Theos and Polis: Political Theology as Discernment 9789042950238, 9789042950245, 9042950234

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THEOS AND POLIS POLITICAL THEOLOGY AS DISCERNMENT STEPHAN VAN ERP – JACQUES HAERS

THEOS AND POLIS POLITICAL THEOLOGY AS DISCERNMENT

BIBLIOTHECA EPHEMERIDUM THEOLOGICARUM LOVANIENSIUM

EDITED BY THE BOARD OF EPHEMERIDES THEOLOGICAE LOVANIENSES

Louis-Léon Christians – Henri Derroitte – Wim François – Éric Gaziaux Joris Geldhof – Arnaud Join-Lambert – Johan Leemans Olivier Riaudel – Matthieu Richelle (secretary) Joseph Verheyden (general editor)

EDITORIAL STAFF

Rita Corstjens – Claire Timmermans

UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE

KU LEUVEN LEUVEN

BIBLIOTHECA EPHEMERIDUM THEOLOGICARUM LOVANIENSIUM CCCXXXI

THEOS AND POLIS POLITICAL THEOLOGY AS DISCERNMENT

EDITED BY

STEPHAN VAN ERP – JACQUES HAERS

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2023

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-429-5023-8 eISBN 978-90-429-5024-5 D/2023/0602/39 All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated data file or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers. © 2023 – Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Stephan van Erp – Jacques Haers (KU Leuven) Theos and Polis: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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I. UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL THEOLOGY AS DISCERNMENT

Andrew PREVOT (Boston College) The Concept of the Mystical-Political: Thoughts on Hierarchy, Sovereignty, Democracy, and Holiness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Rowan WILLIAMS (University of Cambridge) Justice, Distance, and Love: What Would Be a Contemplative Stance in Politics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Colby DICKINSON (Loyola University Chicago) Mystical Theology without Sovereignty: Toward an Apophatic Political Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Jacques HAERS (KU Leuven) Out of Gethsemane: An Essay on Theology as Common Apostolic Discernment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Cyril ORJI (University of Dayton) Can Ubuntu Lead to a Sustainable Political Development in Africa? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Stephan VAN ERP – Wilibaldus GAUT (KU Leuven) The Political Discernment of the Church: Developments towards a Catholic Political Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Anthony J. GODZIEBA (Villanova University) Polis, Architecture, and Signals of Transcendence: Notes for a Political Theology of Material Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Dennis T. GONZALEZ (St. Vincent School of Theology, Quezon City) Political Theology and a Messianic Option in Calamitous Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

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II. DISCERNING POLITICAL THEOLOGY IN THE FACE OF TRAUMA AND CONFLICT

Carlos MENDOZA-ÁLVAREZ (Boston College) Violence, Vulnerability, and Resistances: Discernment to Decolonise Theology in Times of Systemic War . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Judith GRUBER (KU Leuven) Where Death Is the Currency of Life: Political Theology in the Wake of Trauma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Marie BAIRD (Duquesne University) “Don’t Kill Me!”: The Face as the Nexus between the Political and the Theological . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Isabella GUANZINI (Katholische Privatuniversität Linz) Geo-Aesthetics and the Poetics of Relations: Rethinking Migration with Édouard Glissant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Cecilia GONZÁLEZ-ANDRIEU (Loyola Marymount University) “In Glamour We Trust”: The Aesthetics of Deception and the World’s Displaced Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Nontando HADEBE (St. Augustine College of South Africa) “Listen, Your [Sister’s] Blood Is Crying Out to Me from the Ground!”: Calling Churches to Account for Violence against Women in South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 John Gabriel KHALIL (KU Leuven) Christian Political Theology in the Arab World: The Egyptian Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Rachel Joyce Marie O. SANCHEZ (Ateneo de Manila) Slut-Shaming in Philippine Politics and in the Catholic Church: A Feminist Theological Reflection on Leila de Lima and Mary Magdalene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Ruben C. MENDOZA (Ateneo de Manila) The Performance of the Christian Faith under a Populist President: The Case of the Philippine Church under Duterte . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Pauline DIMECH (University of Malta) The Migrant as Locus Theologicus: Theology and Education in Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

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Theo L. HETTEMA (Protestant Theological University, Amsterdam) A Hermeneutics of Discernment: The Case of the Bethel Church Asylum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 III. CONVERSING WITH POLITICAL THEOLOGIANS

Philip John Paul GONZALES (St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth) Apocalyptic Spaces and the Illegitimacy of Political Theology: Schmitt, Agamben, and Peterson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 Ana PETRACHE (Accademia di Romania, Roma) Eschaton’s Witnesses: The Political Theology of Erik Peterson 329 Philip J. ROSSI (Marquette University) Enmity, the Reign of God, and the Grace of Reconciliation: Prolegomena to the Political Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr . 345 David Mark DUNNING (Dublin City University) Adam and Christ in Bonhoeffer: Analogia Relationis, the Imago Dei, and the Body Politic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 Edward DUNAR (Albertus Magnus College, New Haven, CT) Ecclesial Discernment and Action in Lonergan’s Theology . . . 369 David HORSTKOETTER (Carroll University) Uniting Rowan Williams’s Non-Competition Theo-Politics and Johann Baptist Metz’s Interruptive Theo-Politics: A Fundamental Political Theology of Grace and Opposition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 Isabella BRUCKNER (Pontificio Ateneo Sant’Anselmo, Roma) “Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution”: Political Spirituality between Practice and Event Following the Detours of Michel de Certeau 395 Patrick Ryan COOPER (Saint Martin’s University) Cultural Critics in a Post-Christian or Apocalyptic Age: The Complicated Legacy of Ivan Illich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409 Joyce Ann KONIGSBURG (DePaul University) Navigating Pluralism in Political Theology: Discernment from Interreligious Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 Elizabeth PYNE (Mercyhurst University) Epilogue: Redeeming Vulnerability? Questions for Political Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

INDEX OF NAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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THEOS AND POLIS INTRODUCTION

The twelfth LEST-conference (Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology) took place between 23 and 26 October 2019. The theme was “Theos & Polis: Political Theology as Discernment”. Current global challenges – climate change, extreme poverty, large refugee camps, violence and abuse, failing democracies and the rise of populism – were the starting point for choosing this conference theme. But the choice of the theme was also influenced by the theo-political concerns of people in churches worldwide and of a new generation of students in theology: How to theologically understand and respond to political situations that affect faith communities? How to shape a theology that both responds to local, socio-economic contexts and acknowledges being part of a global movement? How to engage with the politics of synodality as a new task for church and theology today?

I. POLITICAL THEOLOGY TODAY In the Letter to the Colossians, it says: “Here, there is no Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all. Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do” (Col 3,11-13). The author of this text purposely and explicitly phrases the political theology of the Christ-like community. In the Christian ekklèsia there are to be no real boundaries between people, in contrast to the ones in the rest of the world. Instead, its members are called to be compassionate, humble, and forgiving. In a phrase in the first chapter of his letter to the Philippians (Phil 1,27), Paul uses the word politeuesthè, that is: conduct yourselves as members of a political community. The idea that the followers of Christ are to form a community of citizens is also stated in Phil 3,20, where Paul describes them as politeuma en ouranois, citizens of the heavenly commonwealth. Political theology is as old and new as

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the communities that have become and are becoming the church1. Its content has changed throughout the development of tradition within these communities. And its approaches differ along the lines of differentiation in discerning and imitating Christ. Currently, there is a variety of approaches that self-identify as political theology. Together, they form the pursuit of critical inquiry into the different connections between church and world, and faith and politics, including ideas, practices, affects, and histories. As such, political theology is a broad intellectual and rapidly changing field, with participants of a variety of religious and theological traditions, exploring the relationships between their own communities and the political world in which their theologies take shape, and with critical scholars of disciplines other than theology and philosophy. Some political theologians are pursuing the contested legacy of Carl Schmitt, also in this volume, while others are addressing questions of sovereignty and governance and their implicit religious content in theories before and after Schmitt. Another set of approaches in political theology is concerned with theologically informed governance and with theoretical and practical critiques of the secular nation-state, for example through the development of theologies of migration. Yet another set of approaches, sometimes also identified as public theology, presents concrete reflections on the role of religion and specific public policies in modern democracies. These are often approaches that speak out against the privatisation of public life or that position the gospel over against neoliberalism2. In all its variety, political theology is sometimes seen as either advocating an undesired partisanship of the church or representing an equally unwanted questioning of the relationship between church and state. In the last two decades, every form of political theology has been confronted with the question of which discourse should be considered primary, the theological or the political. The predicament described here, with which the church and modern theologians are confronted, suggests that reflection on the theological principles of political theologies is urgently needed. Without it, the church either disappears into the actual world or it is completely located outside this world. In both cases, the church becomes a meaningless entity, and, as Hegel argued, will be replaced by the political state, in certain cases even by its own undertakings. This dilemma – the 1. Cf. S. FROLOW, The Cup Does Not Run Over: Political Theology in the Hebrew Bible, in R.R. RODRÍGUEZ (ed.), T&T Clark Handbook of Political Theology, London, T&T Clark, 2020, 47-60; N. ELLIOTT, Political Theology and the New Testament, ibid., 61-74. 2. V. LLOYD – D. TRUE, What Political Theology Could Be, in Political Theology Network, 26 October 2016, at https://politicaltheology.com/what-political-theology-couldbe-vincent-lloyd-and-david-true/.

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disappearance of church and theology in political realities and therefore also in political theory – has been manifest for quite some time. For example, in the struggle of Catholic thinking in conversation with liberal society, which – since the decades after the French Revolution – has been characterised by the primacy of the political, as John Rawls has argued. The social, moral and philosophical pluralisms in liberal society can therefore, according to him, no longer be reconciled by a metaphysical, let alone theological foundation. The social order is no longer made possible by the concordance between, in Rawls’ terms, “comprehensive doctrines”, but by the formal political procedures that shape an “overlapping consensus” on the basis of political agreement, or, as Jürgen Habermas put it, procedures that constitute a universal pragmatism motivated by a communicative rationality, in which all are called to participate, a rationality furthermore that ultimately does not allow for difference and disagreement. In these procedural proposals, religious, moral, and ideological worldviews play a secondary role at best, if they are not excluded from the start or, paradoxically, in principle. Political reflections within modern theology can be characterised by the struggle with this liberal primacy of the political. Catholic thought confronted with liberal politics has sometimes taken the form of political interference, but the complex and tension-rich history of this struggle is mostly an indication of the need to develop theological reflections on the relationship between church and world in light of the political. This involves a polarising going back and forth between an aversion to the world – or the detachment from the world, the Entweltlichung of the church, proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI – and an identification of church and world. During the interwar period in Central and Southern Europe, the aim, at least for political Catholicism, was the realisation of a Catholic state. This aim was supported by ideas in accord with corporatism, developed by Neo-Thomist philosophers, and characterised by a critical attitude towards both capitalism and communism. However, it sometimes paid the price of a proximity to fascist political movements at the time. With the development of Catholic Social Thought, especially since the encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), the Roman Catholic Church has presented itself, through trial and error, as an important social player in the public domain, also within secular liberal societies. It has generated a dynamic tradition of texts and attitudes in which the social, the ecclesial and the theological are interrogating and transforming one another3. 3. See K.R. HIMES, Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations, Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 22018; A. ROWLANDS, Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times, London, Bloomsbury, 2021.

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Despite its growing reception, also in political philosophy and theory, Catholic Social Thought in the West is now faced with the dilemma described above. In the last century, it has provided theological arguments in conversation with others to address social and ethical issues. However, the more plausible these arguments are deemed to be, the more they seem to have lost their theological content. Not only do positions within Catholic Social Thought suffer from this problem, but so, too, do any theologies that seek to criticise or engage with the political order4. In the years before and after the Second Vatican Council, various religious and ecclesial movements began to be driven by a clear political and practical commitment. An example of what perhaps may be called the church’s political turn is the apostolic work of rapidly growing lay movements, such as Focolare, Communione e Liberazione, or Sant’Egidio. In academic theology, after the new political theology of Johann Baptist Metz and Jürgen Moltmann in the late 1960s, we saw the rise of liberation theology, black theology, public theology, and feminist theology, and more recently of post- and decolonial theologies and queer theology5. A frequently heard argument against political theologies is that the socially and politically engaged movements and theologies after Vatican II have abandoned a metaphysical framework, thereby reducing theology to a secular or ethical project (standing alongside many other secular and ethical projects), sometimes supported by identity-confirming liturgical forms. Such criticisms suggest that political theology is reduced to a set of procedures for social and material transformation, instead of seeking to analyse the political reality of the resurrected Christ in the church and in the world6. Perhaps the advocates of the political theologies of the 1970s and their heirs are partly to blame for this critical reception of political theology. Edward Schillebeeckx stated in 1974 that he had left all metaphysics behind in favour of critical theory and historical method. Be that as it may, it was historical-critical method through which he sought to understand experiences of the salvific reality of Christ in the world, on which he would build his own mystical-political theology. 4. J. FINNIS, A Radical Critique of Catholic Social Teaching, in G.V. BRADLEY (ed.), Catholic Social Teaching: A Volume of Scholarly Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, 548-584. See also: B. PRUSAK, Leave It to the Laity: Catholic Social Teaching, in Commonweal, 8 September 2020, at https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/leave-itlaity. 5. See P. SCOTT – W.T. CAVANAUGH, Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, Malden, MA – Oxford, Wiley Blackwell, 22019. 6. S. VAN ERP, God Becoming Present in the World: Sacramental Foundations of a Theology of Public Life, in ID. – M.G. POULSOM – L. BOEVE (eds.), Grace, Governance and Globalization, London, Bloomsbury, 2017, 13-27.

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If one would want to avoid a de-theologising political theory, or an all too rigid and repressive separation of church and state, the Christological question should form the heart of Christian political theology. The difficulty however of speaking politically about the person of Christ in Chalcedonian terms, is the tendency to present an image according to which the human is swallowed by the divine – and by which human history and its political declines and falls are viewed as external to the economy of salvation. Those who do not want to be troubled by this dilemma could find comfort in Revelation 22, in which it is written that there are no more temples in the Heavenly Jerusalem, because they are no longer needed. If, however, one would want to avoid the presumption to live under the conditions of a Heavenly Jerusalem – a most illusory idea in the age of destructive utopias – the relationship between theology and politics must be fundamentally thematised and critically redefined. This is not only true from the perspective of the political, but equally true from the perspective of church and theology. When pursuing the relativisation and criticism of any universalising idea of liberal democracy, or any political movement claiming to have realised utopia in the here and now, theology simultaneously seeks an understanding of the ongoing and constitutive tension between church and world, in order to foster a discernment that informs or should inform Christian political analyses and attitudes. This brings us back to the communities in Colossae and Philippi, who were called to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel, a manner rooted in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is all and in all. The question then arises how to discern Christ becoming present in political communities and their practices, there and then, and here and now, in our social institutions, our democracies, our states and other political forms of government. If Christ is considered the ruling heart of Christian communities, and therefore, also of the political tasks and responsibilities of these communities in the world, then we need discernment: not only of what our situation is, where suffering and injustice happen, or what or who remains hidden, but also of where Christ becomes present, and how he shares in human poverty and frailty. That sharing could be reconsidered as the reality that informs our political theologies. Christologically spoken, the world already accommodates a governance in the given fact that it is assumed by Christ in its brokenness and ambiguity. This governance dwells in the church as it seeks to represent the true future of the world, in the longing and acting of the people of God. It also dwells in the world, where God’s kingdom is hiddenly present in what longs to be born and wants to be resurrected. To discern this hidden

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presence of Christ in the social order of our institutions and governments, belongs to the central task of political theology today. II. POLITICAL THEOLOGY AS DISCERNMENT The twelfth LEST-conference on political theology aimed to focus on acts of discernment as embodied forms of theology. When attempting to theologically study the meaning and practice of discernment, we were searching beyond a critical theological appreciation of the spiritual practices of discernment, as they have unfolded over the centuries7. We were seeking to explore how discernment can be a theological tool, a practice of fundamental theology as well as an ecclesiogenetic long term perspective, rooted in a solid Trinitarian economy of salvation8. Several features of our contemporary world, as well as ecclesial challenges such as the abuse crisis and the hope for synodal decision processes in the church, urge us to develop theologies that unfold as church building discernment processes9. The military have coined an acronym to describe the challenges of leadership in our contemporary world full of intractable and wicked problems such as posed by the environment, multiple forms of violence and injustice, and racial and gender inequalities: VUCA10. It points to Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity in our world. The ease of unquestioned certainties and undisputed hierarchies has disappeared, as well as the conviction that solid knowledge can be acquired and remains valid once and for all. Therefore, the problems we face have no unique answers. 7. See, for example, M. RUIZ JURADO, El discernimiento spiritual: Teología. Historia. Práctica (Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 544), Madrid, BAC, 1994; ID., Discernement des esprits, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, Paris, Beauchesne, vol. 3, 1222-1291. 8. See the Theology of Trinity of Karl RAHNER (e.g., Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte, in J. FEINER – M. LÖHRER [eds.], Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, Einsiedeln – Zürich – Köln, Benziger, 1967, vol. 2, 317-401, as well as the mystical experiences of the Jesuit worker priest Egied VAN BROECKHOVEN; see, Dagboek van de vriendschap, met verantwoording en aantekeningen bezorgd door Georges NEEFS, Brugge, Emmaüs – Desclée de Brouwer, 1971). 9. J. HAERS, Kerk: Plaats van ontmoetingen, veld van spanningen en ruimte voor onderscheiding, in R. MICHIELS – J. HAERS (eds.), Een werkzame dialoog: Oecumenische bijdragen over de kerk 30 jaar na Vaticanum II (Nikè, 38), Leuven – Amersfoort, Acco, 1997, 187-227; ID., A Synodal Process on Synodality: Synodal Missionary Journeying and Common Apostolic Discernment, in Louvain Studies 43 (2020) 215-238; E. LÓPEZ PÉREZ, Fidelidad Sinodal: Liderazgo de discernimiento congregacional, in Revista Confer 59/228 (2020) 479-503. 10. See, on the origins of the acronym, Q: Who First Originated the Term VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity)?, at https://usawc.libanswers.com/faq/ 84869.

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We are confronted with ever new situations in which even familiar problems are calling for new answers. They challenge us to decide amongst various possible choices that will determine future history. This is an invitation to discernment: how are we going to make decisions, taking into account that there is no one clear answer to the challenges and that we will become only gradually aware of the consequences of the decisions we take, decisions which are marked by various degrees of irreversibility? How are we going to consider the fact that we may and, eventually, will make mistakes in our decision processes? How are we going to avoid that decision making processes become corrupted by prejudices, flawed power games, and subjective, competitive interests? Wisdom and prudence, as well as a sense for the common good and future, are required apart from knowledge and a moral sense. It is not always possible to reach the one correct answer, as it may not exist, while we navigate seas waiting to descry land on the horizon. Processes of discernment invite us to a new kind of open rationality inhabited by the desire to care for the world, also in the long term. Not surprisingly, in such a VUCA-environment, unwarranted dogmatised claims in science and theology, show their limits to provide consolation today in a world on the lookout for a sustainable future. We have to gauge and readjust the precise contours and meanings of the scientific and theological endeavours. Control paradigms do not work anymore11. The VUCAenvironment entices us to processes of discernment on a worldwide, planetary scale. Are political practices based on the interaction of individual and competing interests, taking their bearings in worldviews that one-sidedly emphasise and highlight individual subjects and competitive individualism, capable to rise to the challenges of discernment towards a planetary sustainable future? One can, of course, understand that the individual as locus of creativity and responsibility should receive its rightful space and appreciation, but the possible ensuing narrowing down of the universe on the competition of individual interests presents a dangerous one-sided focus, that may well wreck the sense of coherence, interdependence and solidarity that are key features of sustainable societies. There is a real risk that the practice of discernment might be understood as mere inner individual practice and that spirituality might be reduced to the inner individual life. 11. See the still highly relevant sixth chapter (“Discussion: The Way Forward”) of: C. ABBOTT – P. ROGERS – J. SLOBODA, Global Responses to Global Threats: Sustainable Security for the 21st Century (Oxford Research Group, Briefing Paper, June 2006), at https://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-responses-global-threats-sustainable-security21st-century.

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Today’s worldwide and planetary challenges, as well as more local challenges, are issues of solidarity and compassion: they urge that discernment should be common discernment, in both senses that individuals should account for their social responsibilities and that processes of discernment require the real participation of the poor and of the excluded. Liberation theologians will, therefore, continue to emphasise the poor as subjects of their histories as well as the principle of compassion12. In the space where politics discern and decide about a sustainable future for our societies and for our world, the presence of many, and particularly of victims and those who suffer the injustices and inequalities that are present in our life-together, is required, as well as the representation of many perspectives that allow us to consider and do justice to the complexities of our world. Therefore, a reflection on the nature of politics, political practices, and future goals, is of paramount importance today. Theologians should not shun the study of political and social theory, as well as their impact on ecclesial life. In our times of growing ecological awareness, there is more to be said: the word “common” refers not only to interactions between human beings but includes the whole of creation. The conversation needed for common discernment towards a sustainable future, also includes nature as a – albeit strange – conversation partner. It also includes the – equally strange – partner of the future generations to which our understanding of sustainability extends. Our reflection indicates that the word “common” reaches out beyond a moral responsibility of individuals in social life. It points to a much more fundamental, original reality, a context in which all of us (including nature in all its forms and at all its levels) are already always included. There exists an original and fundamental interconnectedness and interdependence, that invites us to a holistic view on reality, encapsulated in the word “creation”. Although individual subjects are hubs of decision-making and represent partners in greater processes of discernment, they cannot be so without recognising their profound and original interconnectedness, as well in their individual constitution – as a being, they are constituted by a network of other beings through a large process of evolution, that at 12. J. SOBRINO, El principio-misericordia: Bajar de la cruz a los pueblos crucificados (Presencia teológica, 67), Santander, Sal Terrae, 1993. The fundamental methodology of liberation theologies: to see, to judge, to act, to celebrate, is a prime example of common apostolic discernment, in which the poor are invited to become subjects of our common history. See A. PIERIS, God’s Reign for God’s Poor: A Return to the Jesus Formula. A Critical Evaluation of Contemporary Reformulations of the Mission Manifesto in Roman Catholic Theology and in Recent Jesuit Documents, Gonawila, Tulana Research Center, 1999.

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a certain level one could call a process of discernment – as in their work in the world; they collaborate with fellow human beings, but also with animals and objects of inanimate nature. More than ever before we have come to realise that our fate and that of the planet’s nature are closely linked. Our deepest creation tradition articulates interconnectedness and its evolving history. Therefore, when we profess our faith in the apostolic church, we may feel invited to envision the church beyond the limits we traditionally assign to that word. We cannot disentangle ourselves and our own interest from the others (even the future others), and the commitment (or lack of commitment) of each one of us to all of us is an important feature of the world as creation. The apostolic responsibility and service to our fellow human beings – particularly those who are forgotten and discarded, such as today migrants and refugees, and the victims of violence and of natural disasters, those who suffer race and gender exclusions, and also the victims of abuse and particularly of church abuse – as well as to nature, to our planet and to the evolving universe, arises, therefore, out of the apostolic tradition of belonging to creation as interdependent and entangled reality. The word “apostolic” refers to our deepest traditions and responsibilities of solidarity. Not surprisingly we come to speak about discernment that is common and apostolic: common apostolic discernment. Today’s reality is a sign of the times and it invites theologians to take on their responsibilities amongst all of those who work towards a sustainable future. This invites them to use methods and tools of common apostolic discernment, it invites them to go public and to convene spaces of discernment. III. CONTENT OF THIS VOLUME This volume is divided into three parts, in which one could loosely recognise the see-judge-act methodology that has been employed by many liberation theologians. Part One (Understanding Political Theology as Discernment) could be seen as providing the theological and theoretical foundations for seeing, judging, and acting theo-politically. Andrew PREVOT, Rowan WILLIAMS, and Colby DICKINSON explore the mystical and contemplative aspects of our political situation. Jacques HAERS, Cyril ORJI, Stephan VAN ERP and Wilibaldus GAUT discuss central theological concepts – common apostolic discernment, Ubuntu, catholicity, and hope – and their political potential. Anthony J. GODZIEBA proposes that for the development of political theology, we need to take a closer look

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at the integral place of religion in contemporary life, for example in the architecture of our buildings and the infrastructure of our cities. Dennis T. GONZALEZ ends part one by noting that more than a specific kind of rationality, what needs to be discovered and developed in theology these days is a deep sense, sensibility, sensuousness, or sensitivity, within, and between, different persons and bodies, in order to bear and nurture sustainably peaceful, joyful, and just communities and societies. In Part Two (Discerning Political Theology in the Face of Trauma and Conflict), political theology is discerned in concrete situations. Carlos MENDOZA-ÁLVAREZ, Judith GRUBER, Nontando HADEBE, and Marie BAIRD focus on the theo-political consequences of trauma and conflict. Isabella GUANZINI and Cecilia GONZÁLEZ-ANDRIEU show how perception and art play a crucial role in politics and in the political aspects of the theological imagination. John Gabriel KHALIL explains how the history of Christian-Muslim relations in the modern history of Egypt has influenced the development of Christian political theology in the Arab world. Rachel Joyce Marie O. SANCHEZ and Ruben C. MENDOZA address the pressing theological questions that have emerged under the rule of the populist president of the Philippines. Pauline DIMECH and Theo L. HETTEMA describe two practical-constructive proposals for a political theology of migration. Part Three (Conversing with Political Theologians) presents ongoing discussions with modern philosophers and theologians who have impacted the development of political theology until today. Philip John Paul GONZALES and Ana PETRACHE continue the conversation with the thinkers who are seen as the central figures in modern political theology: Carl Schmitt, Erik Peterson, and Giorgio Agamben. Philip J. ROSSI, David Mark DUNNING, and Edward DUNAR discuss the work of H. Richard Niebuhr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Bernard Lonergan respectively. David HORSTKOETTER brings Johann Baptist Metz’ new political theology into conversation with Rowan Williams. There are also less common sparring partners in political theology, like Michel de Certeau in Isabella BRUCKNER’S reflections and Ivan Illich in the contribution of Patrick Ryan COOPER. This part ends with the treatment by Joyce Ann KONIGSBURG of theologians engaging with interreligious encounters, which has had a significant impact on political theology today. In an epilogue to the volume, Elizabeth PYNE formulates some questions for political theology today. She points at what she calls a correlative alertness, which remains prudent when it comes to the redeeming quality of vulnerabilities within political theology. Where it is assumed, whether

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explicitly or implicitly, that adopting a posture of vulnerability as the marker of one’s theology enables superior discernment of what brings about redemption in a suffering world, there is need for caution. KU Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Sint-Michielsstraat 4/3101 BE-3000 Leuven Belgium [email protected]

Stephan VAN ERP

KU Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Sint-Michielsstraat 4/3101 BE-3000 Leuven Belgium [email protected]

Jacques HAERS

I

UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL THEOLOGY AS DISCERNMENT

THE CONCEPT OF THE MYSTICAL-POLITICAL THOUGHTS ON HIERARCHY, SOVEREIGNTY, DEMOCRACY, AND HOLINESS

INTRODUCTION Carl Schmitt’s Concept of the Political reduces the political to the polemical: a war between friends and enemies. His Political Theology reduces theology to sovereignty and secularizes it: the most godlike entity on earth would supposedly be a ruler with the power to decide on the state of exception. His writings are steeped in fascism and antisemitism. Despite these serious problems, recent thinkers associated with postmodern philosophy and critical theory, such as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and many others, continue to engage his work. They reclaim Schmitt’s antagonistic sense of the political and reorient it toward progressive ends. They democratize his secularized theology and shift the focus from individual sovereignty to an inconceivable multitude. Although Schmitt informs these new approaches, they construct a type of political theology that is very distinct from his and certainly preferable. These two types must be distinguished from a third that precedes them and that they refuse: the classical model of a divinely ordered society exemplified by Plato’s Republic. Some students of political theology, who want to resist Schmitt, may not embrace a postmodern radical democracy like that envisioned by Laclau and Mouffe, but instead attempt to recover a pre-modern capacity to organize society according to some hierarchically differentiated idea of the Good. However, to the extent that this option relies on patterns of ontological ranking (high vs. low, inside vs. outside, Greek vs. barbarian, man vs. woman, form vs. matter, etc.), it leaves the world’s “non-beings” – the poor, the stateless, the racially oppressed, and sexually marginalized – in serious jeopardy and, therefore, ought to be resisted, too. Compared with the paradigms of Schmitt and Plato, the postmodern form of political theology is the most promising. If one is a Christian, one’s political theology ought to flow from a desire to follow Jesus, to be one with him and his way of life, to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit in history, to become holy as God is holy. Other religious traditions prescribe their own conditions and practices of sanctity, which overlap to some degree with those found in Christianity and open the possibility for fruitful interreligious dialogue, but this is not

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something I attempt in this paper. Instead, writing as a Christian theologian, I endeavour to situate a political theology of Christian holiness in relation to the three political theological models mentioned above: Platonic hierarchy, Schmittian sovereignty, and post-modern radical democracy. I critically examine hybridized forms – including the Christian Platonism of Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and Bonaventure, and the religious decisionism of Walter Benjamin, Søren Kierkegaard, and Ignatius of Loyola – while ultimately favouring a practice of radical discipleship, as promoted by Catholic political and liberation theologians, and exemplified by the social witness of Dorothy Day. I consider this to be the best of the hybridized options. The “mystical” plays conflicting roles in all of this. First, as the felt or dreamt-of union of the divine and the human, it provides the glue that allows the theological and the political (historical, worldly, etc.) to be brought together. Contemporary theory sometimes uses the word “mystical” even when such a union takes the form of secularization; a transferring of divine properties onto the merely human. Second, the mystical indicates an apophatic style of speech or politics that emphasizes unknowability, opacity, subversion, and so on. Again, this deconstructive style is perfectly compatible with secularization. Finally, the mystical designates a form of theology that is lived and, in this sense, more active and real than any dead letter. It means true worship of God: theology at its absolute apex. A political theology that claims to have a “mystical-political” character ought to clarify how it relates to the various types of political theology on offer and what senses of the mystical it employs1. I hope that the following brief sketches will assist with such clarifications and indicate the attractiveness of a Christian option, despite its variously problematic historical entanglements. I. HIERARCHY: MYSTICAL SOURCE AND POLITICAL STRUCTURE The awakened one who departs the cave in Plato’s Republic beholds an incomprehensible source of intellectual illumination. Appearances and 1. The phrase “mystical-political” hearkens back to Charles Péguy and shows up in a range of theological and philosophical texts from the last several decades. See C. PÉGUY, Mystique et politique, ed. A. DE VITRY, Paris, Robert Laffont, 2015; J.B. METZ, A Passion for God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity, New York, Paulist, 1998; A. PAPANIKOLAOU, The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy, Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 2012; K. PRIESTER, Mystik und Politik: Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, und die radikale Demokratie, Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2014.

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inherited beliefs are called into question, and a new domain of knowledge is opened up through a philosophical intuition of the Good beyond being. According to Plato, this mystically endowed philosopher ought to become a king or queen, and preside over a political order of ranked entities. One might assume that the lowest in this order are the masses, the labourers whom Plato argues need to be disciplined, just like our bodily desires. However, no; the lowest are those outside the polis, the foreigners who evidently can be killed or enslaved with impunity, the “non-Greeks” who are virtual non-beings. After the philosopher king or queen, the most glorified class is that of the warriors whose job is to police the boundary between the inside and outside and, through conquest, acquire more land and resources for the Greek city-state. Plato identifies justice with this social structure itself. The transcendent Good that exceeds comprehension grounds a very comprehensible and conceptually regulated society, in which each set of beings is required to occupy its proper place on the scale of beings. Plato’s Republic offers a hierarchical concept of the mystical-political2. Christian Platonism constitutes an uneasy hybridization of the mysticalpolitical forms of Platonic hierarchy and Christian sanctity. Consider the case of (Pseudo-)Dionysius. The Mystical Theology presents an apophatic theological ascent that merges Plato’s cave allegory with allegorical accounts of Mt. Sinai and the Jewish Temple. The Good beyond being becomes one with the Mosaic divine Law that is enshrined in the Holy of Holies. The contemplative philosopher becomes the contemplative monk. To obtain a fuller picture of Dionysius’s thought, The Mystical Theology must be read together with The Celestial Hierarchy and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy3. These latter texts coin the term “hierarchy”, which for Dionysius means “source of holiness”. Yet, the sources of holiness he discusses consist of ranked orders of beings. These ranked orders give rise to the currently more common way of understanding hierarchy as a vertical social structure4. On the ecclesial path toward holiness elaborated by Dionysius there are three fundamental stages. The purgative stage is populated by catechumens and penitents and is administered by deacons; the illuminative stage is populated by baptized and liturgically active Christians and is administered by priests; and the highest, unitive stage is populated by monks and administered by bishops. 2. PLATO, Republic, ed. R. WATERFIELD, New York, Oxford University Press, 2008, 427d-445e, 469b-471b, and 514a-521b. See also, D. O’MEARA, Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity, New York, Oxford University Press, 2003. 3. This reading and the following citations refer to Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, Mahwah, NJ, Paulist, 1987. 4. DIONYSIUS, Letter Eight: To the Monk Demophilus. Concerning One’s Proper Work, and Kindness, especially 1088c-1093c.

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If the philosopher king or queen embodies the mystical-political synthesis in Plato, the correlated offices of monk and bishop do something similar in Dionysius. These offices achieve unity with the source in both its ineffably transcendent and structurally immanent modes. Scholars debate about Dionysius’s properly political views, since he makes scant reference to governmental institutions outside the church5. Nevertheless, the broad notion of the political is not limited to the state, and the combination of a theory of divine union and a vertically ranked model of society (whether ecclesial or civil) suffices to connect Dionysian thought with a hierarchical concept of the mystical-political. The lowest in Dionysius’s schema are not those being purified. The lowest are the ones beyond the possibility of purification – those who have died outside of communion with the church for whom he thinks one should not even pray6. Some contemporary theologians, such as Andrew Louth and Denys Turner, try to strengthen the Dionysian tradition’s claim to Christian holiness by reading it through the more Christologically focused works of Maximus the Confessor and Bonaventure7. However, the tension between hierarchy and sanctity persists in such approaches. The focus on Jesus’ humanity, which appears in different ways in Maximus’s fight against Monothelitism and Bonaventure’s devotion to St. Francis’s apostolic way of life, does not so much stifle Dionysian hierarchical elements in their thought as render their persistence all the more questionable. To be sure, one could hardly expect a different outcome given their pre-modern cultural and political contexts. Regardless, my interests are not in judging these inheritors of Dionysius, but rather in seeking some conceptual clarification about the meaning of Christian holiness. Would not following the Jesus of the gospels explode the idea of social rank? Does not Jesus’ holiness involve a scandalous commitment to the lowest instead of the highest? The political correlate of Jesus’ mystical identity – that is Jesus’ essential and radically unique union with God – shows up in his healing fellowship with those whose social capital is so low that they are discarded as non-beings, and treated as refuse. Jesus’ oneness with his Father and his Spirit is revealed through his service to the “nothings” of the world, and through his willingness to become “nothing” with them on the cross. Bonaventure’s hagiographical work on 5. D. MESING, Rancière, Derrida, and Egalitarian Politics in Pseudo-Dionysius, in Political Theology 16 (2015) 176-189. 6. DIONYSIUS, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 564a-564c. 7. D. TURNER, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1995; A. LOUTH, Maximus the Confessor, New York, Routledge, 1996.

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Francis highlights such a Christic praxis of solidarity – with paupers, lepers, and other outcasts. Yet, we must also contend with Bonaventure’s commitment to what Christopher Cullen calls his political doctrine of “hierocracy”8. The seventh chapter of Bonaventure’s Itinerarium argues that the pinnacle of mystical theology takes place in Francis’s union with Christ crucified. If this stunning claim is right, must not the politics of such a Christoform divine union differ radically from the vertical political structures of Platonism, even Christian Platonism? Although Maximus courageously stands his ground against the Byzantine empire’s heterodoxy and writes eloquently of Christian love, his worldview largely remains one of vertical emanation9. Neither Maximus nor Bonaventure fully elaborate the subversive political consequences of their Christological corrections of Dionysius. II. SOVEREIGNTY: APPROPRIATING DIVINE POWER Schmitt’s secularization of theological concepts appears to be antithetical to Christian mysticism, if by Christian mysticism one means an experience of grace in Christ and the Holy Spirit. However, such secularization is not necessarily incompatible with a broader notion of the mystical. On the contrary, insofar as such secularization encourages human agents to appropriate the divine attribute of sovereign power to themselves, it seems to become a particular form of the mystical; more specifically, of the mystical-political. The hidden depths of the Good or of God, which are revered by pagan and Christian Platonists, are irrelevant to this characteristically modern form of the mystical-political. Its main social function is not to establish a hierarchical structure, but rather to posit an authority that is greater than any legal or normative system. The mystical element in Schmitt’s work can be found, not in his purported Catholicism, which is highly atrophied, but in the inscrutability of an arbitrary will. This will arrogates, to itself, the power to decide whether the law of a community has reached a point of exception, to decide who is a friend or enemy, and to decide – as if willy-nilly – what groups of people get to live or die. For Schmitt, as for Thomas Hobbes before him, the ruler is not a contemplative. The ruler is a mortal god. Schmitt’s concept of the political is not based on an ontological idea of cosmic emanation, but on a voluntarist account of transcendental subjectivity. Justice does not reside in the 8. C. CULLEN, Bonaventure, New York, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 150. 9. MAXIMUS, Letter 2: On Love, in LOUTH, Maximus the Confessor (n. 7), pp. 84-93.

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harmonious operation of the social whole, but merely in the Führer’s decree10. This is the mystical-political option of Nazi Germany. Analogous options can be discerned in any context where an authoritarian leader claims something like divine power over the law, and over life and death. Although a hybridization of the mystical-political forms of sovereignty and holiness may seem highly questionable given the morally disastrous consequences of this Schmittian notion of sovereignty, such a hybridization has occurred in certain instances that merit further attention. A much commented upon example is Walter Benjamin’s essay, “Critique of Violence”, which theorizes a sovereign divine destruction of coercive state power11. Before Benjamin, there is the Kierkegaardian knight of faith, a figure modelled on Abraham’s decision to follow a divine dictate, even when it absurdly contradicts and suspends the universal ethical order. A crucial question that Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling leaves open is how to discern whether such a dictate really comes from God12. By contrast, Ignatius of Loyola develops a method of discernment that acknowledges the challenge of differentiating good and evil spirits without simply revelling in the paradoxical quality of faith, as Kierkegaard’s Johannes de Silentio seems to do. In Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, the “election” is a time to decide about a matter that exceeds the competence of moral law, but does not contradict it. The choice one is called to make is a personal choice about the state of life in which one will pursue holiness. God may freely decide to move one this way or that, whether through ordinary consolations and desolations, or through the more extraordinarily mystical “consolation without prior cause”. However, Ignatius also instructs retreatants not merely to rely on the interior movements of their 10. C. SCHMITT, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Chicago, IL – London, University of Chicago Press, 1985; ID., The Concept of the Political, Chicago, IL – London, University of Chicago Press, 2007; ID., The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol, Westport, CT, Greenwood, 1996. See also R. GROSS, Carl Schmitt and the Jews: The “Jewish Question”, the Holocaust, and German Legal Theory, Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 2007. 11. W. BENJAMIN, Critique of Violence, in ID., Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. P. DEMETZ, New York, Schocken Books, 277-300. See also J. DERRIDA, Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’, in D. CORNELL – M. ROSENFELD – D.G. CARLSON (eds.), Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, New York, Routledge, 1992, 3-67; J. BUTLER, Critique, Coercion, and Sacred Life in Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’, in H. DE VRIES – L.E. SULLIVAN (eds.), Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, New York, Fordham University Press, 2006, 201-219. 12. S. KIERKEGAARD, Fear and Trembling, Repetition, ed. H.V. HONG – E.H. HONG, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1983, p. 22. See also B. RYAN, Kierkegaard’s Indirect Politics: Interludes with Lukács, Schmitt, Benjamin, and Adorno, New York, Rodopi, 2014.

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souls, but also to seek guidance by meditating intensely and repeatedly on the life of Jesus13. Both Kierkegaard and Ignatius leave sovereignty to God, and Benjamin largely seems to do the same. In this respect, these three differ very significantly from the secularizing Schmitt. At the same time, they do understand the human path toward holiness to be contingent; not merely on following the established rules, whether of reason or of a legislative body, but on discovering and serving God’s singular will. For such a hybridization of sovereignty and holiness to work, one must really be sure that the promptings one is following are those of the Holy Spirit and not some all-too-human or even demonic evil, and this will be a perpetual challenge. III. RADICAL DEMOCRACY: OVERCOMING THE CONCEPT OF THE PEOPLE Contemporary thinkers such as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy, Adam Kotsko, Michael Marder, and many others who explicitly reject Schmitt’s authoritarian politics have found his critiques of liberalism, and his account of political antagonism, to be useful in their efforts to theorize democracy14. Jacques Maritain anticipated such an incidence of strange bedfellows when he noted that the democratic general will, championed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, simply transposed Hobbes’s doctrine of political sovereignty onto the people as a whole15. If sovereignty is divine power secularized, democracy would seem to be sovereignty popularized. Sovereignty and democracy both refuse the classical idea of grounding politics in a concept of a just society, which would stem from some abstract intuition of the Good. Deprived of such grounding, political legitimacy begins to rest on the rather volatile foundation of the will, whether of a ruler or a collective. 13. D. BRACKLEY, The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola, New York, Crossroad, 2004. 14. E. LACLAU – C. MOUFFE, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, New York, Verso, 1994; G. AGAMBEN, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1998; J.-L. NANCY, The Sense of the World, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 91-93; A. KOTSKO, Neoliberalism’s Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2018; M. MARDER, Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmitt, New York, Continuum, 2010; P. LACOUE-LABARTHE – J.-L. NANCY, Retreating the Political, ed. S. SPARKS, New York, Routledge, 1997; O. MARCHART, Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, and Laclau, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2007. 15. J. MARITAIN, Man and the State, Washington, DC, Catholic University of America Press, 1998.

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If between these two voluntarist options one favours the democratic (which I would nearly every time if only to avoid a terrifying concentration of power in a morally compromised individual), one would still have to grapple with the distressing question of who belongs to the “people”, the demos, the Volk, which is supposed to govern itself. Much so-called populism is not democratic in any comprehensive sense, but only in the partial sense that it expresses the interests of a majority or perhaps only of the most vocal within a circumscribed country or region16. Those in a society who by popular standards deviate from accepted norms, whether because of their supposed race, place of origin, first language, gender or sexual identity, religious or cultural adherence, or some other distinguishing characteristic, will not be well represented or cared for if political power is based on the sameness or generality of a collective will. Claims to democracy will ring hollow, unless they somehow incorporate a robust affirmation of the plurality, otherness, and incomprehensibility of the real people who are present, whose mysterious ways of life surpass what any concept can contain. The ongoing search for a true, alterity-embracing democracy largely accounts for the post-modern practice of rethinking ancient mystical sources in service of an apophatic sense of the political. Jacques Derrida distinguishes two tropics of negativity in his reading of pagan and Christian Platonism: the height of the Good beyond being and the lowness of the khora, the non-place of possibility and impossibility prior to creation. This lower tropic symbolizes a desirable, yet perhaps never attainable democratic society without conceptualized demos. Derrida offers a way of thinking the political that, contra Schmitt, does not arbitrarily erect boundaries of inside and outside, friend and enemy, but instead extends hospitality to the stranger17. Michel de Certeau describes the events of 1968 as a “capture of speech”, a claiming of voice, on the part of those who, by virtue of their disruptive otherness, exhibit a certain mystical way of proceeding. Luce Irigaray turns to the mystics in her effort to empower women to be subjects, breaking free from the phallo-centrism of the Western symbolic order. Judith Butler asks us to pay attention to bodily performances that defy cultural norms regarding gender and sexual identity, as well as the deaths of those who 16. S. ABRAHAM, Masculinist Populism and Toxic Christianity in the United States, in Concilium: International Journal of Theology: Populism and Religion (2019/2) 61-72. 17. J. DERRIDA, The Politics of Friendship, New York, Verso, 2005; ID., How to Avoid Speaking: Denials, in S. BUDICK – W. ISER (eds.), Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory, New York, Columbia University Press, 1989, 3-70.

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go publicly unmourned. Enrique Dussel formulates a politics of alterity from Latin America. Édouard Glissant announces a politics of opacity from the Caribbean and the African diaspora18. Each of these thinkers uses a mystical style of writing in which conceptual prose breaks down and gives way to a new form of apophatic poetics. However, their primary referent is not God, but an undefined, uncontained, subversive sense of people whose lives should matter. Increasingly, the human borders of this enterprise are being questioned to make space for an ecological affirmation of animal and vegetal life. Following the lead of Laclau and Mouffe, this post-modern form of the mystical-political might be called not merely democracy but “radical democracy”, in order to highlight its indeterminacy. Nevertheless, to be clear, Laclau and Mouffe, like the others I have mentioned, do give this apophatic discourse of radical democracy some positive specificity by associating it with a post-Marxist or left populism19. Post-modernity does not necessarily mean anything goes. IV. CHRISTIAN HOLINESS: LIFE IN CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT Drawing on Catholic mystical-political theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Jon Sobrino, M. Shawn Copeland, Maria Clara Bingemer, Edward Schillebeeckx, and Johann Baptist Metz, to name a few20, I would associate the mystical-political not primarily with radical democracy but with radical discipleship. In this instance, “radical” refers to the allconsuming nature of one’s commitment to follow Jesus and respond to his Spirit. It refers to an extraordinary level of detachment by which one’s egoism is broken down and one’s soul is broken open and elevated, so that 18. M. DE CERTEAU, The Capture of Speech and Other Political Writings, ed. L. GIARD, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 1-76; L. IRIGARAY, Speculum of the Other Woman, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1985, pp. 191-202; J. BUTLER, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, New York – London, Verso, 2006; E. DUSSEL, Philosophy of Liberation, Eugene, OR, Wipf & Stock, 1985; É. GLISSANT, Poetics of Relation, Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 1995. 19. C. MOUFFE, For a Left Populism, New York, Verso, 2018; E. LACLAU, On the Names of God, in DE VRIES – SULLIVAN (eds.), Political Theologies (n. 11), 137-147. See also PRIESTER, Mystik und Politik (n. 1). 20. G. GUTIÉRREZ, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2005; J. SOBRINO, Spirituality of Liberation: Toward Political Holiness, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 1988; M.S. COPELAND, Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being, Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 2009; M.C. BINGEMER, The Mystery and the World: Passion for God in Times of Unbelief, Cambridge, Lutterworth, 2016; E. SCHILLEBEECKX, God the Future of Man (The Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx, 3), London, Bloomsbury, 2014; J.B. METZ, Followers of Christ: The Religious Life and the Church, Mahwah, NJ, Paulist, 1978.

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it might receive divine compassion as the very centre of its being and as its sole motivation for action. It refers to an unceasing proximity with the poor and oppressed in love and common struggle. It refers to the fact that, if necessary, one is willing to die with and for them. Radical discipleship means learning to become nothing other than a vessel of God’s fierce and uncompromising love. This praxis of Christian holiness often translates into active support for radically democratic and left-leaning populist social movements, since, at their best, these also manifest a preferential option for those whom the world discards as non-beings – those whose precious lives are treated like garbage. I believe that Jesus would, more often than not, side with such movements if he were an individual political actor today. However, the conceptual distinction between holiness and democracy remains important for at least two reasons. First, the indefinite aims of even a left-leaning multitude may not coincide in every instance with the boundless love that is God’s very own heart, and this is especially the case given our corrupted human nature. The flesh of the world – even among the victims of history whose perspectives we ought to prioritize – consists of fallible human flesh that deceives, harms, abuses, and, in countless other ways, cries out for divine judgment and mercy. The will of the people is only as good as the people themselves. The surest antidote for such pervasive sinfulness is for human beings to live into their identities as created images of God and bodily temples of the Holy Spirit, a task which one certainly cannot accomplish without the healing activity of grace. In short, post-modern apophasis and the enmity between left and right may not be finely grained enough as tools for discernment in a fallen world, and they arguably do not possess the divine power that is necessary to overcome the depravity of the human condition. Second, the distinction between holiness and democracy is important for another reason. Post-modernity tends to reduce the meaning of the mystical to the immanent mysteriousness of human life as experienced within the messy political realities of the world, whereas the tradition of Christian hagiography that I support affirms that there is an infinitely greater mystery than this, without which human beings cannot find their deepest fulfilment or joy. This is the mystery of God revealed in creation, in countless religious traditions throughout history, in the sacred texts of the people of Israel, and, above all, in Jesus himself. While there is no holiness apart from solidarity with the poor and oppressed, this is not all that holiness means. In the final analysis, holiness refers to an ecstatic gift of union with the triune God through whom one finally becomes oneself by becoming

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something wholly other and unexpected. It is what Eastern Christian traditions call theosis. Sanctity is a divine gift. It is God’s action in us. We do not save ourselves. We receive a love that saves us by turning us into bodily vessels of this very love. Let me close by discussing just one example: Dorothy Day. Whether she ultimately becomes canonized or not, she is an icon of the saintly sort of mystical-political life I have been advocating. In her praxis, love of God and love of neighbour were inseparable and undeniable. Even when as a young person she abandoned her Christian faith for a time, she still wanted a synthesis of these loves. She wanted a form of sanctity that would not merely serve the oppressed but liberate them, and her problem was simply that the church seemed painfully disinterested in this sort of real, world-transforming holiness. Her commitment to those the world discarded as non-beings led her to join radical democratic movements for women’s suffrage, just wages for urban labourers and farmworkers, civil rights for racial minorities, and the abolition of the military-industrial complex. Although it is possible to question whether her anarchism and pacifism accorded too little authority to the state as an agent of social welfare and international peacekeeping, one cannot argue that these were apolitical stances on her part. The political is not limited to statist politics. Hers was not a spirituality of quietist withdrawal but rather of constant, critical engagement with the powers that be. In the long run, however, activism was not enough for her. She needed prayer. She needed the two together. Her models became the saints: Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Ávila, and her friend Peter Maurin. Her devotion to Jesus fuelled her labours at the Catholic Worker’s houses of hospitality. She wrote, “The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him”21. She found strength and comfort in the Holy Spirit’s mysterious activity. Once she asked, “Who knows the power of the Spirit? God’s grace is more powerful than all the nuclear weapons that could possibly be accumulated”22. A concept is best understood when it takes on flesh. Better even if one implicates oneself in it. My hope is that I have not only given us something to think about but something to put into practice. Political theology can, and must, do better than Carl Schmitt. Instead of adhering to his Concept of the Political, which leads to the gas chambers, I propose that Christians and others who share a love for the “non-beings” of the world 21. D. DAY, The Mystery of the Poor, in Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, ed. with introd. R. ELLSBERG, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2019, 329-330, p. 330. 22. R. ELLSBERG, Dorothy Day: A Saint for Our Time, in Spiritus 16 (2016) 1-20, p. 10.

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work together to embody a concept of the mystical-political that does justice to these precious lives. If Christian holiness must be hybridized with another form of political theology in order to take shape in history, I would suggest that it pursue dialogue with the post-modern theorists of radical democracy and tread very carefully around Christian Platonism and religious decisionism of various kinds. To be sure, the antagonistic energy of the prophets is an unavoidable part of Christian discipleship. However, a true follower of Jesus is not free to reify the other as killable enemy. Though confrontational, the life of grace is supposed to be healing and restorative: a balm on the wounds of this violent world. Boston College Theology Department Faculty Gasson Hall 140 Commonwealth Avenue Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 USA [email protected]

Andrew PREVOT

JUSTICE, DISTANCE, AND LOVE WHAT WOULD BE A CONTEMPLATIVE STANCE IN POLITICS?

I In the unusually febrile atmosphere of national and global politics at the moment, one question that is worth addressing is what it is in political life that makes for what I shall call “sustainable” justice – that is, a corporate habit of relation that allows a community to believe that the security of its members does not depend entirely on contingent relations of power at any given moment. To speak of justice, at all, is in fact to speak of what it is in human relations that is not settled simply by power: imagining this is the fundamental issue of Plato’s Republic. For any social situation to be called “just”, it has to be capable of being presented as more than a more-or-less bearable compromise between contending interests, arrived at by balancing potentially violent pressures. In the reality of practical politics, this aspect will regularly be to the fore, and it may reasonably be thought of as a search for fair settlement. However, one of our problems is that, if the idea of what is “just” is reduced simply to what is “fair”, the discourse never moves beyond a balance of the supposed entitlements each party begins with. Acts that are just, in a more classical sense, are acts that respond appropriately to reality. Vere dignum et iustum, aequum et salutare in the text of the Mass incorporates the language of justice into worship: what we do in worshipping God is what is appropriate to the reality that is God, and so is “just and equitable”1. The measure of justice, in other words, is not primarily about a balance of interests, but about an act of recognition. What I believe (or any particular agent believes) about my interest, may or may not correspond to what actually requires recognition – in myself or in others. The real difficulty of “doing justice” is the labour of recognition, the identification – always vulnerable and provisional – of what is due to the reality before us “in itself”, not simply in relation to the agenda of * Also published in a slightly revised version as: Justice, Distance and Love: A Contemplative Stance in Politics?, in R. WILLIAMS, Looking East in Winter: Contemporary Thought and the Eastern Christian Tradition, London, Bloomsbury Continuum, 2021, 185-194 (© Bloomsbury Continuum, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.). 1. The insistence that worship and sacrifice offered to the true God are instances of iustitia is an aspect of Augustine’s argument in Book XIX of the De Civitate Dei; see, especially xvii, xxi and xxiii.

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the moment. Understood in this sense, justice is inescapably a notion that recedes over the horizon of achievement, retains a critical and utopian edge to it, and is bound up with a sustained critical practice over time. To say that it is never “arrived at” is not to make it a formally regulative idea only; the point is that in any and every specific situation, it allows the question to arise of what and who is and is not acknowledged in their actuality, and of what process and habits would be needed for that acknowledgement to be better secured or realised. Naturally, this depends on “re-grounding” our language about what is “just” in an understanding of ius that takes seriously the metaphysical hinterland of the word in an older theological context. What is just is what is “aligned” to truth; this is what the etymology of the Hebrew words for justice suggests2. It is in this sense that we can say that justice is an attribute of God: God is, in the first place, faithful to God’s nature, God is “true” to God; the divine integrity never falters. Consequently, God’s action in respect of all finite realities is to give them what is needed for their life and flourishing; we cannot imagine any distorting “agenda” or self-interest where God is concerned. The divine action is always one that respects the reality of what is made (which itself is shaped by the nature of the creating God and anchored in the eternal reality of the divine Word). God “does justice” to God in the eternal act of self-knowledge and self-assent that is divine life, and so “does justice” in and to creation in honouring what has been made and conserving and enhancing its life to the fullest degree. For us then to “do justice” in a mode that aligns with God’s justice entails first and foremost a habit of fidelity to God and a perspective on God’s works that will allow us to stand away from the definition of my own interest with which I begin my engagement with the world. This is not a search for the proverbial “God’s eye view” of the environment, but a practice of critical detachment from any particular account of the world in terms of my interest, a practice sustained through time, and renewed by repeated scrutiny and exposure to challenge. In the background of such a view lies the familiar Greek Christian theme, enunciated most clearly by Evagrius of Pontus at the end of the fourth century, of how knowledge is inflected by passion, and how our perceptions may become “diabolical” when dominated by the question of what individual profit or satisfaction may be gained from the object of knowledge3. If justice is a mode of seeing before it is a mode of acting – the attempt at 2. The ts-d-q root in Hebrew relates to straightness and literal uprightness; the Greek dikaios has from early on a sense closer to the legal, designating someone who is reckoned free from guilt. 3. See A.M. CASIDAY, Evagrius Ponticus, London, Routledge, 2006, p. 95, for one of the most important texts on this.

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a response to the environment that is fitting to what that environment actually is – what is required is an askesis, a discipline that keeps us attentive to the ways in which our account of our interests may distort what we see and think we know: an education of the passions. The particular challenge we are considering here is how what is traditionally configured as practice for the individual may be re-imagined as a political project. A couple of points may be made straight away. First, it is important to clarify that this is not a merely general challenge – and therefore capable of being utilised to silence any protest from those whose interest are being actively denied by more powerful agents; it is primarily for those powerful agents, those who have the liberty to silence the interest of others in the face of their own. An appeal to the kind of justice we have been considering is disastrously misunderstood if it is seen as a commendation of political passivity: to accept the dominance of another set of interests which silence one’s own is itself an act of injustice in the wider sense. Augustine’s comment in the De Civitate Dei that the unjust ruler harms himself more than his subjects (with the implication that the spiritual health of the oppressor is part of what is addressed when we seek to end oppression) is another version of this4. The injunction to scrutinise one’s own account of one’s interests (collective or individual) is not intelligible if any account of those interests is silenced in advance by another agent. Second, the possibility of some sort of political askesis is premised on the accessibility of institutions of open and public debate, and of dependable flows of information. To speak about a “spirituality” of political life is emphatically not to direct attention away from institutions towards some kind of private selfcultivation; it is to work for the making and preservation of durable environments for genuinely political discourse – the articulation and examination of policies and projects in a climate where some significant equality of “voice” is guaranteed. And such “environments for political discourse” are – to advert to the title of this gathering – essentially communities of discernment in which the goal is learning the skills of self-examination in the presence of those whom I or we are tempted to define in relation to our own supposed needs. II A contemplative political paideia is one in which we accommodate the necessary distance of love – a provocative statement, given that we assume love to be about commitment and solidarity. However, in the 4. See the comments in IV.iii on the lack of aequitas in the condition of the human agent whose primary motivation is simply coercive power.

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light of the foregoing discussion, it should be clear that the investment of love, if it is to be more than an exercise of self-serving emotion, requires a particular kind of time-taking in which we step back from our initial articulation of our interests and our initial account of others. We interrogate our own self-descriptions, beginning with the simple (or not) exercise of reimagining them, as if they were not simply ours; that is, we learn to consider them as one element in an “ecology”, not as the factor that organises the mapping of all others. We interrogate our initial account of others – i.e., other agents, complexes of circumstances, including material objects and conditions – seeking to imagine them not as they relate to or serve us, but as products of a history that is not ours and may not be accessible to us; and ultimately in relation to their source in God. In the context of this askesis of distancing, silencing the voice of primary attachment or investment, we may be said to clear the path for love – if by love we mean a deliberate and (to use the word again) sustained attention to a reality not at our disposal. This perspective is echoed in a somewhat surprising context by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his fragmentary Ethics, where he invokes the idea of das Wirklichkeitsgemässe5 as the basis of ethical action for the believer. Bonhoeffer is still regularly misread as kind of “situationist” in his ethics, but he is in fact concerned above all to dissolve the fiction of an isolated ethical subject facing a morally unstructured or uninterpreted set of facts. The moral agent is always already “representative” of the selves with which s/he is involved; this agent is an historical agent, being who they are as a result of their involvement with others, given identity by that involvement. Discerning and responding to das Gebotene, the requirement of the situation, means both recognising the reality of one’s own multiple connections and investments as an agent acting with and for others, and recognising the constraints of the specific situation – including, above all, the fact that the situation is grounded in the acceptance and transfiguration of all things by God through the Incarnation. “The most fundamental reality is the reality of the God who became human”6; “to act responsibly means to include in the formation of action human reality as it has been taken on by God in Christ”7. This in turn means relinquishing the craving to know that one’s action is just according to some pre-ordained set of criteria; we have to accept “[u]ltimate ignorance of one’s own goodness or evil”8, and this is what sets Christian ethical action in the sharpest 5. D. BONHOEFFER, Ethics (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 6), Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 2005, pp. 221ff. 6. Ibid., p. 223. 7. Ibid., p. 224. 8. Ibid., p. 225.

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contrast to ideology, which will always promise to assure us of our goodness and justification. What we do as believers is to release into God’s hand, so to speak, the action we have undertaken, confident not that we have done justice but that God will continue to act so as to do God’s justice. Yet this does not mean that we are absolved from attention and discernment; quite the opposite. In a later draft of this section of his argument, Bonhoeffer spells out what he now calls Sachgemäßheit, “suitability to the facts”9, insisting that this incorporates a recognition of “law” as an element in the world we engage with (hence, my phrase a moment ago about not confronting a morally unstructured set of facts). However, law is an inescapably analogical notion, whose clarity is less and less obvious the closer we are to a specific human situation; in political ethics, there may be a tension between “the explicit law of a state” and the deeper question of what conserves the “necessities of human life”10 – the fundamental structures of human solidarity, which Bonhoeffer elsewhere discusses in terms of the “mandates” that bind us in family connections, in working collaboration, and in broader political affiliations. The law of a state that effectively dissolves these solidarities in the name of a single political/ ideological loyalty has to be resisted. But discerning when this extremity has been reached is a highly complex question – and by definition it cannot be resolved by appeal to an abstract ideological criterion. There is always a debateable element remaining in any decision to cleave to law or to resist it. Coming to a decision is not a matter of applying a universally valid principle that can be abstracted from attention to the particular situation; attention to every detail, every aspect of the historical “embeddedness” that we inhabit, is ethically imperative. In contrast to the facile resolution of situationism11, the agent is not seeking for a new principle that will provide individual absolution for an unconventional moral decision, but attempting to see clearly both their own involvement/investment in a situation, all that makes them more than a free-floating agent whose decisions affect themselves alone, and the nature of the situation itself, in respect of its relation to the widest horizons of solidarity – discerning (or trying to discern) what kinds of human solidarity are honoured or imperilled by this or that decision and then acting in the trust that God 9. Ibid., pp. 270ff. 10. Ibid., pp. 272-273. 11. J. FLETCHER, Situation Ethics: The New Morality, Louisville, KY, Westminster, 1966, is the classic statement of this approach for which every action has to be adjudged good or bad according to its promotion or otherwise of agape. There is no acknowledgment here of anything other than an individual level of guilt or innocence, and no recourse to any doctrine of grace.

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will still be free to act, not through the correctness or effectiveness of our action, but because we have given place to God’s mercy on the basis of his embrace in the Word Incarnate of both our finitude and our complicity. Bonhoeffer’s ethical reflection here is shaped by his personal anguish over the decision to take part in active resistance to the government of the Third Reich; but it has a clear general import as well. His critique of an individualist ethic that seeks only to secure the innocence of an isolated agent connects – remotely but significantly – with the Evagrian critique of a perception dictated by the supposed needs of the ego for satisfaction and the Evagrian analysis of how passion distorts the possibilities of just and truthful knowledge. Bonhoeffer demands that we work on the givenness of our responsibilities and affiliations, in order to act “representatively”, taking responsibility for the well-being of all whose lives are linked with ours – a category that obviously widens constantly as we understand better our involvement in the actualities of history. Further, the related demand to scrutinise as patiently and carefully as possible the ways in which possible actions support or destabilise the fundamental forms of human solidarity is a way of articulating the older concern to see what is presented in its relation to God’s purpose, that is, in the full range of its relatedness. What is distinctive in Bonhoeffer is the emphasis on the Word Incarnate as the context in which the world must be seen: the compromising interconnectedness of the world’s history is already taken into the scope of divine action through the entry of God the Word into precisely those compromised connections. If the fullness of divine agency in the incarnate life is not diminished by this, then there are grounds for faith that our own ineradicable involvement with the tangles of history will not defeat the divine purpose and the divine mercy. III Contemplative practice for the tradition that Evagrius inherits and helps to mould is among other things a ceaseless vigilance in respect of the images we construct and entertain, images primarily of God, but also of ourselves and our unexamined desires. Putting together these unlikely partners, Evagrius and Bonhoeffer, what we find in common is an account of what discernment might mean in public as well as private contexts. Learning discernment is first learning how to identify and bring to stillness the urge to reduce the world to the terms of my desires; in other words, it is to do with learning to observe and question whatever forms of controlling power I possess. Second, it is learning how to read the various and

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complex situations of the historical world with an eye to how they serve or fail to serve fundamental human solidarities. From this perspective, a “contemplative” political practice might be summed up as one that seeks to make room for the narrative of the other; one that does not begin by attempting to absorb this narrative into itself, and thus is willing to learn how it is itself seen and understood. Only a practice of this sort can ultimately ground a politics that works towards the difficult common ground on which the majority and the minority can negotiate together. The prevalent pathology of our political life seems to be the idea that majorities obliterate the interest of the minority and that political victory is – while it lasts – license for a majority to enforce its agenda. This in turn has a retroactive effect on political campaigning in that it encourages the idea that political disagreement is essentially and invariably a contest of absolute and incompatible loyalties, so that the opponent’s victory is the worst outcome imaginable. In other words, the failure to factor in the critical space in which I am able to hear how I am heard and seen becomes a driver of the febrile absolutism of online polemics, and of the corruption of democratic politics into majoritarianism12. To say that we must learn to distance ourselves from our commitments in politics in order to arrive at both justice and love is at first sight a bizarre recommendation, suggesting a corrosive indifferentism. However, the distance involved is not a refusal of commitment; it has rather to do with what it is that we are committed to. Bonhoeffer’s commitment is manifestly a serious and ultimately costly affair, but it is a commitment neither to victory nor to innocence. It is a commitment to the Wirklichkeit he evokes – the reality both of a many-layered and historically complex acting self and to the precise demands of a particular context, as well as a commitment to a radical and all-powerful mercy beyond all planning and justification. Nor is this about a detachment from particular interests that allows an “objectively” just outcome to prevail, as if justice were simply an abstract allocation of deserving. Justice as seeing what is there and responding appropriately, in Wirklichkeitgemäßheit or Sachgemäßheit, is a task for imagination and intelligence directed towards the detail of a person, object or situation whose life is grasped as organised around a principle that may never be fully accessible, but is certainly not one’s own individual agenda. 12. For a searching and original essay on the modes of discourse that resist these corruptions, see C. KAVENY, Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square, Cambridge, MA – London, Harvard University Press, 2016; cf. R. WILLIAMS, Overcoming Political Tribalism, the 2019 P.M. Glynn Lecture on Religion, Law and Public Life, Sydney, Australian Catholic University.

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Returning to the question with which we began this enquiry, “sustainable” justice, a degree of social and legal stability that will guarantee that defence and redress do not depend on the contingent arrangements of power, requires something of the discernment we have here been sketching; which also means that it requires communities of discernment in which the habits of scrutiny described can be assimilated and transmitted. It is – to put it mildly – not wholly obvious that traditional communities of faith can be relied upon to provide such a setting; but this essay has tried to suggest that at least those communities have resources capable of being put to work for this end. “The more we attend to the world, the less we find ourselves wishing to control it”, says Jan Zwicky in a recent and haunting essay on the role of spiritual practice in our thinking about politics and the global environmental crisis13. Attention, she suggests, takes us into mourning as well as wonder, the sense of dangerous loss and damage as well as the celebration of “deep acknowledgement”; a contemplative politics will be one that is capable (as seems so unthinkable in public life at the moment) of recognising and naming our own failure, the hurt done as well as received, and the perpetual slippage towards violence (once again, Bonhoeffer has much to say on this). Consequently, if this is truly the fruit of the sort of distance we have been thinking about, we can perhaps begin to understand why Evagrius can say that apatheia, our liberation from defensive and aggressive instinct, is the gateway to love14 – as well as to a justice that has some claim to be a little more transparent to the just vision that God has of the creation. University of Cambridge Magdalene College Magdalene Street Cambridge CB 0AG United Kingdom [email protected]

Rowan WILLIAMS

13. R. BRINGHURST – J. ZWICKY, Learning to Die: Wisdom in an Age of Climate Crisis, Regina, Saskatchewan, University of Regina Press, 2019, p. 65. 14. “Love Is the Child of Apatheia”, in EVAGRIUS, Praktikos 81; see, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, Spencer, MA, Cistercian Publications, 1970.

MYSTICAL THEOLOGY WITHOUT SOVEREIGNTY TOWARD AN APOPHATIC POLITICAL THEOLOGY

INTRODUCTION Political theology has historically had an uneasy relationship with mystical theology, one that this essay seeks to clarify and amend. Quite often, mystical theology is portrayed as an apophatic or negative exercise taken as a form of revolt or rebellion against Church hierarchy. Its propensity as a type of political insurrection is not without justification, however, and its deployment frequently begs the question of how one is to return to a notion of community, or ecclesia, after taking seriously its experience of negativity. Indeed, and as an accompanying illustration of this problematic, modern arguments for atheism typically founder upon the question of community involvement. The nature of apophatic thought, so central to mystical theology throughout the centuries, has often led to sentiments perceived as nihilistic insofar as all commitments to a given tradition and its institutional norms become subject to unending critique. Within such tensions, it is easy to imagine how thought itself becomes caught in-between the defense of established traditions and their critical undoing wherein contingency appears to trump necessity, just as experience appears to rule over tradition. This essay will argue, however, that such an apophatic shift toward contingency and experience, rather than relying upon the historical arguments for necessity and tradition, might not signal the destruction of tradition and normativity altogether, but might actually realize a path forward for locating new forms of human existence, including those claims to sovereignty so typically embraced by historical forms of theological reflection. From another point of view, perhaps it is only by realizing the failures of the particular that one is able to make a movement toward universality. This wager is what might prevent the negativity of mystical experience from lapsing into a nominalist discourse or a violent form of nihilism. By taking account of these trends and possibilities – ranging in commentaries on mystical thought to studies on nihilism and mysticism – this essay aims to set another course for the use of negative theology vis-à-vis philosophical thought that has not yet been applied in our time.

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I. SECULARIZING SECULARITY Christianity in the West has been full of highly significant politicaltheological tensions. There have been centuries of tension, for example, between the domus ecclesia and post-Constantinian Catholicism, between Christological doctrines that legitimated sovereign rule and heretical teachings that undermined monarchical support, between ecclesiastical defenders and Holy Spirit infused poverty movements often associated with laypersons, as well as tensions between institutionalized doctrines that shored up religious and political identities and those mystical experiences that sought to negate any normative measure of selfhood1. Such tensions have codified, and at times disbanded, the boundaries between the orthodox and the heretical, though never actually eradicating the fundamental basis of these divisions. The contemporary Catholic Church is, as such, intuitively correct to read countercultural movements for women’s or LGBTQ+ rights, sexualcultural liberation, or the critiques of radical ecofeminism as maintaining the spirits of heresy, antinomianism, pantheism and the like, though the church is often mistaken in believing that these forces are going to be effaced at some point in time. What we are witness to, time and again, is the force of an apophaticism (or some form of critical negativity) as an in-built part of every normative institution or identity. The division between form and content that apophatic thought highlights is one that, in the (post)modern period, favors formal dynamics and empties traditional and institutional contents into a void many have critiqued as nihilistic (grasped sociologically as those perpetual forces of de-traditionalization). A certain impasse is thereby constantly reached wherein there appears to be no way to legitimate a particular, historical content of a given tradition, history, institution or ecclesia, but no way to do away completely with such things either. The modern tension between religion and secularism (expressed antagonistically as some potential form of atheism) plays out these same tensions between established structures and their undoing. If monasticism can be seen as a laboratory for forming communal and political identities, atheism today, with its inbuilt libertarian leanings, is obsessed with its inherent lack of concern – indeed its indifference – toward communal identity and political association2. As the modern secular rationale and 1. See, among others, those tensions discussed by L. SIEDENTOP, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, New York, Penguin, 2014. 2. On monasticism as a laboratory for political models, see the general analysis offered throughout G. AGAMBEN, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, Stanford,

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defense of the nation-state wanes, there is little theoretical justification for specific communal associations, though the practical desire for community itself remains a constituent feature of being human. Philosophically postmodern at this point in history, humanity discovers itself in a compensatory situation wherein contingency appears to trump necessity, just as experience rules over tradition. Plurality trumps a singular (monolithic) perspective and makes clear that no single religious tradition monopolizes truth, which is more accurately rendered as truths rather than Truth. Nonetheless, a normative measure, often captured as a practically implemented Truth (e.g., linguistic paradigms, cultural-national mores, liturgical rites that define the religious community, etc.), is necessary for identity formation, just as myriad experiential truths are necessary to de-construct any hegemonic utilization of a totalizing Truth, or what academics have realized for decades now as a critical process favoring divergent histories over a monolithic History, and so of contextual theologies over a singularizing Theology. To say this much is to suggest nothing more than a repetition of Heidegger’s discussion of ontological difference, of how existent beings are the only way to experience an ultimately fictitious, even mythological, sense of Being, giving rise to the subsequent critique of all metaphysical, onto-theological structures that have propped up the façade of Being as an existent divine entity3. As this logic is extended, in the absence of an identifiable, metaphysical Being in the modern era, we turn to our sacramental relationship to language itself as the ultimate inexplicable but necessary experience of Being capable of defining humanity4. Recognizing the contingency of difference and experience as (postmodern) foundations for that which is more than contingent (appearing as, but not crossing over entirely into necessity) and more than experience (appearing as, but not crossing entirely over into institutional structure) is a possibility that has, however, not been fully incorporated within political-theological conversations focused more on the nature of sovereignty defined through its apparent necessity5. Each of these movements CA, Stanford University Press, 2013. Regarding atheist struggles with community, see P. ZUCKERMAN, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions, New York, Penguin, 2015, pp. 107-136. 3. See, among other places in his work, M. HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, Albany, NY, State University of New York, 1996, pp. 8-9. 4. See, in particular, the overall argument presented in T. EAGLETON, Culture and the Death of God, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2015, and the way in which language is perceived as sacramental in G. AGAMBEN, The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2010. 5. Cf. the philosophical efforts of W. DESMOND regarding alternative models of sovereignty, such as presented in his The Intimate Universal: The Hidden Porosity among Religion, Art, Philosophy, and Politics, New York, Columbia University Press, 2016, pp. 156-198.

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resonates deeply with the ontology developed by Slavoj Žižek wherein immanence is not all that constitutes reality, yet it can never be said to cross over into transcendence either. The facile polarizations that characterize tensions within political theology emanate from these same dynamics: communitarians who defend the structures of religious identity as necessary deployments of sovereign power versus deconstructivists (or genealogists, as Alasdair MacIntyre has called them) who stress the contingency of identity in contestation of all metaphysically legitimated structures6. Despite the partisan rhetoric that occasionally occupies both sides, and which is to be expected as part of any dualistic political process, there will always be a series of totalization, de-totalization and re-totalization within each political-theological configuration, as Paul Ricoeur has aptly described the construction of any narrative form7. One cannot deny the practical legitimacy of shared symbolic representation unless one wants to walk naked down the street – a temptation that only emperors clothed in their majestic sovereignty seem capable of sustaining as the fundamental ruse of political prestige. To break the possibility of a totalizing logic becoming a totalitarian one, what is needed is a clearer delineation of universality, for it is only by realizing the failures of the particular that one is able to make a movement toward a universal proposition. This process is what likewise prevents the negativity of mystical experience from lapsing into a nominalist discourse or a violent form of nihilism. In essence, as Saint Paul recognized long ago, it is only by dividing an established, and so socially divided, identity – through the same methods as are bountiful in negative theology – that we are capable of transcending identity. As Paul had rendered the formulation, in the second division of every established identity into flesh and spirit lies the undoing of the first division between the Jew and the Gentile. In other words, it is only by exposing the cracks within immanence itself that we are able to find something that is more than immanent, whether we label it as transcendent or not. There are very serious questions to pose to Christianity in this regard, as a revolutionary movement bent not on establishing a new religious identity, but on procuring a universal subjectivity through the negation of every established identity – what Giorgio Agamben has referred to, in a Pauline negative dialectical vein, as the division of every pre-formed social and religious division. It presents 6. A. MACINTYRE, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition, Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 1994, p. 25. 7. P. RICOEUR, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1990, pp. 281-318.

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us with a philosophical and political legacy that has still to be more fully embraced and enacted8. We can see the need for such a philosophical distinction in a contemporary political context. Amidst the competing universalities that characterize our age, there is a need to move beyond the nationalistic secular communities that typify democracy today in order, not to return to populist or fascist national forms, but to “secularize secularization” with a movement toward a UN style meta-ethics that transcends any particular religious commitment: a “metamorality” as it were. In the writings of Étienne Balibar, for example, we witness the call for a “vanishing mediator” that performs a negative, deconstructive task, such as what secularism represents, but which is not claimed as a positive political or communal project. Its role is precisely to provide fertile grounds for critique and then to vanish from view. It is a creative and philosophical fiction that humanity invents in order to realign its most important commitments, but also to establish a possibility for universalization that does not become totalitarian. Such a vanishing mediator is certainly bound up with so many philosophical methods of the last century that sought for a universal position to appear through the self-reflexive doubling that was at once a negation of a previous negation, but also an inspiration for a world beyond the normative one we seem always bound to inhabit. It is present in the Parisian protestors of May 1968 who claimed it was “prohibited to prohibit” or “forbidden to forbid”, in the deconstructivist legacy that searches for a “politics of politics” and in the critical theorists and liberation theologians” search for a negative dialectics as a “negation of negation”. It is in this sense, provocatively, that Balibar views secularism as itself a fiction working within every religious claim, as in any language or identity, and it is an essential activity undertaken within the historically religious processes of community formation. It is important to recognize how such universalizations are a playing out of a certain fiction – what for Paul was a state of living “as if not”. Such fictions, if considered as such, resist an absolutizing of their claims (including moral ones), though they emphasize their necessary existence as normative measures. That is, even if we understand Paul’s suggestion to be a challenge to all existent, normative identities (e.g., the subdivision of the Jew/Gentile divide), they are also the key to forming new universal identities (e.g., the Christian, as a universalizing of Jewish particularity), even if these new identities eventually 8. See G. AGAMBEN, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2005, pp. 49-53.

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become subdivided themselves in an unending process of identification, de-identification, and re-identification (or Catholic, Protestant, and generic Christian). These dynamics signal something like the eventual division of a previously “universal” identity when it is faced with a new division due to an increased internal plurality, one brought about by global forces, women’s rights, non-human agents and so on. The fiction that divides, which Balibar points to in this regard unfolds as such: The vanishing mediator between politico-religious differends is effective only if it resonates within religious discourses, if it reveals cracks in their creeds, impossibilities in their prescriptions, or inconsistences in their ethics. It has to divest them of their singularity and undermine their certainty that they hold the monopoly on truth and justice, without, however, thwarting their search for truth and justice (“salvation”) on their own paths. Here we may, perhaps, once again invoke the category of heresy or try to imagine the vanishing mediator as the unlikely heresy common to all religious discourses, while leaving open the question of its relation to the heretical movements that have historically affected each particular religion. Not all heresies, of course, have been tolerant; far from it9.

I believe it is in this way that nihilism is to be denounced when its practitioners believe it to be an embodiable position, when they understand it to be more than a fiction, as something in its own right worth dying for as one might die for a nation-state – perhaps the very definition of a totalitarian impulse, even if rooted in patriotic enthusiasm. Those, however, who see nihilism as a spectral force utilized to deconstruct oppressive structures, to expose the “cracks in their creeds”, in order to challenge dominant and oppressive normative forms, deserve, as Adorno had understood nihilism in league with his own negative dialectics, to be championed above all else10. Those who fight and die for such causes seek not to formulate their own political project in a negative register, but only to undo or suspend the normative measure through their “fearless speech”11. This was the impetus that had once prompted the French novelist Jean Genet to side with various marginalized groups such as the Palestinians and the Black Panthers, with their cries for liberation, but only up until the point that such freedoms were politically achieved and no further12. 9. É. BALIBAR, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism: Critical Hypotheses on Religion and Politics, New York, Columbia University Press, 2018, p. 55. 10. See his concluding remarks on nihilism in T.W. ADORNO, Negative Dialectics, London, Continuum, 1973, pp. 376-380. 11. BALIBAR, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism (n. 9), p. 158. 12. See J. GENET, The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews, ed. A. DICHY, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2004, pp. 2-17.

