intimate relationships nearly impossible, as others are seen only as appendages of the narcissist’s ego, not as a partner. Narcissists often make a good first impression, but soon others regard them as arrogant and snobbish because of their seeming calm and confident nature. They are also extremely sensitive to perceived slights and often seek a close circle of admirers who will worship them.82

Some level of narcissism is an essential and normal part of every person from birth,83 whereas a pathological narcissism is an “excessive investment in self at the expense of investment in others”. 84 Every person is somewhere on this continuum between healthy adaptive confidence to unhealthy maladaptive arrogance.

79

Sperry, Ministry and Community. Meloy, “Narcissistic Psychopathology and the Clergy”, 50. 81 S. Vaknin, Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited (Skopje: Lidija Rangelovska, 2007). 82 T. Millon, S. Grossman, C. Millon, S. Meagher, and R. Ramnath, Personality Disorders in Modern Life (New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2004), 369. 83 S. Freud, On Narcissism (New York: Penguin, 1914); T. Millon et.al., Personality Disorders in Modern Life (New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2004); A. Morrison, Shame: The Underside of Narcissism (New York: Analytic Press, 1997); Steinke, Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times, 166. 84 A. Lowen, Narcissism: Denial of the True Self (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 27. 80



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There is a growing body of literature on narcissism in leadership,85 and it is inevitable that organisations will continue to seek the leadership qualities that a healthy, adaptive leadership style brings. However, the unhealthy maladaptive elements of a narcissistic leader are highly destructive to the communities they lead. Brunell and colleagues found that narcissists will inevitably rise to the surface as leaders when there is a leadership void and that “narcissism might predict leader emergence but not necessarily leader performance”.86 The other concern is the growing body of research87 indicating narcissistic personalities can so easily find a home in religious organisations. Narcissistic leaders always seem friendly, charming and sincere, but their secret agenda is to use the people around them and organisational resources to make them look unique, special and important. When people do not acknowledge this leader’s superiority, the leader can become enraged and retaliate. The narcissist comes across as charming and clever and committed to the organisation. However, the narcissist will resist transparency and accountability. They are the centre of their agenda, so, whenever the goals of the organisation or other people clash with this, the narcissist will try to regain control and influence.

Participant Reflections on Moving towards Quadrant One The Zone of Personal Balance Participants in Bingham’s group who work across three industry sectors found value in imagining what quadrant one might look life in their everyday life. What would they do? What would they not do? What would they feel? What would energise them? What would drain them? As being in the zone of personal balance is such a high priority the groups collaborated in identifying practical strategies for healthy transition to quadrant one—the sustained servant:88

85

Morrison, Shame: The Underside of Narcissism; Steinke, Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times; Vaknin, Malignant Self-love. 86 A. Brunell, W. Gentry, W. Campbell, B. Hoffman, K. Kuhnert, and K. DeMarree, “Leader Emergence: The Case of the Narcissistic Leader”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34 (2008): 1661-1676, at 1663. 87 Steinke, Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times. 88 Bingham, Care of Others vs. Care of Self.



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Moving from self-destructive martyr (Q3) to sustained servant (Q1) x Schedule time for fitness. x Schedule free time into the diary. x Allow for time off when ministry demands are great. x Ensure you are member of a ministry support group, as members look out for each other. x Go for walks during the day. x Plan holiday time in advance. x Ensure your job will be undertaken by others when you are on holiday. x Have a “want to” attitude towards ministry rather than a “have to”. x Build teams of people so that ministry is undertaken together. x Train people and then learn how to delegate. x Say no. x Talk with your spouse to check how you are doing. x Become self-differentiated. x Learn the difference between rescuing and serving. x Train yourself to serve rather than rescue. Moving from self-focused spectator (Q2) to sustained servant (Q1) x Check your attitude towards people—are they there to help you do your ministry, or are you there to help them pursue their ministry? x Check yourself to see if you have any “favourites”. x Do not see everything as ministry. x Be transparent and accountable to someone for how you use your time. x Ask yourself if you are avoiding doing your core ministry. x Are you taking advantage of your paid ministry (doing the minimum) to focus on your own pet interests or other financial ventures? Moving from wounded slave (Q4) to sustained servant (Q1) x Seek help from a counsellor. x Take a break. x Think about whether it is time to re-consider this ministry. 89

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Select Bibliography Friedman, E. Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue. New York: Guildford Press, 1985. Herrington, R., R. Creech, and T. Taylor. The Leader’s Journey. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003. Horney, K. The Neurotic Personality of Our Time. New York: Norton, 1937. Kets de Vries, M. The Leader on the Couch: A Clinical Approach to Changing People and Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006. Maslach, C. Burnout: The Cost of Caring. Cambridge: Maylor, 2003. Minirth, F., P. Meier, D. Hawkins, C. Thurman, and R. Flournoy. Beating Burnout: Balanced Living for Busy People. New York: Inspirational Press, 1997. Rothschild, B. Help for the Helper: The Physiology of Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma. New York: Norton, 2006.



PART SIX: THE UNIVERSITY, CITY AND WELL-BEING: TRAJECTORIES FROM MEDIEVAL TIMES TO THE PRESENT

CHAPTER THIRTEEN RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM AND WELL-BEING IN CHRISTIAN CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE CRISIS OF THE MODERN CITY MARIO BAGHOS

Ancient and medieval cities were characterised by a symbolic culture that attempted to create a microcosm of the universe within their precincts. This was particularly the case in Christian Constantinople, which, in various ways, including the geometric symbolism used in the construction of churches and the art that adorned them, created a space within which one could participate in the community of Christ with his saints. The repeated exhortations to peace within this space—exemplified by the image of Christ the Pantokrator giving the blessing of peace—was conducive to this divine participation in the Lord. Modern cities, however, are constructed according to secular paradigms that do not exhort their inhabitants to peace, but to a frenzy of activity that, as neuroscientists have demonstrated, has had a negative effect on their psychological well-being. This chapter aims to show that the use of Christian symbolism in cities might have the opposite effect, and will do so in relation to an analysis of the art and architecture of late ancient and medieval Constantinople.

In the worldview of ancient and medieval societies, proximity to the cosmos or nature was conducive to one’s “well-being”.1 This was because, as Mircea Eliade has argued, nature veiled the sacred that was manifested through it. Although Eliade did not use this term, it is implied in his description of ancient and medieval persons as desiring to be ontologically conditioned by sacredness, the opposite of which would be existentially destructive.2 Moreover, Eliade highlighted that ancient persons needed to 1

Here nature and the cosmos are considered as interchangeable. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt Inc., 1987), 12-13.

2

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cosmicise the space that they occupied in such a way as to facilitate participation in the sacred, avoiding thereby the psychic trauma of yielding to profane, amorphous space.3 Nowhere can this better be seen than in the religious art and architecture of ancient and medieval cities. Contemporary environmental management and urban planning strategies aside, modern cities are conditioned neither by religious conceptions of nature nor the sacred, but by economic forces that, as Lewis Mumford has pointed out, have made us prioritise material commodities.4 This chapter takes as a critical challenge the adverse impact of the modern city on the human being’s well-being. It begins with a methodology that defines religious symbolism and its relationship to the city, where the symbol is understood as facilitating a participation in the reality that it points to: in this case, God or the sacred. First, the symbolic culture of the ancient city, which is an outcome of humanity’s propensity to cosmicising the space it occupies, is demonstrated. Next, the Christian approaches towards cities— necessary for our understanding of ancient and medieval Constantinople (modern day Istanbul)—are briefly analysed, before turning to the current shape of the modern city and its negative impact on human psychology.5 Following this, I focus on the symbolic art and architecture of Christian Constantinople as an alternative to the modern city. Admittedly, I could have assessed many other cities in the medieval world that were conditioned by ecclesial architecture at their centres. But, given that many Western churches were modelled on Byzantine designs6—not to mention that medieval travellers viewed Constantinople with covetousness 7 —I will settle for Constantinople as my paragon. 3

Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 23-24. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: its Origins, its Transformations, and its Prospects (London: Secker & Warburg, 1961), 414-15. 5 By the modern city, I mean cities that have been conditioned to such a degree by economic forces that their centres, whether geographical or symbolic, are comprised of either the central business district or CBD, or the various skyscrapers associated with corporations and other business, or both. 6 For instance, Charlemagne’s cathedral church in Aachen resembles Byzantine buildings. Gunter Bandmann, Early Medieval Architecture as Bearer of Meaning, trans. Kendall Wallis (New York-Chichester-West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2005), 200. 7 Krijnie N. Ciggarr, Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and Byzantium 962–1204: Cultural and Political Relations (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 32. 4

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Moreover, since the inhabitants of Constantinople prioritised participation in God the Trinity revealed by Jesus Christ, this city represents, for me, a paradigm for well-being understood as salvation and eternal life in Christ; a paradigm I find especially manifested in the fact that Constantinople was replete with images of Christ the Pantokrator—the Master of all—and of his saints. Finally, the chapter will conclude with reflections on how we can learn to overcome the challenges posed by the modern city by drawing on the city-symbolism of ancient and medieval cultures, specifically from Christian Constantinople.

Ancient Cities It is important to make clear the manner in which humans create their cities as sacred centres that epitomise the cosmos (or, their representation of the world) and which reveal that the sacred was conducive to wellbeing. According to Mircea Eliade, archaic, ancient and medieval persons could not endure the formless expanse of undifferentiated space. 8 Thus they needed to assume a certain place within that space, and organise it in a way that reflected the order in the cosmos.9 Although there were some exceptions, ancient cultures perceived the natural world, identified with the cosmos, as revealing the sacred through natural objects that were architecturally duplicated within their towns or cities. Ziggurats, for example, reflected the cosmic mountains from where the demiurge created the world and obelisks reflected rays of the sun, etc.10 Eliade referred to the natural environment as this amorphous space that needed to be organised. In contrast to this view, Karen Armstrong has pointed out that the psychological propensity for “cosmicisation” was motivated not only by an inability to endure the expanse of nature but also by the creation of the first cities at the end of the Neolithic period, around 5000 BC. As Armstrong argues, “in the cities […] the rate of change accelerated, and

8

Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 23-24. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), xxvii, 20. 10 For ziggurats, see Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, 14-15. For obelisks, see Fekri A. Hassan, “Imperialist Appropriations of Egyptian Obelisks”, in Views of Ancient Egypt Since Napoleon Bonaparte, ed. David Jeffreys (Portland, OR: UCL Press, 2003), 19-68, esp. 27. 9

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people became more aware of the chain of cause and effect […] (and) they were becoming increasingly more distinct from the natural world”.11 It was this dissociation between human beings and nature that resulted from the rapid flux of early city life that had to be addressed in such a way as to retrieve the natural order and the sacred manifested within it. Dean A. Miller reiterates this sentiment, affirming that it was the city that caused the dissociation between human beings and nature—between the subject and its co-extensive object—and that this needed to be mended. 12 Paradoxically, this could only be done by constructing the city in such a way as to make it “the simulacrum of total order, a cosmic system”.13 Of the three opinions, Eliade’s diverges from Miller’s and Armstrong’s: the former affirming that human beings at some point could not endure inchoate nature and thus had to build cities to give order and meaning to their lives; the latter stating that it was the city that separated human beings from nature which, since this affected them negatively, compelled a response—the creation of the city as a reflection of the cosmos. Either way, one thing is clear: in the ancient world, cities were mainly characterised by the organisation of settlements around temple-structures that repeated, in architectonic form and through the rituals that took place within them, the cosmogony or creation of the natural world through which the sacred was revealed. Indeed, there is even evidence to suggest that a preoccupation with the sacred took precedence over the interest or the ability to actually settle near their place of worship. What mattered was that people congregated for worship, with other considerations being secondary.14 11

Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth (Melbourne, VIC: The Text Publishing Co., 2005), 58. 12 Dean A. Miller, Imperial Constantinople (New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1969), 2. 13 Miller, Imperial Constantinople, 3. 14 The evidence for this comes from Göbekli Tepe, a pre-pottery Neolithic tell that was built around 11,600 years ago and that, according to the main archaeologist working on the site, Klaus Schmidt, demonstrates “that organized religion could have come before the rise of agriculture and other aspects of civilization” insofar as no settlements have been found around the site. Charles C. Mann, “The Birth of Religion”, National Geographic (June, 2011), 34-59, esp. 57. This is important because it means that religious beliefs were an impetus for human beings to come together as communities, meaning that settlement was organised around, and thus

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Beyond these aspects, the cosmicisation process gave architectonic and artistic form to the symbolic behaviour of ancient persons. Karen Armstrong gives the etymology of the word symbol from “symballein [which] means ‘to throw together’: two hitherto disparate objects become inseparable”.15 In other words, the symbol not only points towards but also participates in the reality it signifies.16 That this object usually relates to God or the gods was also made clear by Armstrong when, after giving the above definition of symbol, she affirmed that “[w]hen [they, i.e. Paleolithic and ancient persons in general] contemplated any earthly object, [they] were therefore in the presence of its heavenly counterpart”.17 According to Eliade, these symbols could be reflected in the geometric shapes—the circle18 and the square19—incorporated into temples and other city-structures,20 as well as the art they contained. Thus, insofar as these conditioned by, sacred structures; and this was done well before they settled for ostensibly utilitarian, or materialistic, reasons. 15 Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, 15-16. The primary definition of the first person verb ȕȐȜȜȦ is “I throw”. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A GreekEnglish Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 304. In composite verbs, ıȪȞ means “with, along with, together, at the same time”. Liddell and Scott, A GreekEnglish Lexicon, 1690. Hence, ıȪȝȕȠȜȠȞ means “throw together”, as indicated above. 16 This is implied in Paul Ricoer’s definition of the symbol, which consists of “any structure of signification in which a direct, primary, literal meaning designates, in addition, another meaning which is indirect, secondary, and figurative and which can be apprehended only through the first”. Paul Ricoer, “Existence and Hermeneutics”, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin, in The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. Don Ihde (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 3-24, esp. 12-13. For Eliade, it was these “figurative” meanings that reflected the “deepest aspects” of “humanity”, and thus, whilst secondary in terms of the process of signification, take on a primary or fundamental importance. Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, trans. Philip Mairet (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 12. 17 Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, 16. 18 Eliade, Images and Symbols, 52. 19 Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 45, 47. 20 To the circle and the square can be added the triangular or pyramidal shape which symbolises fire, as made clear by the etymology of the word pyramid (from the ancient Greek ʌȪȡĮȝȚȢ) which includes in the first part of its compound the word “fire” (ʌȪȡ). Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 1555. The triangle, in its pyramidal form, can also symbolise heavenly ascent. Robert J. Wenke, The Ancient Egyptian State: The Origins of Egyptian Culture (c. 8000–2000BC) (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 298.

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symbols-within-cities facilitated an existential participation in the realities they pointed to—in this case usually sacred ones—these cities, to follow Eliade and Armstrong’s reasoning, acted as springboards for participation in the sacred. Moreover, these symbols were the outcome of a religious way of living that was inherent to archaic, ancient, medieval, and modern persons (even if, in some ways, the latter think they are irreligious). 21 According to Eliade, the birth of human consciousness was marked by religiosity. 22 Armstrong reiterates this in saying that “men and women started worshipping gods as soon as they became recognisably human”. 23 Furthermore, in her Short History of Myth, she began her discussion with Neanderthal graves from the Paleolithic period that displayed an interest in ideas “that went beyond everyday experience”.24 This preoccupation with otherworldliness would become a standard feature in ancient civilisations and up to early modernity, pointing to the fact that the kind of persons who created, lived in, and were conditioned by ancient, medieval, and early modern cities were fundamentally homines religiosi.25 So far we have seen that the natural world revealed the sacred, and so the dissociation between human beings and nature, involved a retrieval of the natural order and the sacred revealed through it. This retrieval, executed by human beings who were inherently religious, involved the use of geometric and other symbols within the cityscape. We have examples of 21

Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 209. David Dorin’s translation of the following passage in the Romanian edition of Eliade’s Patterns of Comparative Religion is relevant for this point: “The main religious stances of human [beings] had been given once and for all, since the moment the man became conscious of his existential situation inside the Universe”. From Mircea Eliade, Tratat de Istorie a religiilor [Patterns in Comparative Religion] (Bucureúti: Humanitas, 1992), 422-23, translated by Dorin David in his article “Homo Religiosus in the Scientific Work and Fantastic Prose of Mircea Eliade”, Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braúov, Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies vol. 6, 55.1 (2013), 21-28, esp. 22. 23 Karen Armstrong, A History of God (London: Vintage, 1999), 3. 24 Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, 2. 25 I wrote “early modern” instead of “modern” here because even though there are religious tendencies in many modern persons—even if they believe they are secular—still generally speaking early modern (beginning c. sixteenth century) persons were consciously more religious. Also, by homines religiosi I mean “people as religious” in an inclusive sense. 22

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how this retrieval took place from the Mesopotamian city of Eridu, one of the oldest urban settlements in the world. Eridu was considered a locus and recapitulation of a cosmogony that revealed the sacred through its ziggurat which, it was believed, represented a cosmic mountain.26 Similar perceptions could be found not only in other ancient Mesopotamian cities but also in Egypt (where cities contained no characteristic structures apart from temples),27 Palestine (especially Jerusalem),28 Greece29 and Rome.30 This process continued with Christian cities, but instead of temples at their centres, there were now churches whose symbolic architecture indicated the worship of the triune God, revealed through the God-man Jesus Christ and his saints. Thus, for Christians, the life of Christ and his saints were the main source of sacredness in the world, a sacredness that they desired to participate in and that could be manifested in cities. But if we are to consider Constantinople as the Christian city par excellence, then a preliminary assessment of the Christian approach to cities should precede our assessment both of Constantinople and of the modern city.

Christian Approaches to Cities If Christians await the “heavenly” (Hebrews 12:22) and “holy city, the new Jerusalem”, that, on the last day, will come “down out of heaven from 26

Samuel Noah Kramer, Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievements in the Third Millennium B.C. (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1961), 62-63. 27 Jan Assmann, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, trans. D. Lorton (London: Cornell University Press, 2001), 1. 28 According to Eliade, “Palestine [Israel], Jerusalem, and the Temple severally and concurrently represent the image of the universe and the Center of the World”. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 42. 29 According to Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges, “the Greeks, like the Italians, believed that the site of a city should be chosen and revealed by the divinity. So, when they wished to found one, they consulted the oracle at Delphi”. Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome, trans. Willard Small (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006), 138. 30 The literature on Rome as caput mundi or as eternal (Roma aeterna) is long and complex. See Eliade’s comments regarding the location of the mundus, the gateway to the underworld, in the Roman Forum, the symbolic heart of the city: “the mundus was clearly assimilated to the omphalos, to the navel of the earth; the city (urbs) was situated in the middle of the orbis terrarum”. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 47.

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God” (Revelation 21:1-2), then the Christian City is almost a misnomer. The eschatological description of the permanent establishment of God’s kingdom at the end of time as a “new Jerusalem”, a motif inherited by the Church from Old Testament prophecies concerning the “last things”31 and reinterpreted through the lens of the Christ experience, led the writer of Hebrews to affirm that here we “have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (13:14).32 This contradicts the belief that a terrestrial city, like Rome for instance, could be eternal. Mathetes, or the unnamed Disciple, fleshes out the Christian approach to terrestrial cities in his Epistle to Diognetus, which affirms that Christians live in their respective countries, but only as resident aliens; they participate in all things as citizens, and they endure all things as foreigners. Every foreign territory is a homeland for them, every homeland foreign territory. […] They live on earth but participate in the life of heaven.33

This dual approach, where Christians could be said to participate in the life of a terrestrial city without becoming affected or circumscribed by its rhythms, is made possible because they anticipate the coming of God’s City. But if, according to the author of the Epistle to Diognetus, Christians already participated in heaven—where heaven, the city of God, and God’s kingdom can be considered mutually inclusive—then why did they bother to Christianise the ancient cities that they occupied by building churches and monuments covered in Christian symbols? What purpose could this serve? I will suggest two possible reasons, one theological and one historical, for the early Church’s Christianisation of space. The first reason is that the immediate participation in the life of heaven—in God’s kingdom—whilst characteristic of the Eucharistic community of believers, is nevertheless only perfected in the lives of the 31

As described, for instance, in Daniel chapters 9 and 10. Hebrews 13:11 describes “[t]he high priest [who] carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp”. Christ is here likened to the animals—a “sin offering”—whose blood sanctifies people in the same way that the blood of the animals does. However, it remains significant that this sacrifice, through which the Lord Jesus is able to “sanctify the people by his blood” (13:12), happens outside the city. The author therefore exhorts the Hebrew Christians to go out to him there: that is, outside of Jerusalem. 33 Epistle to Diognetus 5, in The Apostolic Fathers, trans. Bart D. Ehrman, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 139, 141. 32

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saints. The saints have no need of a symbolic culture to facilitate their participation in the reality signified by the symbol because they already participate in that reality by grace. But sainthood is not inherited. It is the reward of strenuous schooling in faith that is granted by God on his terms, a schooling that is facilitated through the use of symbols.34 To give a few examples in relation to the lives of the saints: it was not until the young Antony entered the church that he was motivated to embark on his ascetical journey and become, according to the Church’s reckoning, St. Antony the Great.35 This is also the case for St. Mary the Egyptian, whose call to the ascetic life was marked by her being prevented by providence from entering the church of the Holy Sepulchre to venerate the cross of Christ on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. She was only able to do so after beseeching the Mother of God, in the presence of the latter’s icon, to help her change her way of life.36 At the beginning of their respective journeys, these saints needed to encounter and engage with symbols in the same way as the rest of us who await the perfection from above. Compelled, as we have seen, to cosmicise the space around us,37 we need symbols—existential bridges linking us to the realities that they signify—insofar as they call to mind the transformation 34

To give one example of such symbols: since the Church has as its ultimate aspiration holiness wrought by God within her, then the icons, images of Christ and his saints, contribute to the “schooling” that is meant to sanctify the people of God. The definition of the second council of Nicaea—the seventh ecumenical council—held in 787 in Constantinople is important in this regard; but I will not address it here since I explore it in more detail below. Suffice it to supply the reference: “Second Council of Nicaea—787”, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: Nicaea I–Lateran V, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 1989), 133-37. 35 St. Athanasius the Great, The Greek Life of Antony 2, in The Life of Antony: The Coptic Life and the Greek Life, trans. Tim Vivian and Apostolos N. Athanassakis (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2003), 59, 61. 36 St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, Life of St. Mary of Egypt 22-24, trans. Maria Kouli in Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, ed. AliceMary Talbot (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996), 82-83. 37 Of course, saints also “cosmicise” the space around them, but they do this differently. As immediate participants in the grace of God, they are able to shape the natural world. See St. Serapion of Thmuis’ description of St. Antony in Serapion of Thmuis, To the Disciples of Antony 5, 7, in The Life of Antony (cit. n. 35), 42.

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that we need to undertake and the fact that we should continue on the Christian journey. I will return to these aspects later. For now suffice it to state that ordinary Christians needed to cosmicise their space with the use of Christian symbols in order to fulfil the existential desire and need to participate in Christ, a participation achieved perfectly in the saints. In sum, this is the first reason for the Christianisation of space in cities. The second reason, which in fact led to the creation of monumental church architecture, is that the historical circumstances from the fourth century onwards facilitated an unprecedented imperial beneficence towards the Church by the Roman emperors beginning with Constantine the Great. This beneficence expressed itself in the building projects that any emperor or king since time immemorial would have typically carried out to express their patronage of a religious cult (or to express their own power and prestige). Whether or not the extravagances that resulted from the Constantinian building projects obscured the first theological reason, outlined above, in the minds of many believers is not a question relevant to this chapter. Because my purpose to compare the Christian city to the modern city, I ascribe more value to the former than to the latter. I acknowledge that Christians before Constantine used symbols such as the ǿȋĬȊȈ (icthys) acronym, fish, anchors, and the Chi-Rho in order to recognise one another and that they represented various scenes from the Gospels and the Old Testament in the catacombs and in house churches. But the former symbols were displayed in secret: the catacombs were underground and the house churches were private residences. Instead I wish to focus on public displays of Christianity in the city of New Rome, Constantinople, because it constitutes the paradigmatic Christian city, filled as it was with symbols that functioned for the well-being of its inhabitants. But before we proceed to this investigation, we must briefly address the modern city and its adverse impact on well-being, an adverse impact that, I will argue, can be redressed with insights from Constantinople.