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Though Balibar, among others, can only point toward a symbolic authority “superior to the state by its universalism and inferior to it by its constitutive pluralism” achieved through “negative theologico-political” dimensions, secularism becomes the process of the nihilation of the specific that paves the way for universality to appear13. His “secularization of secularity” is an act of double negation that aims to produce a universal subject beyond the competing universalisms that otherwise proliferate in our world through their ability to enact and reinforce divisions (or boundaries) between persons and communities. What he is also doing, however, is repeating the Pauline distillation of the Christian message and its universalizing of a Jewish particularity founded upon an absolute religious division (of the Jew and the Greek). His analysis is certainly right to point out how the “virtual deconstruction” of any primary identity is carried out in order to institute a “virtual reconstruction” of secondary identities aimed at becoming a vague, universal (meta) category (e.g., “new humans”, “community of citizens”, “global citizens”, etc.), but which may also contain a good deal of violent underpinnings14. Christianity, as a virtual reconstruction of this sort, has certainly not been spared the presence of violence in its self-understanding – a violence made possible by assuming an absolutist position rather than admitting its inherent non-homogenous plurality15. What we need to become attentive to, as Balibar himself notes, is an element embedded within politics proper, what Roberto Esposito has called the “impolitical”. The impolitical is not the antipolitical in the sense that secularism, as Balibar uses the term, is not atheism. The impolitical is what appears from within the political as yet pointing beyond the political, though it is also a confirmation that the political is all that exists and cannot simply be wished away. It is a movement away from immanence that yet “never amounts to transcendence”16. It is the core negative element of any positive political program and the key, one might say, toward understanding how a universal position might actually be achievable. Likewise, the secular is not necessarily a refutation of the religious, and it is not necessarily an anti-religious stance either, as atheism often seeks to be, but which reveals how it is, for that very reason, more and more bound up with the existence of religion. The secular, in this sense, 13. BALIBAR, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism (n. 9), pp. 60, 134. 14. Ibid., p. 130. 15. Ibid., p. 151. 16. R. ESPOSITO, Categories of the Impolitical, New York, Fordham University Press, 2015, p. 78.

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is a recognition of the religious dynamics of human existence insofar as they safeguard the particularities of human existence lived outside of the normative, political boundaries of representation. As such, an attentiveness to the impolitical elements within the political is what attunes us to those singularities, those forms of existence or forms-of-life, that live their life out beyond their ability to be inscribed into either law or politics17. What Balibar envisions is a secularizing of secularity that pushes toward, but does not fully cross over into, the domain of the religious. For that very reason, it also calls us to become particularly attentive to the dimensions of the religious as historical attempts to safeguard the precarious vulnerability of each form-of-life. Though this may be only a dealing with that which is immanent, it is also a recognition that this immanent life is “not all” there is to existence, a consideration that prevents any immanent framework from formulating itself as absolute or what was historically the hallmark of transcendent sovereign expressions. Attentiveness to the immanent may in fact provide the key toward embracing the plurality and complexity of existence beyond the (sovereign) human form that has stood as abstracted from the rest of existence. Perhaps, through such a critical awareness, we can extend recognition and protection to other marginalized, nonhuman forms-of-life so valuable to the overall wellbeing of this planet.

II. THE FATE OF THEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE It is difficult but necessary to imagine the fate of theological discourse in light of these remarks, for the suggestion that all we can discern of reality is that the immanent is not all that there is, but refuses to cross over into a formulation of transcendence, leaves theology in an extremely precarious situation. Locating the contours of an apophatic or negative political theology is only possible by first discerning exactly what a mystical theology without sovereignty might look like. By drawing upon a reformulation of the relationship between apophatic thought, which in the modern period becomes secularized as the philosophical forces of nihilism, theology might better be able to articulate the possibilities of its own future. 17. See the commentary offered in L. DUBREUIL, The Refusal of Politics, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2016, pp. 41, 89-91.

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As the philosopher Stanley Rosen once put it, nihilism is generally “an attempt to overcome or to repudiate the past on behalf of an unknown and unknowable yet hoped-for future”. It is, as such, an inherent dynamic within any given history, much as Derrida’s description of a messianic force moving through every structure has helped us to understand. As Rosen would continue, however, things are not always so balanced, for “The danger implicit in this attempt is that it seems necessarily to entail a negation of the present, or to remove the ground upon which man must stand in order to carry out or even merely to witness the process of historical transformation”18. By allowing nihilism to pronounce itself within any given historical context or community, one risks disrupting the present, and in such a way as to frequently evoke reactionary elements bent on preserving the established order. Those who would work toward eradicating nihilistic tendencies become the de facto guardians of order itself. As Rosen would make clear, any attempt to suppress nihilistic tendencies is likewise an attempt to suppress what makes each individual unique, at the same time as it is a bid to turn humans into gods19. There is more than a casual note of sovereign claims implicit within efforts to remove what appears as nihilistic. At the same time, however, and insofar as we become witness to a political struggle between nihilistic forces and established sovereign claims for order, any sovereign claims that are made for power actually share with nihilism an attempt to recreate the world ex nihilo, revealing how both sides wrestle for the same stakes20. Within such contestations for power, the guardians of order reserve the right to dictate the terms of correct practice (orthodoxy). It is from this point of view that the so-called “heretical” nature of nihilistic impulses within mystical theologies, or that which more orthodox theologians have decried as merely forms of “unbelief”, appear21. It does not take too much of an imagination to conceive, as Peter Berger does, that there is an overlap between mystical impulses, nihilism and modernity itself – all of which are forces that multiply our choices by introducing plurality and so remove what was once considered to be destiny or fate22. Each force conspires to upset traditionally received normative boundaries. 18. S. ROSEN, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1969, p. 140. 19. Ibid., p. 234. 20. Ibid., p. 141. See the way in which nihilism is implicitly connected with the markers of sovereign power – necessity, destiny and decision – in E. SEVERINO, The Essence of Nihilism, London, Verso, 2016. 21. See P.L. BERGER, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation, New York, Anchor, 1980, p. 154. 22. Ibid., p. 28.

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As disconcerting as such dynamics are for modern religious identities and communities, so much of our modern advancements for minority rights springs from this same place, as well as the critical insights of scientific thinking. This reading accords, for example, with the insights of Maurice Blanchot who argues that Nietzschean nihilism is actually the platform upon which modern science rests, opening up the possibility of great destruction, to be sure, but also harboring within itself the potential to rise above ignorance in search of currently unfathomable knowledge23. The question remains, however, how humanity is to live in light of the ongoing deconstruction of its (previously) most valuable identities and traditions, and it is an inquiry humanity is still very much undertaking. Beyond outright rejection of what appears as nihilistic, there are various options available as responses to the deconstructing, de-sacralizing force of the apophatic. Take, for example, Charlie Gere’s recent assessment of the options facing humanity in light of modern nihilism. Relying upon a set of options put forth by Simon Critchley, Gere attempts to move beyond mere metaphysical resistance, sheer indifference, passive acceptance of absurdity, an embrace of pure destruction or even, Critchley’s preferred solution, locating a slight distinction between the way things are and the way they might rather be24. Following more closely to Ray Brassier’s response, Gere wants to contemplate the implications of simply embracing nihilism as it “makes religion necessary, if it also renders it impossible at the same time”25. Something like a religious nihilism that recognizes how nihilism is lodged at the very heart of religion and how religion inevitably leads to nihilistic tendencies might yet hint, as Brassier has put it, at a “speculative opportunity” located within nihilistic operations26. What we are witnessing through such efforts is the paradoxical recuperation of what had appeared to disappear at the hands of nihilism, what Bradley Onishi has referred to as the utilization of apophatic traditions in order to develop a “nonsecularist secularity”27. As with the negation of negation, or the Pauline hollowing out one’s identity, there is no positive 23. M. BLANCHOT, The Infinite Conversation, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1993, p. 146. 24. S. CRITCHLEY, Very Little … Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy and Literature, London, Routledge, 2004, which deals with nihilism, recounted in C. GERE, Unnatural Theology: Religion, Art and Media after the Death of God, London, Bloomsbury, 2019, p. 17. 25. GERE, Unnatural Theology (n. 24), pp. 17-18. 26. R. BRASSIER, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. xi. 27. B.B. ONISHI, The Sacrality of the Secular: Postmodern Philosophy of Religion, New York, Columbia University Press, 2018, Chapter 5.

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sacrality before humanity to be discovered, but only a “nonsecularist secularity” that intimates the grounds for what the sacred might be, without actually evoking any positive, dogmatic claims (and so somewhat akin to Richard Kearney’s God “who may be”). We are reminded here, too, of those writers, from Thomas J.J. Altizer to Slavoj Žižek, who have argued for an ontology of the “not all” – that is, that the most we can suggest is that there is no transcendence from our world, but that a complete immanence is “not all” there is to reality. There is a fracture within immanence itself that cannot be sutured and which does not entirely cross over into a type of transcendence. It is a post-secular moment that refuses to become a platform for a particular theological point of view. It is this linkage of mysticism with nihilism that announces the thought of Thomas J.J. Altizer and his “death of God” theology. Here the “absolute abyss” is an iconoclastic revolution within the heart of a kenotic God, who is unafraid to utilize the force of nihilism in order to produce a self-annihilation that might yet be capable of producing a new experience of grace in our world28. Parallel to Altizer is the force of negativity in the theological musings of Žižek, for whom the brokenness of God constitutes the uniqueness of Christian claims29. His formulation of a “materialist theology” begins with an attempt to locate the death drive within God’s own being30. This materialist theology bears the admittance that “god” “is a name for the immanent decentering of human subjectivity” that no divine being can conceal any longer31. God, as he will elsewhere state, is “ultimately the name for the purely negative gesture of meaningless sacrifice, of giving up what matters most to us”32. Herein, he even suggests, lies the “atheist” core of Christianity33. Likewise, we might mention how these varied threads coalesce in the writings of John Caputo, whose take on the “weakness of God” merges with the “nihilism of grace” understood as itself dependent upon “the power of nothingness, something that is because it is, nothing more, without why. This nihilism not only dares to think, which is the Enlightenment’s audacity, but dares to hope in the blossoming of the rose, which is a mystical audacity, a second and still higher audacity”34. There is only 28. T.J.J. ALTIZER, Godhead and the Nothing, Albany, NY, State University of New York, 2003, pp. 131-143. 29. S. ŽIŽEK, Disparities, London, Bloomsbury, 2016, p. 296. 30. Ibid., p. 303. 31. Ibid., p. 320. 32. S. ŽIŽEK, On Belief, London, Routledge, 2001, p. 150. 33. ŽIŽEK, Disparities (n. 29), p. 322. 34. J.D. CAPUTO, Hoping against Hope (Confessions of a Postmodern Pilgrim), Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 2015, p. 44.

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the respect for whatever exists beyond any teleological destiny or theological signature, as Agamben has termed it. Derrida himself, Caputo’s major inspiration, had refused to label deconstructionism as a form of nihilism, because it maintains a radical openness to the other35. It is important to remember, however, that, as Caputo sees this, the absence and openness that constitute a properly apophatic gesture may appear as a type of nihilism, but it is nihilistic only insofar as it clears the terrain of whatever had prevented an authentic hospitality from seducing us further. Within every form of radical openness, there is something of the divine lingering that calls to humanity, as many mystics and modern-day writers alike have noted36. As is suitable in any conversation about nihilism and mysticism, William Franke likewise draws our attention to the manner in which both are counter-discourses, of which negative theology is the partner to the nihilistic37. Here, words fail to capture the sense of what one is trying to present, and, as such, sense itself is undone, though at the same time, the entire matrix of representations is reconfigured as a result38. A genuine apophaticism will always be characterized by the transgressive nature of the blasphemous, or even the scatological, both of which press the limits of language39. As historical examples, Gnosticism and other heresies have frequently appeared as discourses on the failures of language to be absolute40. More to the point, as Franke notes, and as Wittgenstein had once described the situation, the unsayability of language’s existence is itself what we consider the mystical to be41. It could be said, as Franke also points out, that language is devalued in the mystical experience, but also retained as a witness, as providing testimony to the experience itself, allowing language to more or less annihilate itself in order to reveal what cannot be said42. Seen from this point of view, we are provided with an understanding of mysticism as a secular reinterpretation of the religious categories of experience43. As so many of the theorists we have been looking at will reaffirm again and again, it 35. See J.D. CAPUTO, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1997, p. 17. 36. K. MACKENDRICK, Divine Enticement: Theological Seductions, New York, Fordham University Press, 2013, pp. 200-202. 37. W. FRANKE, A Philosophy of the Unsayable, Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 2014, pp. 1-2. 38. Ibid., p. 6. 39. Ibid., p. 16. 40. Ibid., p. 36. 41. Ibid., p. 21. 42. Ibid., pp. 61, 68. 43. Ibid., pp. 81-82.

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is the death of the words we use that allows us to see, perhaps for the first time, the life-forms that lay behind the words. Hence, it is the inability of language to truly express something that is paradoxically its “greatest power”, allowing the failure of a representation to be its only authentic moment44. What language endlessly searches for is the ability to pronounce a “relationless relation”, as we see in Blanchot’s thought, which recalls the “purposeless purpose” of the sublime experience in Kant, or the “religion without religion” that we see in the apophatic gestures of Levinas and Derrida45. Apophasis is about the limits of discourse and not about making ontological claims, about pointing toward an unsayable experience that cannot be uttered, but which “shows itself” nonetheless and is about locating the space where language “unsays itself”46. Franke makes the connection of apophaticism to contemporary philosophical thought explicit in this context by demonstrating how apophasis takes place as the negation of negation and so points just to what is “simply there” (as in the phenomenological reduction) beyond all normative representations or words, and so tries to prevent any idols from forming47. Following the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, Franke shows how these apophatic movements themselves demonstrate God being emptied of content and so becoming only a place of “pure receptivity”, where anything “beyond word and concept” would be God, which is not a thing48. When framing this conversation in the context of the larger religious question (i.e., asking questions such as, do such apophatic gestures seek to overcome institutionalized religion altogether?), things become somewhat more problematic. Can Christianity, for example, contain within itself the resources for overcoming itself, leading to the “death of God”, the revaluation of all values and secularism? Or, following Franke, is there a way to work with the negative theological tradition in order to see it cultivate apophaticism within a religious context49? Franke’s solution is to conceive of Christianity as introducing to thought itself the possibility of imagining an “other world” to every world, the 44. Ibid., pp. 124, 135. 45. Ibid., p. 60. 46. Ibid., pp. 151-154. 47. Ibid., pp. 148-150. 48. Ibid., pp. 156-157. As Nancy himself will express matters generally, “Christianity became, by itself, a humanism, an atheism, and a nihilism. The ever more difficult preservation of its properly religious forms (its church, its practices, and its myths) ended up becoming the object of a struggle or of internal schisms”, in J.-L. NANCY, Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity, New York, Fordham University Press, 2008, pp. 23-24. 49. FRANKE, A Philosophy of the Unsayable (n. 37), p. 161.

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deconstruction of Christianity as the “religion of the exit of religion”, much as Larry Siedentop or Gianni Vattimo have likewise conceived of it50. Here, there is an opening toward the abstract and permanently empty Open, which comes to us as a form of nihilism in Nancy’s thought brought about through the Christian declaration of a kenotic divinity51. As such, negative theology, he finds, is actually the best antidote to destructive forms of nihilism (such as Michael Gillespie has also illustrated)52. Moreover, what we have taken to calling the “religious” is really a dimension of language, recasting negative theology as little more than a dimension of thought itself53. The negation of negation that defines apophatic thought consequently opens discourse up to what lies beyond it, to critical thought itself then, making the muses of theological history more than simply metaphysical ploys for political power54. Theology is inherently implicated in the very coordinates of thought attempting to think about its own existence, of thought thinking thought then. The negation of negation, as Adorno well knew, and as Franke repeats for us, is not a nihilistic endeavor, but what saves us from idolatry55.

CONCLUSION If we are going to find a way to formulate a negative political theology, it is only by refocusing the history of theological discourse as a particular chapter in the history of philosophical thought itself. Theology is not a discourse waiting to be overcome by those modern atheistic forces that would see it dissolved once and for all. Rather, theology is the seedbed of philosophical thought in our contemporary, postmodern context, despite the fact that this re-envisioning of theology also recasts religious operations entirely. This is not to suggest that it merely become the “handmaid of philosophy”. On the contrary, there must become an inseparability of theological and philosophical methods, with or without a belief in a transcendent force beyond our fractured immanent domain. Though this insight may seem to spell the end of religious institutions and communities, doctrines and theologies, it may also yield more insight than ever into 50. Ibid., pp. 164-166. 51. Ibid., pp. 166, 168. 52. Ibid., p. 279. See also M.A. GILLESPIE, Nihilism before Nietzsche, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1995. 53. FRANKE, A Philosophy of the Unsayable (n. 37), p. 296. 54. Ibid., p. 298. 55. Ibid., pp. 317-318.

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what it means to respect the precarity and vulnerability of every form of life living on this planet – a most valuable payoff reached only by taking already established theological-political and apophatic claims more seriously than ever. Loyola University Chicago 1032 W. Sheridan Road 60660 Chicago, IL USA [email protected]

Colby DICKINSON

OUT OF GETHSEMANE AN ESSAY ON THEOLOGY AS COMMON APOSTOLIC DISCERNMENT

INTRODUCTION Common Apostolic Discernment (CAD) is known primarily as a spiritual tradition and practice inspired by Ignatius Loyola1. It can be studied and appreciated in theology, more specifically in moral theology, in ecclesiology2, or, of course, in the theological study of spirituality and its history. Nevertheless, it can also be understood as a tool to craft theology and in that sense, it suggests a fundamental theology. It is to this kind of fundamental theology based on CAD and its characteristic elements that I want to turn in this contribution, taking my lead from Ignatian spirituality3 as well as from a reflection on human vulnerability, as narrated in the gospel passion narratives. Vulnerability is well suited to our endeavour: it requires processes of discernment in common, it is an important feature of our contemporary world, and it may unsettle theology as it is recalcitrant to overly systematic and dogmatic approaches. In what follows I will merely offer some preliminary ideas and possible inroads, without unfolding a full treatment of the subject, of CAD’s importance as a theological method. A fundamental theology based on CAD is a future project close to my heart and also urgent in our contemporary context as well as in view of the importance of processes of synodality in the Roman Catholic Church4. 1. By way of introduction: E. MERCIECA, Discernimiento comunitario, in J. GARCÍA DE CASTRO et al., Diccionario de Espiritualidad Ignaciana (A-F) (Colección Manresa, 37), Bilbao, Mensajero; Santander, Sal Terrae, 2007, 611-616. See also, M. BACQ – J. CHARLIER – L’ÉQUIPE ESDAC, Pratique du discernement en commun: manuel des accompagnateurs, Namur – Paris, Fidélité, 2006; M. ROTSAERT, Geestelijke onderscheiding by Ignatius van Loyola, Averbode, Altiora, 2012. 2. J. HAERS, Kerk: Plaats van ontmoetingen, veld van spanningen en ruimte voor onderscheiding, in R. MICHIELS – J. HAERS (eds.), Een werkzame dialoog: Oecumenische bijdragen over de kerk 30 jaar na Vaticanum II (Nikè, 38), Leuven – Amersfoort, Acco, 1997, 187-227. 3. For example: W.A. BARRY, Toward a Theology of Discernment, in The Way Supplement 64 (1989) 129-140. 4. J. HAERS, A Synodal Process on Synodality: Synodal Missionary Journeying and Common Apostolic Discernment, in Louvain Studies 43 (2020) 215-238; E. LÓPEZ PÉREZ, Fidelidad Sinodal: Liderazgo de discernimiento congregacional, in Revista Confer 59/228 (2020) 479-503.

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Vulnerability constitutes a key feature of today’s reality, a sign of the times. People increasingly become aware of how vulnerable they are in a world that they assumed under their control. This may produce fear and a craving for security at various levels of (common) existence. The expression “exploiting vulnerabilities” has become familiar, particularly when we understand reality as the interaction of individual and competitive interests. The vulnerabilities of others can be used to control them through the clever and cunning manipulation of their weaknesses. Sometimes, in a world of “fake news” and “alternative realities”, politicians even construct fictitious, fabled weaknesses in their opponents as a means to control them: a nasty game to subjugate the other. The expression “exploiting vulnerabilities” is also coined in the IT world: vulnerabilities in hard- or software can be used to break through network defences, to infiltrate programs, to acquire access to data, or to gain control over important systems. Moreover, discovered vulnerabilities represent an advantage and are not communicated as one awaits the best opportunity to use them against the other, who is viewed as an enemy. We also use the expression “vulnerable people”: people who do not dispose of the necessary means – physical, intellectual, political, military, economic, social, spiritual – to provide a safe environment for themselves or their loved ones, and who therefore can be excluded, exploited, humiliated, abused or submitted. And last but not least, we have become more aware of nature’s vulnerability as we ruthlessly rob our environment of its wealth: nature even begins to fight back, if one may say so. Exploiting vulnerabilities of a person or a system beyond their carrying capacity is violence and provokes violent responses. The issue of how to deal with vulnerability is a major complex and multifaceted challenge in our world. Will our understanding of or approach to vulnerability lead to further destructive spirals or, hopefully, to more sustainable life together? Dealing with vulnerability requires discernment: to become aware of its presence, its context, and its complex features – to see it as it is present and operates in ourselves, in people, in nature, and even in God –; to gauge (judge) the nature of vulnerability so as to explore its opportunities in the further development of life; and to choose (act) how to deal with vulnerability in ever concrete contexts. Is it possible to celebrate vulnerability also as an opportunity for creative encounters and the building of sustainable life together, even in the face of gross abuse? Key in this discernment is the realization that vulnerability is a relational reality: vulnerabilities arise in relationships and depend upon these. Therefore, discernment about vulnerability becomes common discernment, in which those experiencing the vulnerabilities and suffering

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abuse are involved as conversation partners, and in which the goal is to deal with vulnerabilities in a constructive, life-giving and sustainable way, i.e. by promoting relationships in which vulnerabilities become an asset (this represents an apostolic goal: it builds upon the creational togetherness and challenges us into efforts at bringing it about). Issues of vulnerability require CAD, concern life and existence together, with our fellow human beings, with nature, with God, and even with such strange actors as are the future generations on our planet. They connect with our fundamental and original interdependence and connectedness and so constitute a part of our deepest and most fundamental history – our apostolic, creational tradition – which we are called to serve as its apostles. In CAD, we are invited to view vulnerability not as a competitive tool to dominate others, but rather as an opportunity for emulation and existence and life. Being vulnerable means that we are never complete in ourselves, never alone and on ourselves, self-sufficient; we always need the support of others. Although we remain at risk to be abandoned or abused or to become the victims of dangerous and abusive power games, together we can build a strong common future, in which we rely on one another. We are called, positively, to empathize with one another and to collaborate: the collaboration between individuals allows for more than the sum of what these individuals can reach out to on their own. However, and for various reasons, amongst which the fear for abuse precisely where we are vulnerable, we may decide to build up powerful and impenetrable defence systems or attempt to submit and subdue the other, to compel the other to look and to think the way we do. Dealing with and encountering the other as a resistant and challenging other who is a real other and not just the other we allow for – the real other is an “other other” and not merely “our other” (an other in the sense that we want him of her to be other, in as far as we accept him or her as a valuable other) –, is one of the great challenges of our time. Not respecting the vulnerability of the other – the other’s real otherness – and reducing it to an otherness we control, leads to trauma and to inhumanity, as well as to the building of defensive structures of all kinds, the construction of protective borders: genuine encounter becomes impossible, because too dangerous. But, dealing with vulnerability in a constructive and consoling way requires “frontiers” of encounter where faces meet and where our vulnerabilities allow for real and respectful conversations that will change our world and enable the construction a shared sustainable future. Examples of destructive and abusive approaches to vulnerability are, unfortunately, not very far and not very difficult to spot: the abuse crisis in the church creates deep trauma in the victims and “survivors”, dehumanizes perpetrators

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who live a perverted understanding of love, and attacks the very vision that the church is called to serve. We still have to gauge the impact of church abuse and, through processes of restorative justice, find constructive reconciliation that also changes the practices and theologies of the church. Vulnerability calls positively for compassion in line with the fundamental interdependence of all reality as creation. It requires humility: to accept that we are co-dependent, that we share common ultimate ground, and that we live together and are called to do so, existentially and originally – our existence as creation together. The biblical story of the poor Lazarus (Luke 16,19-31) illustrates compellingly how destructive responses to vulnerability betray the original creational co-existence and lead to ultimate and final disaster. Simone Weil, in a wonderful little study on human personhood, clarifies how vulnerable interdependence breeds deep hope and expectations in ourselves. Human persons expect, in the deepest depths of their existence, that people do good to them: Il y a depuis la petite enfance jusqu’à la tombe, au fond du cœur de tout être humain, quelque chose qui, malgré toute l’expérience des crimes commis, soufferts et observés, s’attend invinciblement à ce qu’on lui fasse du bien et non du mal. C’est cela avant toute chose qui est sacré en tout être humain5.

She does not hesitate to recognize this existential pulse also in the life of Jesus Christ. In what follows, to illustrate how CAD may be involved in doing theology, we will refer to the gospel narratives of the vulnerable and suffering Jesus. Ignatius, in his Spiritual Exercises, speaks about “the Third Week”: how in dangerous and threatening situations, vulnerability unfolds as a fragile but strong resource to foster full shared life and existence as promised and hoped for in creation. Earlier on in this Spiritual Exercises, in the so-called “Meditation on the Two Banners”, Ignatius articulates the deep conflict between contrasting approaches to vulnerability. In this perspective, theologians are invited to become aware of the choices they make in approaching vulnerable reality: these choices are not innocent. Out of which perspectives and experiences do theologians speak and articulate their thoughts and theological systems? What are the interests involved in their theological discourse? Whom do they serve in their systematisations? What do they aspire at? Decisions are made, taking into account contextual realities today, as well as traditions that reach out to us from the theological narratives that have originated over the ages in so 5. S. WEIL, La personne et le sacré, Paris, Allia, 2018, p. 10.

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many different contexts, in which the signs of the times have been interpreted and discerned. The awareness that theologians are involved in making decisions and, therefore, in processes of discernment, is crucial to understand the meaning and relevance of theology. By referring to features of Jesus’ own discernment process in his “passion” – both his suffering and his passion for God’s commitment to a sustainable future (the Kingdom) for the whole creation –, by remembering crucial narratives and moments of his passion, by exploring the choices he makes and taking our lead from them in a heuristic endeavour today, we will highlight some important features of discerning theologies and of CAD as a theological method. We do this probingly, as such fundamental theology requires a more elaborate systematic treatment. I. ENCOUNTERS The passion stories of Jesus are narratives full of encounters, some of which are life-giving in the midst of terrible horror – such as with people providing support (Simon of Cyrene assists Jesus in carrying his cross, the women who follow Jesus and weep compassionately) or with some of the people at the foot of the cross (John and Mary, the centurion who recognizes the Son of God in the crucified, one of those crucified with Jesus) –, while other encounters are extremely violent and aim at the elimination of Jesus – the encounter with the high-priest, with the mob calling for Jesus’ condemnation. Other encounters express fear and are of abandonment, such as the betrayal of Peter and the disciples. One could say that all of these encounters constitute the “discerning” community that decides about Jesus’ fate, life or death. In many ways, vulnerability is revealed in these encounters. Of course, they show us a very weak and powerless Jesus; we also see the fear and suffering and pain of some people; we see people whose heart has hardened for many reasons; we see politicians … People who show to what compassion and horror human beings are capable, decide the fate of Jesus. All of them are challenged to “judge” Jesus. Theology also is about decisions in particular and changing circumstances – and vulnerability and suffering are key circumstances and contexts in which theologians are tasked to contribute: how do we allow God to speak in concrete reality – how do we lend our voice to God – and how do we speak about God? Various ways of approaching this challenge are possible: we can work with predetermined answers that reach us through particular interpretations of our tradition; we can also see theology as a

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heuristic and conversational process ongoing in tradition, portrayed by the history of that tradition, and in conversation with the concrete context in which we live. Challenges today – as exemplified in the context of vulnerability – certainly suggest the importance of a conversational approach: environmental issues, migrants and refugees, gender, and the construction of truth. All of these are signs of the times and theology cannot exist without entering into dialogue with these realities. Moreover, we have to raise the questions of who we are going to invite into the community of discernment in which the theological decisions are made and of what are the motives and interests that govern the contributions of these participants – also non-theologians – in the discernment process? Theologians, vulnerable to the realities that engage us, will have to become careful, attentive, and humble “listeners”, vulnerable to what (strange) others have to say or contribute and, in them, to God’s profound otherness. II. THEO-RELATIONALITY Ignatius Loyola challenges the person who does the spiritual exercises to look at how God reveals and hides Godself during the passion of Christ. Central to the whole narrative is the relation of Jesus with the Abba, the origin and wellspring of all connected life. The vulnerable and humiliated Jesus draws his strength from the Father and continues to trust in God’s presence in all the people he encounters, even in his enemies: on the cross, he will ask God to forgive them. His opponents move in the other direction: they attempt to weaken and exclude Jesus, to strip him from his humanity to make him even more vulnerable; they want to mark the difference with him by attacking him precisely on his trust in the Father: “How dare he speak in the name of God?”. Discerning Theologies are also invited to follow Jesus and to deeply concentrate on God as the origin of all connected reality: they are theorelational, and in God, creation-relational – interconnectedness is the core of creation, fundamentally and originally. Ignatius Loyola refers to these constitutive relationships as the “Principle and Fundament”. In a broad sense of the word, we could speak about an “apostolic” reference: we return to the ultimate roots of who we are, to the narratives of creation that constitute us as human beings and as creatures in the interaction with the whole of creation. This apostolic reference challenges us, in our turn, to become apostles, in faithfulness to our origins, at the service of a world moving towards the vision of the Kingdom. Jesus always reconnects to

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this original level, the source of all existence, revealing the relationship to God, to one’s own humanity, trusting the deep humanity in the person he encounters. In the encounter with a servant of the high priest who hits him (John 18,22-23), Jesus calls him out to connect with his deep humanity and addresses him as a worthwhile, responsible human being: “If there is some offence in what I said, point it out; but if not, why do you strike me?”. The servant is left vulnerable as a human being and invited to confront his own lack of humanity in dealing with a fellow human being. He is called to discern his own behaviour and his own existential roots. Jesus relates back to the original deep human levels, and he attempts to bring the conversation at that level: he appeals to the humanity of his interlocutors and opponents and recognizes in them full blown persons6. Theology as CAD is relational and unfold as the articulation of relations at various levels, while at the same time aiming at being practiced relationally. Theologians, in their work, articulate relationships that inform the frames and systems of thought they develop. As relations are in development and can be looked at from various perspectives, they require multiple sets of eyes, and theologians need companions on the road of theology to help them see and understand and listen. This seems obvious, but in practice it is not at all easy. Sometimes, theologians are loners reflecting on the individual’s most private relationship to God or on systems of thought in which the faithful have to fit their own experiences, eliminating but for the growth allowed within the limits of the system driven patterns, all experiential differences – particularly if they were to challenge the existing systemic patterns and traditions. They do not always pay sufficient attention to the fact that the language they use is profoundly relational and refers to relational realities. Moreover, theology is contextual and for that reason inevitably also relational: contexts and ways of doing theology will differ and so invite interchange. This rich variety allows for the complexities of a self-revealing, always surprising God, who sides with those who are excluded or forgotten. III. INDIFFERENCE Jesus is a prayerful person, inviting his companions to pray with him in Gethsemane. Prayer reveals Jesus’ intense inner life and relationship with 6. I am very grateful to Elías López Pérez who, in the context of reconciliation work, pointed out this interpretation of the biblical passage.

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the Abba as a source of strength: in prayer, he discovers God’s full and real commitment to reality in himself; in prayer, he expresses his own joys and fears, his own vulnerability. Prayer that allows us to unfold our vulnerability, insecurity, and disquiet, allows us also to look for what Ignatius Loyola calls “indifference”: the ability to take a distance and not be absorbed by all-consuming thoughts or feelings, so as to discover and touch the real connections and existential relationships that constitute us, so as not to be overwhelmed by what distracts us from what is really important. How does a discerning theology pay tribute to this indifference as the desire and willingness to concentrate on the really important? Can theologians, in their discerning communities, open up space for celebration and prayer, for silence that allows them to connect with their contexts as signs of the times? How do they acquire a really committed and engaged distance in which they attempt to look at reality through the eyes of God? Apart from celebrations, biblical narratives may help to initiate and sustain heuristic processes of common discernment. Also, conversations with those who think differently or offer different perspectives, may help. Constructive criticism, when given and received in trust and respect, is a sacred space to be cherished. Indifference will allow for the freedom to speak boldly as well as for the humility to listen carefully how in the words of others lies a gift for all. Theology then becomes an adventure, shared with many others, also non-theologians, to constitute a community of people free and humble to share a space of common discernment. One-sided, once-and-for-all dogmatic approaches that narrow down our understanding of a reality that is always a new surprising revelation of God’s commitment to the world, are out of place. IV. OPEN PROCESSES The encounter with Pontius Pilate shows how decisions could have been made otherwise and how history could have unfolded in other ways: it is challenging to imagine alternative realities that might have arisen (but have not). Decision-making processes are vulnerable and uncertain, many variables enter into the equation and not always do we factor in all that should be accounted for. But, once decisions are taken, a step on a map is set – history is made, irreversibly –, and the whole process is, ultimately and viewed from hindsight, path-dependent on the decisions taken. With hindsight, one has the impression of inevitability – given the opposition to Jesus and his faithfulness to his mission, a violent death seems the inevitable outcome – but there are moments when history could

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have taken another turn and where the path of violence is rejected, as, e.g., is the case with Malchus, an encounter which seems to be a moment of sanity amidst the logic of inevitable violence (Luke 22,49-51). Jesus shows us that choices can go against the grain of what would be expected, that there are other possibilities; he refuses the logic of overpowering violence. Discernment concerns such open processes where our freedom is engaged as various responses are possible: at each moment of time and given the possible options, different decisions could have been taken. Discernment is not about the one and unique correct response to a challenge, but about free choices that people have and about the factors that determine these free choices, the relations out of which such free choices arise. Theologies that connect with life and lived realities accept that revelation – how God is at work in and through human choices – is an adventure and ongoing discovery of God’s presence and work in the world. It is not always easy to accept that the practice of theology is a never-ending story, an open narrative, and that theological decisions are taken that mark a path through the history of theology and of the church. Always again, another path could have been taken, and there were several possibilities. Alternative futures were and are possible. Conditions in our time and contexts today are different from those at the onset of Christianity. Often, we can merely try to understand why certain decisions were taken at certain moments, decisions that have consequences today. Maybe, given the consequent history and knowing what we know today about yesterday, today we would decide differently. Therefore, the history of theology and of the church is a vital concern for theology: it contains the narratives of church-constituting theological discernment processes that may inspire us today. V. NARRATIVITY Jesus was intimately connected to the stories of his people and its prophets. He knew Scripture and was inspired by it. We, in turn, also refer to the challenging and reflection-urging story of Jesus, as provided to us by the gospel narrators and transmitted along centuries of church history. This narrative structure inspires us and changes us, it helps us to discern, to observe and to choose. Narrativity is a key feature of discernment processes7. All of us are embedded in narratives and inspired by them. In the space of discernment, 7. To understand the narrative structure of the Ignatian spirituality, based in the Spiritual Exercises, see, R. BARTHES, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Points. Essais), Paris, Seuil, 1971.

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we listen to the stories of those who are present as partners in CAD: they allow us to understand them better from the perspective of their histories in God. We also, in this space, connect with inspiring narratives of our traditions, that allow us to be moved by the spirit that inhabits these narratives and that opens our minds and hearts to God’s action through all of us. Moreover, as discernment leads to a history of choices and decisions, without a predetermined line, narrativity is key to recognize the thread that unites all of these decisions and to make us part of this thread. We need to document these discernment pathways and to critically look at them, even with the advantage of hindsight. They are a precious gift for further discernment. These narratives function as traditions that challenge us into ever new discernment processes and that invite us to an ever-greater openness. VI. CONSOLATION

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Consolation and desolation are the criteria to evaluate processes of discernment, the way in which we recognize the faithfulness, honesty, and truthfulness of the road taken, of the narrative constituted. We observe, in the narratives of the passion of Jesus, some deep moments of desolation: Jesus is abandoned and in pain; Peter and Judas suffer deeply from their betrayals and regret them; followers of Jesus flee in fear. Healing is needed to reconcile them with themselves, with Jesus, with the community of followers of Jesus, and ultimately with Godself. We also observe moments of intense consolation in the passion narratives: the words of friendship at the last supper; Jesus addressing John and Mary at the foot of the cross; Jesus’ words of forgiveness; the consolations experienced in Jesus’ prayer; Jesus’ surrender to the will of the Father; the resurrection as a life-giving horizon. We as readers, entering into the narratives of the passion, connect with these experiences of consolation and desolation, in the midst of our own lives. Although a horror story, the narratives of the passion of Jesus ultimately express consolation: God commits to life, to Jesus and to human beings. The call of the passion narratives is to open up to the gift of ultimate consolation, to God’s healing presence in our lives and in the lives of our communities. Discernment is sensitive to moments of consolation and desolation, in the processes themselves, but also on the longer run. In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius Loyola helps us to better recognize consolation and desolation – particularly since desolation can take on the form of consolation – and links human psychological and spiritual experiences to

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these realities. Discerning theologies will explore the consolations and desolations of the individual theologians and participants in the discernment process, how they “feel” and “resonate” with the choices made. They will also look for signs of social consolation and social desolation in the community of discernment as such and in the church at large: are these communities experiencing consolation or desolation, are they growing as caring and responsible communities, capable to open up to God and to the world? Are the choices made in the actual contexts promoting a sustainable life-giving church inhabited by Jesus’ and God’s desire? Do the choices promote joy and peace in the life together? Or do they bear the seeds of painful divisions and unhappiness or restlessness in the communities? It remains a challenge to entrust oneself and the faithcommunities to processes that are never closed and in which the freedom is fostered – in boldness and humility – that allows us to open up to the revelation of a surprising God, committed to our world. It is a not unimportant feature of theology that we should also look at its ecclesial consequences and how it produces communities full of life and joy and commitment (solidarity). What do theologians produce in the communities? How do they deal with conflicts in a life-giving way? How do they resolve and answer tensions that may exist in various ways in the communities? Are their theologies helpful and consoling … or not? In the perspective of CAD this is a crucial question for theologians. VII. INCARNATION God’s vulnerability is most clear in the kenotic act of the incarnation, particularly in the passion. There is a deep desire in God to share human life and to bring salvation and healing precisely by sharing human life, showing the potentialities that human beings carry in themselves as part of creation. God doesn’t shun to share the lives of suffering and rejected human beings. God not only reveals Godself and God’s love, but also the deep reality of human beings, by participating in their vulnerability and displaying in this way God’s own vulnerable love. This approach of God is “apostolic”: through a long history, it aims at the “salvation” of humanity and of creation, which means: the fulfilment of the promise encapsulated in creation itself, the promise of the Kingdom. God enters in broken human life and self-reveals in a relational, trinitarian way8, i.e. 8. Karl Rahner’s understanding of the immanent and economic trinity, as well as the mystical experience of Egied van Broeckhoven support this understanding of the trinity

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in the midst of relationships that are divine relationships. When Jesus addresses the servant of the high priest in the depth of his humanity, he reveals the creational activity of the Father in the servant and opens the space for the work of the Spirit. The narrative leaves open what happened to the servant, but it opens up an intimate discernment moment in his life. He is invited to address his own humanity and to recognize the incarnate God in Jesus, the presence of the Son. Incarnation involves encounters and a history, a line of narratives, in which encounters take place referring back to these moments of the work of the economic Trinity. These incarnational (trinitarian) encounters are “apostolic”, both in the faithfulness to creational reality and connectedness, as in the hope for sustainable future in the Kingdom. We are called to move into the world through a community building effort of solidarity that takes its inspiration from God’s salvific, economic commitment. Discerning theology is called to be incarnational: it doesn’t aim at liberating us from a dangerous world by proposing abstract faith doctrines that present us with an otherworldly reality; it looks for God’s presence in the concreteness of our world, and invites us to enter that world as God enters our world by committing to inclusive communities and to the poor. Discerning theology aims at recognizing God’s salvific work in broken humanity and is concerned with creation and willing to embrace it and enter it. Human beings are called, in the following of God and Christ, to enter the world, embracing it towards its own fullness, particularly in moments of distress and injustice and poverty. Theologies that draw human beings away from the choice to enter the concreteness of the broken world, are not discerning theologies and, moreover, they betray their theo-relational perspective. VIII. VISION The passion narratives offer a vision to those willing to enter into them. Jesus in his life points to the Kingdom of God and continues to do so in the course of the passion, when responding to Pilate and on and of the incarnation. They also mean that in CAD processes human beings are in the image and likeness of Godself. See, K. RAHNER, Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte, in J. FEINER – M. LÖHRER (eds.), Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, Einsiedeln – Zürich – Köln, Benziger, 1967, vol. 2, 317-401; E. VAN BROECKHOVEN, Dagboek van de vriendschap, met verantwoording en aantekeningen bezorgd door Georges NEEFS, Brugge, Emmaüs – Desclée de Brouwer, 1971.

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the cross. The vision of the resurrection and the fulfilled world is present in the background as God’s promise and faithfulness to life, but also as the perspective in which to read the passion narratives, allowing the reader to participate fully in their painful reality. We sense a powerful promise and commitment of Godself, as the vision of a still undecided future, that remains ambiguous and difficult to grasp. The future, indeed, in the lived circumstances of the passion, remains vulnerable as the invitation to accept that a promise is offered to us in the surrender to a God full of promises. Jesus surrenders to this future promise beyond the agony of his last days. In the conversations and (symbolic) actions with his disciples the evening before his death, he opens up their expectations and hope. He invites one of the crucified to join him in his kingdom. Discerning theologians enter the passion of a broken world, its suffering and also its hope for a fulfilled future. They work out of visions that are open and undecided, while nevertheless pointing towards the Kingdom of God as an attractor, leading us forward: the vision of a world interconnected in love. They articulate hope when attempting to work towards the vision, thereby discovering its meaning and content, and suggest ever new possibilities for a sustainable future. Although they may be painfully realistic in their evaluation of contextual realities, they nevertheless commit to a sustainable future in full confidence that God remains faithful to God’s promise of the Kingdom. IX. BECOMING CONVENORS Jesus works as a convenor of people: all kinds of people, friend and foe, are invited, challenged, and gathered around him. In doing so, Jesus shows a compassion that is not always returned to him. People are invited to situate themselves in the face of what is happening and to decide on how to live the fate of Jesus. The whole passion story appears as the narrative of a table of discernment convened by Jesus and God, to look at the passion of Christ and to decide about the future of that passion. The biblical texts invite us, as their readers, to take a seat and join the process of discernment processes arising from the passion of Christ. Where do we stand? What do we hope for? Who do we identify with? Theologians, too, hear the call to become convenors, a hub in which diverse perspectives come together and join in a common effort. In the diversity of perspectives and approaches – a transdisciplinary environment –,

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theologians often occupy a place of opportunity that allows them to become convenors of tables of discernment. In this, they follow God self, who convenes us as an interconnected creation and challenges us to commit to full life, to co-create the Kingdom. But this implies a profound openness on their part and a willingness to listen to what happens in the world and to the various existing religious traditions that inhabit our world. Theologians are called to show an openness to various participants in the processes of discernment and to welcome people by listening to them and inviting them to voice the promise God holds in them for all of us. X. COMMUNITY We see how, around Jesus in his passion, a community is built, amongst whose members we find friends and enemies, but also some “strange” and unexpected players, creation and the future generations. Many contribute to what can be called an ecclesiogenetic endeavour responding to Jesus’ passion, a process in which we discover God’s presence and commitment even in what we experience as absence. At the core of all the biblical stories about Jesus’ passion stands the suffering, tortured, crucified and humiliated Christ, the poor Christ. It may seem trivial to point that out, but it is vital and crucial: in theology as a common discernment, particular attention is paid to those suffering and to the poor and crucified. To those who experience vulnerabilities that do not allow them to have a clear voice or say in what happens to them. In them, the poor Christ is among us. Discernment theologies display ecclesiogenetic energy, build up church. Their effort is a common effort: decisions and courses of action are taken together and even those who are cast out and remain without the capacity to speak or to act, even the poor, remain key players as Jesus. A verb should exist as “to church”, as the church is a CAD driven community in which theologians act as (critical) convenors. The openness of the community and its willingness to enter into conversation with the excluded and the poor is crucial: it is the task of theologians to keep them and their memories and perspectives present in our midst. The apostolic dimension of the processes of CAD concerns the construction of inclusive communities of solidarity, in line with the promise of interconnectedness embedded in creation itself. The poor become the subjects (the actors) of their and our histories and communities.

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XI. RECONCILIATION When entering into the narratives of the passion of Christ, we identify with both the crucified and those who crucify, and we live stories of horror, but also of forgiveness and reconciliation. These are risky stories, as we see in the case of Judas and of “survivors” in abuse cases. The passion of Jesus – his arrest, torture, crucifixion – requires processes of deep healing, also for us today as the situation of Jesus is repeated over and over again in the shameful treatment of so many fellow human beings and of nature. The biblical narratives articulate reconciliation, and the common discernment processes, as the one initiated in Christ’s passion, therefore, are processes of reconciliation. We are vulnerable in the evil we have done or suffered, and we crave for forgiveness. The passion narratives articulate reconciliation and forgiveness and invite even the sinner to the process of discernment, to participate in the community of discernment. Forgiveness and reconciliation – knowing how to deal with mistakes and accepting that mistakes may be part of the road – are part and parcel of discerning theologies. Inevitably the theological round table of discernment also requires to deal with power games: theologians can hurt one another, they can also make mistakes or take decisions which have dire consequences. Over the course of the ages theology has caused the persecution, the torture and the death of people; it has caused wars; it provides ideological support to structures of injustice and exploitation; …. Reconciliation processes need to be a part of the CAD process called theology; theologians need to be humble and remain aware of the damage they may cause or cause to the original interconnectedness of creation. CONCLUSION We have discovered, through the discernment features present in the passion narratives of the vulnerable Jesus Christ, how vulnerable but constructive theology requires CAD. We have pointed out some of the perspectives and features of such discerning theologies (emphasis on encounters; theo-relationality; indifference; open process; narrativity; consolation and desolation; incarnational; visionary; role of convenor; ecclesiogenetic; reconciliation). For theologies to have relevance and a future in today’s world, they need to become CAD processes: faithful to creational

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connectedness in God and eager to translate God’s vision of and dream for the world into efforts of inclusive ecclesiogenetic discernment that allow the poor and discarded people to become the subjects of our common history. KU Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Sint-Michielsstraat 4/3101 BE-3000 Leuven Belgium [email protected]

Jacques HAERS

CAN UBUNTU LEAD TO A SUSTAINABLE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA? INTRODUCTION This paper has a dual motif. First, to show that Ubuntu, in principle at least, is a universal concept. This universal-cosmological viewpoint, which many Africans seem to assume to be exclusive to African culture, in actual fact has cognates and resonances in all human cultures, including Western traditions. Second, to show that Ubuntu has three-pronged levels, which, properly harnessed and creatively employed, can spur Africa on the path of sustainable political development. The latter of the dual motifs is an acknowledgment that Ubuntu may be universal, but its African slant is undeniable. From these, I argue that the ontological reality Africans call Ubuntu could be best understood within the framework of what the Canadian theologian and methodologist, Bernard Lonergan (1904-84), theologically identifies as the human good. The human good, as he delineates it, has a structure. It is realized through human apprehension and choice1. It can also be expressed in different descriptive categories. The human good is not an abstract notion. It is totally concrete2. What South Africans call Ubuntu (personhood) and other sub-Saharan Africans call Ujamaa (brotherhood) would be instances of this human good. The iteration of their principles would be instances of the concreteness of the good that Lonergan alludes to. In all, the human good is comprehensive and universal3. This is why Ubuntu (or by whatever name other sub-Saharan Africans call it) is a unifying force in culture. It is because the structure of the human good is invariant that it can be found in any human society, including Western traditions. Lonergan distinguishes three interlocking aspects or levels of the structure of the human good: the particular good, the good of order, and value. The limitation of space does not permit an elaborate discussion of each of these structures here4. However, Lonergan 1. B. LONERGAN, Topics in Education: The Cincinnati Lectures of 1959 on the Philosophy of Education, ed. R.M. DORAN – F.E. CROWE (The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, 10), Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2000, p. 32. 2. Ibid., p. 28. 3. Ibid. 4. I have demonstrated, elsewhere, that the three levels of the human good are distinguishable in Ubuntu because Ubuntu has three interlocking levels: (i) Personhood, which corresponds to Particular Good in Lonergan’s schema; (ii) Identity, which corresponds to

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creatively shows how the good of order is always in tension with evil and human sinfulness. He also shows how it develops under a bias in favor of the dominant class, “a bias in favor of certain groups and against other groups, class opposition, the emotional charging of that opposition, and the organization of those emotions and that opposition in mutual recriminations and criticism”5. The aberration or evil that comes in tension with the good of order provides a context for understanding the tension between Ubuntu and human evils that play out in Africa. In Africa, human evil takes various forms, such as ethnic and religious conflicts, human-made famine, human trafficking, bad governance, corruption, wars, and genocides. The tendency to romanticize, on the part of those Africans who want to retrieve the African cosmological good (Ubuntu), has sometimes led to a mystification of what Ubuntu really is. Some who appeal to Ubuntu to make this African-derived term more appealing to modern consciousness, unfortunately, make Ubuntu seem like a “code of behavior born of a prescriptivist, classicist [African] mindset”6. T.W. Bennett who has helpfully brought Ubuntu into the discourse of African jurisprudence, for example, mischaracterizes Ubuntu as having mainly “a prescriptive value”7. A code of behavior that is prescriptive is static and conceptualist. It mars understanding of the notion of rights and responsibilities in a community of persons8. Thus, in achieving the two-pronged objectives of this paper, I offer an explanatory meaning of Ubuntu. I begin by locating the factors responsible for why the term acquired a descriptive meaning in Post-Apartheid South Africa. I offer reasons why Ubuntu discourse needs to move beyond the current descriptive understanding to an explanatory one. The explanatory meaning that I offer will require a clarification of what this Nguni-derived term means in relation to nonAfrican ways of being human, particularly in the context of human rights vis-à-vis the legal norms discourse that has dominated much of Western treatise on democracy. Since Ubuntu can be for the African a form of political theory, I argue that to make Ubuntu acceptable and compatible with the kind of constitutional democracy that the emerging states of the Good of Order in Lonergan’s schema; and (iii) Humanness, which corresponds to Value in Lonergan’s schema. See C. ORJI, Unmasking the African Ghost: Theology, Politics, and the Nightmare of a Failed Sate, Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 2022. 5. LONERGAN, Topics in Education (n. 1), p. 60. 6. See J. HAUGHEY, Responsibility for Human Rights: Contributions from Bernard Lonergan, in Theological Studies 63 (2002) 764-785, p. 774. 7. T.W. BENNETT, Ubuntu: An African Jurisprudence, Cape Town, SA, Juta, 2018, p. 1. 8. L. ROY, Bernard Lonergan’s Foundations for Human Rights, in Science et Esprit 62 (2010) 313-322, p. 313.

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Africa aim at achieving, a prescriptivist notion of Ubuntu must first be eliminated. To do this effectively, mindful not to distort the distinct cultural provenance of Ubuntu, I mediate Ubuntu with two functional specialties Lonergan calls Dialectic and Foundations. These two functional specialties help mediate understanding of the African good of order – their community-based ethos. For the African good of order, as found in Ubuntu, requires individual conformity and subordination (i.e., subordination of particular goods and value). Africa’s confrontation with modernity has not come without a dilemma. Africans want to be part of a global human cultural community that participates in constitutional democracy. Constitutional democracy is a Western liberal idea that is rooted in a capitalist economic system and anchored in an individualistic legal order. At the same time, following their community-based ethos, Africans want the particular goods of the individual to be subordinated to the good of order, in order for them to participate meaningfully in a constitutional democracy. Jürgen Habermas spoke to the reverse aspect of this dilemma when he suggested that the human rights discourse “is plagued by the fundamental doubt about whether the form of legitimation that has arisen in the West can also hold up as plausible within the frameworks of other cultures”9. This is precisely where both Dialectic and Foundations come to our aid. They help us understand how the two horizons (the African and the Western) can be fused, if Africa desires a meaningful political theory that draws from the best of their tradition and the best of what the West has to offer. Finally, I use Lonergan’s development of general and special categories in theology to show that the realities Africans call Ubuntu are not products of African cultures, as many Africans have mistakenly thought, but rather are the principles that produce and preserve cultures in their generality. I. UNDERSTANDING THE DISCOURSE The discourse on Ubuntu is everywhere, but, in actual fact, nowhere. There are as many interpretations of Ubuntu as there are peoples and ethnic groups in Africa. Ubuntu first came to the attention of the Western world in 1995 during the peace and reconciliation process in Post-Apartheid South Africa. It was made famous by the anti-Apartheid activist, reformer, and the first elected president of the newly democratically reformed South 9. See J. HABERMAS, Remarks on Legitimation through Human Rights, in Philosophy and Social Criticism 24 (1996) 157-171, p. 162.

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Africa, Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) and the South African Archbishop, human rights activist, and theologian, Desmond Tutu (1931-2021). In their various attempts to bring healing to a society that had lost its moral rudder because of Apartheid, these two drew from an ancient African cosmological wisdom the Sotho-Tswana, a language group in southern Africa (Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, especially) calls Ubuntu. Mandela and Tutu both employed the term to mean an African form of humanism, and both used it to forge peace and reconciliation. In addition to using Ubuntu as a guiding principle for the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), they also used Ubuntu as a descriptive catchword for a new national ideology for the emerging democracy in South Africa10. Before the South African experience, its neighbor lying between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers, Zimbabwe, was the first to employ Ubuntu at independence in 1965 to counter the political ideologies of Marxism and capitalism. Whether both the Zimbabwean and South African experiences have been a success is beyond the scope of this paper. However, both experiments employed Ubuntu as a descriptive category. In truth, the native political ideal of Ubuntu, which Mandela, Tutu, and the TRC brought to the attention of the West, is not new to sub-Saharan Africans. In fact, every sub-Saharan African community or group has its own descriptive term for this native expression of the human good that guides their Afro-Communitarian political activities and intersubjective relations. They call it by various names, depending on their ethnicity and language: “Ujamaa” (Tanzania), “Harambee” or “Uhuru” (Kenya), “Consciencism” (Ghana), and “Negritude” (Senegal). What is being referenced in these terms is their own construction of an ontological reality that grounds their conception of the natural law. The rights and relations that is mediated to them in this metaphysical reality is often difficult to translate into English. In general terms, it is transliterated as “A person is a person through other persons” or “I am because we are”. This was what Mandela, Tutu, and the TRC brought to the attention of the Western world through Ubuntu. Since then, the term has taken on a new life, even to a point of mystification. The phrase “Africa is a continent of Ubuntu” is now sometimes thrown around the same way “Africa is incurably religious” has been misused, rendering Ubuntu to be a term hardly critiqued and poorly understood by both Africans and non-Africans who employ it11. In a new 10. BENNETT, Ubuntu (n. 7), p. v. 11. See S. CHU ILO, The Search for Abundant Life in African Christian Religion: Historical Interpretation of Christian Mission in Africa, in ID. (ed.), Wealth, Health, and Hope in African Christian Religion: The Search for Abundant Life, New York, Lexington, 2018, xv-xxxii, p. xx.

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political economy, a reified notion of Ubuntu does no one any good. It leads only to an idealized past, and does nothing to enhance the praxis of democracy for the many nation-states in Africa in need of one. An idealized past breed merely what Lonergan, following John Cardinal Henry Newman, calls a notional apprehension of conversion. A notional apprehension of conversion is what makes a person mistake counterpositions for positions and positions for counter-positions12. Let me be clear, I do not contest the idea that a vast majority of Africans who appeal to Ubuntu do so out of what John Dadosky refers to as a quest for a “specific-identity focus”13. There is a merit to be derived from emphasizing what is distinct about Africa in a world cultural matrix that can at times be obsessed with what Dadosky again calls “general-identity focus”14. Thus, I am not contesting that Ubuntu can be a “specific-identity focus” when contrasted with “general-identity focus”. In other words, it is true that Ubuntu is a kind of humanism traditional Africans conceive as their own art of governance that establishes rights and responsibilities. What is misleading is to leave it on the level of description and make it seem uniquely African. If it is uniquely African and in the African DNA, from where did the DNA of corruption and mismanagement of state goods by corrupt leaders come from? Why do nearly all African leaders show propensity towards kleptomania? Why has it not resolved the continent’s ills, particularly ethnic frictions and genocides? What I am trying to argue is to move beyond a descriptive meaning to an explanatory notion that understands Ubuntu as an instance of the human good that is realized through human apprehension and values – a human good that can be found in every human society. As a human good, therefore, Ubuntu does not offer any new humanism that is not already implicit elsewhere. It does not offer any social transformation that is not already found elsewhere. All human cultures have their own cosmological viewpoints from which they derive standards for what is true, good, and of value; which are politically and socially constructed for the good of order. Like any cosmological viewpoint or value system, Ubuntu is not inborn. It is not innate in the same way that, in the Western conception, human rights are not pre-given moral truths15. Like human rights, Ubuntu is a value-system that is acquired and learned in a social process. The relational self or intersubjectivity, 12. B. LONERGAN, Method in Theology, ed. R.M. DORAN – J.D. DADOSKY (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, 14), Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2017, p. 236. 13. J. DADOSKY, The Dialectic of Religious Identity: Lonergan and Balthasar, in Theological Studies 60 (1999) 31-52, p. 32. 14. Ibid. 15. HABERMAS, Remarks on Legitimation (n. 9), p. 164.

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which is the bread and butter of Ubuntu, is also found in some shape or form in cultural norms that are non-African. Lonergan has the right of it when he distinguished the following as the three differentials of the human good: intellectual development, sin, and redemption16. The African quest to build their society using the principles of Ubuntu is in accord with the first differential, intellectual development. The questions I raised earlier, regarding the propensity of African leaders to be corrupt, can be explained through the second differential, sin, which is a component in human process. The quest to break with the aberrations of the past and build a new political order follows along the line of the third differential, redemption. It is the re-establishment of truth as a meaningful category and a liberation of intelligence and reason17. In the next section, I expatiate on the idea of Ubuntu as a heuristic notion. This will help set up the argument of the section that will follow it, where I will draw from Lonergan’s Dialectics and Foundations to show how one might understand the differentials of the human good in other cultural norms. These two functional specialties help us understand how something can at one and the same time be specific and generic. Dialectic clarifies the source of diverse and/or conflicting positions and highlights the need for conversion. Foundations spells out this conversion by bringing to light complementary, genetic, and irreducible differences18. II. UBUNTU: A HEURISTIC NOTION What Ubuntu means and how it can be integrated into African socialpolitical order was thoroughly discussed at the twelfth biennial conference of the International Academy of Practical Theology (IAPT) in Pretoria, South Africa, in July 2015. The theme of the conference itself, “Practicing Ubuntu: Practical Theological Perspectives on Injustice, Personhood, and Human Dignity”, was both suggestive and instructive. The conference successfully shed light on the import of the term for contemporary Africa and drew attention to an important, but often missed point in many of the discourses on Ubuntu – that Ubuntu is not what a person is, but what a person practices19. The problem with some of the papers at the conference, however, was that they were moving in the 16. LONERGAN, Topics in Education (n. 1), pp. 49-69. 17. Ibid., p. 67. 18. DADOSKY, The Dialectic of Religious Identity (n. 13), p. 31. 19. This point has been made so well by J.S. DREYER in his beautiful essay Ubuntu: A Practical Theological Perspective, in International Journal of Practical Theology 19 (2015) 189-209.

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direction of reifying and essentializing Ubuntu. They barely acknowledged that Ubuntu is a heuristic for grasping a cosmological viewpoint. Such a counter-position must be addressed and Ubuntu acknowledged, as it should be, to be a heuristic that integrates the African political community more by duties than by rights. The only rights it recognizes are those that are conferred on individuals by the community, such as chieftaincy rights and rights of inheritance, etc. The hyper tendency to essentialize Ubuntu must also be guarded against. As I show in the pages that follow, it is not about reifying Ubuntu, but understanding the production of this human good and how it can be used as a form of resistance to the corruption and ills that demotivate the continent. The term “Ubuntu” is a Nguni word that has been rendered in English as “personhood” or “humanity”. It refers to a value system that is shared across Africa as a whole: “I am because we are”. As a category for expressing the human good, Ubuntu is uniquely African. It is a philosophical category for expressing what the African communities conceive as their particular good, the good of order, and value. These three levels of the human good derive from a tripartite relationship with God, ancestors, and community. Ubuntu is also a philosophical category that spells out the expectations of an African in a network of relationships – responsibility, honesty, justice, trustworthiness, integrity, cooperation, hospitality, and devotion to community – and depicts these as qualities of an authentic African person20. In Lonergan-derived terms, these qualities all enable the good of order. Contrary to what may appear in popular literature on Ubuntu, this good of order is not exclusive to Africans. In all traditional legal orders, whether in Africa or Asia or among the native peoples of North America, South America or the aborigines of Australia, there is conceptual privileging of duties to the community over rights of the individual. Beyond traditional legal orders, many of the instantiations of the good of order are also a mainstay of Western civilization and at the heart of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). They are also at the heart of the Sufi concept of wahdat al-wujud (unity of being)21, and the Islamic concept of Beitul Mal (rendered in English as “public treasury”) in which members of a community are required to contribute to a common purse that is set aside to help the needy, particularly widows and orphans, in times of difficulty and distress22. I will return to this point later. 20. V. REROPA, Unhu/Ubuntu and the Shona Economy: Teaching the Traditional Economic Ethos in Zimbabwean Secondary Schools through Patrick Chakaipa’s Pfumo Reropa, in Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies 12 (2018) 103-112, p. 105. 21. S. JOHNSTON, The Art of Ubuntu, in Sufi 94 (2108) 56-59, p. 59. 22. See J.M. BHENGU, Ubuntu: The Essence of Democracy, Cape Town, SA, Novalis, 1996, p. 8.

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In the aftermath of political independence, Post-colonial Africa, particularly southern African countries, saw the need to go back to Ubuntu, and use it as a form of renaissance and social transformation. This was at least the case with Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia), which used Ubuntu as “narratives of return” and tools for reaffirming the dignity of those severely scarred by colonialism23. It was also the case with PostApartheid South Africa. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) under the leadership of Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1996-98) used Ubuntu to forge a political theology centered on forgiveness and reconciliation. They adopted Ubuntu rhetoric to further nation building, healing for the wounded, and restoration of the human dignity of the marginalized people who were regarded as second-class citizens under apartheid24. Given the appeal of Mandela and Tutu, the Ubuntu rhetoric caught on beyond the shores of southern Africa and “became part of the rhetoric of African renaissance, African humanism, and the idea that the world can learn something from Africa”25. It is hard to dispute that Ubuntu is something of great value that the rest of the world can learn something from, particularly with respect to relational self, a holistic approach to human existence, a cosmovision of interconnectedness of all living creatures26, and the emphasis on the spiritual nature of human existence. Again, while the emphasis cannot be denied, these are not the exclusive preserve of the African. They are also found in some fashion in the cosmological vision and ethos of communities that are non-African, regardless of whether they are clearly apprehended or carefully delineated. It is a mythic consciousness to think these are exclusively African. Max Scheler (1874-1928) had no reference to Africa when he distinguished community of feeling, fellow-feeling, psychic contagion, and emotional identification in human intersubjectivity. Expanding on Scheler’s idea, Lonergan has noted that a community of feeling (two or more persons responding in parallel fashion to the same object) and fellow-feeling (a first person responding to an object and a second person following suit and responding to the manifested feeling of the first) are intentional responses that arouse feeling in any human intersubjective relation27. Catholic Social Teaching (CST) uses a different 23. DREYER, Ubuntu (n. 19), p. 192. 24. Ibid., p. 194. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., p. 197. See also I. NALCKER, The Search for Universal Responsibility: The Cosmovision of Ubuntu and the Humanism of Fanon, in Development 54 (2011) 455460. 27. LONERGAN, Method in Theology (n. 12), p. 56.

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language to express the same human emotive response. At the heart of CST are four main principles with origins in Western civilization: the principles of the dignity of the human person, the common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity. Using an expression similar to Lonergan’s idea that the human good is realized in human apprehension and choice, the Catholic Church speaks of these four principles as “the expression of the whole truth about man known by reason and faith”28 – that they are born of “the encounter of the Gospel message and of its demands summarized in the supreme commandment of love of God and neighbor in justice with the problems emanating from the life of society”29. Furthermore, using a language similar to Lonergan’s idea that the human good is invariant and can be found in all human cultures, the Catholic Church recognizes that many of the elements of the CST “are shared by other Churches and Ecclesial Communities, as well as by other religions”30, like African Traditional Religions (ATRs) that nourish the praxis of Ubuntu. Since many of the elements of CST, which we know are based on natural law and are confirmed and strengthened in the church’s faith in the Gospel of Christ31, are shared by other religions and cultures, it is hard to deny that the positive elements of Ubuntu – interconnectedness of life, cosmovision, human dignity, respect for human life, and compassion – are also derived from natural law and confirmed and strengthened in the ancient African faith in ATRs. However, given that human knowledge is always partial and incomplete, there are also aspects of the African apprehension of Ubuntu that are potentially at odds with authentic human living, such as the tendency towards collectivism. This comes with negative consequences for the individual. There is also the egalitarianism that veers towards uniformity, and blind loyalty to one’s group, which has fed the rash of ethnic and religious conflicts on the continent. On the basis of these negative attitudes, might it not be best to search for how to reconcile Ubuntu with a modern contemporary system of government, say constitutional democracy, that may be compatible with Ubuntu while simultaneously eschewing the deficiencies of both systems? Habermas pointed out long ago that the choice between the collectivist approach, like that of the African, and the individualist approach, like that of the 28. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Washington, DC, USCCB, 2011, p. 71. 29. Ibid., p. 72, quoting Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Libertatis Conscientia published in Acta Apostolica Sedis 79 (1987) 585. 30. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (n. 28), p. xviii. 31. Ibid., p. xvii.

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West, “disappears once we approach fundamental legal concepts with an eye toward the dialectical unity of individuation and socialization processes”32. This is because while “legal persons are individuated only on the path to socialization, the integrity of individual persons can be protected only together with the free access to those interpersonal relationships and cultural traditions in which they can maintain their identities. Without this kind of ‘communitarianism’, a properly understood individualism remains incomplete”33. While the Catholic Church does not endorse any one economic system over another, or one form of government over another, the Catholic presumption, however, is always for constitutional democracy. Lonergan’s functional specialties, Dialectic and Foundations, become a useful tool for understanding how the African community-based ethic (Ubuntu) and Western notion of individualism and its constitutional democracy can be made to complement each other. III. THE ROLE

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DIALECTIC AND FOUNDATIONS

Dialectic is a functional specialty that deals with conflicts of opposing viewpoints. It clarifies them through a careful, deliberative, and evaluative process. The conflicts Dialectic deals with may be overt or latent, known or unknown. They may even be conflicts that are hidden in the historical traditions or religious imaginations of a people34. The basic conflict in human development, to use Lonergan’s own preferred term, is opposition of positions and counter-positions; two contradictory abstractions that need to be resolved, if human development is to become a reality35. What Dialectic does, therefore, is reveal that not all differences are dialectical and that, while opposing viewpoints may in fact be contraries, they are not all necessarily contradictories. Differences may, in actual fact, simply be perspectival. In bringing to light conflicts, Dialectic exposes the limits of their different standpoints and horizons, so that they can be overcome through an intellectual, moral, and religious conversion36. To our point, the horizons on which Ubuntu and constitutional democracy were framed complement each other. While singly, each may not be self-sufficient in itself, “together they represent the motivations and knowledge needed for the functioning of a communal world”37. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

HABERMAS, Remarks on Legitimation (n. 9), p. 167. Ibid. See LONERGAN, Method in Theology (n. 12), p. 220. Ibid., p. 237. Ibid., p. 221. Ibid., p. 222.

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With respect to Foundations, there are two ways Foundations serves our purpose. First, Foundations reveals that African leaders, irrespective of their rhetoric of Ubuntu, which they purportedly claim to use in advancing social transformation or African renaissance, are far from making genuine decisions that advance the good of order. Not only do their inept decisions work against the common good, their ineffective policies reveal their inauthenticity and the hidden dangers of the mechanisms they use in arriving at their decisions. Foundations, Lonergan writes, “occurs on the fourth level of human consciousness, on the level of deliberation, evaluation, decision. It is a decision about whom and what you are for and, again, whom and what you are against”38. Inept policies are conscious decisions about these leaders’ horizon, their outlook on life, and their worldview. Foundations tells us that deliberate decisions cannot be considered arbitrary. It also tells us that a person’s decisions are responsible and free. Lonergan explains how a responsible and free decision is not the work of a metaphysical will, but that of a free and responsible decision of a conscience that is either good (when decisions are good and lead to good outcomes) or bad (when decisions are bad and lead to bad outcomes)39. Since every tree is known by its fruit (Matt 7,16), anarchy and chaos that result from decisions of African leaders must be the fruits of inept policies. The second way in which Foundations serves our purpose is in the fact that the role of Foundations is to take a stance. Where earlier (mediating phase) one had mouthed what had been handed on and taken for granted these beliefs and practices as ideals, in the latter (mediated phase), one is no longer content with repeating what others have proposed. Rather, one takes a much more personal stance. Foundations provides the basis of this much more personal stance40. What I have been saying in a summary fashion is that it is no longer tenable to simply repeat the ideals of Ubuntu that have been transmitted orally in cultural traditions. What is needed are creative ways to make it work in a new world order. One way is through a fusion of horizons – bringing together the goods of Ubuntu and the goods of constitutional democracy. If the goal of Foundations is what Lonergan says it is – decreasing darkness and increasing light and adding discovery to discovery41 – then Foundations validates this need to take a stand on a hybridization of Ubuntu and constitutional democracy. This is because Foundations is methodical, not deductivist or prescriptivist. It ensures that positions are accepted and 38. 39. 40. 41.

Ibid., p. 251. Ibid., p. 252. Ibid., p. 250. Ibid., p. 253.

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counter-positions are rejected through intellectual conversion that comes from renunciation of false philosophies, moral conversion that frees one from individual, group, and general biases, and religious conversion that ensures that one loves God with all of one’s heart, all of one’s soul, and all of one’s strength42. IV. THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE RELATIONAL SELF The fusion of horizon advocated in the preceding section requires the kind of method Lonergan calls transcendental to help effect it. Lonergan’s transcendental method is universal and transcultural. It is hinged on interiorly and religiously differentiated consciousness. To help one attain interiorly and religiously differentiated consciousness, Lonergan follows Thomas Aquinas’ distinction between general revelation or categories (knowledge of God that can be discovered through natural means) and special revelation or categories (knowledge of God that can be discovered only through divine guidance), and suggests that theological categories are either general or special. “General categories regard objects that come within the purview of other disciplines as well as theology. Special categories regard the objects proper to theology”43. Lonergan locates the base of general theological categories in transcendental method. The realities inherent in general categories are transcultural. They are transcultural because they are not the product of any culture. They are also not restricted or confined to a particular culture. What may be culturally conditioned is only the explicit formulation of general categories, since this can be historically conditioned and subject to modifications, depending on how that culture understands itself and the world around it at that point in time. Following Lonergan’s development of general and special categories, what Africans traditionally understand to be the principles of Ubuntu can be located in general categories. The principles of Ubuntu, as I have pointed out repeatedly, are transcultural. They are transcultural in the realities to which the formulation refers, for these realities themselves are not the products of African cultures specifically, but the products of the principles that produce, preserve and develop cultures in generality44. However, the explicit formulations of these principles in the African worldview are undeniably African. They are historically conditioned by African customs, traditions, and practices. To say that the principles of Ubuntu 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., p. 264. 44. Ibid.

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belong to general categories is not to say that some of the core principles are outside of the special theological categories. To the extent that they derive from the habitual actuation of the human capacity for selftranscendence45, they are also special theological categories mediated to Africans through ATRs. In so far as ATRs are one of the many ways of God’s self-disclosure to creatures, this means that the principles are not exclusive to Africans. They are available to anyone who responds to the gift of God’s love. This is to say, what Africans call Ubuntu is at one and the same time a general and a special theological category through which Africans understand themselves and their world, their relationships to God, and their ancestors. It is a general and special theological category through which they communicate with one another in ways that non-Africans may not fully comprehend. General and special categories show that there is a relational self that is universal, and this relational self belongs to the human organum wherever that species is found. Thus, the core principles of Ubuntu derive from the gift of God’s love, which God offers to all peoples (Rom 5,5), granted that its manifestations may vary from culture to culture, depending on the authenticity or inauthenticity of the peoples in that culture. We need not confuse the gift (God’s universal gift of love) with its manifestations (Ubuntu that reflects this gift, in the case of the African), for the gift, which is transcultural, is different from its manifestations, which in this case is particularly African. For God’s gift of love, as Lonergan notes, is free. “It is not conditioned by human knowledge; rather it is the cause that leads men to seek knowledge of God. It is not restricted to any stage or section of human culture but rather is the principle that introduces a dimension of otherworldliness into any culture”46. In an essay in which he used Lonergan’s understanding of the universal, invariant structures of consciousness, and ethical insights to illumine liberal cultures’ fixation with rights, John Haughey points out that the contemporary understanding of rights did not begin with the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. What the UN Declaration did was give “a formal shape and a quasi-universality to human rights”47. Haughey suggests that insofar as rights are understood in the light of the dignity of all persons, human rights should be understood as a culturally transcendent moral category48. Jürgen Habermas has also emphatically made a similar point – that “those non-Western critics, whose self-consciousness comes from their own traditions, certainly do not reject human rights, lock, stock, 45. 46. 47. 48.

Ibid., pp. 265-266. Ibid., p. 265. HAUGHEY, Responsibility for Human Rights (n. 6), p. 766. Ibid.

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and barrel”49. We must grant, however, that human rights can, and do, take an egoistic turn, particularly in non-Western cultures that ironically stress community-based relationships. In this way, Habermas had the right of it in insisting that human rights are not pre-given moral truths to be discovered, but are rather human constructions that can at times be artificial50. Due to the surd of sin, human constructions of natural and legal rights can be skewed and can take a turn towards me/mine, as opposed to we/our, especially when groups and cultures are tinged with the bug of hyper-individualism. Hyper-individualism trivializes human dignity51. The epilogue of South Africa’s Interim Constitution of 1993, which made a case for the practice of Ubuntu, recognizes that not only can hyperindividualism lead to gross violations of human rights, it can also lead to violent conflicts, leaving behind a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt, and revenge. If there is any value in the African conception of rights in Ubuntu, it is in the fact that African cultures, in principle at least, give primacy to the community over the individual. African cultures do not make a sharp distinction between law and duties. African political communities are traditionally integrated more by duties than by rights. They do not place primacy on individual rights, but only rights that are conferred on individuals by the community52. To return to our allusion of human rights as a transcendent moral category, the insight validates the argument that the principles of Ubuntu and the apprehension of values contained therein are not culture-specific, but universal and culturally transcendent. “There are only a limited number of human rights, i.e., rights that go with the territory of being human. Human rights are coextensive with human beings even if they do not recognize they have them or are not acknowledged to have them by their community and its authorities”53. Contemporary discourse on Ubuntu has yet to specify whether the rights implicit in Ubuntu are co-extensive with being African, or whether the implied rights are Ubuntu because they are acknowledged by the law of the community and its authorities. As one writer puts it, “according a right by law does not make a human right; it makes a legal right”54. Habermas, in my view, has correctly refuted the notion that the individualistic legal understanding of the West is incompatible with the community-based ethos of African cultures. In the modern 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

HABERMAS, Remarks of Legitimation (n. 9), p. 163. Ibid., p. 164. HAUGHEY, Responsibility for Human Rights (n. 6), p. 766. HABERMAS, Remarks on Legitimation (n. 9), p. 165. HAUGHEY, Responsibility for Human Rights (n. 6), p. 775. Ibid., p. 766.

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pluralistic society, the newly emerging African states with their muchvaunted community-based ethos that is anchored in traditional African cultures that require individual conformity and subordination “cannot participate in capitalistic modernization without taking advantage of the achievements of an individualistic legal order”55. It is no longer tenable, as Habermas makes pointedly clear, to desire one and reject the other. The question is no longer whether values derived from an individualist legal order are compatible with African values and cultures, “Rather, the question is whether the traditional forms of political and social integration can be reasserted against – or must instead be adapted to – the hard-to-resist imperatives of an economic modernization that has won approval on the whole”56. CONCLUSION I have tried to show that the term “Ubuntu” defies easy explanation and that modern attempts to translate this ancient African way of being human into English have made it even more complex and more difficult to grasp, at least conceptually. Faced with the enormous task of bringing about peace and reconciliation to an emasculated society, Post-Apartheid South Africa creatively employed Ubuntu and rendered it an African kind of personhood, suggesting in the process that Ubuntu also means “correct behavior”. According to this line of interpretation, Ubuntu is that “correct behavior” that is deemed acceptable in an African community of persons. While not questioning this interpretation, through a critical engagement with Lonergan (and some insights from Habermas), I have added the caveat that Ubuntu is a human good, and its traditional understanding exposes some fault lines that make its application in a modern multicultural and multi-religious nation-state problematic. This critical engagement leaves open the possibility that what goes under the garb of Ubuntu is in actual fact an African articulation of inquiry, knowledge, and commitment to truth and goodness that is always headed towards God57. Ubuntu, at least conceptually, is an umbrella term for an African ethical sense of what is true, intelligible, and of value. As an umbrella term for a particular type of value in Traditional African cultures, Ubuntu derives from the transcendental notions that promote the subject to full consciousness, 55. HABERMAS, Remarks on Legitimation (n. 9), p. 165. 56. Ibid., p. 166. 57. P. BYRNE, The Ethics of Discernment: Lonergan’s Foundations for Ethics, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2016, p. 35.

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direct their goals, and “provide the criteria that reveal whether the goals are being reached”58. It is no wonder that some legal luminaries in Africa have begun the process of teasing out the legal value of Ubuntu, and have started employing it as a form of jurisprudence59. To the extent that Ubuntu is a transcendent conception of the good, from an African perspective, Ubuntu is a rich cultural preserve – a way of discerning what the African considers a good that can enhance the political state. However, it is far from an ideal type. It is at best a heuristic for correct behavior, or a correct way of measuring intersubjectivity within a state. Its analogues exist in cultures that are non-African. A heuristic is a model. Models, or the ideal types, “purport to be, not descriptions of reality, not hypotheses about reality, but simply interlocking sets of terms and relations”60. The usefulness of models or ideal types is that they help frame hypotheses and guide investigations. When Africans, then, beat their chest and pump their fists with pride that they have Ubuntu, one at times get the impression that they are projecting Ubuntu as the model of models, or the ideal type of human living and operation. Often forgotten in these self-congratulatory gymnastics is that there is no one model of human living and operation, and no one ideal type. A subject or community of persons, irrespective of place and time, can be reasonable and responsible, and respond to human needs in self-transcending ways, like Ubuntu purportedly suggests, not minding that we have yet to find an instance where Ubuntu has been able to transform an African society. Conversely, a subject or community of persons, irrespective of place and time, can become truncated, neglected, or even alienated, depending on the choices one or one’s community makes within their particular horizon. It is our horizons that are conditioned by the cultures to which we belong and which we grow up in61. If, for the sake of argument, we take Ubuntu to be to be an African form of jurisprudence, the jurisprudence grants an African all the rights and responsibilities of being human within an African communal setting, analogous to the way the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the citizen of 1789 or the United States Bill of Rights that were put in place in 1789 and ratified in 1791 grants an American the rights and responsibilities of being a bonafide American citizen – the right to free speech, assembly, and worship in the free exercise of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

58. 59. 60. 61.