The Modern City The modern city is a product of complex phenomena. The mentalities behind it were in fact driven by an anthropocentrism that was augmented by mercantile interests in the sixteenth century and which led, through various intellectual trajectories and cultural trends, to the prioritisation of the human being to both nature and the sacred. These two dimensions of life, as we shall see, were by necessity recapitulated into the art and

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architecture of ancient and medieval cities. As opposed to the former, modern cities are marked by certain distinguishing features: the central business district that dominates the centres of most cities; skyscrapers, often boasting giant company or corporate logos; and billboards displaying the brands under which the products or services are sold by corporations. The current state of the city has been aptly summed up by Mumford, who argues that “in our time the ultimate fate of the commercial city is to become a backdrop for advertising”. 38 Although movements such as “green building” have attempted to make us aware of the need to connect with nature in the cityscape,39 still, the fact that we belong to a cosmos seems to be something that only ancient and medieval persons were able to integrate into their buildings.40 Moreover, both in CBDs and commercial areas (such as Times Square in New York), corporations display their symbols far above any temple or church. The brands they sell appear on billboards, posters, and bus stops, advertising their material products as essential for a human being’s identity and conducive to one’s well-being. 41 Recent studies by neuroscientists, however, have shown that mental health issues are compounded in the current civic space. Overcrowding in cities can lead to social stress that increases “the risk of depression and anxiety, and the rate of schizophrenia is markedly higher in people born and brought up in cities”.42 The physiological impact of cities on urbandwellers, affected by the above disorders, has been amply demonstrated:

38

Mumford, The City in History, 445. Charles J. Kibert, “Introduction”, in Construction Ecology: Nature as the basis for green buildings, ed. Charles J. Kibert, Jan Sendzimir, and G. Bradley Guy (London and New York: Spon Press, 2002), 1. 40 I thank Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache for this nuance. 41 The extent to which we are conditioned is made clear by Joel Bakan, who affirmed that corporations “…determine what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work, and what we do. We are inescapably surrounded by their culture, iconography, and ideology”. Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (New York: Free Press, 2004), 5. 42 Daniel P. Kennedy and Ralph Adolphs, “Stress and the City”, Nature 474 (23 June, 2011): 452-53, esp. 452. See also Alison Abbott, “Urban Decay: Scientists are Testing the Idea that the Stress of Modern City Life is a Breeding Ground for Psychosis”, Nature 490 (11 October, 2012): 162-64. For details on the higher levels of schizophrenia in cities, see Lydia Krabbendam and Jim van Os, “Schizophrenia and Urbanicity: A Major Environmental Influence—Conditional on Genetic Risk”, Schizophrenia Bulletin 31.4 (2005): 795-99. 39

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… the size of the amygdala [known to regulate the assessments of threat and fear] correlated with the size of the city within which the individual currently resided, and activation of the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC) [which regulates the amygdalas] correlated with how long a participant had lived in a large city during their childhood.43

Apart from anxiety disorders and depression, the amygdala has also been connected to “other behaviours that are increased in cities, such as violence”.44 It is estimated that by 2050 seventy per-cent of the world’s population will live in cities, and thus attempts to mitigate health risks are of paramount importance to scientists working in the field of mental health.45 Although the link between “urban upbringing and habitation” and social stress processes has been empirically established, with the former impacting the latter, still other possible reasons, posited by Florian Lederbogen, for the negative impact of modern cities on humans, have been limited to “pollution, toxins, crowding, noise, or demographic factors”. 46 Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, director of the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, has suggested that “the common urban experience of feeling different from your neighbours because of socioeconomic status or ethnicity” could also be a stress-producing factor in cities.47 Psychiatrist and epidemiologist Jim van Os has hypothesised that “the risk of progressing from disturbance to full-blown psychosis” has to do with a distortion in the subject’s learning, regarding which elements of a new environment are rewarding and which are a threat.48 Without detracting from the groundbreaking work of these professionals, I do believe there is more to the story. Certainly, if human beings are symbol-making creatures, then the kind of symbolism that we see in modern cities must have an effect on the people that live in them. Conditioned by buildings that scrape the sky or cosmos instead of trying, like in ancient and medieval cities, to replicate it on earth, and by the 43

Kennedy and Adolphs, “Stress and the City”, 452. Florian Lederbogen et al., “Letter: City Living and Urban Upbringing Affect Neural Social Stress Processing in Humans”, Nature 474 (23 June, 2011): 498-501, esp. 499. 45 Lederbogen et al., “Letter: City Living and Urban Upbringing Affect Neural Social Stress Processing in Humans”, 498. 46 Lederbogen et al., “Letter: City Living and Urban Upbringing Affect Neural Social Stress Processing in Humans”, 500. 47 Abbott, “Urban Decay”, 164. 48 Abbott, “Urban Decay”, 164. 44

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advertisements of various businesses—i.e. the new, materialistic symbols of our time—urban dwellers wander through city-streets that, whilst indicating a degree of spatial extension, do not have any cosmic or sacred significance. As such, the inherent propensity of human beings towards religiosity remains unfulfilled, and the human being in the city can become ensnared by the objects of his or her experience, namely the products being advertised, often marketed, as mentioned above, as being essential for one’s identity and well-being. From this, various addictions—which, from a Christian point of view, constitute the overwhelmingly passionate attachment to objects of one’s desire or experience—can arise. The irony is that these addictions (to products, people, places, modes of behaviour, etc.) draw people precisely into aspects of the civic framework that are inimical to their health. Since the remedies to these addictions—which, we will see below, can be found in those Christian churches that exhort a degree of dispassion—are diminished by virtue of being overshadowed by skyscrapers, advertisements and the like, in some cases mental illness ensues. Next, we shall see that, in Constantinople, the symbolic art and architecture of the city helped people to contemplate—and thus, through prayer, participate in—the grace of God the Trinity manifested in the Godman, Jesus Christ. This grace was in turn transmitted by Christ to his saints (who were, like the Lord, depicted in the city): the former, that is Christ—together with his Father and the Holy Spirit—being the only source of well-being understood as salvation; the latter, that is, the saints, having achieved this well-being by God’s grace. It will be demonstrated that the symbolic art and architecture of Constantinople—particularly the often repeated image of Christ as Pantokrator (Master of all)—act as positive alternatives to the materialistic symbols in modern cities insofar as they provided those who dwelt in the city with ample opportunities to be reminded of, and to pray to, Christ as God, and his saints as intercessors, for the well-being of all.

Religious Symbolism and Well-being in Christian Constantinople Despite the fall of the old Rome in AD 476, the Eastern Roman Empire centred in New Rome, Constantinople, persisted, and due to the growing prestige, wealth and power of its imperial court, was able to commission— in tandem with the Church—the building of Christian churches that recapitulated the entire Christian worldview. It is true that when the city

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was founded, according to St. Jerome, “by denuding nearly every other city (Constantinopolis dedicatur, pene omnium urbium nuditate)”,49 it was filled with pagan art and architecture. The statue of Constantine as the sungod Apollo atop a column in the centre of his Forum—which was, at least topographically, in the centre of the city—attests to this.50 So too do the Hippodrome and the Baths of Zeuxippus which were filled with spolia that demonstrated that the New Rome superseded its predecessor, Delphi, and even Troy as the most prominent city of the empire.51 Like the ancient pagan emperor Augustus, Constantine built a miliareum aureum—the Milion—that marked the distances to all the cities in the empire at the juncture where his main road—the mese hodos—turned off to the city’s eastern-most edge bestriding the Bosphorus.52 It was at this eastern end of Constantinople where the emperor commissioned the building of two of at least four churches attributed to him, although scholars have debated this, since not all of them were completed during his reign.53 First, we have the churches dedicated to the martyr-saint Acacius, the first Hagia Eirene (Holy Peace), and the first Hagia Sophia, or Holy Wisdom, that was not completed until the reign of Constantine’s son Constantius II. Next, we have the mausoleum-church of the Holy Apostles, which was controversial insofar as the emperor placed his tomb in the centre of the building, surrounded by symbolic sarcophagi of the Twelve.54 Hagia Sophia and Hagia Eirene would, like Holy Apostles, be 49

St. Jerome, Chronicle, the 277th Olympiad, the 334th year after the birth of Christ (PL 27, 677-678); my translation. 50 Philostorgius affirmed that construction on the city began “at the place where the great porphyry column bearing his statue now stands”. Philostorgius: Church History 2.9a, trans. Philip R. Amidon (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 25. 51 Sarah Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 62, 69, 77. 52 Charles Matson Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, Second Edition (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 240. See also map on ibid., 233. 53 Jonathan Bardill affirms that at least three or four churches were built by Constantine within the city itself. Bardill, Constantine: Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 254. Mark J. Johnson mentions five. Johnson, “Architecture of Empire”, in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 292. Above, I am following the latter. 54 Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 69.

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rebuilt twice over, and although the latter does not survive, the extant edifices of the former two are the result of the extensive building campaign of the emperor Justinian in the sixth century. What Justinian’s architects managed to accomplish was the recapitulation of the Byzantine vision of the cosmos—an emphatically Christian vision—in the architectonic and artistic space of many of the churches the emperor commissioned, but before turning to Justinian’s reign, it is important to note that in the intervening years between the reigns of Constantine and Justinian, certain pagan ideals persisted in the empire and were gradually transformed—such as the Roman ruler cult that continued in Byzantium, albeit in a mitigated form.55 It is, however, a truism that Constantinople took on a more emphatically Christian character as time went on. Theodosius I, who sanctioned Nicene orthodoxy as the official religion of the capital and empire, 56 banned pagan sacrifice 57 and extinguished the flame of the Vestal Virgins in Rome that symbolised the city’s eternal duration. 58 Although pagan statuary still existed in Constantinople, it was perhaps viewed as secular art exemplifying the city’s Greco-Roman heritage as opposed to idolatry. 59 In addition, Theodosius 55

Gilbert Dagron commented that the canonisation of Constantine the Great, which must have come into effect by the sixth century, defused the “scandal of a cult or an imperial priesthood grafting itself on to the Christian religion”. G. Dagron, Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in Byzantium, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 144. Still, this did not prevent emperors from depicting themselves as semi-divine and thereby coming into conflict with the Church. See, for this early period, St. Athanasius the Great’s criticism of Constantine’s son, Constantius II, in Mario Baghos, “The Traditional Portrayal of St. Athanasius according to Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret”, in Alexandrian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Doru Costache, Philip Kariatlis and Mario Baghos (Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle upon Tyne, 2015), 139-71, esp. 155. However, by and large—and especially after iconoclasm—the Byzantine emperors were not considered gods in the way that ancient Roman emperors were. 56 Stephen Williams and Gerard Friell, Theodosius: The Empire at Bay (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 55-57. 57 Williams and Friell, Theodosius: The Empire at Bay, 57. 58 David Watkin, The Roman Forum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 87, 92. 59 Sarah Bassett insightfully addresses this issue in her article “‘Excellent Offerings’: The Lausos Collection in Constantinople”, The Art Bulletin 82.1 (2000): 6-25, esp. 18-19.

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oversaw the rebuilding of St. Paul “Outside the Walls” in Rome,60 as well as the dedication of three other churches in Constantinople:61 to St. John the Baptist, the Holy Notaries, and St. Mark. 62 This Christianisation of the cityscape went hand in hand with the Christological debates that the Church was preoccupied with at the time—represented by the second ecumenical council held by Theodosius I within the city—which were repeated on the popular level in the city’s thoroughfares. To quote St. Gregory of Nyssa, who commented on the events at this time: For the whole of this city is full of it (ȆȐȞIJĮ Ȗ੹ȡ IJ੹ țĮIJ੹ IJ੽Ȟ ʌȩȜȚȞ IJ૵Ȟ IJȠȚȠȪIJȦȞ ʌİʌȜȒȡȦIJĮȚ), the alleys, the forums, the squares, the streets: the clothes-sellers, money-changers, and those who sell us food. If you ask someone about the obol, he philosophises to you about the begotten and the unbegotten; and if you ask about the price of bread, the answer is the Father is greater and the Son inferior. If you ask, “Is my bath ready?” the divisive answer you receive is that the Son was made out of nothing.63

St. Gregory is here summarising some of the Arian arguments against the orthodox tenet that God the Son is homoousios or “of one essence” with God the Father and hence entirely divine; but what one can surmise here is the degree to which the debate regarding Christ’s divinity had impacted the city streets. In any case, the Christianisation of space continued under Theodosius II, grandson of Theodosius I. He and his sister, Pulcheria, were famous for procuring relics, and Theodosius II undertook the second rebuilding of Hagia Sophia in 415 AD.64 But it is the third Holy Wisdom, rebuilt by Justinian—who also built or rebuilt thirty-three other churches in the city—that I want to focus on.65

60 Deno John Geanakoplos, “Church Building and Caesaropapism, A.D. 312–565”, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 7 (1966): 167-86, esp. 178. 61 See fn. 66 in Ine Jacobs, “The Creation of the Late Antique City: Constantinople and Asia Minor during the ‘Theodosian Renaissance,’” Byzantion 82 (2012): 11364, esp. 132. 62 Jacobs, “The Creation of the Late Antique City”, 132. 63 St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Deity of the Son and the Spirit (PG 46, 557B); my translation. 64 Nadine Schibille, Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Aesthetic Experience (Surrey, ENG: Ashgate, 2014), 50. 65 Brian Croke, “Justinian’s Constantinople”, in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 79.

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m (Hagia Sophiia), Istanbul (ii.e. Constantino ople). The Figure 13-1 Holy Wisdom minarets andd mausoleums (grey and in the foregrounnd and backgrround) are additions madde after the chhurch was conv verted into a moosque in 1453,, when the city was capptured by the Ottoman O Turkss. It is currenttly a museum. Photo by author.

The originall designation Holy H Wisdom m, seen by som me interpreterss as a way of appeasingg the pagans inn the capital by b referring too an attribute of o God as opposed to eexplicit refereences to Christ or the saintss,66 was clearly y seen by Justinian’s ccontemporariees, such as Pro ocopius, as reeferring to Chrrist,67 and was in factt interpreted Christologicaally throughoout the empirre’s long duration.68 IIn other words, the city of Constantinopple was condittioned by 66

Hans A. P Pohlsander affiirmed that the designations H Holy Wisdom and Holy Eirene, givenn by Constantinne to the two churches c that hhe commissioneed, “would not be offennsive to paganns”. Pohlsander, The Emperror Constantinee, Second Edition (Londdon and New York: Y Routledgee, 2004), 71. 67 Schibille, H Hagia Sophia annd the Byzantin ne Aesthetic Expperience, 50. 68 Zofia Brzozowska, “The Church C of Divin ne Wisdom or of Christ—Thee Incarnate Logos? Dediccation of Hagiaa Sophia in Co onstantinople inn the Light of Byzantine Sources from m 5th to 14th Ceentury”, Studia a Ceranea 2 (22012): 85-96, esp. e 87-90. Robert G. Ouusterhout disagrrees, affirming that t the church was “famously y dedicated

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the “Great Church” of Christ at its centre.69 Robert G. Ousterhout describes this church aptly: In plan, Hagia Sophia follows the model of an early Christian basilica, with a nave flanked by side aisles, but it differs dramatically in elevation, with vaulting introduced throughout the building, framing an enormous, centrally positioned dome. Thus, in addition to the longitudinal axis of the plan, a centralizing focus is introduced into the interior. The great dome, 100 feet in diameter, is the dominant theme of the building’s design, as it soars 180 feet above the nave.70

This dome is supported by four arches that are buttressed by four pendentives that link them together, and by two semi-domes (or conches), each sitting below the east and west axes of the main dome. In fact, the weight of the entire structure is supported by four main piers that give the floor plan the shape of a cross in a square, geometric symbols that, along with the semi-sphere or circle represented by the dome, summarise the Christian conception of the world.71 The symbolism of the cross should be obvious enough; it represents the sacrifice of Christ through whom Christians participate in the life of resurrection.72 For Christians, the life of resurrection is inaugurated by Christ on behalf of the whole cosmos, which is symbolically articulated by St. Gregory of Nyssa in his Catechetical Oration, wherein he described the arms of the cross as reaching out to all the cardinal points of the universe (North, South, East and West) from a

to a concept and not to a person”. Ousterhout, “The Sanctity of Place and the Sanctity of Buildings: Jerusalem versus Constantinople”, in Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium (New York: Cambridge, 2012), 286. 69 In referring to the reconstruction of Hagia Eirene by Justinian, Procopius mentioned that the building was located next to the “Great Church” (ਫțțȜȘıȓ઺ į੻ IJૌ ȝİȖȐȜૉ) that is, Hagia Sophia. Procopius, Buildings 1.2, in Procopius VII: Buildings, trans. H. B. Dewing (London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 36-37. 70 Ousterhout, “The Sanctity of Place and the Sanctity of Buildings”, 288. 71 Falter stated emphatically that “the cross, the square and the circle” are used in the church and that, whilst the building’s outline is a square, the “interior is a cross with a longitudinal axis”. Holger Falter, “The Influence of Mathematics on the Development of Structural Form”, in Architecture and Mathematics from Antiquity to the Future, vol. 1: Antiquity to the 1500s, ed. Kim Williams and Michael J. Ostwald (London: Birkhäuser, 2015), 83. 72 Colossians 1:18-20; 1 Corinthians 15:12-23.

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central axis.73 To the cross’ cosmic significance can be added the circle represented by Hagia Sophia’s dome, insofar as for ancient persons “the observable cosmos represented itself as inescapably circular—not only the planets themselves […] but also their cyclical movements and the recurring cycles of seasons”.74 This was the case especially in ancient Greece and Rome. One need only think of the ancient Athenian prytaneion, marked by the presence of the fire of Hestia in its centre,75 upon which was modelled the temple of Vesta in Rome, which was also circular and which Plutarch interpreted as a symbol of the universe.76 The Pantheon was also circular, with an oculus facilitating communication between heaven and earth,77 and so were the mausoleums of various emperors including Augustus. 78 That the Byzantines, with their Greco-Roman inheritance, would continue such dispositions and designs should not surprise us, and the architects that designed and built the structure, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Pelusiam, were by all accounts well versed in the crafts of ancient geometry and architecture. 79 When Procopius described Hagia Sophia’s “spherical dome” (ıijĮȚȡȠİȚį੽Ȣ șȩȜȠȢ), he emphatically stated that it seems to be “suspended from Heaven” (ਕʌઁ IJȠ૨ Ƞ੝ȡĮȞȠ૨ ਥȟȘȝȝȑȞȘ). 80 Holger Falter described the dome as “the circular space […] representing everything spiritual”,81 and indeed, the circle, representing eternity, can in

73

The Great Catechism 32 [i.e. the Catechetical Oration], in Gregory of Nyssa: Selected Works and Letters, trans. William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson, NPNF (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979), 500. 74 The Complete Dictionary of Symbols: In Myth, Art and Literature, ed. Jack Tresidder (London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 2004), 108. 75 Jean-Joseph Goux, “Vesta, or the Place of Being”, Representations 1 (1983): 91107, esp. 92. 76 Plutarch, The Life of Numa 11, in Plutarch’s Lives I, trans. Bernadotte Perrin (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1967), 345. 77 William Lloyd MacDonald, Pantheon: Design, Meaning, and Progeny (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 89. 78 Mark J. Johnson, The Roman Imperial Mausoleum in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 19. 79 Procopius, Buildings 1.1 (Dewing, 11, 13). 80 Procopius, Buildings 1.1 (Dewing, 21). 81 Falter, “The Influence of Mathematics on the Development of Structural Form”, 83.

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some religions be considered characteristic of the spiritual realm:82 but it is more likely that in Holy Wisdom the created worlds, both spiritual and material, are represented.83 I will return to this aspect in a moment; for now it is important to highlight the significance of the square, which Falter described as the earthly space.84 Mircea Eliade provided an interpretation that can be used here, for according to him the square—along with the circle—when considered from a central axis, projected the four horizons or the four cardinal points (North, South, East and West) as aspects of the world,85 just like the cross in the Nyssan’s interpretation above. Thus, in Hagia Sophia’s cruciform design within a square that was topped by a circular dome, we have concurrent representations, via geometric symbolism, of the universe from a Christian perspective. To these can be added the octagon, symbolising the “eighth day” of God’s eschatological kingdom,86 and which can be found as early as Constantine’s church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. It consisted of an octagonal structure to cover the cave of Christ’s birth, to which was attached a basilica whose apse the octagon replaced.87 Justinian’s church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, which acted as the prototype for Hagia Sophia (and is pertinently still called küçuk ayasofya or “little Hagia Sophia” in Turkish), also contained eighth day symbolism in its dome, supported by eight columns that “form an octagon placed inside an irregular square”. 88 This design was repeated in Holy 82

See fn. 48 in Schibille, Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Aesthetic Experience, 55. 83 For the “earthly” dimension of Hagia Sophia, see the excerpts from Paul the Silentiary’s Descriptio S. Sophiae translated by Bissera V. Pentcheva in her article “Hagia Sophia and Multisensory Aesthetics”, Gesta: International Centre for Medieval Art 50:2 (2011): 93-11, esp. 97, 99. 84 Falter, “The Influence of Mathematics on the Development of Structural Form”, 83. 85 Falter, “The Influence of Mathematics on the Development of Structural Form”, 83. 86 The eighth day was transcendent because, according to early Christian saints such as Basil the Great, it went beyond the recurrent cycle of the seven-day week outlined in Genesis. Mario Baghos, “The Recapitulation of History and the ‘Eighth Day’: Aspects of St. Basil the Great’s Eschatological Vision”, in Cappadocian Legacy: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Doru Costache and Philip Kariatlis (Sydney: St. Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2013), 151-68, esp. 159-60. 87 Bardill, Constantine, 258. See the church’s design on ibid., 260. 88 Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 203.

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Wisdom’s baptistery, which was also octagonal, and later, on a larger scale, in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna. 89 Ravenna is important, because in its apse above the altar a mosaic depicts Christ enthroned upon the world: one of the earliest images of the Pantokrator—the Master of all giving the blessing of peace 90 —that would appear in the centre of Byzantine domes throughout the empire.91 Although this image was not painted in the dome of Hagia Sophia until 1355—and described by a contemporary, Nicephorus Gregoras, as “the enhypostatic Wisdom of God”92—it can be traced as early as the Christian catacombs. 93 It begins to appear on portable icons by the end of late antiquity, such as the famous sixth-century image from St. Katherine’s monastery in Sinai,94 a complex that was, incidentally, commissioned by Justinian and Theodora. 95 By the Middle Ages, the Pantokrator would appear in central domes, apses and wall panels in the palatine chapels of Aachen 96 and Constantinople, 97 in the churches of the Theotokos

89 Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 227. 90 In Ravenna, the Pantokrator is “seated on a blue globe” and “holds a scroll closed with the seven seals of the Apocalypse”. Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, 237. 91 John Lowden affirmed in relation to Byzantine church domes that “the standard post-iconoclast formula employed the medallion bust of Christ alone, in the form we call ‘the Pantokrator.’” J. Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (London: Phaidon, 1997), 194. 92 Nicephorus Gregoras, Historiae Byzantinae XXIX, 47 f., in The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453: Sources and Documents, trans. Cyril Mango (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 249. 93 The “idea of Christ as Ruler of the Universe finds clear expression in the Catacomb of Commodilla [mid 4th century] where, within a frame coloured red and brown, the Master’s head and shoulders are set in a manner expressing authority”. One can detect in this image the origins of what would later become the image of Christ the Pantokrator. Robert Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 47; see image on 46. 94 Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 93. 95 Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), xxii. 96 Derek Wilson, Charlemagne: Barbarian and Emperor (London: Pimlico, 2006), 75.

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Pammakaristos98 and Holy Saviour in Chora in the latter;99 in Greece, in the churches of Hosios Loukas100 and the Dormition in Daphne;101 and in Norman Sicily, in the cathedrals at Monreale 102 and Cefalù 103 and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo.104 The Monastery of Graþanica in Kosovo boasts a Pantokrator in its dome from the later Middle Ages,105 and so do the Coptic Monastery of St. Antony the Great in Egypt,106 St. Mark’s in Venice,107 St. Paul’s “Outside the Walls”,108 and Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, which also depicts the Mother of God enthroned next to her Son and our God. 109 In the post-Byzantine period various other churches in Romania, Russia, Greece, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Serbia all include this 97

Specifically, in the Chrysotriklinos, where “an image of the enthroned Christ [was] depicted in the apse right above the emperor’s throne”. Alexei M. Sivertsev, Judaism and Imperial Ideology in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 182. 98 Guy Freeland, “The Lamp in the Temple: Copernicus and the Demise of a Medieval Ecclesiastical Cosmology”, in 1543 and All That: Image and Word, Change and Continuity in the Proto-Scientific Revolution, ed. Guy Freeland and Anthony Corones (Dordrecht: Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V., 2000), 189-270, esp. 215. 99 Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 415. 100 Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 231, 235. 101 Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 260, 264. 102 John Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 260. 103 Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 259. 104 Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 260. 105 Slobodan ûurþiü, “Graþanica and the Cult of the Saintly Prince Lazar”, Recueil des travaux de l’Institut d’études byzantines XLIV (2007): 465-72, esp. 466. 106 Elizabeth S. Bolman, “Theodore’s Program in Context: Egypt and the Mediterranean Region”, in Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St. Antony at the Red Sea, ed. Bolman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 99. 107 “Refashioning Byzantium in Venice, ca. 1200-1400”, in San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, ed. Henry Maguire and Robert S. Nelson (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010), 208. 108 Margherita Cecchelli, “Il Complesso Monumentale Della Basilica dal IV al VII Secolo”, in San Paolo Fuori Le Mura a Roma, ed. Carlo Pietrangeli (Firenze: Nardini Editore, 1988), 37-54, esp. 50-51. 109 Marina Righetti Tosti-Croce, “La Basilica Tra Due E Trecento”, in Santa Maria Maggiore a Roma, ed. Carlo Pietrangeli (Firenze: Nardini Editore, 1988), 129-70, esp. 132-33, 134-35, 136-37. The same is also the case in the apse of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome.