LONERGAN, Method in Theology (n. 12), p. 35. BENNETT, Ubuntu (n. 7), p. v. LONERGAN, Method in Theology (n. 12), p. 266. HAUGHEY, Responsibility for Human Rights (n. 6), p. 766.

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What do I suggest as a way forward? Post-Apartheid South Africa has provided an experimental way of integrating Ubuntu into African political discourse. The South African experiment utilizes “Ubuntu” in the epilogue of the Interim Constitution of 1993 – that South Africa’s legacy of hatred, fear, guilt, and revenge can be “addressed on the basis that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for Ubuntu but not for victimization”62. The South African experiment should be the beginning, not the end point, of a much-needed conversation to resuscitate the decrepit modern African states. Perhaps fusing the best of Ubuntu with the best of constitutional democracy might be the beginning point of a long process of realizing the ideals of a political state in Africa. The University of Dayton Department of Religious Studies 300 College Park Dayton, OH 45469-1530 USA [email protected]

Cyril ORJI

62. See the epilogue of South Africa’s Interim Constitution of 1993, titled “National Unity and Reconciliation”, cited in BENNETT, Ubuntu (n. 7), p. 2.

THE POLITICAL DISCERNMENT OF THE CHURCH DEVELOPMENTS TOWARDS A CATHOLIC POLITICAL THEOLOGY

INTRODUCTION The current crisis in the Roman Catholic Church becomes manifest in its debates on synodality. Central to these debates is the location of authority, and the different positions in the discussion can be placed along the line from a centrifugal to a centripetal ecclesial government. Until now, the conversation that should have led to a reconstitution of ecclesial unity, has instead intensified the already existing polarization between the so-called “traditional” and “liberal” Catholics. A result of the description of this polarization is a binary, and often conflicted view of the dynamics of unity and diversity, a zero-sum balance determined by degree, in which one aspect is inversely proportional to the other. That balance now seems to be a constant battle, subject to disagreement on procedures rather than on principles, and a contested matter of strategy rather than structure. Unity in diversity has become the rare and intermediate result of laborious negotiations instead of being the starting point for reflections on a common ground or goal. In order to counter the potential defeat of the intentions behind synodality, a new understanding of unity in diversity is needed, if it were to avoid ending up as a tool for window dressing a pragmatist dealing with plurality and division. In this article, we will reconsider the concept of catholicity as a model for political theology. The catholicity of the church has often been described as unitas in diversitas. During the last few decades, reflections on the theology of catholicity have shown that the Catholic concept of unity is not one of sheer universality, nor of uniformity1. Instead, it implies a relationship among things that are diverse, a dynamic that, according to Avery Dulles, “designates a fullness of reality and life, especially divine life, actively communicating itself”2. The catholicity of the church is therefore regarded by him as shaped by a diversity of participations in the divine catholicity. So, this theological view of catholicity seems to be a combination of divine self-communication on the one hand and the various participations in that divine communication on the other. In both instances, 1. A. DULLES, The Catholicity of the Church, Oxford, Clarendon, 1985. 2. Ibid., pp. 167-168.

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catholicity is a dynamic performance: of God in particular moments in the history of salvation, and of the church in its variety of forms and engagements. In what follows, we will first define the concept of catholicity and then explore its potential as a political principle for the church. Next, we will sketch what a political theology might look like by means of a Catholic vision of synodality. This way, we hope to contribute theologically to the debate on unity and plurality in an age of ecclesial conflict and disagreement.

I. CATHOLICITY: UNITY, PLURALITY, SOLIDARITY The dialectic between unity on the one hand and freedom and democracy on the other has challenged the conversation on synodality in the church. An abstract dialectic between unity and diversity has not proven to be a helpful tool for understanding the motives or goals behind the complexities of ecclesial government. Therefore, we would like to suggest to first reformulate the idea of catholicity, as it suffers from the same tendency to lead either to a static all-embracing universality or to an abstract, undefined unity that is supposed to be at the centre of an otherwise nongovernable diversity. 1. Catholicity: Defining a Dynamic Unity The term “catholic” comes from the Greek roots kata and holos, together forming kath’holou, which means according to, concerning, or through the whole. Ancient Greek writers used the adjective katholikos, and the noun katholikon, to talk about what is universal or most general. So, there are treatises on the universals, ta katholikè, which may be instantiated by particular realities in various ways, depending on one’s philosophy. In kath’holou the main sense is downward motion, down in the whole, or immersed in the whole, but it can also mean along, or following, so along or following the whole3. To complicate matters even further, it can also mean both towards and against (as in Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses: kata hairesen). It might prove to be difficult to include all these senses in a particular use of the concept, but it is at least clear that 3. B.M. MEZEI, Radical Revelation, London – New York, Bloomsbury, 2019, pp. 299304. Cf. D.C. SCHINDLER, The Catholicity of Reason, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2013, p. 9.

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the meaning of catholicity is a dynamic combination characterized by movement rather than by a settled, complete idea. It seems to be a quality on the move, a questing, dynamic, active quality which should engage all aspects of life4. Employing the term “catholicity” in an ecclesial context could lead to misunderstandings motivated by matters of identity, and especially by the concern of exclusivism. Such misunderstandings are usually caused by confusing the quantitative and qualitative understandings of the term5. The quantitative understanding emphasizes the geographical, temporal and numerical extension of institutional Catholicism. The qualitative understanding focuses on ideas of fullness or holism, whether they be doctrinal, sacramental or eschatological. Understanding the term “catholicity” in the ultimately quantitative sense of universal, which is quite a frequent temptation, can lead to a static, totalizing, and exclusive sense of the term. It is interesting, as the Jesuit Walter Ong noted, that the Western church did not, despite having the perfectly good Latin adjective universalis in its lexicon, by and large use the Latinate term in its early documents, preferring instead to transliterate the more unusual Greek term, katholikos, into Roman script. As Ong points out, the etymology of universalis is also clear, coming from the Latin roots unum, or one, and vertere, to turn, so to turn into one6. There is a clear undercurrent in that term tending towards uniformity. However, it is incontrovertible that if that were the sense of catholic, then the Roman Catholic Church, let alone any other ecclesial body, is not and has never been catholic. Therefore, it seems more fitting that the qualitative path could be explored as a model for political theology, with special attention paid to the sense of dynamism in the act of “turning”, the transformative quality of an event in context. 2. Unity as Communion: Plurality and Equality within the Church The performative dimension of catholicity is perhaps best expressed as “unity as communion”, which is central to it, and could prove to be helpful for envisioning a dynamic model for a political theology. In the 2018 document Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, the 4. For a concise introduction into the concept of catholicity and its variety of meanings, see P. MCCOSKER, Catholicity: Its Varieties and Futures, Lecture for the von Hügel Institute for Critical Inquiry, 1 March 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf7iDedGWho. 5. The distinction between quantitative and qualitative understandings of catholicity has been clearly explained by H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Claim to Catholicity, in ID., Spirit and Institution: Explorations in Theology IV, San Francisco, CA, Ignatius, 1995, 65-121. 6. W. YONG, Yeast, in America Magazine, 7 April 1990, 347-363, p. 347.

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International Theological Commission (ITC) has demonstrated the inextricable link between communion and synodality, arguing that synodality should be understood in the context of a communion ecclesiology. “Synodality is the specific modus vivendi et operandi of the Church, the People of God”, the document affirms, “which reveals and gives substance to her being as communion when all her members journey together, gather in assembly and take an active part in her evangelising mission”7. Walter Kasper, in his attempt to explain how synodality is related to the Petrine ministry, has made a similar point. The revival of synodality, in his view, results from the understanding of the church as communion8. So, what does the Catholic idea of “unity as communion” signify, and how could it envision a model of a discerning political theology? Wolfgang Beinert affirmed that communion is a model of social life that manifests the idea of catholicity. The Catholic way of perceiving unity, he argues, does not favour a vertical unity in which “unity is valued above all”, but rather “a multiple figure of unity”, whereby “each organ is called to fulfil its irreducible and original function within the whole”9. Beinert seems to suggest that a Catholic model of unity manifests itself when the diversity of the constitutive elements is recognized and accommodated, and when their distinctiveness is faithfully preserved. In this Catholic model of unity, he argues, “the plurality of organs maintained intact in the harmony of the organism”10. In the literature on the concept of catholicity, a stress on diversity and plurality is often accompanied with a trinitarian foundation. Richard Gaillardetz regards “unity as communion” as an implication of the trinitarian root of the catholicity of the church: “An ecclesiology attuned to ancient trinitarian convictions had to affirm that church unity, if grounded in the triune life of God, could not be based in a stifling uniformity but should rather affirm unity as communion”11. This affirmation informs the model of catholicity as performance. It not only demands a passive confirmation of the distinct persons in the Trinity, but also the active performance of their interrelatedness. Beinert claims that in the mystery of the 7. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, 2 March 2018, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_ documents/rc_cti_20180302_sinodalita_en.html. Here, we refer to art. 6. 8. W. KASPER, Petrine Ministry and Synodality, in The Jurist 66 (2006) 298-309, p. 303. 9. W. BEINERT, Catholicity as a Property of the Church, in The Jurist 52 (1992) 455493, pp. 470-471. 10. Ibid., p. 471. 11. R.R. GAILLARDETZ, Ecclesiology for a Global Church: A People Called and Sent, New York, Orbis, 2008, p. 88.

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Trinity, distinction and mutual relationship are well maintained. According to him, the immanent Trinity is perfect communion (communio) in perfect communication (communicatio)12. Dulles also writes that the doctrine of the Trinity could clarify that God’s unity is not static and monotonous, but consists in a dynamic interaction, and that the practice of catholicity is analogous to this dynamic of a differentiated trinitarian unity13. A communion model of unity is therefore not uniform but demands performance, for it depends on the complex interactions of its diverse constitutive elements. A prime reference for speaking of such dynamic communion as a model of unity, is the Pauline image of the Body of Christ14. In 1 Cor 12,12-31, Saint Paul writes, “just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ”. This image has been used to confirm the vertical structure of the hierarchy of the church, but it has also been employed to stress the equality of all its members. Promoting the vision of active and equal participation of all the constitutive elements, the Catholic view of unity as communion could be used to underline its inclusive character, or as a tool for discerning exclusivity signifying that which is not Catholic. This discernment – leading either to inclusivity or exclusivity – is never inferred from a single unity that measures everything else, but is based on a participatory performance that constitutes that unity. To cast some light on the notion of inclusive unity, an idea of Pope Francis is worth noting. During a general audience in 2013 at which he used the image of building a temple, he explained that each member of the church is a living stone. He then added that “we are all necessary for building this Temple! No one is secondary. No one is the most important person in the Church, we are all equal in God’s eyes”15. Put differently, the inclusive character of the Catholic model of unity entails a recognition that all members play an important and decisive role in it, and that therefore no one can be excluded or considered to be less important. So, the 12. BEINERT, Catholicity as a Property of the Church (n. 9), p. 467. For Beinert, the fundamental attribute of God as love (1 John 4,8) is of great importance. “Love is the desire for unity of those who are distinct”, writes Beinert, “and the realization of communion in a perfect exchange while at the same time maintaining the identity of those who love”. 13. DULLES, The Catholicity of the Church (n. 1), p. 31. Another term that Dulles uses is “diversified unity”, ibid., p. 42. Cf. GAILLARDETZ, Ecclesiology for a Global Church (n. 11), pp. 35, 88. 14. BEINERT, Catholicity as a Property of the Church (n. 9), p. 471. Here, Beinert speaks about the communio ecclesiarum, that is the communion among the local churches that constitute the universal church. 15. Pope FRANCIS, General Audience, 26 June 2013, https://w2.vatican.va/content/ francesco/en/audiences/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130626_udienza-generale.html.

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Catholic vision of unity seeks to guarantee a form of equality in which every single element assumes equal significance. In his image of the church as the Body of Christ that is made up of a plurality of distinct members, Paul also stresses a certain equality. “There should be no division in the body”, he cautions, “but that its parts should have equal concern for each other” (1 Cor 12,25). In other words, all are included, and more importantly, each distinct contribution is fully recognized. Beinert shares a similar view, though with a slightly different emphasis. For him, the Catholic vision of unity is best described “in a horizontal sense” that recognizes the multiple relationships among the constitutive elements16. It is important to note that this unity is not so much constituted by consensus or by sheer equality, but by the active participation in the givenness of that equality, which needs a participative performance to become manifest and to bear fruit. According to Ormond Rush, a high appreciation of the indispensable contribution of each constitutive element has characterized the ecclesiological vision of Pope Francis. For this reason, Rush argues, Francis’ vision could be viewed as a correction to the monarchical model that maintains a hierarchical inequality in the church17. For the monarchical model of church governance, Rush takes Pope Pius X’s encyclical letter Vehementer Nos (1906) as a case in point. In it, Pius X asserts that “the Church is essentially an unequal society, that is a society comprising two categories of persons, the Pastors and the flock”, in which the faithful are left without any role but to follow the direction that is exclusively decided by those in the hierarchy18. Yves Congar OP has called such an excessively centralized model of church governance as “hierarchology”, in which the church is identified with its hierarchy, namely with the Pope and bishops19. Contrary to this monarchical model, communion ecclesiology informed by the spirit of catholicity calls for equal participation of all members, and thereby builds on its vision of inclusive community. The spirit of communion ecclesiology therefore, as Beinert succinctly puts it, aims at “promoting all elements” instead of “reinforcing tendencies toward centralization”20. 16. BEINERT, Catholicity as a Property of the Church (n. 9), pp. 470-471. 17. O. RUSH, Inverting the Pyramid: The Sensus Fidelium in a Synodal Church, in Theological Studies 78 (2017) 299-325, pp. 299-300. 18. Pope PIUS X, Vehementer Nos, 11 February 1906, http://www.vatican.va/content/ pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_11021906_vehementer-nos.html. Here, we refer to art. 8. 19. Y. CONGAR, Lay People in the Church: A Study for a Theology of Laity, Westminster, MD, Newman, 1965, p. 45. 20. BEINERT, Catholicity as a Property of the Church (n. 9), p. 474.

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The awareness that a centralized and monarchical model does not reflect the genuine way of understanding the essence of the church has been a prime concern of Vatican II. The council fathers had attempted to overcome the tendency towards centralization and put tremendous effort into promoting a communion ecclesiology, the result of which is to be found mainly in Lumen Gentium, but also in the other documents of the council. With its primary feature of the church as a people of God, as church historian John O’Malley observes, Vatican II insists that “the first reality of the church is horizontal and consists of all the baptized, without distinction of rank. Only then comes the vertical unity, hierarchy”21. This yields to the recognition of the equality of all the members of the church. Rush asserts that through Lumen Gentium, “the council affirmed the shared dignity and consequent equality of all the baptized in the church, despite differences in charisms and ministries”22. In Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, this emphasis achieves an even greater recognition. After acknowledging the roots of synodality in the ecclesiology of Vatican II, the authors of the ITCdocument state, “the ecclesiology of the People of God stresses the common dignity and mission of all the baptised, in exercising the variety and ordered richness of their charisms, their vocations and their ministries”23. The feature of the church as a people of God, in which inclusivity and equality among its members finds its warrants, is also central to Pope Francis’ ecclesiological vision. In an interview from 2013, the Pope clearly expressed his view of the essence of the church, saying: The image of the Church I like is that of the holy, faithful people of God. This is the definition I often use, which is the image of Lumen Gentium, no. 12. Belonging to a people has a strong theological value … The people themselves are the subject. And the Church is the people of God on the journey through history, with joys and sorrows. Sentire cum Ecclesia [to sense, to feel with the Church], therefore, is my way of being a part of this people24. 21. J.M. O’MALLEY, What Happened at Vatican II, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 177-178. 22. RUSH, Inverting the Pyramid (n. 17), p. 305. 23. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (n. 7), art. 6. 24. Pope FRANCIS, My Door Is Always Open: A Conversation on Faith, Hope and the Church in a Time of Change; Pope Francis with Antonio Spadaro, London, Bloomsbury, in association with La Civiltà Cattolica, 2014, p. 49; cf. Pope FRANCIS, Evangelii Gaudium, 24 November 2013, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/ documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html. Here, we refer to art. 119.

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3. A Eucharistic Performance: Universal Solidarity beyond the Church The idea of unity as communion leads to another key feature of catholicity, in addition to equality and inclusivity, viz. solidarity. Paul’s vision of the Church as the Body of Christ, on which Beinert draws when speaking of a horizontal unity, presents solidarity as an inherent part of communion. In the Body of Christ, Paul writes to the Corinthians, “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it” (1 Cor 12,26). This is indeed another way of expressing that every individual member plays an important role. When one does not perform its function properly, this will affect the integrity of the whole. Similarly, what happens to one will have a bearing on the others. This inextricable connection between equality and solidarity is also highlighted in Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church. Commenting on the Pauline image of the Church as the Body of Christ, the document offers a line of thought that demonstrates the inseparable link between equality and solidarity in the context of communion ecclesiology. “All are equally responsible for the life and mission of the community”, the document states, “and all are called to work in accordance with the law of mutual solidarity in respect of their specific ministries and charisms, inasmuch as every one of them finds his or her energy in the one Lord (1 Corinthians 15:45)”25. To put it another way, for co-responsibility to happen, in which each contributes out of their specific charisms, a sense of solidarity should be deeply rooted in the life of a community. Solidarity has the Eucharist at its heart. Rush claims that a eucharistic communion lays the foundation for catholicity and its solidarity. Drawing on the vision of eucharistic communion of Lumen Gentium 7, he affirms that the eucharistic synaxis is not only a sacrament of unity with God but also with one another26. An insight of the political theologian William Cavanaugh sheds further light on this matter, as he writes: The Eucharist aims at the building of the Body of Christ which is not simply centripetal; we are united not just to God as to the centre but to one another. This is no liberal body, in which the centre seeks to maintain the independence of individuals from each other, nor a fascist body, which seeks to bind individuals to each other through the centre. Christ is indeed the Head of the Body, but the members do not relate to one another through the Head alone, for Christ Himself is found not only in the centre but at the margins of the Body, radically identified with the “least of my 25. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (n. 7), art. 22. Italics original. 26. RUSH, Inverting the Pyramid (n. 17), p. 319.

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brothers and sisters” (Matt. 25.31-46), with whom all the members suffer and rejoice together (1 Cor. 12.26)27.

The latter point, namely the unity of all humanity enacted by the Eucharist, merits further consideration. It should be noted that such a unity is inclusive for it is not confined to the unity among the fellow participants of the Eucharist alone but rather embraces all humanity. In the words of Cavanaugh, “the Church in its Eucharistic gathering is the sacrament of the gathering of all humanity, but that gathering is not limited to the institutional Church itself”28. The document Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church echoes the same thought, albeit with a somewhat different emphasis, as it denotes the universal unity of human beings as the fruit of the Eucharistic communion. The spirituality of communion, the document insists, contains “the awareness of being members of each other as the Body of Christ and of being sent to our brothers and sisters, first and foremost to the poorest and the most excluded”29. In short, those who are united as a Body in Christ in turn are sent to build up unity with all humanity, in which care for the lowest in society is of primary concern. This line of thought indicates that solidarity is one of the constitutive elements of the Eucharistic communion. The unity of all human beings is celebrated sacramentally in the Eucharist, a sign and instrument of universal solidarity. By exploring the close relationship between the Eucharist and mission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church asserts that “communion made real in the Eucharist spurs us on to mission”, for “whoever partakes of the Body and Blood of Christ is called to share the joyous experience of it with everyone”30. Cavanaugh points out that to be in unity with others means to be willing to be part of their lives. As he writes, “when we consume the Eucharist, we become one with others and share their fate”31, which is reminiscent of the words of Saint Paul who cautions the Corinthians that “because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf” (1 Cor 10,17). 27. W.T. CAVANAUGH, Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism, London – New York, Bloomsbury, 2002, p. 49. 28. W.T. CAVANAUGH, The Church in the Streets: Eucharist and Politics, in Modern Theology 30 (2014) 384-402, p. 397. 29. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (n. 7), art. 108. 30. Ibid., art. 109. 31. W.T. CAVANAUGH, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, Grand Rapids, MI – Cambridge, Eerdmans, 2008, p. 95.

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The Eucharist, in order to manifest this universality, demands a specific discernment of the people who are sharing in it in order to be diverse and inclusive. Because, although it gathers everyone within the boundary of the Eucharist, by virtue of that boundary it could also lead to the exclusion of whoever falls outside the universality of the communion it constitutes. The aim of the eucharistic performance therefore needs to be understood in a Catholic way, because the Catholic quality of “throughout-thewhole” carries no notion of boundary that demarcates those who are “in” and those who are “out”32. II. A CATHOLIC POLITICAL THEOLOGY 1. Catholicity at the Heart of Synodality The discussion of communion as a Catholic model of unity paves the way to understanding the inextricable connection between synodality and catholicity. This link is also expressed in Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church. Advocating the idea of synodality as inherent in “the dynamic of Catholic communion”, the authors of the document aver that “synodality is a living expression of the Catholicity of the Church as communion”33. In the first place, such a connection is made on the account of what one may call the sacramental dimension of the catholicity of the church. Following its bold statement of synodality as a living expression of catholicity, the document immediately adds, “in the Church, Christ is present as the Head united to His Body (Ephesians 1, 22-23) in such a way that she receives from Him the fullness of the means of salvation”34. Hence, synodality is primarily concerned with the performance of the church as a sacrament of salvation. In this regard, the concept of synodality gains significance on account of its promotion of all members of the church sharing in the fullness of grace, that is salvation, that they receive from God through Christ. The authors of Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church state that for the church, “the synodal path expresses and promotes her Catholicity” in the sense that “it shows the dynamic way in which the fullness of faith is shared by all members of the People 32. D. HORAN, Catholic Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does, in Huffpost, December 20, 2012, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/catholic-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-itmeans_b_1978768. 33. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (n. 7), art. 58. 34. Ibid.

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of God”35. Amanda Osheim makes this point as she speaks of the baptismal roots of synodality. Reflecting on Pope Francis’ vision of a synodal church, Osheim remarks that “synodality is primarily baptismal rather than hierarchical”, for the final end of synodality is “that all may truly ‘journey together’, led by the spirit in living the church’s faith and mission within history and with eschatological hope”36. The centrality of synodality in the catholicity of the church pertains to the universal character of God’s salvific work, of which the church is the sacrament. Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church clarifies that for the church, the second way in which “the synodal path expresses and promotes her catholicity” is that such a practice “assists in handing it on to all people and all peoples”. Prior to this statement, the document makes clear that the catholicity of the church is also related to its mission, for the church “is sent to all, in order to gather the entire human family in the richness of the plurality of cultural forms, under the Lordship of Christ and in the unity of His Spirit”37. In her reflection on the steps toward a synodal church, Osheim writes in much the same terms, arguing that synodality is helpful to “foster an understanding of faith incarnated in the diverse cultural and historical contexts characteristic of the Church’s catholicity”38. The practice of synodality, accordingly, ensures the connections being made in the church beyond the various geographical, cultural, and historical contexts where faith is lived and manifests itself. It follows that in the understanding of synodality, the qualitative understanding of catholicity is prior to the quantitative one. 2. Catholicity instead of Centralization As a way of governing the church, synodality has been often placed over against primacy and collegiality. Each, of course, has its own emphasis, yet closely related to each other. As clearly stated in Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, “synodality as an essential dimension of the Church is expressed on the level of the universal Church in the 35. Ibid. 36. A.C. OSHEIM, Stepping toward a Synodal Church, in Theological Studies 80 (2019) 370-392, p. 373. Here, Osheim refers to Pope FRANCIS, Address of His Holiness Pope Francis at the Ceremony Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/ 2015/october/documents/papa-francesco_20151017_50-anniversario-sinodo.html. 37. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (n. 7), art. 58. In art. 45 of the document, the authors write, “the Church is Catholic because she preserves the integrity and totality of faith (cf. Matthew 16,16) and she has been sent to gather into one holy People the peoples of the earth (cf. Matthew 28,19)”. 38. OSHEIM, Stepping toward a Synodal Church (n. 36), p. 373.

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dynamic circularity of the consensus fidelium, episcopal collegiality and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome”39. In this regard, synodality is understood as “the involvement and participation of the whole people of God in the life and mission of the Church”40. Such a definition of synodality is easily attributed to Pope Francis who introduced the concept of “entirely synodal Church”. Synodality in this sense, to use Daniel Horan’s terms, insists on a “proper recognition of the place of all the baptized faithful in the prudential discernment about Church decision-making and governance”41. Although such a general understanding of synodality reflects how the term is widely held today, it nonetheless captures only a part of the whole idea that has been associated with it in the course of history. In his attempt to expound how the concept of synodality is deeply rooted in the ecclesiological vision of Vatican II, Rush identifies another two ways of understanding synodality. First, synodality in the sense of conciliarity, that is the meeting of all bishops with the Pope as the bishop of Rome in view of exercising the task of governing and teaching the church. Such an understanding of synodality, according to Rush, has appeared thanks to the transliteration of the Greek word synodos into concilium in Latin. Second, synodality points to episcopal collegiality that takes form in episcopal synods at national, regional, and international level, which also includes synods at lower levels as its extension. This aims at creating a more collaborative way of exercising ecclesiastical power between the bishops and the Pope, and thereby between collegiality and primacy42. With his notion of an entirely synodal church, by which he exceeds the narrower meanings of synodality as merely pointing to conciliarity and collegiality, Pope Francis insists that the concept of a people of God should be the primary feature of the church. In this synodal church, thus the Pope affirms, “as in an inverted pyramid, the top is located beneath the base”43. According to Rush, with his vision and praxis of a synodal church, Pope Francis is making manifest Vatican II’s vision of a participative and dialogic church, namely “the Church that is primarily baptismal in its orientation and in which ministry is exercised in service to the 39. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (n. 7), art. 94. 40. Ibid., art. 7. 41. D. HORAN, Synodality Isn’t Just an Option, It’s the Only Way to be Church, in National Catholic Reporter, 13 June 2019. 42. RUSH, Inverting the Pyramid (n. 17), p. 303. Cf. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (n. 7), art. 66. 43. Pope FRANCIS, Evangelii Gaudium (n. 24), art. 171.

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whole”44. The underlying principle in this regard is, as Rush writes to summarize the position of Léon-Joseph Card. Suenens when discussing the draft of Lumen Gentium, “a whole should precede that on the hierarchy”, for “what is common to all should be treated before what differentiates all”45. Advocating the primacy of baptismal orientation, the vision of a synodal church of Pope Francis, as Massimo Faggioli observes, is utterly opposed to the tendency of excessive centralization in the church46. Rush shares a similar view and spells out three tendencies that are contrary to the spirit of synodality, namely triumphalism, juridicism, and clericalism47. Being far removed from any kind of tendency of centralization, the vision of a synodal church cherishes the active participation of all its members. As clearly stated in Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, a synodal church is a manifestation of an awareness that “the Church is not identical with her pastors; that the whole Church, by the action of the Holy Spirit, is the subject or “organ” of Tradition; and that lay people have an active role in the transmission of the apostolic faith”48. The example that a synodal church provides as an alternative model for governing political institutions and organizing social life lies in its emphasis on the active participation of all people. A synodal way of governing community life places the active participation of all people as its priority. Social responsibility, therefore, is not to be concentrated to a few elites. In Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, a synodal church is viewed as “a Church of participation and co-responsibility”, for “in exercising synodality she is called to give expression to the participation of all, according to each one’s calling”49. Horan therefore observes that with its emphasis on “the participative and collaborative process of the church governance”, synodality calls into question unilateral governance50. 44. RUSH, Inverting the Pyramid (n. 17), pp. 304-305. 45. Ibid., p. 305. Rush refers to G. PHILIPS, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: History of the Constitution, in H. VORGRIMLER (ed.), Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, London, Burns & Oates, 1967, 105-137, p. 110. 46. M. FAGGIOLI, From Collegiality to Synodality: Promise and Limits of Francis’s ‘Listening Primacy’, in Irish Theological Quarterly 85 (2020) 352-369, p. 354; ID., The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis: Moving towards Global Catholicity, New York, Orbis, 2020, pp. 134-135. 47. RUSH, Inverting the Pyramid (n. 17), p. 301. 48. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (n. 7), art. 39. 49. Ibid., art. 67. 50. HORAN, Synodality Isn’t Just an Option (n. 41).

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The idea of participation of all is not merely a procedural statement, but first and foremost a Catholic one, because it, “offers a way of understanding and experiencing the Church where legitimate differences find room in the logic of a reciprocal exchange of gifts in the light of truth”51. This, however, raises the question of how to deal with legitimate differences? Should they be reconciled, or just be simply left unresolved? To adequately address this question, it should be noted that when speaking of the discernment as inherent part of a synodal process, it is obvious that listening to the Holy Spirit is not to be seen separately from reading the signs of the times. Discernment of the Spirit in a synodal process is always conducted in the light of one’s present circumstances52. This leads a synodal church to put emphasis on concrete experience as a point of reference in order that its performance can be carried out in an effective way. A synodal church is a church that is always cognizant of its call to respond properly “to particular circumstances and challenges”, and such a response is made “in fidelity to the depositum fidei and in creative openness to the voice of the Spirit”53. Rush makes an insightful point in this regard. Reiterating Dei Verbum’s concept of the ongoing revelation and uninterrupted conversation between God and the church, Rush contends that “divine revelation is happening here and now, and the Spirit’s gift … enables its faithful interpretation”54. Rush is convinced that “in the here and now, God may just be teaching the church new perspectives on God’s plan for humanity as history unfolds”55. 3. Polycentrism and the Polyhedron Joseph Komonchak has argued that the mission of the church, while “defined by its Christological, pneumatological and eschatological dimensions”, is always “undertaken only within the specific mission of particular churches where the founding event takes place every day”56. While Komonchak speaks of the catholicity of the local churches, he 51. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (n. 7), art. 9. 52. OSHEIM, Stepping Toward a Synodal Church (n. 36), p. 376. 53. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church (n. 7), art. 94. 54. O. RUSH, A Synodal Church: On Being a Hermeneutical Community, in A.J. GODZIEBA – B.E. HINZE (eds.), Beyond Dogmatism and Innocence: Hermeneutics, Critique, and Catholic Theology, Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 2017, 160-175, p. 163. Here, Rush reiterates Dei Verbum, art. 8. 55. RUSH, A Synodal Church (n. 54), p. 164. 56. J.A. KOMONCHAK, The Local Church and the Church Catholic: The Contemporary Theological Problematic, in The Jurist 52 (1992) 416-447, p. 444.

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claims that the diversity resulting from the differing contexts in which the church realizes its mission “is not the denial of catholicity, but its realization”57. This Catholic model of mission, as Vittorio Peri observes, has characterized the way the early church lived out their catholicity. In his study of local churches and catholicity in the first millennium, Peri has come up with the concept of “a concrete and historical ideal of catholicity”58. By this he means the self-awareness of a local church that, while it is bound to the task of preaching the gospel to every creature and embrace all aspects of life, and in so doing always in a fraternal love with all other churches, it is also linked to “its own particular historical situation and related it to the territorial and anthropological milieu in which its evangelizing activity was carried out”59. A collaborative process is central to the concept of synodality that encourages unity while recognizing and building on the contextual differences. This model of unity does not lead to uniformity and centralization, but rather promotes pluriformity and decentralization. In this regard, Bradford Hinze links synodality with the concept of polycentrism, to which decentralization is a key concept. Hinze conceives Pope Francis’ synodal church as “the primary vehicle for his program of promoting a ‘healthy decentralization’ in the church and a polycentric approach to the church’s universality – polyhedron in his own idiom”60. These visions of a healthy decentralization and a polycentric approach suggest that the decision-making is made at the local level as much as possible61, hence the decision on a matter can vary from one context to the other. Nevertheless, this is not to say that a synodal way is just another form of relativism. Rush offers a strong argument on this matter that is worth citing at length here: 57. Ibid., p. 445. 58. V. PERI, Local Churches and Catholicity in the First Millennium of the Roman Tradition, in The Jurist 52 (1992) 79-108, p. 83. 59. Ibid. 60. B. HINZE, Can We Find a Way Together?, in Irish Theological Quarterly 85 (2020) 215-229, p. 217. Cf. FAGGIOLI, From Collegiality to Synodality (n. 46), p. 2. Cf. RUSH, Inverting the Pyramid (n. 17), p. 324. According to Pope Francis, the polyhedron model, which he considers most fitting for pastoral and political activities, “reflects the convergence of all its parts, each of which preserves its distinctiveness”. The polyhedron model, therefore, is opposed to the sphere model, in which “every point is equidistant from the center, and there are no differences between them”. Pope FRANCIS, Evangelii Gaudium (n. 24), art. 236. 61. This is a revival of an ecclesial custom in the early church. In his elucidation of the relationship of the local churches and the universal church in early Christianity, Gaillardetz states: “The default assumption of early Christianity was that most church issues where to be dealt with at the local level, and only when issues clearly had consequences for the broader community … were decisions to be made by representative gatherings of religions churches (synods)”. GAILLARDETZ, Ecclesiology for a Global Church (n. 11), p. 86.

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This is not to be cheaply dismissed as some “situation ethics” or just one more example of the “dictatorship of relativism” but rather a deeply theological affirmation, grounded in the New Testament and the tradition of the church, concerning the activity of the Holy Spirit whose enlightenment brings about understanding, interpretation, and application of the Christian Gospel in the realities of life in sinful, yet grace-filled and often selflessly loving, human lives – down in the valley, in their particular situations62.

In addition to the active participation of all by way of consultation, a synodal way of organizing social life allows the application of the principle of subsidiarity. Already in Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis highlights such a principle. “It is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory”, thus the Pope warns, and then he adds, “in this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound ‘decentralization’”63. Hinze observes that another underlying principle of synodality is the use of local knowledge in solving the problems that occur in a certain context64, and therefore, the empowerment of local resources is of ultimate importance65. In Laudato Si’, which has been widely considered not only as a document on human ecology but also on the ecology of power66, Pope Francis also emphasizes the need for empowering local resources for the sake of a more dialogical and transparent way of exercising power in society67. Furthermore, a polycentric approach allows the church to reach those with specific needs, namely those who have been often marginalized. According to Bradford Hinze, it is also an expression of synodal spirit that encourages Pope Francis to reach the people who are marginalized in the church68. Faggioli likewise notes that “synodality is the foundation to Francis’ vision of the Church for the poor”69. In other words, by virtue of its polycentric approach, a synodal church is able to address the specific needs of those whose interests have been often overlooked and in 62. RUSH, A Synodal Church (n. 54), p. 170. 63. Pope FRANCIS, Evangelii Gaudium (n. 24), art. 16. Cf. ID., Amoris Laetitia, 19 March 2016, http://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/ papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf. Here, we refer to art. 3. 64. HINZE, Can We Find a Way Together? (n. 60), p. 221. Cf. OSHEIM, Stepping toward a Synodal Church (n. 36), p. 378. 65. FAGGIOLI, From Collegiality to Synodality (n. 46), p. 357. 66. FAGGIOLI, The Liminal Papacy (n. 46), p. 135. 67. Pope FRANCIS, Laudato Si’, 24 May 2015, art. 183, http://www.vatican.va/content/ dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_ en.pdf. 68. HINZE, Can We Find a Way Together? (n. 60), p. 217. 69. FAGGIOLI, From Collegiality to Synodality (n. 46), p. 353.

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need of recognition and empowerment. In this way, synodality is not only the way of expressing solidarity, but also a means for realizing the church’s contribution in search of a more just society as an integral part of its Catholic performance. 4. Catholicity and Political Performance The concepts of catholicity and synodality have presented us with a complex vision of unity, leaving room for plurality and calling for equality and solidarity. As such, it could be seen as a critical instrument against any form of centralist or uniformist thought in theology, and especially ecclesiology, through an open, universalist interpretation of the Eucharist. At the same time, it has become clear that catholicity has a theological, in particular trinitarian and christological foundation, which manifests its dynamism of revelation and communication. Catholicity calls for divinehuman performances – e.g., liturgy, prayer, reconciliation, theology – without which it would not be recognized as signifying the qualitative aspect within a communal plurality, or be the critical instrument it could be as a performance within other performances. This is the reason why catholicity should form the heart of synodality, while at the same time it presents us with a different image of what synodality can be. Rather than locating a unity in the procedures of listening, dialogue, and openness, or in the outcomes of these procedures, it forms the heart of what these procedures are, as they are generated by it and are aiming at it. This way, catholicity can be viewed as the source and telos of synodality. It forms a critique of every consensus reached by synodal procedures, since these procedures, however motivated by good intentions, can be manipulated, and will also be the result of power structures. Therefore, the synodal way should not be regarded as constituting the church’s catholicity, but it is the church’s catholicity that constitutes its synodal structures. Synodality, however, might be subject to the same critique as the dominant liberal paradigms such as those developed by John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. These have been critically questioned by the influential political theories of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière and the Belgian philosopher Chantal Mouffe70. A consensual democracy for example, as observed by Rancière, is bound to exclude true otherness, diversity, and dissent, and is therefore blind to the realities of political struggle and conflict. Rancière believes that the present plea for democracy is not 70. J. RANCIÈRE, La mésentente: politique et philosophie, Paris, Galilée, 1995.

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open to a diversity of opinions, and it finds expression in abstract ideals, such as altruism. It offers no room, he argues, for those who are unable to participate in the dominant discourse71. Rancière mentions two crucial social developments that have led to this “end of the political”, and he claims that both have to do with a lack of difference between the visible and the invisible: both in the total rule of the opinion polls and in the total rule of the right, every possibility of dissent, and hence of political dispute, disappears. In opinion polls, there is no possibility of disagreement, which makes the demos appear as a unity that is completely transparent and present in itself72. According to Rancière, this rule of opinion is linked to the logic of modern science, for “opinion research is the science that immediately becomes an opinion”, and any opinion that defies that unity is immediately identified as populist73. A similar “transparency” and also an expression of the abolition of the difference between the visible and the invisible, can be seen in the gradually growing dominance of law over politics. The law itself becomes the instrument of power, governing society with an ever-increasing optimism, thus excluding any political argument or dissent. Again, according to Rancière, the absence of alternatives is the highest commandment given with the need for consensus. In his book La mésentente, the clear and permanent visibility and rule of law infiltrates politics and even replaces it74. Mouffe also sees the central principle of modern liberal democracy in the pursuit of consensus and criticizes it for being an element that undermines real political democracy. Inspired by Carl Schmitt, Mouffe distances herself from a Habermasian political model, which determines the rational conditions of social communication. Precisely because conflict is excluded, this model enables the emergence of different forms of populism. Populism, according to Mouffe, is essentially nothing more than opposition to the communicative moral consensus and is produced by liberal democracy itself75. At first glance these critiques of liberal democracy seem to be equally valid for the concept of catholicity. Nevertheless, there is also an important 71. A. HETZEL, Der Anteil der Anteilslosen: Jacques Rancières Versuch einer Neubestimmung der politischen Philosophie, in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 52 (2004) 322-326. 72. S. WITTMANN, Die Entzauberung der Demokratie: Eine Analyse der politiktheoretischen Ansätze von Colin Crouch und Jacques Rancière im Spiegel der PostdemokratieDebatte, Diss. Regensburg, 2013, p. 35. 73. J. RANCIÈRE, La haine de la démocratie, Paris, La Fabrique, 2005. 74. RANCIÈRE, La mésentente (n. 70), pp. 58ff. 75. C. MOUFFE, On the Political, Abingdon – New York, Routledge, 2005, pp. 1114, 50.

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similarity between this critique and the Catholic idea of unity, because in both positions it is clear that unity cannot be performed in its fullness. Rancière and Mouffe however clearly indicate that a political unity is beyond the domain of political philosophy and theory. We would like to propose however that catholicity presents us with a performative idea of unity that could be regarded as a political theology. Catholicity is a reality that may be difficult to achieve, but it is also a reality that is everywhere and nowhere and cannot be attached to a particular performance once and for all. It is a reality within the political performances and constellations that are shaped by it, and that can and should be regarded as worthwhile if one is willing to think about the conditions of the performance. Thus, it becomes clear that the criticism of catholicity as a dangerous and therefore failing unifying principle and the description of catholicity as an elusive but real and necessary experience, are two sides of the same coin, and also show two different points of view – the difference between a political-theoretical point of view and a theological point of view, which perceives a political relationship as a locus theologicus. A Catholic performance expresses an elusive dynamic that precedes the opposition between world and actors, and in this respect also overcomes the dualism that underlies the dilemmas with which every theology that wishes to move in the world is confronted. In the network of political relations, a Catholic political theology is concerned with the faith that becomes manifest in the interplay between the political actors and their performances. In this respect, a Catholic political theology seems to escape the dilemma of having to ground political theology either fully in a political diversity or fully in a theological unity. CONCLUSION Catholicity could serve as a model to tackle the current crisis in the Roman Catholic Church. In contrast with traditionalist and liberal positions, it offers much more than the pragmatism of procedural solutions. Its contribution would be the analysis of trust as the foundation of all good governance, but also the description of the Catholic integration of the political and the theological. It would be political as it proposes to search for fullness in governance, without putting into perspective whether this can be achieved, without subscribing to a set of procedures or to the principles of a common rationality, and without claiming that catholicity can only be achieved by acknowledging that opposite views will always

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remain opposites. It would be theological, as it presents a polyhedron space in which the presence and will of the unknown God can become manifest, without denying the radical apophatic nature of understanding the infinite and without projecting or forcing a divine law onto an unreconciled situation. KU Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Sint-Michielsstraat 4/3101 BE-3000 Leuven Belgium [email protected]

Stephan VAN ERP

KU Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Sint-Michielsstraat 4/3101 BE-3000 Leuven Belgium [email protected]

Wilibaldus GAUT

POLIS, ARCHITECTURE, AND SIGNALS OF TRANSCENDENCE NOTES FOR A POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF MATERIAL CONTEXT

The attention-grabbing image used in the logo for LEST XII (Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology, 2019) is one of the catalysts for this paper (fig. 1). On the left, a vertigo-inducing view from the top of a massive skyscraper down to the big city streets below; on the right, a view from those same streets up and out to a blue sky speckled with drifting clouds. The symbolism seems obvious: the streets in the business district far below, clogged with taxis and other vehicles, represent the polis, while the open sky framed by high modernist skyscrapers represents our gaze in the direction of theos.

Figure 1

However, an adequate interpretation of this visual metaphor is not as simple as saying the polis and its political economy live “down there” and God is “up there”. Rather, both views are roughly identical: they portray a life-world framed and constrained by the artifacts of late capitalism (notice, for instance, how buildings blot out about half of the sky).

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This is the context for the polis not only in global financial centers but in metropolitan areas throughout the world. The overall emphasis of LEST XII was on discerning “the dynamic relationship between politics … and theology” that “requires an approach for understanding real-life contexts as well as for developing theories and models of government and belonging”1. With that in mind, political theology needs to examine how those contexts are influenced by the built environment in which many of us live. Political theology, from a Christian perspective, brings the values of the Kingdom of God into dialogue with efforts to shape our common life together. Edward Schillebeeckx’s phrase extra mundum nulla salus (“outside the world, no salvation”) can serve as an obvious motto2. In truth, though, theology tends to leave a crucial aspect of that “world” unthought; namely, the material setting that shapes the context of meaningful actions of the polis and of believers. This paper focuses on the built environment of the city as the setting for a contemporary political theology – what content and what material context does it provide for theological discernment, and how do these shape the theological task? I. ARCHITECTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY A fundamental phenomenological insight from Maurice MerleauPonty’s major work Phenomenology of Perception forms the backbone of my argument: the human person is an embodied subject, and through the interaction of the person with the world through the modes of perception (the body-subject, le corps vécu) and reflection (the cogito), the human world that we inhabit, a “world of meaning”, is disclosed, indeed, built up. Merleau-Ponty assumes the truth of Edmund Husserl’s claim that consciousness is fundamentally intentional, always “consciousness of …”3. Then he widens the notion of intentionality beyond mental acts to include body-consciousness, how our experience is immersed in the world by our bodies and opened out by our perceptions – in short, how our bodies 1. See the “Conference Theme” of LEST XII, https://theo.kuleuven.be/en/lest/lest-xii. 2. E. SCHILLEBEECKX, Church: The Human Story of God, New York, Crossroad, 1990, pp. 12-13. 3. M. HEIDEGGER summarizes Husserl’s insight nicely in his History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1985, p. 29: “Intentio literally means directing-itself-toward. Every lived experience, every psychic comportment, directs itself toward something. Representing is a representing of something, recalling is a recalling of something, judging is judging about something, presuming, expecting, hoping, loving, hating – of something”.

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reveal the truth of the world. Our conscious awareness streams outward from the embodied self toward what is beyond the self, in order for us to reveal and know this “non-I” through our perceptual relation to it. Further, most importantly, the body knows the world before rational reflection clarifies what has been grasped. Perception’s “normal functioning”, Merleau-Ponty says, “must be understood as a process of integration in which the text of the external world is not so much copied, as composed”4. He compares our engagement with the world’s materiality to that of a pianist who “deciphers an unknown piece of music: without himself grasping the motives of each gesture or each operation, without being able to bring to the surface of consciousness all the sediment of knowledge which he is using at that moment”5. In other words, all my knowledge comes from lived experience, which, like the playing of the pianist, ferrets out and discloses the meaning I am involved in experiencing, and never apart from that intimate involvement. My identity as a body-subject is being constituted even as my perceptive intentionality is constituting the world of which I am a part; it is “made both possible and precarious by the temporal structure of our experience”6. My immersion in the world through perception already insures that from the start my existence is double-edged: absolutely individual, because my perspective is rooted in the perceived world by my body, while at the same time absolutely universal, since the interplay between my subjectivity and the world opens me to the whole world. Merleau-Ponty will, in his later work, call this a chiasmus, the intertwining of embodied self and world. This chiastic accessibility, between self and non-self, grounds my appropriation of meaning or structure. Even though embodied consciousness accomplishes the constitution of meaning, it can do so only along the lines of the direction or hint provided by the world that is “found ahead of us, in the thing where our perception places us, in the dialogue into which our experience of other people throws us by means of a movement not all of whose sources are known to us”7. Now we can ask the direct question: what does architecture – that is, the built environment – have to do with embodied human life? The built environment, as an interpretation of the human condition, is always already part of how we constitute and reveal the truth of the world. The 4. M. MERLEAU-PONTY, Phenomenology of Perception, London, Routledge – Paul Kegan, 1962, p. 9. 5. M. MERLEAU-PONTY, The Metaphysical in Man, in ID., Sense and Non-Sense, Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 1964, 83-98, p. 93. 6. MERLEAU-PONTY, Phenomenology of Perception (n. 4), pp. 84-85. 7. MERLEAU-PONTY, The Metaphysical in Man (n. 5), p. 93.

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Finnish architect and theorist Juhani Pallasmaa, building on MerleauPonty’s chiasmus, answers our direct question just as directly: “Architecture is our primary instrument in relating us with space and time, and giving these dimensions a human measure. It domesticates limitless space and endless time to be tolerated, inhabited and understood by humankind”8. He sees this task projected across a wide canvas: Buildings and cities provide the horizon for the understanding and confronting of the human existential condition. Instead of creating mere objects of visual seduction, architecture relates, mediates and projects meanings. The ultimate meaning of any building is beyond architecture; it directs our consciousness back to the world and towards our own sense of self and being. Profound architecture makes us experience ourselves as complete embodied and spiritual beings. In fact, this is the great function of all meaningful art9.

Out of the richness of Pallasmaa’s analysis, let me emphasize two of his major insights. First, there is a haptic quality to vision, a tactile quality that integrates the visual into the ensemble of bodily sense experiences, and our bodyconsciousness into the material world10. This is the basis of his sustained critique of the ocular-centrism of contemporary architecture: “the dominance of the eye and the suppression of the other senses tend to push us into detachment, isolation and exteriority”11. With the hegemony of the visual over the other senses, contemporary architectural design veers away from tactility and texture and, instead, produces “architectural structures [that] become repulsively flat, sharp-edged, immaterial and unreal … The increasing use of reflective glass in architecture reinforces the dreamlike sense of unreality and alienation”12. The result of ocular-centric design is buildings that are mere expressions of disembodied theory, where everything is seen at once, or buildings that present one striking, overwhelming, and unique image that is immediately exhausted and offers no texture, shadows, or mystery to be explored and delighted in by the 8. J. PALLASMAA, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, West Sussex, Wiley Blackwell, 32012, p. 19. See also his approving citation of Merleau-Ponty: “MerleauPonty saw an osmotic relation between the self and the world – they interpenetrate and mutually define each other – and he emphasised the simultaneity and interaction of the senses” (ibid., p. 23). 9. Ibid., p. 13. 10. Ibid., p. 12: “Even visual perceptions are fused and integrated into the haptic continuum of the self; my body remembers who I am and how I am located in the world … [A]ll sensory experiences are modes of touching, and thus related to tactility”. 11. Ibid., p. 22. These feelings of estrangement are “often evoked by the technologically most advance settings, such as hospitals and airports” (ibid.). 12. Ibid., p. 34.

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senses. Pallasmaa calls these “image products” that imitate “the psychological strategy of advertising and instant persuasion”, similar to “the printed image fixed by the hurried eye of the camera. In our culture of pictures”, he argues, “the gaze itself flattens into a picture and loses its plasticity”, and we become spectators in an instrumentalized world, rather than participants in our own context13. Pallasmaa’s second insight is architecture’s necessary immersion in temporality, its incarnation and structuring of time. The body’s multisensory role in creating and dwelling within architecture normally gives us a subtle awareness that the solid permanence of great buildings is actually something of an illusion: what looks to be massive static presence is subtly affected by the rhythms of time. With this insight, Pallasmaa is reacting to two issues. The first is the contemporary problem of the collapse of time, and the dominance of the sole focus on the present and the instantaneous. The social theorist Hartmut Rosa names the proximate cause of this now-ism “social acceleration”. Its three elements – the acceleration of technique, of social change, and of the pace of life – create a social condition where the constant flood of new events and contingencies cause the present moment to be the sole focus of our overwhelmed attention; the flow of time from past through present into the future disappears. This “de-temporalization of time” affects individual identities, social identities, and political decisions, which are all pervaded by directionless inertia masquerading as frantic change14. The contraction of time to the isolated present moment makes the past and the future drop away – they become literally unimaginable, unthinkable15. If “architecture articulates our experiences of time as much as of space”, then ocular-centric architecture creates an environmental ambiance that encourages this collapse of time and the isolation of the present. Today’s “attention-seeking buildings”, Pallasmaa says, “often appear to be rushing as if time were just about to disappear altogether. This architectural hurry is expressed in two opposing ways: in the overwhelming number of motives, materials, and details on the one hand, and the forced simplicity of buildings intended to impress us through a single simultaneous image 13. PALLASMAA, The Eyes of the Skin (n. 8), p. 33. 14. H. ROSA, Social Acceleration: Ethical and Political Consequences of a Desynchronized High-Speed Society, in Constellations 10/1 (2003) 3-33, pp. 20-22. 15. Ibid., p. 27. For further discussion of the issues surrounding social acceleration, see my article: A.J. GODZIEBA, And Followed Him on the Way (Mark 10:52): Unity, Diversity, Discipleship, in ID. – B.F. HINZE (eds.), Beyond Dogmatism and Innocence: Hermeneutics, Critique, and Catholic Theology, Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 2017, 228-254, esp. pp. 249-251; also, ID., A Theology of the Presence and Absence of God, Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 2018, pp. 285-289.

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on the other”16. Vision is thus either overcome by myriad details or bored into stasis. However, rather than take refuge in a Platonicallyinfluenced architectural theory of timeless beauty, or capitulate to a more modern theory that sees architecture as a defense against the deep-seated “terror” of homelessness and the morbid flow of time towards death17, Pallasmaa argues that time and beauty are mutually supportive. Buildings are not “monologues”, but rather “mediate deep narratives of culture, place and time, and architecture is in essence always an epic art form”18. Profound buildings evoke from us both intense feeling and a rich extension of our temporally-saturated intentionality. Some structures of epic beauty, like a medieval cathedral, give us a sense of “slow or dense time”, while others (a Greek or Egyptian temple, for instance) seem to suspend time altogether. Yet, this experience of being “liberated from the flow of time” is not an experience of being taken out of time altogether, but rather of being immersed in a dense accumulation of memories that occur in a deeper, more slowly moving temporal continuum that only seems to us to be timeless because of its monumentality. Indeed, this applies to more than epic structures. Even the most ordinary architectural settings and objects can immerse us “in the continuum of lives through centuries”: for example, “an ancient paved street, polished to a clean shine by centuries of walking; stone steps carved by millions of feet; or a patinated bronze door pull, polished by thousands of hands, turning it into a warm gesture of welcome”19. Further, every building, epic or not, is bathed in and pierced by the shifting light of the rhythms of the day and the seasons, and thus presents different looks at different times on the same day or on different days, while also offering a manifestation of time in the aging of the building’s materials20. Architecture thus registers its 16. J. PALLASMAA, Inhabiting Time, in Architectural Design 86/1 (2016) 50-59, p. 54. 17. See K. HARRIES, Building and the Terror of Time, in Perspecta: The Yale Architecture Journal 19 (1982) 59-69, p. 59: “Thus, if we can speak of architecture as a defense against the terror of space, we must also recognize that from the very beginning it has provided defenses against the terror of time”. 18. J. PALLASMAA, Newness, Tradition and Identity: Existential Content and Meaning in Architecture, in Architectural Design 82/6 (2012) 14-21, p. 20. 19. PALLASMAA, Inhabiting Time (n. 16), p. 57. 20. Karsten Harries himself, surprisingly, provides an example in a small pavilion he designed for the Puerto Rican island of Vieques that creates the “presencing of time”: “An oculus allows the space to be a “sun-, moon-, and star-dial, mediating life-time and worldtime”, giving views in the night of constellations and the changing light of the moon on the floor and walls. Generous doors to the east bring in intense morning sun …” (K.A. FRANCK, Visiting Karsten Harries and Revisiting His “Building and the Terror of Time”, in Architectural Design 86/1 [2016] 128-135, p. 131).

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own kind of temporal mood: “Geometry and form speak of permanence, whereas materials – through the very laws of nature – trace the passing of time”21. Here is where the material texture of buildings and the tactility of vision – or, in Merleau-Ponty’s terms, the world’s materiality and our body-consciousness – meet to constitute a revelation: profound buildings, despite their massive and static appearance, are caught up in a wave of time that connects the present with the past and the future22. This felt sense of the deep, invisible temporal continuum that transcends and underpins the particularity of the visible is one part of what Pallasmaa calls “mood”, an unstructured experience that escapes objective thought and “is closer to an embodied haptic sensation than to an external visual percept”23. Mood or “atmosphere” is completely missed by ocular-centric architecture with its relentless focused frontal vision. Mood or atmosphere can only be encountered through “diffuse and peripheral perception” that is pre-conscious24. Peripheral perception is a “sixth sense” through which “we sense embodied and existential meanings outside of the direct, conscious cognitive channels of our life situations. This exemplifies embodied and tacit knowledge”25. This knowledge thus extends the description of the chiasmus of body-consciousness and world: “The experience of atmosphere or mood is thus predominantly an emotive, pre-reflective mode of experience”26.

II. THE VISUAL EVIDENCE A look at selected aspects of the city confirms both Pallasmaa’s link between texture and time, and Merleau-Ponty’s argument that the temporally-saturated body reveals the truth of the world. As Pallasmaa 21. PALLASMAA, Inhabiting Time (n. 16), p. 57. 22. See PALLASMAA, The Eyes of the Skin (n. 8), p. 34, where Pallasmaa contrasts natural materials (stone, brick, wood) whose aging processes reveal “the story of their origins and their history of human use” with “scaleless sheets of glass, enameled metals and synthetic plastics” that present “unyielding surfaces” and “do not incorporate the dimension of time”. 23. J. PALLASMAA, The Sixth Sense: The Meaning of Atmosphere and Mood, in Architectural Design 86/6 (2016) 126-133, p. 130. 24. This insight is supported by recent neurological research. See I. MCGILCHRIST, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2009. 25. PALLASMAA, The Sixth Sense (n. 23), p. 129 (diffuse and peripheral), p. 130 (embodied and tacit). 26. Ibid., p. 133.

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Figure 2

notes, every building manifests a deep temporal continuum, and does so not only by the aging of its materials but, especially, by means of the play of light which, though experientially absent and invisible in itself, makes present the various truths of a building that are expressed in the various “looks” it presents in the light throughout the day27. Abstract temporality becomes revealed in light. This bland apartment building in my home city of Philadelphia (fig. 2), built in the boxy style of the 1960s, is directly across the street from my own building and normally gives little visual pleasure, especially on a grey day. However, on bright mornings and late afternoons, the rising and setting sun rakes across its surface and reveals a further truth about the building beyond its blandness, a sensuous texture of interlocking bricks and a play of shadows that provide pleasing visual drama and depth. And the brightness of the light that reflects back into our apartment evokes a different truth about our own space as well (figs. 3-4). 27. See J. PALLASMAA, Light, Silence, and Spirituality in Architecture and Art, in J. BERMUDEZ (ed.), Transcending Architecture: Contemporary Views on Sacred Space, Washington, DC, Catholic University of America Press, 2015, 19-32, pp. 24-26.

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Figure 5

It is too easy to interpret massive urban skyscrapers, such as these in New York City’s Lower Manhattan (fig. 5), as footprints of elite power, especially the power of capital. My focus here is something different: the ambient meaning of the lifeworld that such buildings help to constitute and evoke; the environmental mood that is central to the orientation of our human condition. If the primary task of architecture is “to defend and strengthen the wholeness and dignity of human life”28, then a built environment that intentionally suppresses texture and temporality is one that blots out key possibilities of embodied selfhood in favor of technical sheen and the suspension of time and context. The effect is to visually intensify the isolated “now-ism” of contemporary Western culture, thereby making the fundamentally temporal character of human life and the eschatological heart of the Christian life, which intensifies that temporal character, almost impossible to envision and perform. The downtown areas of most big cities are a mix of different architectural styles. “Good architecture”, Pallasmaa notes, “offers shapes and surfaces moulded for the pleasurable touch of the eye”29. In Philadelphia (fig. 6), 28. PALLASMAA, Newness, Tradition and Identity (n. 18), p. 20. 29. PALLASMAA, The Eyes of the Skin (n. 8), p. 48.

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Figure 6

the nineteenth-century city hall (left, with statue on top) shares space with an International Style icon from the 1930s (the PSFS Building, to the immediate right of city hall), as well as a corridor of office buildings built in the 1980s and 1990s, all presenting a random play of visual textures30. Even these more recent skyscrapers have texture and tactility: the top of the reflecting glass building immediately right of center is stepped back in Art Deco style, while the building at the center not only has articulated ornamentation, but also a whimsical pyramid at the top. Another 30. For dates of construction, see S. NEPA, Office Buildings, in The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/office-buildings/.

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Figure 7

glass building along the same corridor breaks what could have been the reflective monotony with darker-hued glass, and by supplying texture through side cut-outs and articulated grooves that cast shadows, distort reflections, and presents different looks throughout the day (fig. 7). However, after the turn of the century, the dominant design pattern in many big cities has been variations on the monumental glass box. The glass sheeting produces a disorienting mirroring effect that, as Pallasmaa notes, “reinforces the dreamlike sense of unreality and alienation” and “reflects [our] gaze back unaffected and unmoved; we are unable to see or imagine life behind these walls”31. Comcast Corporation, the U.S. cable TV and entertainment behemoth with its headquarters in 31. PALLASMAA, The Eyes of the Skin (n. 8), p. 34.

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Figure 8

Philadelphia, has built two buildings one block apart over the past 15 years, each with this design (fig. 8). The headquarters building (fig. 9) consists of sheer glass walls whose monotonous effect is broken slightly by a ground-level protruding glass atrium and an indentation at the top (one critic called the design “vacuous” and looking “like a flash drive”)32. Its counterpart on the next block (fig. 10) varies the boxy design with zig-zag metallic details and a nondescript spire. In Pallasmaa’s terms, both are attention-seeking buildings in a hurry: each offers only “a single simultaneous image” exhausted by one visual “take”. 32. I. SAFFRON, Changing Skyline: Comcast’s New Tower a Blank Slate for City, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 June 2008, https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/homepage/ 20080601_Changing_Skyline__Comcast_s_new_tower_a_blank_slate_for_city_gallery.html.

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Figures 9 and 10

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Figures 11 and 12

Other recent examples carry out the theme of monumentality, onetime attention-grabbing cleverness, and the monotony of alienation – now so dominant that even shorter buildings mimic the textureless effect (figs. 11-12).

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III. THE THEOLOGICAL APPLICATION The take-away for political theology is the reality of time and the expression of hope – namely, how to recover one and connect it to the other. If political theology is truly about bringing Christian discipleship into dialogue with our structures of common life, then this dialogue already presupposes a theological anthropology – a Christian analysis of the human condition guided by faith and revelation. Further, this theological anthropology, if it is truly theology, is itself already grounded in what I have elsewhere called “the luxurious and productive tension between Incarnation and eschatology”, between presence and expectation, the already and not yet33. The nexus of Creation, Incarnation, and Resurrection that is at the heart of Christianity – that is, a strong creation theology with emphasis on the revelatory goodness of materiality, rooted in God’s self-giving love; the confirmation of that revelatory potential in the Incarnation; the achievement of that potential for Christ, and eventually for us, in the Resurrection – mandates that we pay attention to the particular material circumstances where we practice the values of the Kingdom of God. Temporality is already implicitly revelatory. We understand the Creation–Incarnation–Resurrection nexus in terms of a performance hermeneutic, where the truth of God’s grace is grasped by enacting their possibilities in performances of discipleship, unfolding over time, and making the love of God continually more visible in the particular material settings of our lives. These material circumstances automatically include those aspects of the built environmental which the embodied self interacts with daily. For our bodies to reveal the truth of the world, they must, as Merleau-Ponty emphasizes, follow the hints provided by the world that is “found ahead of us, in the thing where our perception places us”34. Signals of transcendence are found there, along with signals of the foreclosure of time. The phrase “signals of transcendence” comes from the sociologist Peter Berger to denote signs of a reality that transcends the immanent empirical world, and to which human beings are open by nature, engendering a fundamental trust in that reality. It was Berger’s way of showing that what looks like a purely secular context still supports some belief in the supernatural, even if only covertly35. It’s ironic that architecture, which 33. A.J. GODZIEBA – L. BOEVE – M. SARACINO, Resurrection – Interruption – Transformation: Incarnation as Hermeneutical Strategy, in Theological Studies 67 (2006) 777815, pp. 783-784. 34. MERLEAU-PONTY, The Metaphysical in Man (n. 5), p. 93. 35. P.L. BERGER, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1969, pp. 71-72.

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articulates our relationship to the particularity of our physicality and that of the world, can signal “transcendence” not merely spatially, but even more so temporally, back to a deep past and ahead to an imaginable future that connects with our temporally-saturated bodily existence. Pallasmaa writes that “although architecture operates in the world of concrete gravity, materials, technical means, and human skills, it always aspires for an ideal. Without the inner tendency for idealization and suggestion of a better world, architecture withers into banal construction”36. Without time and hope, theology collapses into mere social description. What we encounter in major cities includes, among other sedimented meanings, buildings that attempt to defeat time. Texture-less materials, monothematic images, and monolithic designs, already try to lift some of these out of their temporal context. Certainly, they are visible symbols of power, but more important is the pre-conscious mood they create – a sense of semper idem, the alienating boredom of sameness masquerading as timelessness. Such buildings judge their surroundings, just as architects of high modernist office buildings of the 1950s and 1960s tried to do by detaching the building from its base with an empty elevator lobby. As we have seen, the visual environment produces an attitudinal or atmospheric environment that confirms and intensifies social acceleration and the collapse of time – the now-ism of neo-liberalism and its technologies prevail. What Charles Taylor has called the “immanent frame” (“a constructed social space, where instrumental rationality is a key value, and time is pervasively secular … a ‘natural’ order, to be contrasted to a ‘supernatural’ one, an ‘immanent’ world, over against a possible ‘transcendent’ one”)37 is, now, visually performed as architecture, the default look of neo-liberalism. Political theology’s task in this setting is to take on board in a new way the temporal structure of embodied experience disclosed by philosophical, architectural, and theological anthropologies, especially under the pressure of social acceleration. It has not only a macro task of analyzing government and community, but also the micro task of looking around on the ground and examining the particular constitutions of the real that people make and live through everyday. In light of the gospel, and the incarnational-and-sacramental imagination, political theology must recover a sense of grace and timely (that is, eschatological) hope, while immersed in a context where social acceleration and the erasure of time become the default structures of society, reinforced by the built 36. PALLASMAA, Light, Silence, and Spirituality (n. 27), p. 22. 37. C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 542.

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environment. This task connects contemporary political theology with particular forms of embodiment and with the sense of eschatological expectation that drove the theologies of Jürgen Moltmann and Johann Baptist Metz, the originators of post-war political theology in the midst of what they considered to be the erasure of human values. Our time of erasure is just as serious, if not more so – it is the erasure of time itself. “Go and do likewise”, Jesus tells the scholar of the law at the close of the Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10,37): an embodied performance of grace that takes time and needs to have a future in order to have its effect. Villanova University Theology and Religious Studies 800 Lancaster Avenue Villanova, PA 19085 USA [email protected]

Anthony J. GODZIEBA

POLITICAL THEOLOGY AND A MESSIANIC OPTION IN CALAMITOUS TIMES INTRODUCTION This piece is a creative exercise in order to help address some recurrent issues in political theology that were also raised during the LEST XII conference on political theology, where I was part of the panel of respondents to the plenary speakers. I recall questions on the proper prominence of polis or theos, the kind of rationality requisite for sustainable societies, and the dearth of discussion on Christology. For some wrestling with those questions, this exercise embraces a diversity of sources inclusive of and expansive beyond Christian theologies. I. EXCESSIVE FORCE AND MESSIANIC OPTION? In one of the bible study sessions I periodically conduct in my parish, the plenary discussion turned to the deaths of at least, by conservative estimates, seven thousand unemployed drug addicts and small-scale drug peddlers at the hands of police officers and unknown killers. The violent purge started when the authoritarian and populist President announced and encouraged a nationwide war on drugs, after he won the elections by a broad plurality in May 2016. Brave kith and kin of the slain, many of whom left widows and orphans behind, and some journalists, citizens organizations, opposition politicians, and leaders of academic and religious institutions have bewailed the impunity, lack of due process, police brutality, excessive use of force, and state-sponsored purge that targets mostly suspects in locales of the urban poor. One of the bible study participants expressed her frustration about her unanswered petition to God to end the unjust “war” by “taking away” the punitive President, who sometimes looks ill in public and openly says that he suffers from serious ailments and takes medication to manage chronic pain1. Another participant expressed her belief in the unlikelihood 1. Another example of a misunderstanding of prayer is the following: “As [U.S. presidential] votes were counted in the evening of 8 November (2016), the evangelizing cheerleader [and former congresswoman] Michele Bachmann rallied (Donald) Trump’s Texan supporters in a televised ‘corporate prayer’, which in her view immediately caused

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of such a relatively quick and easy solution, since Jesus our Lord is “seated on the right hand of the Father”. Then she elaborated that, by sitting on the right hand, the body of the Beloved Son restrains the almighty divine hand from any heavy-handed intervention that will solve our social problem, or relieve our shared distress, hastily and without sufficient initiative and participation from us. II. FOLK WISDOM As a theologian, I was both humbled and gratified by this interpretation from a non-theologian whose deep faith and thirst for Scripture makes her receptive to the Spirit of wisdom. In my study of theological texts, I have not encountered such a graphic-comic and insightful interpretation of the creedal affirmation: “he is seated on the right hand of the Father”. Later, as I reflected on the image and sought other associations, I found this Filipino proverb: “After inserting the hand, the elbow is sure to follow”2. Intervention by the Father Almighty’s hand could elbow human initiative and activity out of the way and thus darken or deform the passionate humanization and embodiment of God’s wholehearted self-giving in Jesus and his body of believers. There is a better-known Filipino proverb: “In divinity is mercy, in humanity is activity”3. It is akin, but not equivalent, to the popular extrabiblical saying, “God helps those who help themselves”, which was first expressed by Algernon Sidney, a seventeenth-century English political theorist. There is also an interesting myth, “Why the dead come back no more”, from the Ifugao highlanders in a northern region of Luzon island4. In the deep mists of the past, the myth began about a kind woman and her three little children. She worked hard to feed them. Unfortunately, she fell ill and died. Her spirit went to the place for those who lived good lives. One night she thought of her poor children and decided to return to earth. She reached their house and called out to them. They recognized their mother’s voice but could not see her because it was too dark, for they (Hillary) Clinton’s results to falter. Trump’s win, she later declared, exhibited ‘the strong right arm of a merciful God’”. See P. CONRAD, Mythomania: Tales of Our Times from Apple to Isis, London, Thames and Hudson, 2016, p. 243. 2. Nang mapasok ang kamao, iniupos hanggang siko, in Philippine Folk Literature: The Proverbs, compiled and edited by D. EUGENIO, Quezon City, University of the Philippines Press, 2002, p. 249. 3. Nasa Diyos ang awa, nasa tao ang gawa. See ibid., p. 235. 4. See D. EUGENIO, Philippine Folk Literature: The Myths, Quezon City, University of the Philippines Press, 22001, pp. 315-316.

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had no fire in the house. Thus, she instructed her eldest to go to the neighbours to ask for fire. Every household, however, refused the child. Eventually, the mother became angry, took a jar of water, and went out into the yard. She shouted for all the neighbours to hear, “What selfish people you are! Henceforth, all people will follow my example. No person will ever come back to earth after death”. She then smashed the jar on a big stone, and took her children with her. The next morning, the neighbours in horror found the children dead in the midst of bits of broken jar. Since then, the dead come back to earth no more. Would, or should, Jesus stop sitting on or restraining the Almighty’s hand and return to earth in manifest glory as just judge and faithful friend, while few people, or not many enough, have learned to act justly, to love mercy, to care for our shared earth-home, to put down ego-liaths, and to live and transit with humble attentiveness to the mystery of life (cf. Micah 6,8)? The question leads to a Christology that tangles tightly the effectivity of divine mercy and might, and the responsibility of human activity and reflexivity. III. CHRIST

THE

REPRESENTATIVE

In the wake of the post-Holocaust declaration of the “death” of the God of both omnipotence and benevolence, an early essay of Dorothee Sölle (1929-2003) propounded a Christology of Christ as the representative of God among us and our representative before God. Here, the nature of Christ’s mediation is representation and not substitution. Sölle explained the distinction: The differentia specifica that distinguishes representation from substitution … [is] the perspective of time. Representation regards humankind from the standpoint of time. It gains time for the human who is for the moment incapacitated … The chief thing which Christ does for us is to give us time, new and real time for living5.

As our representative before God, Christ does not substitute for us: he does not take away our responsibility to fulfil the divine will to humanize humanity. A classic Filipino proverb says, “It is easy to be born human; it is difficult to humanize oneself”6. Christ does not substitute for us in the fulfilment of the painful process of humanization. Through his life, 5. D. SÖLLE, Christ the Representative: An Essay in Theology after the “Death of God”, London, SCM, 1967, p. 91. 6. Madali maging tao, mahirap magpakatao. See EUGENIO, The Proverbs (n. 2), p. 353. Another possible translation: “It is easy to be born human; it is difficult to act like one”.

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ministry, death, resurrection, and (pressing) position at the Almighty hand, Christ gains time and space for people to participate fully in the divinehuman partnership to continue creation and make life on earth meaningful. To become God’s liberating and energizing representative among us, God’s wholehearted self-giving was fully incarnated and humanized in history and creation as Jesus of Nazareth. For Sölle, the Incarnation signifies that, in Christ Jesus, God is committed to respect fully the human condition. Thus, the community of disciples should seek God not in transcendental or timeless essences, but in human affairs. Furthermore, “because God mediated himself into the world, all immediacy has come to an end since Christ. God now appears in mediation, in representation”7. This is an option for an incarnational Christology in which expiation is neither central nor necessary but may have a meaningful place in it. Three decades later, Sölle wrote a book on mysticism and resistance to the death-dealing status quo. In reading the section on the mystical relation to time, I think she had changed her position on the end of all immediacy since Christ’s glorification. She wrote: “The time of mysticism is the time of the pure now, the now that is not distracted”8. It is “a pure fulfilled present … [a] kind of immanent transcendence … [in which] every purpose becomes purposeless and every mediation unmediated”9. In appropriating such a dense description of the mystical experience, I attempt to re-express the place of Christ as follows. Christ, our representative, who rests and presses on the Almighty hand, gives us time and light to see the mysterious gift of the present, to “look at the birds of the air” (Matt 6,26), to “look at the fields ripe for harvest” (John 4,35), to stop and smell the flowers, to hear the chanting bamboos or a still small voice in the breeze, and to find joy or solace in the present and every present moment, even in the midst of suffering10 and resistance to violence and the status quo. Christ does not just sit and wish that his disciples and friends will live day by day in the here and now with energy and wisdom to resist the death-dealing status quo. In his lifelong humanization that was finished by his last breath, moment by moment Jesus breathed in and out God’s Spirit, present and active in the world and the day-to-day lives of the 7. SÖLLE, Christ the Representative (n. 5), p. 141. 8. D. SÖLLE, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance, Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 2001. 9. Ibid., p. 92. 10. In his classic work on grief after the loss of his beloved wife to cancer, C.S. LEWIS wrote: “One never meets just Cancer, or War, or Unhappiness (or Happiness). One only meets each hour or moment that comes”. See C.S. LEWIS, A Grief Observed, London, Faber and Faber, 1961.

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disciples. Thus, the incarnational Christology that tangles tightly the effectivity of divine mercy and the responsibility of human activity and reflexivity requires a pneumatology of abiding presence and energy to sense and respond to the subtle graceful rhythm of moments of joy, grief, solace, worry, or tangles of strong or weak wants. IV. JUSTICE OF GOD? Is such an incarnational Christology responsive to the problem of theodicy or the justice of God in our world, with much unnecessary suffering, untimely deaths, and unresolved evil caused by dominant social systems, armed agencies, prominent economic institutions, ecological processes, natural disasters, powerful persons, and ordinary people who unwittingly aid and abet them? If yes, does it qualify for what the sociologist of religion, Peter Berger (1929-2017), has called “abstraction that is most disturbing”11? Can the Chosen Servant-Leader’s restraint on the Almighty hand vindicate God from the charge of heartlessness for letting, for example, the Nazi regime’s “industrial death machine devoted to the annihilation of an entire people” to succeed in the mass murder of around six million Jewish men, women, and children12? Can such restraint justify even one child’s distress and death caused by a disease like typhus in a concentration camp, or tetanus in a remote farmer’s hut13? V. A SUFFERING GOD? Berger wrote: “Christians reflecting on theodicy in the context of the Holocaust should avoid premature Christological responses to it … The Jewish responses to the Holocaust should be accorded priority”14. A Jewish response he found partly persuasive is the idea of “the suffering God … 11. P. BERGER, Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity, Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2004, p. 34. 12. Ibid., pp. 34-35. 13. On his long homeward trip after he did everything, yet failed, to cure a poor farmer’s child of tetanus of the newborn, Dr. Lazaro mused: “The sparrow does not fall without the Father’s leave [Matt 10,29] … but it falls just the same. But to what end are the sufferings of a child?”. See G. BRILLANTES, Faith, Love, Time, and Dr. Lazaro, in I. CRUZ (ed.), The Best Philippine Short Stories of the Twentieth Century: An Anthology of Fiction in English, Manila, Tahanan Books, 2000, p. 283. 14. BERGER, Questions (n. 11), p. 35.

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[who] does not stand outside the suffering of His creation, but in a mysterious way undergoes it Himself”15. Berger considered such belief in the suffering God acceptable to believers only when it would be joined with the following beliefs: God’s suffering “implies a temporary delimitation of God’s omnipotence”, and the time will come for Holy judgment of the living and the dead16, the condemnation of unpunished evil, and the liberation of creation from its bondage to deterioration and death17. For Berger, discerning Christian believers would find unacceptable both the “naturalness” of death and the wholesomeness of biological evolution, with its hundreds of millions of years of wasteful suffering of animals and extinction of species, and they would have to conclude that nature is deeply flawed and in need of redemption too18. The belief in a suffering God can include a suffering Messiah even in his resurrected body that rests and presses on the Almighty hand. The gospels mention that the risen Jesus shows his pierced hands (Luke 24,40; John 20,20) and thus suggest that his disfigurement and scars are present in him for ever. Perhaps with bearable and no lasting pain, memories of those hours of trauma and knotted passion from Gethsemane to Golgotha arise and return in him. With tangled feelings, contemporary believers who are survivors of detention and torture can imagine that, even in the Glorified body of Jesus, his members can remember the repeated blows by soldiers who, in their 15. Ibid., p. 37. 16. Ibid., p. 39. Berger wrote, “of the three monotheistic faiths, it is Islam that has put the strongest emphasis on the day of judgment”, and among the passages he quoted from sura 82 of the Quran is the following: “[on that day] each soul shall know what it has done and what it has failed to do”. 17. Ibid., pp. 38-40. 18. Ibid. Is not the predator-prey relationship in wildlife part of the deep flaw in nature? A retired trial court judge and critically acclaimed Catholic writer of spiritual and literary works offers a hesitant answer in his award-winning poetry book on selected Philippine birds and varied verse forms. Here is an excerpt of a poem that reflects on the “Long-tailed or Schach Shrike”, a scrubland bird that preys on insects, lizards, rodents, and small birds whose remains are sometimes found impaled on thorns: “Schach Shrike, in this you just follow the creed/ Of hunger, and although I get a chill/ When thinking of the way that you proceed/ In slaughtering your prey, I note the skill/ With which you do it, and, alas, your thrill … The little cries the small bird makes to plead/ For freedom echo in my throat and fill/ Me with a truth I fear I could misread – That there are things that I should not distill/ Beyond acceptance – instinct, time, the spill/ Of leaves when blind winds crash into the corn/ As you impale the small bird on a thorn”. See S. DUMDUM, JR., If I Write You This Poem, Will You Make It Fly: A Book of Birds and Verse Forms, Quezon City, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2010, p. 76. In the poetic Book of Job, a description of the wild ways of the eagle, which can look for its prey from afar (Job 39,28-30), is part of God’s extended, enigmatic, and passionate response to Job’s repeated protestations about the unfairness of his suffering.