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image, whiich spread even e to the West in moodern times with the proliferationn of Orthodoxy via its diasp pora communiities and missiions.

Figure 13-2 A Byzantine mosaic m of Christt the Pantokrattor giving the blessing b of peace in the ccircular dome of the Cappella Palatina, P Palerm mo. Photo by au uthor.

In Byzantinne churches and a churches influenced byy the Byzantine style, therefore, thhe Christian conception c off the whole unniverse is rep presented, with Christ as its Masterr. When Frank kish, Byzantinne, and Norm man rulers depicted thee Pantokrator in their cath hedrals and paalaces, they may m have been attemppting to bolsteer their claim to being the Lord’s repressentatives on earth; neevertheless, evven in these cases the Lorrd took preceedence.110 110

This is eviidenced by the fact that many emperors depiicted themselvees as being crowned by aand in obeisannce to Christ. See, S for instancce, the mosaic above the imperial doorrway in Holy Wisdom, W wheree the emperor L Leo VI the Wisse (r. 886–

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The fact that the main church of any Byzantine monastery was, and still is, called the katholikon—the place where the “fullness of the church” was summed up—is indicative of this mentality, and in monasteries, as in cities, these churches literally or symbolically constituted the centre of orientation for the inhabitants.111 The location of the place of worship as the focal point of the community, one that can be traced back to the first cities in Mesopotamia, and later in Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, and elsewhere, was thus continued in the Christian era, and the city of Constantinople had no small part to play in establishing a paradigm that would be repeated in cities throughout the world. It would be remiss of me not to mention the Byzantine influence on Islamic architecture which characteristically replicates the Byzantine dome, but the latter nevertheless represents a dissimilar mentality: for whilst calligraphic and floral representations are permitted, the human person is not112—and thus the “paradises” reflected in shrines such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem are bereft of inhabitants. Moreover, and in light of what we have seen concerning churches as representations of the cosmos, the effacement of mosaics—including the Pantokrator—in Byzantine churches throughout Constantinople in its iteration as Istanbul, and in lands occupied by the Ottomans, not to mention the displacement of the Christian communities that worshipped within them, represent, in metaphorical terms, veritable apocalypses. In addition to the geometric symbolism of Byzantine architecture and the oft-repeated motif of the Pantokrator, a standard pattern of the representation of Christ and his saints within Byzantine churches—now continued by many Orthodox churches throughout the world—would indeed be to show Christ at the centre of the dome as Pantokrator, and the Mother of God in the apse below the main dome as “Wider than the 912) is depicted in obeisance to the enthroned Christ, and Christ crowning the twelfth century Norman king Roger II of Sicily in a panel mosaic in the Martorana church in Palermo. Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 191 and 258 respectively. 111 The third and fourth definitions of katholikos (țĮșȠȜȚțȩȢ) given in Lampe’s Patristic Dictionary are relevant in this respect. They refer to “the fullness of Christian doctrine” and “the whole Church”. G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1961), 690. 112 Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Art and Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 21-23.

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Heavens”, insofar as she contained the uncontainable One, who encompasses the cosmos, within her womb.113 The rest of the church, the walls inside the altar, the icon screen and walls of the nave would depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments and the saints, who are considered immediate participants in the grace of Christ, in states of dispassion. In some cases, these representations would be placed on the façades and other external walls of churches also, as made famous by the painted monasteries of Moldavia,114 where Christ, the Mother of God, and the saints are made visible to all who pass by. This is antithetical to Gothic architecture that sprang up in the medieval West, which demarcated sharply between the profane or demonic, exemplified by grotesques and gargoyles adorning the external walls of cathedrals, 115 and the sacred which was represented within them. In fact, Constantinople was replete with images of saints and Christian images in the main streets of the city, and in the eighth century this Christianisation of public space was given a formal mandate, with the seventh ecumenical council in 787 declaring that the revered and holy images, whether painted or made of mosaic or other suitable material, are to be exposed in the holy churches of God, on sacred instruments and vestments, on walls and panels, in houses and by public ways (Ƞ੅țȠȚȢ IJİ țĮ੿ ੒įȠ૙Ȣ)…116

To mention just a few of these images, an icon of the Pantokrator adorned the Chalke or Bronze gate, the entrance to the imperial palace,117 and the walls and many gates to the city were marked by Christian images

113

John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 222. 114 D. J. Deletant, “Some Aspects of the Byzantine Tradition in the Rumanian Principalities”, The Slavonic and Eastern Europe Review 59:1 (1981): 1-14, esp. 56. 115 Thomas E. A. Dale, “The Monstrous”, in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 253-73, esp. 255-57. 116 “Second council of Nicaea—787”, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 13537. 117 This was destroyed by the iconoclasts in either 726 or 730. Leslie Brubaker, “Icons and Iconomachy”, in A Companion to Byzantium, ed. Liz James (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 323-37, esp. 328-29.

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functioning as apotropaia.118 For instance, when the Avars invaded in 626 AD, the Patriarch Sergius, to whom defence of the city was entrusted whilst the emperor Heraclius was on campaign, each day made a circuit of the land walls whilst holding the icon of the Mother of God Hodegitria— and it was to her that the protection against the Avars was ascribed.119 Now that I mention the saints, it is important to outline the correlation between them and the image of the Pantokrator in Byzantine churches: the latter gives the blessing of peace, and the former, insofar as they have interiorised the peace of Christ by grace and act as intercessors between the Lord and us, also give the same blessing. In the various Orthodox services, the celebrant often imitates this gesture, proclaiming the Lord’s words “Peace be with you”, meaning that the ecclesial space, art, and worship are all geared towards generating peace within the congregation— a peace that is befitting to God’s presence amongst us, and thus to our well-being. In Byzantium, as well as in Orthodox churches today, the ecclesial space is an ordered cosmos with Christ as its Master and goal. It has been argued that Constantinople, just like any other ancient or medieval city, was an “archetectonic [sic] metaphor of eternal order and harmony, peace, justice and life”.120 The emperor was also “the imitator of the cosmos”, 121 and the imperial presence in no less than ten liturgies celebrated within the Great Palace (albeit officiated by the patriarch), nine ceremonies that began at the palace and culminated with the liturgy in Hagia Sophia, and seventeen processions that culminated in various urban churches, 122 underscores the fact that the emperor construed himself as integral to the functioning of this city as an image of the cosmos. But, as we mentioned above, the emperor was also subordinate to Christ the Pantokrator, and in the absence of the emperor after the conquest of the city, churches influenced by the legacy of Byzantium continued to function in the same way: as recapitulations of the Christian vision of an ordered cosmos mastered by Christ, with the saints as intercessors, and 118 Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age Before Iconoclasm”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954): 83-150, esp. 118. 119 Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 57. 120 Miller, Imperial Constantinople, v. 121 Miller, Imperial Constantinople, 5. 122 Carolyn L. Connor, Saints and Spectacle: Byzantine Mosaics in their Cultural Setting (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 106.

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with participation in the Lord—mediated through the existential condition of peace—as the aspiration of the worshipping community inhabiting the city. In Byzantium, as in Western Christendom and amongst Oriental Christians, the recapitulation of the cosmos within the ecclesial space spilled out into the thoroughfares of almost each and every city,123 village, and town, with liturgical processions and litanies undertaken around and in between churches and other important shrines constituting a main expression of the public devotion of a city’s inhabitants. We know from the tenth century Book of Ceremonies that in Constantinople everyone had a part to play in the processions—even the circus factions! 124 —so that prayers to God the Trinity revealed by the Son and his saints resonated in the streets. For all the dastardly things that we know took place in the Middle Ages—symptoms of our fallen humanity—nevertheless, thus was the character of Christian cities, replete with symbols, acts and gestures that not only reminded their inhabitants that Christ is Master and the source of their well-being as salvation, but, if we are to take the meaning of the word symbol as an existential bridge into consideration, facilitated participation in Christ and his salvific kingdom. On a micro scale, such are the traditional churches today.

Concluding Remarks At the beginning of this chapter I asserted that ancient, medieval, and early modern persons wanted to be closer to nature and the cosmos because they perceived the sacred as manifested through them. This is reflected in ancient and later Christian cities. In the Byzantine churches in Constantinople (and beyond) that I addressed above, the whole cosmos is considered as symbolically recapitulated into the cross-in-square or octagonal design, capped with domes that signify the firmament. The Pantokrator, the image of Christ giving the blessing of peace, is one amongst many images that 123 For the Orthodox this is typified at the end of the liturgy, just before the dismissal, when the priest exhorts the faithful with the following words—ਥȞ İੁȡȒȞȘ ʌȡȠȑȜșȦȝİȞ—meaning “let us go forth in peace”, which can be interpreted as the faithful being encouraged to take the existential state of peace, received in the Church, with them into the world. The Divine Liturgy of our Father among the Saints, John Chrysostom (Sydney: St. Andrew’s Orthodox Press, 2005), 104. I thank Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache for this nuance. 124 Dagron, Emperor and Priest, 91.

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filled the churches within the city of Constantinople, but the fact that he marked the underside of the dome indicated, for the Byzantines, that Christ is the Master of all. The saints that adorned the inside of these churches and the streets of the city, who are acclimatised to Christ’s divine life by his grace, are depicted as serene, dispassionate, and also giving the blessing of peace. As homines religiosi in Christ, attending church was a regular activity for the Byzantines, both in Constantinople and in the many cities throughout the empire. As such the constant exposure of the Byzantines to sacred images, bolstered by hymns that praised these figures in a spirit of prayer, would undoubtedly have had a lasting effect. It was remarked to me once that the long duration of the Byzantine empire represented a growing incarnational mentality, and that this is reflected in Byzantine architecture. The grand designs of buildings like Hagia Sophia, make way, in the middle and late Byzantine periods, for smaller, more intimate structures. This occurred not for lack of funds, nor for lack of architectural ingenuity, for these churches are also stylistically intricate. The Byzantines simply wanted to be in closer proximity to Christ and the saints depicted on the walls of their churches; they wanted to be part of the community of saints. 125 I have also been taught that the Byzantine fascination with holiness reached such heights in the last decades of the empire, as indicated by the phenomenon of hesychasm— the silence or stillness practised by monastics, dignitaries, and laypersons alike—that part of the reason the empire fell to the Ottomans in 1453 was because many of its inhabitants spurned worldly concerns. 126 It is not insignificant that this later period saw the greatest flowering of artistic representations of saints who, by abiding in Christ, transcend the world. That the silence, stillness, and peace revered in the Byzantine world— and, paradoxically, by many in a capital city like Constantinople—leads to well-being should be taken as a matter of fact. From a Christian point of view, this well-being is augmented by the grace of the Trinitarian God, whom the Byzantines worshipped and who was manifested in the saints, many of whom were “produced” precisely by the ecclesial framework, with its manifold symbols, promoted by the Byzantines. I believe the fact that modern persons in the public or civic sphere are not exposed to these existentially significant symbols—which have been relegated more or less 125 126

I thank Professor Vrasidas Karalis for this nuance. I thank Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache for this nuance.

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to the private sphere of some individual Christian groups127—is problematic for the modern human being’s well-being. We have already seen that a complex network of factors has led to the current situation, where in modern cities the public space is occupied by a-cosmic buildings that signify commerce and material products. There have also been spikes in anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and violence in modern cities, and although a causal link between the new symbolism of modern cities—such as advertisements of material products—and these illnesses has not been demonstrated, nevertheless I believe it is no coincidence that such disorders are at their highest in an epoch where religiosity, which according to Mircea Eliade and Karen Armstrong is inherent to humankind’s behaviour, is marginalised in the public sphere, and economic/materialistic forces reign supreme. More problematic is the dismantling of Christianity in the public space, especially from a Christian point of view that promotes Christ as disclosing the true God and the path towards well-being—“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). I stated above that it has been asserted that by 2050 seventy per-cent of the world’s population will live in cities. As such, it is imperative to address the problems faced by modern people in cities, but how can this be done concretely from a Christian perspective? Is it reasonable to believe that modern society can revert to Christendom: that modern governments will reinstitute the public worship of Christ and the veneration of his saints in the cityscape? Certainly not in the West: although the nations of the Balkans and Russia might be an exception, since Orthodox Christianity has seen a resurgence in the public arena in many cities in these countries, leading to the construction of churches in cities and towns that will inevitably remind people of Christ and his saints.128 In the West, the only remedy might be for Christians to do a better job in publicly promoting their views based on certain common denominators that, unfortunately, not all Christians share: namely, the active promotion of Christianity through traditional symbols and images that can be found in most Orthodox, Catholic, and even High Protestant churches. This might constitute a 127

Churches nevertheless do impact the public space by virtue of their external symbols (crosses, etc.), but these are often overshadowed by the kinds of symbols that we saw above that were intrinsic to modern cities. 128 Of course, the presence of churches and Christian symbolism in a city does not assure well-being: one needs to be consciously aware of the functions of these symbols in order for them to do any good.