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anger for the deaths of fellow soldiers at the hands of rebels against the Roman empire, crave to degrade by including among their targets of torture the private parts of the accused or condemned rebels. Would, or should, the Messiah, whose members remember the traumas, stop resting and pressing on the Almighty hand and come to earth, while many people remain oblivious to the plight of prisoners of conscience and victims of state torture, and spend much time and energy enjoying their obsession with consumeristic, hedonistic, or narcissistic celebrities, and their shallow lifestyles and values19? VI. RELIGION AND PUBLIC VALUES Berger affirmed that religious beliefs bear “transcendent points of reference” for which many people have a deep desire20, and which can inspire and sustain believers in the practice and promotion of public values such as kindness, peace, fairness, self-control, and hard work. Thus, beliefs and practices of adherents, guardians, and institutions of religion can be relevant to issues of economic development, war and peace, and international politics21. As for the public positions of various religious groups on issues of social justice and human rights, such positions not only arise from religious reasons, but also “reflect the location of the religious functionaries in this or that network of non-religious social classes and interests”22. Resonant religious stories can form part of “a social determinant of public health”, especially during disasters like epidemics, as “many people rely on religious narrative to make sense of what is life-threatening and seemingly uncontrollable”23. History, however, has shown that whenever 19. In the post-modern or post-industrial world, “there is weariness of life, a mournfulness without an object” from which many people mindlessly try to get away. See SÖLLE, Silent Cry (n. 8), location 2538. Conrad says: “The selfie is the perfection of solipsism: we assume that the rest of the world will share our high opinion of ourselves … Obsessed with who we are, we forget where we are; rapt in self-consciousness, we squander our chance of attaining self-awareness”. See CONRAD, Mythomania (n. 1), p. 106. 20. “The religious impulse, the quest for meaning that transcends the restricted space of empirical existence in this world, has been a perennial feature of humanity”, and, thus, it is the absence of religious sentiments among a significant group of people which requires specific explanation more than its presence and persistence. See P. BERGER, The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview, in ID. (ed.), The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, Washington, DC, Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999, 1-18, p. 13. 21. Ibid., pp. 15-16. 22. Ibid., p. 17. 23. M. KISER – S. SANTIBAÑEZ, Influenza Pandemic, in E. IDLER (ed.), Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health, New York, Oxford University Press, 2014, 382-395, pp. 384-385.

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believers developed hysteria partly because of apocalyptic stories, they would tend to look for scapegoats, especially among minorities or outsiders and thus aggravate the effects of the disaster rather than mitigate them or address their roots24. Especially in the wake of highly uneven globalization, in which there has been increasing disturbance of remaining wildlife habitats and dispersion of zoonotic and crowd diseases, the effects of global and local health disasters are worsened considerably by unfair policies and under-supported programs of public health agencies and institutions. In this state of affairs, the role of religion as a social determinant of physical and mental health is increasingly recognized. Thus, health and social welfare institutions should engage with and not neglect faith-based organizations, for “by directing attention to shared values and common purposes and lending their social capital, religions can help to create the conditions for social change that are critical to altering conditions of inequality and improving public health”25. In the wake of evil events that are unresolved, should believers confine themselves to one faith tradition in their search for compelling stories, resonant metaphors, and vibrant images that can help them make sense of what is life-threatening? VII. INTERRELIGIOUS POSSIBILITIES For the diverse contexts in the Asian mainland, Indian public theologian, Felix Wilfred, proposes that instances of unresolved evil caused by state despotism, environmental degradation, religious and ethnic exclusivism, and dehumanizing poverty and ill-provided health care in rural and urban poor communities will require an interreligious ying-yang response that bears “prophetic anger and sapiential compassion”26. Sapiential compassion will be discussed in a later section. As for prophetic anger, it is a purposive kind of anger primarily of the victims of communal or public evil-doing, and together with the anger of those in solidarity with the victims, their anger aims to open the wounds of society in order to ultimately heal them. Such anger “provokes people out of their complacency, their situation of being anesthetized by the manipulative techniques of the empire, of the dominant powers”27. 24. Ibid. 25. E. IDLER, Conclusion, in ID. (ed.), Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health (n. 23), 408-420, p. 417. 26. F. WILFRED, Asian Public Theology: Critical Concerns in Challenging Times, Delhi, ISPCK, 2010. 27. Ibid., location 29. There can be an understanding of anger that is positive most of the time. Anger as energy for life and “sense of optimism and vitality” is expressed by

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Wilfred asserts that an interreligious or multireligious response to unresolved evil is crucial, as by itself no religion “has come out with appropriate strategies and praxis to respond to evil, especially when it confronts us as the suffering of the innocent”28. He continues: At best, [the attempts of different religions to explain the origins and complexities of evil] are scattered flickers while humanity is struggling … to look for a black cow in the pitch darkness of the night; and at worst they are like the plight of Sisyphus, sadly witnessing all the painstakingly worked out theoretical constructions roll down the hill, to begin the struggle once again. Maybe when these flickers come together more light is thrown on this vexing issue; maybe when the hands of religious traditions all join together in the ascent, there is more hope at the end29.

In continental Europe, where Christianity seems to be migrating away, while Islam30 and to a lesser extent Buddhism seem to be migrating in, it would be timely for practitioners of political theology to engage in a sustained dialogue with Buddhist wisdom and Islamic thought and sensibility. This may help European political theology to discover and evade the hidden sectarian or ethnocentric traps in its thinking. In the matter of our planetary crisis and its ecological-social disasters, a meaningful and sustainable response has to include partnerships of religious traditions for interreligious ecological projects and reflections that translate into political activity that, in turn, challenges a “competitionbased system of economy and an unbridled production and consumption pattern”31. In the case of Catherine Keller’s provocative and constructive political theology of the earth, what she calls its apophatic spirituality shows “affinity to the spiritualities of Asia”, such as those with roots in Buddhism among others, and she promotes “an apophatically darkened theology” that attempts to make way “for the gathering of a public across the word liget from the Ilongot tribe in an Eastern Province of Luzon Island, according to published studies by a wife-and-husband team of anthropologists. In her encyclopedia of feeling, T.W. Smith says: “Liget is certainly capable of stirring up pointless arguments and violent outbursts. But more usually it excites and motivates – makes people plant more seeds than their neighbours, or stay out hunting for longer”. See T.W. SMITH, The Book of Human Emotions: An Encyclopedia of Feeling from Anger to Wanderlust, London, Wellcome Collection, 2016, p. 164. 28. WILFRED, Asian Public Theology (n. 26), location 2771. 29. Ibid. 30. British sociologist, Grace Davie, wrote: “The Islamic presence in Europe is here to stay, and it follows that Europeans can no longer distance themselves from the debates of the Muslim world”. See G. DAVIE, Europe: The Exception That Proves the Rule?, in BERGER (ed.), The Desecularization of the World (n. 20), 65-84, p. 72. Also, “an ignorance of even the basic understandings of Christian teaching is the norm in modern Europe, especially among young people”. See ibid., p. 83. 31. WILFRED, Asian Public Theology (n. 26), location 5000.

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critical difference” in gender, generation, race, religion, and culture32. This new public shall be prepared to “stay with the trouble” and to “fail better” every time it responds with “apophatic animality” and practical action to our planetary crisis33. An interreligious eco-theology can enrich and deepen diverse religious traditions and, specifically, for Christianity “may help it recover the hidden dimension of its ecological message, and provide an occasion to bring to light the ecological sensitivity we find in the Christian tradition as borne out in the life of St. Francis of Assisi, [and] Hildegard of Bingen”, among others34. When interpreted through “Enlightenment anthropocentrism”, however, Christianity creates unhealthy distances among humankind, God, and the world of nature and wildlife35. The mystical approach to God, which one finds in the “negative theology” of Dionysius the Areopagite, the Upanishads of Hinduism, and other mystical writings that can be found in every major religious tradition36, invites one to experience the divine immanence in oneself, fellow creatures, the earth, and the whole cosmos with its aquatic, terrestrial, and celestial bodies37. Perhaps contemporary disciples of Jesus who find a rationalistic, logocentric, anthropocentric, or dualistic practice of the faith eventually destructive of wildlife and ecological-social systems can welcome this aesthetic image from the Hindu Saivite tradition: the deity “Siva creates the whole universe through his eternal dance. The motion and rhythm of the divine dance keeps the entire universe in movement”38. Do the dancer and the dance form one reality or two realities? The answer in Hindu tradition is neither. This is its principle of non-duality. The non-duality of creator and creation “helps us to interpret the divine immanence in a much more intense and deep way than a perspective of hierarchization of cause and effect, as can be seen in the traditional interpretation of the relationship of creator and creation” in the monotheistic religious traditions39. 32. C. KELLER, Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public, New York, Columbia University Press, 2018, Kindle edition, locations 2955-2963. 33. Ibid., locations 3034-3058. 34. WILFRED, Asian Public Theology (n. 26), location 5063. 35. Ibid., location 5056. 36. Ibid., locations 4788-4803. 37. Ibid., locations 5070-5085. 38. Ibid., location 5044. 39. Ibid., location 5040. Berger would consider such principle of non-duality unhelpful in preserving individual personhood and thus likely to be harmful in its moral and political implications. See BERGER, Questions (n. 11), p. 25.

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VIII. PROMINENCE OF POLIS OR THEOS? Such an aesthetic and religious image can be appropriated and adjusted to add more light to the discussion over the proper prominence and entanglement of political and theological realities in political, public, and liberation theologies. A criticism that is commonly used to dismiss political theologies is the apparent prominence of polis over theos in their descriptions and explanations. For example, in the LEST XII conference, polis appeared more prominent, as most of the plenary presentations revolved around painful and messy entanglements of global and local issues, ideologies, partisan standards, and public values, which tie in tight knots many structures, persons, households, communities, and nations. Perhaps in a couple of presentations, theos gained more prominence, but I remember that no presentation dealt with clean or pure theological questions around doctrinal issues. In my view, the primacy or prominence of either polis or theos in a political theology is not a criterion in determining its validity or authenticity. If I were to borrow and modify the Hindu image of the creative dance of Siva, the flow of the dance of theos with polis may entail one partner taking the lead and doing most of the movements for a significant period of time. It is also possible that the prominence I see may be a matter of focus or perspective. I can imagine that if I focus on the lovely face of the dancer, I may conclude that the dancer is more prominent than the dance. However, how likely am I to focus on the veiled face of theos or Spirit Sophia40, especially when she dances with polis? Should I be surprised if I can catch only glimpses of the radiance of her face? Should I be surprised if I tend to watch polis more, given the urgency and the precariousness in which polis dances? Perhaps polis keeps on dancing even when the music turns bad, or polis turns away at times to try to orchestrate its own music for dancing41. When polis does these things, do I hope that its missteps will 40. Spirit-Sophia is a feminist name that Elizabeth Johnson has proposed for the active and subtle presence of God which vivifies, renews, and empowers creation and communities for ends that include the following: “the integrity of nature, the liberation of peoples, the flourishing of every person, and the shalom of the whole world in rescue from the powers of evil, which foster sin and destruction”. See E. JOHNSON, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, New York, Crossroad, 1995, p. 138. 41. Is it a mistake for a dancer to both dance and conduct his own music? In describing the similarities between dancing and poetry-making, Dumdum affirms: “The rules say that life should find freshness and power by conforming itself to the moves and the music and become a dance to the music of time”. See S. DUMDUM, JR., The Poet Learns to Dance: The Dancer Learns to Write a Poem, Quezon City, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2015, Kindle edition, location 79.

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be remedied by Sophia, who when taking the lead, removes the veil at the grand finale, if there is a finale? In the dark brilliance of Keller’s eco-political theology, the image can transfigure into a triangular drama of the dance of polis and Sophia to the music of gaia and her planetary orchestra in the pre-dawn darkness of the possible “Ecocene emergence”, which can cry out “a time of agonized attention to the interdependence of humans with the planetary plenum of non-humans, not to mention the humans cast as sub-humans”42. Such a possibility is discernible even “amidst the indubitable dance of triune doom” of political, ecological, and theological meshes and messes43, as 11,000 years of Holocene climate stability is coming to an end. IX. AESTHETIC SENSIBILITY I approve of developing an aesthetic sensibility and appropriating artistic imagery in doing political and liberation theology and Christology. In 2003, I was among the founding members of the Catholic Theological Society of the Philippines, and we were debating what would be our official name in the Filipino language, and the result (DaKaTeo: Damdaming Katoliko sa Teolohiya), when translated into English, was the “Catholic Sense in Theology”. We could have chosen the Catholic thought or logic in theology, but it would have resonated less among us and in our culture. Thus, to one of the guiding questions raised at the start of the LEST XII conference: “What kind of rationality do we need to help build sustainable societies?”, I would propose this modification: What kind of deep sense, sensibility, sensuousness, or sensitivity do we need in order to bear and nurture sustainably peaceful and just communities and societies? X. EMPATHY: NECESSITY AND AMBIGUITY A genuinely human sense or sensitivity that members of our households and communities need more today is empathy. Experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning say that machine logic already surpasses the mathematical and economic logic of most human beings, but one skill that would be highly unlikely for artificial intelligence to learn would 42. KELLER, Political Theology (n. 32), location 2907. 43. Ibid., location 2949.

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be empathy. It is a capacity that is authentically human. Empathy entails “the ability to intuit the distress of another, or to feel a faint echo of their excitement, and therefore respond in ways which bring the other person closer, rather than alienate them”44. I believe that the political theologies we need today are those born among communities, organic theologians, and pastoral servants, who have encountered and empathized with fleshand-blood persons, households, and communities in their misery and shared in their moments of joy. After the plenary sessions on memory and trauma at the LEST XII conference, I remembered Isabella Guanzini’s presentation on the changing church’s geo-aesthetics and politics, and her point about the ambivalence of biblical stories like that of Noah and the Deluge (Gen 6,5–8,22). Some provocative questions about that story came to mind: Was Noah ever troubled, during and after the great flood, and did he mourn the drowning of his neighbours, peers, and friends? How deeply did he empathize or feel his link with them? The story mentions that, before the decision to bring the flood, Noah’s God was deeply troubled by the wickedness of humankind (Gen 6,6), but the story is silent about Noah’s feelings during and after the disaster. Empathy is the ability to imagine and share in another’s feelings, and expansive imagination is another skill beyond the capability of artificial intelligence. Empathy is essential for households, communities, and institutions to practice solidarity and hospitality, or to be welcoming towards migrants and persons who have been displaced by ecological-social calamities, dehumanizing poverty, gender-based violence, state-sponsored violence, and genocidal acts. Empathy, however, can yield toward suffering persons feelings of disgust, rather than compassion on the part of observers and spectators owing to a complex combination of inadequate beliefs in the following: the contagiousness of misfortune, the strangeness of the sufferers, and the (in)vulnerability of the fortunate ones45. Perhaps disgust towards the unemployed drug addicts and small-scale drug peddlers contributed to the ease with which policemen heeded the populist President’s ravings and rantings about the necessity to eliminate pests that put “law-abiding” society in grave danger. Besides the development of disgust, imagining another’s grief can become excessive so that it makes an attempt at a compassionate response trivial, unhelpful, or unsustainable. 44. SMITH, The Book of Human Emotions (n. 27), p. 94. 45. See S. WESSEL, Passion and Compassion in Early Christianity, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 73-74.

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XI. SAPIENTIAL COMPASSION For example, in the thought of Gregory the Great (590-604 AD), who ministered to the afflicted people of Rome as they struggled with the devastating invasions of the Lombards, “shared grief was supposed to be tempered to prevent the comforter from causing even greater despair in the person she was healing, or from becoming morose herself”46. People of compassion have to exercise wisdom so “they can bend themselves to another’s pain without being rendered numb and helpless themselves: the ‘compassion fatigue’ we hear about in the caring professions today”47. In Buddhism, “compassion results from wisdom that perceives each event, and each aspect of reality as part of an organic whole”48, while “ignorance” of our profound interrelatedness is what creates enmity that easily leads to violence49. Sapiential compassion keeps one aware of shadows of ignorance within oneself and others, and leads to “a sense of repentance, readiness for expiation, and [the] transformation of the self of the evil-doer, or the group that was instrumental in bringing forth a particular evil”50. In his critical reflection on Satish Kumar’s creative retelling of a traditional Buddhist story about Angulimala, a fearsome bandit and serial killer who meets the Buddha and converts to the way of life of a monk and disciple of the Dharma (teaching) of wisdom and compassion, John Thompson recounts that the Buddha tells King Pasenadi, who has been hunting the notorious killer, the following: “Justice differs from vengeance … if a horrible killer can renounce violence, then a civilized society surely should be able to do so as well”51. Soon, the King overhears and admires a new monk who is explaining the Buddha’s teaching to some laypeople, and upon being introduced to this monk, Ahimsaka, the non-violent one, who was previously known as Angulimala, the King immediately faints. For Robert Schreiter, a theologian who has engaged in peacebuilding processes in post-conflict situations for the past 25 years, besides creative 46. Ibid., p. 161. 47. SMITH, The Book of Human Emotions (n. 27), p. 54. 48. WILFRED, Asian Public Theology (n. 26), location 2789. 49. Ibid., location 2934. 50. Ibid., location 2954. For Berger, Buddhist compassion and Christian love, “despite some similarities on the level of practical activities … have very little to do with each other”, because of the Buddhist uncertainty or even denial of the ultimate existence of the individual self. See BERGER, Questions (n. 11), p. 28. 51. J. THOMPSON, Envisioning a Dharmic Society: Retelling a Traditional Buddhist Tale, in H. TIMANI – L.S. ASHTON (eds.), Post-Christian Interreligious Liberation Theology, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, Kindle edition, location 3389. Satish Kumar is a peace activist and former Jain monk, and the author of the book, The Buddha and the Terrorist (2004).

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engagement with compelling stories, rituals of healing and reconciliation are apparently necessary for individual perpetrators who want to repent of their atrocities, to make amends, and to be re-integrated into the community they did hurt. In offering his thoughts on the challenge of healing perpetrators, he concludes: As church people we need to be involved in these processes, and bring to bear our spiritual resources here as well, especially the narratives from the Bible and the history that will support one or other of the things that need to go on in processes for victims as well as for perpetrators. We need to learn as well from rituals practiced in indigenous communities that allowed for the reintegration of wrongdoers into the community. In those instances, small indigenous communities could not survive if some members were permanently excluded52.

To return to our question on the messianic option in times of atrocities and calamities: Would, or should, the Messiah, whose members remember the traumas, stop sitting on or restraining the Almighty hand and come to earth in glory as just judge and faithful friend, while not many enough people practice sapiential compassion, and reach out to help victims and mourners to find healing for their traumas and become survivors, and not many enough feel the prophetic anger, or positive liget, to echo their cries for justice and accountability? Should the Messiah, who was arrested, battered, wounded, disfigured, and mocked by his captors, stop sitting on the Almighty hand and return to earth, while too few of his followers visit prisoners and persons who undergo rehabilitation and offer resistance to punitive carceral systems, and fewer are willing to accompany perpetrators who have the desire to repent, to make amends, and to be re-integrated in the community? Should the scarred Christ with nail-marked hands stop resting and pressing on the Almighty hand, while few of his followers join victims and their grieving kith and kin, and help them to grieve with hope, to catch glimpses of the mysterious gift of the present, and to find joy or solace in the here and now, even in moments when memories of trauma arise and return? 52. R. SCHREITER, The Challenge of Healing Perpetrators, in D. PILARIO (ed.), Theology, Conflict, and Peacebuilding, Quezon City, St. Vincent School of Theology, 2019, 75-88, p. 88. On rituals of reconciliation and re-integration, Schreiter mentions specifically the public penitential process in the ancient church. He says: “The Western Christian penitential process provides a good model: acknowledgment of sin, showing sorrow, and commitment to not doing it again; ritual separation from the community for a given period of time to refine and deepen the regret; the imposition of a penance or pattern of repair and expiation for what has been done”. Ibid., pp. 86-87.

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CONCLUSION This essay is a creative exercise for the purpose of enkindling flickers of light to address some recurrent issues in political theology, and it has made use of, and tried to interweave, a diversity of sources such as folk wisdom, tribal culture, poetic verses, aesthetic descriptions, and sociological, theological, and interreligious insights. It ends with this selection of topical points: 1. The novel and graphic-comic image of the Messiah whose members remember traumas and who opts to sit or rest on and restrain the Almighty hand, as not enough people on earth practice prophetic anger and sapiential compassion, can be a vibrant image for an incarnational Christology that seeks to sustain believers in their active search for practical and mystical responses to calamitous local and global events and systems. 2. An interreligious approach and the search for compelling stories, resonant metaphors, and vibrant images in other faith traditions and cultural contexts can help diligent believers and practitioners of political theology to be attentive to, and interpret, the hopeful and worrisome signs of the times. 3. The primacy or prominence of either polis or theos in a political theology is not a criterion in determining its validity or authenticity. 4. More than a specific kind of rationality, what needs to be discovered and developed these days is a deep sense, sensibility, sensuousness, or sensitivity, within, and between, different persons and bodies, in order to bear and nurture sustainably peaceful, joyful, and just communities and societies. St. Vincent School of Theology 221 Tandang Sora Avenue P.O. Box 1179 1116 Quezon City The Philippines [email protected]

Dennis T. GONZALEZ

II

DISCERNING POLITICAL THEOLOGY IN THE FACE OF TRAUMA AND CONFLICT

VIOLENCE, VULNERABILITY, AND RESISTANCES DISCERNMENT TO DECOLONISE THEOLOGY IN TIMES OF SYSTEMIC WAR

INTRODUCTION: TODAY’S SURVIVORS Three decades ago, on a long walk during a pastoral tour in the parish of San Jacinto de Polonia in Ocosingo (Chiapas, Mexico), a young catechist stopped with me on the top of a mountain. Pointing his finger to the horizon, with a slow and clear voice he told me: “Look there in the distance, jTatik1 Carlos, where you can see that hacienda, that’s where I was born when my parents were slaves”. His words were a lightning bolt that slapped my conscience, but, at the same time, illuminated the dark night with the presence of that survivor from deep Mexico who walked with his tseltal people as an animator of the heart of his community, seeking peace with justice and dignity. Since then, I could not continue doing theology in the same way. Some time ago, as a young Dominican – accompanied by the master of novices, fray Raúl Vera, who would later become a recognised bishop – I had “been discovered” by the Mayan communities in the southeast of Mexico, in the prophetic impetus of the Synodal path of the Diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas, animated by its pastor jTatik Samuel Ruiz. Yet, after years of Western philosophical and theological formation in Mexico, Switzerland, and France, I learned to listen to other knowledge, and I began to weave a theology by listening to the victims in their own voice, where indignation and hope intersect. The liberation theology of the 80s and 90s of the last century was giving way, little by little, to theologies “from below”2, lived and written by the “subalterns” themselves, that is, by those who were invisible to the hegemonic world, but who lived in the heart of God, according to biblical faith, longing for, and building, other possible worlds. Hence, the need for my generation to undertake a “refounding of theological knowledge” in its sources, actors, methods, symbols, narratives, and practices.

1. Mayan tseltal term meaning “father”, used to designate a communal authority figure. 2. Expression used by anti-systemic thought to designate the option of thinking reality from the epistemic South inhabited by the disinherited of the Earth.

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Here, we will propose the coordinates of this theological itinerary in a decolonial3 and queer key, as essential references today to account for the way redemption is taking place in the fragmented history of humanity at a time of global systemic violence. First, we will focus on the brief description of systemic violence, which as a “fourth world war”, according to the Zapatista communities of the Mexican Southeast, afflicts humanity as a whole. Then, we will address some categories necessary to understand this logic of dominant necropower. Finally, we will present some features of the theological work that emerges “from below”, that is, from the invisible zone of humanity, such as people in forced migration, relatives of disappeared people, as well as those who suffer gender violence, especially women, and also the cultures that struggle to the point of agony to preserve their knowledge in the face of old and new epistemicides. Finally, we will connect that decolonial version of theological thought with the provocation that arises from queer/cuir thinking that, today, in all cultures of the planet, fertilises the experience and reflection of the diverse as an indispensable expression of the divine Sophia that nourishes humanity in ways that are always surprising, in order to give life to all in a banquet of redemption. I. SCENARIOS OF SYSTEMIC VIOLENCE The Zapatista expression “fourth world war”4, already cited at the beginning of this chapter, is not exaggerated, because it designates the catastrophe that afflicts the planet and humanity in the present time, as a hydra with multiple heads. The critical thinking of the second half in the twentieth century had already announced what we now see in its devastating effects as the future that has already reached us: Heidegger’s critique of technique, Foucault’s analysis of biopower, Ivan Illich’s visionary description of the civilisation of the machine, Hannah Arendt’s criticism of totalitarianism, even the apocalyptic accent of the spiral of violence 3. Critical thinking in Latin America distinguishes between the terms “decolonial” and “descolonial”. The first one refers to an academic context developed mainly in the United States from the white academic privilege open to dialogue with other actors of social change. On the other hand, the term “descolonial” has been proposed by “communitarian feminisms” and native peoples to emphasise the importance of thinking from other epistemologies. We prefer this second meaning and assume it as the main reference in our reflection. 4. Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, La cuarta guerra mundial, in La Jornada, 23 October 2001, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2001/10/23/per-lacuarta.html (accessed 6 September 2020).

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that marked René Girard’s work, together with the unmasking of the globalised state of exception analysed by Agamben: they have all alerted us to what was to come. Seen from the epistemic South, the catastrophe had already been announced by Frantz Fanon, a voice taken up by decolonial thought with a strong academic accent, but led to the radicalisation of the community, black and communal feminisms of recent decades as decolonial or frankly anti-colonial practices and knowledge, as Silvia Rivera-Cusicanqui points out. Even in the African context, Achille Mbembe has unfolded his critical potential to make visible the “dark side of democracy” that has given wealth and power to North Atlantic colonial powers, after the formal independencies that created new states in Africa, together with the “Africanisation of the world” derived from colonial power that makes invisible those it subjects, as pillars of the hegemony of necropower. In the eye of the hurricane, the social movements of victims all over the planet, but especially in the global South, those who say “enough!” to the violence they suffer, have sounded the alarm, from the Ukraine to Japan, from Kurdistan to Chiapas, from the Amazon to the Congo, from the refugee centres to the clandestine graves in Mexico and the United States, in the Sahara and the Mediterranean, from Syria to the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. Yet, these movements of victims do not remain only in denouncing the catastrophe, but in alliance with the critical thought that walks with them “from the rear”, as Boaventura de Sousa Santos affirms, they analyse the systemic causes of the destruction, locating the “extractivist capitalism”, the heteronormative patriarchy, and the external and internal colonialism of white supremacy, as a network of violence. However, they are not satisfied with this analysis; they also explore new modes of social organisation, of the production of goods with care for sister earth, together with the promotion of knowledge and spiritualities made invisible by hegemonic thought as the source of their resistance. Systemic violence has been analysed by Emmanuel Wallerstein, Catherine Walsh, Aníbal Quijano, and Ramón Grosfoguel in decolonial terms as a world-system that generates the subjugation of peoples and cultures for the sake of a neo-colonial capitalist project. Raúl Zibechi, from Uruguay, sharpens this analysis with the category of “extractivist capitalism”, and Sayak Valencia in Tijuana outlines the features of the patriarchal power of white supremacism as “gore capitalism”. On the other hand, from mimetic theory, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, as an economist and philosopher, has deepened the contradictions of the mimetic desire of appropriation that has supported the nuclear accidents on the planet and proposes to analyse the resistance

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of the survivors as another way of mimesis that allows us to face the catastrophe as survivors of the escalation of violence. In this perspective, the scenarios of violence are interconnected: from the depredation of territories for the extraction of water, oil, gas, minerals, forests, and other natural goods, to the migration of forced mobility of millions of people caused by climate change, by the greed of criminals in complicity with corrupt political regimes. As Rita Laura Segato has emphasised, the “war against women” is the most brutal expression of patriarchal and colonial capitalism. We can, therefore, characterise these scenarios as places of bared life (nuda vita) that unfold in times of globalisation, new “open-air states of exception”, as Raúl Zibechi calls the suburbs of the megalopolis around the planet where millions of people live. These lives are regarded as “garbage” by the production-consumption system that the global media disseminate, with increasingly refined marketing strategies, as a mirage of the realisation of the human endeavour that is never reached by the majority. 1. Decolonising Vulnerability In this scenario of violence, the systemic victims have discovered a power of experience that emerges from their being affected by the hegemonic world5. What the victims of totalitarianism have experienced in other times in concentration camps and by other devices, such as control and extermination camps, is now replicated in various forms in the globalised world. Paradoxically, from the heart of the victims’ experience of being “vulnerated” and vulnerable at the same time, a resilience emerges that keeps them united among themselves and attached to life. However, this resilience is gradually transforming itself into resistance as forms of organisation of the survivors. In other words, the passive way of being affected by the imposition that dominates, subdues, and destroys life, weaves a physical and psychological, communitarian and social indignation, as a fabric of life that defends itself to the last breath. From such an experience of indignation, resistance emerges as a subversion against the hegemonic order with a power of historical imagination, which leads them to seek ways of autonomy in the various forms of care 5. The basic ideas in this section are inspired by the conversations that have taken place in recent years between universities in a decolonial model and social movements. An example of this horizontal dialogue can be seen at: C. MENDOZA-ÁLVAREZ – T.-M. COURAU (eds.), Concilium 2020/1: Decolonial Theology: Violence, Resistance and Spiritualities (JanuaryFebruary 2020), https://concilium.hymnsam.co.uk/issues/20201-decolonial-theology-violenceresistance-and-spiritualities/ (accessed 6 September 2020).

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that weave experiences of Good living (Buen vivir6): the earth as an autonomous territory, living organism, and sister, which expresses the love of divine Wisdom; the community as the primary place to exist with others, in a continuous learning of daily life, shared work, and celebration of the gifts of life; the symbols of survival that through the arts and spiritualities weave meaning in the midst of non-meaning. The vulnerability of people and communities becomes the power (potencia7) of the poor and the excluded; of the subalterns who organize and build autonomies; of women who weave networks of political affection to resist the heteronormative patriarchy; of the LGBTIQ+ communities that from hate crimes and gender phobias in macho societies generate practices of gender inclusion in the life of families and communities. Finally, nourished by these resistances, of artists, universities, and social movements at the intersections of projects of self-defence, mutual care, and common ethos, create narratives of meaning. Therefore, decolonising vulnerability means dismantling the theoretical scaffolding that has made it an individual redoubt of identity at the cost of the denial of others, in order to discover a subversive relational ontology of the hegemonic order that allows systemic victims to live interstitial resistances through which “the messiah slips in”: in that enigmatic expression of Walter Benjamin8 that evokes the interruption of the linear time of the victors who manipulate history. This always unfinished process of decolonisation as the dismantling of the hegemonic structures of capital, colonisation, the white supremacy, and patriarchy of the “world above”, has emerged in the cracks of modern history in the twentieth century with women’s liberation movements, the independence of colonised nations, the insurrection of black peoples, and so many other subordinates, who have taken control of their subjectivities and communities for the creation of their own autonomies and the networks that link them to other resistances.

6. Expression used by the native peoples by which they recover their ancestral wisdom as a source of epistemology and ethics. It was an expression taken up again by the World Social Forum, which began in Porto Alegre in 2001 with periodic meetings to promote an alternative vision of the world to that of the hegemonic thought represented by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 7. In Latin languages, a distinction is made between “power” and “potency”. The first term is associated with dominance, the second with the potentialities of subjectivity. We opt here for the second. 8. “For every second of time was the strait gate through which Messiah might enter”. W. BENJAMIN, in On the Concept of History, Appendix B, https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/ CONCEPT2.html (accessed 6 September 2020).

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2. The Theoretical Dilemma: Maintaining the Logic from Above or “Insurgency” from Below Insurrection, as a way of overcoming hegemonic history, was proposed by Marxist and Benjaminian political philosophy in a new version in times of the globalisation of neo-liberal capitalism. However, the historical force that emerges from the democratic processes lived in the streets – in that revolutionary moment analysed by Jacques Rancière as an immeasurable historical praxis of emerging political subjectivities – returns sooner or later to the imposition of totalitarian regimes. Therefore, the alternative proposed by the anti-systemic social movements, and the critical thought that accompanies them, assumes the civilising catastrophe as the place of the appearance of new communal and political relations from which a good life for all will be recreated, always with critical vigilance before the implacable logic of power from above. Communitarian feminisms, indigenous autonomies, black resistances, and movements of family members, who are searching for their disappeared children, are indications of these other forms of intersubjectivity that express the ethical, political, and spiritual reserve of humanity at the time of the catastrophe that has reached us. From these communal, social, and political insurrections also emerges a theoretical subversion that we can call here, following the Mexican anthropologist Xóchitl Leyva, “epistemic resistances”. This field of meaning is in the process of developing epistemic networks that allow for the promotion of critical dialogue between ancestral knowledge and Western rationality with its current principles – such as science, technology, human rights, and democracy – but which must be subordinated to a communal ethos that overcomes the anthropocentrism of Western civilisation, a predator of the ecosystem in which humanity is called to flourish. II. CHALLENGES TO THEOLOGICAL DISCERNMENT IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY The “epistemic re-foundation” in times of catastrophe, must first of all overcome the logocentrism that characterised post-enlightened Western modernity, especially in its version of instrumental rationality. In this context, Christian theology is also called to carry out a discernment of its own character as a sapiential discourse that comes from a vital source of a sense of redemption. In particular, as a second act that proceeds from

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the praxis of following Jesus of Nazareth as the crucified Messiah and son of God who reveals the love of the Abba in the power of his Ruah, Christian theology is called to think with new models of redemption, such as the Incarnation of the compassionate and merciful God, who rescues wounded humanity and creation from death. Therefore, in times of global catastrophe due to the systemic violence that the world-system imposes on all the peoples of the Earth, a theological discernment is necessary to distinguish the places of presence and revelation of the compassionate love of the Abba of Jesus, as they are experienced and narrated by the same communities of survivors. In this way, a critical reflection of the scenarios and processes where life in the midst of death, justice in the midst of oppression, and reconciliation as a horizon of meaning in the midst of the horror of the necropower of our time, is imposed. Therefore, in a decolonial key, Christian theology is called to live a process analogous to the kenosis of the divine Word that is incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, but located in the processes of resistance that the impoverished and excluded live today as systemic victims of the hegemonic world. For this reason, decolonial theology is always woven from the back of the social movements of the poor and excluded from the systems of domination that idolise power, capital or gender, to be a witness to the stories of those defeated who “insurrect” their exclusion as peoples from the promise of full life that is being received and realised, thanks to those who “take charge of reality”, as Ignacio Ellacuría said, with historical hope. In other words, the meaning comes from the praxis of those who are indignant and resist with such a love that the believing community recognises it as a source for a vita theologalis experience, in the core of the violent historical reality, as a place of “grace in the midst of disgrace” (misfortune), according to Leonardo Boff’s intuition, and therefore as an irruption of the God of life in the midst of the catastrophe that surrounds us. 1. Epistemic and Spiritual Resistances Resistances are not only a political or economic process; they also reveal a more important issue, namely the recovery and revitalisation of a way of life and knowledge that has kept the subaltern peoples with dignity, despite the long night of oppression they suffer. In the midst of “epistemic wars”, epistemic resistance becomes more urgent. Following the vein of intercultural thought opened by Raúl

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Fornet-Betancourt for several decades, within these resistances it is necessary to unravel the spiritual resistances, because the spiritualities of the peoples are modes of knowledge of the real – immanent and transcendent – that must be recognised as a source of Good living (Buen vivir), as symbolic autonomies that preserve and nourish the dignity of peoples. Against the Western colonial imposition of a “universal” epistemology proper to a model of the enlightened individual – European, white, male, Christian and proprietary – which has its summit in a “morality” of the autonomous individual of Kantian and Hegelian stock: what the epistemic and spiritual resistances imply is the contextualisation of all knowledge. Without renouncing the search for meaning and a certain universality of reason, the need for a permanent deconstruction of its theoretical assumptions and its pretension of universality is imposed, so that an ecology of knowledge may emerge that contributes to the good life of peoples and individuals. Then, the spiritual dimension of knowledge will be manifested as a constitutive part of human rationality, where immanence and transcendence are combined in a grammar of mutual recognition in its epistemic and sapiential dimension. 2. Re-membering the Queer Body of the Messiah9 Christianity, as a narrative of the divine Incarnation in human and cosmological reality assumes, in this decolonial perspective, the diverse as the original place of revelation, a revelation of creation, the human and the divine in their strange communion and diversity, where it is urgent to recognise and empower from the subjectivities denied by systemic violence. Hence, decolonial thought finds a fertile intersection with queer theory that, in recent decades, has developed with epistemic and political force in the feminist and gender diversity movements, and is now reaching other subjectivities in resistance and autonomy processes, such as the social movements in defence of black identities, the trans-collectives, the caravans of migrants and refugees, as well as the native peoples in defence of territories threatened by extractive capitalism. 9. A balance of the theological reception of queer theory can be seen in: S. KNAUSS – C. MENDOZA-ÁLVAREZ (eds.), Concilium (2019/5): Queer Theologies: Becoming the Queer Body of Christ (November-December 2019), https://concilium.hymnsam.co.uk/issues/ 20195-queer-theologies-becoming-the-queer-body-of-christ/ (accessed 6 September 2020).

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If the theology of the Incarnation has as its centre the body of the Messiah, it cannot forget in these times of systemic violence that this body is dismembered, in a literal and metaphorical way, by the systemic violence in the refugee camps, the clandestine graves, the “kitchens” of drug dealers, the detention centres for undocumented migrants, the women who have been violated, and so many other subjectivities violated in a cruel and criminal manner. For this reason, queering theology is an essential process of theological discernment in times of global violence. To disregard the bodies that have been garbage dumped, by the capitalist and neo-colonial patriarchy of white supremacy with a Christian mask, would be to deny the realisation of redemption in the broken history of humanity, and the loving presence of the Abba of Jesus with all the crucified people and communities of today. To twist (queering) the theology of their forgetfulness of history, of the exclusion and trauma experienced by systemic victims, is the function of this process of critical thinking intimately linked to the Incarnation of God, according to the foundational Christian narrative. Re-membering the queer body of the crucified messiah, in the subjectivities and communities of systemic victims, is the way to promote the intelligence of redemption in the midst of the debris of late modernity, which is the scene of the planetary devastation caused by the abysmal thinking that champions the planet today as necropower. Hence, there is an urgent need for a theological discernment of redemption in the midst of global catastrophe.

III. TOUCHING THE MARGINS: THEOLOGICAL DISCERNMENT IN TIMES OF GLOBAL TRAUMA Who are the subjectivities and subjectivations that can open a path in the middle of the dark night to understand the divine-human redemption10 that is taking place in the fragmented history of humanity?

10. The central ideas of this section are developed in the first volume of a theological trilogy on the idea of tradition from a post-modern and decolonial perspective. Cf. C. MENDOZA-ÁLVAREZ, La resurrección como anticipación mesiánica: Duelo, memoria y esperanza desde los sobrevivientes, México, Universidad Iberoamericana, 2020.

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If the liberation theologies of the second half of the twentieth century placed the poor as the primary theological subject for deciphering history in terms of redemption, in the context of the systemic violence on a planetary scale of our uncertain times – which we have described here in its structural features – they will be the systemic victims themselves, in the diversity of their resistances, who practice, narrate, and await the other possible world longed for by suffering humanity and sown as a seed of full life by the “compassionate and merciful God”, who recognises, and celebrates, the Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic spiritual traditions that are recognised as being related to the ancestors Abraham and Sarah. When the subalterns speak, the powerful tremble, say the slogans in the streets of cities in all latitudes of the planet, from the anarchist movement Occupy and the Arab spring, to the Kurdish and Zapatista insurrections of past decades, or the feminist green tide that links with the bicolored trans and rainbow marches against gender violence. We could even evoke the social movements that, in the gap opened by the World Social Forum in 2001, continue to seek how to translate the desire for social justice into economic and political life, through governments that have emerged from democratic processes for social justice and equity, although they have had to resolve the manipulations of populist governments that have claimed in the last decade to represent “the messianic insurrection of the people” in Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico, to list some recent Latin American examples. However, theological discernment in this hour of global uncertainty cannot be reduced to the political dispute of some social movements that claim to represent the victims. It is necessary to deepen the questioning of possible redemption in history until it reaches its eschatological depth, that is, the mode of temporality of redemption that interrupts the fatal cycle of mimetic violence, and gives way to a new way of living the present. Today, that kairos, which the European liberal theology of the twentieth century raised as political hope and the Latin American liberation theology assumed as a commitment to the poor, is insufficient. Hence, it is necessary and urgent to explore now – in times of the necropower that is imprinted on the whole orb – the signs of the “contracted time” of the just people, by which redemption takes place in the cracks of history. This is what we are going to describe below in its basic co-ordinates.

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1. Re-membering “the Righteous People of the Nations” The course of history as an experience of mutual recognition is given by those whom the Talmudic tradition calls Tzadikkim, the righteous people of history, who, in each generation and anonymously, live in justice, not only in the eyes of humans, but in the eyes of God. This means, in the context of systemic violence, that the ethical, political, and spiritual reserve of humanity comes from those persons and communities that – inserted in the midst of the violence of patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, and sacrificial religion – have succeeded in dismantling the worldsystem they impose through practices, knowledge, and spiritualities of Buen vivir. In effect, the righteous people of history are those who stop the spiral of resentment, rivalry, and hatred in their own bodies and territories, thus gestating a new world through the “contraction of time” in a messianic and “kairological” experience. Messianic because it actualises the promise of full life, given by the Eternal to the Hebrew people as a gift and task, as the firstborn of a multitude of peoples. Kairological because it anticipates the consummation of the times that have come from God as Creator and Redeemer, which is possible thanks to the crucified Messiah risen from dead, and all the crucified persons and peoples of history who, with the offering of their lives in a logic of gratuitousness and donation, sow new times. To affirm this realisation of redemption in the righteous people of history does not mean, however, that these persons are already the solution to the enigma of violence, nor the unique and final expression of redemption. Rather, they are a symbolic anticipation, with all the strength of their bodies and territories in the process of autonomy, of that divine design for humanity and for all creation, which the biblical tradition calls Beatitude. Perhaps today the “anonymity” of the Tzaddikim is not enough. We need the opposite, the visibility of the systemic victims who weave networks of empathy, agreement, communication, and solidarity, so that the cracks that they have managed to open in the walls of hate through their resistance become larger and larger causing those walls to collapse. Chains are broken, clandestine graves are opened, and the states of exception that keep the bodies of the subordinates as waste disappear. It is at the crossroads of these resistances that “time is interrupted” as a fatal cycle of sacrifices. Another world is given birth, with labour pains, and made possible, because it is desirable from the heart of the

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resistances, where the bodies of the victims are insurrected and resurrected in an anticipated manner, with their own names. Bodies of women who have been raped are able to live their dignity while their rights are respected. Bodies of migrants who flee from wars and famine satisfy their hunger for bread and work by weaving networks of solidarity. 2. The Redemption that Takes Place in the Below When the poor and the excluded, like the systemic victims, make their experience of being violated a source of resilience and resistance against necropower, they become witnesses of a promise fulfilled coming from their wounds through which human-divine consolation passes, and thus make possible a qualitative leap in history. The post-modern and decolonial theological discernment glimpses there – precisely within that experience of anthropological and epistemic conversion of mimetic desire – a flash of redemption, not in order to sacralise the victims who are now converted into witnesses. It is rather a question of capturing the “second through which the messiah passes”, what Walter Benjamin and Enrique Dussel called the “revolutionary instant” and the anarchists “the crack of hegemonic history”. Yet, decolonial theology seeks to go even further because history cannot contain the divine glory, but can only witness its radiance, and give way to comfort and hope for the systemic victims, with the warning to the hegemonic powers that their wealth and vainglory are finite. Thus, this theology is nourished by the proclamation of the “little ones” of this world, who testify and confess that the God of Life is on their side as Ruah who accompanies, consoles, and encourages them to stand and live the joy of the dismembered community that has been re-membered. Redemption from below means that the divine presence fecundates humanity and creation by assuming the radical vulnerability of creation as a primal place of revelation. Just as the bodies, dismembered by the criminal mafias, that lie in clandestine graves are sought “as treasures” by the relatives of disappeared persons, so the God of Abraham and Sarah went into the desert to seek the Eternal, or Jesus and his messianic community went into Galilee to live the signs of the Kingdom – in an analogous way the survivors of today seek those who were dismembered from the messianic community to re-member them. Then, redemption occurs as an insurrection in the form of a change of temporality in order to live in search of the re-membered community,

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re-united, but in an endless process, until we find everyone, especially those who are missing because they disappeared or were annihilated by necropower. There, it will be that tears will be revealed as the principle of knowledge and truth. We will learn to “laugh while crying”, as Yadira González11 said in the Mexico City Zócalo when – along with her colleagues from family groups looking for missing persons – she demanded that the Mexican federal government fulfil its campaign promises, so that the state would fulfil its function of guaranteeing the safety of all. Thus, amidst the paradox of bodies re-membered by memory, the demand for justice, and the offer of forgiveness, a glimmer of redemption emerges. 3. On the Theological Density of the Present Time Here arises the kairological temporality in its theological source, beyond the way Heidegger incorporated in his philosophy of the Dasein the instant as expression of the authentic life. In fact, although Heidegger made an exegesis of Saint Paul’s letters in his work, “Philosophy of Religious Life”, which later appears as a backdrop in his masterpiece, Being and Time, it seems to us that because of the predominance of his category of being-for-death he left Christian eschatology in suspense with its own intelligibility of the real. At most, he assumed the previous phase of kairological existence, which is the idea of messianic time so recurrent in the philosophy of history and political philosophy after Walter Benjamin. That is why the theological discernment of authentic life is crucial, but in the grammar proper to the theology of kairos as an anticipation of divine-human redemption in the heart of history, as grace in the midst of historical dis-grace. The awareness of death as the only certainty and horizon of life is not enough to forge the human condition in its openness to transcendence. If we remain in the “heaviness” of being-for-death there will be no place for grace.

11. As part of the process of decolonisation of the university, in recent years in Mexico we have been involved with social movements that resist violence, especially with relatives of disappeared persons. The result of these narrative practices can be seen in: Grupo de investigación Narrativas de resistencias, Cuaderno digital número 1 “Sobrevivientes” (agosto 2020), https://blog.narrativas.ibero.mx/2020/08/19/cuaderno-digital-num-1-sobrevivientes/.

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In this sense, it is necessary to affirm that the life of just people – those who have lived the qualitative leap from resentment to forgiveness, from accusation to inclusion, from sacrifice to donation, in their own flesh – is something more than “a splinter that hurts” or a tragic response to “the rights of the dead”. They are – precisely in the grace of their imagination that creates new worlds – a foretaste of the full Good living to which survivors tend after living their mourning with hope. This is precisely what it is all about: healing wounds, carrying the scars on the body with memory and dignity, to re-member the forgotten of the earth. Thus, the present time acquires something more than messianic density as an interpellation of the dead to the living. It receives the grace of the co-presence between the living and the ancestors, that sacramental experience of re-encounter that anticipates the full communion of the beyond of violent history, which Christianity designates as vita beata or blessed life. In this horizon it is possible, then, to contemplate the promise fulfilled, not only as a promised land seen in the distance by Moses according to the narrative of the Pentateuch. It is a banquet of present and future conviviality that includes those who lack a place at the table, who are present in memory, indignation, and commitment to continue his work. The present time is redemption insofar as it is “contracted time” by the labour pains of those who give birth to new worlds in their own bodies pregnant with dignity, memory, and hope for all, starting with the victims and offering, as the ultimate radicality of divine love, a place of conversion for the executioners. CONCLUSION: DECOLONISING AND “QUEERING” THEOLOGY We have started from the description of the scenarios of violence that are part of the same process of hegemonic power that runs around the planet as necropower. With its diverse jaws, the capitalist, patriarchal, and colonial hydra generates naked life and the garbage of bodies and territories, including the common house that has been given to us by the Creator as a garden to co-exist with others. There we have sharpened our ears and our eyes, to recognise the clamour of the innocent and the systemic victims who, from their wounds and their mourning, babble resilience and cry out for justice and truth giving way to the diverse resistances. In the bosom of that clamour that mixes indignation and prayer, there emerges a flash of theological hope that we have read, in the key

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of post-modern and decolonial theology, as a messianic anticipation of redemption, and as the fulfilment of human-divine grace in the fragments of history. The horizon of the eschaton of the re-membered community remains open thanks to the just persons of history who have gone beyond rivalry and resentment in their own bodies, giving way through creative resistances to another world, “where other worlds fit”, where we fit all, each in their own difference and diversity. The theological discernment in times of necropower will not cease to look down for practices, narratives, and celebrations of the re-membered life of the queer body of the messiah, which will not be complete until we find those who are missing. Boston College Theology Department Faculty Gasson Hall 140 Commonwealth Avenue Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 USA [email protected]

Carlos MENDOZA-ÁLVAREZ, OP

WHERE DEATH IS THE CURRENCY OF LIFE POLITICAL THEOLOGY IN THE WAKE OF TRAUMA

INTRODUCTION How do we build communities that remember their violent past without glorifying, normalising or normativising this violence? This is one of the central questions around which a political theology in the wake of Carl Schmitt revolves. In this contribution, I will explore how trauma theory can offer new perspectives to think through the political-theological problem of originary violence in community-formation. In order to do this, I will engage with a source that we might, perhaps not immediately, identify as belonging to the core canon of political theology: in March 2019, the German hard rock band Rammstein released a video teaser for their new song “Deutschland”1. It shows the band as inmates in a concentration camp, waiting for their execution. In Germany, where memory politics on the holocaust are highly sensitive, this instantly triggered a storm of indignation2: Are Rammstein crossing a red line by using holocaust scenes for marketing purposes? Are they violating the memory of the victims of the Nazi-Regime? More broadly, what are appropriate ways of remembering the holocaust in popular culture? The release of the full video then revealed that this scene is by no means the only reminder of a violent past in “Deutschland”. The 9 min long video covers 2000 years of German history, in a frenzy of orgiastic-violent images, with each scene capturing in a moment the icons of an era. We see the Roman defeat by Germanic tribes in the Teutoburger Forest, the Hindenburg disaster, book and witch burnings, the RAF, Bismarck and Marx, swastikas, hammers and sickles, with each scene staged by aesthetic citations of films, such as The Name of the Rose and Schindler’s List. As the video goes on, it cuts between scenes more and more frenetically. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFhwnk4Wo94. 2. This controversy found wide coverage, cf. D. HORNUFF, Kann dich lieben, will dich hassen, in Die Zeit, 28 March 2019, at https://www.zeit.de/kultur/musik/2019-03/rammsteinvideo-deutschland-holocaust#comments; L. BERSHIDSKY, The Hard-Rock Group’s Controversial New Song Explores National Identity by Confronting Painful History, in Bloomberg Opinion, 2 April 2019, at https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-02/rammsteinrock-video-sparks-debate-over-german-national-identity.

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The narrative centre is “Germania”, played by a Black German actress, who we see beheading the Roman general Varus, striding through battlefields, being devoured by cannibals, and giving birth to dogs. As this grotesque, violence- and sex-filled version of German history unrolls, Rammstein’s frontman Till Lindeman sings: “Germany … Want to love and damn you / Germany, your love is both curse and blessing / Germany, my love I cannot give you”. The teaser with the execution scene, it turned out, was a well-calculated provocation by Rammstein. “Deutschland” examines precisely the questions that were raised in the run-up to its release. For many commentators, the song presents a “delirious meditation about identity … and an orgiastically staged struggle with Germany”3, which express the ultimately unfulfilled “desire for a collective identity”4 in the wake of historical trauma. Deutschland can be seen as a critique of a growing influence of populist identity discourses in Germany that glorify the country’s history, but also it grates against mainstream public historiographies in contemporary Germany that want to acknowledge the past critically, while also looking to its future as a cosmopolitan community5. In Deutschland, Rammstein paints a darker vision of where the country is; torn “between contempt for … its history and the need to construct an identity from the history”6. The interrogation of German identity, which Rammstein presents us with, reflects some of the decisive debates in the field of political theology. They revolve around the question of originary violence in communityformation, and seek to calibrate the tensions that are at stake in the wake of such violence between remembering and forgetting, between sovereignty and subalternity. With Colby Dickinson7, we can discern two traditions in this field: on the one hand, there are communitarian approaches that build on imaginations of originary unity and stability; on the other hand, we find genealogical approaches that seek to destabilise 3. A. FRANK, Kontroverse um Rammstein-Musikvideo: Eine Falle, in Spiegel Online, 28 March 2019, at https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/musik/rammstein-kontroverse-um-musikvideodeutschland-eine-falle-a-1260212.html. 4. J. BALZER, Ein lauter Schrei nach Liebe, 29 March 2019, at https://www.zeit.de/ kultur/musik/2019-03/rammstein-video-deutschland-provokation-holocaust-sexualitaet. 5. Cf. A. LLOYD, Rammstein’s Deutschland Video Is Jaw-Dropping in Its Size and Scale – But What Exactly Is It All About?, in Metal Hammer, 29 March 2019, at https:// www.loudersound.com/features/we-got-an-oxford-university-professor-to-explain-whatthe-fcks-going-on-in-that-rammstein-video. 6. BERSHIDSKY, The Hard-Rock Group’s Controversial New Song (n. 2). 7. C. DICKINSON, Minima Theologica, or the Poverty of Theology (Manuscript), pp. 118-132.

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such “archaic” founding discourses – hence, their deconstructive selfdescription as “anarchic”. Dickinson suggests that each of these traditions can be linked to distinct forms of historiographical and theological knowledge production: communitarian approaches write monumental historiographies (Paul Ricoeur); genealogical approaches engage in critical historiography that seek to give voice to the silenced victims of hegemonic history. These political-theological traditions, Dickinson holds, find themselves at an irreconcilable impasse: while communitarian approaches cannot account for the violence inherent in the foundations of communities, deconstructive approaches are often said to be unable to provide constructive resources towards the formation of communities beyond critique. In this contribution, I argue that “Deutschland” provides resources that allow for new orientation in this impasse: Rammstein’s grotesque historiography of Germany takes neither an archaic nor an anarchic approach to memory politics; rather, it describes history as traumatic, and thus activates distinct forms of knowledge that allow us to gauge the political role and theological status of violence in new ways. In order to tease these out, I will bring Deutschland into conversation with the work of Walter Benjamin – an author who belongs more firmly, if not uncontestably, to the canon of political theology. Reading Rammstein and Benjamin together through the lens of trauma studies, I will first argue that they suggest an understanding of messianic time as a grotesque history of trauma, thereby challenging theology to think of salvation in ways that can account for the pervasive impact of trauma on history. In order to develop a theological response to this challenge, I will, in a second step, analyse this interplay between the traumatic, the salvific, and the grotesque more closely, and argue that it can be addressed in two distinct political-theological ways: a dialogical/dialectic approach, taken for example by Mikhail Bakhtin or Johann Baptist Metz, which allows one to recognise historical trauma, but locates salvation outside trauma, and is ultimately unable to develop a fully-fledged theological response to trauma. The postcolonial approach of Achille Mbembe, in contrast, closely ties the analysis of the grotesque as a political and soteriological category to the psychoanalytical language of trauma. This brings a soteriological ambiguity to the fore that allows us to unfold the theological viability of the argument that messianic time is a grotesque history of trauma and, consequently, provides resources for reconfiguring salvation in the light of trauma “ana-archaically” as new beginnings without innocence.

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I. READING RAMMSTEIN AND BENJAMIN: A HISTORY OF TRAUMA AND A GROTESQUE MESSIAH Benjamin’s essay, “On the Concept of History”8, has been highly influential in thinking through the theological dimensions of memory politics. Here, Benjamin describes the writing of history as an ethical obligation that he frames in soteriological terms: humankind is redeemed, he posits, only when “its past has become citable in all its moments”9. This soteriological vision translates into the normative historiographical principle “that nothing which has ever happened is to be given as lost to history”10, and paves the way for an ethical concept of history in which past, present, and future are conceived as interrelated: In this “Jetztzeit”11, history is not a linear progression, but is contracted into “a constellation overflowing with tensions”12, which “summarizes the entire history of humanity into a monstrous abbreviation”13. We obtain a first glimpse of such contracted time through the eyes of the Angel of History – and it is monstrous indeed: where “we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet”14. With Benjamin, we can register a desire for reparation in this contraction of time: “The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed”15. Yet, the task of repairing is not the angel’s, but the messiah’s – it is messianic time in which history comes to that standstill that Benjamin describes as both monstrous and redemptive. Benjamin, thus, draws on theological terms to shape his concept of history. This, in turn, frames the political problem of community-formation in the wake of violence as a profoundly theological question, which ties closely into central soteriological and Christological imaginations of the (Jewish-)Christian tradition. A theological reception of Benjamin’s work, of course, is complex, and when I bring it into conversation with Rammstein in order to develop resources for political theology, I acknowledge these complexities, 8. W. BENJAMIN, On the Concept of History, in ID., Selected Writings. 4: 1938-1940, ed. H. EILAND – M. JENNINGS, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1938-1940, 389-411. 9. Ibid., p. 390. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., p. 395. 12. Ibid., p. 396. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., p. 392. 15. Ibid.

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but it will also explore Benjamin’s “a/theological concepts”16 as a challenge to reconsider theological interpretations of Christ, history, and salvation. This intertextual reading rests on my suggestion that we can see Deutschland as an aesthetic reflection of Benjamin’s ethical concept of history. In Deutschland’s frenetic citation of iconic elements, German history comes into view as “a monstrous abbreviation” of a violent past. In its grotesque composition of disjointed episodes, it appears as “one single catastrophe”, presented as if seen through the eyes of Benjamin’s Angel of History, who arguably does, indeed, appear towards the end of the video (min 6:23). The psychoanalytical name for such a catastrophe is trauma, one of whose defining characteristics is a rupture in time. Indeed, we can read Shelly Rambo’s summary of trauma symptoms as an apt description of both Rammstein’s history of Germany and Benjamin’s concept of messianic time: “Temporal categories of past, present, and future shatter in the experiences of trauma. … The past does not remain in the past. … [T]he effects of an event are not contained or completed in the past; instead, they intrude into the present”17. By aesthetically representing and conceptually explicating history as a constellation of disjointed events, Rammstein’s Deutschland and Benjamin’s “Concept of History” meet in framing history as traumatic, and they seek to reflect on the conditions of the possibility for forging collective memory in the wake of historical trauma. Cathy Caruth, a major proponent of trauma studies, allows us to further unfold this argument. She defines trauma as a profound experience of suffering that resists closure: it is too overwhelming to be fully known and is therefore not available to consciousness until it imposes itself in the symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, i.e., flashbacks and recurring nightmares18. For Caruth, this absence of immediate understanding implies a call for witness that responds to the dispossession and belatedness of trauma and is itself structured by these marks: trauma is marked not by “simple knowledge, but by the ways it simultaneously defies and demands our witness”19. Trauma, Caruth says, is “fully evident only in 16. For a discussion of some of the issues at stake: see, C. DICKINSON – S. SYMONS, Introduction, in IID. (eds.), Walter Benjamin and Theology (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy), New York, Fordham University Press, 2016, 1-20. 17. S. RAMBO, Beyond Redemption? Reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road after the End of the World, in Studies in the Literary Imagination 41 (2008) 99-120, p. 108. 18. Cf. C. CARUTH, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History, Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 4. 19. Ibid., p. 5.

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connection with another place, and in another time”20 such that “a history [is] constituted, multiply and heterogeneously, around the site of a wound”21. Trauma’s epistemics of unknowing gives rise to an ethics of testimony through which trauma cannot be reduced to an individual pathology, but has a historical, political dimension. From the traumatic structures of belatedness and dispossession, Caruth thus outlines a concept of history that elucidates Benjamin’s concept and Rammstein’s aesthetics of history. Like them, Caruth speaks of a contraction of past, present, and future that rests on the overwhelming experience of suffering, and she, too, highlights the resulting ethical obligation and epistemological difficulties to give testimony to this experience. History, Caruth posits, perhaps invoking Benjamin’s principle of responsibility that each generation has for previous ones22, “is precisely the way we are implicated in each other’s traumas”23. “History”, she concludes, explicating what has been an implicit assumption with Benjamin and Rammstein, is a “history of trauma”24. One further parallel between Benjamin and Rammstein allows us to push this argument and expose the theological provocation that it bears. In both, the figure of the messianic features prominently. Yet, particularly in Deutschland, these citations of the messianic appear grotesquely disfigured: cast as a messianic figure, Germania beheads General Varus in the Teutoburger Forest, and thus, unlike Christ Jesus, triumphs over Rome. In a grotesque distortion of the Eucharist, she offers her body to be devoured by cannibalistic monks. In the inmate cleaning the officer’s shoes, there is a ludicrous allusion to the foot washing. Germania appears as gracious and life-giving – albeit in monstrous ways, kissing the decapitated head of Varus, as well as giving birth to dogs. In the end, she ascends into heaven in a glass coffin. These grotesque representations of the messianic owe themselves to an understanding of history as trauma. As Judith Herman argues, the style of the grotesque (as an aesthetic distortion that disrupts habits of 20. Ibid., p. 17. 21. C. CARUTH, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (TwentiethAnniversary Edition), Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016, p. 121, cit. in B. HIRTH, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History by Cathy Caruth (Review), in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature – Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 45 (2018) 346. 22. BENJAMIN, On the Concept of History (n. 8), p. 390: “There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim”. 23. CARUTH, Unclaimed Experience (n. 18), p. 24. 24. Ibid., p. 15.

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perception) is the figuration of trauma25, and is thus intimately connected to how both Benjamin and Rammstein conceive of history. As Deutschland’s grotesque disfigurations of the messianic reveal, an understanding of history as traumatic also has a major impact on notions of salvation. Trauma places survivors in-between an oscillating crisis of death and life, and resists imaginations of full recovery. Resisting closure, trauma allows for imaginations of healing and liberation only within the chassis of trauma. What Benjamin alludes to in his theses – holding that the “Jetztzeit … as the model of messianic time summarizes the entire history of humanity into a monstrous abbreviation”26 – comes fully to the fore in Rammstein’s grotesque history of Germany: messianic time is a history of trauma, and the grotesque is the aesthetic style in which it makes its appearance. When we read these two sources of political theology together, they present us with a challenging argument. Salvation, they posit, remains implicated in a history of trauma and is exposed to the epistemological and ethical aporias of testimony in the aftermath of violence that defy to speak of it in self-evident ways. How viable is such a resituating of salvation within a history of trauma from a theological perspective? How does it do justice to the central Christian belief that a memoria passionis is always also a memoria resurrectionis? How can it account for the biblical witness that Christ crucified is Christ resurrected? Ultimately, the theological question at stake is this: Which locus does salvific God-talk take in a history of trauma? In which ways can we speak of salvation in a history that we must describe – with Benjamin, Rammstein, and Caruth – as traumatic?

II. MIKHAIL BAKHTIN: BEYOND A TRAUMATOGENIC HISTORY OF HEGEMONIC OPPRESSION I will explore the theological viability of Benjamin’s and Rammstein’s argument by looking more closely into the interplay they have revealed between a history of trauma, figurations of the grotesque, and notions of salvation. Such an investigation can tap into an extensive body of literature that analyses the grotesque as a stylistic figuration of the effects of power and the dialectics of resistance. For Mikhail Bakhtin, one of the 25. Cf. J.L. HERMAN, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, New York, Basic Books, 1992, p. 146. 26. BENJAMIN, On the Concept of History (n. 8), p. 396.

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key influences in such a study of the grotesque as an emancipative category, the grotesque is an innately critical tradition that ridicules authority by representing it in images drawn from the material bodily lower strata27. The original locus of the grotesque is the culture of carnival that undoes the hierarchies reinforced by official authorities, and replaces it with equality among individuals, if only temporarily. The origin of the grotesque is, thus, the popular, and its orientation is anti-authoritarian. A central theme that runs through Bakhtin’s conceptualisation of the grotesque is ambiguity that uncrowns the authorities of the status quo. Such ambiguity results from misalliances of signs that are the defining characteristic of the grotesque. Two points are crucial here for tracing the connection between the traumatic, the salvific, and the grotesque. First, for Bakhtin, this ambiguity can always only be found outside the official culture. The carnivalesque crowd that performs the ambiguity of the grotesque “is outside of and contrary to all existing forms of the coercive socio-economic and political organization”28 and their “laughter could never become an instrument to oppress and blind the people. It always remained a free weapon in their hands”29. Second, Bakhtin explores the overturning of authority through debasing humour, always with the suggestion of a utopian future in mind. For him, the ambiguity of the grotesque points to new birth that is implicit in death30. Here, the grotesque goes beyond a negative critique of the social order and also contains the possibilities for imaging a utopian alternative that emerges through the inversion of values. Hence, in Bakhtin’s conceptualisation, the grotesque appears as a political category with liberative/soteriological import; however, the intimate connection between trauma and the grotesque fades into the background31. Instead, he is interested in identifying, through the grotesque, beyond a traumatogenic history of hegemonic oppression, clearly delineable resources of resistance, practices of liberation, and loci of salvation. 27. Cf. A. EDWARDS, Historicizing the Popular Grotesque: Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World and Attic Old Comedy, in R.B. BRANHAM (ed.), Rethinking Theory: Bakhtin and the Classics, Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 2002, 27-56, p. 29. In my outline of the grotesque in Bakthin, I follow Edward’s reading. 28. Cit. ibid., p. 28. 29. Cit. ibid., p. 29. 30. M. BAKHTIN, Rabelais and His World (A Midland Book, 341), Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1984 (original in Russian, 1965), p. 21, states: “To degrade also means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore relates to acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth. Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth”. 31. Cf. also J. ADAMS, Magic Realism in Holocaust Literature: Troping the Traumatic Real, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 104.

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What kind of political theology emerges if we read the grotesque messianic motives in Deutschland through Bakhtin’s lens? With Bakhtin, the grotesque must be seen in opposition to the authority of state and church and, indeed, from the first scene on, which shows Germania beheading Varus, we can read Deutschland as a critique of heroic representations of a triumphant Christ that translate into a powerful church, colluding with empire/state to establish sovereignty through violence. When we follow Bakhtin, we assume that the grotesque is a critique of established power that inaugurates a utopian counter-vision. Targeting the triumphant messiah and their ecclesia militans, the goal of their monstrous representation in Deutschland would then be to unleash a utopian counter-imagination of a messiah who does not replicate state violence and, instead, institutes an alternative form of power. We are familiar with such interpretations of Christology from important strands of political theology. Following a dialectic trajectory that, not unlike Bakhtin’s dialogical approach32, assumes a definite difference between dominating hegemony and liberating critique, they juxtapose triumphant representations of the messiah to the biblical testimony of Jesus as a Christ, who failed according to the standards of the political and religious status quo, but whose failure to defeat the lethal Roman Empire with military means inaugurated a different, life-giving Basileia33. III. JOHANN BAPTIST METZ: SALVATION OUTSIDE A HISTORY OF TRAUMA Johann Baptist Metz’ political theology is a highly influential example of such a dialectical definition of Christianity that takes its shape by way of a critique of a “bourgeois religion”, which supports the status quo in complicity with established power. As Metz details in Memoria Passionis, his critique of such a theology emerges as a response to trauma: towards the end of the Second World War, at the age of 16, he was, like many others, drafted and survived, due to sheer luck, as the only person from a bomb attack that killed more than a hundred young people in his division. Of the harrowing 32. For Bakthin’s approach to dialectics as dialogical, and a discussion of the relation between the dialectical and the dialogical, cf. R.S. PATKE, Benjamin and Bakhtin: The Possibility of Conversation, in Journal of Narrative Theory 33 (2003) 12-32; M. DAFERMOS, Relating Dialogue and Dialectics: A Philosophical Perspective, in Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal 6 (2018), doi:10.5195/dpj.2018.189. 33. For a recent example from in the German-speaking context, cf. B. ELTROP et al. (eds.), Bibel und Kirche / Macht und Kirche: Biblische Impulse, in Bibel und Kirche 74 (2019).

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experience of seeing his fallen companions, he says: “I remember nothing but a silent scream. This is how I still see myself today, and after this experience, my childhood dreams had shattered”34. Resulting in a “breach in the mind’s experience of time, self, and the world”35, this episode induced the symptoms of a personal trauma that is, for Metz, inextricably woven into the “catastrophic history of the twentieth century, particularly the situation ‘after Auschwitz’”36. In its wake, he has found himself dispossessed of a language that can speak in theologically meaningful ways of a just and loving God37. Trauma’s “crisis of death” and its “corresponding crisis of life”38 also give rise to a crisis of faith, or, as Metz puts it, a “crisis of God”39. Trauma disrupts familiar forms of knowledge about God, and it disarrays established patterns of theological interpretation40. Metz’ political theology can be read as a belated response to this theological dispossession in the aftermath of overwhelming suffering that could find its first expression solely in a silent scream (reminiscent of Benjamin’s Angel of History staring at the wreckage of history), but then sought to witness theologically to this traumatising experience and the social textures of historical violence into which it is tied41. In the wake of Auschwitz, Metz posits that the Christian hope for salvation cannot be conceived in disregard of a history of suffering. He, like Walter Benjamin, sees intimate connections between trauma and salvation and, seeking to resituate Christian God-talk in relation to trauma, asks what kind of figurations soteriology can take in response to a history of suffering. As we will see below, Metz’ new political theology links a theological epistemics of unknowing to an ethics of testimony in ways that strongly resonates with trauma theory. Ultimately, however, by following a dialectic approach that locates salvation beyond trauma, Metz immunises salvation from its effects. 34. J.B. METZ, Memoria Passionis: Ein provozierendes Gedächtnis in pluralistischer Gesellschaft, Freiburg i.Br., Herder, 42011, p. 94 (all translations by the author). 35. CARUTH, Unclaimed Experience (n. 18), p. 4. 36. METZ, Memoria Passionis (n. 34), p. 94. 37. Ibid.: “My theological work is … shaped by a special sensitivity to the … question of theodicy, to the question of God in face of the world’s abysmal history of suffering – a world, that, after all, is meant to be ‘his’ [sic]”. 38. Cf. CARUTH, Unclaimed Experience (n. 18), p. 7. 39. METZ, Memoria Passionis (n. 34), p. 60 and passim. 40. Cf. ibid., p. 94. 41. Ibid. According to Metz, this theology is witness to his trauma that is itself marked by trauma’s structures of dispossession and belatedness: “Until this day, my prayers are drenched in this silent scream. … Since then, I have questions to God, …. for which I do find a language, but no answers. And, thus, I started to own up to them in the form of prayer. … In any case, a touch of irreconcilability lingers over this story faith. Prayers, to me, are first of all prayers … of longing for God”.

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In order to see how Metz separates salvation from a history of trauma, it is instructive to look more closely into his reception of Benjamin. Metz, whose theology has been described “at least in part as a comment on the writings of Benjamin”42, makes a memoria passionis (that is, for faith always also a memoria resurrectionis43) the point of construction for theology in the aftermath of trauma, and suggests to think of salvation as mediated through a remembrance of suffering. Practiced as testimony to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the revelation of the coming reign of God44, remembrance is, for Metz, the “foundational expression of Christian faith”45 that translates into practices of witnessing to suffering. Such dangerous memory has political effects46 and redemptive quality47, because it opens trajectories for redeeming the forgotten hopes of those who have disappeared from the history of victors. Salvation history, Metz argues, cannot be separated from a secular history of suffering. Rather, it is “secular history in which meaning has been granted to defeated hope and suffering”48. Metz’s resistance to “differentiate between an inner-worldly history of suffering and a transcendent history of glory”49 echoes Benjamin’s conception of messianic time as a history of trauma. Benjamin’s influence on Metz’s theology is particularly evident in the overlaps between their non-linear conception of history50 that is motivated by ethical concerns, and underpinned with soteriological imaginations: both speak to a rewriting of history as discontinuous, in which the contraction of time through a remembrance of suffering opens trajectories for redeeming the forgotten 42. H. HAKER, Walter Benjamin and Christian Critical Ethics – A Comment, in DICKINSON – SYMONS (eds.), Walter Benjamin (n. 16), 286-316, p. 299. 43. Cf. J.B. METZ, Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft: Studien zu einer praktischen Fundamentaltheologie, Mainz, Matthias Grünewald, 51992, p. 99 (all translations by the author). 44. Ibid., p. 78. 45. Ibid. 46. The memorative practices of faith have political effects because they “interrupt the magic circle of prevailing consciousness” (ibid., p. 78) and hold that “purpose is not only a category reserved for the victors” (ibid., p. 99). In this way, “the Christian memoria passionis can become the ferment for the new political life that we seek for the sake of our human future” (ibid., p. 103). 47. Ibid., p. 79: “The dangerous memory is ‘liberative, but also redemptive’”. For a discussion of the relation between the liberative and the redemptive, with a particular focus on his reception of Walter Benjamin’s work, cf. B. WUNDER, Konstruktion und Rezeption der Theologie Walter Benjamins: These I und das theologisch-politische Fragment (Epistemata: Reihe Philosophie, 223), Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1997, p. 42. 48. METZ, Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft (n. 43), p. 103. 49. Ibid., p. 100. 50. Ibid., p. 111. For Metz, the notion that there is a “future [emerging] through a remembrance of [past] suffering” captures the gist of his work.

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hope for a future harboured by those who have disappeared from the history of victors. Yet ultimately, Metz does not fully embrace Benjamin’s traumatic concept of history as the basis for his soteriology. When redemption is conceived as remembrance of suffering, it is exposed to the epistemological and ethical aporias of testimony in the aftermath of trauma that defy to speak of it in self-evident ways51. In Metz’s theology, however, such soteriological ambiguity ultimately has no place. Instead, he anchors the redemptive effects of memoria passionis to an eschatological proviso that functions politically as ideology critique, and serves theologically to hold on to God as the subject of history52: For him, “Christian memoria passionis is … not an ambiguous release … but has a utopian orientation”53, that is “constitutively different from all established cognitive systems”54. Only because it is “not deducible from specific historical, societal and psychological forces”, is “the eschatological truth of the memoria passionis a liberating truth”55. Diverting from his argument that 51. As outlined above, locating trauma theory at the intersection of psychoanalytical theories and literary studies, with a particular focus on deconstructive approaches, Cathy Caruth has highlighted the aporetic nature of speaking to traumatic experiences. Further, as already indicated, Benjamin, too, has found ways to speak to such soteriological ambiguity in the wake of trauma when he argues that the “elements of the ultimate condition … are deeply embedded in every present in the form of the most endangered, excoriated, and ridiculed creations and ideas”. W. BENJAMIN, The Life of Students, in ID., Early Writings: 1910-1917, ed. H. EILAND, Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011, 197-210, p. 197. For Benjamin, as witness to suffering, redemption continues to carry the traumatic marks of belatedness and dispossession; it appears as grotesquely (dis)figured by suffering. 52. “Meaning and goal of the total of history are bound … to the ‘eschatological proviso’. The Christian memoria remembers the God of the Passion of Jesus as the subject of the universal history of suffering and simultaneously refuses to politically determine and enthrone such a subject. Wherever a party, a race, a nation or a church misunderstanding itself as the Dostojewskian Grand Inquisitor attempts to determine and introduce such a subject, the Christian memoria has to object and demask this attempt as political idolatry … In this way, the Christian memoria passionis … is also protected from totalitarianism. But now – in contrast to the liberal version of idealism – in a utopically oriented, not in an ambiguous release”. METZ, Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft (n. 43), p. 103. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., p. 97 (my italics). Also, ibid., p. 154: The Christian utopia also fundamentally differs from historical utopias: “It is not utopias that disrupt the spell of timelessness, but rather the eschatological consciousness that refuses to be pacified by evolutionary thinking. In the end of the day, utopias would turn out to be a ‘trick of evolution’, if only they existed and no God (from whom the past is not safe, either)”. 55. Ibid., pp. 72f. We can draw parallels here to Bakhtin’s concept of the grotesque that similarly relies on a clear demarcation between totalitarian hegemony and an innately critical counter-tradition of the oppressed that unfolds within a utopian framework. However, as Wunder points out, it is at this point that Metz differs most significantly from Benjamin: “It allows Metz to hold that “the knowledge of faith … is ‘incommensurable with purely scientific and philosophical-idealist forms of knowledge’ … [For Metz,] the

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salvation history cannot be separated from a history of suffering, Metz thus locates the redemptive effects of a Christian memoria passionis in a realm beyond history, and hence, beyond trauma. Holding on to a utopian framework that warrants soteriological unambiguity through an ahistorical eschatology, Metz’s approach exempts salvation from the effects of trauma. We can, of course, argue that such an ahistorical eschatological approach is necessary to account for the specific knowledge form of faith in reconfiguring theology in the wake of trauma56. It does, however, not offer a problem-free theological solution. By introducing an eschatological proviso that warrants soteriological unambivalence, Metz devises a theology of history that allows him to posit that there is a salvific “Christian continuum”57 underpinning the history of trauma, which is – by way of negative dialectics – clearly discernible through the dangerous memory of the Christian tradition58. Relating memoria passionis and memoria resurrectionis to each other in such teleological ways that allow to posit a “soteriological guarantee”59, Metz comes close to resubscribing to central tenets of what he has identified, with Benjamin, as a historiography of the victors. Ultimately, in immunising salvation against the effects of trauma, Metz does not fully reckon with the “touch of irreconcilability”60 that lingers over his and any biography of faith in the aftermath of trauma. religious question thus poses a fundamental break with the system of thinking. … Metz’ … often-quoted dictum ‘Shortest definition of religion: interruption’ pick up on this argument. This definition marks a very important difference to Benjamin. … Benjamin always refers to theological topoi with the concepts ‘Ende’ and ‘Abbruch’, not with the concept of interruption”. WUNDER, Konstruktion und Rezeption der Theologie Walter Benjamins (n. 47), p. 42. 56. For Hille Haker, for example, these interpretative divergences in Metz’ reading of Benjamin are essential to maintaining the difference between theology and philosophy and to accounting for the specific knowledge form of faith in Metz’ reconfiguration of theology in the wake of trauma. She argues that Metz’ reception “avoids transforming Benjamin himself into a theologian but rather tries to take seriously the challenges Benjamin poses for any theology”. HAKER, Walter Benjamin (n. 42), p. 299. Haker thereby reiterates, rather than critically interrogates, Metz’ argument that there is a fundamental difference between theology and other forms of knowledge. 57. METZ, Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft (n. 43), p. 151. 58. Cf. M. SCHÜSSLER, Praktische Wende der Politischen Theologie? Von der schöpferischen Kraft des Evangeliums im Risiko der Ereignisse, in H. KLINGEN – P. ZEILLINGER – M. HÖLZL (eds.), Extra ecclesiam … zur Institution und Kritik von Kirche (Jahrbuch politische Theologie, 6/7), Münster, LIT, 2013, 286-307, p. 294. 59. M. GREY, A Theology for the Bearers of Dangerous Memory, in M.A. HAYES – D. TOMBS (eds.), Truth and Memory: The Church and Human Rights in El Salvador and Guatemala, Herfordshire, Gracewing, 2001, 161-174, p. 164. 60. METZ, Memoria Passionis (n. 34), p. 94.

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IV. ACHILLE MBEMBE: THE SOTERIOLOGICAL AMBIGUITY OF THE GROTESQUE IN A HISTORY OF TRAUMA With this, let us again turn to Rammstein’s Deutschland. Here, this touch of irreconcilability is, indeed, palpable. As many commentators agree, Deutschland does not tell a story of hope61. Instead, melancholia prevails. It does include scenes of sex and birth, but quite in contrast to Bakhtin’s positive framing, these speak more to an incestuous continuation of a violated past, rather than to hopeful new beginnings. In grotesque ways, Deutschland narrates history as a perpetuation rather than an interruption of a cycle of lethal violence that takes everybody into its grip and blurs the binary notions of sovereignty and resistance on which Bakhtin’s concept of the grotesque rests: After her violent triumph over the Roman general, we see Germania both as perpetrator and as victim of the brutality that we find unleashed in its wake. Her triumphant laugh is juxtaposed with tears. Most intriguingly, with Benjamin in mind, we can see her embodying both the Angel of History who, hopelessly overwhelmed, looks back on the wreckage of history, and as the coming messiah bringing time, momentarily, to a standstill. The aesthetics of Rammstein’s Deutschland, in short, does not fracture the grotesque along binary notions of perpetrator and victim, triumph and despair, suffering and redemption. It thus taps into a well-established critique of Bakthin’s optimistic view of popular counter-sovereignty. This critique does not only approach the grotesque in terms of subaltern subversion, but also sees in it a discursive thrust that validates the hegemonic order and, therefore, seeks for conceptualisations that can account for the “contrary energies”62 through which the grotesque has both conservative and subversive effects, albeit in asymmetrical ways. The Cameroonian political philosopher Achille Mbembe has put it succinctly: the “grotesque that Bakhtin claims to have located in “non-official” cultures is, in fact, intrinsic to all systems of domination and to the means by which those systems are confirmed or deconstructed”63. For Mbembe, who defines sovereignty necropolitically as the exercise of the power over life and death64, 61. Cf. LLOYD, Rammstein’s Deutschland Video Is Jaw-Dropping (n. 5). 62. P. ARMSTRONG, Bahian Carnival and Social Carnevalesque in Trans-Atlantic Context, in M.A. CRICHLOW (ed.), Carnival Art, Culture and Politics: Performing Life, London – New York, Routledge, 2012, 55-78, p. 57. 63. A. MBEMBE, Provisional Notes on the Postcolony, in Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 62 (1992) 3-37, p. 3. 64. A. MBEMBE, Necropolitics, in Public Culture 15 (2003) 11-40, p. 11. Here, Mbembe holds that necropolitics rests on the sovereignty to kill, to allow to live, or to expose to death certain persons, with the colony as the “location par excellence” of the exercise of such power.

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performances of the grotesque can both enable and contest killing as state craft, and have to be analysed as to how they produce, and distribute, destitution and death. Showing that the aesthetics of the grotesque is not split along a dualism of death-bearing power and its life-giving resistance, Mbembe builds on Michel Foucault’s reconfiguration of the grotesque as a style of performing sovereign power65, and follows Foucault’s argument that those who are subject to necropolitical sovereignty only become visible insofar as they brush against “power that wished to annihilate them or at least to obliterate them”66. Yet, stronger than Foucault, Mbembe also seeks to explicate the ways in which these “dead multitudes”67 eke out life at the verge of death within the chassis of necropolitical sovereignty in ways that “go beyond the binary categories used in standard interpretations of domination, such as … hegemony v. counter-hegemony”68. Instead, Mbembe explores how subjects are obliged to engage state-crafted grotesque aesthetics of power, whereby they become complicit with it, without really accepting the legitimacy of it. Rather than insisting “as Bakhtin does … on oppositions”69, Mbembe explores the “dynamics of domesticity and familiarity, which inscribe the dominant and the dominated with the same episteme”70. By turning, with Mbembe, to an extreme case of life eking out an existence within the chassis of violence, we can argue that the political performances of the grotesque find their origins in experiences of trauma. Drawing on a literary analysis of Amos Tutuola’s novels, which portray the historical trauma of the slave trade and its reverberating effects on individuals and society in West Africa, Mbembe describes such life as “forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life that confer upon them the status of living dead”71, and shows that such life “in death-worlds”72 takes grotesque forms. The 65. Cf. V. DAS, Techniques of Power and the Rise of the Grotesque: Prepared for the March 2-3, 2017 Seminar, Theorizing (Dis)Order: Governing in an Uncertain World (2017), at https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2017/03/15/techniques-of-power-andthe-rise-of-the-grotesque/. 66. Cit. ibid. 67. Cit. ibid. 68. MBEMBE, Provisional Notes (n. 63), p. 3. 69. Ibid., p. 10. 70. Ibid. This resonates with BENJAMIN, On the Concept of History (n. 8): “The same leap into the open sky of history is the dialectical one, as Marx conceptualized the revolution … Only it takes place in an arena in which the ruling classes are in control” (my italics). 71. A. MBEMBE, Life, Sovereignty, and Terror in the Fiction of Amos Tutuola, in Research in African Literatures 34/4 (2003) 1-26, p. 1. 72. Ibid.

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protagonists in Tutuola’s novels have “crippled bodies [marked by] lost parts, scattered fragments, misshapings and wounds”73. They “teem with a multiplicity of living species: bees, mosquitoes, snakes, centipedes, scorpions, and flies. [And from them] emanates a pestilent odour fed by neverending faeces, urine, and blood”74. In contrast to Bakhtin, Mbembe does not see these portrayals of grotesque bodies with fluid boundaries as innately imbued with a critique of death-bearing sovereignty that facilitates rebirth. Instead, he reads them as effects of trauma. These grotesque bodies emerge as a belated response to a disruptive experience of dispossession and the ensuing breach in the subject’s knowledge of world, self, and time: “One does not enter into the ghostly realm [of the “living dead”75] out of curiosity or because one wants to. Ultimately, a tragedy, indeed a loss, is at the origin of everything. The fracture that ensues derives from the self’s inability to … bear the loss”76. These grotesque subjects of the death-world are utterly dispossessed of resources that sustain life, but, following Tutuola’s protagonists, Mbembe traces how they – nevertheless, spitefully – engage in “work for life”77 through a “reparation”78 that follows the “logic of composition”79 and continuously rebuilds life out of “debris”80, on the site of the ruins, out of discarded (body) parts, in ways that cannot but replicate trauma’s simultaneous crises of death and life: “[D]espite an insatiable desire to exist, the living being is condemned to take on not its individual and singular shape, but the identity of a dead person”81. For the living dead, the “currency of life is death”82. As Mbembe asserts, such grotesque life, forged from the wreckage of a legacy of violence, continues to bear the traumatic marks of dispossession and belatedness. It does not congeal into history, but “unfolds in the manner of a spectacle where past and future are reversed. Everything takes place in an indefinite present”83, as Benjamin put it, as a monstrous abbreviation of history. Reparation in the aftermath of trauma does not allow for 73. Ibid., p. 10. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., p. 1. 76. Ibid., p. 7. 77. Ibid., p. 16. 78. D.T. GOLDBERG, ‘The Reason of Unreason’: Achille Mbembe and David Theo Goldberg in Conversation about ‘Critique of Black Reason’, in Theory, Culture & Society 35 (2018) 205-227, pp. 215-216, at https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276418800843. 79. Ibid., p. 226. 80. Ibid. 81. MBEMBE, Life, Sovereignty, and Terror (n. 71), pp. 16, 19. 82. Ibid., p. 16. 83. Ibid. Cf. also, ibid., p. 22, where, again with Benjaminian echoes: “As a result, there is no necessary continuity between the present, the past and the future”.

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closure, but “functions according to the principle of incompletion”84. For Mbembe, life in the wake of death is bound to the im/possibility of remembering. In forging life from the remnants of death, the “work of life consists … in distancing oneself each time from memory and tradition at the very moment one is depending upon it to negotiate the twists and turns of life”85. Memory work in the aftermath of trauma is thus profoundly fraught: Mbembe’s living dead “must escape from [themselves] each time”86 and, embracing the angel’s horror at the wreckage of history, must “allow [themselves] to be carried away by the flux of time and accidents”87. Yet, much like Benjamin, in the very end, Mbembe, too, does not foreclose trajectories of remembering that might unfold redemptive power by bringing time momentarily to a standstill, allowing for a precarious, dangerous, and grotesque communion with the ghosts of the past88. In much stronger terms than Bakhtin, Mbembe thus ties his analysis of the grotesque as a political and soteriological category to the psychoanalytical language of trauma. His approach elucidates Judith Herman’s argument that the “grotesque is the style of trauma”89, and helps us to put flesh on Caruth’s notion that “history is the history of a trauma”90. Mbembe’s argument that the aesthetics of the grotesque is not split along a dualism of death-bearing power and its life-giving resistance reiterates, in political-philosophical terminology, the core insight of trauma studies that the “reality of violence haunts us all, daily, in varying ways and to varying degrees. … [F]or the living, violence often continues to exist and expand, in the recesses of their minds and in their patterns of action and of hoping”91. Reading the grotesque as the aesthetic style through which necropolitical sovereignty is both produced and contested, Mbembe allows us to speak to the pervasiveness with which the effects of trauma shape and in/form history in ways that, as Tina Chanter suggests, highlight “the difficulty, if not impossibility, of isolating a zone in which trauma has not had an impact, as if trauma has become uncontainable, contagious”92. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid., p. 23. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid. 89. Cf. HERMAN, Trauma and Recovery (n. 25), p. 146. 90. CARUTH, Unclaimed Experience (n. 18), p. 15. 91. S. JONES, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox, 2009, p. 11. 92. T. CHANTER, The Artful Politics of Trauma: Rancière’s Critique of Lyotard, in E. BOYNTON – P. CAPRETTO (eds.), Trauma and Transcendence: Suffering and the Limits of Theory, New York, Fordham University Press, 2018, 121-141, p. 121.

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Yet, as Mary-Jane Rubenstein has pointed out, this entails by no means that “we … share the burden of trauma equally”93. Configuring “trauma as the universal condition of being-undone [does not] evacuate the specificity and unequal distribution of trauma”94, such that it would obliterate questions of guilt, complicity, or complacency. Rather, Mbembe’s conceptualisation of grotesque life in the wake of trauma is a reminder both of the “impossibility of innocence and, more abstractly, of the related impossibility of a purely singular event”95. It untethers practices of resistance and imaginations of redemption from utopian warrants, and instead inscribes them with the aporetic marks of trauma, speaking to the irresolvable ambivalence that marks the “work for life”96: Wrestling precarious survival from death is continuous labour “under the conditions of necropower [where] the lines between resistance and suicide, sacrifice and redemption, martyrdom and freedom, are blurred”97. It does not replace the necropolitical regime of sovereign power, but is continuously and precariously at work within it98. Intersecting political philosophy and trauma theory, Mbembe’s conceptualisation of the grotesque within the “intimate tyranny”99 of necropolitical sovereignty brings a soteriological ambiguity to the fore that allows us to unfold the theological viability of the argument that messianic time is a history of trauma. It does this by providing us with resources to revisit the biblical kerygma that Christ crucified is Christ resurrected within a traumatic history, which, in turn, opens trajectories for reconfiguring soteriology in the light of trauma. V. RE-READING THE GOSPEL OF JOHN: MESSIANIC TIME AS A HISTORY OF TRAUMA Situating the biblical memoria passionis et resurrectionis in a history of trauma, I suggest, opens avenues for proclaiming Christ crucified as Christ resurrected in ways that do not conceal the aporias of witness in the 93. M.-J. RUBENSTEIN, Afterword. Prospects for the Continental Philosophy of Religion, in BOYNTON – CAPRETTO (eds.), Trauma and Transcendence (n. 92), 283-294, p. 286. 94. Ibid. 95. Cf. A.E. BENJAMIN, Working with Walter Benjamin: Recovering a Political Philosophy, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2013, p. 30. 96. MBEMBE, Life, Sovereignty, and Terror (n. 71), p. 16. 97. MBEMBE, Necropolitics (n. 64), p. 40. 98. Again, there is an echo of Benjamin’s writing, who argues that “There has never been a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism” (Thesis VII). 99. Ibid., p. 25.

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wake of historical violence. Intersecting, like Achille Mbembe, political philosophy with trauma theory, New Testament scholar Benny Tat-Siong Liew puts forth a reading of John’s Gospel that allows us to find such a witness to messianic time as a history of trauma. Using the lens of necropolitics, he argues that “Jewish life of the first century C.E.”100, under Roman rule, is life utterly “vulnerable to death”101 and, against this background, reinterprets well-established readings of Jesus’ initiative in his own death as an act of resistance within the grotesque spectacle of necropolitical power. Like Mbembe, he argues that death-bound subjects, under the necropolitical conditions of empire, can but wager their life to contest the empire’s sovereignty over the production and distribution of death. Switching from “‘living within death’ to ‘dying within life’”, they make “a life out of re/signing death”102. By reading John’s Jesus, simultaneously, “as a victim of violence [and] a colluder or conspirator in his own betrayal and death”103, Liew finds in John’s memoria passionis and resurrectionis an irresolvable ambiguous “mixture of rebellion, murder, sacrifice and suicide”104, in which “death is the currency of life”105. In Liew’s reading, resurrection is forged from “improvisations”106 within necropolitical sovereignty that make “death productive”107 for the unending “work for life”108. He further shows how such “fluidity between death and life”109 not only marks the body of Jesus, but also the collective body of the community that is generated from his death, and the textual body of gospel testimony, and argues that the “work for life”110 to which John’s testimony of Jesus’ resurrection speaks cannot but replicate the simultaneous crises of death and life that mars the traumatic 100. T.B. LIEW, The Word of Bare Life: Workings of Death and Dream in the Fourth Gospel, in T. THATCHER – S.D. MOORE, Anatomies of Narrative Criticism: The Past, Present, and Futures of the Fourth Gospel as Literature (Society of Biblical Literature Resources for Biblical Study, 55), Atlanta, GA, Society of Biblical Literature, 2008, 167193, p. 171. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid., p. 183: “By ‘re/signing death’, I mean here the doubled sense of resigning to die and deconstructing the death zone in terms of Agamben’s connection between sovereignty and bare life”. 103. Ibid., p. 181. Liew quotes H.C. ORCHARD, Courting Betrayal: Jesus as Victim in the Gospel of John (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, 161), Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. 104. LIEW, The Word of Bare Life (n. 100), p. 191. 105. MBEMBE, Life, Sovereignty, and Terror (n. 71), p. 16. 106. LIEW, The Word of Bare Life (n. 100), p. 180. 107. Ibid. 108. MBEMBE, Life, Sovereignty, and Terror (n. 71), p. 16. 109. LIEW, The Word of Bare Life (n. 100), p. 185. 110. MBEMBE, Life, Sovereignty, and Terror (n. 71), p. 16.

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event of Jesus’ crucifixion. The gospel’s “intervention over death”111 does not overcome the necropolitical regime of colonial sovereignty, but is precariously at work within it. VI. TRAUMA AND SALVATION Such testimony to life that does not triumph over death, but persists amid the constant threat of death pushes against the boundaries of traditional narratives of salvation. Liew’s reading of cross and resurrection offers political-theological imaginations of life and death that untether a memoria passionis et resurrectionis from utopian warrants. Here, resurrection appears as the fraught work for life from the debris of death that Mbembe describes as reparation: a remaking of world through its unmaking, a ressourcement of life from the remnants of death that does not congeal into a stable salvation history, a re/membering of the wreckage of history that resists closure. Speaking of resurrection as work for life within the chassis of death, thus, does testify to salvation, not as eschatological fulfilment at the end of days, but as a limited event of rupture in the present – not as opposite to a history of suffering, but as right in the midst of it. It speaks to new beginnings in ways that have, to use Hannah Arendt’s phrase, lost all dainty innocence112. Here, salvation no longer serves as an eschatological proviso that safely underpins the history of suffering. Instead, it becomes an eschatological possibility that is (dis)figured by suffering. Conceived as remembrance, redemption continues to bear the marks of trauma that defy to speak of it in self-evident ways. This loss of self-evidence implies that political theology can no longer securely anchor salvific God-talk in a discourse of historical victimhood that has informed wide strands of political theology. Such an approach in which victims are conceived as actually marginal, but symbolically central to imaginations of redemption, has problematic consequences. It engages in a consumption of victimhood that harvests experiences of suffering to sponsor teleological narratives of salvation113, and it shifts the perspective of perpetrators out of view. By relying on historical victims as 111. LIEW, The Word of Bare Life (n. 100), p. 191. 112. Cit. in SCHÜSSLER, Praktische Wende der Politischen Theologie? (n. 58), pp. 296ff. 113. M. ALTHAUS-REID, Doing Theology from Disappeared Bodies: Theology, Sexuality, and the Excluded Bodies of the Discourses of Latin American Liberation Theology, in S. BRIGGS – M.M. FULKERSON (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology (Oxford Handbooks), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, 441-455, p. 444. Marcella Althaus-Reid has described this process that uses embodied experiences as evidence to support existing theological presuppositions, as “reification”.

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an indispensable resource of salvific God-talk, it runs the risk of re-inscribing the established distributions of sovereignty and death along given lines of victimhood and perpetration. The discourse of historical trauma, in contrast, locates oppression and resistance within the same episteme; it speaks to liberation and salvation within the chassis of traumatogenic violence. In the territory of trauma, where death and life bleed into each other, we abandon the familiar, teleological coordination of victimhood and redemption, and with it, we lose the self-evident move from death to life that it has sponsored. Instead, it yields a new soteriological vocabulary that resists the potentially violent identification of victimhood and redemption, and reshapes imaginations of salvation through the ambivalent, inconclusive, reparative work for life that engages in the im/possible re/membering of the wreckage of history within the chassis of death. Here, in the landscape of the post-traumatic, the question is not, as Shelly Rambo puts it provocatively, “who will save the world but, instead, who will witness its shattering?”114. With these soteriological reconfigurations, it becomes viable to theologically speak of messianic time as a history of trauma. Such a theology emerges on Holy Saturday115, it is witness to the women’s trembling silence at the empty tomb116, it sees the Lord through Mary’s tears117, it recognises Christ by his wounded resurrection body118, and in the crucified people of history. It does not flee from trauma’s oscillation between the crises of death and life, but negotiates the ethical obligation and epistemological difficulty to give testimony to the death-life experience of overwhelming suffering. Which resources do these theological reconfigurations provide for political theology in the wake of trauma? Above, I have indicated that political theology seems to find itself at an impasse between “archaic”communitarian and “anarchic”-critical approaches in thinking through the problem of originary violence. By way of conclusion, I would like to gesture towards the trajectories that trauma can offer for re-framing this problem. Crucially, the distinct knowledge forms of trauma have an antiprogrammatic thrust that challenge theologians to be cautious of all-too-quick, 114. RAMBO, Beyond Redemption? (n. 17), p. 115. 115. Cf. ibid., pp. 110-114. 116. T.B. LIEW, Haunting Silence: Trauma, Failed Orality, and Mark’s Messianic Secret, in ID. – E. RUNIONS (eds.), Psychoanalytic Mediations between Marxist and Postcolonial Readings of the Bible (Semeia Studies, 84), Atlanta, GA, SBL Press, 2016, 99-128. 117. S. RAMBO, Between Death and Life: Trauma, Divine Love and the Witness of Mary Magdalene, in Studies in Christian Ethics 18/2 (2005) 7-21. 118. S. RAMBO, Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma, Waco, TX, Baylor University Press, 2017.

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all-too-smooth teleological imaginations of salvation. In times that we perceive as overwhelmingly complex, it is tempting to quickly move from an analysis of problems to offerings of solution; we are easily lured into resorting to familiar stories of hope, healing, and reconciliation as counter-narratives to staggering destruction of cosmic dimension. Resisting a straight-forward line from death to life, in contrast, the knowledge forms of trauma challenge us to “stay with the trouble”119, and to acknowledge “what cannot be made right again”120. Rammstein’s Deutschland has presented us with such a “staying with the trouble” of a history of trauma. At first sight it seems to be devoid of all hope, no future seems to emerge from such overwhelming violence. Yet, as Benjamin has suggested, it is precisely such a “staying” that might allow humanity to engage in the messianic work of reparation. With such reparation, however, Benjamin does not have a total restoration of an original whole from the wreckage of history in mind. Rather, he suggests to discover, from the fragments, “in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event”121, precisely because they do not add up to the promise of a linear history, but remain “deeply embedded in every present in the form of the most endangered, excoriated, and ridiculed creations and ideas”122. Reparative work does not congeal into a linear salvation history – messianic time is, and remains, a history of trauma. Salvific God-talk in the aftermath of trauma, then, takes neither archaic nor anarchic forms. Instead, we can describe it as ana-archaic123. By speaking to new beginnings without innocence, it invalidates the critique of archaic approaches that anarchic deconstruction does not offer constructive resources beyond critique – it is, indeed, no coincidence that the anaarchaic introduces a difference to anarchy that is barely audible: new beginnings in the wake of trauma proceed in anarchic ways; shaped by the deconstructive knowledge forms of dispossession and belatedness, reparative work for life in the chassis of death allows to affirm the constructive, if inconclusive, effects of an epistemics of unknowing and the ethical aporias of testimony. At the same time, however, the ana-archaic also poses difficult 119. D. HARAWAY, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Experimental Futures. Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, Anthropological Voices, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2016, cit. in C. KELLER, Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture), New York, Columbia University Press, 2018, pp. 88ff. 120. RAMBO, Beyond Redemption? (n. 17), p. 113. 121. W. BENJAMIN, The Arcades Project, with the assistance of H. EILAND – K. MCLAUGHLIN, Cambridge, MA – London, Harvard University Press, 42003, p. 461. 122. BENJAMIN, The Life of Students (n. 51), p. 197. 123. I would like to give Chris Doude van Troostwijk credit for this term.

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questions for anarchic approaches insofar as they anchor salvific God-talk in a discourse of victimhood. Speaking to salvation within the chassis of traumatogenic violence, the ana-archaic discourse of trauma does away with any such last vestiges of soteriological unambivalence. Oscillating between death and life, community-formation in the wake of trauma takes place by way of continuous new beginnings that have lost all innocence. In the wake of violence, messianic time is an ana-archaic history of trauma, tied to an epistemics of unknowing and the precarious ethics of testimony. KU Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies Sint-Michielsstraat 6/3101 BE-3000 Leuven Belgium [email protected]

Judith GRUBER

“DON’T KILL ME!” THE FACE AS THE NEXUS BETWEEN THE POLITICAL AND THE THEOLOGICAL

INTRODUCTION In an interview first published in 1994, the following exchange took place: Roger Pol-Droit: Do you not fear that liberal democracies would be undermined by the resurgence of murderous “hopes”, tied to the return of nationalism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism? Emmanuel Levinas: I believe in the force of liberalism in Europe. But I also have too many memories to be certain in my answer1.

Given the rise of nationalist, xenophobic, populist, and antisemitic movements in Europe and the United States, and given such movements’ organizational and messaging efforts around what they consider to be the scourge of unwelcome immigration by (for them) unwanted populations, one question arises urgently: whose humanity is deserving of protection or, in Levinasian terms, who has a face? Be it in the desperate attempts to cross the Mediterranean or the ongoing struggle to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, this question insists2. Aside from the ongoing fact of mass migration, it insists also in the U.S. in the names of those African American young people who acquire a face only in death; Jazmine Barnes and Laquan McDonald being only more recent examples of young African Americans gunned down either as a result of gang-related violence or police shootings. Most recently, George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis by a police officer who put him in a chokehold for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, causing him to go into cardiac arrest. At the bottom of all these cases is the refusal to recognize the face of the other precisely as a face, because its unique irreplaceability – its very infinity – has been sacrificed on the altar of racist, populist, nationalist or xenophobic objectification, noting that such distinctions are often irreversibly intertwined. This essay will argue that the common denominator to all of them is racism3. 1. B. BERGO, The Awakening of the I, in J. ROBBINS (ed.), Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2001, 182-187, p. 186. 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4302270/. 3. https://scholar.harvard.edu/jlhochschild/publications/policies-racial-classificationand-politics-racial-inequality.

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Political theology must respond to a current situation in which ethically responsible American citizens face potential prison time of up to 20 years for those who “leave water and food in the desert, or who take part in search and rescue efforts – or even for a passer-by, who might stop to help struggling border crossers who have reached a highway”4. Although a high-profile case involving an Arizona man who provided such help resulted in his acquittal on the most serious charges, the threat of prosecution remains5. Pope Francis calls us to respond when he acknowledges in relation to immigrants: “It is the fear that makes us crazy”6. This essay will invoke Levinasian ethics to argue that the face leads “beyond” the objectifying impulse of perception, because its most fundamental phenomenality is the plea not to be killed. The essay will argue further that the introduction of multiple faces, while necessitating the institutionalization of law and justice, remains predicated on the priority of the ethical obligation to encounter the face of the other without the objectifying impulse that denies the face its very humanity. Finally, it will comment upon “prophetic voices” as the inspiration for a political theology that tempers the ontologized order of politics and institutionalized justice by seeking to pursue justice, to love goodness, and to walk humbly with God. I. THE ONGOING FACT

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The fact of mass migration from “poor, and often desperate” citizens of countries from the global South – sub-Saharan Africa and Central America spring especially to mind – is expected to continue, no matter how many barriers are erected to keep them out7. Desperation-driven migration is due to many factors: violent conflict and war, persecution, gang-related criminality, environmental degradation due to climate change, and its accompanying destruction of agricultural livelihoods. Even if migrants manage to arrive at their hoped-for destination after an arduous journey that often risks life and limb, they may be met with a variety of responses ranging from grudging, if temporary, welcome to active 4. https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/03/us/trial-scott-warren-no-more-deaths-volunteermigrants-arizona-invs/index.html. 5. https://www.npr.prg/2019/11/21/781658800/jury-acquits-aid-worker-accused-ofhelping-border-crossing-migrants-in-arizona. 6. https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/01/23/pope-francis-trumps-borderwall-fear-that-makes-us-crazy/?utm_term=.56885e7bb4d7. 7. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/20/business/economy/immigrationeconomic-impact-html?auth=login-email.

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incarceration in squalid holding camps along the border. Swift or eventual deportation also awaits all but the lucky few in many cases. Migrants who are able to remain also face obstacles in the form of negative attitudes among those factions of the indigenous population who do not welcome them: an exaggeration of their numbers, the claim that they take jobs away from deserving native-born citizens, the belief that migrants receive government benefits denied to the more-deserving, their suspected inability to integrate, the sheer otherness of their appearance, their language, and their religion8. To be sure, similar attitudes can, and do, occur in relation to fellow citizens of different ethnicities. The highlighting of overt racism, intertwined with these other considerations, whether or not the people in question are native-born, is one of the most pernicious consequences of current political discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. While such negative attitudes often seem to prevail, “there is a body of scholarship suggesting that direct contact between people of different ethnicities, nationalities, and cultures can breed trust”9. As will become apparent, from a Levinasian perspective, the possibility of contact and interaction with such individuals invites the recognition that “he or she who emigrates is fully human”10. Prior to articulating the parameters of such possibility, however, it is necessary to explore in greater detail the relationship between the perception of otherness with the kind of objectification that denies the face of the other his or her very humanity and, as a result, denies the justice that is due to the individual, migrant or native-born. II. THE RESURGENCE OF NATIONALISM This essay was originally written after a weekend in the United States that witnessed two mass shootings that left 31 people dead and dozens more injured. One of the gunmen left a manifesto on the notorious 8chan web site that “spoke of a ‘Hispanic invasion of Texas’. It detailed a plan 8. These observations are supported by the following study by A. ALESINA – A. MIANO – S. STANTCHEVA cited in the New York Times article quoted earlier: https://scholar.harvard. edu/stantcheva/…/immigration-and-support-redistribution. 9. The New York Times article quoted earlier cites the following study for this claim: M.A. CRAIG – J.M. RUCKER – J.A. RICHESON, The Pitfalls and Promise of Increasing Racial Diversity: Threat, Contact, and Race Relations in the 21st Century, in Current Directions in Psychological Science 27 (2018) 188-193. 10. E. LEVINAS, Philosophy, Justice, and Love, in Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, New York, Columbia University Press, 1998, 88-104, p. 101. When such emigration occurred is entirely irrelevant since in the United States at least, most citizens are the descendants of immigrants.

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to separate America into territories by race. It warned that white people were being replaced by foreigners”11. The international scope of this violence extended to Christchurch, New Zealand, in a mosque shooting on 15 March 2019. Further, its capacity to shatter the peace of an autumn Shabbat morning is attested to in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in my own neighbourhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania12. As the New York Times article quoted above asserts, “aggrieved white men over the last several months have turned to mass murder in the service of hatred against immigrants, Jews, and others, they perceive as threats to the white race”. Inevitably, in the aftermath, fingers are pointed, blame is assigned, based, all too often, on political considerations to the detriment of an honest assessment of the “global spread of white supremacist ideology in the age of social media and at a time when immigration in America and elsewhere has become a divisive political topic”13. Of course, “white supremacist ideology” does not limit its target to immigrants, since it has a terribly violent history in the United States of being directed at African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians as well14. William Faulkner’s famous quote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past”15, from his play, Requiem for a Nun, reverberates not only in relation to an overt display of white supremacist violence as occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August of 201716, but every time yet another African American person is shot dead by the police, gang violence occurs, or, in the case of Trayvon Martin, a lone neighbourhood watch captain acts17. In both cases, the scourge of white nationalism and supremacism is infused with racist intent that refuses to recognize the people it targets as fully human. At bottom, it is the refusal to recognize the face of the other as a face. Instead, and all too often, racist intent, however overt or subtle, seeks to criminalize the face of the other, as will be argued below. III. THE OBJECTIFICATION AND RACIST CRIMINALIZATION OF THE FACE The racist criminalization of the face functions in the first instance as the vehicle of an objectification that obliterates the face – as face – from 11. html. 12. 13. html. 14. 15. 16. 17.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/patrick-crucius-el-paso-shooter-manifesto. https://www.cjr.org/opinion/tree-of-life-anti-semitism-coverage.php. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/patrick-crusius-el-paso-shooter-manifesto. https://themillions.com/2008/03/obama-and-faulkner-quote.html. Ibid. Cf. https://www/splcenter.org/unite-the-right. https://www/cnn/com/2013/06.05.us.trayvon-martin-shooting…/index.html.

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view. It is precisely the objectification of the face into an ontologized “visibility” that reduces it to race, age, gender, etc., thus ensuring that the face as such is never seen. Its objectified attributes transmogrify what was the face into a plasticity whose appearance blinds the viewer to the face as face, thus eliminating it from view and from the very possibility of ethical encounter. It is probably more accurate to assert that racist criminalization and objectification of the face generally go hand in hand, since the antecedence of one in relation to the other would have to be analysed on an ad hoc basis. Either way, the refusal to recognize the face of the other as a face leads to either the possibility or reality of the denial of justice to the individual who has been objectified and criminalized. This dual refusal opens the door to a violence that maims and kills with impunity. To alleviate any suspicion that the case is being overstated, I offer the following as an illustration of this dual denial. In this instance, the face as face was not merely denied, but was violently twisted into its plasticized opposite, inviting a use of lethal force that abandoned any sense of ethical obligation so completely that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was mortally wounded by a Cleveland, Ohio, police officer whose performance in firearms qualification training in a prior position was deemed so questionable that the Independence, Ohio, Police Department recommended that he resign. This was an ethical obligation so egregiously overlooked that Tamir only received preliminary medical treatment 3 minutes and 49 seconds after he was shot18. Neither of the two officers on the scene, one of whom did the shooting, offered any medical aid whatsoever, “even though Cleveland police officers receive the American Red Cross Heartsaver course, which teaches them how to respond to ‘emergency injuries’” according to New York Magazine19. In an astonishing denial of justice, the City of Cleveland actually blamed Tamir for his own death, with the mayor admitting, after the fact, that proclaiming the City innocent of Tamir’s death was “very insensitive”20. The refusal to acknowledge the face of Tamir Rice, precisely as a face is also at the heart of the mass shootings mentioned earlier in this essay. The linchpin between the two is racism. In a 1988 interview, Emmanuel Hirsch offered Levinas the following observation: “Racism could be defined as a refusal or an incapacity to assume the dimension of conscience – thus the love, from which this identification proceeds”. Levinas responded: 18. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/…Cleveland-cop-shot-12-year-old-Tamir-Rice-fired.html. 19. nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/11/cops-who-shot-tamir-rice-didn’t-give-first-aid.html. 20. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/cleveland-mayor-apologizes-for-languageused-to-blame-tamir-rice-for-his-death.html.

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In the expression of racism, one experiences human identity uniquely on the basis of its persistence in being, while turning qualitative differences and attributes into a value, as in the appreciation of things that one would possess or reject. But that is not to encounter the face of the other, not to respond to the uniqueness of the other, not to recognize the possibility of sacrifice which in the event of being is the very overwhelming of the human21.

In other words, racism acknowledges the being of the other while, at the same time, rejecting the other’s humanity on the basis of “qualitative differences and attributes”, such as skin colour, or language, or religion – a now-objectified “value” that is then rejected. As such, the face of the other is not seen as a face. Levinas explains this further in an interview in the collection of radio interviews entitled Ethics and Infinity: “[The face] is what cannot become a content, which your thought would embrace; it is uncontainable, it leads you beyond”22. For the racist, no such “beyond” exists when it comes to the gunning down of innocent shoppers or synagogue, church, or mosque worshippers. Ontologized objectification puts an immediate halt to any visibility of the face as face, leaving at best indifference and, at worst, murderous violence in its wake. A further violence visited upon the ontologized objectification and racist criminalization that leaves the face of the victim “desperately and ferociously alone”, in Primo Levi’s memorable phrase, is its utter helplessness upon being singled out on the basis of the very plasticity that effectively hides it from view23! Although it is undeniable that the victims of racist-suffused mass shootings are often gunned down at random, it is also the case that such violence can involve gunmen who choose their victims on the basis of their perceived appearance that is labelled “other” to the racist, xenophobic, and nationalist mind. In all such cases of mass murder, the most fundamental phenomenality of the face, its plea not to be killed, has been thoroughly and fatally rejected. IV. ENTER POLITICS: THE INTRODUCTION OF MULTIPLE FACES If the face leads “beyond” the objectifying impulse of, in this case, fundamentally racist perception, is the need for at least some degree of objectification not necessitated when we are confronted by more than 21. J. ROBBINS, The Vocation of the Other, in EAD. (ed.), Is It Righteous to Be? (n. 1), 105-113, pp. 110-111. 22. E. LEVINAS, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, Pittsburgh, PA, Duquesne University Press, 1985, pp. 86-87. 23. P. LEVI, Survival in Auschwitz (If This Is a Man), New York, Macmillan, 1960, p. 88.

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one face? How, in other words, are we to adjudicate among the potentially competing claims made by disparate faces? Levinas characterizes this issue as “the arrival of the third party” and, with such arrival, the necessity for the institutionalization of the rule of law with its attendant enforcement becomes apparent. The inevitability of politicization follows hard upon such developments. In his second major work, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas formulates the question in this way: The third party introduces a contradiction in the saying whose signification before the other until then went in one direction. It is of itself the limit of responsibility and the birth of the question: What do I have to do with justice? A question of consciousness. Justice is necessary, that is, comparison, coexistence, contemporaneousness, assembling, order, thematization, the visibility of faces, and thus intentionality and the intellect, and in intentionality and the intellect, the intelligibility of a system, and thence also a copresence on an equal footing as before a court of justice24.

Here, we see that the working of justice requires “comparison, coexistence, contemporaneousness”, and so on, but it also requires “the visibility of faces”, as faces, “on an equal footing as before a court of justice”, which racism – and racist inspired mass murder – explicitly rejects. Is such visibility not shielded by “an equal footing as before a court of justice”? All too often, in the toxic atmosphere of a civil “order” permeated by nationalism, populism and xenophobia, with the teeming undercurrent of racism as their fuel, the answer is unequivocally negative. Populist politics takes its cues from such forces and is likely to respond to them on the basis of its own well-considered and calculated self-interest; “the visibility of faces”, as faces, be damned. As a result, we witness such grotesque events as children being separated from their parents at the United States-Mexico border, and housed in cages with no access to proper personal hygiene, beds, or even hot food. We see multiple and repeated drownings in the Mediterranean Sea as smugglers seek to capitalize on the desperation of others fleeing violence and poverty. As politicians stand by, frozen in their self-interested inertia, the callousness of their political self-interest is only outdone by the impunity with which they allow it to continue. Does “the arrival of the third party” so relativize their ethical obligations so as to render them essentially null and void, as political survival trumps all other considerations? Or does the glimmer, however faint, of 24. E. LEVINAS, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, Pittsburgh, PA, Duquesne University Press, 1998, p. 157, emphasis added.

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a theologically-friendly, if not inspired, alternative, not assert itself when Levinas reminds us that “[t]he equality of all is borne by my inequality, the surplus of my duties over my rights”25. This assertion is key for Levinas, because it requires that the rule of law itself be predicated upon the incommensurable priority of the ethical obligation to view the face of the other as a face; without the objectifying impulse in the first instance that denies the face of colour, to take but one example, its very humanity. Any member of a politically-inflected governing body that eschews his or her obligation in that regard must be held accountable for having done so. That they all too often are not is itself an indictment, for ethically responsible people, of the racist nationalism and xenophobia that continues to insist. However, for Levinas, the inevitability of politicization does not, in and of itself, destroy the possibility of ethical responsibility for the other from breaking through the necessity of ontologized political and judicial order: But would ethics disappear in the justice that [the state] requires and in the politics that justice requires? A permanent danger which threatens goodness and the originary compassion of responsibility for the other man. A danger of being extinguished in the system of universal laws which these laws require and support. But also the eventual possibility for “goodness” to be understood in the guise of prophetic voices reverberating imperiously beneath the profundity of established laws26.

Such voices speak outside the ontologized order of politics and institutionalized justice, finding their source and inspiration in the invitation to “hesed and to rahamin”: … mercy-for-the-other-man, going beyond the rigorous limit which designates justice, responds to these invitations, whether by resources – or by the poverty – of my uniqueness as an I, in which God can come to mind. Creative, it pierces the hard crust of “the being persevering in its being” which risks burying everything forever27.

This is where the political and the theological meet. The nexus of this meeting is the face of the other whose plea, not to be killed, constitutes this invitation to take responsibility. This invitation “does not allow me to constitute myself into an I think, substantial like a stone, or, like a heart of stone, existing in and for oneself. It ends up in substitution for another, in the condition – or the unconditionality – of being a hostage”28. 25. 26. 27. 28. burgh,

Ibid., p. 159. Being-for-the-Other, in ROBBINS (ed.), Is It Righteous to Be? (n. 1), 114-120, p. 116. Ibid. E. LEVINAS, God and Philosophy, in ID., Collected Philosophical Papers, PittsPA, Duquesne University Press, 1987, 153-173, p. 167.

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V. ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY: THE NEXUS THEOLOGY

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POLITICS AND

In the “real time” of the current political climate, whose twists and turns never violate a strictly ontologized “order of being”, a glimmer of the theologically friendly alternative and the prophetic voices introduced above occurred recently in the United States in two incidents worthy of mention. The first was a document published by the leaders of the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, in response to an American president’s racist excoriation of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, and the African American Congressman who had served it since 1996. In response to the President’s insults against the Congressman and the city of Baltimore, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, the Dean of the National Cathedral, and the Canon Theologian of the same, lifted up their prophetic voices by asserting the following: [w]e have come to accept a level of insult and abuse in political discourse that violates each person’s sacred identity as a child of God … When does silence become complicity? What will it take for us all to say, with one voice, that we have had enough? The question is less about the President’s sense of decency, but of ours29.

Two days later, another prophetic voice, that of Archbishop Wilton Gregory, the first African American Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, voiced the same sentiment in an interview: We must all take responsibility to reject language that ridicules, condemns, or vilifies another person because of their race, religion, gender, age, culture or ethnic background. Such discourse has no place on the lips of those who confess Christ or who claim to be civilized members of society … Comments which dismiss, demean or demonize any of God’s children are destructive of the common good and a denial of our national pledge of “liberty and justice for all”30.

Surely, he made this statement mindful of the pastoral letter entitled “Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love – A Pastoral Letter against Racism” developed and released in November 2018 by the Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops31. This pastoral letter uses as its inspirational template the prophetic voice of Micah: 29. https://cathedral.org/have-we-no-decency-a-response-to-president-trump.html. 30. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/gregory-says-trump-tweets-deepeneddivisions-and-diminished-our-national-life-88391. 31. www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and…/open-wide.our-hearts.pdf.

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You have been told, O Mortal, what is good, And what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, And to walk humbly with your God (Mic 6,8).

The letter correctly diagnoses the fundamental problem: “Racism is a moral problem that requires a moral remedy – a transformation of the human heart – that impels us to act. The power of this type of transformation will be a strong catalyst in eliminating those injustices that impinge on human dignity”32. How does one pursue justice, love goodness, and walk humbly with God? First and foremost, by recognizing the face of the other as a face, by breaking through the ontologized plasticity that both hides the face from view and, in so doing, denies it the justice that is its due. Ethical responsibility begins with this breakthrough. The American bishops are under no illusions that the transformation for which they call is easy or quick. They assert that in the United States, “[t]he cumulative effects of personal sins of racism have led to social structures of injustice and violence that makes us all accomplices in racism”33. Such structures have become so entrenched in American society that they have become all too easy to overlook at times – as when the claim was made, upon the election of the first African American president, that the United States had entered a post-racial era34. Those who made that claim severely underestimated the hard and sustained work, over generations, that is required for America’s “original sin” to be overcome, if such is even possible35. Although other countries certainly contend with their own problems with racism, the United States incorporated the economic benefit of slave labour into its very existence beginning with some of its earliest settlements. The reverberations, social, cultural, and political, extend to this very moment. In recognizing the necessity of such sustained effort, given these ongoing reverberations, the American Bishops call for the “moral remedy” of the kind of ethical encounter that recognizes the face of the other, precisely, as a face: To work at ending racism, we need to engage the world and encounter others – to see, maybe for the first time, those who are on the peripheries of our limited view … We must invite into dialogue those we ordinarily would not seek out. We must work to form relationships with those we might regularly 32. Ibid., p. 20. 33. USCCB, Open Wide Our Hearts (n. 31), p. 5. 34. Cf. https://www/naacpldf.org/wp…/Post-Racial-America-Not-Yet_Political_ Participation.pdf. 35. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-12…/americas-originalsin.

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try to avoid. This demands that we go beyond ourselves, opening our minds and hearts to value and respect the experiences of those who have been harmed by the evil of racism36.

Here is the theological remedy to this festering – and politicized – problem that has re-emerged not only in America, but in all countries affected by mass migration: to finally recognize and engage the face of the other as a face, to break it out of its plasticized carapace. This is the “direct contact between people of different ethnicities, nationalities, and cultures” quoted in the introductory pages of this essay. This is the antidote to Pope Francis’ invocation of “the fear that makes us crazy”. This, for Levinas, is the “‘goodness’ to be understood in the guise of prophetic voices reverberating imperiously beneath the profundity of established laws”. The question remains: How is the message of these “prophetic voices” to be incorporated into a system of institutionalized justice influenced, all too often, by a political order whose self-interest seeks to deny the face of the other the justice that is its due? The “moral remedy” the Bishops called for begins with each of us. For Levinas, “To soften this justice, to listen to this personal appeal, is each person’s role. It is in that sense that one has to speak of a return to charity and mercy. Charity is a Christian term, but it is also a general biblical term: the word hesed signifies precisely charity or mercy”37. Or, put more bluntly, “politics must be held in check by ethics: the other does concern me”38. Tempered by charity and mercy, my concern for the other is focused, first and foremost, on the face as the plea not to be killed. The essence of the face is, on the one hand, its mortality, while its infinity, on the other, is that which speaks, however silently and obliquely, “of God who comes to mind”. The face, recognized as both mortal and infinite, calls forth the simultaneous recognition that the working of justice “always marks a subordination of the I to the other”, because the face’s plea not to be killed articulates both its extreme vulnerability and its commandment to its interlocutor to take charge39. For Levinas, this “moral remedy” pursues justice, loves goodness, and walks humbly with God, because “[t]he religious discourse that precedes all 36. USCCB, Open Wide Our Hearts (n. 31), p. 23. 37. E. LEVINAS, Interview with Francois Poirie, in ROBBINS (ed.), Is It Righteous to Be? (n. 1), 23-83, p. 68. 38. E. LEVINAS, Being-Toward-Death, in ROBBINS (ed.), Is It Righteous to Be? (n. 1), 130-139, p. 132. 39. E. LEVINAS, The Proximity of the Other, in ROBBINS (ed.), Is It Righteous to Be? (n. 1), 211-218, p. 214; Cf. also p. 215: “The face is wholly weakness and wholly authority”.

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religious discourse is not dialogue. It is the ‘here I am’ said to a neighbour to whom I am given over, by which I announce peace, that is, my responsibility for the other”40. The infinity of the face breaks through the ontologized plasticity that held it hostage. This “moral remedy”, as the inspiration for a political theology of the face, is, finally, a clear first step on the path to the recognition that “the visibility of faces”, as faces, applies to all faces, everywhere. Duquesne University 600 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh, PA, 15282 USA [email protected] [email protected]

40. LEVINAS, God and Philosophy (n. 28), p. 170.

Marie BAIRD

GEO-AESTHETICS AND THE POETICS OF RELATIONS RETHINKING MIGRATION WITH ÉDOUARD GLISSANT

INTRODUCTION Even if it is true that migratory processes have been part of human history since its origins, today, due to the interaction of multiple economic, social, and cultural transformations of the globalised era, more people are migrating than ever before – twice as many now as 25 years ago. The turbulence of migration surrounds and pervades almost all aspects of contemporary society and affects all spheres of human life. “Migration and the resulting ethnic and racial diversity are amongst the most emotive subjects in contemporary societies”1. Its endless flux involves huge movements of people, of information, of resources, of traditions, and cultures. We are dealing with a new era of mobility, which some scholars have defined as the “age of migration”. This historical development has enormous implications on politics and culture, and is deeply transforming the worldwide geography of Christianity as well. Christianity is ceasing to be a Euro-American religion, becoming thoroughly global. On the one end, Christianity is migrating away from Europe, southward, to Africa and Latin America, and eastward, toward Asia. “Today”, as Philip Jenkins in his book, The Next Christendom, remarks, “the largest Christian communities on the planet are to be found in those regions”. Christian churches are not just surviving, but expanding in the global South and this development will increase over the coming decades. On the other hand, another movement, northward, to Europe, can be observed. Many Christian and non-Christian people are actually involved in human mobility, and are profoundly changing the symbolic order, not only of the Western churches, but also of Western societies as a whole. In Amsterdam, London, Vienna, or Berlin, there are Christian migrant communities, whose members have a migrant background that transforms and differentiates the northern Western landscapes and opens them to new religious and ecclesiological experiences. Migrants and refugees carry with them the weight of their own biographies, traumas, dreams, and conflicts, 1. S. CASTLES – M.J. MILLER, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, London, Guilford, 2003, p. 1.

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but also the imagery of their narratives, their languages, their religious convictions, and approaches to the world. Within this transforming and creative dynamic, it is possible to speak about a recovery of a migratory identity of Christianity, which strongly recalls its biblical origins. Whereas about 50 years ago, Gustavo Gutiérrez2 spoke about the fundamental importance of “the irruption of the poor in history”, “nonpersons”, for Christian theology, today we are witnessing that the “irruption of migrants” has now assumed planetary dimensions, and has become an ineludible sign of the times. This means that migration corresponds not only to an economic, socio-political, and cultural phenomenon, but also to a spiritual dimension of the Heilsgeschichte (salvation history) with its messianic hopes and promises3. Out of the many biblical figures, which have a deep relationship with the experience of migration, I want to mention only some crucial events that have a clear theological-political meaning: Noah’s fleeing the water; God’s covenant with Abraham, in which God promised numerous descendants and a land of their own – the Promised Land, after a very specific command: “The LORD had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you’” (Gen 12,1-20); and the Exodus event, where the people of Israel, who were living as slaves in Egypt, were liberated and received the Torah. These crucial events in the salvation history testify that migration bears the potential of liberation and humanisation of the collectivities and singularities, and thereby creates situations in which utopias and visions of the future can be born. Consequently, migration represents a duty incumbent on the entire church at present, since it is undoubtedly a sign of the times that requires a courageous theoretical and practical engagement. In this perspective, many theologians empathise that migration represents inescapable loci theologici today; that means, generative experience for faith and theology. In this contribution I will focus neither on the analysis of the complexity of this huge contemporary phenomenon, nor on the exegesis of the many biblical migratory topoi. I rather aim to explore migration, first under the perspective of geo-aesthetics, which needs itself a preliminary explanation. Second, I will briefly illustrate the philosophical perspective of the French-Caribbean author Édouard Glissant, who has developed 2. On the irruption of the poor as a sign of the times, see G. GUTIÉRREZ, Teología de la liberación: Perspectivas, Salamanca, Sígueme, 1990, pp. 21-22. 3. Cf. G. CAMPESE, The Irruption of the Migrants in the 21st Century: A Challenge for Contemporary Theology, in Journal of Catholic Social Thought 14 (2017) 9-27.

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an aesthetics of the earth and of the sea yet an aesthetics of disruption and intrusion. In my opinion he could represent an interesting interlocutor to explore the experience of migration today. Finally, I would like to show some theological and ecclesiological perspectives – or rather pose questions – to face the present situation of our migratory church. I. GEO-AESTHETICS AND MIGRATION Geo-aesthetics does not exactly correspond to a specific philosophical discipline within the large and manifold branch, which can be defined as the theory of beauty, sublimity, imagination, and of taste, or more broadly, as the philosophy of art. If we consider the first terminus of this notion, it is possible to sustain that geography deals with the delineation of geographical and cultural landscapes, and social relations with political dynamics and conflicts, with visual culture and spatial imagination. Not least, geography offers a fundamental orientation in the world, giving us critical instruments to find a way in unknown topographies as well. With the denomination “aesthetics”, I primarily refer to the manifold and dynamic field of sensory perceptions, as well as of a pre-reflexive comprehension of reality, namely, to the elementary subjective encounter with the world. This deals with the dimension of aisthesis as the ability to perceive, as discernment, as the original form of relations between subjects, as well as between subjects and their life-worlds. Within aesthetic knowledge, thinking and feeling, as well as theory and praxis, are inseparable, so that mind and body form a plexus. Knowledge becomes experience, artistic creation, and social construction, in which intuition plays an essential role. Moreover, the Greek noun aisthesis recurs just once in the New Testament, and can be translated with “discernment” or “insight” in ethical matters. The apostle Paul writes in his Letter to the Philippians: “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment” (Phil 1,9): God’s people need judgment or insight, so they can “approve things that are excellent” and “be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ” (Phil 1,10)4. As a result, in the context of the New Testament, aisthesis deals with moral discernment and justice in all concrete circumstances and situations, which must be hic et nunc 4. Ceslas Spicq considers these verses as “les plus denses et les plus précis du Nouveau Testament sur l’influence de l’agapè au point de vue intellectuel et moral, en ce monde ou en l’autre” (C. SPICQ, Agapè dans le Nouveau Testament, Paris, Gabalda, 1966, p. 234).

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tactful and sensitive in an eschatological perspective. Aisthesis corresponds here to a perceptive ability as well as to a spiritual touch, which should gradually progress towards a discernment en agape within the economy of salvation. In this Pauline line, geo-aesthetics seeks to explore the world of perceptions, experiences, and truths of migrant identities in a sort of impossible cartography of symbolic and emotional landscapes. As a consequence, a geo-aesthetical approach to migration is deeply rooted in sensation and sensibility. It should be emphasised that a geo-aesthetical approach, which tries to deepen the possibility to perceive things that are happening around, has an essential socio-political intention: it aims to investigate the immanent geographies of social resistance and struggle for recognition, which deal here, above all, with the anxieties, humiliations, and the adaptation processes the migratory condition often generates. It aims to work on cultural and perceptual sensibilities, in order to imagine, and encourage, a qualitative transformation of the relationships among subjects, as well as between humanity and earth, both as an act of discernment and responsibility, as well as a sign of justice and recognition. For this reason, it is essential to clarify, beyond any reasonable misunderstanding, that I would like to avoid any aestheticisation of migration, which transfigures or, even worse, romanticises the drama of exile, of escape, and of persecution. The Romanian/Canadian scholar Alexis Nouss prefers to speak of the “condition of the exile”, rather than of migration. In his book, La condition de l’exilé: penser les migrations contemporaines (2015)5, he indicates that the category of “migrant” reflects a socioeconomic reality and a realm of spectres without flesh and shadows, which should be commercially managed and geographically displaced. Conversely, his work on “exiliance” aims to explore the psychic experience of exile, which consists of a combination of individual and collective material conditions and emotional states. Actually, as Nouss stresses in the introduction, he has written this book, above all, for those exiled subjects who have not reached their destination, namely Europe, because they have drowned during the journey. During the last years, between Libya and Malta, Tunisia and Sicily, Turkey and Greece – to name just a few present migratory routes – many human bodies have sedimented into the depths of the seabed. In the silence of the Mediterranean, unknown women are still embracing their lost children, 5. A. NOUSS, La condition de l’exilé: penser les migrations contemporaines, Paris, Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2015.

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bearing witness of their failed need to escape from wars, persecutions, and misery. It seems to be the contemporary fulfilment of Creon’s law in Sophocles’ Antigone, where Polyneices is left “unburied and a sight of shame, eaten by both birds and dogs”6. The lack of a tomb, or an honourable burial, prevents the dead person from being remembered by future generations, as if she or he had never existed. The invisible debris on the seabed seems to be the apotheosis of the bio-political body, which Giorgio Agamben speaks of, that is the killable, but unsacrificable bare life, reduced to its last organic residuum7. Geo-aesthetics represents here the urgency of an ethical and theological – as I will try to show later – aptitude, which involves cognition as well as perception (i.e., discernment in the sense of Paul). It expresses a critical geographical and spatial consciousness, which is a “post-colonial sensibility” for the insurgence of the other and her/his upsetting displacement. Furthermore, the main purpose of this approach is in connection with an exigence as an act of resistance against (a) the bio-political logics of immunisation and objectification of the human; (b) the cultural amnesia, especially of dangerous memories, which interrupt our present and the productive system we live in; and (c) the myth of identity and roots, which prevents communities and individuals to perceive and appreciate the difference, and to build relationships with one another. II. THE WOMB

OF THE

BOAT: AGAINST CULTURAL AMNESIA

I would like to approach these questions through the perspective of Édouard Glissant, one of the greatest francophone writers and thinkers of our time. Born on the island of Martinique in 1928 and moving from his French-Caribbean origins, Glissant develops a profound reflection both on colonialism, slavery, and racism, and on the encounter of cultural diversity and creolisation as a possibility for our future. The dramatic experience of the slave trade in the Atlantic, the so-called Middle Passage, finds a literary and philosophical echo in his writings and could be reread, considering the different historical and political genealogies, in relationship with the present migratory crisis, and the migrant smuggling in the Mediterranean Sea. In his work, Poetics of Relation, he 6. … ἄϑαπτον καὶ πρὸς οἰωνῶν δέμας / καὶ πρὸς κυνῶν ἐδεστὸν αἰκισϑέν τ ̓ ἰδεῖν (M. GRIFFITH [ed.], Sophocles: Antigone, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 205-206). 7. G. AGAMBEN, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1998.

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describes the belly of the boat as an abyssal pregnant womb with “as many dead as living under the sentence of death”8. The drama of the slave trades concerned the threatening experience of being suddenly torn away from even the most everyday object, even the most familiar animal, facing the unknown, amidst a thousand forms of suffering and torture. The bare life of the slaves was troubled by the panic of the new land, the haunting of the former land, and lastly by the encounter with the imposed land, without stabilising certitudes of filiation and community. In the new “non-world, inhabited by no ancestor”, the fugitive African “did not recognise even the taste of the night”; he entered into another history, in which, “without him knowing, time was beginning again for him”9. A new perception of time and the absence of the scent of acacias were apocalyptic experiences of abandonment and obscurity. He writes: For the Africans who lived through the experience of deportation to the Americas, confronting the unknown with neither preparation nor challenge was no doubt petrifying. The first dark shadow was cast by being wrenched from their everyday, familiar land, away from protecting gods and a tutelary community. But that is nothing yet. Exile can be borne, even when it comes as a bolt from the blue. The second dark of night fell as tortures and the deterioration of person, the result of so many incredible Gehennas. Imagine two hundred human beings crammed into a space barely capable of containing a third of them. … Paralleling this mass of water, the third metamorphosis of the abyss thus projects a reverse image of all that had been left behind, not to be regained for generations except – more and more threadbare – in the blue savannas of memory or imagination10.

Upset, displacement, forced migration, and enslavement (the plantation) could become political, aesthetic, and, I would suggest, theological categories – between catastrophes and world-making. Glissant was fascinated by the imaginative forces that could result from the trauma of deportation. In the process of navigating the terror of the unknown not only the human language, but also “the word of gods” have been vanished. What remained to survive were, however, “the savannas of memory and imagination”, which were blue and ancestral as the abyss of the sea, yet carrying a consumed vision of returns and redemption. The brutality of the Middle Passage becomes a site of philosophical thinking about material history, memory, and futurity. Although the African landscape is lost and forgotten, it has sedimented into the unconscious and allows change and creation. Memory and imagination become powerful responses 8. É. GLISSANT, Poetics of Relation, Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 2010, p. 6. 9. É. GLISSANT, Poétique II: l’intention poétique, Paris, Gallimard, 1997, p. 9. 10. GLISSANT, Poetics of Relation (n. 8), pp. 5, 7.

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necessary to survive, since “the abyss”, as Glissant writes, “is also a projection of and a perspective into the unknown”11. His poetry, which corresponds to these memories and imagination, seems to be an open boat – I would say a biblical ark – also for the forgotten and abandoned of our present. It’s that which keeps us bound to poetry …. We know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify. We cry our cry of poetry. Our boats are open, and we sail them for everyone12.

The experience of the abyss becomes knowledge both of despair and of a new beginning. The liberating force of the poetic impulse is able to recreate a place – in the sea, on earth – where all is not lost. I would like to stress the political (and not sentimental) meaning of this aesthetics once again. Glissant, descendant of a family of slaves, was a militant activist in crucial struggles of black Atlantic thought – from Négritude to Post-colonial critique, from Poststructuralism to ethic-political existentialism – imagining a real emancipation. Despite his cruel representations of the horror, the witness of which was the Atlantic (“The Sea is History”, as Derek Walcott wrote13), Glissant remains entirely immune from desperation and resentment, from the visceral defence of one’s own suffering and oppression that, however, risks to exhaust any inner energy and freedom. III. POETICS OF RELATIONS Glissant’s crucial question does not principally correspond to the post-colonial deconstruction of Western imperialist thought and to the construction of post-colonial identities in a post-colonial world. Rather, he focuses on Relation, which corresponds to the necessary transformative force to bear the tragedies of history. “Relation is not made up of things that are foreign but of shared knowledge. This experience of the abyss can now be said to be the best element of exchange”14. The abyss is paradoxically transformed from an element of exhausting conflicts and recrimination into an element of “shared knowledge”, into an art of geo-aesthetic discernment. In fact, the crucial question deals 11. Ibid., p. 8. 12. Ibid., p. 21. See also J.M. DASH, Sugar and Its Secrets: The Caribbean Contexts of Creolization, in Research in African Literatures 45/1 (2014) 161-169, p. 162. 13. D. WALCOTT, The Sea Is History, in Collected Poems: 1948-1984, New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986, p. 366. 14. GLISSANT, Poetics of Relation (n. 8), p. 8.

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with the possibility to live together in a world of differences and contacts among cultures, in the dynamic and open horizon of a poetics of Relation. This is because before us lies a “terra incognita”, the unknown territory of an inexhaustible sphere of variations born of the contact between cultures. Although the cultures of the world have always had more or less active and close relations among themselves, it is only in modern and post-modern times that some conditions came together, radically accelerating the nature of these connections. Glissant states that the modern spirit of adventure and exploration, and an almost mystical curiosity for the New World, have been finally replaced by the need to understand the other: “Understanding cultures then became more gratifying than discovering new lands”15. We are just entering into a new era, in which, for the first time in the history of humankind, the ex-colonists and the ex-colonised, the ex-masters and the ex-slaves, the ancient empires and the ancient Companies, live together. And, for the first time, it is no longer a matter of explorations nor discoveries or conquests, but of sharing imaginaries. The point of departure of this practice of sharing imaginaries is the Caribbean archipelagic geography, and its landscape of both pain and beauty. The concrete particularity of Caribbean landscape is transformed by Glissant’s thinking and poetry into a powerful imaginary16 for our globalised world, since the Caribbean has been from the very beginning a crossroads of cultural diversities: from the very beginning they have been global. “The Caribbean, as far as I am concerned, may be held up as one of the places in the world where Relation presents itself most visibly, one of the explosive regions where it seems to be gathering strength”17. Against the threat of a uniform world dominated by financial markets, as well as the new bio-political maps of neo-colonialism and exploitation, Glissant proposes his Tout-Monde (Whole World), where humanity is multiple and fragile, rooted and open, in harmony and in errantry. Opposing the myth of identity and roots, Glissant suggests that human truth is not one 15. Ibid., p. 26. 16. Glissant’s sense differs from the common-sense English usage of a conception that is a conscious mental image. Furthermore, the now widely accepted Lacanian sense in which the imaginary, the order of perception and hallucination, is contrasted with the symbolic (the order of discursive and symbolic action) and the Real (not just “reality” but what is absolutely unrepresentable), does not apply. For Glissant the imaginary is all the ways a culture has of perceiving and conceiving of the world. Hence, every human culture will have its own particular imaginary. 17. Ibid., p. 33.

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of the absolute, but one of Relation18. “When identity is determined by a root, the emigrant is condemned … to being split and flattened. Usually an outcast in the place he [she] has newly set anchor, he [she] is forced into impossible attempts to reconcile his [her] former and his [her] present belonging”19. Instead of a world of nations and closed identities, which produces isolation and exclusion, he/she assumes the plural and rhizomatic reality of the archipelago, in which we are all connected, while remaining distinct, beyond any hidden violence of filiation. A rhizomatic understanding of identity opposes the idea of a totalitarian root, preserving, however, the experience of rootedness as a condition of possibility of Relation. As Glissant admits, however, Relation cannot be defined, but “at least imagined”20. The word creolisation expresses the idea of Relation as nearly as possible. It is not merely an encounter, a cultural shock or a métissage; creolisation represents a new dynamic dimension, an unpredictable process, which finds its exemplary realisation in the Creole21 language, or in jazz music22, “whose genius consists in always being open”23, to cope with, or express, the turbulent confluences of people, languages, and traditions. Glissant’s “poetics of Relation” – both aesthetic and political – aims to be a transformative approach to history, in which identity is necessarily constructed in relation and not in opposition to one another. Relation seeks to move beyond those antagonistic positions (such as Negritude, Historical Marronage, or even Aboriginality), because they risk assuming subject identity only in opposition to the oppressor. Consequently, the thought of Relation wants to go beyond the oppositional discourse of the same and the other, because it is not threatened by its other, even the colonial one. In this perspective, the recognition of the other is not a moral obligation, but an aesthetic experience, a question of perception and sensibility toward the signs that came from the other. Glissant recognises that each concrete identity (like the single isle of the archipelago) is a necessary 18. See J.E. DRABINSKI, Glissant and the Middle Passage: Philosophy, Beginning, Abyss, Minneapolis, MN – London, University of Minnesota Press, 2019. 19. GLISSANT, Poetics of Relation (n. 8), p. 143. 20. Ibid., p. 171. 21. Creoles are cultures that emerged as a result of contact that existed among indigenous Americans, Europeans, and West Africans. Creole has been associated with cultural mixtures of African, European, and indigenous (in addition to other lineages in different locations) ancestry (e.g., Caribbean). 22. Jazz music developed from the creole music, which generated from the encounter between black folk music in the U.S. in plantations and rural areas, and black music based in urban New Orleans. 23. GLISSANT, Poetics of Relation (n. 8), p. 34.

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part of the exchange: but, if it is true that the construction of identity reinforces the sense of Relation, then self-realisation is not enough to express the truth of the human: it requires the realisation of Relation, where multiple histories and ways of being can co-exist. At the same time, “Relation struggles and states itself in opacity”24, it demands the right to opacity, that is the right not to be fully understood by the other, not to fully understand the other. This means that we have to live with the other, and love the other, in a respective singularity and freedom. I do not have to be reduced to the transparency of a shared system of values and representations to be accepted and recognised as a human being. The right to opacity “is not enclosure within an impenetrable autarchy but subsistence within an irreducible singularity”. Any existence embodies an abyssal dimension, which withstands the pretensions of a clarifying knowledge. IV. THE CHURCH AS AN ARK

OF

RELATIONS

At this point, we cannot forget that one of the oldest images of the history of the church, which can contribute to a possible geo-aesthetic discernment of our time of migration, is that of the ark. This fundamental biblical icon has a long tradition in Catholic ecclesiology, as well as in art history and in the history of ideas. Against the background of the Middle Passage in the Atlantic in the past, and of the thousands of passages in the Mediterranean Sea in the present, this image can now acquire a new legibility and theological-political potential. Among the endless interpretations of the image of the ark, some of which risk to inexcusably aestheticise histories of death and unconceivable despair, I would like to enlighten only two elements. The Ark of Noah, Moses, or Peter, were for the church fathers a living space naufragante mundo, a symbol of creation and salvation of every life form in times of despair. If we think about the church as ark today, I must immediately stress a radical return of the biblical situation: like Noah, the desperate migrants and refugees go to the sea; the church remains on mainland; the Drowned are in the sea, the Saved on the land, to mention Primo Levi25.

24. Ibid., p. 186. 25. P. LEVI, The Drowned and the Saved, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1988.

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Furthermore, I have to radically stress the anamnestic and eschatological potential of the symbol of the ark as place of resistance to the present Great Flood: the present church is called to resist any form of cultural amnesia and to be grounded in a memoria passionis; that is, in the continuous dangerous memory of the history of suffering, of innocent and forgotten sufferings, beyond any soft conciliatory intention. Johann Baptist Metz writes: There are dangerous memories, memories that make demands on us. There are memories in which earlier experiences break through to the center point of our lives and reveal new and dangerous insights for the present. They illuminate for a few moments and with a harsh steady light the questionable nature of things we have apparently come to terms with, and show up the banality of our supposed “realism” …. They seem to subvert our structures of plausibility. Such memories are like dangerous and incalculable visitants from the past26.

They are also, I would suggest, incalculable visitants from the present, which demand an understanding of history ex memoria passionis et resurrectionis. The churches are called to become political and geo-aesthetic sites of connections and narrations, which are able to react to the experiences and the loss of identity of migrants. The churches should accept to be interrupted by the irruption of the migrants, challenged by their opacity, which is ultimately, in the ancient tradition of negative theology, the opacity of God. The question is increasingly about where spaces of translation and recognition can be created, in which real encounters can occur, in which diversity, errancy, and distress could become crucial elements of a new Christian symbolic order. The political challenge consists in perceiving and recognising the stories, the languages, as well as the natural and symbolic landscapes migrants bring along with them to their new worlds, and in making them a component of a new narrative. Here, churches and religions are particularly called to become wandering arks of narrations, which offer a place or a time for narrating and breathing, where the migrant people could get stronger voices and faces, not only as the recipients of our caritative actions, but rather as inventors and partners of new symbolic narratives.

26. J.B. METZ, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, New York, Crossroad, 2007, p. 105.

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In his monumental book, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele (Apocalypse of the German Spirit), Hans Urs von Balthasar analyses the symbol of the ark in innumerable examples in literature until the twentieth century, and emphasises that, within the apocalyptic atmosphere after the First World War, it assumes an ambivalent meaning, which oscillates between salvation and threatening decline. The ark seems to become menaced and uncertain, and cannot guarantee salvation, since it refers to a fundamental exposure in the floods27. The ark shows here a deep ambivalent connotation, since it relates to both protection and helplessness, safeguard and menace, hospitality and exclusivity. On the one hand, there is the ark as one of the oldest forms of architectural isolation and autarchic selfpreservation, “a construction without a neighbourhood that incarnates by itself the negation of the environment by means of its artificial structure”28. On the other hand, Noah’s Ark expresses explicitly the idea that we are always in the same boat, that we are all exposed to the abyss of history, yet we have the hard responsibility to build a world of Relation and reconciliation. In this second perspective, the ark/church does not appear as an end in itself, but it humbly serves the people of God, engaging for the salvation of everyone who struggles in the floods. Here, we have to turn to the biblical meaning of the name: “And he called his name Noah, saying: This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed” (Gen 5,29). The church has to repeatedly choose between these alternatives and to clearly position itself in front of the drama of thousands of people in the floods. The New Testament suggests an interpretative option, which can be found in the Acts of the Apostles: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing (the time of deeply breathing) shall come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3,19). A church, which lives change, appears here as the place of radical consolation, as a tender and militant ark, onto which subjects could come out of their abyss and could begin to breathe deeply again.

27. “Das Haus der Kultur ist abgebrannt und all ihr Gut von innen her fraglich geworden”. – “Aber über den Wassern der Verzweiflung erhebt sich ein neues eschatologisches Sinnbild: die Arche. Arche besagt zunächst das Loslassen der letzten, in den Fluten untertauchenden Felsen und die Preisgegebenheit in ein schwankendes, ungesichertes Treiben” (H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele: Studien zu einer Lehre von letzten Haltungen, vol. 3, Fribourg/CH, Academic Press, 2007, pp. 63-66). 28. P. SLOTERDIJK, Sphären II – Globen, Makrosphärologie, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1999, p. 251.

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This possibility of taking a deep breath, which stands for the beginning of a reconciliation with one’s surroundings, the others, the sea, and the earth, is not possible without memory and imagination, namely with a poetics of Relation. Katholische Privatuniversität Linz Fakultät für Theologie Bethlehemstrasse 20 AT-4020 Linz Austria [email protected]

Isabella GUANZINI

“IN GLAMOUR WE TRUST” THE AESTHETICS OF DECEPTION AND THE WORLD’S DISPLACED PERSONS

INTRODUCTION It’s a popular position to hold that political theology is illegitimate. On the one hand we hear that religion and politics cannot mix and must be kept separate because religion is a private affair, while on the opposite side we are told that religion, bound by fundamentalist interpretations must indiscriminately impose its will on the world. There are places that outlaw all religion, places that impose one religion over others, and places that foster religious conflicts. In the end what all have in common is side-lining theological inquiry, reducing religious traditions to labels and fights over power, and hindering informed critical thought that can shed light on beliefs as these become actions that affect our common life. To put theos and polis together is to say that what we believe about fundamental questions affects how we act, and how we act affects the world. What we are doing in political theology matters, greatly. If as our theme suggests, “political theology is dedicated to exploring and clarifying” how the church contributes to the efforts of giving shape to our common life, in a way that is coherent with planetary flourishing, then the thrust of a political theology is oriented toward Jesus’ incessantly communicated obsession – the vision of El Reino de Dios, the Reign of God. What I have experienced over the last few years as a U.S. Latina theologian accompanying immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, inside what Latino theologians call la realidad, the messy tangle of daily life where God works in history, is an overwhelming attack on that vision of the Reign that we, as church, affirm as shimmering throughout salvation history. The situation of displaced persons in the world changes daily, and as I worked on this research, I realized I could not address these as I would want. So, rather than acquainting us with the situation, which we need to do for ourselves daily, I want to focus on how we landed here, and what theological thought can contribute to unmasking the problem, so we may at least resist and, at the most, give our communities the tools to undo what is happening.

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I will proceed by focusing on the rise to power of Donald J. Trump, and how his candidacy and presidency shifted policies and worldviews about vulnerable people, especially immigrants, in the United States. Although my inquiry is focused on the country where I live and work, we know that the Trumpian worldview has spread and emboldened similarly constructed political calculations globally. Although I am not suggesting that there was a carefully thought-out plan behind Trump’s rise other than the consolidation of power through any means, I do believe that a theological aesthetics analysis yields how Trumpism eviscerated ethical judgment and action by destroying the fundamental religious commitments of solidarity and kinship. So, I begin with Trump’s rise to power. I. THE GOLDEN STAIRCASE On 16 June 2015, a real estate developer and minor reality-television celebrity emerged at the top of a golden glass escalator accompanied by his third wife, a model, 24 years his junior. Loud music blared as the mechanical stairs glided each of them down to a platform located in the lobby of the Manhattan building branded with Trump’s name1. At once smiling and menacing, Donald J. Trump launched into a speech to declare his intention of running for President of the United States2. After exaggerating the size of the crowd present, Trump exclaimed, “our country is in serious trouble!”. Fear, which journalist Bob Woodward later used as the title of his book on the Trump presidency, was thus unveiled as the strategy to propel this candidate to the presidency. As Woodward quotes Trump, “[r]eal power is – I don’t even want to use the word – fear”3. The politics of fear would be central to Trump’s election playbook, but fear alone would not work in a country with a high standard of living4 claiming to be a robust and paradigmatic democracy. The 1. C-SPAN clip available at: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4583025/trump-comingescalator. 2. I use the transcript of the speech provided by Time Magazine at: https://time.com/ 3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/. 3. Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, on 31 March 2016 at the Old Post Office Pavilion, Trump International Hotel, Washington, DC. B. WOODWARD, Fear: Trump in the White House, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2018, p. vii. 4. According to Gallup, in 2015 and 2016, 62% of Americans felt their standard of living was improving, while only 22% felt it was declining. Except for voters over 65, no demographic group surveyed in the year prior to Trump taking office (by party, income level, or ethnicity) reported less than a 50% number in their economic confidence with some reporting numbers as high as 86%. J. NORMAN, American’s Ratings of Standard of

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context was simply not amenable to the unvarnished politics of fear deployed successfully so often in human history. On the contrary, the national context on that June day was stable and optimistic. By the time Obama left the White House, and despite the continued sin of racism plaguing the United States, a majority of people felt positive about having elected their first Black President5. On taking office in 2009 as the deregulated financial markets of the previous Bush administration collapsed, Barack Obama’s administration had taken unprecedented steps to stabilize the U.S. economy and prevent a global depression. At the time of Trump’s announcement in 2015, the economy continued “on a moderate growth trajectory”6 and was well underway to a full recovery7. So, although Trump wanted to stoke fear, he was addressing a prosperous country, rich with diversity and teeming with a growing sense of the dynamism and interconnectedness of the world. The real estate developer had to find a way to seize control of a nation with constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and concentrate power in his hands in direct contradiction to the country’s image of itself as “the land of the free and the brave”. That morning coming down the golden escalator, Trump needed a new brew, a recipe of his own making, which mixed in all we know about the politics of fear and added some new and potent ingredients. II. ACHIEVING POWER In order to succeed, Trumpism’s fear-driven appeal to power had to target human solidarity. The candidate and his supporters had to undermine it so thoroughly that his voters would hand over power and follow him blindly. From a theological vantage point, we could say that the Living Best in Decade, 12 September 2017, Gallup. This puts into question the oft-repeated superficial analysis that Trump was lifted to the presidency due to voters’ economic difficulties; https://news.gallup.com/poll/218981/americans-ratings-standard-living-bestdecade.aspx. 5. A. CONE, Obama Leaving Office at 60% Approval Rating, UPI, 18 January 2017, at https://upi.com/6481823. 6. United States – Economic Forecast Summary (June 2016), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, https://www.oecd.org/eco/outlook/united-states-economicforecast-summary-june-2016.htm. 7. 61% of respondents approved of his handling of the economy (ibid.). “The economy added more jobs in every year of Obama’s second term than it did in Trump’s first year”. M. KELLY, The ‘Trump Economy’ vs. the ‘Obama Economy’, in The Washington Post, 18 September 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/18/trump-economyversus-obama-economy/.

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targets were truth and goodness, the basis of ethical action, but how to destabilize these? Trumpism’s answer was to deploy an impostor that had been spreading its influence globally for decades and had actually been the basis of Trump’s dubious fame. The attack was on Beauty, and the impostor put in its place was Trump’s only real asset: glamour. It worked, and here is why. The Christian tradition has long held that beauty is an effective pointer to its source and sustainer, God. Clearly expressed in Augustine’s exclamation in The Confessions, “Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved Thee!”8, generations of thinkers have grappled with the question of Beauty’s role in creation and salvation. However, in recent years, talk of beauty had been neglected. Taking our attunement to beauty for granted on the basis of our cathedrals and great works of art, the church had paid little attention to how beauty forms and informs consciences. In a book, The Community of the Beautiful, published just a year before the third millennium, theologian Alex García-Rivera noticed an insight from semiotics theory with important theological implications. Following the nineteenth-century American logician, Charles Sanders Peirce, García-Rivera observed how the philosopher had struggled in his early work because he could only account for “a judgment of value about the world”, what García-Rivera terms the “Community of the True”. As he explains, “Peirce’s logic of signs had given a satisfying answer to the question of how the true becomes discovered but left open the implicit question of what inspires such discovery in the first place!”. Missing was the question of what precisely initiated “such a pursuit” of truth and, also, what guided it once begun9. As they worked to close this gap the pragmatist philosophers finally concluded that “Actions, to be logical, must be guided, indeed initiated, by ends”10. The possibility of subverting what initiates and guides ends is the ingredient Trumpism accidentally discovered. How to replace what initiates and guides the actions of the electorate so they would have no independent thought and be guided only by him? Trumpism had to replace what García-Rivera expresses as the radical interconnectedness of human experience. For the theologian, When guidance is given to the Community of the True, it reveals itself to be the Community of the Good as well. When inspiration generates the Community of the True and the Good, then the Community of the Beautiful is revealed as well11. 8. AUGUSTINE, Confessions, Book 10, Ch. 27, par 38. 9. A. GARCÍA-RIVERA, The Community of the Beautiful, Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 1999, p. 113. 10. Ibid., p. 114. 11. Ibid.

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What becomes immediately evident is that while beauty inspires and guides the search for truth and goodness, it is also generated by truth and goodness, so as to form a circular process of ongoing ethical revelation within aesthetic effulgence. It was this interconnectedness of truthfulness and goodness, initiated and guided by beauty, which Trumpism subverted and, for that, he had to replace beauty with a counterfeit version of it. The impostor had served Trump well all his life and now it had a new stage. Beauty would be replaced by glamour. Why glamour? Could it be as powerfully motivating and controlling as fear, but much more subtle? Could it lead away from God, rather than toward God? A few years after the breakthrough of the pragmatists, the Chicagobased pastor and theologian Von Ogden Vogt, responded to the horrors of the two World Wars, noting how these events had followed humanity’s age of Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, the optimism of science, and the belief in something called “progress”. He didn’t call it glamour, but denounced the false sense of human prowess and hubris that had led to the wars, correlating the material destruction of the war with the devastation of over-confident intellectual constructions built on shaky ground. During a time not unlike our own, he writes: A new age is coming. It will be upon us swiftly and we must bestir our imaginations to prepare for it. We are like the dwellers in the war-swept areas of the old world whose homes were wrecked by shell fire. Our intellectual houses are falling about our ears. We do not yet know whether we must rebuild them or desert them. We are hurriedly wondering what to save from the wreckage. We are half unconsciously taking stock of our valuables; making new appraisals of what is most precious. It is a time of re-examination of all things, a time of changes, profound and universal. The disorganization of normal life by the great war has compelled a new openness of mind and roused new demands for better life12.

Vogt’s insight presents a choice: continue on the road of making wars on each other and effectively end human history, or rediscover why our world, why we, might be worth preserving. Echoing the pragmatists, Vogt saw that the only way back from the precipice of death was the rediscovery of the life-giving power of experiences of beauty, and thus have beauty do the work of pointing, incessantly, back toward the Good, and the True, guiding our ethical action back toward God. Vogt stresses two things: First he argues that humanity’s legacy of creative-making across the ages provides unquestionable evidence that to have a full life, human beings require beauty, truth, and goodness. God’s creation as revealed in the book of nature and in the book of Sacred 12. V.O. VOGT, Art & Religion, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1921, p. 1.

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Scripture is deeply beautiful, true, and good, and human beings are somehow mysteriously made to value and desire these attributes. To intentionally keep ourselves tethered to beauty, truth, and goodness is to remember who we are as children of God. His second insight builds on this. Vogt argues that the ethics of life are inseparable from the aesthetics of life. He discerns the simultaneity of ethical judgment and aesthetic longing declaring that what we call ethics is “the struggle of human life to have a larger share in the beauty of life”13. What his insight makes clear, is that if the actual content of ethics is effectively revealed by the desire for beauty, to supplant beauty with something else will essentially extinguish ethics. A couple of decades after Vogt, the awakening of civil rights movements in the world, coinciding with the Second Vatican Council, once more demonstrated that the appearance of prosperity and progress was a deception. There was a pervasive disconnect in the world, and the Council noticed it even if it was unable to name it. Never has the human race enjoyed such an abundance of wealth, resources and economic power, and yet a huge proportion of the world’s citizens are still tormented by hunger and poverty, while countless numbers suffer from total illiteracy. Never before has [the human person] had so keen an understanding of freedom, yet at the same time new forms of social and psychological slavery make their appearance. Although the world of today has a very vivid awareness of its unity and of how one [person] depends on another in needful solidarity, it is most grievously torn into opposing camps by conflicting forces. For political, social, economic, racial and ideological disputes still continue bitterly, and with them the peril of a war which would reduce everything to ashes (GS 4).