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challenge for some Protestant denominations—namely Evangelical and charismatic groups—who tenaciously adhere to the an-iconic (and in many cases, iconoclastic) injunctions of the Reformation which, to an extent, contributed to the removal of Christian symbols from the public space.129 But, in light of what I demonstrate above—that those of us who are not saints can be helped by symbols and images in order to contemplate God and participate in him—then these denominations could learn much from the Orthodox, Catholics and High Protestants who still use images and symbols. I believe that this is especially the case in relation to the Orthodox Church, which, in its iconography, depicts the saints in a state of dispassion and peace—the outcome of their strenuous asceticism and the gift of grace—not to mention the Lord himself as Master of all, something that we all need to be reminded of. Certainly I would not expect images of the Pantokrator to adorn each and every Christian façade and interior. But in a public arena—in cities—bombarded by images that exacerbate the passions and contradict the Christian way of life, it would benefit us to be constantly reminded, through images of Christ and his saints, that Christ’s peace, given to the saints, is always available; that eternal life in Christ is possible, and that it is only in him that we can experience permanent wellbeing.

Select Bibliography Abbott, Alison. “Urban Decay: Scientists are Testing the Idea that the Stress of Modern City Life is a Breeding Ground for Psychosis”. Nature 490 (2012): 162-64. Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Melbourne: The Text Publishing Co., 2005. Bassett, Sarah. The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Beckwith, John. Early Christian and Byzantine Art. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979. Eliade, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return. Translated by Willard R. 129

Lee Palmer Wandel, “The Reformation and the Visual Arts”, in The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 6: Reform and Expansion 1500-1660, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 345-70, esp. 348-49, 353.

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Trask. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005. —. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Translated by Willard R. Trask. New York: Harcourt Inc., 1987. Kennedy, Daniel P. and Adolphs, Ralph. “Stress and the City”. Nature 474 (2011): 452-53. Krautheimer, Richard. Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986. Lederbogen, Florian, et al. “Letter: City Living and Urban Upbringing Affect Neural Social Stress Processing in Humans”. Nature 474 (2011): 498-501. Lowden, John. Early Christian and Byzantine Art. London: Phaidon, 1997. Miller, Dean A. Imperial Constantinople. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1969. Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: its Origins, its Transformations, and its Prospects. London: Secker & Warburg, 1961. Schibille, Nadine. Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Aesthetic Experience. Surrey: Ashgate, 2014.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY AND THE CONCEPT OF WELL-BEING YVETTE DEBERGUE

In the public university sector today, prospective students are promised not only “job-readiness” and “definitive university experiences”, they are also assured that their well-being will be of great import for the duration of their studies. Free counselling, academic success programs, group meditation and Wellness Programs are to be found listed on websites of most major public universities. Studies show that students who utilise this additional support can achieve far greater graduate outcomes and remain within the tertiary education system, than those who may require additional assistance with studies or general well-being issues who have no access to such facilities. But what was life like for the average student in the Middle Ages? Who looked after them, helped them, guided them, protected them and counselled them? By examining the lives of students at the universities of Bologna, Oxford and Paris, through the study of charters and canon law, it will be shown that diverse interests, both religious and secular, played pivotal roles in creating organisations where students might obtain an education in a safe environment. At Oxford during the 13th century, the rights of students to receive an education in this manner were repeatedly reaffirmed and strengthened by Royal Decree, with the added proviso of bursaries for the poorer students. A survey of the letters of the students themselves, who were diverse in origin and disparate of tongue, also demonstrates the resilience of the medieval youth as they sought to obtain best practices in their vocationally-orientated learning and teaching.

Universities in Western Europe arose from the cathedral schools of the 10th and 11th centuries. They were educational establishments dedicated to training the minds of young men for their chosen profession in life, and also a place of research.1 They began as a collection of schools, often little 1

In the English speaking world, women were not permitted to graduate from universities until 1920—less than 100 years ago—although they were allowed to

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more than hired rooms in a larger building, and it was these straggling collectives that would gradually come to attain the status of a universitas or corporation. While originally spontaneous and organic, lacking governance and regulation, they would grow to be influential institutions, and thus come to be placed under the authority of Popes and Kings.2 They can be likened to a medieval guild of scholars. In Paris, the masters or teachers formed the guild; in Bologna, the model was the opposite, and saw the students come to control the university in order to safeguard their educational outcomes, and, I argue, their well-being. The mission of the medieval university was to impart knowledge through the scholastic method. The aim was that, in due course, the student would become the scholar, to enter the church as priest or clerk, or to become an administrator in some emerging secular field; to assume a profession as a lawyer or doctor; or to establish themselves as a master in their chosen field of study and teach the next generation of eager young men, while continuing their own research. Roger Bacon was one such who taught at Paris and Oxford, as well as conducting his own scientific experiments.3 The extent to which “religion, education and government were very closely connected in the Middle Ages” is not in dispute here, but what is argued is the extent to which spiritual care of the students was undertaken. This chapter investigates the essential well-being of students in the universities in the Middle Ages, focusing on Bologna and Paris as the two oldest institutions and also the most diverse in origins. It is shown that the two universities are also dissimilar in the sense of responsibility they demonstrate toward their students and the students’ well-being in the 12th and 13th centuries. In Paris, a more established central authority, in the form of royalty and the papacy, would quickly ensure that students were provided with an educational environment that was conducive to positive outcomes, both immediate and long-term. In Bologna, a more egalitarian and diverse authority (or group of powers)—the communes—would see an entirely attend lectures. The first woman to obtain a doctorate—in law—was a Spanish woman, Juliana Morell in the early 17th century and then the next was in the 18th century. 2 Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 17-18. 3 http://www.britannica.com/biography/Roger-Bacon

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different response required on the part of the students. In taking into consideration the socio-cultural backgrounds of the university students, their programmes of study and their responses to the threats to their vocational aims, it is seen that they fought vigorously for their rights. Alan B. Cobban argues that “medieval students had, for the most part, a highly utilitarian view of the university as an institution of direct community relevance”.4 He further finds that medieval students did not rail against the existing order of things, but sought instead to wage their battles in the aim of winning “greater student participation in university structures”.5 While it is true that the medieval university student protests and boycotts were not the “explosive outgrowth of pent-up antiestablishment feelings”, when we examine more closely the ideals behind the student movements, we see an awareness on the part of the students that their future, as well as their present existence, depended on subverting the existing model of student care. I will further argue that students at one university, in Bologna, needed to transform the “existing order of things” for their own personal well-being.6 The governance models for the universities of Paris and Bologna must be understood against the backdrop of the larger socio-political paradigm. In Italy, with its city states and its communes, foreign students came to be excluded and marginalised. They retaliated, seeking a more equitable distribution of power, and they would come to achieve this, not through barricades and burnings, but through boycotts and fines. It will be shown that this model was not only in response to the prevailing socio-political model, but was also due to the unique socio-cultural background of the student body. Students at Bologna were older, men of substance, often with an immediate background of working within the church.7 Thus they were more likely to be aware of their needs and agitate for their rights. In Paris, the governance model was necessarily different, dictated by the curriculum, the masters and the students. In the 13th century, a closer relationship on the part of the university with both the king, Philippe 4

Alan B. Cobban, “Student Power in the Middle Ages”, History Today, 30.2 (1980), http://www.historytoday.com/alan-b-cobban/student-power-middle-ages 5 Ibid. 6 Well-being is defined by the World Health Organisation as not just an absence of illness or disease, but a holistic state encompassing mental, physical and social health factors. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs220/en/ 7 Cobban, “Student Power in the Middle Ages”.

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Augustus, and the Popes in Rome, due to the prevalence of theology being taught at Paris, saw a different structure emerge. The charters of independence granted to the universitas would give the masters the power to negotiate reasonable rents for both their classrooms and their living accommodations. Here we see the masters acting not only in their own best interests but in the interests of the well-being of their students as well. It will be shown that just as each university—Bologna, Paris and Oxford—has a different origin story and different governance models, so too is it seen that there were different factors at play in the way they protected their students and the ways the students were forced to protect themselves. In Bologna, for example, recognising the inability, apathy or simple lack of awareness on the part of the religious and secular authorities of the challenges faced by the students, the students themselves took up the mantle of self-protection, devising their own rules and regulations. In this way it is seen that the students at the University of Bologna demonstrate their awareness of the importance of certain basic needs being met before they could achieve their quest for a higher education. The mission of the medieval university was to produce scholars. In response to the changing society of the High Middle Ages, greater or higher education was required by those men who wished to become administrators within the Roman church. Other opportunities arose in larger towns and cities for secular clerks, lawyers and physicians.8 Scott writes: The scholastic method was state-of-the-art in Europe for both teaching and research, thus, these missions or ideals fused … the medieval university teaching mission embodied the undergraduate liberal education and graduate (professional) education missions.9

The mission of the medieval university was to impart knowledge through the scholastic method. The aim was that, in due course, the student would become the scholar, to enter the church as priest or clerk, or to become an administrator in some emerging secular field, to assume a profession as a lawyer or doctor, or to establish themselves as a master in their chosen field of study and teach the next generation of eager young men, while 8

John C. Scott, “The Mission of the University: Medieval to Postmodern Transformations”, The Journal of Higher Education, 77.1 (2006): 4-6. 9 Scott, “The Mission of the University”, 4.

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continuing their own research. Roger Bacon was one such who taught at Paris and Oxford, as well as conducting his own scientific experiments.10

Masters in the Middle Ages Teachers or masters at a medieval university were often renowned, and students who wished to study under a particular master would seek them out, sometimes travelling vast distances to do so. Abelard assures us that his little school at Corbeil was preferred by many to that of his own former master, William of Champeaux: “Thus it came about that my teaching won such strength and authority that even those who before had clung most vehemently to my former master, and most bitterly attacked my doctrines, now flocked to my school”.11 Abelard was to increase further his flock when he took up lecturing on theology as well as philosophy: I set about completing the glosses on Ezekiel which I had begun at Laon. These proved so satisfactory to all who read them that they came to believe me no less adept in lecturing on theology than I had proved myself to be in the field of philosophy. Thus my school was notably increased in size by reason of my lectures on subjects of both these kinds, and the amount of financial profit as well as glory which it brought me cannot be concealed from you…

In contrast to the modern university, where tutors can often be the first point of contact for a student at risk or a struggling student, the masters in the medieval universities were more remote and removed from the everyday lives of their students. The seven liberal arts were the basis of education in the early medieval universities. Grammar, rhetoric and logic were grouped together as the trivium, while the remaining four made up the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. Of the first group, logic was the most highly regarded, with grammar and rhetoric relegated to a lesser standing. The masters would provide the lectures, ordinary and extraordinary, for which the students paid. According to Odofrodus, master of canon law at Bologna, it became unfeasible for him to offer the extraordinary lectures and so he intended to cease this practice the following year as “students 10 11

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Roger-Bacon http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/abelard-histcal.asp

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are not good payers, wishing to learn but not to pay, as the saying is: All desire to know but none to pay the price”.12 Odofrodus’ acknowledgement that there were students who did indeed wish to learn, although seemingly reluctant to pay for their education, appears in contrast to other masters, whose letters and writings reveal an almost existential despair at the youth of the day. Egbert of Liège, writing in the 11th century, so in the age of the Cathedral schools and not the universities, explains: Scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before. Indeed, cleverness is shunned at home and abroad. What does reading offer to pupils except tears? It is rare, worthless when it is offered for sale, and devoid of wit.13

The writings of such masters as Egbert of Liège give valuable insights into the nature of the relations between the masters and their students. Jacques de Vitry, 13th century bishop and theologian, gives further glimpses into the diverse nature of student motivations: Some studied merely to acquire knowledge, which is curiosity; others to acquire fame, which is vanity; others still for the sake of gain, which is cupidity and the vice of simony. Very few studied for their own edification, or that of others. They wrangled and disputed not merely about the various sects or about some discussions; but the differences between the countries also caused dissensions, hatreds and virulent animosities among them and they impudently uttered all kinds of affronts and insults against one another.14 12

Paris, Biblioteque Nationale, MS. Lat. 448, f. 102, cited in C. H. Haskins, The Rise of Universities (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1923), 44. 13 Egbert of Liège, The Well-Laden Ship, translated by Robert Gary Babcock (Harvard University Press, 2013), http://www.medievalists.net/2015/09/07/thelong-history-of-teachers-complaining-about-students/ 14 The “differences between the countries” refers to the practice of dividing the student population into nations, based on the country or place of origin of the student. At the University of Paris there were originally four, and later five, nations: the French, the Normans, the Picards and the English, joined by the Allemagnes. At the University of Oxford there were two nations, the australes, from south of the river Trent, and the boreales, from the north of England and Scotland. At the University of Bologna there existed some 14 nations, including those from various regions in France, Germany and Spain, as well as Italian regions and neighbouring countries such as Hungary.

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If we translate student-centred care or well-being into a medieval world, we see a marked lack of concern in the writings of the masters about the spiritual growth of the students, although there is genuine despair over the lack of study, the excessive drinking and carousing and the waste of opportunities. This does not translate or extend to concern for their spiritual welfare though. In 14th century Bologna, Alvaro Pelayo writes: They attend classes but make no effort to learn anything … The expense money which they have from their parents or churches they spend in taverns, conviviality, games and other superfluities, and so they return home empty, without knowledge, conscience, or money.15

In a world where everyone was Christian and paid allegiance to Rome, and with the growing importance of the theological schools within the emerging institutions, it can be considered surprising that while the masters bemoan the lack of education, and the lack of willingness to study, they appear unconcerned with the spiritual nourishment of the students. This is even more remarkable when it is considered that the teaching model in the Middle Ages was that of the Instructor/pupil, where “scholars tried to summarize the state of knowledge in their area of expertise”.16 The scholastic method employed by the masters saw human reason as subordinate to biblical truth. There is one letter from a father to his son which leaves no doubt as to the concern of a master toward his errant pupil. A master had written to a student’s father, advising him that “while the young man is doing well in his studies, he is just a trifle wild and would be helped by judicious admonition”.17 Interestingly, this would be illegal today or certainly against policy in a modern university, due to issues of privacy; however, in the Middle Ages it was not considered a problem. Here I would argue that we see a genuine concern for the student, for his well-being, both social and intellectual. It is a personal letter, respectful and well-meaning in its intent, and indicating a relationship between the master and pupil that

http://www.medievalists.net/2015/09/07/the-long-history-of-teachers-complainingabout-students/ 15 http://www.medievalists.net/2015/09/07/the-long-history-of-teachers-complainingabout-students/ 16 George M. Bodner, et al, “Cooperative Learning: An Alternative to Teaching at a Medieval University”, Australian Science Teachers Journal, 43 (1997): 2. 17 C. H. Haskins, “The Life of Medieval Students as Illustrated by their Letters”, The American Historical Review 3.2 (1898): 214.

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transcends that of our traditional understanding of such a model. How the young man may have felt when he discovered his degenerate lifestyle had been revealed to his father is regrettably not recorded. Such concern for the well-being of a student is unseen in the arrogant musings and memoires of an Abelard, or the general condemnation of the university student by Jacques de Vitry. Abelard’s concern is only with how many students he has, so as to compare favourably with his rival masters. He expresses no pleasure in teaching: for him it is merely a series of rightly deserved opportunities to defeat his critics and confound his enemies, of whom, unsurprisingly, there were many. There are other examples of an unusual relationship between a master, a parent and a student from Cambridge: one writes that he hopes his father will receive his master on a visit over Christmas for two or three days. This appears to indicate a friendship that has sprung up between the pupil and the master. If there had been a prior connection between the pupil’s family and the master, the wording of the invitation would have been different: Mon tres doulz pere, sauve votre grace il nest pas vray ce que vous mavez certifiee par votre lettre, comme mon tres honeuree maistre vous dira plus plainement a Noel quar il venra avecque moy pour sojourner et prendre desduit avec vous par deux jours ou trois, sil vous plaist. 18

Lastly, another indication of a more caring and personal relationship is to be found in a letter of a professor of law at Orléans, who took the time to write the father of a pupil, assuring him that “while no doubt the man’s son G. was one of a crowd that had sung a ribald song on an organ, the matter was of no importance, as the young man’s general record was good and he was making excellent progress in law”.19 While a previous acquaintance between the professor and the concerned parent cannot be dismissed, it remains evident that here were two people who cared for the young man and his future prospects.

18

British Museum, Harleian MS. 3988, f.45v. Translation: “My very kind father, save your grace, it is not true what you have certified to me in your letter, as my very honourable master will tell you more plainly at Christmas, when he comes with me in order to sojourn and take pleasure with you for two or three days, if you please”. 19 Haskins, “The Life of Medieval Students”, 227.

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Isolated examples of a close and compassionate relationship between masters and their students do not come close to a modern understanding of what would be considered the proper facilitation of student well-being. The prevailing model is that of the medieval scholastic framework, where intellectual instruction and exhortation to study hard(er) have not yet given away to an awareness of the individual and their rights. Turning now to the student experience, it is seen that some precursor to the humanist stance is preferred by the students at Bologna over the prevailing traditions.

Students in the Middle Ages Primum carmen scolarium est petition expensarum, nec umquam erit epistola que non requirit argentum.20 Students have long been objects of despair, as demonstrated above, to their masters and parents alike. So who was looking after them when they were at university? Who was protecting their rights and ensuring their responsibilities were met? Who was caring for their well-being? Some students would commence their university study from the age of 14, having been sent to live in Oxford or Cambridge and required to manage their own time, their studies, their income and expenses. It cannot be considered surprising that much of the information we have about student life, contained in letters home, details the immediate necessity of the recipient of the letter sending funds to the writer of the letter! There was a series of form letters that might be used, acquired, or a scribe paid to write the obligatory epistle home, which included “reports of his conduct” as well as “statements of his progress”. The letters themselves reveal the concern that fathers held for their sons: that they would study hard and gain their degree in order to gain suitable employment. While the money was forthcoming, so too were the exhortations to study hard, and to be more moderate. It is also evident from the responses of some fathers that they were not willing to continue supporting their sons indefinitely, nor could they be relied on for additional funds every time they were asked. 21 It would be interesting to know how many students resembled Chaucer’s Clerk, with his love of 20

“A student’s first song is a demand for money and there will never be a letter which does not ask for cash”. Buoncompagno, Antiqua Rhetorica, in MS. Lat. 8654, f14v, cited in Haskins, “The Life of Medieval Students”, 209. 21 Haskins, “The Life of Medieval Students”, 216-28.

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learning and his constant poverty as he spends all his money on books. This vision of the poor but highly respected clerk stands in direct contrast to those equally romantic depictions of students to be found in the Carmina Burana, a collection of poems dating from the 11th and 12th centuries.22 These poems of love and lust conjure up visions of the student who, if not hard working, then is certainly hard drinking, and spends all his time in taverns with pretty girls. They defraud their master of their due salaries, although they are able to pay.23 Relations between the masters and their students have been shown above to be complex, with marked disdain evident on the part of the masters in much of their writing about the students. But to what extent was the disdain reciprocated? At the University of Bologna, students demonstrated not only their disdain, but also their determination to circumvent the disadvantageous situation in which they found themselves. They identified their immediate needs as being the right to a good education, in a safe learning environment, and worked collectively to achieve these goals. As the prestige of the university at Bologna grew, students came from further afield to study. They came from other towns and cities in Italy and from neighbouring countries.24 As such, they were vulnerable in the eyes of unscrupulous townspeople. As has been shown above, students haven’t really changed that much in the past six to eight hundred years—some were studious, some were lazy, some really didn’t belong there and some drank too much. Physical altercations between students of the university and the townspeople, merchants and tradespeople, victuallers and booksellers, are referred to as Town and Gown conflicts, the students being the “gowned ones”. Coronial rolls from the university towns demonstrate that they occurred frequently and that both sides could be equally at fault; that is, they were not always caused by students who drank too much and ran amok. The rolls indicate that many quarrels arose over financial issues as well, as the townspeople tried to relieve the students of as much of their money as possible.

22

http://tylatin.org/extras/index.html Alvaro Pelayo, “The Plaint of the Church”, in The Middle Ages, Vol. 1: Sources of Medieval History, 5th ed. (1992): 296-97, https://wp.cune.edu/matthewphillips/2012/11/29/medieval-university-students/ 24 Ibid. 23

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The first student guilds occurred in the 12th century in Bologna— because students identified the need to protect their own interests against the townspeople, who provided food and lodging to the students, and who appear to have been tempted to inflate their prices at times to take advantage of the supposed well-heeled, silver spooned students. The student guilds were run by a rector (one who governs) who held a wide range of powers including the right to suspend attendance at lectures and to migrate to another town. The right to suspend attendance at lectures was only enforced if the master in question was not proving suitable, either skipping lectures, finishing early, starting late or not sticking to the curriculum. The master must take an oath, vowing adherence to the student-rector and could not leave, or threaten to leave the city, even for a matter of days without permission from both his students and the rector.25 Additionally, in Bologna, it was the students themselves who enforced the rules governing their own behaviour as well. In the case of the student guilds of Bologna of the 12th and 13th centuries, we see that recognition and determination to promote both the rights and the responsibilities of the students themselves—this is a student-led awareness, evaluation and summation that the negative aspects of student life were outweighing the positive, both short and long-term. Migration to another town was a last resort, and yet it happened with some frequency. At Bologna, in 1222, the students migrated to Padua in protest of what they saw as unfair conditions. It appears initially as though this opportunity for a tabula rasa was unsuccessful when it is seen that just six years later the students again moved from Padua to Vercelli.26 Excerpts from the agreement between the commune of Vercelli and the students of Padua demonstrate not only the power that the students wielded but also give an insight into the conditions they were experiencing, or their quality of life: The Podesta of Vercelli … will give to the scholars … 500 of the best houses … and more if necessary … the rent of the better houses will not exceed 19 librae papienses and the rent of the houses should be fixed by two scholars and two citizens. … Also that the Commune of Vercelli 25

Ian P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100–1330 (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 90. 26 http://www.britannica.com/topic/University-of-Padua

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In order to attract the students, of whom there were more than there were masters, and who presumably had good disposable incomes, the Commune of Vercelli was capping rents, preventing excessive mark-ups on food and drink and also paying the masters to teach. Although the student-led guilds did not survive past the 14th century in Bologna, it is seen here that for a short period of time there was an acknowledgement and an awareness of what was necessary for the ongoing well-being of the students, even if it was only by the students themselves. Like all guilds, it was “a mutual benefit society designed to give its members protection under city law and to provide a measure of defence against hostile parties”.28 Social and ethical competencies are a necessity in the ultimate goal of education, according to Jonathan Cohen, who promotes the use of pedagogy that is informed by social-emotional and ethical learning.29 The learning climate must be free from obstruction, from petty politics, whether religious, secular or between the two, and lastly from price gouging. In order to pursue their academic education, the students at Bologna were forced to confront various social and ethical issues, in order to improve the quality of their lives, both in the immediate sense and in order to secure their future well-being. This is their subjective well-being: that is, the way they experience the quality of their lives, and quality in their lives. Subjective well-being encompasses three different aspects: cognitive evaluations of one’s life, positive emotions (joy, pride), and negative ones (pain, anger, worry). While these aspects of subjective well-being have different determinants, in all cases these determinants go well beyond people’s income and material condition. All these aspects of subjective 27

Helene Wieruszowski, The Medieval University: Masters, Students, Learning (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1966), 179-80. 28 Alan. B Cobban, “Student Power in the Middle Ages”. 29 Jonathan Cohen, “Social, Emotional, Ethical, and Academic Education: Creating a Climate for Learning, Participation in Democracy, and Wellbeing”, Harvard Educational Review 76.2 (2006): 201-37.

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well-being should be measured separately to derive a more comprehensive measure of people’s quality of life and to allow a better understanding of its determinants.30 And so it is seen that in the case of the medieval student at Bologna, subjective well-being was increased and stabilised by the formation of guilds, for financial protection (against the townspeople intent on healthier before-tax profits), and for social protection (again, the townspeople who attempted to charge exorbitant rents for substandard accommodation in overcrowded hostels). Lastly there was an ethical awareness regarding the responsibilities of the masters to provide consistent teaching and learning.