The conflict between life and death, war and peace, solidarity and the dehumanization of others continued unabated, and Pope Paul VI summarized the challenge in the title of his address on Peace Day in 197214. His words, made art by Corita Kent, proclaimed to the world “If you want peace, work for justice”. Yet, he failed to see that without the link to aesthetics, the difficulty of activating and guiding ethical life persisted. Paul VI was overconfident in the Christian blueprint for what constitutes justice, most centrally present in Matthew 25 and the Beatitudes. This 13. Ibid., p. 34. 14. “But it is precisely from this place that the invitation we give to celebrate Peace resounds as an invitation to practice Justice: ‘Justice will bring about Peace’ (cf. Is 32:17). We repeat this today in a more incisive and dynamic formula: ‘If you want Peace, work for Justice’”. PAUL VI, “If you want Peace, Work for Justice”. Message of His Holiness Pope Paul VI for the Celebration of the Day of Peace, 1 January 1972.

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is because what la realidad reveals is that the world is not made up of only, or even primarily, Christians; what’s more is that Christians seem quite willing to disregard the radical nature of the solidarity required by the Scriptures and the tradition. How do we proclaim and do justice when we don’t agree on what it is because our own gain and well-being are all that guide us? Three decades after Paul VI, John Paul II concludes his pastoral letter To Artists with a section enigmatically titled “The ‘Beauty’ that Saves”15. The Pope, an actor in his youth, and a poet all his life, hints at a profound truth, but, like Paul VI, takes for granted much that is far from settled. He writes poetically that “Beauty is a key to the mystery, and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savor life and to dream of the future” (TA, 16). He asserts that beauty invites and calls, or in García-Rivera’s words, Beauty initiates and guides us to the common good. However, John Paul II doesn’t perceive how beauty itself can be subverted through its feigned presence. Vogt told us that to be human is to crave beauty, truth, and goodness. Gaudium et Spes pointed to the drastic lack of beauty, truth, and goodness in the world and called the church to engage the world’s wounded state in solidarity. Soon after, Paul VI told us that the road to peace would be built by justice, and then John Paul II told us that “beauty saves”, pretty much tracing a path right back to Vogt’s assertion at the start of the century about the continuity between aesthetics and ethics. What this discloses is that the ethical is rendered inert without the aesthetic. In other words, “if you want peace, work for justice”, is incomplete without adding “if you want justice, work for beauty”, and for that to actually work, we must know true beauty and unmask the impostor. III. BEAUTY’S ABSENCE However, let me add another note of caution about the ways we tend to speak of beauty, because if we do not, we have significantly reduced beauty’s power to reveal what is just. I’m speaking of beauty’s absence. Just as beauty can move us to pursue it as Augustine asserts, as it reveals the concentric circles of the communities made up by truth and goodness, as García-Rivera points out, beauty’s absence is also an exceptionally 15. JOHN PAUL II, Pastoral Letter to Artists, 1999, https://www.vatican.va/content/ john-paul-ii/en/letters/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_23041999_artists.html.

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effective pointer. Perhaps even more powerful than beauty, the starkness of the absence of beauty cannot be feigned or co-opted. John Paul II hints at this when, having spent most of his letter extolling beauty and the role of artists in activating it, he finally admits that, “[e]ven when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption” (TA 10). This is precisely the opening and guide to ethical judgment and action offered by the absence of beauty. This is why everything in Trumpism is manufactured to present a thin veneer of faux gold. The power of heartbreak can be just as potent of an initiator and guide toward truth and goodness as the delight and transcendent call of beauty. If there has been an effective resistance to Trump’s draconian excesses, it has been activated and guided precisely by the sight of dead migrant children, and parents ripped away from their arms. This should come as no surprise to Christians who intentionally contemplate and venerate the image of a tortured and bleeding man. Especially following Francis of Assisi’s reforms, “[t]he image of Christ on the cross was no longer solely the sign of God’s love and … sacrifice for humanity; it became the focus for humanity’s own compassion for the suffering Saviour”16. The Christian was not only to glory in the triumph of the cross, but to courageously enter into the horror of suffering alongside Christ in order to cultivate a sense for seeking and building justice by contemplating its most abject absence on that same cross. The tradition then reveals that both Beauty and its heart-breaking absence initiate, guide, and sustain humanity’s desire to work for truth and goodness. “Actions, to be logical, must be guided, indeed initiated, by ends”17. Back to Trump on his shiny gold escalator. What he presented was definitely not ugly, but abundant, golden, and powerful. The master of all he surveyed, he could make full use of the politics of fear, but only by diligently obscuring beauty’s ability to initiate and guide truth and goodness. The best way to do this had been honed in the United States by years of reality television, Trump’s only area of expertise. The genre thrived on presenting glamour and, then, stoking envy, deception, materialism, and the drive toward domination. As television showed, glamour was proven effective in breaking down human solidarity. For Trump’s white nationalism to triumph those with the least shiny golden things, the immigrant, refugee, the poor, and the sick, had to be trampled.

16. G. FINALDI, The Image of Christ, London, The National Gallery, 2000, p. 105. 17. GARCÍA-RIVERA, The Community (n. 9), p. 114.

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SOLIDARITY: OUR ORIGINAL SIN

In Chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis, the collapse of human solidarity is center stage as the sin that disrupts humanity’s bond with each other and with God. We can spend lots of time speculating about the meaning of the tree of life, or the knowledge of good and evil, or continue building up the patriarchy by blaming Eve, but for me these miss the point. The myriad prohibitions, the serpent, tree, fruit, eating, fig leaves all of these, function to set the stage and build the action until God asks the central question, a simple one that most parents recognize: “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gen 3,11). For a parent, as for the figure of God in the story, this is a rhetorical question, the parent knows, God certainly knows. Does God want to see what the humans will do after being caught? Will coveting favor and advantage from God make them turn on each other, or will they care and sacrifice for each other? The devastating answer comes quickly, as Adam’s betrayal of his wife is swift. His desire to shift blame from himself, which might diminish his standing in God’s eyes, obliterates any kinship he may have felt with the woman. As the story recounts, her well-being does not even enter into his calculations. If someone is to be blamed and punished, it will be Eve. By betraying her, he will be exonerated and his privileged status will be untarnished. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate”. Adam is the first informant, and breaks his bond with Eve. Eve for her part is more compassionate toward Adam, blaming the serpent (3,14). What ensues after this pivotal moment is the unleashing of God’s heartbroken disappointment, resulting in the banishment of the humans from the garden, the place where they could walk with each other and with God. The call to right relationship and solidarity, and its constant breakdown, is a signal theme throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, as is the insistence on the role that the “us-ness” of God’s people plays in their deliverance. As Isaiah announces: on the day when “every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low” and “the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together” (Isa 40,4-5). The Scriptural memory is clear: giving in to scapegoating others will bar us from the garden. And unless we arrive at it together, we will not see the glory of God. Was glamour ultimately to blame for the fall? Is coveting our own advantage at the expense of the other the swiftest way to get us to betray each other? The baptismal rite preserves the memory of this insight as the elect are asked together the questions:

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Do you reject sin so as to live in the freedom of God’s children? Do you reject the glamour of evil and refuse to be mastered by sin?18

Evil hides behind glamour, leading us away from truth and goodness and making us desire it, rather than beauty, we will forget our freedom as God’s children, and lured away from the good and the true will allow evil to become our master. Finally, it is in the Christian Scriptures that the reversal of the original condition of broken relationships brought about by our selfishness is expressed in all its fullness. The opposite of the sin of Adam and Eve is presented most clearly as Jesus answers which is the greatest commandment (Matt 22,36), and what must be done to “inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10,25-28). Jesus does not say, “you need to give up your knowledge of good and evil”, or “you need to give up wanting to be like God”. No, the answer is as extraordinary as it is simple: what you must do is love God and neighbor with complete abandon. Both, not one or the other, both. In following this action, the betrayal of kinship of Adam and Eve is undone and the image of God as love is restored. Matthew and Luke insist that our ultimate act of loving God is to make God as love present as we unconditionally and fully love each other. Yet, as all things with Jesus, this is not merely talk. Jesus’ life and violent death add the ultimate reversal to the condition of disloyalty and broken relationships of our human history. He dies as a direct result of betrayal, trampled under by the glamour of Rome and the collusion of the Temple elite. He is abandoned, forgotten, marked as a criminal. It is this act of starkly unveiling our selfishness followed by his altruism that unleashes resurrected love in history, just as its opposite had unleashed alienation. The measure of Beauty then becomes Christ on the cross, giving up his life for his friends (John 15,13), while commanding us to love one another as he has loved us (John 15,12). Christian love guided by such Beauty can have no conditions and because of this, it is untamable and incorruptible. So back to Trump Tower. After declaring the country in serious trouble, but without evidence to support him, the would-be strong man set out to break solidarity. He couldn’t do it with war or hunger, so he needed glamour, and this was the only thing the reality television salesman actually knew how to do. The rest of his announcement speech reveals the relentless dissolution of the three interlaced communities of the good, true, and beautiful through recasting everything in a false light. First, identify enemies, not because they are making war, or restricting human rights, but because they have “more” than us, and if they have 18. The Rites of the Catholic Church, English translation prepared by the International Commission on English Liturgy, New York, Pueblo, 1976, p. 98.

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more, then we are less wealthy and American glamour will slip away. Trump attacks China, Japan and Mexico, repeating that they “beat” us and “kill” us, using words of violence for financial transactions. He warns that terrorists have “become rich”, not that they kill. Further, to make his audience even more vulnerable he heightens their insecurities, repeating that everyone is “laughing at us” and at our “stupidity”. Finally, Trump invents a new enemy by creating a category of “other” on whom to heap darkness, suffering, frailty, and want. He could point his finger and say beneath his bombastic rhetoric, “you do not ever want to be like this black/brown/poor/suffering person, the very opposite of the glamour I promise you, follow me”. The salesman offers glamour, personalized in him, and his constant boasts of wealth and power, to protect his followers from “the others”, those Emma Lazarus described over a century before as the “tired…, poor…, huddled masses … the wretched refuse” of other shores. By making his voters covet the promised invulnerability of glamour, Trump had finally found a reason for them to want to close “the golden door”19. CONCLUSION Trump takes the neighbor to the south, whose lands the United States invaded and took by force 167 years before, and scapegoats everything unto them. He claims Mexicans are “bringing drugs”, “bringing crime”, and are “rapists”. During the campaign and in the years since, brown and black people will be chased out of parks, stores, restaurants, and their own apartment buildings by whites emboldened by Trump’s subverted aesthetics, which make only the white race desirable, equating whiteness with American exceptionalism and the glamour of power20. Destroying any possibility that beauty may ignite ethical action, Trumpism defines the other as unworthy based on intrinsic aesthetic attributes lacking glamour, easily identifiable, and beyond the control of the one marked and coded. To be 19. The poem is The New Colossus by E. LAZARUS, 2 November 1883. Lazarus was “involved in charitable work with refugees … She was deeply moved by the plight of the Russian Jews she met …”. She wrote the poem to help raise funds for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, but it was not until many years after her death that the plaque with a portion of the poem was placed on the statue’s pedestal. United States National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/colossus.htm. 20. “Hate crimes against Latinos were at their highest level since 2010, when the unemployment rate and border crossings from Mexico were both peaking. Some advocates placed the blame for the recent rise on President Trump”. A. HASSAN, Hate-Crime Violence Hits 16-Year High, F.B.I. Reports, in The New York Times, 12 November 2019, https:// nyti.ms/2q50bRC.

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poor, brown, black, a refugee, or a mixture of these, will be to be undesirable, and this new identity, placed by Trumpism on the most vulnerable of the world is remarkably effective in thwarting human solidarity and the possibility of shared heartbreak resulting in altruism. With this final stroke, Trumpism connected glamour to fear. Glamour, the impostor built up by deception and materialism, is replacing beauty, and thus effectively initiating and guiding xenophobia, jingoism, and white supremacy. His promise of safety from being contaminated through the brown, black, poor, and immigrant, sets up a hierarchy of values completely untethered from anything other than personal advantage. The “America first” doctrine Trump introduces behind the veil of waving flags and red hats, proposes and encourages violations, not only of international law, but of the actual Ten Commandments, and many of his followers and members of his own party look the other way. His message about other countries will become simply to covet what they have. He also proposes stealing from others for economic gain, the currency of mimetic desire21. He likewise encourages bearing false witness as the best way to create a hall of mirrors where what is true no longer matters. In a remarkable data point, as of 7 June 2019, his 869th day in office, news analysts had clocked Trump in at 10,796 lies22. However, it is the commandments against glamour, graven images, idolatry, and taking God’s name in vain that he will most completely negate. The vulnerable within our shores and beyond them, God’s most beloved and protected, are the sacrifice that Trump, who demands absolute fealty, promises will guarantee America’s renewed racial purity and dominance. So how do we turn the tide? Perhaps by exposing glamour’s lies we might make real the vision of the Reign of God where “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matt 20,16) and through this build up human solidarity, because right now, beauty needs to save the world. Loyola Marymount University 1 Lmu Drive 90045 Los Angeles California USA [email protected]

Cecilia GONZÁLEZ-ANDRIEU

21. For more on mimetic desire see G. ANDRADE, René Girard (1923-2015), in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://www.iep.utm.edu/girard/#H2. 22. G. KESSLER – S. RIZZO – M. KELLY, President Trump Has Made 10,796 False or Misleading Claims over 869 Days, in The Washington Post, 10 June 2019, https://www. washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/10/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleadingclaims-over-days/?utm_term=.340433d01497.

“LISTEN, YOUR [SISTER’S] BLOOD IS CRYING OUT TO ME FROM THE GROUND!”* CALLING CHURCHES TO ACCOUNT FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA

INTRODUCTION The partially clothed body of Eudy Simelane, former star of South Africa’s acclaimed Banyana Banyana national female football squad, was found in a creek in a park in Kwa Thema, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Simelane had been gang-raped and brutally beaten before being stabbed 25 times in the face, chest and legs. As well as being one of South Africa’s best-known female footballers, Simelane was a voracious equality rights campaigner and one of the first women to live openly as a lesbian in Kwa Thema1.

The brutal rape and murder of Eudy Simelane epitomises violence against women in South Africa that affects women across the spectrum of race, sexual orientation, class, marital status, and age. According to the Medical Research Council of South Africa, a woman is killed by their intimate partner every eight hours2; 53 617 rape cases were reported in 2015 (146 rapes per day and it is estimated that the figure is much higher as most rape cases are not reported)3; and the number of “corrective rapes” of lesbians increases4. The crisis has generated extensive multi-disciplinary research, intervention programs by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), * Gen 4,10b (NRSV). The context of this text is the account of Cain’s murder of his brother Abel and God calling him to account for his deeds in 4,9-10: Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He answered, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”. 1. A. KELLY, Raped and Killed for Being a Lesbian: South Africa Ignores ‘Corrective’ Attacks, in The Guardian, 12 March 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/ mar/12/eudy-simelane-corrective-rape-south-africa. 2. N. ABRAHAM, Every Eight Hours: Intimate Femicide in South Africa 10 Years Later!, Research Brief South African Medical Research Council, August, 2012, http://www.mrc. ac.za/policybriefs/everyeighthours.pdf. 3. Crime Stats for South Africa: Everything You Need to Know, http://businesstech.co.za/ news/government/99648/2015-crime-stats-for-south-africa-everything-you-need-to-know/. 4. Correct rape is done to “correct” lesbian sexuality. A descriptive analysis and narratives of victims is found in this article: C. CARTER, Crisis in South Africa: The Shocking Practice of ‘Corrective Rape’ – Aimed at ‘Curing’ Lesbians. Clare Carter travelled across South Africa to photograph and interview the victims of this appalling crime, http://www. independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/crisis-in-south-africa-the-shocking-practice-ofcorrective-rape-aimed-at-curing-lesbians-9033224.html.

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as well as media and community forums; yet, the violence continues unabated. It is the gender related nature of the violence, perpetrators being mostly men, and the victims being mainly women, which implicates the socio-cultural and theological construction of femininities and masculinities that produce, sustain, and perpetuate hierarchical and differential power relationships between the sexes. Women theologians continue to argue that patriarchy, androcentrism, and sexism in Christian beliefs and practices have given divine sanction to gender inequality. Consequently, the alarming rate of violence against women, especially in a predominantly Christian country such as South Africa, imposes an ethical imperative for theological ownership and accountability. Hence, the relevance of the legacy of the Kairos document, which emerged in a context of a theological crisis driven by theologies that both implicitly and explicitly supported apartheid: a system that systematically and violently dehumanised and deprived black Africans of their human rights. A prophetic ecumenical and communal prophetic theology owned by grassroot theologians was produced that paved the way for churches to actively participate in the struggle against apartheid. It will therefore be argued that the Kairos legacy provides a methodological framework for a similar process to be undertaken by churches in response to violence against women, so that a grassroot ecumenical prophetic theology can emerge that empowers the churches to intervene, together with other stakeholders, in the eradication of the underlying factors that fuel violence against women. The focus therefore will be on engaging with the methodology of the Kairos document and not on prescribing theological solutions, because that would infringe on the participatory, communal, and ecumenical process of producing a prophetic theology. It is a methodology that proposes a way for churches to become their “sisters’ keepers”, as suggested in the topic of this article. Accordingly, the rest of the paper will develop this argument through the following outline. First, lessons from violence against women in South Africa and recommendations from research will be considered; second, lessons from the methodology of the Kairos document are considered as a possible Kairos legacy; and finally, a model for churches as their “sisters’ keepers” will be proposed. I. VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA: LESSONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FROM CURRENT RESEARCH As mentioned in the introduction, extensive research has been done on violence against women in South Africa. Some examples of research institutions focusing on this topic include: the Centre for the Study of Violence

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and Reconciliation (CSVR)5, the Medical Research Council (MRC)6, Sonke Gender Justice (SGJ)7, and the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (The Circle). Notable publications include a comprehensive critical synthesis of theories and research on violence against women in South Africa by Romi Sigsworth (2009) from CSVR8; statistics and analysis of intimate partner violence, the leading cause of female homicides released through a MRC Research Brief9; longitudinal research on the “corrective rape” of lesbians by Amanda Lock Swarr10; an analysis of five research projects on men, masculinity, and gender transformation in South Africa between 2007 and 2011 by Amanda P. Viitanen and Christopher J. Colvin11; and, last, a theological analysis of rape by Sarojini Nadar12. Nadar critically examines rape and violence against women in the Hebrew Bible and argues for the retelling of these biblical narratives through the experiences of violence by contemporary women, so that “those texts that are difficult to read [be] exposed, interrogated, deconstructed and re-interpreted, until a liberating message can be found”13. Thus, the experience of violence by women, both in the Bible and in contemporary society, is for Nadar the starting point for constructing liberating theologies for women through post-modernist-literary methodologies that open texts to new and multiple interpretations14. 5. http://www.csvr.org.za/. 6. http://www.mrc.ac.za/. 7. http://www.genderjustice.org.za/. 8. R. SIGSWORTH, Anyone Can Be a Rapist: An Overview of Sexual Violence in South Africa, in November 2009, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), Johannesburg, http://www.csvr.org.za/images/docs/sexualviolence.pdf. 9. ABRAHAM, Every Eight Hours (n. 2). 10. A.L. SWARR, Paradoxes of Butchness: Lesbian Masculinities and Sexual Violence in Contemporary South Africa, in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37 (2012) 961-988. 11. A.P. VIITANEN – C.J. COLVIN, Lessons Learned: Program Messaging in GenderTransformative Work with Men and Boys in South Africa, in Global Health Action (2015), p. 8, http://www.genderjustice.org.za/publication/lessons-learned/. 12. S. NADAR, Texts of Terror: The Conspiracy of Rape in the Bible, Church and Society: The Case of Esther 2:1-18, in I.A. PHIRI – S. NADAR (eds.), African Women, Religion, and Health: Essays in Honour of Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2006, 77-95. Nadar is a member of The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, abbreviated as The Circle. It is an ecumenical and interfaith organisation of women theologians in Africa formed in 1989 (Accra Ghana) under the leadership of Mercy Amba Oduyoye. The mission of The Circle is: “To undertake research and publish theological literature written by African women with special focus on religion and culture”, www.thecirclecawt. org/profile.html (accessed 10 March 2016). A comprehensive introduction to The Circle can be found in M.R.A. KANYORO, Beads and Strands: Threading More Beads in the Story of the Circle, ibid., 19-42. 13. NADAR, Texts of Terror (n. 12), p. 78. 14. Ibid.

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1. Common Themes from Research on Violence against Women Two of the dominant themes that emerge from the aforementioned research on violence against women are: (a) the culture of violence; and (b) the construction of masculinities. First, “the culture of violence” is a characteristic of South African society that is rooted in the violent history of apartheid and various forms of resistance. Sigsworth describes this culture as where “violence is accepted as a long-standing means of resolving conflict and problems in the family, in sexual relationships, in school, in peer groups, in the community, and in political spheres”15. The high level of violence against women is therefore one of the manifestations of the endemic culture of violence rooted in the politics of repression from the apartheid era. Another form of violence against women, which is a by-product of apartheid, is the economic marginalisation of women that has resulted in the dependence of women on men. The migrant system, for example, replaced the homestead economy run by women with the market economy of mines and industry, which employed mostly men, thus creating economic inequality based on gender. Turshen explains how the economic empowerment of African men benefited colonial governments: Colonial officials subsidised African men in order to increase men’s productivity, generate more revenue from wage labour, and cash-crop agriculture, and spur capital accumulation, all in the interest of supporting the state16.

Further, there were social consequences resulting from migrant labour that included family disintegration and the increase in sexual violence against women. Historian Cheryl Walker describes the migrant system as imposing a “heavy strain on rural society’s internal relationships and social institutions with uneven results for women”, which, as a result, ensured that the increase in sexual violence was “indicative of heightened tension between the sexes and the breakdown of older codes of behaviour”17. The economic dependence of women on men leads many women to remain silent on their experiences of violence, and forces them to remain in abusive relationships. Second, cultural constructions of masculinities characterised by dominance over women, a sense of entitlement, male supremacy, and the acceptance of violence as an expression of masculinity, are key factors that fuel 15. SIGSWORTH, Anyone Can Be a Rapist (n. 8), p. 18. 16. M. TURSHEN, Engendering Relations of State and Society in the Aftermath, in S. MEINTJES – A. PILLAY – M. TURSHEN (eds.), The Aftermath: Women in Post-Conflict Transformation, London, Zeb Books, 2001, 78-96. 17. L. WALKER, Negotiating the Boundaries of Masculinity in Post-Apartheid South Africa, in G. REID – L. WALKER (eds.), Men Behaving Differently: South African Men since 1994, Cape Town, Double Storey, 2005, 161-182, here pp. 162, 163.

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violence against women18. MRC estimates that 58% of female homicides are by intimate partners. The links between violence and distorted masculinities is evident in the growing amount of literature and research, both locally and internationally. Robert Morrell defines masculinity as: a collective gender identity and not a natural attribute. It is socially constructed and fluid. There is not one universal masculinity, but many masculinities. … Class and race factors are constitutive of the form that masculinity takes. This means that in any society there are many masculinities, each with a characteristic shape and set of features. The contours of these masculinities change over time, being affected by changes elsewhere in society and at the same time, themselves affecting society itself19.

Masculinities are social constructions that are not static, fixed, universal, or homogeneous, and intersect with other systems of oppressions, such as class and race. Similarly, black masculinities are not homogenous, but multiple; therefore, violent masculinity constitutes one form of masculinities. The relationship between masculinity, dominance, and violence is described by Tillner as follows: “masculinity is the articulation of dominance and male gender. But gender is nothing but the construction of difference. So dominance and difference are the prime elements of masculinity – and of a culture of violence”20. Connell concurs and locates the source of male violence in social constructions of masculinity, not in biological causes: “it is in social masculinities rather than biological differences that we must seek the main causes of gendered violence and the main answers to it”21. For Kimmel, however, power is at the root of sexual violence: “men initiate violence when they feel a loss of power to which they feel entitled”22. Many men experience a loss of power when they are not able to fulfil gender roles that depend on economic resources. Niehaus’ research on male perpetrators of sexual violence in South Africa found that economic marginalisation and a failure to fulfil gender roles were key factors in sexual violence: He describes some of his findings as follows: 18. SIGSWORTH, Anyone Can Be a Rapist (n. 8), p. 18; VIITANEN – COLVIN, Lessons Learned (n. 11), p. 2. 19. R. MORRELL, Of Boys and Men: Masculinity and Gender, in Journal of Southern African Studies 24 (1998) 605-630, p. 608. 20. G. TILLNER, The Identity of Dominance: Masculinity and Xenophobia, in I. BREINES – R.W. CONNELL – I. EIDE (eds.), Male Roles, Masculinities and Violence: A Culture of Peace Perspective, Paris, Unesco Publishing, 2000, 53-59, here p. 56. 21. R.W. CONNELL, Arms and the Man: Using the New Research on Masculinity to Understand Violence and Promote Peace in the Contemporary World, in BREINES – CONNELL – EIDE (eds.), Male Roles, Masculinities and Violence (n. 20), 21-33, here p. 23. 22. M. KIMMEL, Men, Masculinities & Development: Broadening Our Work towards Gender Equality, United Nations Development Programme, 2000, p. 242.

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Evidence suggests that we cannot see rape merely as an expression of masculine domination and entitlement, as this is apparent only in cases of sexual coercion by relatively privileged men. In the sections below, I suggest that during the era of de-industrialisation, marginal men who fell well short of meeting masculine ideals were more likely to perpetrate rape. I argue that rape can also be seen as a violent attempt to symbolically assert – and sometimes even to mimic – a dominant masculine persona23.

Similar research in East Africa, carried out by Margarethie Silberschmidt, explains the relationships between economic resources and masculinity as follows: The irony of the patriarchal system resides precisely in the fact that male authority has a material base while male responsibility is normatively constituted… This has made men’s roles and identities confusing and contradictory, and many men express feelings of helplessness, inadequacy, and lack of self-esteem24.

Other social changes, such as granting equal rights to women, challenged traditional masculinities and contributed to violence. Walker’s research on young men in South Africa found that many cited social changes, such as the granting of equal rights to women, as significant factors that destabilised masculinity and contributed to the high levels of sexual violence25. Perceived threats to masculinities are implicated in men committing “corrective rape” on lesbians. Swarr found that the underlying causes of “corrective rape” of butch lesbians was due to the “tripartite threat they pose: to heterosexuality (through their relationships with women); to gender norms (through their expressions of masculinities and disregard for femininities); and to sex (through challenging expectations surrounding somatically female bodies)”26. Thus, significant to the eradication of violence against women is the deconstruction and transformation of destructive masculinities. This emphasis is also evident in the recommendations from research that will be discussed in the next section. 23. I. NIEHAUS, Masculine Domination in Sexual Violence: Interpreting Accounts of Three Cases of Rape in the South African Lowveld, in REID – WALKER (eds.), Men Behaving Differently (n. 17), 65-87, here p. 69. 24. M. SILBERSCHMIDT, Poverty, Male Disempowerment, and Male Sexuality: Rethinking Men and Masculinities in Rural and Urban East Africa, in R. MORRELL – L. OUZGANE (eds.), African Masculinities: Men in Africa from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present, Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005, 189-203, here p. 195. 25. L. WALKER, Men Behaving Differently: South African Men since 1994, in Culture, Health & Sexuality 7 (2005) 224-238, here p. 227. 26. SWARR, Paradoxes (n. 10), p. 963.

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2. Recommendations from the Research on Violence against Women Current research has generated many recommendations and three of these will be discussed in this section: namely, the inclusion of men in strategies to eradicate violence against women; a critical analysis of culture and the deconstruction of biblical texts and theologies used to justify gender inequality; and differential power relationships between women and men. First, the need to include men came from projects involved in engaging men on masculinities and violence against women. The research by Viitanen and Colvin on men in gender transformation programs focused on three themes namely: (1) the “costs of masculinity” men pay for adherence to harmful gender constructs; (2) multiple forms of masculinity; and (3) the human rights framework and contested rights27. The most contentious of these themes was that of the human rights framework and its concept of contested rights because it referenced the constitutional rights of women and LGTBI persons, which many men felt were in direct violation of culture and, as such, became a cause of social disruption. They were frustrated and felt threatened by the “gendered power shifts in both the public and private spheres, citing the impact of these changes at the household (e.g., women’s sexual and reproductive health rights; division of labour), community (e.g., women in the workplace), and societal level”28. The responses of men are both resistant to gender changes as well as supportive, as indicated in the research done by Sonke Gender. This research shows that some men hold deeply alarming attitudes towards women, sex and gender equality. However, it also shows that a growing number of men and boys are strongly opposed to this violence and feel that it has no place in a new democratic South Africa. They recognise that it is a fundamental violation of women’s human rights. These men give voice to the reality that many men are themselves negatively affected by domestic violence and rape. They remind us that boys who live in homes where their fathers abuse their mothers are often terrified by their fathers and the violence they commit and, as a result, can experience problems with depression, anxiety, and aggression that interfere with their ability to pay attention at school. Similarly, they tell us that all men are affected when women they care about are raped or assaulted29. 27. VIITANEN – COLVIN, Lessons Learned (n. 11), p. 8. 28. Ibid., p. 7. 29. Quoted in D. PEACOCK – B. KHUMALO, “Bring Me My Machine Gun”: Contesting Patriarchy Rape Culture in the Wake of the Jacob Zuma Rape Trial, from Politicising Masculinities: Beyond the Persona. Paper presented at an international symposium linking lessons from HIV, sexuality and reproductive health with other areas for rethinking AIDS, gender and development, 15-18 October 2007.

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This research illustrates the complexities of masculinities that refuse to be reduced to any category that assumes to represent all men. The multiplicity of masculinities therefore creates opportunities for alliances with women in the struggle against gender inequality and violence. The theme of culture was mentioned in the research as one of the challenges to gender equality. Carol Nagengast raises questions on the power dynamics involved in the discourse on cultural preservation. She asks: “whose interests are served by traditions and customs that control women’s autonomy, sexuality, production, and reproduction” and “who is defining culture, because culture is referred to as though it was a stable, easily recognizable, static entity?”30. In the context of violence against women, the discourse on culture needs to be interrogated and framed in the language of equality and reverence for the lives of women and LGBTIQ persons. As mentioned earlier, there is a similar struggle between theologies that either support or are against gender equality. Hilkert points out that despite consensus amongst most churches that “women and men are created equally in the image of God and are to be accorded equal human dignity with men. This is true even of those churches who deny ordination to women or argue that women are divinely intended to be subordinate to men”. Yet, there are disagreements on “what constitutes human dignity, fundamental equality, human rights, and just social structures”31. In the African context, The Circle has taken up the struggle for gender equality in both culture and Christianity. For example, as discussed earlier, the Circle theologian Nadar brought violence against women into the theological realm by juxtaposing the experiences of violence by women in South Africa with similar experiences of women in the Christian bible. Similarly, another Circle theologian Ayanga challenges theologies that legitimate the subordination of women even in the face of violence and abuse. The church and its teaching on submissiveness have also not assisted the African woman in this regard. If anything, the church has legitimated and sacralised the culture of silence and the taboo about sexuality. According to church teachings, women are expected to submit to their husbands. For many, submission has meant accepting physical abuse and other unhealthy situations … Can we justify harmful interpretations in the light of the overall teaching of Scripture? 30. C. NAGENGAST, Women, Individual Rights and Cultural Relativity: Power and Difference in Human Rights Debates (Working Paper, 266), East Lansing, MI, Michigan State University Press, 1998, here p. 2. 31. M.C. HILKERT, Cry Beloved Image: Rethinking the Image of God, in A.O. GRAFF (ed.), In the Embrace of God: Feminist Approaches to Theological Anthropology, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 1995, 190-205, pp. 194-195.

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I believe that we cannot do this honestly and in faithfulness to Scripture and the liberating message it contains32.

In the above quote, Ayanga challenges the Christian scriptural teachings on submission in the light of women’s experiences of abuse, and advocates for a re-interpretation of these texts in the light of the liberating message of the Christian bible. The foregoing discussions presented a brief summary of the extensive research being done, both in South Africa and globally, on violence against women. The concluding remarks on the role of theology set the context for the next section, which will discuss the Kairos legacy through the methodology of a prophetic communal theology reflected in the Kairos document. As mentioned in the introduction, the Kairos document represents a contextual theological methodology used during apartheid to confront and replace theologies that supported apartheid. This article contends that it offers a model that can be used to confront theologies that support gender inequality, which, as discussed earlier, is a major contributor to gender relations that fuel violence against women. The next section will discuss four lessons from the methodology used in the Kairos document that can provide a model for churches to respond prophetically, and ecumenically, in the eradication of all forms of violence against women. II. LESSONS FROM THE KAIROS DOCUMENT The discussion will begin with a description of the Kairos Document (1985) taken from the preface that will include the first lesson, and then followed by the other three lessons that have particular relevance for theological responses to violence against women. These lessons are: a participatory method of doing theology; the naming and analysis of prevailing theologies and social analysis; and an alternative prophetic theology supported by a plan of action. 1. First Lesson: The Use of a Participatory Method The Kairos Document is a Christian, biblical and theological comment on the political crisis in South Africa today. It is an attempt by concerned Christians in South Africa to reflect on the situation of death in our country. It is a critique of the current theological models that determine the type of activities 32. H. AYANGA, Religio-Cultural Challenges in Women’s Fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, in T.M. HINGA et al. (eds.), Women, Religion and HIV/AIDS in Africa: Responding to Ethical and Theological Challenges, Pietermaritzburg, Cluster Publications, 2008, 34-48, p. 41.

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the Church engages in to try to resolve the problems of the country. It is an attempt to develop, out of this perplexing situation, an alternative biblical and theological model that will in turn lead to forms of activity that will make a real difference to the future of our country33.

Three characteristics of the Kairos document can be deduced from the above quotation. First, it is explicitly Christian and communitarian. The document was not the work of an individual or group of theologians or clergy, but of a Christian community made up of laity, clergy, and theologians that crossed denominational, political, and racial divisions. This was a radically inclusive community, in a context where Christians were on both sides of the political divide among the oppressed and oppressors. Second, a theological audit was carried out that identified and analysed prevailing theologies operating in churches, and shaping their responses to the “situation of death” in the country. The failure of these theologies to confront and act against apartheid led to the formulation of an alternative prophetic theology. Last, there was a program of action for churches to become involved in concrete ways in the struggle against apartheid. In other words, the prophetic theology had practical consequences: namely, participation in actions that led to liberation from oppression. This process is similar to the hermeneutical circle of liberation theology, also known as the “see, judge, and act” cycle. Thus, the first lesson from the Kairos document is the participatory method used that included a broad spectrum of Christians. The nature of the participatory process is described in the Preface as a series of steps starting with an informal group meeting in Soweto to discuss “the situation and the various responses of the Church, Church leaders, and Christians”34 to apartheid, followed by assigning specific research tasks to individuals who then reported back to the group; then, the writing up of the first draft of the Kairos document, which was circulated widely for comment; and last, the drafting of the final document. Through this participatory process many Christians became more conscious about the different theologies that were dictating the role of churches in the political crisis and, as well, were engaged in the entire process that culminated in the formulation of a prophetic theology and program of action. There was broad based ownership of the Kairos document, which contributed to its effectiveness as an instrument of liberation and change. 33. The Kairos Document – Challenge to the Church: A Theological Comment on the Political Crisis in South Africa, http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/challenge-churchtheological-comment-political-crisis-south-africa-kairos-document-1985#sthash. anVJ3Coq.dpuf. 34. Ibid.

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In this regard the Kairos document differs from the research discussed in the previous section that was undertaken by scholars, who publish findings in books and websites that are generally not accessible to the public and grassroot communities most affected by violence against women. The research is often peer reviewed by other scholars, not the wider community, before being published in journals or books. None of the articles cited have been translated into indigenous languages, or popularised through mass media. For example, The Circle of African Women Theologians have published over fifty books on a range of issues that are oppressive to women in culture, society, and church, and developed liberation theologies for women. However, not much has been done to disseminate the information to the grassroot level of communities. Accountability means, as Collins explains with reference to Black Women’s epistemology, that: “Black feminist thought must be validated by ordinary African-American women” whose responsibility is to “engage in dialogues about their findings with ordinary everyday people”35. This is a kairos call for academic theologians to be accountable in their research to both the wider Christian and public communities. Without a participatory theological process, which includes women who have been sexually violated, perpetrators of violence, LGTBI, clergy, theologians, lay women and men, liberation theologies for women will have little impact on the churches’ role in the elimination of violence against women. Thus, the participatory process, which produced the Kairos document and galvanised many churches to enter into the struggle against apartheid that culminated in the advent of democracy, provides a tested and working model for theological accountability that can galvanise churches to join the struggle to eradicate violence against women. 2. Second Lesson: Name and Critique Prevailing Theologies The moment of truth has compelled us to analyze more carefully the different theologies in our Churches and to speak out more clearly and boldly about the real significance of these theologies. We have been able to isolate three theologies and we have chosen to call them “State Theology”, “Church Theology” and “Prophetic Theology”. In our thoroughgoing criticism of the first and second theologies we do not wish to mince our words. The situation is too critical for that36. 35. P.H. COLLINS, Black Feminist Thought Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, New York, Routledge, 2000, p. 266. 36. The Kairos Document (n. 33), Chapter One: “The Church Is Divided and Its Day of Judgement Has Come”, http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/challenge-church-theological-comment-political-crisis-south-africa-kairos-document-1985-sthash.anVJ3Coq.dpuf.

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The Kairos document, as per the above quotation, was stringent, systematic, and uncompromising in identifying and naming the three different theologies operating in that context: namely, state, church, and prophetic theologies. To illustrate this process the focus will be limited to state theology as it has a direct correlation with the foregoing discussions on violence against women. State theology was defined as “simply the theological justification of the status quo with its racism, capitalism and totalitarianism. It blesses injustice, canonizes the will of the powerful and reduces the poor to passivity, obedience, and apathy … It does it by misusing theological concepts and biblical texts for its own political purposes37. An example of one of the texts used by state theology was Rom 13,1-738. The first verse, for instance, states that authorities are instituted by God and must be obeyed: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God” (NRSV). This text was interpreted as setting out a divine sanction for civic obedience to governments, irrespective of whether they are oppressive or not: it “assumes that in this text Paul is presenting us with the absolute and definitive Christian doctrine about the State, in other words an absolute and universal principle that is equally valid for all times and in all circumstances”39. The interpretation of the text by state theology to legitimise the apartheid government was challenged through different hermeneutical methods, such as contextual theology that examines texts in light of their historical context: “To abstract a text from its context and to interpret it in the abstract is to distort the meaning of God’s Word”40. Further, as noted by the Kairos document, oppressive governments were a common feature in Scripture, and God’s response as seen in the Book of Exodus was liberation from such oppression. Thus, the distortion of Scripture to justify oppression in state theology 37. The Kairos Document (n. 33), Chapter Two: “Critique of State Theology”, http:// www.sahistory.org.za/archive/challenge-church-theological-comment-political-crisissouth-africa-kairos-document-1985-sthash.anVJ3Coq.dpuf. 38. Rom 13,1-7: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s agent for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the agent of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s agents, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due to them: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due”. 39. The Kairos Document (n. 33). 40. Ibid.

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exposed the vested interests of the proponents: that is, it “tells us more about the political options of those who construct this theology than it does about the meaning of God’s Word in this text”41. A critical contribution of the contextual method of interpretation of Scripture is that it challenges literal and acontextual interpretations used to justify oppression. In the context of violence against women, as noted earlier, particular texts are used to legitimate the subordination of women to men, the superiority of men, and the vilification of LGTBI. The contextual approach, together with biblical scholarship, provides a way, as seen in the examples of theologies of The Circle, to challenge and re-interpret texts used to justify oppression of women in light of the overall liberating message of Scripture. Thus, the second lesson for theological accountability to violence against women is to name and critique the prevailing gender theologies, and to apply contextual and biblical scholarship in analysing biblical texts that support these theologies. This theological work has been done by feminist and Circle theologians and the challenge therefore is to integrate and popularise these theologies. Circle theologies are particularly relevant as they not only critique theology, but culture as well, because as Kanyoro argues: “Theological engagement with gender issues seeks to expose harm and injustices that are in society and are extended to Scripture and the teachings and practices of the Church through culture”42. To be able to do this, social analysis is necessary, and that is the next lesson from the Kairos document. 3. Third Lesson: Engage in Social Analysis of Context The necessity of social analysis is critical to countering theologies that apply biblical principles like reconciliation without addressing the unjust social structures of inequality. This critique in the Kairos document was directed to church theology (one of the theologies mentioned together with state theology in the previous section), which tried to apply Christian principles, such as reconciliation and forgiveness without addressing the root causes of racial inequality, oppression, and the violence of apartheid. The following quotation elaborates this point. We have seen how “Church Theology” tends to make use of absolute principles like reconciliation, negotiation non-violence and peaceful solutions 41. Ibid. 42. M.R.A. KANYORO, Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics: An African Perspective (Introductions in Feminist Theology, 9), Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 2002, p. 17.

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and applies them indiscriminately and uncritically to all situations. Very little attempt is made to analyze what is actually happening in our society and why it is happening. It is not possible to make valid moral judgment: about a society without first understanding that society. The analysis of apartheid that underpins “Church Theology” is simply inadequate. The present crisis has now made it very clear that the efforts of Church leaders to promote effective and practical ways of changing our society have failed. This failure is due in no small measure to the fact that “Church Theology” has not developed a social analysis that would enable it to understand the mechanics of injustice and oppression43.

The application of principles without addressing or understanding the fundamental causes of the social reality of oppression, violence, and apartheid, failed churches; hence, the emphasis on social analysis as the starting point of an alternative liberation theology that addresses oppression, and participates in the struggle for justice. The lesson for the context of violence against women is the importance of understanding the root causes as described by research. Thus, the research on violence against women, as discussed earlier, is a critical resource for theological responses that address the root causes, such as gender norms for masculinities, the legacy of violence in society, the subordinate status of women, and the vilification of LGTBI. A multidisciplinary approach provides a critical lens for theological analysis of Scripture and teachings that support male supremacy: a driving force in violence against women. 4. Fourth Lesson: Alternative Prophetic Theology and Plan of Action As noted earlier, in the description of the Kairos document, the ultimate goal was to produce “an alternative biblical and theological model that will in turn lead to forms of activity that will make a real difference to the future of our country”44. There were several “building blocks” used to construct the prophetic theology and plan of action. The building blocks include the following45: 1. Theological support for the struggle against apartheid found in Scripture, and God as one who is not neutral to oppression but sides with the oppressed: “A regime that has made itself the enemy of the people has thereby also made itself the enemy of God. People are made in the image and likeness of God and whatever [we do] to the least of them we do to God (Mt 25:49, 45)”. 43. See The Kairos Document (n. 33), 3.5: “The Fundamental Problem”. 44. See ibid., “Preface”. 45. Ibid.; the building blocks for a prophetic theology are found in Chapter Four.

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2. Hope as a powerful theme in the struggle for justice: “There is hope. There is hope for all of us. But the road to that hope is going to be very hard and very painful. The conflict and the struggle will have to intensify in the months and years ahead because there is no other way to remove the injustice and oppression. But God is with us”. 3. Participation in the struggle for justice: “… the present crisis challenges the whole Church to move beyond a mere ‘ambulance ministry’ to a ministry of involvement and participation”46. 4. Transformation of all church activities to align with the struggle for justice. All of these activities must be re-shaped to be more fully consistent with a prophetic faith related to the kairos that God is offering us today. The evil forces we speak of in baptism must be named. We know what these evil forces are in South Africa today. The unity and sharing we profess in our communion services or Masses must be named. It is the solidarity of the people inviting all to join in the struggle for God’s peace in South Africa. The repentance we preach must be named. It is repentance for our share of the guilt for the suffering and oppression in our country. This Kairos process lays out the framework for creating similar building blocks that can culminate in a prophetic theology that replaces theologies that fuel violence against women. The next section will conclude with some examples of theological resources working together with feminist and Circle theologies that can be building blocks to a search for an alternative theology that will eradicate violence against women.

CONCLUSION SISTER’S KEEPERS – CALLING CHURCHES TO ACCOUNT FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN The foregoing discussions on the four lessons taken from the Kairos document support the argument of this paper that this methodology, particularly its participatory process, is inclusive of all affected, which is the local community and parish, particularly survivors of violence and their families, the LGTBI-community, and men, including male perpetrators. Theological anthropology that deals with theologies of the human person are central to this process. The fundamental belief that is common to all 46. Ibid., Chapter Five: “Challenges to Action”.

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Christians is the dignity of all persons based on their being created in the image of the Trinitarian God, who embodies characteristics including difference, equality, relationality, community, interdependence, oneness, love, and justice. Liberation theologian Leonard Boff summarises the model of the Trinity as follows, In the Trinity there is no domination by one side, but convergence of the Three in mutual acceptance and giving. They are different but none is greater or lesser, before or after. Therefore a society that takes its inspiration from trinitarian communion cannot tolerate class differences, dominations based on power (economic, sexual or ideological) that subjects those who are different to those who exercise that power and marginalizes the former from the latter47.

Hence, this foundational basis for theological anthropology offers a theological starting point that has consensus among churches that could spearhead the appropriation of the Kairos methodology in the search for a prophetic communal and ecumenical theology that will empower churches to engage in the struggle for the eradication of violence against women. The Kairos process therefore is powerful in that it provides a contextual and successful theological legacy that confronted oppression and participated in the struggle for justice. Herein lies the hope for an accountable response by churches that can contribute to the eradication of violence against women. St. Augustine College of South Africa Department of Theology PO Box 44782 Linden 2104 Johannesburg South Africa [email protected]

Nontando HADEBE

47. L. BOFF, Trinity and Society, Eugene, OR, Wipf & Stock, 1988, p. 151.

CHRISTIAN POLITICAL THEOLOGY IN THE ARAB WORLD THE EGYPTIAN CONTEXT

INTRODUCTION Given the relatively small numbers of Copts in a majority Muslim world, Christians find themselves in a lower social stratum of the Egyptian state. This was especially felt during the presidency of Sadat1. Feeling socially and political marginalized, many Copts retreated into micro societies (that is, slums and church environs) in parallel to the macro society. Copts separated from other Egyptians in many public activities by emphasizing their religious identity. As a consequence, religious identity became the core of Coptic society. Such an exclusive stance based solely on religious identity caused several problems: a wide separation of Copts from their national identity as Egyptians; the disproportionate authority of religious leaders viewed as the only mediators between the state and the Coptic community; a disinterest in Arabic culture and language now identified with Muslims; and an overestimation of martyrdom as the only possible religious and public witness. Until the Arab Spring, most Copts failed to articulate their political status in a political language. It was after the Arab Spring that the perception of Coptic communities changed. They, together with their Muslim brethren, could directly represent and defend their interests without mediation through religious leaders (the Patriarchate) by developing a framework of action built on rights and obligations of the state. First, this essay will present a linguistic tension of Copts with the Arabiclanguage consideration of the term “political theology”. Thus, the Arabic linguistic tension becomes the crux of mistrust for Coptic ideas of parallel worlds. Second, as a follow-up to the aforementioned points, this essay will explicate certain factors responsible for the alienation of Copts from Egyptian state affairs prior to the Arab Spring, namely the Coptic identity built upon martyrdom and an alienating spirituality towards the World, an alienation with the Arabic language, and the downwards-spiral relationship between the Church’s authority and the Egyptian state. Third, the essay will explicate the changing attitude of inclusivity and collaboration of Copts with Muslims, and the emerging question and possibility of a Coptic political theology. 1. H. LĀBĪB, al-Kanīsaal-miṣriyya: tawazunāt al-dīnwal-daūla, Cairo, Dar Nahḍet Miṣr, 2012, pp. 18-19.

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I. ISLAMIC INFLUENCE ON THE ARABIC CONCEPT OF POLITICAL THEOLOGY Al-lāhūt al-siyāsī translates as “political theology” in Arabic. The word for politics in Arabic, siyāsa, is not derived from the Greek word polis, which means “city”. Rather, it is derived from the verb sāsa, yasūsu2, which means “to groom”, that is to train and care for an animal. Thus, the verb has the meaning of taming and domination. Siyāsa therefore is connected to the idea of domination and control, rather than to the idea of an order or system inherent polis: “city”. In Arabic, the word lāhūt, “theology”, carries the meaning of three separate words in English: “theology”, “deity” and “divinity”. This word is connected to what is divine, God. In an Islamic context, God is transcendental, omnipotent, and is the One who possesses power, control and domination. In Islamic thought, God cannot be immanent, never close to man. The Quran says: “It was We Who created man, and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him: for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein” (Q. 50 Qāf: 16)3. Traditionally, this verse is separated into two parts. First, “It was We Who created man, and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him”. In this part, it is generally held that it is God who speaks. Second, “For We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein”, is attributed to the angels. God, it is generally thought, is nearer to man via mediation of his angels. “For God, the omnipotent, cannot be near to man”. This is in the Sunni tradition of commentaries4. According to the Shia interpretation5, God is near to man by his knowledge. This gives an idea about what comes to mind when an Arab hears the word, political theology. It is thought to be the combination of what is mundane and what is divine. Thus, in the mind of an Arabic speaker, influenced by Islamic thought, the term “political theology” implies the justification of political domination, through the invocation of divine will. Consequently, as it is perceived as the theocratic justification of political power, most Egyptians consider “political theology” reminiscent of the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, and of the Brotherhood’s rise to power in 2013. Therefore, an Egyptian will be inclined to think that political theology is akin to the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood. 2. M. AL-FĪRŪZĀBĀDĪ (d. 817/1415), al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ, Cairo, Mu᾿assasat al-Risāla, 1987, p. 710. 3. Quran quotations used here are from A. Yusuf Ali’s translation, 1937. 4. See the commentary of IBN KAṮĪR (d. 774/1373), Tafsīr al- Qur᾿ān al-῾aẓīm, vol. 13, Cairo, Dar ῾Ālam al-Kutub, 2013, pp. 185-186. 5. See the commentary of F.H. AL-ṬUBRUSĪ (d. 548/1153), Maǧma῾ al-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qur᾿ān, vol. 9, Cairo, Dār al-῾Ulūm, 1995, p. 239.

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There are two main political conceptions in Egypt. First, a theocratic system based on ideas, such as those of the Muslim Brotherhood. Second, a secular system of separation between state and religion. The first trend, dominant among Egyptians, provokes fear amongst Christians concerned that they might be relegated to a less important status in the Muslim theocratic system. They could easily become ahl al-ḏimma, “second degree citizens”. II. LINGUISTIC ALIENATION Egyptian Copts have a strained relationship with the Arabic language. For the majority of Christians, Arabic is not considered their first language. Rather, they hold that Coptic is, even though Coptic language is reserved for liturgical worship only. Reports indicate that Christian students in secondary and university institutions are disinterested in learning Arabic language6. This creates a situation of linguistic alienation for Christians. Most Christians consider that the Arabic language is not theirs, but rather a language imposed by the conquerors. This phenomenon has given rise to a form of Coptic nationalism, a growing movement within the Coptic community that considers other Egyptians, other than Copts, to be descendants of invaders and migrants due to the Muslim conquest of Egypt by the Arabs, which took place between 639 and 646 AD and was overseen by the Rashidun Caliphate. Arabic language, thought of as a foreign language by some Copts, is perceived to exacerbate the marginalization of Copts today. Copts think of themselves as non-genuine Arabs7, and promote a lackadaisical attitude towards formal Arabic learning. As the medium of education is via the Arabic language, Copts fear that their children may be forced to learn the Arabic from Qur’anic verses. Attitudes such as these come with serious consequences. An immediate and major result is that a majority of Copts have become alienated from Arabic civilization. Few Christian literary works, treatises and concepts are found in Arabic. Linguistic alienation removes the instrument of expression for a people. Responding to this threatening phenomenon, Taha Hussein, an Egyptian Muslim scholar, holds that there is a need for Copts to cease looking 6. T. HUSSEIN, Mustaqbal al-ṯaqāfafīMiṣr, Cairo, al-Hay᾿a al-Miṣriyya al-῾Āmma li-lKitāb, 2013, pp. 357-361. 7. M. ḤANNĀ sees that Egyptian identity is composed of seven pillars (historical and geographical): Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Coptic, Arabic, African and Mediterranean, The Seven Pillars of the Egyptian Identity, Cairo, General Egyptian Book Organization, 1994.

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at the Arabic language as the language of the other and to integrate its dynamism into their history8. Christian traditions support this view. According to Christian doctrine, when God wanted to reveal himself, he pronounced his Word in human history. The Word of God was made incarnate at a specific moment in history, in a geographical space and using a specific language. God communicates with humanity using human language. The Arabic language could very well be one of those languages through which divinity addresses his people. It becomes imperative for Copts to embrace their Arabic culture and the heritage it gives, including the Arabic language, to be able to access the wealth of the rich historical values of the Egyptian civilization. III. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO ASSUME AND PRESERVE CHRISTIAN IDENTITY? At the core of Christian identity in Egypt is the concept of martyrdom. The idea of martyrdom plays a vital role in constructing the identity of the Coptic community. Copts are proud of their historical contributions to Christian Monasticism. It has given birth to holy men such as Anthony of the Desert (d. 17 January, 356) and Paul the Hermit (d. ca. 341). The call to a solitary life in the desert as a witness of one’s faith, with the rigours that such life in the desert is built, is based on the spirituality of martyrdom. It is a spirituality that requires alienation from the world for the elevation of the soul towards a higher goal. The Copts ties to martyrdom as spirituality has traditionally shaped their world view towards the notion of state and religious relationships. It promoted a separation, a passive participation of Copts towards the social issues of the state. Intrinsic to the idea of identity for Copts is the liberating or redemptive role of the memory of martyrs. It is felt that distancing from the world by means of the difficult and perilous path of solitude, whether in the desert or by disconnecting from the macro society, is necessary for salvation. However, such exclusive ideas of Copts towards the world goes contrary to the Christian traditions of the West. Contrasting the Coptic model of the memorializing of martyrs to Western Christian thought, Metz, speaking of victims as a liberating and redemptive principle, feels that Incarnation and humanism are called to play important roles as tools in constructing a Christian identity. Christian concepts of God’s eternal and divine Word 8. HUSSEIN, Mustaqbal (n. 6), pp. 357-361.

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becoming Man for the salvation of the world promote an inclusive attitude of Christians towards the affairs of the world, with an emphasis on the importance of “humanness” and the world9. Humanism takes into consideration cultural factors. One such cultural element is language. IV. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE EGYPTIAN STATE 1. The Nasser Era (1953-1970) In the early twentieth century, and before July 1952, Copts were treated as Egyptian citizens, able to exercise their rights and obligations towards the state. However, the Church started to experience turbulent times, especially in the aftermath of the kidnapping of the patriarch, Yusāb (Joseph) II on 25 July 1954 by Ǧamā῾at al-Umma al-Qibṭiyya (the Association of the Coptic Nation)10. Following the death of Yusāb II, Cyril VI was invested as the Patriarch of Alexandria in 1959. At the start of the papacy of Cyril VI, the Church established relations with the state based on a mutual admiration between President Nasser and the Pope as articulated by Mohamed Hassanein Heikal11. This resulted in a partnership enforcing the state’s acknowledgement of the Patriarch, not only as the spiritual head of the Coptic community, but also as its temporal representative. This was in exchange for the steadfast loyalty of the Church towards the regime12. This arrangement enjoined the state to abstain from interfering in the internal affairs of the Church, as it had during the crisis following the kidnapping of Yusāb II. This was a symbiotic relationship, whereby the state’s recognition of the hierarchy of the Church gave Copts some leverages in state affairs. The state got to solidify its hold of power not only in Egypt, but also in Ethiopia, where Coptic sister churches exist. The state’s increasing recognition by Copts within and outside of Egypt strengthened President Nasser’s ambitions against Israel with neighbouring nations of Egypt. Hence, the era of stronger ties between the state and the Church13. 9. See Y. ABŪ SAYF, al-Aqbāṭwa-l-qawmiyya al-῾arabiyya (dirāsaistiṭlā῾iyya), Beirut, Markaz Dirāsāt al-Waḥda al-῾arabiyya, 22011, pp. 149-151. 10. https://to.almasryalyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=253823. 11. M. HEIKAL, Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat, New York, Random House, 1983, section 4, ch. 3. 12. See ABŪ SAYF, al-Aqbāṭwa-l-qawmiyya al-῾arabiyya (dirāsaistiṭlā῾iyya) (n. 9), pp. 149-151. 13. LĀBĪB, al-Kanīsaal (n. 1), pp. 18-19.

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2. The Sadat Era (1970-1981) In the aftermath of Egypt’s defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967, religious institutions became more influential in Egyptian society, following a general sense of the state’s failure. When Sadat came to power and succeeded in winning the war of 1973 (at least politically, it is generally held), he tried enforcing his sovereignty by promoting a strong and non-tolerant Islamic front in Egypt. Patriarch Shenouda III, the successor to Cyril VI, took a reactionary path to Sadat’s aims14. He began the clericalization of the Coptic Church as a countermeasure to Sadat’s project of Islamization as a national project. This clericalization gave the Patriarch more power and authority in his relationship with the state’s administration. Problems erupted as President Sadat opened the door to Islamist movements (Muslims Brothers, Salafists, etc.) to eliminate the influence of the communists and the left wing in Egypt15. The fundamentalist groups used by Sadat’s administration engaged in frequent fights with members of the left wing. Their violence often extended to the Copts on many occasions. Several examples would be: The Khanka event (1972), which is considered the first sectarian event in Egypt in the twentieth century. In that year, a group of radical Islamists destroyed a church in Khanka located north of Cairo. In response, Pope Shenouda delegated a group of bishops and priests to celebrate a Mass on the ruins of the church16. Sadat considered the Pope’s action as a silent revolt in challenge to his authority and did not take the gesture lightly. He interpreted this as an attempt by Shenouda to use his religious authority as a leverage for secular authority in all matters pertaining to Copts. It was a show of power from the Patriarch17. On 17 January 1977, the Church held a conference to discuss the drafts of laws proposed in parliament relating to the implementation of Sharia. The Church then issued a declaration against the implementation of Sharia on non-Muslim citizens. As a result of this declaration, they implied that there should be freedom of belief and worship, acknowledgement of Christian marriage, and a just representation of Christians in the state’s administration. The draft also called for a three-day fast from 31 January 14. See M.W. HANNA, Excluded and Unequal, in The Century Foundation, https://tcf. org/content/report/christian-exclusion-from-egypts-security-state/?agreed=1. 15. A. SHALĀBI, Ṯaūrat 23 yuliu min Anwar al-Sādāt, šaḫṣiyyatihwa῾aṣrih, Cairo, Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1990, p. 110. 16. Read the report made by a Commission of the Egyptian Parliament on 28 November 1972, https://www.coptichistory.org/untitled_4427.htm. For English translation: https:// www.arabwestreport.info/en/year-2009/week-13/2-report-dr-jamal-al-%E2%80%98utayfi-alkhankah-sectarian-events. 17. HEIKAL, Autumn of Fury (n. 11), ch. 4.

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to 3 February, 1977. Sadat considered this action as a direct message to the West challenging his power18 . Pope Shenouda visited the United States of America in April 1977 and met with President Carter. Sadat held this action to be subordinate to his office as president of Egypt. He disliked any form of communication between the American administration and the Egyptian Church. In September 1981, at the height of the escalation of tensions between the Pope and Sadat, the latter instructed the police to arrest 1,531 political opposition figures. Shenouda was one of them. He stripped him of the state’s recognition of his office and banished him to a monastery in Wadi Natrun19. Pope Shenouda, in his writings, became the sole representative of Coptic Christians, ignoring the input of laypersons20. His works suggest that Coptic Christians are not Arabs, and even called for a Coptic nationalism, enabling Christians to live in a social and theological ghetto that alienates Christians from Arabic culture and philosophy. 3. The Mubarak Era (1981-2011) Mubarak sought to reconcile the broken relations between the state and the Church. As an incentive, he gave some authority back to Shenouda to act as mediator between the state and Coptic citizens. This was a special arrangement, whereby the desires of the Copts were made known to the administration through the Patriarch and, in return, the government responded to their demands via the patriarchate21. A consequence of this arrangement, however, was that the Christian presence in society became isolated and they took refuge in the Church. Thus, the Pope was perceived as an outspoken champion of the rights of Egyptian Christians, and he supported the regime politically. We may say that the state had given up a share of its own authority over a certain group of citizens to guarantee the Church’s loyalty in return. On the other hand, the Church saw the Coptic Pope as a figure who ensured its safety and security, which could not be obtained through another democratically elected regime22. 18. https://eipss-eg.org/‫والرئيس‬-‫الكاهن‬-‫قصة‬-‫ـ‬-‫والسياسة‬-‫الأقباط‬/#_ftn10. 19. See, M. ALESSIA, Divide et Impera: The Political Application of Sectarianism in the Egyptian Context. From the Sadat Years to the Reign of Mubarak (1970-2011), in D. MARCO (ed.), Religious Violence, Political Ends: Nationalism, Citizenship and Radicalization in the Middle East and Europe, Hildesheim, Olms, 2018, 39-54. 20. Cf. HEIKAL, Autumn of Fury (n. 11), ch. 12. 21. LĀBĪB, al-Kanīsaal (n. 1), pp. 52-59. 22. M.῾AFĪFĪ, “Ma῾an fī al-hamm al-῾āmm: Aṣwāt qibṭiyya qabl 25 yanāyir”, al-Tārīḫ al-šafawī, vol. 3, al-Ḍa῾āyin, al-Markaz al-῾Arabī li-l-Abḥāṯ wa-Dirāsat al-siyāsāt, 2014.

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4. The Revolution of 25 January 2011 With the Revolution of 25 January 2011, a new relationship began between the Church’s authority and the Copts on one hand, and between the Copts and the state on the other. Looking to Christian Coptic activists engaged in politics such as Georges Isaac and Amir Iskandar, one finds that they were a rare phenomenon from 2005 and, as political activists, they were not liked by Pope Shenouda III. The January Revolution of 2011 was a shock and surprise for the Church. It had lost control of her Coptic youth who participated in the street protests despite the Church’s call to refrain from participation. This worried the Patriarch, who felt he was losing power over the Christians, and that this would, consequently, weaken his position in the eyes of the state’s civil authorities23. The incidents of the revolution are considered the symbols of the loss of power of the Patriarch over many Christians. This reached its climax at the Maspero events of October 2011. Coptic citizens were gathered protesting the demolition of Atfeeh Church and then started a sit-in protest. They sat in front of the headquarters of the Egyptian Radio and TV known as Maspero. It is generally held that it was the military police who opened fire on the protestors and about 28 people were killed. That was a historic move by the Copts against the state without the mediation of the Church, or the Pope24. 5. The Church and Morsi’s Withdrawal in 201325 This is generally known as “the corrective revolution”. It was a popular revolt initiated by the people and supported by the military chiefs against Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood president. Those who refer to it as a coup d’état in Egypt are generally the Muslim Brotherhood and those groups opposed to the deposing of President Morsi. When the Minister of Defence declared that Morsi had been deposed, he was surrounded by Patriarch Tawadros II and the Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al Tayeb, symbols of the religious support of Christians and 23. M. ALMONĪR, al-Kanīsa al-Miṣriyyawa ṯaūratyanāyir: al-mawāqifwal-taḥaūlāt, https://eipss-eg.org/‫والتحولات‬-‫المواقف‬-‫يناير‬-‫وثورة‬-‫المصرية‬-‫الكنيسة‬/. 24. E. IBRAHIM, Justice Denied: Egypt’s Maspero Massacre One Year On, http://english. ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/54821/Egypt/Politics-/Justice-denied-Egypts-Masperomassacre-one-year-on.aspx. 25. This is generally known as “the corrective revolution”. It was a popular revolt initiated by the people and supported by the military chefs against Morsi the Muslim brother president. Those who call it as a coup d’état in Egypt are generally the Muslim Brothers and the oppositions of the successor of president Morsi.

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Muslims alike. This act is interpreted to be a re-establishment of the Church-state relationship as an achievable goal at the time of Mubarak. In addition, the arrival of the Minister of Defence to the presidency created more disagreement between the youth, the protagonists of the 25 January Revolution, and the Church in matters of political opinions. One can observe that the 25 January Revolution brought about a historical shift in the way many young Christians perceived their role in relationship with the state. In the meantime, while Pope Shenouda and the Coptic authorities were defending the ahl al-ḏimma (the protectorate) model, a new generation of Christians started contesting this approach and searching for a new model: a model in which Christians do not identify themselves only as Christians in relationship with the state, but also as citizens, regardless of religious affiliation. Unfortunately, this new approach is seen as an affront against26 the traditional authority of the Patriarch and considered, somehow, disobedient to the Church’s faith. In the minds of Coptic activists, the Patriarch did little to defend the rights of Copts. They see that the Patriarch’s adherence to authority comes at the expense of the Copts’ long-term ability to defend their rights. In addition, fewer priests co-ordinated with the Maspero Youth Union27, founded in 2011 after the Maspero Massacre. The union provided Coptic activists an important platform to express their demands outside the Patriarch’s politics. Many activists, since the Revolution of 25 January 2011, have hoped that the Patriarch would cease playing a worldly role, thereby allowing Copts to play their critical political role as Egyptian citizens. If Copts do not engage politically in society, they risk being viewed as submissive supporters of any government. This creates another conflict inside the Church itself, where young Christians feel rejected by the Church, accused of betrayal by the political powers. A theological question arises: On which side does God stand? What is the difference between being a peacemaker and being submissive? Will God’s kingdom only be built in the spiritual dimension, in the afterlife, or also in the temporal dimension? This raises a theological reflection on what is the just position: Is Jesus then where people are revolting against an unjust system represented by the temporal power? What can someone do when the spiritual power is allied with the temporal power? Is it a sin or a duty to resist the temporal one defended by the spiritual? Political theology in Egypt is, 26. Les coptes, Égyptiens parmi les Égyptiens, s’associent à la révolte, interview with Christian Cannuyer, La Croix, https://www.la-croix.com/Religion/Actualite/Les-coptesEgyptiens-parmi-les-Egyptiens-s-associent-a-la-revolte-_NG_-2011-02-01-562812. 27. Ibid.

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therefore, born from the oppressed classes, rather than from the specialized academic sphere of theology, as it had been in Germany in the second part of the twentieth century. As such, political theology in Egypt is closer to Latin American Liberation Theology, inspired by the spiritual demands of the people, and their political plight. V. CAN THE SEEDS OF A CHRISTIAN POLITICAL THEOLOGY BE SEEN? In this context, some Christians have taken the martyrs’ spirituality – the idea of dying for God’s kingdom in heaven – and applied it to the temporal and political context: they are prepared to die in order to build God’s kingdom on earth. Since martyrs give their lives to witness to their faith, Christian citizens would give up their lives for a better future for humans in Egypt. In this context, martyrdom should be understood as a testimony for the truth and also as an act of love for the other. The way these young people reflect and act is a practical example of what Metz has theorized as the narrative of martyrdom28. One can notice here a theology of resistance, not just against political power, but also against Church authorities. It is interesting to see what Mina Daniel, a 21-year-old young Christian man said: “Church represents a spiritual authority, nothing more. It does not have the right to advise people not to revolt against the political system”29. Also, he adds: “I have participated in the revolution with the conviction that I will not live, I will die for. But, I believe that I obtain a better future for other generations”30. Two years later he was shot dead by the military police force. In recent times, three writers have attempted to rethink and criticize state-Church relations, even daring to make suggestions for improving this relationship, and, as a result, aim to assist better integrating Copts into Egyptian society. These are Kamal Zakher, Yousef Abou Seif and Abba Matta El Meskeen. Since the first two are lay persons, they are not considered to reflect the official opinions of the Coptic Orthodox Church, as the Church emphasizes clericalism as the only source for teaching. During the patriarchate of Pope Shenouda III, these theologians were looked at with suspicion by Church’s authorities. However, given the most recent engagements of Christians in political matters, one can see 28. A.B. LAKSANA, The Narrative of Martyrdom as Postmodern Way of Doing a Modern Liberation Theology, in Diskursus (Jurnal Filsafat Dan Teologi Sekolah Tinggi Filsafat Driyarkara) 14 (2015) 80-100. 29. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00KorYz7Zas. 30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6JcZEtSClY.

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their affirmation for the need of some sort of political theology to help and guide Christians in their responsibility towards the state. VI. THE COMPLEX OF PERSECUTION AND SPIRITUALITY OF SUBMISSION IN THE THOUGHTS OF ABBA MATTA There have been attempts made by some Christian activists and clergy, represented on a spiritual level by Father Matta El Meskeen. His position is considered the opposite of Pope Shenouda’s conception and practical comprehension of Church-state relations. It is worth mentioning that, even if some of his writings were published before Shenouda III became Patriarch, these writings are still influential among Copts. He has a more monastic and spiritual concept of how the relationship between Christians and the state should function. He represents an unofficial, but popular position of the Coptic Church and her adherents until the installation of the patriarchate of Shenouda III. These ideas may be considered as an “out of context political theology”. Yet, Matta El Meskeen has been considered the most influential spiritual and theological master in the Coptic Church for more than five decades. Let us consider one of his books in order to have a glimpse of his conception of the state-Church relationship in direct opposition to the thoughts of Pope Shenouda III. We examine Chapter 3 of his “Articles on Politics and Religion”31 (1963), titled “The Complex of Persecution”: Persecuted for generations, Copts began to identify themselves with the martyrdom model. According to this model, the only possible Christian witness is the acceptance of persecution and a retreat into the spiritual level. In this chapter, Matta El Meskeen was faithful to the spiritual monastic Coptic line, built on a spirituality of repentance and emphasizing detachment from worldly goods. He quotes many verses from the New Testament that speak about persecution. “Those who follow Christ and work in the right way are subject to persecution”32, he claims. So, Matta exhorts Christians to change their hearts in silence and never complain about persecution, but rather to accept it with real joy33. It is his belief that in doing so, a real miracle will happen. The person will discover that: “Their situation is better than the others”. 31. M. AL-MISKĪN, Maqālāt bayn al-siyāsa wa-l-dīn, Dayr Abū Maqār, 1963. 32. Ibid., p. 57. 33. Ibid.

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“How can a Christian citizen overcome persecution?”, Matta writes, “By being detached from the vanities of this world. Also, to leave the matter in the hands of the state represented by the government to do what must be done. This entails leaving it for the Muslim clergy who try to make awareness among their faithful in order to allow equality for Christians in the society”34. What should Christians do? “They must resort to Christian charity and live according to the teaching of Christ in society and to love the persecutors”35. This spirituality of submission illustrates why every Coptic discussion revolves around discrimination, persecution, defiance, and violence against Christian Churches. For Matta, persecution is something that has already been prophesied by Jesus: the cross of all those who follow the way of righteousness, for someday, God will render his justice. A Christian has nothing but to wait for the divine, miraculous intervention of God. One can notice the resemblance between the Muslim concept of obedience towards the political power and the Coptic narrative on persecutions. For example, according to Ibn Baz, it is morally wrong to protest against the governor of a state. If the governor is unjust, one should ask himself, “What is my sin?”. For God has appointed the governor that I deserve, so I must repent36. One can see that these Coptic positions are influenced more by Islamic thoughts than Christian ideas on persecution. This framework ideology of submissiveness has dominated Egypt for the last four decades, where the most influential religious currents have been the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. In the last four decades, Christians have taken refuge inside the walls of the Church. The political context obliged Christians to abandon political life and wait for divine intervention from God. Copts experienced a direct and complete divorce from political affairs. It would seem that such a view was inspired by a certain links mode of interpretation of the sacred text of the Bible. In this context, we must ask how the Bible has been interpreted and used in the construction of theological discourse. Influenced by Muslims in their reading of the Quran, most Christians in Egypt read the Bible in the same way as Muslims do, that is, literally. For instance, verses which read: “In the World you will have hardship…”; “Blessed are you the persecuted ones…”; “The Lord defends his beloved ones while they sleep…” are all taken literally, and as a just reason for submission, in the hope of a divine intervention. In other words, the human agent is called to be passive in matters of world governance (Ps 91,5 & 1 Peter 3, Luke 21). 34. Ibid., p. 58. 35. Ibid., p. 62. 36. S. ABŪ ṢĀWĪ, Ma ḥukm al-ḫurūǧ ῾alā al-ḥākim?, https://mawdoo3.com/_‫ما_حكم‬ ‫الخروج_على_الحاكم‬.

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However, in reality, and in spite of Christians’ solicitude for God’s intervention, divine intervention comes too late, or not at all. As a result, some Copts have begun to realize that this monastic ascetic methodology of analysing the world has played a role in positioning Christians at the margins of society for almost five decades. Those who have tried an alternative route by joining political parties and voting have been ostracized by ecclesial authorities. Also, Pope Shenouda implored Copts not to join the waves of revolts against the government in the Revolution of 2011, owing to the prevalent understanding with Mubarak that presented the Church as a miniature of a state. Such a radical stance was a deliberate schema by Pope Shenouda III both to consolidate his power and to protect Christians, since his emergence in 197037. According to the Patriarch’s plans, all political theology has a role simply to strengthen a greater recognition of ecclesiastical authority with its relationship with the state. As such, it goes against the position of separation between state and religion. The Patriarch feared that this separation would lead the state to a secular system, which would adopt laws which are inconsistent with the Christian faith. For example, there is no civil marriage in Egypt. In fact, clergy, both Christian and Muslim, are the legal representatives for validating marriages. In 2014, there were debates among the state’s judiciary class and citizens about rendering civil marriage lawful. The Coptic Orthodox Church was strongly against civil marriage38. Another instance was the debate on the status of the death penalty. The Church’s official position was in favour39. This was in accord with the state’s position. One may realize that this was due to the lack of solid moral theological development of thought in the Church’s history. Also, it shows that the Egyptian theological positions are sometimes compromised in solidarity with the state’s position, in order to seek the favour of the state in supporting ecclesiastic hierarchical independence. There is a fundamental connection between political and linguistic alienation and the lack of emphasis on the humanity of Christ. Coptic Orthodox theology is greatly theocentric to the point where the humanity of Jesus is neglected both on the theological level and the pastoral level. The reason for this becomes clear, if one takes into perspective the dominance of Islam, and her denial of the Incarnation. Islam is a highly theocentric religion: on theological, juridical, spiritual and practical levels. In contrast, in Western theology, reflection on the idea of the Incarnation, 37. HEIKAL, Autumn of Fury (n. 11), ch. 4. 38. An interview with Pope Tawadros II in the Egyptian daily newspaper al-Masry al-Youm, on 26 December 2014, https://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/612062. 39. According to the report of the Egyptian association Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights, 14 December 2008, https://www.maatpeace.org/old/node/492.htm.

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together with a philosophical reflection on the self, has played a fundamental role in shaping the religious-free subject. In Coptic theology, the absence of emphasis on the Incarnation, together with the inability to act politically, enables a martyrological approach to human life. As suggested by Metz, the martyrological approach can be seen in light of “dangerous memory”40, that is, that the idea of martyrdom empowers the oppressed against the oppressor by nursing their hope. CONCLUSION This current paper has presented two dynamics between religion and politics in Egypt, the submissive model and the martyr model. These two models are influenced by different approaches to Christology. The first allows for the shadow of Christ’s humanity; while the second considers that the emphasis on humanity can make Christians play an active role in society, while also constructing a different voice from the dominant Muslim one. The protectorate model followed by some patriarchs has played an important role in the alienation of the Copts in their own country. Contrarily, there has arisen a tendency to redefine the approach to Churchstate relations among lay people and youth who seek a more just society. The former movement can theologically be described in the terminology of Metz as a narrative of martyrdom, while the latter can be described as the searching for the renovation of the Church and of society by seeking liberation from religion and political oppression. Finally, the previous points show that the Church in Egypt is still alive, especially through the voice of young people and lay persons who are prepared to contribute to the development of a theologically incarnated discourse that, hopefully, helps the Church in its reflection of her mission on earth. Paters Dominicanen Ravenstraat 98 BE-3000 Leuven Belgium [email protected]

John Gabriel KHALIL

40. J.B. METZ, Memoria Passionis, Paris, Cerf, 2009, pp. 235-240.

SLUT-SHAMING IN PHILIPPINE POLITICS AND IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH A FEMINIST THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION ON LEILA DE LIMA AND MARY MAGDALENE

INTRODUCTION The name “Mary Magdalene” often evokes associations with “prostitute”, “adulterous woman”, and “sinner”. While these notions are not precisely based on Scripture, Mary Magdalene has been remembered in church history as a “slut” who needed to repent. Feminist theologians and contemporary church liturgy have sought to rectify this image by recovering a more respectable image of Mary Magdalene based on Scripture, although the damage has been done. Similarly, Leila de Lima, a Philippine senator, gained a negative reputation after her affair with her driver-body guard became national news. The image of Mary Magdalene and Leila de Lima both underwent a damaged reputation. Feminist theologizing can take place through articulating a hermeneutic reciprocity between how Mary Magdalene is remembered in Christian tradition and Leila de Lima’s situation. A hermeneutic reciprocity is a mutual interpretation of Christian faith and human experience by asking the questions like, “What does God’s Word and the teachings of the church say about this situation of social injustice, which, in turn, also sheds light on this Revelation-Faith”1? In this chapter, I will offer a feminist theological reflection of this event in Philippine politics using the see-judge-act framework and a feminist methodology of analysis, deconstruction, and reconstruction, based on Mary Magdalene. The see-judge-act method is based on Joseph Cardijn and articulated by John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra as looking, judging, and acting. Seeing or looking entails an investigation into concrete realities, judging comprises the evaluation and valuation of actual situations considering the Christian faith, and acting involves deciding on possible and necessary Christian responses concerning the previous two 1. M. TEJIDO – J. ACEVEDO, Ang Sirkulong Pastoral Sa Pagtuturo Ng TH 141, in Readings for Theology 141: A Theology of the Catholic Social Vision, Office of Research and Publications, Ateneo de Manila University, 2007, 85-90, p. 88.

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steps2. This approach is appropriate to doing political theology because it facilitates in theological activity a hermeneutical circle between theory and socio-political engagement3. Nevertheless, feminist perspectives need to be incorporated into this process for political theology and liberation theology to be gender inclusive4. One way of doing this is by integrating the approach to doing feminist theology derived from Elizabeth Johnson’s discussion on how feminist Christology is carried out5. This process includes a feminist analysis that is sensitive to sexism and its manifestation in power structures (i.e., patriarchy), and ways of thinking (i.e., androcentrism). The next phase entails a critique of tradition and existing theologies that results in a deconstruction of particular notions perceived as universal. The third step comprises a reconstructive engagement with tradition, wherein elements that have the potential to be liberating for women are brought forward, reinterpreted, and employed in theologizing. The two approaches can be combined as See, Judge (Analyse, Deconstruct, Reconstruct), Act. This combination not only ensures that a feminist perspective is incorporated in the hermeneutical circle, but also, more strongly, challenges the process of faith reflection or judgment in the see-judge-act method, so that Scripture and church tradition are not merely applied, but are also interpreted and transformed in the process. The following parts exercise the combined approach. In the “see” phase, slut-shaming against Leila de Lima, a Filipina senator, will be looked into. In the “judge” part, the representation of Mary Magdalene in Western Catholic tradition is analysed as a form of slut-shaming. This representation has been dismantled by feminists who seek to bring Mary Magdalene’s “less sexual” image from Scriptures to the fore. The case of Leila de Lima is placed vis-à-vis the reconstructed image of Mary Magdalene, so that an alternative reconstruction can be explored. This alternative reconstruction can contribute to strengthening women’s solidarity, which will be the emphasis of the “act” section.

2. Ibid., p. 85; JOHN XXIII, Mater et Magistra, 15 May 1961, art. 236, http://w2.vatican. va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_15051961_mater.html. 3. TEJIDO – ACEVEDO, Ang Sirkulong Pastoral Sa Pagtuturo Ng TH 141 (n. 1), p. 88; G. GUTIERREZ, Liberation Theology, in J. DWYER (ed.), The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 1994, 548-553. 4. M.A. GONZALEZ, Latina Feminist Theology: The Past, Present, and Future, in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 25 (2009) 150-155, pp. 150-151. 5. E. JOHNSON, Feminist Christology, in EAD., Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology, New York, Crossroad, 1990, 97-115, pp. 99-112.

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I. SEE 1. Slut-Shaming Slut-shaming is “the practice of maligning women for presumed sexual activity”6. This systematic stigmatization functions to keep women’s activities and exercises of agency within what is appropriate, as dictated by culture and influenced by those in power7. A double-standard underlies slut-shaming in that women’s sexual morality is often guarded more strictly. Women, themselves, can be participants in slut-shaming when they have internalized their subordination or feel some need to assert themselves as being above other women8. In a broader perspective, slut-shaming is a way of discrediting others or one’s opponent by bringing up negative qualities of the person, whether true or untrue. This is a form of an ad hominem fallacy that directs discourse on the qualities or reputation of the opponent, rather than focusing on issues at hand. This ad hominem attack becomes especially powerful when the person or group making accusations against the person enjoys a certain influence over others and is able to destroy the person’s reputation in public, and when the public also participates in shaming the person. Slut-shaming is psychologically effective because it places the person being accused on a defensive stance, and can distract the person from focusing on the original issue. Sociologically, slut-shaming influences collective consciousness, and offers an enticing controversy for people to talk about at the expense of the person whose reputation is being ruined9. Hence, slut-shaming not only destroys an idea of the person, but can also hurt both a person’s own self-esteem and social standing. This practice of maligning one’s enemy is incongruent with Christian values. Jesus teaches us to love our neighbour, and even our enemies (Lev 19,18; Mark 12,31; Matt 5,44; Luke 6,27.35). Rather than publicly condemn and shame a woman caught in adultery in public, he allows her to speak in private and empowers her to live her life anew (John 8,2-11). Rather than buy into the negative stereotype of Samaritans during his day, Jesus tells a parable of the good Samaritan. Paul has taught the early 6. E.A. ARMSTRONG et al., “Good Girls”: Gender, Social Class, and Slut Discourse on Campus, in Social Psychology Quarterly 77 (2014) 100-122, p. 100. 7. S. SHARIFF – A. DEMARTINI, Defining the Legal Lines: EGirls and Intimate Images, in J. BAILEY – V. STEEVES (eds.), EGirls, ECitizens (Putting Technology, Theory and Policy into Dialogue with Girls’ and Young Women’s Voices), Ottawa, University of Ottawa Press, 2015, 281-306, pp. 286-288, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt15nmj7f.15. 8. ARMSTRONG et al., “Good Girls” (n. 6), pp. 100-101. 9. Ibid., pp. 100-103.

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Christian community to make peace with one’s neighbour before making an offering on the altar or escalating personal issues. These teachings are reflective of the love and respect people ought to have for one another, and of the kind of human community the church seeks to be a witness to. Pope Francis’ most recent social encyclical Fratelli Tutti criticizes how swaying public opinion and discrediting others as political strategies have been detrimental to public health discourse and the common good: The best way to dominate and gain control over people is to spread despair and discouragement, even under the guise of defending certain values. Today, in many countries, hyperbole, extremism and polarization have become political tools. Employing a strategy of ridicule, suspicion and relentless criticism, in a variety of ways one denies the right of others to exist or to have an opinion. Their share of the truth and their values are rejected and, as a result, the life of society is impoverished and subjected to the hubris of the powerful. Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others10.

Furthermore, slut-shaming, which is primarily directed at women, undermines the notion that women “possess the same dignity and identical rights as men” that the church seeks to uphold11. 2. Leila de Lima Sen. Leila de Lima experienced slut-shaming. De Lima used to be the chair of the Commission on Human Rights and, later, became Justice Secretary. Back in 2009, she admonished then Mayor Rodrigo Duterte for killings occurring in Davao and the alleged Davao Death Squad. She became known as an opposing voice against Duterte when he became a president whose term became marked with rampant killings12. While enjoying widespread popularity, Duterte’s presidency, even from his first few days of office, became highly controversial, especially due to his strong domestic agenda against drug trafficking, which became known as a “War on Drugs”. Thousands of deaths have been associated with this campaign, including those attributed to the national police, so much so 10. FRANCIS, Fratelli Tutti, 3 October 2020, art. 15, http://www.vatican.va/content/ francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti. html. 11. Ibid., art. 23. 12. “I Won’t Be Silenced”: A Conversation with Incarcerated Philippine Senator Leila De Lima, in World Policy Journal 34/2 (2017) 59-65, p. 58; Duterte Political Opponent Jailed in Philippines, Morning Edition, NPR.org, 21 June 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/06/ 21/533764283/duterte-political-opponent-jailed-in-philippines.

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that international groups, Philippine universities, and the Catholic Church have become involved in protesting unjust activities13. De Lima headed an investigation on the president’s alleged involvement in mass executions but she, herself, was eventually accused of drug trafficking, and was later arrested and imprisoned14. Slut-shaming became a political strategy to put De Lima’s credibility into question: “But her stinging attacks on the president’s human rights abuses have been countered with spurious and baseless charges of abetting the drug trade while she was Secretary of Justice, and slut-shaming her about her relationship with her former bodyguard”15. Duterte, in a speech in Camp Crame on 17 August 2016, says, “Here is an immoral woman, flaunting … well of course insofar as wife of the driver was concerned, it’s adultery…”16. De Lima was publicly shamed on national television and other media, especially through an emphasis on her alleged sex video and extramarital relationship with her driver-bodyguard, Ronnie Dayan, who allegedly received money from drug dealers to fund De Lima’s campaign17. During the hearing, questions revolved around the quality of De Lima’s relationship with her driver-bodyguard. For instance, House Deputy Speaker Fred Castro asked Ronnie Dayan, “Do you mean to say in this hearing that your relationship with Sec. De Lima is not just to partake with her in a shallow wading in romance, but to partake with her in relieving carnal heat?”. Dayan answered, “Yes, Your Honor”18. One of De Lima’s lawyers, Jose Manuel Diokno explains that all this was a strategy to destroy her reputation19. Sociologist John Andrew Evangelista describes how De Lima’s affair was made into a big deal in the media and even in the Congress: Newspapers and online media made a circus out of de Lima’s love affair. “Love affair led to corruption” was the headline of Manila Times. “Leila’s driver was her loved”, the Manila Standard printed in big bold letters. In congressional enquiries, representatives grilled de Lima’s driver, asking him 13. The Philippines: Duterte’s Wilful Start, in Strategic Comments 22/8 (2016) v-vii; E. PALMER, The Effectiveness of National Human Rights Institutions’ Relationships with Civil Society: The Commission on Human Rights in the Philippines, in Australian Journal of Human Rights 25 (2019) 299-316, pp. 307-308. 14. “I Won’t Be Silenced” (n. 12), p. 58. 15. V.L. RAFAEL, Duterte Unbound, in Dissent 64 (2017) 102-105, p. 104. 16. D. PORCALLA – R. CABRERA – P. ROMERO, Rody Eyes Leila’s Former Driver as State Witness, Philippine Star, 19 August 2016, https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/ 08/19/1615086/rody-eyes-leilas-former-driver-state-witness. 17. Duterte Political Opponent Jailed in Philippines (n. 12). 18. Wagas, Dalisay, Matatag: Dayan Asked if Love for De Lima Was Pure, ABS-CBN News, 24 November 2016, https://news.abs-cbn.com/video/news/11/24/16/wagas-dalisaymatatag-dayan-asked-if-love-for-de-lima-was-pure. 19. Duterte Political Opponent Jailed in Philippines (n. 12).

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to rate the intensity of their love affair as though it were an earthquake. When asked for his opinion on whether de Lima should be detained in a special facility, Congressman Harry Roque said, “Why does she want to be detained at the Armed Forces of the Philippines? Is it because there are many men there?”. The conduct of the proceedings is an exemplary case of how locker room banter is transposed in the “dignified halls of Congress”20.

3. Machismo Nationalism The description above shows that this case of slut-shaming is not only attributed to President Duterte, but also the media, other members of the congress, and the general consumers of news and media who became eager to learn about De Lima’s affair. Here, slut-shaming is not only an act done by individuals, but by people of a nation and their leaders, thus manifesting the social dimension of this practice. Slut-shaming occurs socially and systematically due to structurally rooted injustices. One such structure is patriarchy. Patriarchy refers to hierarchical structures of dominance and ideologies wherein males who fit the role of the father, or the manin-authority are accepted to have power over others, such as women and children21. In the Philippines, patriarchy is performed and reinforced in machismo nationalism. Machismo is a Spanish influenced idealization of a masculinity that is associated with strength, virility, stubbornness, courage, attractiveness, protectiveness, and superiority to women. A society that subscribes to machismo has a double standard for men and women. Sexually active men are admired or at least accepted, while women are expected to be chaste, prim, and proper, in order to be deserving of respect and protection. Women who exhibit “manly” qualities, such as strength and stubbornness, are regarded as threats22. In machismo nationalism, machismo in politics plays a role in pursuing supposedly national interests to the detriment of women23. 20. J.A.G. EVANGELISTA, Queering Rodrigo Duterte, in N. CURATO (ed.), A Duterte Reader: Critical Essays on Rodrigo Duterte’s Early Presidency, Quezon City, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016, 251-262, p. 261; L. PANTI, Love Affair Led to Corruption, in The Manila Times Online, 21 August 2016, https://www.manilatimes.net/love-affairled-to-corruption/281280/. 21. A.M. CLIFFORD, Introducing Feminist Theology, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2002, p. 18. 22. D.L. MOSHER, Macho Men, Machismo, and Sexuality, in Annual Review of Sex Research 2 (1991) 199-247, p. 199; E.P. STEVENS, Mexican Machismo: Politics and Value Orientations, in The Western Political Quarterly 18 (1965) 848-857, p. 848; R. BASHAM, Machismo, in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 1 (1976) 126-143, p. 127. 23. R.J.M.O. SANCHEZ, “Postcolonial” Feminist Theologizing in the Philippines: A Critical Study of Mary John Mananzan, Judette Gallares, and Agnes Brazal (Dissertation), Quezon City, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2018, p. 102.

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De Lima was a very vocal woman who spoke clearly and assertively against killing and human rights violations. She occupied positions of power, such as being the chair of the Commission on Human Rights and then being a Senator. She fits the “strong woman” type unaccepted in machismo. Her sexual conduct became a weapon used by those threatened by her against her. By doing so, De Lima’s image became one that was ridiculed or looked down upon instead of being admired. While De Lima’s sexual morality became a national issue, the sexual activities or even “conquests” of her male counterparts in politics did not seem to capture public interest in the same way. For instance, Duterte openly admitted to being a womanizer, and people only laughed. During his presidential campaign, he said, “If you don’t want me as president because I have 4 or 5 women, then you vote for one of the other candidates”24. He still won and has become a symbol of machismo for the Philippines in contemporary times. However, machismo goes beyond Duterte. Evangelista says, “… Duterte’s misogyny is not a new phenomenon, but one that is deeply anchored on the culture of macho politics in the Philippines”25. II. JUDGE 1. Analysis In the Catholic tradition, slut-shaming has taken place against the image of Mary Magdalene. She was often portrayed as a repentant sinner or prostitute. Medieval texts and paintings up to the Renaissance period often depicted her with long reddish hair, sensually posed or attired, or even naked. Her conversion is often emphasized26. Mary Magdalene became the face of women who were impure and sinful, who threw themselves at the feet of Jesus for mercy and forgiveness. This portrayal of Mary Magdalene, which became popular during the Medieval period, results from the fusion of different women in the gospels, such as the exorcised woman, the woman who wiped Jesus’ feet with her hair, the woman caught in adultery, and the woman with five husbands, into one figure, that of Mary Magdalene who became erotically portrayed as a 24. P. RANADA, Rodrigo Duterte: Yes, I’m a Womanizer, Rappler, 30 November 2015, http://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections/2016/114416-rodrigo-duterte-womanizer. 25. EVANGELISTA, Queering Rodrigo Duterte (n. 20), p. 252. 26. B. DE KLERCK, Mary Magdalene’s Conversion in Renaissance Painting and Mediaeval Sacred Drama, in A. LARDINOIS et al. (eds.), Texts, Transmissions, Receptions (Modern Approaches to Narratives), Leiden, Brill, 2015, 175-193, pp. 175-183, https:// www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w76wgh.14.

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prostitute27. Other Marys in Scripture were joined together to form a composite image of Mary Magdalene, such that she became known as “the sinful sister of Martha and Lazarus”28. Unfortunately, this depiction continues to be prevalent in the imagination of many Catholics today. In the Philippines, Mary Magdalene’s reputation finds its way in pop songs like Freddie Aguilar’s “Magdalena” and Gloc-9 (Aristotle Pollisco)’s “Magda”, both of which center of the story of a woman in prostitution. Aguilar’s Magdalena is described as “You’re looked upon as mud, your image is insulted”29. Gloc-9’s Magda describes prostitution as a form of slavery and livelihood: “Why can’t you break out of the chains? Every night you are in a cell, which is your livelihood now”30. Like De Lima, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as immoral and shameful. This image has served the church’s agenda of conveying women’s sexuality as sinful, as well as discouraging clergy from marriage and sexuality. In both cases of Mary Magdalene and Leila de Lima, slut-shaming became a way of putting women in their place. 2. Deconstruction This conflated image of Mary Magdalene stems from later works after the writing of the scriptural texts. Gregory the Great in 591 identifies Mary Magdalene in a homily as follows: “… She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary [of Bethany], we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark”31. Moreover, he interprets Mary’s demonic possession as relating to sexual immorality and sensuality: “And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices? … It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts”32. Dominican friar Jacobus de 27. M.T. MALONE, Two Models: The Virgin Mary and Mary of Magdala, in EAD., Women and Christianity, vol. 2 (Christianity/History/Women’s Studies), Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2001, 254-270, pp. 263-264. 28. E. DE BOER, The Gospel of Mary: Beyond a Gnostic and a Biblical Mary Magdalene (Library of New Testament Studies; Journal for the Study of the New Testament. Supplement Series, 260), London, T&T Clark, 2004, p. 2. 29. F. AGUILAR, Magdalena, G. Records International, 1983 (my translation). 30. A. POLLISCO, Magda, 2013 (my translation). 31. DE KLERCK, Mary Magdalene’s Conversion (n. 26), p. 176. Cf. Gregory the Great, Homilia xxxiii; Gregorius Magnus Homiliae in Evangelia (Instrumenta lexicologica latina. Series A, 120), Turnhout, Brepols, 1999; S. HASKINS, Mary Magdalene, Myth and Metaphor, London, Harper Collins, 1993, p. 96. 32. DE KLERCK, Mary Magdalene’s Conversion (n. 26), p. 177. Cf. Gregory the Great, Homilia xxxiii; English quotation after HASKINS, Mary Magdalene (n. 31), p. 96.

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Voragine, in his compilation of the lives of saints known as Legenda Aurea or “Golden Legend”, describes Mary Magdalene as coming from a rich landed family and engaging in missionary activity, but does not say much about her life before meeting Christ. This description has led to ideas that Mary Magdalene may have been a courtesan or prostitute. Furthermore, another saint with the name Mary, Maria Aegyptiaca, or Mary of Egypt, with a past associated with seventeen years of carnal lust before experiencing repentance upon beholding the Virgin Mary, came to be associated with Mary Magdalene. Mary of Egypt used to be portrayed as naked and covered with her hair. In some paintings, Mary of Magdalene became conveyed similarly in succeeding years. For instance, in a painting done by Sandro Botticelli around 1491-1493 for the Confraternity of Convertite, a Florentine community of former prostitutes, Mary Magdalene is painted as a naked woman covered with her hair33. Mary Magdalene, despite her mission and leadership, has often gone down in church history as a prostitute or sinner, who needed to change. This reimagination of Mary Magdalene became a way of discrediting her as a respected leader, and her achievements became overshadowed by sexualization: Mary Magdalen was the favourite saint of the Middle Ages, even though her devotion was initiated by nothing more than monastic rivalries. She filled a gap and had the widest appeal of any saint because of her quasi erotic and penitential representation. As the image of a redeemed prostitute, she offered both an image of repentance, but also sufficient titillation in her naked hair-covered body to add a frisson of sexual interest to her cult34.

Therefore, what became emphasized regarding Mary Magdalene is her sinful past and her repentance35. Moreover, Mary Magdalene increasingly became a contrasting image to that of the Virgin Mary, who was “blessed among women”: pure, immaculate, and queenly. Despite their stark differences, both Marys share a common denominator: both images became patriarchally constructed models for women that became popular, especially during the Medieval Period36. The Virgin Mary was emulated as a woman to be looked up to, while Mary Magdalene was the type of woman one looked down upon. Mary Magdalene, as seen from Pope Gregory’s homily, and the succeeding representations of her, turned out to be a product of a patriarchal imagination of what women ought to be 33. DE KLERCK, Mary Magdalene’s Conversion (n. 26), pp. 176-185. 34. M.T. MALONE, Women and Christianity, vol. 1 (Christianity/History/Women’s Studies), Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2001, p. 268. 35. DE KLERCK, Mary Magdalene’s Conversion (n. 26), p. 175. 36. MALONE, Two Models (n. 27).

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or not to be37. Some scholars argue that the composite image of Mary Magdalene became a weapon that was used by the church to reject women’s sexuality and prescribe limited roles for women38. For instance, Malone explains how Mary Magdalene’s image served the patriarchal agenda especially in the eleventh century: The eleventh century is a boom-time for Magdalen veneration, and the image of the submissive woman repenting her sexuality at the feet of Jesus suited the Church’s agenda excellently. It was, indeed, the flip side of the ecclesiastical attempts to make marriage and sexuality unappetising to the clergy and offered a fitting model to hopefully repentant wives. Besides it filled out the picture of earthly womanhood in giving a clear model for all those who could not dream of attaining the purity of the Virgin Mary39.

Similar to the case presented in Philippine politics, a woman with potential and leadership capacity is discredited by associating her image to one that is immoral and shameful. In both the case of Mary Magdalene and Leila de Lima, slut-shaming became a way to put down, legitimize and reinforce a low regard for women. The practice of slut-shaming manifests social sin. According to Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium, “The toleration of evil, which is injustice, tends to expand its baneful influence and quietly undermine any political and social system … An evil embedded in the structures of a society has a constant potential for disintegration and death. It is evil crystallized in unjust social structures, which cannot be the basis of hope for a better future”40. For John Paul II, structures of sin are consolidated, difficult to eliminate, and influential to the members of the society or community within which they exist41. These two popes are both apparently acknowledging and describing structures of sin in secular society. However, slutshaming exposes how structures of sin, such as patriarchy, sexism, and machismo, exist not only in secular society, but also in the church. The disregard, or negative regard, against women that can be found in culture and clericalism demands to be called out. 37. MALONE, Women and Christianity, vol. 1 (n. 34), p. 97. 38. DE BOER, The Gospel of Mary (n. 28), p. 3. Cf. HASKINS, Mary Magdalene (n. 31), pp. 96-97; I. MAISCH, Maria Magdalena zwischen Verachtung und Verehrung: Bild einer Frau im Spiegel der Jahrhunderte, Freiburg i.Br., Herder, 1996, pp. 189-190. 39. MALONE, Two Models (n. 27). 40. Pope FRANCIS, Evangelii Gaudium, 24 November 2013, art. 59, http://www.vatican. va/holy_father/francesco/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_ 20131124_evangelii-gaudium_en.html. 41. JOHN PAUL II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 30 December 1987, art. 36, http://www. vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudorei-socialis_en.html.

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3. Reconstruction Feminist theologians not only critique the elements of Scripture and Catholic tradition that violate women or justify the negative regard of women; they also seek aspects of Scripture and tradition that can serve as a basis for women’s liberation and empowerment. Feminist theologians point out that Mary Magdalene’s portrayal in the Catholic tradition is inaccurate, and make efforts to retrieve a more positive view of her by focusing on how she is mentioned in Scripture42. In the Gospel of Luke, Mary Magdalene is mentioned as one of the women who accompanied Jesus and whom Jesus had freed from seven demons (Luke 8,2). Her exorcism is also mentioned in Mark (Mark 16,9). In John, she is conveyed as someone who stood at the foot of the cross and first encountered the resurrected Christ in a very moving scene wherein Jesus calls her by name (John 19,25; 20,1-18). In the Synoptic gospels, Mary arrives at the empty tomb with other women (Matt 28,1; Mark 16,1-9; Luke 24,10). In John, Mary is sent by Jesus himself to testify to what she has witnessed – the resurrection – to the other disciples, thus becoming the sent to the sent, or an “apostle to the apostles” (cf. John 20,17). In different versions of the gospels, the other male disciples react with shock and reluctance when she spoke of Jesus’ body missing from the tomb (John 20,2-10) and when she recounted what she witnessed with other women (Luke 24,11)43. These efforts are congruent with the re-evaluation of the image of Mary Magdalene that commenced during the Second Vatican Council in 196344. For instance, Filipina theologian Judette Gallares regards Mary Magdalene as a “Disenfranchised Apostle”, and re-interprets stories that explicitly include Mary Magdalene in connection to women today who are also being put down or set aside. Her reconstructed Mary Magdalene is a woman who had a profound relationship with Jesus. She stood courageously with Jesus at the foot of the cross, even when the majority of male disciples ran away. In John, she witnessed the Resurrected Christ before others, and Jesus commissioned her to proclaim what she saw45. 42. M.R. THOMPSON, Mary of Magdala: Apostle and Leader, Mahwah, NJ, Paulist, 1995, p. 9. Cited in T.M. KENNEDY, Mary Magdalene and the Politics of Public Memory: Interrogating “The Da Vinci Code”, in Feminist Formations 24 (2012) 120-139, p. 124. Cf. M. DALY, Beyond God the Father, Boston, MA, Beacon, 1973; E. PAGELS, Gnostic Gospels, New York, Vintage Books, 1979; R.R. RUETHER, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology, Boston, MA, Beacon, 1993. 43. J.A. GALLARES, Mary of Magdala: The Disenfranchised Apostle, in EAD., Images of Courage: Spirituality of Women in the Gospels from an Asian and a Third World Perspective, Quezon City, Cenacle Philippines and Claretian Publications, 1995, 177-208, pp. 178-183. 44. DE BOER, The Gospel of Mary (n. 28), p. 4. 45. GALLARES, Mary of Magdala: The Disenfranchised Apostle (n. 43).

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These re-interpretations have accomplished a “recovery” of Mary Magdalene’s good standing by disentangling her image from sexual misconduct to show that she does not deserve to be slut-shamed. This results in the clearing of Mary Magdalene’s name as neither a prostitute, a woman caught in adultery, or a repentant sinner. By doing so, women gain or “re-gain” a representative of a woman who is now regarded as an apostle to the apostles, a close friend of Jesus, and a leader in the early church. Nevertheless, the biblical narratives contained in the gospels are primarily faith narratives and not historical textbooks. Combining an image of Mary from the different gospels into one biblical image, even without equating this image with a historical Mary Magdalene, also entails a process of interpretative mixing. The product is a composite image, but one that is purified or untainted by lust and sexual sin; but which merely disentangles Mary Magdalene from the image of a slut without criticizing or correcting slut-shaming itself. This strategy may be helpful for women whose sexual conduct falls within the norm. Unlike the reconstructed image of Mary Magdalene, however, Leila de Lima’s image remains tinted. What if she really had an affair with her driver-bodyguard? More than merely seeking to prove a woman’s “innocence”, confronting the issue of slut-shaming itself is crucial. Slut-shaming is not merely an issue of a woman’s sexual morality. It is instead an issue of a community participating in a structural sin that victimizes women. Advocating for women who experience stigma should not be premised on women’s sexual conduct, but should rather be motivated by the need to correct a practice that is wrong. 4. Alternative Reconstruction Rather than merely going back to Scripture for a historical or biblical reconstruction, Mary Magdalene’s image can be regarded as what it currently is, as an integrated product of both Scripture and tradition, whose composite image can represent various women who have been looked down on, but which exposes the broader problem of patriarchy and its systematic discreditation of women. Both Leila de Lima and Mary Magdalene fell victim to slut-shaming. Building an empowering and liberating image of Mary Magdalene for women will be more effective when attention is shifted from proving her sexual innocence to precisely considering her image as an ongoing product that challenges Christians to speak out against the slut-shaming that has been assigned to her, regardless of her ambiguous past. While it is still possible to reconstruct Mary Magdalene’s past as innocent, she can also be read in provocative ways that do not shy away from

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sexuality. Thomas Hanks, for instance, appreciates how Mary’s portrayal as a prostitute can reiterate Jesus’ inclusive non-discriminating love for minorities, including sexual minorities46. Her image is complex, and her story is complicated. Regardless, she has been called by name and sent. She may not be “pure” or “perfect”, yet she proclaims the truth, which for her, is personal: “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20,18). This truth continues to have political implications for women today. Her composite image is an amalgam for women coming together from various backgrounds and experiences to proclaim how Christ can be seen anew in the church and in society, where ways of thinking and practices are not always good news for women. III. ACT Despite the divisive effect of slut-shaming, a shared experience of delegitimization and disrespect among women as seen in the image of Mary Magdalene and in Philippine politics becomes an opportunity for women’s transformative solidarity. Based on the analysis above, slut-shaming appears to be one of many forms of marginalizing or discrediting women in the context of machismo nationalism47. Slut-shaming has become a way of dividing women between righteous women and unrighteous women, such as the Blessed Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. As mentioned, this practice has been a way for women to claim superiority over other women48. Mary Magdalene’s composite image, when critically recognized, can become a way for different women, regardless of sexual behaviour, to identify with one another, rather than be divided. In this way, Mary Magdalene can be the women’s religious image of #MeToo, a hashtag used by women around the world to speak of their solidarity in experiences of sexual harassment that has also evoked reactions from popular misogyny49. Similarly, #Everywoman, 46. T. HANKS, Matthew and Mary of Magdala: Good News for Sex Workers, in R.E. GOSS – M. WEST (eds.), Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible, Cleveland, OH, Pilgrim Press, 2000, 185-195, p. 181. 47. T.L. MENDOZA, Reinforcing Myths about Women in Philippine Culture: Semiotic Analyses of the Sexbomb Girls in Eat Bulaga’s Laban o Bawi, in Kritika Kultura 33-34 (2019) 275-298, pp. 292-295; E.J. MANALASTAS – C.C. DAVID, Valuation of Women’s Virginity in the Philippines, in Asian Women 34 (2018) 23-48, p. 39. 48. ARMSTRONG et al., “Good Girls” (n. 6), pp. 100-101. 49. R. BONGIORNO et al., Why Women Are Blamed for Being Sexually Harassed: The Effects of Empathy for Female Victims and Male Perpetrators, in Psychology of Women Quarterly 44 (2019) 11-27, p. 11, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0361684 319868730?ai=2b4&mi=ehikzz&af=R&utm_source=researcher_app&utm_medium=

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a hashtag that became trending in Philippine social media when many Filipina women began claiming that they are the women in De Lima’s alleged sex video50. Likewise, a similar sense of solidarity coincides with the way Vice-President Leni Robredo considered De Lima, and how De Lima regarded Mocha Uson. Vice-President Leni Robredo recognized the questions posed regarding De Lima, during the hearing about her, as forms of slut-shaming and sexual harassment. She says, “Tinitingnan ko ang mga questions na tinanong, parang totally unnecessary. Bastos na talaga ang iba” [I looked at the questions being asked, and these seem totally unnecessary. Some are already vulgar]51. Moreover, she says, “Kung susundan natin ang mga tanong, wala siyang relevance sa investigation na kina-conduct. Parang ang nangyari talaga ay slut-shaming” [If we follow the questions, they didn’t have any relevance to the investigation they were conducting. It seems that what happened was really slut-shaming]52. Robredo herself experienced sexual insult when false claims regarding her pregnancy spread53. Rather than separate herself as innocent, since the news of her pregnancy was false, from De Lima, whose romantic and sexual relationship could be true, Robredo’s response manifests solidarity. Robredo expressed concern for a fellow woman who was being sexually shamed in politics. One may say that solidarity between Robredo and De Lima is easy to see because they are both part of the Opposition. However, another example that attests to solidarity among women is how De Lima has spoken about Mocha Uson, a woman who was appointed Presidential Communications Assistant Secretary by President Duterte. Uson has been known to support President Duterte. Her past as a sexy dancer has often been brought up by her critics. Nevertheless, slut-shaming remains wrong regardless of women’s political leanings54. De Lima makes this clear when she says: referral&utm_campaign=RESR_MRKT_Researcher_inbound; R. LEUNG – R. WILLIAMS, #MeToo and Intersectionality: An Examination of the #MeToo Movement through the R. Kelly Scandal, in Journal of Communication Inquiry 43 (2019) 349-371, p. 350. 50. A. TANTIANGCO, #EVERYWOMAN: Netizens Rally against Showing Sex Video in Congress, GMA News Online, 30 September 2016, https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/ story/583335/hashtag/everywoman-netizens-rally-against-showing-sex-video-in-congress/. 51. D. PLACIDO, Leni: De Lima Was “Slut-Shamed” during House Probe, ABS-CBN News, 25 November 2016, https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/11/25/16/leni-de-lima-was-slutshamed-during-house-probe. 52. Ibid. 53. VP Leni on Pregnancy Rumors: “Insulto Naman Yata Yun”, ABS-CBN News, 21 November 2016, https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/11/21/16/vp-leni-on-pregnancy-rumorsinsulto-naman-yata-yun (accessed 22 July 2019). 54. Mocha Uson: From Sexy Dancer to Social Media Player, ABS-CBN News, 4 October 2018, https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/10/03/18/mocha-uson-from-sexy-dancer-to-socialmedia-player (accessed 22 July 2019).

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I would be the first to defend her against attacks that focus on people’s perception of her character or morality, based on what she used to do for a living. I would ask people not to slut-shame her, to use her past career, relationships or sexual history to malign her, to subject her to misogynistic attacks, or any other form of ad hominem attacks, for that matter55.

Rather than compete by putting one another down, these women show how solidarity among women is a promising locus of resistance and transformation against structures and situations that are detrimental to women56. Also, these examples show how women need not be regarded as morally upright in order to deserve respect. They are, after all, human beings made in God’s image, regardless of how society regards them or how they behave. Filipina theologian Agnes Brazal proposes that care and support for prostituted women need not be premised on the notion that these women are absolutely innocent victims. Instead, they can be considered as “tragic heroines”, who are in a constant process of negotiating survival and self-determination amidst the various challenges and limitations they face. She says, “A sense of the tragic, however, allows for greater compassion for the victim, even if she is not innocent. It can acknowledge even more the ambiguities in which people live and survive rather than the dualism we have created between innocent and sinful victims”57. As seen in the examples above, women from different backgrounds and social locations can support one another against prevailing structures. Instead of dismissing the slut-shamed composite image of Mary Magdalene by promoting her innocence or engage in the tedious task of separating the purely innocent women from the sexually guilty, feminists can build on the unifying and empowering potential of Mary Magdalene’s composite image. Actual women have more dynamic lives and exercises of agency beyond stereotypes, requiring women to be sexually pure or innocent to deserve respect is oppressive, and drawing lines between pure women and tainted women is destructive. An alternative reconstruction, inspired by some Filipinas exercise of solidarity, is precisely to take 55. Y.V. GONZALES, De Lima: I’ll Defend Mocha Uson from Slut-Shaming | Inquirer News, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 16 May 2017, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/897095/delima-ill-defend-mocha-uson-from-slut-shaming (accessed 22 July 2019). 56. C. PULIDO et al., Exclusionary and Transformative Dimensions: Communicative Analysis Enhancing Solidarity among Women to Overcome Gender Violence, in Qualitative Inquiry 20 (2014) 889-894, p. 893. 57. A.M. BRAZAL, Decriminalizing Prostitution in the Philippines: A Christian Response to the Tragic?, in Hapag 2 (2005) 229-248, p. 242.

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Mary Magdalene as an amalgamation of different women with all the contentious issues that comes with it. This image is potentially a powerful rallying point for women to confront misogyny through transformative solidarity. Ateneo de Manila University Rachel Joyce Marie O. SANCHEZ Theology Department 3rd Floor Dela Costa Building Loyola Heights, Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City 1108 Philippines [email protected]

THE PERFORMANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH UNDER A POPULIST PRESIDENT THE CASE OF THE PHILIPPINE CHURCH UNDER DUTERTE

INTRODUCTION The Philippines has never had a chief executive in its history who has had no qualms in attacking the church and who, in the process, has not lost any political capital. In the face of such a populist President1 who has embarked on his “war on drugs”, and all its attendant human rights abuses, it appears that the church is a divided community. On one hand, one finds the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) issuing pastoral letters that criticise the excesses of the President’s statements and the human rights abuses brought about by the government’s drug policies. There are also individual bishops who have spoken openly against extrajudicial killings in their localities. On the other hand, one finds members of the Catholic Church, including ordained ministers, who consider the President’s iron-fist approach as necessary, and are supportive of him. In spite of the many statements of the hierarchy against the abuses of the Duterte administration, the president’s approval and trust ratings remain excellent and in spite of the obvious abuses committed in the drug-campaign2, it remains popular among the citizenry3. This paper focuses on the statements of Duterte against the church, the responses issued by the CBCP to his administration and the drug war, and the challenges with which Duterte’s presidency confronts the church. In the first part, I give examples of the president’s criticisms of the church hierarchy and the church’s teachings, and his responses to perceived 1. See N. CURATO (ed.), A Duterte Reader: Critical Essays on Rodrigo Duterte’s Early Presidency, Quezon City, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2016; EAD., Politics of Anxiety, Politics of Hope: Populism and Duterte’s Rise to Power, in Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 35/3 (2016) 91-109; EAD., Flirting with Authoritarian Fantasies? Rodrigo Duterte and the New Terms of Philippine Populism, in Journal of Contemporary Asia 47 (2017) 142-153. 2. See Philippine Human Rights Information Center, The Killing State: 2019 Philippine Human Rights Situationer, January 2020, https://www.philrights.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2020/02/WP-Copy-2019-HR-Sit.pdf. 3. R. CABATO, Thousand’s Dead: Police Accused of Criminal Acts. Yet Duterte’s Drug War Is Widely Popular, 23 October 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_ pacific/thousands-dead-police-accused-of-criminal-acts-yet-dutertes-drug-war-is-wildlypopular/2019/10/23/4fdb542a-f494-11e9-b2d2-1f37c9d82dbb_story.html.

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attacks from local church leaders of his person, actions, and policies. The examples that I provide are meant to be representative, and are not exhaustive of all that Duterte has said against the local Catholic Church. Second, I make a survey of the statements of the CBCP prior to and after the election of Duterte. Many of them are in reaction to the President’s statements, while others are in response to government policies that are deemed inimical to the people’s well-being. Nevertheless, it is apparent that there is a disconnect between the statements of the bishops and the ordinary Filipino’s support for Duterte. This is why, in the third part, I argue that the church’s leadership, both the clergy and the lay, needs to grapple seriously with this difference. In this context, the Catholic Church is called to become a “field hospital”, an instrument of healing of a fractured Philippine society. It is only when the local church performs its faith in this regard that it will become credible in denouncing the abuses that are committed by the present administration and, in the process, help heal the nation. I. DUTERTE’S STATEMENTS ABOUT THE CHURCH, ITS TEACHINGS AND ITS LEADERS When he assumed the office of President, Duterte showed that he was not afraid to confront the church. From the very beginning, he did not bother hiding his disdain for the church and his criticisms focus on its credibility as an institution, the credibility of its leaders, and the intelligibility of its teachings4. Each point will be elaborated in what follows. At the heart of Duterte’s dislike and even hostility toward the church is his view that the Catholic Church is “the most hypocritical institution in the Philippines”5. He questions the practices and teachings of the church and the lifestyle of its leaders from that perspective. He claims that he had a different concept of God: “It’s only one God, God the Father. He’s not even the father. He’s God, period”6. He even joked about having a new 4. In their study of 13 of Duterte’s speeches against the Catholic Church in 2017, Chua, Labiste, and Rara of the College of Mass Communication of UP Diliman argue that Duterte’s attacks can be classified as “hate speech”, which is defined as “‘abusive, insulting and demeaning and stirs up hatred vs. individuals or groups’. The intention of such language is to attack the dignity as well as dehumanise and diminish its targets” (Digong vs the Catholic Church, 14 December 2017, https://upd.edu.ph/digong-vs-the-catholic-church/°. 5. Philippine Leader Duterte Vents at ‘Hypocritical’ Catholic Church, 22 May 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-politics-church/philippine-leader-dutertevents-at-hypocritical-catholic-church-idUSKCN0YD0OH. 6. P. GUTIERREZ, ‘Most Hypocritical Institution’: Duterte Blasts Church Anew, 15 August 2018, https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/08/15/18/most-hypocritical-institution-duterte-blastschurch-anew.

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religion, “Iglesia ni Rodrigo”7, and even invited people to join his “Iglesia”. He said that his “religion does not limit anything … Do not believe in hell. When you die you are just a piece of carcass and that’s it. There’s no more hell – about hell – burning in hell? You cannot burn a soul”8. He identifies with Jose Rizal, the country’s national hero, whom he considers a “god”, who “stood against the Roman Catholic Church” and who “died for our country”9. In his mind, the Christian God is “stupid” with reference to the story of creation in Genesis: “Who is this stupid God? … You created some --- something perfect and then you think of an event that would tempt and destroy the quality of your work”10. His reasoning goes this way: “Eve ate it and then woke Adam up and asked him to eat it as well. Adam ate it and then malice was born … Now all of us are born with an original sin. What is the original sin? Was it the first kiss? What was the sin? Why is it original. You’re still in your mother’s womb and yet to already have a sin”11. He cannot accept the doctrine of original sin, which for him is a “[v]ery stupid proposition”12. Duterte asks, “How can you rationalize a God? … Would you believe in one?”13. He also criticises the traditional Catholic practice of honouring saints and remembering departed loved ones, because people really do not know who the saints were14. Moreover, he attacks the church’s doctrine on the Trinity: “You’re already praying at one God, then you’re going to pray at these cursed saints. There’s only one God … There’s only one God, period. You cannot divide God into 3, that’s silly”15. He asked why one would believe in a God who was crucified16.

7. Duterte Jokes about Creating Iglesia ni Rodrigo, 7 March 2019, https://www. dailymotion.com/video/x73nl6z. 8. V. LOPEZ, Duterte Hits Church Anew, Slams Veneration of Saints Practice, 15 August 2018, https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/664205/duterte-hits-churchanew-slams-veneration-of-saints-practice/story/. 9. Duterte Deifies Rizal for Standing Up to Catholic Church, 8 June 2019, https:// news.abs-cbn.com/news/06/08/19/duterte-deifies-rizal-for-standing-up-to-catholic-church. 10. Duterte Asks: ‘Who Is This Stupid God?’, 23 June 2018, https://news.abs-cbn. com/news/06/23/18/duterte-asks-who-is-this-stupid-god. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. P. RAÑADA, On All Saints’ Day, Duterte Calls Saints ‘Gago, Drunkards’, 2 November 2018, https://www.rappler.com/nation/215767-duterte-call-saints-gago-drunkardsnovember-1-2018. 15. M. CEPEDA, Duterte Says Christian Belief in Trinity Is ‘Silly’, 29 December 2018, https://www.rappler.com/nation/219912-duterte-speech-christian-belief-trinity-silly. 16. Ibid.

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Duterte also claimed that the Catholic Church thought wrongly that he would refrain from criticising it for fear of losing the votes of Catholics17. In a speech, during national Baptist Day, he considers himself as the first politician to successfully carry on a battle against the church: … maybe it’s good to bullshit the bishops. It might make you win. Take it from my experience … You’d notice that they’re no longer complaining even if I said bullshit ‘yang … they don’t respond anymore. That is how to win the war against the Catholic Church. All you have to say is “Putangina ninyo’, panalo ka na” (“Son of a bitch”, you win)18.

With regard to the bishops who are critical of his “war on drugs”, Duterte says: “… Kill your bishops. Your stupid bishops are inutile … All they do is criticise”19. He tells priests: “don’t meddle too much”20. For him, the church has to correct itself first before it can criticise21. He went on to issue a seeming threat: “… You Catholics better slow down. Better shut up or else. Extrajudicial killing? Prove it. But killing? Yes, destroy my country and I will kill you”22. Undoubtedly, Duterte uses very colourful language in his tirades against the Catholic Church. They manifest his own personal issues against the church, his misunderstandings of church teachings, and his inability to take criticisms in stride. It appears that he is unmindful of the effects and impact of his words as the chief executive against the church, and the possible repercussions that may result because of them, especially if they are acted upon by his most fanatic followers. His remarks about the church and its failings, actually, are in a way reflective, in my opinion, of the ordinary person’s disgruntlement with the church. This explains why many 17. ‘When Did I Lie?’ Duterte on Church Sex Abuse Cases, 11 May 2019, https:// news.abs-cbn.com/news/05/11/19/when-did-i-lie-duterte-on-church-sex-abuse-cases. While Duterte criticises the colonisation of the Philippines by Spain, it appears that he is allowing a regional power, China, to trample on Philippine sovereignty (see T. REGENCIA, Duterte Finds a Friend in China But Critics Cry Treason, 12 July 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/ news/2019/07/duterte-finds-friend-china-critics-cry-treason-190712064055601.html). 18. D.J. ESGUERRA, Duterte Lambasts Catholic Church Anew in Curse-Laden Speech before Filipino Baptists, 16 January 2020, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1214254/dutertelambasts-catholic-church-anew-in-curse-laden-speech-before-filipino-baptists (translation mine). 19. D. PLACIDO, ‘Patayin Ninyo’: Duterte Says Bishops Better off Dead, 5 December 2018, https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/12/05/18/patayin-ninyo-duterte-says-bishops-betteroff-dead. 20. C. YAP, Duterte Steps Up Attacks on Catholic Church, Priests, 29 December 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-29/duterte-steps-up-attacks-on-catholic-church-meddling-priests (translation mine). 21. Ibid. 22. P. RAÑADA, Duterte Says Priests Should Be Shot, 14 March 2019, https://www. rappler.com/nation/225762-duterte-says-priests-should-be-shot/.

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Catholics are not bothered by his statements, and that many of them have bought his narrative that what he has been doing is necessary in order to save the country. II. THE CHURCH’S RESPONSE TO DUTERTE The most pressing problem in the Philippines for Duterte is the prevalence and use of illegal drugs. During the campaign season, he promised that he would end the scourge of drugs in 3-6 months, a promise left undelivered four years into his presidency. He has embarked on a bloody “war on drugs”, which has claimed the lives of thousands of suspected drug addicts and pushers, many, if not most, of whom are victims of extrajudicial killings by state actors23. Duterte’s message is clear: “criminals can be humiliated and killed in order to protect law abiding and god-fearing Filipinos”24. Duterte’s heavy-handed approach to drugs (and crime in general), and the human rights abuses associated with it, serve as the backdrop of the ongoing conflict between church leaders and Duterte. In what follows, I focus on the statements of the CBCP as they relate to Duterte and his policies. Just before the May 2016 national elections which catapulted Duterte into the presidency, the CBCP issued a pastoral statement that acknowledged the “desire for change” on the part of the people, but argued that it “could not take not the form of supporting a candidate whose speech and actions, whose plans and projects show scant regard for the rights of all, who has openly declared indifference if not dislike and disregard for the Church, especially her moral teachings”25. This statement was an apparent reference to Duterte, who at that time was leading in all the polls and seemed to be the likely winner. He eventually won the elections by plurality, and ten days before he assumed the presidency, and in response to the rise in the apparent killings of suspected criminals, the CBCP urged the police to follow due process and not to give up on anyone, “even if it be the blood of [the] one we suspect of crime”26. 23. See the documentary of National Geographic, Nightcrawlers: Truth Hides in the Darkness (2019), an exposé of Duterte’s “war on drugs”, https://www.nationalgeographic. com/films/the-nightcrawlers/#/. 24. D.A. REYES, The Spectacle of Violence in Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’, in Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 35 (2016) 111-137, p. 112. 25. CBCP, Prophets of Truth, Servants of Unity, 1 May 2016, http://www.cbcpnews. com/cbcpnews/?p=76660. 26. CBCP, Pastoral Appeal to Our Law Enforcers, 20 June 2016, http://cbcponline. net/pastoral-appeal-to-our-law-enforcers/.

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A few months after, on 16 September 2016, in response to killings in general, but of suspected drug pushers and addicts in particular, the hierarchy expressed its solidarity with all those who suffer because of them. With specific reference to drug addicts, it stated, Our hearts reach out in love and compassion to our sons and daughters suffering from drug dependence and addiction. Drug addicts are children of God equal in dignity with the sober ones. Drug addicts are sick brethren in need of healing deserving of new life. They are patients begging for recovery. They may have behaved as scum and rubbish but the saving of love of Jesus Christ is first and foremost for them. No man or woman is ever so unworthy of God’s love27.

The claim of the bishops that addicts have dignity and are beloved of God was contrary to what Duterte stated: “Crime against humanity? In the first place, I’d like to be frank with you: are they humans? What is your definition of a human being?”28. In September 2016 he said, “Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there are three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them”29. In its 22 November 2016 pastoral letter, the CBCP acknowledged the efforts of the Duterte administration to respond to the issue of inequality and to the right of workers to their security of tenure. At the same time though, it echoed the concern of human rights activists in the country: “There can be no opposition between the campaign against drugs and the campaign for human rights”30. On 30 January 2017, the CBCP issued another pastoral letter that dealt solely with the “war on drugs”. At that time, around 7,000 people have been killed since the “war” started, according to Amnesty International. The CBCP letter began with a statement of concern: We, your bishops, are deeply concerned due to many deaths and killings in the campaign against prohibited drugs. This traffic in illegal drugs needs to be stopped and overcome. But the solution does not lie in the killing of suspected drug users and pushers. We are concerned not only for those who have been killed. The situation of the families of those killed is also cause for concern. Their lives have only become worse. An additional cause of concern is the reign of terror in many places of the poor … Those who kill them 27. CBCP, I Will Turn Their Mourning into Joy (Jeremiah 31:13), 15 September 2016, http://cbcponline.net/i-will-turn-their-mourning-into-joy-jeremiah-3113/. 28. AFP, Drug Users Aren’t Human, Says Philippines Duterte, 28 August 2016, https:// www.yahoo.com/news/drug-users-arent-human-says-philippines-duterte-110624632.html. 29. E. RAUHALA, Duterte: Hitler Killed Millions of Jews, I Will Kill Millions of Drug Addicts, 29 September 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/ wp/2016/09/29/duterte-hitler-killed-3-million-jews-i-will-kill-3-million-drug-dealers/. 30. CBCP, Blessed Is the Nation Whose God Is the Lord! (Psalm 33:12), 22 November 2016.

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are not brought to account. An even greater cause of concern is the indifference of many to this kind of wrong. It is considered as normal, and, even worse, something that (according to them) needs to be done31.

The letter went on stating: “We are one with many of our countrymen who want change. But change must be guided by truth and justice”32. On 7 September 2017, the CBCP issued a clarion call for the killings to stop and for healing to begin. It stated: Because we Christians are heralds of a Gospel of Life there is no way that one can be a faithful Christian, let alone a fervent Catholic, and yet stay safely quiet in the face of these shocking attacks against human life. The very Gospel that the Church was founded to teach is a Gospel of Life. The Church must either be at the forefront of the intense and fervent struggle against a culture of death, or the Church betrays Christ33.

It went on to say: When we label members of our society because of the offenses they commit – or that we impute rightly or wrongly against them – as “unsalvageable”, “irremediable”, “hopelessly perverse” or “irreparably damaged”, then it becomes all the easier for us to consent to their elimination if not to participate outright in their murder. We stand firmly against drugs and the death drugs have caused, but killing is not the solution of the problem34.

It appealed for a period of mourning and prayers for all those who have been killed. In November 2017, the CBCP issued an invitation to begin the process of healing the divided nation, a 33-day period as the time to “Start the Healing”. All the above CBCP statements were under the presidency of Archbishop Socrates Villegas. In January 2018, Archbishop Romulo Valles, the Archbishop of Davao, Duterte’s hometown, assumed the CBCP’s presidency, and it led to hopes that there would be a better relationship between the bishops and Duterte. In his first speech, before the 116th CBCP Plenary Assembly, on 27 January 2018, among other points, Valles stated: … I cannot help myself but mention this – the great opportunity for our local Churches – that those deep in addiction of illegal drugs can come to us, the Church, as a mother that welcomes them home, to their home, with open arms (see E.G. nos. 46-49). From my experience, they are most comfortable and 31. CBCP, For I Find No Pleasure in the Death of Anyone Who Dies – Oracle of the Lord God (Ezekiel 18:32), 30 January 2017, http://cbcponline.net/for-i-find-no-pleasurein-the-death-of-anyone-who-dies-oracle-of-the-lord-god-ezekiel-1832/. 32. Ibid. 33. CBCP, Lord Heal Our Land, 12 September 2017, http://cbcponline.net/lord-healour-land/. 34. Ibid.

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confident to accept and bring themselves to be helped through the initiative and work and programs of the Church … Each and every life is to be loved and treasured. We do not want anybody to be killed35.

It was a theme that was consistent with the statements issued under the leadership of Villegas. In a Pastoral Exhortation, issued on 9 July 2018, the CBCP issued its most comprehensive statement to date as it is related to the church’s response to the “war on drugs”, and its relationship to the Duterte administration. The CBCP acknowledged the difficulties that were being experienced by the church: We do not fight our battles with guns and bullets. We do not seek protection from those who might wish to harm us by wearing bullet-proof vests, because the battles that we fight are spiritual. In these times of darkness, when there’s so much hatred and violence, when murder has become an almost daily occurrence, when people have gotten so used to exchanging insults and hurting words in the social media, we admonish the faithful to remain steadfast in our common vocation and mission to actively work for peace36.

Given the vitriol of Duterte and his supporters against the church, the bishops noted that this was nothing new: “We are not strangers to persecution and ridicule”37. Significantly, the bishops also acknowledged the divisions within the church in relation to Duterte. While as we have seen, the CBCP has been consistent in its condemnation of the excesses of the “war on drugs”, there were many Catholics, even members of the clergy, who found no problem with it and would even justify the government’s approach38. To its critics, the church said: “We do recognise the constitutional provision of the separation of church and state, mainly in the sense of distinction of roles in society. When we speak out on certain issues, it is always from the perspective of faith and morals, especially the principles of social justice, never with any political or ideological agenda in mind”39. On 22 November 2018, Duterte publicly accused Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, a vocal critic of the “war of drugs”, of stealing money from the 35. R. VALLES, Message of CBCP President Archbishop Valles for the 116th Bishops’ Plenary Assembly, 27 January 2018, http://cbcpnews.net/cbcpnews/message-of-cbcppresident-archbishop-valles-for-the-116th-bishops-plenary-assembly/. 36. CBCP, Rejoice and Be Glad!, 9 July 2018, http://cbcponline.net/rejoice-and-beglad/. 37. Ibid. 38. On this point, see the reflection of A. PICARDAL, Why Did Priests and Religious Vote for Duterte?, 3 July 2020, https://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/265507-opinionwhy-priests-religious-vote-duterte?fbclid=IwAR3QPFZRoIjfiel2ZJeMYsQd6LRRWfsjM LGeWdkKLoNPPLGRKUg4ZPOM3T0. 39. CBCP, Rejoice and Be Glad! (n. 36).

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church in order to give it to his family40. David denied the President’s allegations: “I think he has confused me for someone else. You see, people who are sick sometimes do not know what they are talking about, so we should just bear with them”41. In his own statement, the CBCP President stated that he was “saddened and disturbed” by the recent statements against David and asked for prayers for him42. However, he did not ask Duterte to refrain from making unsubstantiated allegations. In its 28 January 2019, Pastoral Letter, the CBCP expressed an awareness of a question that was in many people’s minds: why were the bishops silent in the face of many disturbing issues43? With respect to the issue of illegal drugs and the government’s efforts to eradicate it, the bishops said: There are people who, perhaps out of concern for us, have warned us about being critical of the government’s fight against illegal drugs … We are not against the government’s efforts to fight illegal drugs. We do respect the fact that it is the government’s duty to maintain law and order and to protect its citizens from lawless elements … It was when we started hearing of mostly poor people being brutally murdered on mere suspicion of being small-time drug users and peddlers while the big-time smugglers and drug lords went scot-free, that we started wondering about the direction this “drug war” was taking44.

The bishops went on to state: Our faith informs us that no human being in this world deserves to be treated as a “non-human”, not even the mentally ill, or those born with disabilities. This is consistent with our defence of the right to life even of the unborn, because we believe that all human beings are creatures in God’s image and likeness, imbued with an innate dignity. We also must consider the right to life of people who are brutally murdered just because they are suspected of being opponents of government, as well as those who are summarily executed by armed groups45. 40. ABS-CBN News, Bishop David on Duterte Tirade: Let’s Bear with Sick People, 23 November 2018, https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/11/23/18/bishop-david-on-dutertetirade-lets-bear-with-sick-people. 41. Ibid. 42. J. TORRES, Philippine Bishops Stand by Prelate over Duterte Attacks, 30 November 2018, https://www.ucanews.com/news/philippine-bishops-stand-by-prelate-over-duterteattacks/83996. 43. For instance, see W. BELLO, The Silent Church, 17 October 2016, https://www. rappler.com/thought-leaders/149397-silent-church (accessed 28 January 2020); A. PICARDAL, The Silence of the Shepherds, 16 September 2018, https://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/ 212093-silence-shepherds-amado-picardal. 44. CBCP, Conquering Evil with Good, 28 January 2019, http://cbcponline.net/ conquering-evil-with-good/. 45. Ibid.

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When sedition and other criminal charges were filed against four bishops, the President of the CBCP issued a statement in support of them on 19 July 2019. That such charges would be levelled against them is “beyond belief”: That they are accused of sedition and other criminal complaints is for me beyond belief. They may be perceived as very vocal and very critical in their pronouncements. But that they consciously worked promoting seditious activities and other related crimes, these honestly I cannot believe. These are individuals whose love for country and dedication for the welfare of our people I cannot doubt … I say this, I cannot bring myself to believe that these bishops were involved in seditious activities; they are bishops whose sincerity, decency, respectfulness, and love for our country and our people are beyond doubt46.

Then, on 1 August 2019, as the judicial process against the accused bishops started, Valles invited Catholics to show solidarity with them in prayer47. For their part, the accused bishops released a joint statement in which they affirmed the following: We renew our commitment to serve, to teach and to bless without relent, without repay. We will not allow this splinter from the cross of Christ to distract us from our mission, to dampen our zeal or to intimidate us. This cross we carry now is nothing compared to the agony and passion of the Lord and the pains and aches of the poor. Our defense for human life and the sacredness of marriage remains. Our message of peace based on truth will not be perturbed. Our zeal for souls will not falter. Our mission is yet incomplete. We will not be discouraged48.

As one can see, the CBCP, whether acting as a collegial body or through its President, has been consistent in its criticisms of government policies and actions that it deemed as contrary to the Christian gospel and the Kingdom. In addition, individual bishops as pastors in their local churches have also issued such statements critical of the “war on drugs” and instituted practices that provide alternatives to the government’s violent approach. Nevertheless, it is another question altogether if Catholics listen to their pastors and heed their message. I now turn to the question of the challenges that the reign of Duterte presents to the church. 46. CBCP, On the Accusation of Sedition against Some Bishops, 19 July 2019, http:// cbcponline.net/on-the-accusation-of-sedition-against-some-bishops/ (accessed 28 January 2020). 47. CBCP, Solidarity in Prayers, 1 August 2019, http://cbcponline.net/solidarityin-prayer/ (accessed 28 January 2020). 48. T.C. BACANI, JR. – H.F. ONGTIOCO – P.V.S. DAVID – S.B. VILLEGAS, Fraternal Statement, 7 September 2019, http://cbcponline.net/fraternal-statement/ (accessed 28 January 2020).

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III. TOWARDS BECOMING A FIELD HOSPITAL Why is it that in spite of the many statements of the church against Duterte’s problematic policies, his attacks against church leaders and the church’s teachings, and the on-going killings of suspected addicts and pushers, he seems to remain popular among the vast majority of Filipinos? If the church’s pastoral statements are really reflective of the gospel, then it seems that many in the church do not appear to recognise it as such. Evidently, the issuance of statements by the bishops is not enough. The drug rehabilitation programs, while indeed necessary, are more in reaction to the situation rather than preventive of it. The rise of Duterte seems to have brought out that which is not the best among Filipinos: but the “the formless void and darkness [that] covered the face of the deep” (Gen 1,1 NRSV). In a sense, Duterte opened Pandora’s box, unleashing forces, many of which he himself unintended and did not foresee, to put it charitably. He has tapped into his supporter’s frustrations and fears49, but unfortunately that has led to the creation and acceptance of a culture that is violent, that lacks accountability for state actors, that has disregard for the truth, that is divisive and sows division, that is fanatical in its support of its leaders, that fails to truly engage in dialogue and is not respectful of other points of view, that is intolerant of dissent, and that relativises respect for human dignity and human rights50. To say that this ongoing situation is worrisome is an understatement. When violence – virtual, physical, and psychological – becomes institutionalised and acceptable to people, and when the vulnerable are dehumanised by those in power and their supporters, a re-discovery of the dignity of each person and her or his rights, especially of the one who “fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead” (Luke 10,30 NRSV), becomes more difficult, and Jesus’ call to show mercy to him or her like the Samaritan (see Luke 10,37) becomes less audible. It becomes much easier, just like what both the priest and 49. Heydarian argues that one must understand the rise of Duterte in the context of the spread of populism all over the world. He further asserts rightly that in the case of the Philippines, Duterte and his handlers capitalised on people’s dissatisfaction with the postMarcos “elite democracy”. See, R.J. HEYDARIAN, The Rise of Duterte: A Popular Revolt against Elite Democracy, Singapore, Springer, 2018. 50. Tony La Viña is spot on when he says that the present dispensation makes its policy decisions “on the basis of politics and not scientific evidence”. This is evident in its “war on drugs” policy, its response to the Taal Volcano eruption and most recently, its (in)action (or lack of it) with regard to the 2019-nCoV. Unfortunately, such an approach will cause suffering on the part of ordinary people, particularly among the vulnerable ones of our society. See T. LA VIÑA, The Collapse of National Leadership, in Eagle Eyes, 1 February 2020, https://www.facebook.com/tonylavs/posts/10158117548951967.

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Levite did, to “pass by on the other side” (see Luke 10,31-32 NRSV). It would also appear that Juan de la Cruz has simply accepted extra-judicial killings, the present-day victims of “robbers” in the story of the Good Samaritan, as the “new normal”. In many unfortunate ways, the Catholic faith has become domesticated, a phenomenon that would partly explain the people’s silence about and acceptance of state-sponsored killings. Nevertheless, that did not happen overnight. Even before the Duterte administration, many Catholics seem to prefer a faith that is comfortable and that does not question one’s sensitivities and social realities. The Catholic faith has apparently lost its radical element in the way many people, including the clergy, understand and have performed it. It would seem that Jesus’ message and example of love, justice, and compassion are selectively enacted, and Christians would rather listen to a prosperity “gospel” that does not question the prejudices and antipathy they have towards those who are “othered”. Such a domesticated faith squares precisely with what Duterte and his handlers want to happen – the confinement of the Christian faith to one’s private life and the removal of its relevance in the public sphere. With the effective silencing of the fourth estate, especially those who are critical of his administration, the only thing left is to relegate the church to irrelevance and, hence, remove an institution that is capable of questioning him and his policies. If the believing community is to be truly church, it must rediscover its prophetic voice in all of this. It cannot and must not remain silent and indifferent to human rights abuses and the failure of the government to be truly at the service of the people. Perhaps, the entire church needs to be reminded once again of the primary insight of the 1971 Synod of Bishops: “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation”51. Given the plurality of voices in contemporary society, the church, especially its leaders, must necessarily be dialogical in its approach as it remains prophetic in its words and actions. In a way, the Duterte presidency is a time of purification for the church, which in the history of the Philippines easily becomes caught up with the trappings of power, wealth, and success. As the church engages in prophetic dialogue, it will 51. 1971 Synod of Bishops, Justice in the World, https://www.cctwincities.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/10/Justicia-in-Mundo.pdf.

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be “forced” to rely not on its diminished social capital, but on the power of the gospel as grace works in the lives of its leaders and members. It is precisely from a position of vulnerability that it will resist the empire and speak truth to power. Duterte’s critique of church teachings on God, the Trinity, creation, and the communion of saints is actually bad theology. More than anything, his attacks simply betray his lack of understanding of the things that he purports to criticise. Nevertheless, his kind of theology is reflective, I suspect, of the theology of many of his supporters (and even non-supporters). In this sense, what he has done is to simply surface the confusion among many Catholics about those teachings. Unintentionally, he has verbalised it for them. It is not surprising then that many of the Catholic supporters of Duterte have used their faith in order to justify all the killings that have taken place52. While Duterte and his supporter’s theology is, indeed, theologically problematic, the reality is that they think in that manner and see nothing wrong with Duterte’s anti-illegal drugs campaign. In this regard, the church has its work cut out for itself. Given the total number of Filipino Catholics and the number of pastoral ministers, the church needs to institute sustainable and creative means through which people will come to truly know the basics of the Christian faith. As the church engages in renewed catechesis, the more difficult task is the accompaniment of the victims of all the senseless violence. An example of an initiative to help those left-behind by the victims of extra-judicial killings is SOW: Support for Widows and Orphans, a joint project of Ina ng Lupang Pangako Parish, St. Vincent School of Theology, and DePaul House53. Similar initiatives must necessarily be a part of the church’s accompaniment of the victims. When it does this, the church will fulfill Pope Francis’ call on the church to become a “field hospital” and to be a refuge for those who suffer and a source of their healing. It is only in this way, I think, that the church in the Philippines will become credible; when it is truly in solidarity with those who are on the peripheries in the Philippines. Perhaps, when the church journeys with the victims of the “war on drugs” – when it allows itself to be vulnerable – it can little by little learn what it means to be truly the Church of the Poor and, in its effort to become one with the marginalised, people will come to have faith in the church in spite of all its imperfections. 52. J. CORNELIO, God Gave Us Duterte, 3 July 2018, https://www.rappler.com/thoughtleaders/206394-god-gave-us-duterte. 53. See SOW: Support for Widows and Orphans, https://projectsow.weebly.com/.

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The church cannot afford to be simply reactive to the “new normal” in Philippine society. The present situation in which many Filipinos just accept the violence in the streets, in relationships, in politics, and in the social media did not happen suddenly, but is the confluence of issues and problems that were taken for granted. The question that confronts the church is: how can it form communities that are compassionate, inclusive, truthful, and just? Needless to say, the church cannot do this task alone, and needs to collaborate with other stakeholders in responding to the situation. As an initial but crucial step, it can begin to listen to Catholics who are supportive of Duterte and know first-hand from them the reasons why they support him. In this process, instead of alienating and dismissing them as “Dutertards”, the church will perhaps make them feel that they are listened to. I suspect that the church will learn a lot from them, especially as they share their frustrations and struggles, and their hopes and dreams for a better life. Dialogue in this regard will not be easy, but the church must remain open to the Spirit as it works in the lives of those whose political leanings are different. It will be a long process, but it is only by doing so that the church may begin the process of healing the divisions in Philippine society. It is only after listening to their stories that it can discern where the Spirit is leading it at this point in the country’s history. The rise of Duterte has, undoubtedly, led to the loss of social capital on the part of the Catholic Church. This is due in part to his constant attacks against the Institution, and the apparent inability of the church to make a dent on his political fortune in spite of its many statements that are critical of his personal actions and government policies. However, the more important thing for the church is not whether it still holds sway over Philippine society, but whether it remains faithful to its mission of building the Kingdom in today’s world. One thing appears certain in all of this – the church is called to be an instrument of healing of a Philippine society that is deeply divided because of political affiliations and orientations, and economic interests. It is only by being a neighbour – the one who acts with compassion and, hence, with vulnerability – that the church will begin to become a “field hospital”, open to all the victims of injustice and violence. Perhaps in doing so, it will be true to Pope Francis’ vision of the church as: … bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. I do not want a Church concerned with being at the centre and which then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures. If something should rightly disturb us and trouble our consciences, it is the

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fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life54.

To become a field hospital should not be seen as a merely temporary and palliative solution but as a new way of being church – a church that is out in the streets and that serves as a beacon of hope for all. Ateneo de Manila University Department of Theology School of Humanities Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights 1108 Quezon City, Philippines [email protected]

Ruben C. MENDOZA

54. Pope FRANCIS, Evangelii Gaudium, art. 49, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#IV.%E2%80%82A_mission_embodied_within_human_limits.

THE MIGRANT AS LOCUS THEOLOGICUS THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION IN DIALOGUE

INTRODUCTION The Covid-19 crisis, with its economic outcomes, and particularly with the ensuing loss of employment, has reduced the number of migrants on the island of Malta, but the ratio of foreigners in Malta remains relatively large, compared to the number of Maltese. My country is small. In our case, there is no colonization or occupation. There is no direct attempt to eradicate the original owners or caretakers of the region. However, there has been a massive settlement of foreigners. As a consequence of massive migration, we could still be experiencing something similar to what the Native Americans, the Australian Aborigines (when Britain began colonizing the island in 1788), or the African tribes experienced when Europe colonized Africa. At least, it feels like that for many Maltese. In this essay, the term migrant is used very loosely, referring as much to the economic migrant as to the forced migrant or the refugee. In Malta, the migrant population is very diverse. We have people coming on boats from Africa, we have wealthy individuals buying Maltese passports, we have migrants from the EU coming to Malta for work, as well as many others coming from countries like India and the Philippines (often working mainly in the health and hospitality sectors, or as domestic workers), or China (often working mainly in massage parlours, or in outlets selling Chinese food). Migration has completely changed the face of Malta, and not always for the better. Work sometimes turns to forced labour1. Massage parlours are often places of prostitution2, and Malta has had the second highest rate of syphilis in Europe3. I am aware that I am somewhat of an armchair theologian, an outsider. My interest in the theology of migration arises out of my geographical 1. K. ABELA, Forced Labour: Malta’s Modern Slavery, in Times of Malta, 2 August 2019, https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/forced-labour-maltas-modern-slavery.726325. 2. M. AGIUS, Seven Charged over Prostitution in Massage Parlours, in Malta Today, 19 September 2019, https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/court_and_police/97543/ seven_charged_over_prostitution_in_massage_parlours#.XbaqkppKjcc. 3. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Syphilis Notifications in the EU/EEA up by 70% since 2010, 12 July 2019, https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/ syphilis-notifications-eueea-70-2010.

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context: it comes from reading about the subject, and from observing what is happening in Malta and around it. As a consequence, I have grown in my realization that, first, the theology of migration must become a contextual theology, if it is not to remain superficial, and, second, that the individual (both the migrant and the local) must be recognized as, and empowered to be, the subject, not the object, of this theology in particular. We need to recognize that the individual, and not just history, events, or migration in general, is a locus theologicus. While interpreting migration as a locus theologicus has academic value, treating the individual (rather than migration in general) as a hermeneutical tool can, I argue, not just be beneficial, but is actually essential. There is always a risk of sounding naïve. The issues concerning migration are so complicated, and I have received no intensive training on migration from a sociological standpoint, nor do I pretend to offer easy solutions to politicians or to educators. All I can do is to fulfil my duty as a theologian, and ensure that I remain perturbed by the events that occur, or the policies that are created. There is also always a risk in an article such as this, of reductionism, that is, of reading the reality of migration, which is a social reality, from a theological standpoint, thus seeming to treat theology as the regina scientiarum. Both of these (naïvité and supériorité) are real possibilities. However, as a Maltese citizen, I cannot remain unperturbed by what is going on in my country and around it and would rather be called naïve and opinionated than passive. Finally, there is the risk of trying to connect too many elements: Migration, education, politics, and theology. However, speaking of a “love of neighbour”, and the theologies of mercy, of hospitality, of reception etc. – which are associated with an option for the poor – though certainly profound in themselves, appear to be very superficial when addressed to a community that is facing a migration revolution, such as the Maltese Islands have experienced in the past two decades. Two levels are required: first, a vertical level, that is, an in-depth theology, one that explains and spells out the various facets of the Christian commandment to love, going beyond the simplistic statement of the commandment. Pope Francis has said that migrants are to be welcomed, protected, promoted, and integrated4, but even this can seem to be too vague. A second level is required: the horizontal level, that is, an expansive theology, one that is applied to 4. Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for the 104th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 14 January 2018, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/migration/ documents/papa-francesco_20170815_world-migrants-day-2018.html.

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the various social areas, not just to one, education being only one of them. Further, this horizontal level must be one that respects both the migrants and the locals. Tisha M. Rajendra argues that “traditional dualisms like citizen/alien, legal/illegal, and native/foreigner have broken down”. She claims that “these categories do not work, but they also create waves of injustice that force countless individuals into the shadows of society and make them vulnerable to being exploited on the merciless sea of human indifference”. In Malta, the distinction between migrants and the local community is generally kept5. Workers from non-European countries have the biggest challenge, since Malta, like many other countries, protects the positive human rights of its members; and often excludes non-members”6. The migrant-students to whom I refer later on in this essay may be sons or daughters of highly skilled and economic migrants who enter a country in search of employment; sons or daughters of undocumented or of unauthorized migrants without the necessary documents and permits; even sons or daughters of forced migrants: refugees, asylum seekers or people forced to move due to factors such as environmental catastrophes or development projects, or even be students of university age who have travelled alone7. The focus of this essay is the theological concept of the locus theologicus, and its use within the theology of migration. The questions which I ask here are: how is the locus theologicus to be understood? How is this concept to be applied to the theology of migration? Furthermore, I ask myself: is it sufficient to apply the concept of locus theologicus to migration, or should it rather be applied to the migrant, and to those offering hospitality towards the migrant? Another question which I ask concerns educational institutions, in particular schools offering religious education, and Faculties of Theology within Universities. Does what is taught in schools and in Theology Faculties reflect the current reality concerning migration, and are student-migrants, as well as those who are hospitable towards the migrants being seriously considered as loci theologici?

5. T.M. RAJENDRA, Migrants and Citizens: Justice and Responsibility in the Ethics of Immigration, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2017, p. viii. 6. Ibid., p. 16. 7. I am aware that the legal protection for refugees is generally better fostered than that of economic migrants, that the category of economic migrants is hardly recognized, and that undocumented immigration would be the most controversial, even from a theological standpoint.

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I. LOCUS THEOLOGICUS: A DEFINITION In 1521, the German Lutheran theologian, Philip Melanchthon (14971560) composed a treatise entitled Loci communes rerum theologicarum seu Hypotyposes Theologicae. In 1542, he released a German redaction of his Loci Theologici8. He had borrowed the term Loci Theologici from classic rhetoricians. The term topoi (from the Greek for “place” or “turn”) is a metaphor introduced by Aristotle to characterize the “places” where a speaker or writer may “locate” arguments that are appropriate to a given subject. As such, the topoi are tools or strategies of invention9. On the Catholic side, Melanchthon’s Loci were countered, in 1525, by the Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutherum et alios hostes ecclesiae of the Ingolstadt professor Johann Maier Eck (1486-1543). The topics that Eck expounds and defends against the Reformers include: the church and her authority, the Councils, the primacy of the Pope, Holy Scripture, faith and works, human laws, the veneration of saints and their images, the Mass, vows, clerical celibacy, wars against the Turks, immunities and wealth of the church, indulgences, purgatory, the burning of heretics, and so on10. Also, significant in the evolution of the term locus theologicus is the work of Melchior Cano (1509-1560). In his posthumous work, De Locis theologicis (Salamanca, 1562), Cano tried to bring religion back to first principles; and, by giving rules, method, co-ordination, and system, to build up a scientific treatment of theology. For Cano, the locus theologicus was an authority, a dependable source for the emergence of theology, rather than simply a topic within theology. Cano identified a plurality of authorities, ten to be precise: Seven are inner authorities of the church, called loci theologici proprii: The Holy Scripture, the Magisterium of the church and theology, the bishops and so on. The three loci theologici alieni are the human natural ratio, philosophy (for example, science) and history. History is a source of theological insight and knowledge11. Daniel Franklin Pilario has proposed the spatial metaphor of “placeable social identities”, originally provided by Raymond Williams (1922-1988), 8. Philip MELANCHTHON, The Loci Communes of Philip Melanchthon: With a Critical Introduction by the Translator, trans. C.L. HILL, Eugene, OR, Wipf & Stock, 2007, pp. 24-26. 9. R. NORDQUIST, Definition and Examples of the Topoi in Rhetoric: Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms, https://www.thoughtco.com/topoi-rhetoric-1692553. 10. J. ECK, Enchiridion of Commonplaces against Luther and Other Enemies of the Church, Grand Rapids, MI, Baker, 1979. 11. Melchior CANO, De locis theologicis, ed. J.B. PLANS, Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2006, https://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1509-1560,_Cano_ Melchior,_De_Locis_Theologicis,_LT.pdf.

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which allows us to ask “questions of ultimate meanings and values” from what he calls “the rough grounds of the real historical process of actual communities”. Theology is thus created in this “concrete disrupted/disruptive locus with its hard and urgent questions of personal meanings, social values and structural praxis”12. In discussing the locus theologicus, Pilario also refers to Walter Kasper, John Milbank and Robert Schreiter, contrasting the three. The focus is on identifying the more reliable source for theology. Kasper identifies the faith of the church as the locus theologicus, that is, as the starting point of theological reflection from where “God’s effects” could be discerned, adding that “this faith has a relationship with the normative witness of Scripture”, that “it must be integrated into the contemporary process of Christian proclamation”, and that Dogmatic theology serves this hermeneutic process13. For Milbank, it is Christian practice that acts as the locus theologicus. Milbank, writes Pilario, posits Christian doctrine and tradition as social theory in itself, arguing that “there can only be a distinguishable Christian social theory because there is also a distinguishable Christian mode of action, a definite practice”. This social theory claims, for itself, the right to read and critique other realities (that is, other societies, cultures, peoples) from the perspective of its own new social practice14. On his part, Schreiter chooses the contemporary “context” as his starting point. “Be context construed as culture, social structure, or social location, it always plays an important role in framing any theological articulation”. Pilario adds that, for Schreiter, “the fundamentally disruptive experience [which proceeds from globalization] … is the locus where theology should start asking where God is to be found”15. Schreiter’s emphasis on “context” as the locus theologicus brings us to the next point in our argument. II. THE EXPERIENCE OF MIGRATION

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The current theology of migration is good at telling us what the values, virtues, and attitudes are that should guide us in our dealings with 12. D.F. PILARIO, Locus Theologicus: Place, Theology and Globalization, in Bijdragen: International Journal for Philosophy and Theology 63 (2002) 71-98. 13. W. KASPER, The Methods of Dogmatic Theology, Shannon, Ecclesia Press, 1969, p. 31. 14. J. MILBANK, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Oxford, Blackwell, 2006. 15. R. SCHREITER, The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2015, p. 59 and p. 93.

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migrants. It is also good at telling us what the best theological concepts that represent the Christian vision of migration are. It is good at telling us what it is that a society can learn from the experience of migration. Further, it is good at telling us what some societies have learnt through their experience of receiving migrants. However, the theology of migration has not told us much about the losses that are suffered by a society as a consequence of huge influxes of migration, or the pain associated with the process of discernment of that local church wishing to remain faithful to its identity and its traditions, while opening its doors to foreigners with different religious devotions and theological priorities. The theology of migration tells us very little about how a society that became multicultural too swiftly can cope with the manifold changes that are required. Neither does the theology of migration tell us about how one is to engage with migrants so that they become a locus theologicus (that is, transmitters of God’s presence). This occurs only if one considers the more social and moral elements of the theology of migration. The theology of migration also has the potential to challenge our fundamental and dogmatic theology: our theological anthropology, our concept of God, our Christology, our ecclesiology, our eschatology, and our theology of Christian existence. Perhaps the reason for this lack of development is, as Peter C. Phan (2014) pointed out, that the theology of migration “is still in its infancy due to the fact that the number of theologians who are themselves migrants or work with migrants, as well as the number of pastoral ministers who reflect theologically on their work in the field of migration, still remains small”16. In fact, Phan is one of the few theologians who has started developing such a theology17. Daniel G. Groody is another such theologian. Groody argues that “legal or social constructs are not sufficient”, and provides his readers with four foundations of a theology of migration and refugees: Imago Dei, Verbum Dei, Missio Dei and Visio Dei18. Phan distinguishes between “Migration Theology”, by which he understands “a new way of doing theology”, “doing theology from migration”, and the “Theology of Migration”, which he defines as “a new conceptualization of basic Christian beliefs”, and as “God-on the Move”19. In 16. P.C. PHAN, Embracing, Protecting, and Loving the Stranger: A Roman Catholic Theology of Migration, in E. PADILLA – P.C. PHAN (eds.), Theology of Migration in the Abrahamic Religions, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 77-110, p. 94. 17. P.C. PHAN, Deus Migrator – God the Migrant: Migration of Theology and Theology of Migration, in Theological Studies 77 (2016) 845-868. 18. D.G. GROODY, Crossing the Divide: Foundations of a Theology of Migration and Refugees, in Theological Studies 70 (2009) 638-667, pp. 644-645. 19. PHAN, Deus Migrator (n. 17), pp. 854, 857.

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this essay, I do not make this terminological distinction. I argue, however, that migration is itself a method that arises out of the actual re-location, the physical experience of movement within time and space, from which theology, consequently, arises. Also, I argue that a theology of migration that recognizes both migration and the migrant as a locus theologicus, enables us to re-conceptualize theological content, including, but not solely, the theology of migration itself. The locus theologicus, as I would define it, is the place where theology poses the question, that is, inquires where God is to be located, as well as the place where the answer is formulated. It is the place where a confession of faith takes place: God is to be found here. Further, it is a place of authority, that is, a guarantee that whatever theology is discovered is to be considered reliable. Now, one could always stick to the idea held by Aquinas that none of us can ever stand in that very locus where theology is both located and created, except for God. In this sense, not even the Scriptures or the church would merit the term of loci theologici. Yet, most of us would be willing to consider some things as loci theologici, because they refer us back to God; because, to use Kasper’s phrase, they are a starting point of theological reflection from where “God’s effects” can be discerned. Gemma Tulud Cruz has claimed that the “facet of migration as a rich source for learning about and/or understanding the human condition makes migration a new place for humanity and, as such, a new place of theology”20. Understanding migration as a locus theologicus goes one step further. Besides recognizing that migration is a “rich source for learning about and/or understanding the human condition”, and besides being “a new place for humanity”, seeing migration as a locus theologicus enables us to recognize migration as a hermeneutical tool, that is, as a tool for evaluating the learning that takes place as a consequence of migration. Regina Polak, Associate Professor of Practical Theology at Vienna University in Austria, has done work in this regard. Polak has argued that it was Vatican II, and its understanding of revelation as communication and participation, which has helped us to pick up once again the theology of loci and to make it fruitful for contemporary times. If God reveals himself, also outside the church, a plurality of different loci come into sight. Thus, any place, any space enabling one to generate new theological knowledge can formally be considered as a locus theologicus. Polak argues that, by means of these loci theologici, arguments can be proven, 20. G.T. CRUZ, An Intercultural Theology of Migration: Pilgrims in the Wilderness (Studies in Systematic Theology, 5), Leiden – Boston, MA, Brill, 2010, p. 121.