Student Life in Paris Student guilds in Paris never achieved the status and power of those at Bologna, although interestingly the range of issues was similar to those at Bologna: overpriced and overcrowded accommodation and disinterested masters.31 The average student at Paris, though, differed markedly in their social background; they were usually undertaking their first, and usually their only degree, the Bachelor of Arts, and thus were less likely than their Bolognese counterparts to rail against the “hierarchical assumptions upon which the university was built and to acquiesce, albeit with the reluctance of youth, in the disciplinary code imposed by the masters’ guilds”.32 There was also less need in Paris for the student-led guilds of Bologna. The masters at Paris, justly renowned for their teaching in the arts and theology, were usually not from Paris itself, and so needed, as much as the students did, to band together to protect themselves and their interests. The first royal charter of 1200 demonstrates that instead of working to reduce the rights of the students, as happened in Bologna, the masters in Paris went on strike to protest against the mistreatment of a number of foreign students. The charter of Philippe Augustus grants the students the privileges of the clergy and this meant that any student alleged to have 30

OECD, OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Wellbeing (OECD Publishing, 2013), 21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264191655-en 31 Wei, Intellectual Culture, 91. 32 Cobban, “Student Power in the Middle Ages”, History Today, 30.2, February 1980, http://www.medievalists.net/2015/09/07/the-long-history-of-teachers-complainingabout-students/

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committed an offence or crime would stand before an ecclesiastical court and not a civil one.33 The students at the University of Paris now shared the same rights and privileges as their masters, who were usually members of the clergy and so had always had this right. The rights and responsibilities of the students of Paris are further outlined in the statutes of the university, originally published in 1215: Arts students usually became bachelors at the age of about eighteen or nineteen.34 The statutes allowed those with newly conferred degrees to celebrate, but curiously drinking was not permitted. Lastly, charitable giving was strongly encouraged and the rules for observances at funerals, where a student or master had died, were also referenced.35 These last two statutes give clear indication of the importance of religion and religious observance in the life of a student at the University of Paris and enable the guild of scholars to take its place among the urban guilds, who promoted strong religious observances amongst their members. Lastly there is the 1231 statute of Gregory IX, Parens Scientiarum, which further confirmed the rights and responsibilities of both the masters and the students: their right to self-regulate their lecture schedules, living arrangements and most importantly, the right to suspend lectures in the case of damages to person or property. Additionally, it emphasised the way the university worked in partnership with the church to train and provide men for a life of preaching.

Conclusion The aim of this chapter has been to examine the seeds of diversity between the two earliest universities in Western Europe, and the way this diversity of origins contributed to the emerging concept of self-worth and wellbeing. Universities in Western Europe were, first and foremost, institutions where young men came to study in order to succeed in their chosen profession, whether this was in the church, or teaching, medicine, theology or the law. Universities were originally self-regulating, and if the statutes 33

Ian P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100–1330 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 92. 34 Gordon Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: An Institutional and Intellectual History (R. E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1975), 54-55 35 Hastings Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 300.

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are to be believed, this was not done effectively. An investigation into the essential well-being of students in Paris and Bologna, the two oldest universities in the West, shows that not only are they very diverse in origins, missions and curriculum, but the sense of responsibility they demonstrate toward their students and their students’ well-being in the late 12th and 13th centuries was also disparate. At the University of Bologna, it is understood that the student engagement was based on mature age values of self-worth and recognition of coeducational needs, in addition to the study of canon law, which was paramount in Bologna. Students took control of their education, establishing their rights and limiting those of the townspeople, who sought to take advantage of the students by raising prices and generally being uncooperative. The students at Bologna have been shown to have transformed the “existing order of things” for the betterment of their studies, and their vocation, and therefore their own well-being. The masters of the universities, through their writings, generally reveal themselves to be remote from the everyday concerns of the students as well, taking the time to bemoan the students’ lack of willingness to learn, or to pay for their lectures, but they express no concern over the spiritual welfare of the students. There were some exceptions, where the masters demonstrate some sympathy with an individual, but overall the model is that of an authoritarian figure who fails to connect at an individual level. However, closer examination of the stance of the masters reveals a vested interest in a more regulated and stable environment for the students. At the University of Paris, with its different origins, mission, and curriculum, and its younger cohort of students, the requirement for greater regulation to ensure educational outcomes and vocational success was originally similar to that of Bologna, and yet dealt with in different ways. The younger students were less able to challenge the power of the masters’ guilds. They were to be involved instead in the efforts of the masters to control and protect their own power and interests. Through the study of the earliest royal charters, the statutes and the bull Parens Scientiarum, it is seen that those in authority, the king, Philippe Augustus and Pope Gregory IX, granted to the masters and students the right to self-regulate and to suspend lectures in the case of damages to property or person. These rights and responsibilities were not granted to the students at Bologna. Instead they had to fight for them, recognising their need for their educational and vocational outcomes to be upheld. In this way, the students and masters at

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the two earliest universities in the West created pathways and opportunities still being utilised today, where students, tutors, lecturers, professors and university administrators must work together to ensure the continued wellbeing of their students, in order to achieve the best educational and vocational outcomes.

Select Bibliography Bodner, George M. “Cooperative Learning: An Alternative to Teaching at a Medieval University”. Australian Science Teachers Journal 43 (1997): 1-16. Byrd, Michael D. “Back to the Future for Higher Education: Medieval Universities”. Internet and Higher Education 4 (2001): 1-7. Cohen, Jonathan. “Social, Emotional, Ethical, and Academic Education: Creating a Climate for Learning, Participation in Democracy, and Wellbeing”. Harvard Educational Review 76.2 (2006): 201-37. Geuna, Aldo. “The Internationalisation of European Universities: A Return to Medieval Roots”. Minerva 36.3 (1998): 253-70. Harris, B. F., ed. The Idea of a University: A Series of Nine Lectures. Macquarie University: School of History, Philosophy and Politics, 1983. Haskins, C. H. “The Life of Medieval Students as Illustrated by their Letters”. The American Historical Review 3.2 (1898): 203-29. —. The Rise of Universities. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1923. —. The Renaissance of the 12th Century. New York, NY: Meridian Books, 1957; orig. 1927. Kibre, Pearl. The Nations in the Medieval Universities. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1948. Leff, Gordon. Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: An Institutional and Intellectual History. New York, NY: Wiley, 1968. Myers, Jane E. and Thomas J. Sweeney. “Wellness Counselling: The Evidence Base for Practice”. Journal of Counselling and Development 86.4 (2008): 482-93. Orme, Nicholas. Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Renaissance England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Rashdall, Hastings. The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895. Scott, John C. “The Mission of the University: Medieval to Postmodern Transformations”. The Journal of Higher Education 77.1 (2006): 1-38.

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Waddell, Helen. The Wandering Scholars. London: Constable, 1954. —. Peter Abelard. Fontana Books, London and Glasgow, 1958. Wei, Ian P., Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100–1330. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Wieruszowski, Helene. The Medieval University: Masters, Students, Learning. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1966.



CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Mario Baghos was formerly Lecturer in Church History at St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College (Sydney College of Divinity). He holds a PhD in Studies in Religion from the University of Sydney and is a member of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies and the International Association of Patristic Studies (Paris). He research interests include ancient and modern representations of Christian saints, patristic eschatology and the city of Constantinople. He is the cofounder of The Australian Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Sydney). Elizabeth Waldron Barnett leads Staff Synergy & Supervision and Learning & Theological Engagement with Victorian Council for Christian Education. She regularly teaches on Children and families ministry, Biblical studies and Child Theology, and is currently completing a PhD in New Testament, working on the constructs of spiritual maturity in the Pauline Corpus. Dr. Kirsty Beilharz is the Director of Music Engagement at HammondCare and Visiting Fellow (Music) at the University of Edinburgh UK, applying music research in the context of dementia and palliative care. A recognised composer and musician, Kirsty was formerly Professor of Music and Interaction Design at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Digital Media Director at the University of Sydney. Murray Bingham is Managing Partner at Robertson and Chang, a management consulting firm specialising in the design and implementation of practical learning solutions to complex business challenges. He has degrees in Aeronautical Engineering and Theology and works with a broad range of non-profit, government and corporate organisations around Australia.



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Dr. Michele Connolly is a Sister of St Joseph of Lochinvar, NSW. She is a Lecturer in Biblical Studies at Catholic Institute of Sydney, Strathfield, where she has also served as Academic Dean. She regularly teaches Scripture at Catholic renewal centres and programs in the Sydney region. She is a member of the Australian Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue. Protopresbyter Dr. Doru Costache lectures in Patristic Studies, formerly at St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College, and now at St Cyril’s Coptic Orthodox Theological College (Sydney). He is a member of the scientific board of the Institute for Transdisciplinary Studies in Science, Spirituality and Society (Bucharest) and the International Association of Patristic Studies (Paris). He was the main convenor of the seven St Andrew’s Patristic Symposia (2009-2016), and a participant in the research programme Science and Orthodoxy around the World (Athens). He is the co-founder of The Australian Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Sydney). Reverend Professor Darren Cronshaw serves as Head of Research and Professor of Missional Leadership at the Australian College of Ministries at Sydney College of Divinity, and Mission Catalyst - Researcher at Baptist Union of Victoria, Australia. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at Whitley College at the University of Divinity, Adjunct Professor of the Swinburne Leadership Institute, Australia and Pastor of AuburnLife Baptist Church. Rev Newton Daddow is a Baptist pastor currently serving full-time as coordinator of Chaplaincy at Swinburne University, which includes a team of Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Protestant chaplains based in Swinburne’s MultiFaith Facility. Newton serves on the Council for Christians and Jews Victoria. He is a member of the Baptist World Alliance Commission on Interfaith Relations. Dr. Yvette Debergue has a PhD in Medieval History from the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney. She teaches medieval and church history at several universities and private colleges in Sydney, specialising in heresy, witchcraft, and gothic architecture. Yvette is the co-editor, with James Harrison, of Teaching Theology in the Age of Technology (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015) and also co-edited, with Stephen Smith, Reflections on Leading the People of God (UWS Publishing, 2015).



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Fr Bruce Duncan is Director of the Yarra Institute for Religion and Social Policy and coordinates social justice studies for Yarra Theological Union. He has been a consultant on Catholic social teaching and social policy at Catholic Social Services Victoria and a member of the Melbourne Catholic Commission for Justice, Development and Peace. Prof. James R. Harrison is Research Director at the Sydney College of Divinity and an Honorary Associate of Macquarie University’s Ancient History Department. Formerly he was Head of Theology at Wesley Institute (now Excelsia College) from 2002-2012, teaching New Testament and Greek. Dr. Neil Holm taught Aboriginal teachers in the Northern Territory. He was Director of International House, a residential college at the University of Queensland. He edited the Journal of Christian Education. He lectured in Education Studies and Christian Formation at Macquarie Christian Studies Institute. He was Director of Coursework at Sydney College of Divinity. Currently he is Leader of Wellspring Community, a dispersed ecumenical community in Australia. Rev. Dr. Peter Laughlin is Head of Theology and Dean of the Alliance Institute for Mission, a centre for excellence in Intercultural Studies at the Australian College of Ministries (Sydney College of Divinity). An ordained minister with the Christian and Missionary Alliance of Australia, he currently serves as Chairman of its National Board. Dr. Wendy Mayer, formerly Research Fellow in the Centre for Early Christian Studies at Australian Catholic University, has recently taken up the position of Associate Dean of Research at Australian Lutheran College (University of Divinity). She is also a Research Fellow in the Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies at University of South Africa. Rev. Assoc. Prof. David McEwan is the Academic Dean and the Associate Professor of Theology and Pastoral Theology at Nazarene Theological College, Brisbane (Sydney College of Divinity). He is an Honorary Associate Professor in Studies in Religion at the University of Queensland, Fellow of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre and Fellow of the Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research.



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Rabbi Fred Morgan is Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at Australian Catholic University, researching Judaism and interfaith dialogue. He is Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Beth Israel Melbourne, a President of the Council for Christians and Jews Victoria and Coordinator of The Grass Roots Dialogue project. Dr. Stephen Smith is the Principal and CEO of the Australian College of Ministries. He previously served as Director of Ministry Health for Churches of Christ in NSW plus Director of CareWorks NSW. He holds doctorates in both Organisational Development and Health Science and has consulted widely in the area of leadership development with a broad range of non-profit, government and corporate organisations. Dr. Robert Tilley lectures in Biblical Studies at the Catholic Institute of Sydney and in the field of theology and literature at the Aquinas Academy, Sydney. He is currently working on a book tentatively titled Mary the Temple of Scripture.