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and teachings that refute the church’s teaching can be disproved. As a result, loci are legitimate “residences” of theological arguments, sources of theological knowledge, a formal authority claiming truth21. As José de Mesa and Lode Wostyn have said, “culture and world events are not just areas to which theology is adapted and applied, but the very sources of the theological enterprise. The experience, with its tragedy, its challenges, but also its grace is the source of theology”22. Appreciating the experience of migration as a locus theologicus can help us view this experience as pedagogic, and as theologically productive. It can serve a healing purpose, enabling the individuals involved to accept the trials that come with migration and with the post-migratory experience, and to give them a sense of meaning. Gioacchino Campese has pointed out that Hispanic and Asian-American theologies of migration have been emphasizing how the faith experience of migrants can become a privileged locus theologicus23. Regina Polak (2018) reminds out, quite rightly, that “migration is the locus theologicus of biblical theology: the place where theology is generated. It is reflected upon with profundity”. She, too, acknowledges that “migration can be seen as a hermeneutical tool”, and argues that many biblical stories are shaped by this “migratory hermeneutic”. Polak states that migration teaches us politically; that “spiritual experience and political learning are not separated” in the biblical tradition, and neither should they be separated today; that an authentic theology of migration is one of hope; that “theology does not trivialize the tragedies of flight and migration, but it can show how catastrophes can be transformed into chances for human flourishing”; that signs of the times are loci theologici; that these loci theologici are not places, where theology has to be applied or proven, but “places and spaces, where new theology is born and old theology is reborn”; that “migration can … enable society and politics to identify those structures, processes, institutions, and persons in the social, political, economic, juridical, educational, cultural, and religious realm that restrict, damage or destroy the life of all people in society; that society can learn to interpret problems made visible by migration as opportunities for change; that migration can help the receiving countries to learn about 21. R. POLAK, Flight and Migration: Signs of the Times and Loci Theologici: A European Perspective, in Journal of Catholic Social Thought 14 (2017) 105-121, p. 114. 22. J.M. DE MESA – L. WOSTYN, Doing Theology: Basic Realities and Processes, Manila, Maryhill School of Theology, 1982, pp. 14-18. 23. G. CAMPESE, The Irruption of Migrants: Theology of Migration in the 21st Century, in Theological Studies 73 (2012) 10-18.

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their internal problems and thus provoke processes of transformation”; that “the theology of migration is itself the result of a spiritual and an ethical learning process”; that “suffering is not legitimized spiritually, but perceived as a commitment to learn in religious as well as political terms”; and finally, that “the learning process consists of indispensable elements: first, perceiving the initial situation as it is, including all the bad and evil, all the suffering; second, exploring one’s own contribution to this situation, which includes recognizing one’s own guilt; third, remembering history and the religious tradition and re-learning it in the light of the current tragedy; and fourth, being willing to repent and being open to transformation”24. This “complex process”, as Polak continues to argue, enables the people to develop new ways of religious and political life; to realize that “the experience of migration is not necessary to learn about God”, that “refugees and migrants are not nearer to God than other human beings”, but that “the experience of migration allows for the intensification of some of the experiences that enable us to experience God: powerlessness, dependence, fragility, vulnerability”; and that migration necessarily raises theological questions25. I would argue that migration is a locus theologicus not only in the sense that it is a learning experience (doctrina experientiae) for all those involved, but also in the sense that it confers to those involved (migrant and receiving native) the authority to teach (auctoritas docendi). This brings me to the issue of education. It is clear that, although schools and Theology Faculties in various European countries incorporate multiple references to Judaeo-Christian history26, which enable students to recognize migrants mentioned in the Bible, and to acknowledge the journeys of migration of the great figures of the Bible, and the hospitality shown to them, as loci theologici, schools and Theology Faculties within Universities are yet to recognize migration, contemporary migrants, the current tide of migration, and present-day hospitality towards the migrant as loci theologici.

24. R. POLAK, Turning a Curse into a Blessing? Theological Contributions to a Resource-Orientated Narrative on Migration in Europe, in U. SCHMIEDEL – G. SMITH (eds.), Religion in the European Refugee Crisis, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 243-263. 25. Ibid. 26. P.C. Phan speaks of “Migrantness” as “a mark of the Church”, thus introducing a new adage to ecclesiology: “extra migrationem nulla ecclesia”. See PHAN, Deus Migrator (n. 17), p. 854.

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III. THE MIGRANT AS LOCUS THEOLOGICUS So far, we have advocated the pedagogical value of migration. Now, I wish to focus on the migrant as locus theologicus. Phan speaks about God as the Primordial Migrant27 and of Jesus as “the Paradigmatic Migrant”28. Thus, Phan introduces the analogical notion of attributing migration to God and to Christ. Many theologies of migration “highlight the perspective of the migrants themselves: their hopes, joys, sufferings, resilience, and anxieties for the well-being of themselves and their families”29. However, the concept of the migrant as a locus theologicus, as I understand it, has not really been developed. My argument is that each migrant is one place for doing theology and for sharing it with some authority. The construct, I would say, allows us to see the migrant as both the place where one can learn about God and about life, as well as the place where one can teach about God and about life. I would agree with Rajendra that “the experiences of migrants have been overlooked as a locus of theological reflection and that these experiences reveal an authentic Christian theology”30. There have been some attempts made to put this into a context. Gemma Tulud Cruz, for instance, has studied the life of the Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong. Her book detects, describes, and explores the theological relevance of the role of religion in their struggle, in order to identify the features of a theology that arises from their struggle31. The concept of the locus theologicus can certainly serve the community in general, as well as theology and education, if it is understood to refer to the individual, and not just to migration in general. While the interpretation of migration as a locus theologicus has academic value, treating the individual (rather than migration in general) as a hermeneutical tool can be beneficial on various counts. It can be beneficial to theology, since it makes sense to argue that the theologizing originates from within the subject, even if it is the movement of migration that instigates the investigation. The individual (whether a migrant or a local responding to migrants) can teach us first-hand about God, both within and after migration. Here, the migrant is acknowledged as an active agent, teaching about God, rather than just as a person in the process of learning about God. Naturally, migrants may not always be nearer to God than other 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Ibid., p. 858. Ibid., p. 862. RAJENDRA, Migrants and Citizens (n. 5), pp. 4-5. Ibid., p. 5. CRUZ, An Intercultural Theology of Migration (n. 20).

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human beings, but what they have experienced concerning God throughout their journey, and afterword, is certainly worth learning about and from. Migrants may more easily identify with the concept of God as migrant and as pilgrim, than those who have never experienced migration. A spirituality of neighbour and hospitality that is well lived will also, in itself, be a locus theologicus, that is, as Gioacchino Campese would call it, “a privileged locus where God reveals Godself”32. Cruz also writes of the call to hospitality. She claims, that, in its “subversive countercultural dimension”, hospitality “entails welcoming socially undervalued persons, like migrants. It means challenging ‘other-ing’ and paving the way towards the respect for and visibility of strangers. Hospitality, in this way, becomes resistance for or towards humanization rooted in the power of recognition”33. Peter C. Phan (2014) also sees the importance of identifying the migrant as a locus theologicus. He argues that a theology of migration means, “not simply a theology about migration or human mobility, but a theological reflection using the history of migration and the experiences of migrants as its locus theologicus or source”. Phan writes of the advantages of such a method. He argues that, “as a consequence, the teachings of the Bible and the hierarchical magisterium on migration will be interpreted, as well as enriched, and when necessary, corrected by the concrete experiences of migrants”34. Here, space is allocated to the experience of the individual. Opportunities for encounter are created, reasons for listening generated, and conflicts are more easily reconciled. The migrant becomes an active agent, teaching about God, rather than just learning about him. It is the migrants, and the people who know from experience what it is that migration does to the individual, and how an individual’s life is truly changed by it, that can interpret the realities that concern them. Treating the individual (rather than migration in general) as a hermeneutical tool has consequences on institutions of education, among places. The migrant-students within the school and the University classroom can share and interpret their experience, including their experience of God, alongside other children and young people who were born into the community. Through the concept of the locus theologicus, we are able to see the migrant, as well as the native community, as a privileged locus where God reveals Godself, and as the place where one can learn about God and about life. The individual migrant, as well as the native community, are encouraged to interpret their experience as God revealing and God-bearing. 32. CAMPESE, The Irruption of Migrants (n. 23), p. 29. 33. CRUZ, An Intercultural Theology of Migration (n. 20), p. 127. 34. PHAN, Embracing, Protecting, and Loving (n. 16), p. 94.

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It should be emphasized that I am not, hereby, supporting Gnosticism, that is, the “purely subjective faith whose only interest is a certain experience or a set of ideas and bits of information which are meant to console and enlighten, but which ultimately keep one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings”35. I am simply claiming that the migrant and all those involved in migration are able to know things about God and his creatures, precisely because of this experience. The migrant experience is the place where one learns from one’s suffering, where one encounters evil, where one can learn who God is, and where one learns how to live life36. Migrants often go through experiences of statelessness and human insecurity. Here, the idea is not to justify the suffering and calamities they experience, but to acknowledge that there is also a deep level where the individual, or even the receiving community, are conversing with God. These stories often reveal a faith vision, a faith experience, a theological reflection that is lived out within that same experience. Migrants, and their receiving community are characterized by a continuous attempt to make sense of their experience, and it could be a great initiative – in line with the narratives of the Jewish people in the Old Testament – if each was to seek to truly encounter the other, and to discover the pains and the joys of the journey, but also how all those involved have been using religious resources – as a form of cultural capital – during the entirety of the migration process, from decision making, through the journey, to the arrival, and even through all the attempts at integration37. Stephen B. Bevans wonders: “As theology becomes more of a reflection on ordinary human life in the light of the Christian tradition, one might ask whether ordinary men and women might not, after all, be the best people to theologize”38. He says that theology must be “an activity of dialogue, emerging out of a mutual respect between ‘faith-full’ but not technically trained people, and ‘faith-full’ and listening professionals”39. It should, by now, be clearer why I believe that the migrant, as well as the receiving native, are thus a locus theologicus not only in the sense that they 35. Pope FRANCIS, Evangelii Gaudium, 24 November 2013, art. 94: Acta Apostolica Sedis 105 (2013) 1059. 36. See, for example, J. HAGAN, Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2008. 37. P. DIMECH, A Theology of Migration: Mercy and Education, in Melita Theologica 67/1 (2017) 127-142, p. 141. 38. S.B. BEVANS, Models of Contextual Theology. Revised and Expanded Edition, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2002, p. 17. 39. Ibid., p. 18.

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have achieved a learning experience (doctrina experientiae), but also in the sense that they have the authority to teach (auctoritas docendi). IV. THE MIGRANT-STUDENT AS LOCUS THEOLOGICUS Every aspect of society, whether it is hospitality, health, law or education, is changed by the very fact that the population takes a multicultural turn. Unfortunately, I believe that religious education in schools and Theology Faculties have not really reflected this change. More space should be allocated to the theology of migration within Religious Education curricula, and among the courses offered by Faculties of Theology. Migration is yet to be recognized as a reference, a resource, a locus, and a method for doing religion and doing theology. Where this has happened, the emphasis is often pastoral, and the focus is on ministry40. Otherwise, it has been on the dialogue between cultures, religions and disciplines41. But there are still to be courses based on seeing migration and the student-migrant as a locus theologicus, and therefore on having a fundamental and even systematic theology that derives its contents from the migration experience, where the method itself arises from that very reality. Bert Roebben has already applied the concept of the locus theologicus within the context of education. He has written about raising children as locus theologicus42, as well as about the vulnerability of the educator as a locus theologicus43. However, we are not there yet. The next step is to promote a theology of migration that sees the migrant child, as well as the students offering the hospitality, as loci theologici, and to create theo-educational principles that clarify this, and practices that carry this out. To recognize that the migrant-student is a locus theologicus is to be 40. Loyola School of Theology, the Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples (CBCP-EMCI), and the Scalabrini Migration Center (SMC) established a special program in Migration Theology at the Ateneo de Manila University. Here, the emphasis is Pastoral and the focus is Ministry. 41. The University of Applied Sciences for Intercultural Theology in Hermannsburg, offers a Bachelor degree in Cross-Cultural Theology, Migration and Global Cooperation. 42. B. ROEBBEN, Seeking Sense in the City: European Perspectives on Religious Education (Dortmunder Beiträge zu Theologie und Religionspädagogik, 7), Münster, Lit Verlag, 2009, pp. 93-111. 43. B. ROEBBEN, The Vulnerability of the Postmodern Educator as Locus Theologicus: A Study in Practical Theology, in Religious Education 96 (2001) 175-192.

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willing to engage with the migrant, to put him/her at the centre of the learning process, and to allow him/her to take over a teaching role. It is to appreciate him/her as an authority, to make better use of the experience of migrant-students within the educational context. It is to recognize that all students, even those from the local community, are affected by migration in various ways. It is also to appreciate that the student who was born into the community needs to be listened to and appreciated. To claim that “citizens have responsibilities and obligations to migrants”44 is just not enough. The theologian, like the politician, must remember that both migrant and native have responsibilities and obligations towards each other. The concept of locus theologicus is a theological construct and, as such, is difficult to translate into educational principles and practices. Furthermore, as a concept, it needs to be seen as a theological method, and not just a theological construct. This statement is grounded in the understanding that the migration experience informs all those concerned, who are then able to see God and God’s work, and to approach God from an informed standpoint. It is based on the understanding that, from within the human and faith experiences of the migrant, God can be known, God can be learnt, and God can be shared. The migrant-students in our schools and Theology Faculties have their own stories to tell, and they can provide a particular vision of God and of human life, that would be lost unless all those involved made sure it was preserved. Within the context of the school, and the Faculty of Theology, we need to allow the theological construct of the locus theologicus to serve as a hermeneutical tool for, first of all, evaluating the educational systems and structures that have been created specifically for our diversified classrooms. Second, for evaluating the curriculum and the pedagogical practices, so that migration becomes an important educational metaphor and paradigm. Third, for evaluating laws, policies and decisions created by parliaments and by politicians vis-à-vis schools and Faculties of Theology. Understanding that the student (whether migrant or local) is a valid locus theologicus will affect how the migrant-student is viewed and treated by staff and students within our schools and our Faculties of Theology. It will influence whether the student comes to terms with his/her experience of migration or not, and it will ensure that the student is allocated opportunities for sharing his/ her experiences and for interpreting these experiences from a theological standpoint. 44. RAJENDRA, Migrants and Citizens (n. 5), p. 15.

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In writing about migration and education, politicians, sociologists and academics, tend to focus on concepts, on structures and on systems, rather than on individuals as subjects. Few focus on the experience of the migrant, or the local as such, and on what migrants and locals go through as they suffer, adapt and grow in the face of trauma, including the changes that ensue as a consequence of the migration experience, in what Lisa Anne Petronis, from the standpoint of clinical psychology, would refer to as “the subjective structures of time, space, causality, relationship to self, relationship to others, relationship to God, materiality, and bodily concerns”45. Further, even fewer focus on the fertility of their experience, and on that which one learns as he/she travels to another country, enters another civic system, and adapts and grows in the face of huge challenges, or as one is confronted by migrants from multiple cultures in a small space. The concept of locus theologicus, as presented here, is also about the sense of meaning. The migrant, as well as the receiving community, are called to make meaning, that is, to make sense of their experience. Meaning can be made of traumatic events and can be the narrative of life one tells or asserts to better understand the event46. People working with people, including teachers and lecturers, need to find ways to create narratives and meaning from both negative and positive experiences associated with their migration experience, whether as a migrant or as a member of the receiving community. Migrant-students, for instance, need to reflect on the challenges they went through, and the treatment they received during the journey, upon their arrival, or after their arrival. It is a journey that is often associated with low socio-economic status, limited language proficiency, limited access to social support, and various relational challenges, hugely impacting one’s social status and well-being47. These are part and parcel of their spiritual journey, irrespective of whether what is involved is a faith in God, in humankind, or outside of any established religion. Narrative creation continues throughout one’s life, so that the 45. L.A. PETRONIS, The Lived Experience of Exile and Christianity for the Lost Boys from Sudan: A Transcendental-Phenomenological Study, Doctoral Dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/909530307.html?FMT=AI&pubnum =3486446. 46. D.P. McADAMS – B.K. JONES, Making Meaning in the Wake of Trauma: Resilience and Redemption, in E.M. ALTMAIER (ed.), Reconstructing Meaning after Trauma: Theory, Research, and Practice, San Diego, CA, Elsevier Academic Press, 2017, 3-16. 47. J. POWELL, Coping, Meaning-Making and Well-Being amongst Immigrants of Non-European Descent, Doctoral Dissertation, Pepperdine University, December 2018, p. 57, https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2023&context =etd.

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migrant-student will continue to re-engage with narration, re-evaluation, meaning-making and adjustment of his/her stories over time. Seeing the migrant-student as a locus theologicus may challenge the beliefs and values of the receiving community. It may challenge the theological, religious, and spiritual beliefs and values of the community. It will certainly challenge our sense of Christian fellowship, and our ecclesiology. It will probably challenge our religious values, i.e., the traditions, principles, and established norms founded in our religious traditions, texts, and beliefs. It may challenge those spiritual values that are associated with one particular religious tradition, our meaning production, and our spiritual practice, although it may confirm our human values of truth, righteousness, peace, love and non-violence, which are found in all major spiritual paths. Chrissie Monaghan and Carol Anne Spreen discuss the ways in which the mass movement of peoples (forced and voluntary), as both cause and effect of economic globalization and conflict, has diversified classrooms around the world48. Many teachers are finding the organization of traditional events very challenging, the Christmas concert being one example. Celebrating Christmas with a multicultural classroom population is no longer straightforward. The teacher and the students from the local community must find ways of being inclusive, while ensuring that Christians are not disappointed. A theology of the migrant as locus theologicus sees migration as a sign of hope without ignoring the violence and suffering that take place in the process. At the same time, Christian theology cannot avoid repeatedly asking for the meaning of history before God. Christians believe in a God who reveals Godself in concrete historical conditions, redeeming humanity already now. The account of the history of salvation, then, must include migration, but it must also include the individual. CONCLUSION The main focus of this essay was the theological concept of the locus theologicus, and its use within the theology of migration. I looked at how the locus theologicus is understood. I argued that it is not sufficient to apply the concept of locus theologicus to migration, but that the concept should rather be applied to the migrant, and, secondarily, to those who 48. C. MONAGHAN – C.A. SPREEN, From Human Rights to Global Citizenship Education: Movement, Migration, Conflict and Capitalism in the Classroom, in J. ZAJDA – S. OZDOWSKI (eds.), Globalisation, Human Rights Education and Reforms, Dordrecht, Springer, 2017, 35-53.

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are offering the hospitality towards the migrant. I focused on schools, and Theology Faculties in particular, convinced that there is a lot for both education and theology to gain when the concept of the locus theologicus is contextualized and applied. Also, I made it quite clear that, despite all the work that has been done, the theology of migration is still not sufficiently developed. I hope that, seeing the migrant as a locus theologicus, can contribute to this theological process. University of Malta Msida Campus Msida, MSD 2080 Malta [email protected]

Pauline DIMECH

A HERMENEUTICS OF DISCERNMENT THE CASE OF THE BETHEL CHURCH ASYLUM

INTRODUCTION Between 26 October 2018 and 30 January 2019, the Protestant Church of The Hague in the Netherlands offered a safe place to an Armenian refugee family who was being threatened with deportation. The case of this “Bethel Church asylum”, named after the Bethel Chapel, where the family was given sanctuary, gained international media attention, because the church had to maintain a round-the-clock church service to protect the family from arrest. The ninety-six-day-long service (2306 hours) became a decisive factor in a process within Dutch politics that resulted in granting residence permits to more than five hundred refugee children and their parents. This influential action by the church was unusual, considering the church’s political role in the Netherlands1. The state recognizes the right of religious denominations to have a religious life of their own. The state does not subsidize churches, though it does subsidize religious organizations and foundations. As far as education is concerned, public schools and religious schools receive equal financial support. There are many forms of contact between the government and the churches, both on a local and on a national level. There are also some religious political parties. Two Christian parties are part of the current Dutch government coalition. The separation between church and state clearly does not imply a separation between church (or religion) and politics. Some denominations are known for their criticism of the government, especially when it comes to subjects such as refugees, armament, the environment, and social inequality. Churches sometimes participate in protest movements. Despite this history of dissent, however, it was rather unusual that what many considered to be a subversive church service, started by a local church, had such a huge impact on a national level, in which 1. On the relation between state and church in The Netherlands, cf. H. BROEKSTEEG – A. TERLOUW (eds.), Overheid, recht en religie (Staat en recht, 5), Deventer, Kluwer, 2011; P. DRONKERS, Faithful Citizens: Civic Allegiance and Religious Loyalty in a Globalised Society: A Dutch Case Study, Amsterdam, Pallas Publications, 2013; S.C. VAN BIJSTERVELD (ed.), State and Religion: Re-Assessing a Mutual Relationship, Den Haag, Eleven International Publishing, 2018.

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the urgent call for one refugee family resulted in a one-off government regulation that benefitted hundreds of refugees. The goal of this paper is to explore the question what a case of critical church praxis may contribute to a theology of discernment. The paper aims to answer this question by investigating the case of the Bethel Church asylum and reflecting on the notion of discernment. This contribution is based on my own involvement in the Bethel Church asylum. Between 2016-2020, I was chairperson of the board of the Protestant Church in The Hague. As such, I was involved both in the decision to engage in this sanctuary protest and in the church service itself, as well as in political lobbying. It was a time of many quick decisions that are barely documented, but luckily, we now have at least one attempt at documentation and theological reflection2. I also write as a theologian rooted in the hermeneutical tradition. Now, one can have reservations about using hermeneutics in (political) theology. Was it not Karl Marx who, already in the nineteenth century, stated that “philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”3? Such Marxist reservations might stem from a misconceived idea of interpretation. Hermeneutical interpretation has to do with the act of establishing meaningful connections between speakers and hearers, as well as between human beings and their inspirational sources of living. Hermeneutics is an act of contextualization. Such contextualization may be an act of re-establishing a connection to a person, group, or tradition that had been lost, or it may establish a way of connecting that had not existed before. In this way, contextualization can transform relationships and attitudes. Interpretation can lead to change, and hermeneutic philosophers and theologians are well aware of this fact. When hermeneutics creates contextual connections, it implies that such connections are profiled. In other words, establishing a meaningful connection implies a certain level of concreteness: connections imply a certain commitment that we give to a certain context, situation, or person, while not connecting to everything. Thus, theological hermeneutics consists in making meaningful connections that involve concrete commitment to specific contexts. It is in this way that theological hermeneutics relates to church praxis. For church life consists in a continuous effort to contextualize, i.e., to re-establish relations to contexts, whether they be societal, historical, or communal. 2. W. VAN DER MEIDEN – D. STEGEMAN (eds.), Dat wonderlijke kerkasiel: De non-stop viering in de Haagse Bethelkapel, Middelburg, Skandalon, 2020. 3. Karl MARX, 11th thesis on Feuerbach, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ 1845/theses/index.htm.

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The success of meaningful acts of contextualization cannot be expressed in terms of efficiency, control, or objective change. Meaningfulness rather has to do with the ability to discern the spirit of a situation – or, in other words, the momentum of a situation, the urgent need to take action and respond to that momentum. Thus, hermeneutics has to do with meaningful contextualization, and meaningful contextualization is a matter of spiritual discernment: the ability to perceive the specific spirit of a certain situation, an opportunity to commit oneself to the call of a certain situation. This discernment is part of the praxis of Christian life. The Christian community is asked to give its commitment to persons and groups in a world of oppression and poverty. The experiences of living in our world ask for discernment, sensitivity, and judgment to connect in the right way to persons and situations. Thus, it is especially in the act of discernment that Christian praxis and theology have a hermeneutical character and might meet each other. In order to enrich this relation between church praxis and theology, I turn to the case of the Bethel church asylum as a possible source for a theology of discernment. After an exposition of the Bethel case (I), I consider why this case is a matter of hermeneutic discernment (II), and I compare it to a philosophical-theological notion of discernment (III). I conclude with some aspects of how church praxis may contribute to a hermeneutics of discernment (IV). I. THE CASE OF THE BETHEL CHURCH ASYLUM On 24 October 2018, the question was put to us as the board of the Protestant Church in The Hague if we could help an Armenian refugee family, the Tamrazyan family. This family had fled to the Netherlands nine years before and had applied for asylum, as the father of the family was a political activist who was not safe in Armenia. Though the judge saw good reasons to urge the government to provide a residence permit, the government repeatedly appealed the case, finally winning a ruling in its favour from the highest court. This process took nearly six years. At the time, the Netherlands had a regulation for resident refugee families with children, the so called “kinderpardon” or “children’s pardoning regulation”4. This regulation recognized that long asylum procedures are 4. The official name for the regulation is “Regeling langdurig verblijvende kinderen”, published in Staatssecretaris van Veiligheid en Justitie, Besluit van de Staatssecretaris van Veiligheid en Justitie van 30 januari 2013, nummer WBV 2013/1, houdende wijziging van de Vreemdelingencirculaire 2000, in Staatscourant 2573 (31 January 2013), as a decision of the minister for migration, 30 January 2013, replacing an earlier regulation from 2000.

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harmful for children. Thus, if a procedure took longer than five years, a family might apply to the Minister for Migration for special consideration. The Minister might then use his personal authority to grant a residence permit. This rule had, since 2013, been invoked for a few hundred cases (even under a populist Minister for Migration). However, in 2017 serious problems arose when a government coalition had to be formed after the national elections. After many months of negotiating, there were four political parties willing to cooperate in a government coalition. However, they diverged when it came to the case of this children’s pardoning regulation. The Liberal Party (VVD) wanted neither a general law that was favourable for refugees, nor any possibility of individual exceptions, such as the children’s pardoning regulation. The Neo-liberals (D66) wanted generally favourable laws for refugees, but no individual exceptions. The Christian Democrats (CDA) wanted only individual exceptions and no general law, while the Christian Reformed Party (CU) wanted both favourable laws and individual exceptions for refugees. These four political parties, with their irreconcilable positions, could only be brought together by a political tour de force: the children’s pardoning regulation was maintained, but it was interpreted so strictly that no one could successfully apply, due to the invention of a co-operation criterion. A family might ask for consideration only if they agreed to fully co-operate with the government. The government, however, interpreted “full co-operation” as the willingness to be deported back to the country of origin. If a family did not co-operate, they were denied a residence permit. If they agreed to co-operate, they also did not receive a residence permit, because they were sent back to their country of origin. With this interpretation of the children’s pardoning regulation, the prorefugee parties could assure their members that they had maintained the regulation, while the anti-refugee parties could tell their voters that fewer refugees would be admitted to the Netherlands, as they had promised in their campaigns. Under these political circumstances the Tamrazyan family applied for a residence permit under the children’s pardoning regulation. Their application was, of course, denied. Now, the Netherlands has a tradition of church asylum, based upon both a law and a custom that forbid the police to enter a religious building during a church service or religious ceremony5. Though giving sanctuary may harken back to the Middle Ages, the more recent practice of church 5. This rule is laid down in the “general law on entering a property [by the police]” the “Algemene wet op het binnentreden”, art. 12b, https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0006763/ 2010-07-01.

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asylum dates from the 1980s, when immigrants from Turkey and Morocco came to the Netherlands as migrant labourers6. In the past thirty years, there have been some fifty instances of church asylum, in which refugees stayed in a church building while some volunteers were present, ready to grab a hymnal and begin a service in case the police should enter the building. In practice, it was often the case that staying in a church was enough to keep the police away. The police had always respected such instances of church asylum. However, in the case of the Tamrazyan family, who had fled to their local church in Katwijk, near The Hague, the immigration police stated that they would arrest the family and send them back to Armenia if there would not be an actual church service. The family had recently heard that the situation was not safe for the father in Armenia, even after the democratic elections there in 2018. They were convinced that with a few months of asylum they could gather reliable witnesses for their case. The church community in Katwijk was too small to help, but the larger Protestant community in The Hague could offer assistance. After the request was made to us on 24 October, we started a church service in a small church building, the Bethel Chapel, on Friday 26 October. We had thought that politicians would react favourably to the situation or, at least, that after some weeks, the Minister for Migration would reconsider their case in light of the new witnesses. However, nothing happened. It became clear to us that the family was sacrificed in order to maintain the political status quo, as had been done with many other families. Inspired by other current forms of protest against the government’s policy on refugees, the board of the Protestant Church of The Hague decided to receive this family and to hold a church service in order to allow time to gather evidence for their case in Armenia, and to plea for their fate and the fate of other families in similar circumstances7. 6. Cf. similar movements like the American Sanctuary Movement and the German Kirchenasylbewegung: S. BIBLER COUTIN, The Culture of Protest: Religious Activism and the U.S. Sanctuary Movement (Conflict and Social Change Series), Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1993; F. DETHLOFF-SCHIMMER – V. MITTERMAIER (eds.), Kirchenasyl: Eine heilsame Bewegung, Karlsruhe, Von Loeper Literatur Verlag, 2011. 7. Academic and scientific reports from this period confirmed our decision. Cf. E. SCHERDER – C. VAN OS – E. ZIJLSTRA, Schaderisico bij uitzetting langdurig verblijvende kinderen: Een multidisciplinaire wetenschappelijke onderbouwing, Groningen, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen; Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, december 2018, a report by some forty scientists on the negative neurological and psychological consequences of long term uncertainty for refugee children; K. GEERTSEMA, Rechterlijke toetsing in het asielrecht: Een juridisch onderzoek naar de intensiteit van de rechterlijke toets in de Nederlandse asielprocedure van 2001-2015, Den Haag, Boom juridisch, 2018, a PhD dissertation that criticizes the judicial review on asylum affairs of the highest body of appeal in the Netherlands.

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With these aims we started a church service that continued twenty-four hours a day for more than three months – 2306 hours. The national Protestant Church in the Netherlands lent its support after a few days, as did many local congregations and individuals. We were supported by some thousand pastors from all over the Netherlands and several countries abroad (ranging from Europe to the USA). It was a logistical nightmare for us as organizers and a stressful situation for the family, but it also became a real spiritual adventure, based on hope against all odds. It was inspiring, emotional, and impressive, even if it did not have any effect for months. It was only in January 2019 that, because of the importance of upcoming elections, some political parties started to become worried8. Many local Christian-Democratic (CDA) party members had participated in the Bethel Church service and were preparing a party congress resolution to reconsider the effects of the children’s regulation, contrary to the intentions of the CDA Government Ministers and CDA Members of Parliament. All indications pointed to this resolution gaining a sizeable majority at the next CDA party congress. However, such a majority would create severe problems for the CDA members of the Government coalition. The party congress was meant to express unity as a prelude to the upcoming elections, but adopting the resolution would reveal an apparent and unwelcome gap between the party and its Government members and Members of Parliament. Given this situation, the CDA Members of Parliament decided to end their support for the post-2017 interpretation of the children’s regulation. CDA Members of the Government coalition could not help but follow the decision of the CDA Members of Parliament, thereby creating a majority of three out of four government parties in favour of change (CDA, D66, CU), leaving an unwilling Liberal Party (VVD). After some weeks of negotiation, on 30 January the VVD Minister for Migration, Mark Harbers, announced in Parliament that he was willing to reconsider the case of all refugee families that, according to the previous interpretation of the regulation, could apply to the children’s pardoning regulation9. This was to be a one-off consideration, after which the children’s pardoning regulation would be cancelled. According to a semi-final report from February 2020 by the Minister for Migration, 569 children 8. The Netherlands were to have regional elections and indirect elections for the Senate on 20 March 2019 and European elections on 23 May 2019. 9. Staatssecretaris van Justitie en Veiligheid, Brief van de staatssecretaris, nr. 2459, https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/kst-19637-2459.html, presented to the Parliament on 29 January and debated in the Parliament on 30 January 2019.

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and 502 adults (their parents and adult brothers and sisters) have benefited from this final application10. The church service at the Bethel Chapel was ended by the Protestant Church of The Hague in the afternoon of 30 January 2019, though it was not until March 2019 that the Tamrazyan family was granted a residence permit. II. THE BETHEL CHURCH ASYLUM

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DISCERNMENT

In examining whether or not this case of critical church praxis contributes to a theology of discernment, we should begin by asking if the case of the Bethel Church asylum has anything to do with discernment. For some outsiders, the church service was nothing more than an emotive and impulsive action. It must be made clear from the outset, however, that we had sufficient rational reasons to offer the family sanctuary. In the initial meetings of the board of the Protestant Church of The Hague on 24 and 25 October 2019, as well as in many regular meetings during the period of the church asylum, we, as organizers, asked ourselves the following questions: 1) Do we not risk the immediate safety of this family by our church asylum? We decided that we could indeed guarantee enough safety and privacy for the family (especially in their restricted contacts with the press). 2) Does our church asylum have a higher purpose, i.e., is there a reason that would make the selection of this family more than a random choice? We found this answer in our choice to combine our action for the Tamrazyan family with a more general plea for the correct application of the children’s pardoning regulation. 3) Does this church asylum accord with our mission statement as a local church? The Hague is the capital of the Netherlands. The city proclaims itself the “International city of peace and justice”. As the local church of this city, we feel a special responsibility to contribute to the realization of these aims of peace and justice. This is part of our vision as a church, as endorsed by the Church Council of the Protestant Church in The Hague in 2017. 10. Staatssecretaris van Justitie en Veiligheid, Kamerbrief Afhandeling Afsluitingsregeling Langdurig Verblijvende Kinderen, 12 February 2020, https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/ documenten/kamerstukken/2020/02/12/tk-afhandeling-afsluitingsregeling-langdurigverblijvende-kinderen.

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4) Can we execute the church service in a reliable way? This was a matter of organization, which indeed we could manage with the help of many volunteers and financial contributions from churches and individuals11. However, there was more to the case than rational considerations alone. This aspect should not be called just emotive or impulsive. It was a deeply felt spiritual aspect. We felt that in receiving this family we actualized Jesus’ statement in Matt 25,35: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in”. This was a text that we discussed in our initial board meeting on 24 October 2019. In receiving this family, we felt that we were welcoming Christ12. Over the course of the ensuing months, the church service appeared to be an inspiring, spiritual experience that involved sharing fear and the darkness of the night. Together, we shared the hopelessness of a Christmas eve, just after an announcement from the Minister for Migration that he would never allow the family to stay. Together we were hoping for light, and there were many moments when we could only sing together the Taizé hymn: “Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away”. Our spirituality was a spirituality of perseverance and hope. Another important spiritual aspect was that we saw the Tamrazyan family as persons with names. In the verdict of the judge, they were just referred to as “Stranger 1”, “Stranger 2” and “the children of Stranger 1 and 2”. Politically, they were just another case of difficult Armenians. We, as a church, could receive them as people: we knew their names, their stories, their characters. By receiving them in the name of Christ, we gave them their personhood again. The combination of rational considerations and spiritual sensitivity transformed the Bethel Church asylum case into a matter of discernment. It led us to commit ourselves to this family and the hundreds of similar cases of refugee children at the time. We were aware that such a decision 11. These four criteria in VAN DER MEIDEN – STEGEMAN (eds.), Dat wonderlijke kerkasiel (n. 2), pp. 15-16. Our considerations were informed by a report from 1999 on church asylum by the National Council of churches in The Netherlands. This report stated the following as criteria for engaging in a local church asylum: 1) Only in a case of fundamental injustice; 2) only for a temporary period; 3) realistic expectations for a residence permit; 4) predetermined considerations; 5) a local community is in charge; and 6) necessary reticence towards other organizations. Raad van kerken, Overwegingen rond kerkasiel (Oecumenische bezinning), Amersfoort, Raad van kerken, 1999. 12. This theme was exposed in the first sermon of the sanctuary’s church service on 24 October 2018, given by the author, and in a sermon in the Bethel chapel on 30 October 2018 by dr. R. de Reuver, general secretary of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands.

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could not be generalized to other situations. Of course, we invited other churches to follow our example or to support us, but we never intended to impose our decision on other churches. It was a contingent or, rather, a singular situation that asked for our judgment and commitment13. We felt that it was an opportunity in which we were asked to respond, and we were aware that our decision would not prevent us from making a new decision in the future. Our commitment was not the result of an individual decision. From the start it was considered and made by various people. Nor was it a decision that was born of the present moment alone. As a church, we had a tradition of church asylum: the Protestant Church of the Hague had participated in several instances of church asylum in the preceding decades. In making this commitment, we were participating in a history of local commitment to refugees. Our contextualizing act of committing ourselves to this very family of Armenian refugees continued a centuries-old tradition whereby the church in The Hague had welcomed refugees. We could build upon recent experiences of church asylum in the preceding decades, though this church asylum was the very first time in the Netherlands that a continuing church service was required. III. RICHARD KEARNEY: DISCERNMENT AS INTUITIVE WAGER This discussion of the Bethel Church asylum has shown how a case of church praxis can be conceived as a form of discernment. How does this case of church praxis relate to the field of theology? In the exposition above, I characterized the Bethel Church asylum as a combination of rational considerations and spiritual sensitivity. Reflecting in this line of thought it is tempting to consider discernment in Christian praxis as a kind of practical wisdom that should be justified based on its rationality14. That is not sufficient for me. I searched for another theological approach, in which I could also include the elements of sensitivity to others and decision-making as a way of giving commitment. Therefore, I turned to the philosopher Richard Kearney, who has proposed an interpretation of discernment as a reflective and intuitive wager. I would like to consider this proposal and connect the Bethel case to it. 13. On the use of singularity in theology, cf. T.L. HETTEMA, Reading for Good: Narrative Theology and Ethics in the Joseph Story from the Perspective of Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics (Studies in Philosophical Theology, 18), Kampen, Kok Pharos, 1996, pp. 307-314. 14. E.g., M.A. MCINTOSH, Discernment and Truth: The Spirituality and Theology of Knowledge, New York, Crossroad, 2004.

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Richard Kearney’s idea of discernment is laid out in his book Anatheism (2010)15. By “anatheism”, Kearney refers to how “the God question is returning today with a new sense of urgency”16. There is a “renewed quest for God after God”17. God comes to the fore again, but not in conceptions that are familiar to us. God appears as the stranger, the Other. This appearance of God as the Other asks for a response in “primary lived experience, poetic re-experience, and a double renewed experience of ethical and spiritual praxis”18. As such, our creative and playful response to the Other is always a wager. Kearney describes this wager as having five components: imagination, humour, commitment, discernment, and hospitality19. Kearney views discernment as being closely related to commitment, as well as something on “basic affective and preconceptual levels”20. “Discernment is, to be sure, a matter of prereflective carnal response to the advent of the Other before it becomes a matter of reflective cognitive evaluation. The body already “ponders” in dialogue with the stranger”21. Discernment is not just an emotional intuition that counters reflection, but rather an instinctive attitude to the Other that invites further reflection. “The drama of discernment involves an intense act of attention starting at the most basic carnal level and accompanying the movements of imagination, commitment, and humility … This multi-layered hermeneutic drama – extending from embodied prereflection to critical reflection – is indispensable to the anatheist wager”22. I can only briefly expand on Kearney’s idea of discernment23. Its value and originality are in removing discernment from a moral or cognitive level and placing it in the realm of the body – the carnal, pre-reflective response to the stranger (both as friend and as enemy). This response is not irrational, but adds a level of rationality as the ability to respond properly to a situation, to recognize its call, its opportunity. 15. R. KEARNEY, Anatheism: Returning to God after God, New York – Chichester, Columbia University Press, 2011. 16. Ibid., p. xi. 17. Ibid., p. xiii. 18. Ibid., p. xix. 19. Ibid., p. 40. 20. Ibid., p. 44. 21. Ibid., p. 46. 22. KEARNEY, Anatheism (n 15), p. 47. 23. Cf. more in detail T.L. HETTEMA, When the Thin Small Voice Whispers: Richard Kearney’s Anatheism and the Postsecular Discernment of Spirits, in International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 76 (2015) 149-162 and ID., The Apparent God: Biblical Poetics and the End of Time, in C. DOUDE VAN TROOSTWIJK – M. CLEMENTE (eds.), Richard Kearney’s Anatheistic Wager: Philosophy, Theology, Poetics (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion), Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 2018, 215-225.

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This is the point at which Kearney’s notion of discernment comes near to our discussion of the Bethel Church asylum case. However, I should like to add a more narrative quality to Kearney’s idea of discernment. By that I mean that discernment is a praxis that comes from a narrative community, from a tradition. Indeed, discernment is intuitive, but it is an intuitive response to a situation that is informed by a preceding narrative. This aspect of a narrative tradition and a narrative community has an important consequence. The intuitive experience of carnal response leads to better discernment, which in turn enlarges a spiritual sensitivity to new situations. A narrative community has the opportunity and the ability to learn from its acts of discernment. Discernment is not just an individual competence, but can be fostered by a community. CONCLUSION I have presented the Bethel Church asylum as a case of political church praxis with the goal of understanding how this particular case of critical church praxis contributes to a political theology of discernment. I started with an understanding of discernment as the ability to perceive the spirit of a specific situation, as an opportunity to commit oneself to action. The case of the Bethel Church asylum appeared to be such an instance of discernment, due to an awareness of the urgency of the situation, the political opportunity, the singularity of the decision, and the spiritual perception of the call that was made. This conception of discernment aligns with the idea of discernment as articulated by Richard Kearney. What church praxis may add to his idea of discernment is the narrative quality of tradition and community that creates the ability to discern that transcends that specific moment. Perhaps Marx was right in stating that philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. However, one should add that the point is to discern when and where to commit oneself to acts of change. Interpretation and change need discernment. Such discernment can grow in church praxis, as a kind of living hermeneutics that adds to the hermeneutics of theology. Protestant Theological University Seminary of the Free Evangelical Churches in the Netherlands PO Box 7161 NL-1007 MC Amsterdam [email protected]

Theo L. HETTEMA

III

CONVERSING WITH POLITICAL THEOLOGIANS

APOCALYPTIC SPACES AND THE ILLEGITIMACY OF POLITICAL THEOLOGY SCHMITT, AGAMBEN, AND PETERSON

INTRODUCTION The enigmatic Pauline katechon of the Second Letter to the Thessalonians – or what Augustine tellingly calls in the City of God that “obscura verba” – has been a veritable apocalyptic leitmotif in political theology since the time of Erik Peterson and Carl Schmitt1. Today, the most influential treatment of this motif is to be found in the powerfully original work of Giorgio Agamben as particularly, but not exclusively, seen in The Kingdom and the Glory. This text is largely a covert response to Schmitt and Peterson, both of whom Agamben reads as katechonic thinkers or “apocalyptics of the counterrevolution”. This phrase is borrowed from Jacob Taubes’ depiction of Schmitt as an “apocalyptic prophet of the counterrevolution”2. Yet Agamben’s sly move is to subsume the robustly theopolitical nature of Peterson’s thought into the ranks of merely another “apocalyptic of the counterrevolution” of the same pedigree as Schmitt and, by implication, de Maistre, Bonald, and Donoso Cortés3. I will argue that Agamben’s grouping of Peterson with Schmitt is disingenuous and misleading. Agamben’s assimilation of Peterson’s thought with that of Schmitt’s allows for Agamben to avoid a substantive intellectual confrontation with Peterson’s Catholic apocalyptic and theopolitical slant. In order to provoke this confrontation, I will seek to show that Agamben’s reading of the Schmitt/Peterson debate is correct. This reading argues that behind the debate about the admissibility of political theology really lies a debate concerning a Christian theology of history. My move will be to then turn this discovery of Agamben against him by enlisting Peterson’s Trinitarian denial of political theology into a full-blown 1. AUGUSTINE, City of God, Book X.xix. 2. J. TAUBES, To Carl Schmitt: Letters and Reflections, New York, Columbia University Press, 2013, pp. 2-18. 3. For this conflation see G. AGAMBEN, The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2011, pp. 6-8. For Schmitt’s treatment of the counter-revolutionary thinkers, de Maistre, Bonald, and Donoso Cortés see C. SCHMITT, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Chicago, IL – London, University of Chicago Press, 1985, pp. 53-66.

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Trinitarian apocalyptic reading of history, as held in pleromatic apocalyptic Catholic theologians such as Balthasar and O’Regan. I will programmatically offer a non-identical repetition of Peterson’s rejection of Schmitt’s political theology, which includes a further rejection of Agamben’s rendition of political theology and his correlative philosophy of history that seeks to conflate Schmitt and Peterson. This will be done on the grounds of differing spaces of apocalyptic and the Christian eidetic and metaphysical expanse, or contraction, of the potential philosophy or theology of history contained therein. I. APOCALYPTIC SPACES It is by no means possible, within the confines of our topic, to go into the “increasingly apocalyptic tone” of continental philosophy (specifically, the philosophy of religion), nor is it the place to discuss the extent to which many of the foremost theological figures in twentieth-century theology were apocalyptic voices4. Apocalyptic is a broad term, which is ample enough to cover much of the intellectual discourse of twentiethcentury continental philosophy and theology, as Derrida and O’Regan have shown in different, but not unrelated ways. For both Derrida and O’Regan apocalyptic is a mode of discourse that is radically challenging and critical of the status quo and is thus a breaking down of narrow contours. The fluid nature and critical edge of apocalyptic discourse fittingly allows it to escape easy definitional capture. In light of this, I am following O’Regan’s model of a topological division of apocalyptic as presented in Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic5. This model descriptively divides apocalyptic into three epistemic spaces: kenomatic (empty), metaxic (between) and pleromatic (full). This division is accomplished on the basis of a “metaphorics of space” understood geometrically, not mechanically6. Apocalyptic is read and judged according to the range of its eidetic vision, understood as a response to Christian revelation, or apokalypsis. 4. See J. DERRIDA, On a Newly Arisen Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy, in P. FENVES (ed.), Raising the Tone of Philosophy: Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative Critique by Jacques Derrida, London – Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, 117-171. 5. For my extensive treatment of O’Regan’s rendition of pleromatic apocalyptic, see P.J. GONZALES, Reimagining the Analogia Entis: The Future of Erich Przywara’s Christian Vision (Interventions), Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2019, pp. 288-320. 6. C. O’REGAN, Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic, Milwaukee, WI, Marquette University Press, 2009, p. 26.

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Kenomatic apocalyptic is minimally eidetic, and is characterised by a complete lack of vision and content7. Here apocalyptic emphasises total disruption and discontinuity, and is critical of confessional religion – and Christianity in particular –, institutions, and dogma. Representatives of kenomatic apocalyptic, for O’Regan, include: Benjamin, Bloch, Derrida, Caputo, and I would include Agamben in this list as well8. Often, there is also an explicit rejection of Catholic apocalyptic grounded in the Book of Revelation, as seen in Derrida’s and Caputo’s unsparing critiques of this book9. (Agamben’s rejection of Catholic apocalyptic will be seen)10. In sum, in kenomatic apocalyptic all forms of divine revelation, especially its Christian variant, are denied in this contentless, empty, and destinerrant apocalyptic space. Metaxic apocalyptic, as the name suggest, lies between the kenomatically minimal and pleromatically maximal range of eidetic vision11. It accepts some level of divine revelation, but is leery of giving too much description of this reality. A thinking of God outside of history is forbidden in this discourse and hence any robust metaphysical speculation on the Trinity and its immanent/economic relation. Like kenomatic apocalyptic, it shows a strong suspicion towards institutions, and especially institutional Christianity. Emphasis is likewise placed on interruption and newness. Representatives of this apocalyptic space, for O’Regan, include: Metz, Keller, Altizer, and I would add Ivan Illich as well12. I further think that Girard belongs to this space, eidetically speaking, although he does not clearly show the same allergy to institutional Christianity as other inhabitants of this space13. 7. For the discussion of kenomatic apocalyptic consult O’REGAN, ibid., pp. 61-74. 8. For Vattimo’s “weak” apocalyptic thought that seeks to move apocalypse away from destruction and catastrophe (assuming that is even what it is really about in the first place) into the direction of apokalypsis, understood as a “plane of phantasmagoria” and the dissolution of the real into secondary qualities, see G. VATTIMO, After Christianity, New York, Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 52. 9. For my treatment of Caputo’s and Derrida’s deconstructionist performance of apocalyptic, see GONZALES, Reimagining the Analogia Entis (n. 5), pp. 299-309. 10. See DERRIDA, Apocalyptic Tone (n. 4), especially, pp. 151-168. See J. CAPUTO, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion, Bloomington, IN – Indianapolis, IN, Indiana University Press, 1997, especially pp. 69-116. 11. For the discussion of metaxic apocalyptic, see O’REGAN, Spaces of Apocalyptic (n. 6), pp. 74-88. 12. See I. ILLICH, The Rivers North of the Future: The Testimony of Ivan Illich as Told to David Cayley, Toronto, Anansi, 2005, pp. 59-63. 13. For Girard’s final apocalyptic formulation – and his most powerful – where his allegiance to the institutional Catholic Church and the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI come to afore, see R. GIRARD, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre, East Lansing, MI, Michigan State University Press, 2010, especially but by no means exclusively, pp. 195-210.

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Pleromatic apocalyptic exhibits the fullest range of Christian vision, as it is a whole-hearted acceptance of divine revelation in its Trinitarian depths14. This apocalyptic space is able to say the most about the “triune intention toward the world”15. Indeed, the formal object of this theology must be said to be God’s “triune intention toward the world”, and a reading of history therefrom. Pleromatic apocalyptic is a mode or style of theology that is centred in the very heart of Christian revelation and the narrative of creation, Fall, Redemption, and eschaton. Great emphasis is placed on the mystery of the Cross and its triune disclosure. Along with the importance of Christian identity and difference from the world – in the Johannine sense – an extensive conversation with the wealth of the Christian tradition, in its multivalent potency, is enacted. Thus, practices (especially liturgical) and forms of life, as well as dogma and the robustly speculative and metaphysical side of the Christian tradition – the latter often in its analogical dimension – are all accented. Figures in this apocalyptic space, for O’Regan, include: Balthasar, Moltmann, Bulgakov, Milbank, Hart, and I would include Przywara and Peterson in this list as well16. Pleromatic apocalyptic theology is thus the touchstone of apocalyptic, and it is from this space that kenomatic and metaxic apocalyptic is judged and read from within this robustly Christian visionary space, brimming with maximal eidetic form and content, given through, and within, the revelation of triune Love. Such a form and style of apocalyptic, and the theology of history presented therein, is Johannine through and through, because it is grounded in the analogatum princeps of Catholic apocalyptic: The Book of Revelation. It is thus within this space that I will enact my non-identical repetition of Peterson’s Trinitarian rejection of political theology, hence my critical reading of Schmitt and Agamben. II. SCHMITT’S COUNTER-APOCALYPTIC

OF THE

KATECHON

What does it mean to – with Taubes – nominate Schmitt an “apocalyptic prophet of the counter-revolution”? Is this designation adequate or does it need to be qualified? Schmitt’s most famous apocalyptic passage, broadly speaking, occurs in Chapter Three of The Nomos of the Earth and 14. For the discussion of pleromatic apocalyptic, see O’REGAN, Spaces of Apocalyptic (n. 6), pp. 34-60. 15. Ibid., p. 27. 16. For my full reasons for including Przywara as a pleromatic apocalyptic thinker, see GONZALES, Reimagining the Analogia Entis (n. 5).

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concerns his understanding of the Christian imperium, understood as the restrainer – katechon – of the antichrist. The historical concept of the katechon is fundamental, insofar as it is “… the only bridge between the notion of the eschatological paralysis of all events and the tremendous historical monolith like the Christian empire of the Germanic kings”17. Schmitt reads the imperial history of Christianity as katechonic, that is, as a restraining force or order that holds back the forces of chaos and lawless violence. Moreover, for Schmitt, the legacy of this restraining power is passed on via its secular continuance in the modern sovereign state, which holds off violence and civil war. Schmitt’s radical concern for the holding back of the forces of lawlessness, discord, civil war, and revolution, can be said to be the leitmotif of his thought. This is seen particularly in his intellectual heroes and sources, such as Bonald, de Maistre, and most especially, Cortés (and Hobbes). Schmitt’s marshal rhetoric reaches an apocalyptic fever pitch in the fourth and final chapter of Political Theology, where Schmitt stages the stakes of the confrontation between the counterrevolutionary philosophers of the state and various anarchist revolutionaries, such as Bakunin and Proudhon. Like Cortés, Schmitt seems to see himself as continuously standing on the threshold of the Last Judgement, bowing before a soteriology of dictatorship, sovereignty, and the exception, in order to restrain the ever-welling forces of chaotic violence. Schmitt’s this-worldly, counter-revolutionary, soteriology of the political calls for decision against the vapidity of liberalism that cannot choose between “Christ or Barabbas”, and is thus unable to see and handle the true demonism of anarchic revolution that was unleashed in history in the nineteenth century18. Only the decisive decision of dictatorship can master – restrain – this lawlessness. Schmitt is, broadly speaking, apocalyptic in multiple senses. He is apocalyptic in a pejorative sense of the term, insofar as his thinking seems to always stand at the point where chaotic destruction is an ever-real possibility. Here apocalyptic is always a matter of violence and catastrophe. He is, further, apocalyptic in a deeper sense because, like Girard and Balthasar, he seems to inchoately discern that the march of history is heading towards an “escalation of extremes” and “intensification”, albeit on an entirely secular and political plane, whereas Girard and Balthasar are seeing this from the deeper perspective of the non-violence of Christian 17. C. SCHMITT, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, Candor, NY, Telos, 2006, p. 60. 18. SCHMITT, Political Theology (n. 3), p. 62.

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revelation19. Perhaps he is even a “mystic of order”, as Herrero suggests20. But this order is the order of the violent nomos of this world, which retrains violence with violence, lawlessness with the legal lawlessness of the exception, and plots history from within the secular soteriological realm of the totality of the political. This history is a history ruled by the political mechanism of the aporia of the exception and sovereignty. That is, it is history as the functioning of the katechon interpreted entirely within the political realm. To be an “apocalyptic prophet of the counter-revolution” is to be, ultimately, counter-Christian pleromatic apocalyptic for, at the minimum, three reasons. First, Schmitt denies that the revelation of Christ has overtaken and broken-open the continuum of world history, while also denying the analogical ordering of the natural to the supernatural in the one concrete order of grace and redemption through which history must be read. In other words, a Christian theology or philosophy of history is denied us and thus a reading of history from within the formal object of the triune God’s intention toward the world as espoused by pleromatic apocalyptic theology. Here, history is conceived wholly within the purview of Schmitt’s secularised project of political theology. Second, Schmitt’s thinking is rooted in a negative anthropology where violence and evil are anterior to peace and goodness. This is the inverse of pleromatic apocalyptic theology’s God of Trinitarian peace where evil and violence contingently disrupt the peace of creation given out of the depths of triune Love. Third, Schmitt fails to see that the modern bio-political state, and its soteriology, is not by its very essence the restrainer of the demon of chaos. Rather, the essence of modern politics harbours within it the possibility of being the abode of anti-christ, as Agamben has masterfully shown21. The civitas terrena is ever in danger of becoming the civitas diaboli. Schmitt’s Hobbesian and counter-revolutionary-inspired katechonic style of apocalyptic turns out to be counter-Christian pleromatic apocalyptic and, indeed, colludes with the anti-christic power of the false totality 19. For Balthasar’s apocalyptic reading of history as “intensification”, see, generally, H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory. Vol. 4: The Action, San Francisco, CA, Ignatius, 1994; and ID., Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory. Vol. 5: The Last Act, San Francisco, CA, Ignatius, 1998, especially vol. 4. For Girard’s apocalyptic reading of history as “escalation” see GIRARD, Battling to the End (n. 13). 20. See, generally, M. HERRERO, The Political Discourse of Carl Schmitt: A Mystic of Order, London, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. 21. See G. AGAMBEN, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1998, especially, but by no means exclusively, pp. 166-188; and G. AGAMBEN, State of Exception, London – Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2005, especially, but by no means exclusively, pp. 1-31.

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of the political. The soteriological totality of the idol of the political seeks to screen out the revelatory triune light, given in, and through, the Lamb’s entrance into history which shatters – in an irrevocably cruciform manner – the totality of the political. This shattering introduces a countersovereignty of “sovereign-victimhood”, which reads the katechonic aporia of the world’s political sovereignty from against the backdrop of the peace of the non-violent triune God of love22.

III. AGAMBEN’S KENOMATIC DEACTIVATION OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY From this account, Agamben is more than right to be concerned about Schmitt’s katechonic vision of the political history of Christianity and its secular continuance in the modern state. Yet, if Agamben’s worry about Schmitt – the great theorist of the exception, sovereignty, dictatorship, counter-revolution, and the state – is correct, why identify the radically theological and Catholic position of Peterson with Schmitt’s? For was it not Peterson that was ever-reminding Schmitt of the radical superiority of the theological and religious over against the political? My suggestion is that Agamben is trying to kill two birds with one stone. First, he is seeking to avoid a substantive confrontation with Peterson’s theopolitical project. Second, he is not simply seeking to deactivate the Schmittian katechon, but also the whole of Christian history understood as katechonic in a this-worldly messianic gesture. Agamben’s messianic gesture is underwritten by his Benjaminian reading of Paul, as seen in an exemplary fashion in The Time That Remains23. Agamben’s recourse to Paul stands squarely within the fascinating Pauline trend in both contemporary continental philosophy of religion and theological discourse. This trend in continental philosophy is most famously seen in the figures of Taubes, Badiou and Žižek24, and in its theological variant in biblical exegetes like Douglas Harink and, especially, Louis 22. For Milbank’s understanding of Christ as the exception in conversation with Agamben’s figure of homo sacer, see J. MILBANK, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon, London – New York, Routledge, 2003, pp. 90-93. 23. See, generally, G. AGAMBEN, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2005. For references to Benjamin see: pp. 7, 11, 30, 33, 35-39, 42, 45, 49, 53, 56, 71, 74f., 138-145. 24. For these classic texts see J. TAUBES, The Political Theology of Paul, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1993; A. BADIOU, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2003, and S. ŽIŽEK – J. MILBANK – C. DAVIS, Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology, Grand Rapids, MI, Brazos, 2010.

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Martyn, both of whom heavily emphasise Pauline apocalyptic25. This is not to mention anything of Milbank’s contribution in this area, nor the earlier seminal contribution of the little-known French Passionist priest and thinker, Stanislas Breton26. With that said, the focus here is on how Agamben’s Benjamin-inspired Pauline messianism of The Time That Remains is furthered in the Kingdom and Glory by other Trinitarian means. Central to this weak messianic project of Agamben is his wholesale rejection of Catholic apocalyptic, especially of the pleromatic Johannine sort. For Agamben, what is really at the core of the Schmitt/Peterson debate concerning the possibility of political theology is not its admissibility, but a debate about “theology of history”27. Here, I concur fully with Agamben. However, I demur that Peterson’s theory of history is katechonic, thus reading history as the interim time of delay that waits for history’s end in a suspended time. For Agamben, the Schmitt/Peterson debate is between two Catholics, both of whom “profess their faith in the Second Coming of Christ”28. Both are apocalyptic thinkers because they view history from the Last Day, the Dies irae. Seen from Judgement Day, history is one vast waiting-room where the katechon holds-back the inevitability of the end of time. For Agamben, politics and history, for both thinkers, are founded on this view of their faith. For Schmitt, political theology founds secular politics; for Peterson, Christian political action is founded on liturgy, interpreted as a public practice, along with the belief that Trinitarian doctrine is the only true and possible foundation for a Christian politics. For Agamben, it is true that Schmitt and Peterson part company about the admissibility of political theology, and whether or not history should be read from the point-of-view of a secularised Christian form of political theology or from a theological view of history that results in a Christian theopolitics. Nevertheless, he fails to see how drastically opposed these respective points-of-departure are. In the end, for Agamben, both offer a katechonic theory of history, which is rooted in Christianity and its apocalypse. Both thinkers, by viewing history from the end-time, eliminate “concrete eschatology”, or better a Benjaminian-inspired Pauline messianism. Messianism, as opposed to apocalyptic, reads time not as the 25. See D. HARINK (ed.), Paul, Philosophy and the Theopolitical Vision, Eugene, OR, Cascade Books, 2010. 26. See ŽIŽEK – MILBANK – DAVIS, Paul’s New Moment (n. 24), pp. 21-73, 211-238. See S. BRETON, A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul, New York, Columbia University Press, 2011. 27. AGAMBEN, Kingdom and Glory (n. 3), p. 8. 28. Ibid., p. 7.

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end of time, but the time of the end29. This is a contracted kairotic time where time is not the end of time. It is the time of time’s remaining contraction. Messianic time is the urgent time that remains before the end. Or better: the end is now (Jetztzeit). Messianic time is the time in which every second the Messiah might enter (Benjamin). Messianic time is the urgent time of historical action in the arena of history that refuses to apocalyptically and complacently wait for the end of the world. By twinning Peterson/Schmitt, The Kingdom and the Glory seeks to messianically deactivate a Catholic apocalyptic theology of history, understood as a katechonic theory of history in both its secular (Schmitt) and theological (Peterson) guise. If Peterson is a katechonic thinker, like Schmitt, then he can be done away with, like Schmitt, by deactivating a katechonic theory of history. Yet – and here is the caveat – Peterson holds that Christian political action must be founded on Trinitarian doctrine. How, then, can one dismiss a Trinitarian thinker, as opposed to a secular thinker of the katechon, like Schmitt, without a substantive engagement? Agamben’s answer is to: (1) nominate Peterson as a katechonic thinker; and (2) read the Trinity as a katechonic fiction in the history of the West that must be removed and moved beyond. Let me explain. For Agamben, history is itself a Christian concept. It arises out of Christianity’s failure to think the relation between the immanent/economic Trinity. It is this Trinitarian split that is the root of Occidental dualisms (e.g., immanent/economic Trinity, theology/economy, being/praxis, government/kingdom). This Trinitarian dualism gives rise to the theological inheritance of modern philosophy, and its task of “thinking at one and the same time, an infinite being and its finite history – and hence the figure of being that survives the economy – forms precisely the theological inheritance of modern philosophy …”30. The Trinity, then, is that Western fictive force that is restraining our entrance in post-history and, hence, post-Christian messianic time. Agamben embraces a dialectical view of the Trinity where it vanishes in time so that the time that remains is the time that survives the katechonic Trinitarian economic figuration of being. Agamben thus advocates for a figuration of being that is post-historical, because it is post-Christian. The new post-historical figuration of being is the self. This self messianically contemplates its own live-ability, where being/praxis now meet in the inoperativity of an immanent – parousic – sabbatical self31. This self, now, resides in the vacancy 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., p. 211. 31. Ibid., pp. 245-246.

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of the empty throne (hetoimasia tou thronou) where once the fiction of the Trinitarian divine was thought to reside in power and glory. The seat of power and glory is empty and taken now by the self’s glorifying powerof-possibility. In getting beyond the Trinity, Agamben is beyond Peterson, because both Peterson and the Trinity were interpreted katechonically as was the Christian apocalypse. A substantial engagement with the potential of Peterson’s pleromatic form of apocalyptic (a liturgically inflected Trinitarian theopolitics rooted in the Book of Revelation) and the theology of history that flows therefrom is averted. Agamben’s attempted dialectical and messianic deactivation of the Trinity is in keeping with the commitment of the space of kenomatic apocalyptic thinkers that deny all validity to Christian revelation in favor of contentless and formless interruption (the punctuation of now-time). Agamben’s kenomatic move – as seen in his enlistment of the iconography of the empty throne – is a denial of the formal object of pleromatic Christian theology, that is, the triune God’s intention toward the world. Following from this it is a denial of the possibility of a Christian reading history, rooted in the Trinity’s self-revealing Love. We are, therefore, back to Agamben’s rightful claim that the question of the Schmitt/Peterson debate on the admissibility of political theology really concerns the question of a Christian theology of history. IV. PLEROMATIC APOCALYPTIC: A PROGRAMMATIC ENLISTING OF PETERSON’S THEOPOLITICAL PROJECT In disentangling Agamben’s assimilation of Schmitt/Peterson, what has become clear is that the stakes of this debate lie in the question of a Christian theology of history. So far, two options have been presented and a third has been hinted at. The first consisted in Schmitt’s project of a secular political theology that read the Pauline apocalyptic motif of the katechon as a political holding back of chaos through the violent aporia of the sovereign exception. The second possibility consisted in Agamben’s kenomatic deactivation of the Trinity, where the Trinity was read as a katechonic fiction that was preventing an entrance into a messianic posthistory. Here, the immanent Trinity was dissolved into the economic, and thus into its historical vanishing point of the empty throne. To be post-historical is to be post-Christian because history, rooted in a Trinitarian economic figuration of being, was a Christian concept. The third

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possibility, alluded to along the way, was a reading of history from within the formal object of pleromatic apocalyptic theology where history is read against the backdrop of the triune God’s revelatory intention towards the world. It is in this pleromatic apocalyptic space, I am suggesting, that Peterson’s Trinitarian rejection of the legitimacy of political theology must be non-identically repeated. In conclusion, I seek to offer some programmatic thoughts on what a pleromatic apocalyptic enlistment of Peterson’s theopolitical Trinitarian rejection of political theology would entail. I have suggested in my Reimagining the Analogia Entis that Peterson anticipates, in a theopolitical register, the Johannine apocalyptic move of Balthasar in Volumes 4 and 5 of Theo-Drama and Cyril O’Regan’s advancement of this move in The Anatomy of Misremembering32. To embrace this Johannine move would be to deny the legitimacy of political theology on Trinitarian grounds, but not specifically on the grounds of Peterson’s benchmark treatise “Monotheism as a Political Problem” (1935) (Monotheismus als politisches Problem: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der politischen Theologie im Imperium Romanum)33. The thesis of this treatise is both famous and infamous, the latter specifically for Schmitt34. Hollerich deftly sums up the thesis: As is well known, Peterson posited the existence of a widespread ancient political theology that legitimated monarchical rule on earth by the cosmic rule of one god in heaven. His thesis was that the triumph of orthodox Nicene Trinitarian theology over Arian heresy (which subordinated the Son to the Father) spared Christianity from subjugation to such a political theology by making its ideological presupposition impossible. Not only that, Peterson went on to say, it thereby established that any such thing as a Christian political theology was impossible. (It is sometimes forgotten that his proof actually had two components, the other being the victory of 32. See GONZALES, Reimaging the Analogia Entis (n. 5), pp. 338-340. 33. For an excellent English translation of this treatise, see E. PETERSON, Monotheism as a Political Problem, in ID., Theological Tractates, ed. and trans. M.J. HOLLERICH, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2011, 68-105. 34. It is not possible to go into detail about the historical province of this amazing treatise. Suffice it to say that this treatise was directed towards Schmitt and was, as Peterson famously put it, “a poke at the Reichstheologie”. This is covertly seen in the “Prefatory Note” and hidden in the last footnote of the treatise where he credits Schmitt with reviving political theology, a project which the treatise has sought to render null and void. Schmitt famously responded to this text, ten years after Peterson’s death, and described it as “Parthian assault”, an assault that wounded Schmitt deeply. However, as Taubes rightly saw, this was not a Parthian arrow, but rather a Christian one. See TAUBES, To Carl Schmitt (n. 2), pp. 2731 and C. SCHMITT, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of Any Political Theology, Malden, MA, Polity Press, 2008.

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Augustine’s eschatology of deferral over the readiness of other Christians, such as Eusebius of Caesarea, to see the Constantinian settlement as a harbinger of the peace of the messianic age)35.

I am proposing that Peterson’s Trinitarian rejection of political theology cannot rest solely on the historical grounds argued for in the Monotheism treatise. I am further suggesting that for the sake of the full viability of Peterson’s belief that, “For Christians, political involvement can never take place except under the presumption of faith in the triune God”, needs to be recalibrated in a specifically Christian metaphysico-theological perspective on history36. This view of history is grounded in the apocalyptic and theodramatic Trinitarian “motif of traditio”, understood as the formal object of pleromatic apocalyptic theology37. Here, tradition is understood as Trinitarian because the first handing on, and over, which occurs is the Father’s begetting of the Son. The Father/Son relation is understood as the analogical model for the freeing of created being into its otherness, as well as God’s free interaction with humanity in history. Here, there is no dialectical dissolving or messianic deactivation of the Trinity à la Agamben, and the mystery of eternal triune Being is kept intact in its free analogical theodramatic interaction with history. Creation and history are read as a response to the Trinity’s initiatory and loving action. This is the key motif of Balthasar’s Theo-Drama and is the formal object of O’Regan’s pleromatic apocalyptic recalibration of this move in Misremembering. Here, history is the apocalypse of Trinitarian Love. Christianity is not a religion of revelation. Christianity is revelation and, by implication, apocalyptic is not an offshoot or subset of Christianity, but its meaning. The entrance of Christ and Christianity into history is the apocalypse because Christianity is apokalypsis. Hence, any adequate Christian theological metaphysics or theopolitics is a response to, and enactment of, the Trinitarian backdrop of all of history and its meaning, movement, and end. Further, in this response and enactment nothing of the mysterious dimensions of the Triune life that comes to us by way of the excessive revelation of love which Christ opens up to us for the glory of the Father, in the unity and power of the Holy Spirit, is evacuated. Peterson’s Trinitarian denial of the legitimacy of political theology must be placed in this register because, as we have seen with Agamben, the question of the legitimacy of political theology lies in the question of a Christian theology of history. This move would also be able to further 35. HOLLERICH, Introduction, in Theological Tractates (n. 33), p. xxiv. 36. PETERSON, Monotheism as a Political Problem (n. 33), p. 68. 37. BALTHASAR, Theo-Drama IV (n. 19), pp. 52-53.

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supplement the second aspect of Peterson’s “proof” as Hollerich noted above, namely, Augustine’s “eschatology of deferral”. The later would then have to be placed and read according to the counter-sovereignty opened by Christ’s entrance into history through which Triune Love is revealed. The Civitas Dei would be read as the community of Triune peace and gift, acting over and against the violent aporia of the sovereign exception, understood as the nomos of the civitas terrena’s katechonic functioning. However, this “eschatology of deferral” would not function katechonically – understood as a freezing of historical action as in Agamben’s critique –, but rather in a theodramatic and apocalyptic register. History would be read historico-metaphysically, and within the cosmic light of the Book of Revelation. In this reading every age is qualitatively related to the end, because Christ’s entrance into history is the institution of the Endtime and, thus, the time of the dramatic/apocalyptic yes or no to Triune action in history. This reading denies, metaphysically and epistemologically, political neutrality and anonymity vis-à-vis Trinitarian Love. In order to continue my pleromatic and apocalyptic enlistment of Peterson – to ensure that it is not an extemporaneous project – his pleromatic apocalyptic credentials would need to be established by furthering the Trinitarian denial of the legitimacy of political theology in the Monotheism treatise into “The Book of Angels” (Das Buch von den Engeln) and the extraordinary apocalyptic text “Witness to the Truth” (1937) (Zeuge der Wahrheit). In the former text, Peterson manifests his pleromatic apocalyptic credentials by opening up a visionary discussion of an almost forgotten branch of theology: angelology. Here, Peterson shows the political implications of the heavenly cosmic city, understood as a liturgical city, whose heavenly hymnody is ever-witnessing against the narrow, and exclusionary, cultic hymns of nationalistic earthy power. (Peterson focuses especially on Chapters 4 and 5 of the Book of Revelation to establish this reading). In the latter text, Peterson radically denies political legitimacy to any political regime that does not acknowledge the eschatological priestly kingship of the Lamb slain. This claim sounds, in a Christian register, like Agamben’s radical claim made in Notre Dame Cathedral that “nowhere on earth today is a legitimate power to be found; even the powerful are convinced of their own legitimacy”38. What is the Christian to do, in both theory and practice, in light of this ubiquitous illegitimacy of the political order? Peterson’s answer is to turn to the analogatum princeps of Catholic pleromatic apocalyptic and theopolitics: The Book of Revelation. In 38. G. AGAMBEN, The Church and the Kingdom, London, Seagull Books, 2012, p. 40.

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doing so, he offers a radically non-accommodationist cosmic, liturgical, public, and political reading of Christianity, which demands decision and total commitment, based on the visionary paradigm of the martyrs of the Book of Revelation, along with the eschatological time and community inaugurated by the Lamb. “Because human thinking is never independent of the hic et nunc of a political order of some kind, it inevitably stands either under the power of the Antichrist or the power of Christ”39. Like in the Trinitarian theology of history, all anonymity is made impossible and all of humanity, history, and the political order, is read and gauged as a response to Christ and Christian revelation. “Witness to the Truth”, situated in a public and cosmic reading of the Book of Revelation contains, in embryo, a liturgically inflected apocalyptic theology of history which can be effortlessly expanded into a pleromatic Trinitarian reading of history. This move would, in turn, accomplish two things. First, combining Peterson’s embryonic theopolitical and apocalyptic theology of history with the theodramatic Trinitarian “motif of traditio” insures that Peterson’s Trinitarian denial of the possibility of political theology rests not solely on historical grounds, but on a metaphysico-theological interpretation of history. Peterson’s maximally eidetic metaphysical vision is on display in both “The Book of Angels” and “Witness to the Truth”; however, these full implications need to be brought to light in my pleromatic apocalyptic reading. Second, enlisting these two texts into the pleromatic apocalyptic theology of history, offered programmatically here, would ensure that this reading of history is theopolitically charged. This is, unfortunately, not the case in Balthasar’s Theo-Drama. O’Regan rightly acknowledges the need for this supplementation, and it has now been programmatically shown why and how Peterson is the exemplary candidate in my programmatic enlistment and non-identical repeating of a Trinitarian and theopolitical denial of the legitimacy of political theology. Agamben is correct that behind the Schmitt/Peterson debate really lies the question of a Christian theology of history. However, only a pleromatic apocalyptic Trinitarian theology of history – paradigmatically offered to us in the visionary Book of Revelation – is able to non-violently overcome Schmitt’s secular katechonic reading of the history of the sovereign exception and Agamben’s attempted kenomatic deactivation of the Trinity, katechonically conceived. The Christian theopolitical task must fully orientate itself, not in a conservative/traditionalist nostalgia for the past, but to an eschatological critique abiding within the tension of the 39. E. PETERSON, Witness to the Truth, in ID., Theological Tractates (n. 33), 151-183, p. 166.

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christic New Age that is already-and-not-yet. This is to place all hope in the future of a Trinitarian God of absolute future. However, before the fullness of this Trinitarian arrival – centred in the Lamb slain – “[The martyrs] must conquer because the Antichrist wages war against the saints, because he forces a decision on them by making the political symbol a cultic object”40. St. Patrick’s Pontifical University Maynooth, Co. Kildare W23 TW77 Ireland [email protected]

40. Ibid., p. 170. Italics mine.

Philip John Paul GONZALES

ESCHATON’S WITNESSES THE POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF ERIK PETERSON

INTRODUCTION The centre of gravity of political theology lies in the nature of power and, thus, needs to answer the question: to whom does the legitimate power to make decisions belong? Decision-making is at the core of both religious and political life, and this demands us to analyse the nature of decisions. According to Carl Schmitt, power belongs to the one capable of deciding the exception1. This claim is constructed as a secularization of a religious image, God as an omnipotent being who can suspend the established order through miracles. Schmitt’s reflections on sovereignty and power were contrasted by Erik Peterson, a biblical scholar and a historian of ancient Christianity, a Protestant who converted to Catholicism, and a former friend of Schmitt. His insights twisted the destiny of the discipline, not only because of his direct criticism of Schmitt’s views but also because of Peterson’s influence on J.B. Metz and J. Moltmann; since, Peterson’s work enables Christians to challenge the established power in light of the eschatological proviso. At the core of this debate is the intermingling of religious and political phenomena. Schmitt points out that political concepts are secularized theological concepts, while Peterson, on the contrary, stresses the complementary and inverted phenomenon that political concepts have been used to shape some Christian founding concepts. Peterson’s language points to the ongoing debate with Schmitt, but one needs to read between the lines to see how the opposition is constructed in an indirect way by using suggestions, analogies, or reframing of Schmitt’s themes. For instance, Peterson formally argues that there is no Christian political theology, in the sense that Christian dogma should not enable political systems; however, they can be used to withhold political power. Peterson’s martyrdom challenges the monopoly of violence detained by political power by remembering that the end is close and, therefore, the political authority is not ultimate. Living in the shadow of an eschatological hope provides a rich set of resources for imagining a better world, thus encouraging 1. C. SCHMITT, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Chicago, IL – London, University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 5.

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people to resist. The eschatological dimension of martyrdom, understood as an act of confession of a different way of life that challenges political sovereignty, was already emphasized by Heid2, Passos3, and Rance4, but there is a need to go deeper into the theological reasons why Peterson’s approach to martyrdom as parrhesia is a reply to Schmitt’s view on the friend-foe political distinction. My contribution to the debate5 consists in investigating the relationship between truth and power in the decision-making process. More specifically, I will discuss discernment as an alternative process built on the true-false distinction operated by the martyrs as opposed to the friend-foe distinction theorized by Schmitt. The explanatory angle of my interpretation suggests that the friend-foe distinction is a secularization of discernment. This allows us to examine how Erik Peterson, in his article Witness to the Truth, connects truth and martyrdom as a challenge to sovereignty. Testimony is a reaction; it is provoked by the political realm that forces Christians to position themselves for or against power, transformed into a cultic object. Power as a cultic object is a powerful and dramatic image, but it can be considered an accurate description of the situation of Christians in Germany during Nazism. The expression “witness to the Truth” is, for Peterson, a reference to Kierkegaard6, outraged that the primate of the Church of Denmark was described as a truth witness and a confessing Christian. Used by Peterson in an article published in Germany in 1937, an address against the “Deutsche Christen” position to endorse the Nazi party, this expression was interpreted as the duty to argue against an unjust political system underlining the power of the word in front of official rhetoric. For Michelle Nicoletti7, Witness to the Truth refers to the duty 2. S. HEID, Testimonianza e martirio in Erik Peterson: Fondamento biblico – sviluppo agiografico e liturgico, in G. CARONELLO (ed.), Erik Peterson: La presenza teologica di un outsider, Roma, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012, 367-384. 3. E. SCHMIDT PASSOS, The Blood of the Martyrs: Erik Peterson’s Theology of Martyrdom and Carl Schmitt`s Political Theology of Sovereignty, in The Review of Politics 80 (2018) 487-510. 4. E. PETERSON – D. RANCE, Témoin de la verité, Gèneve, Ad Solem, 2015. An extensive introduction to the French translation of Witness to the Truth. 5. See H. MAIER, The Lesson in Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2011; S. OSTOVICH, Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, and Eschatology, in KronoScope 7 (2007) 49-66; M. BORGHESI, Critica della teologia politica: Da Agostino a Peterson. La fine dell’era costantiniana, Torino, Marietti, 2008. 6. E. PETERSON, Witness to the Truth, in ID., Theological Tractates, ed. and trans. M.J. HOLLERICH, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2011, 151-183, p. 156; see also E. PETERSON, L’influsso di Kierkegaard sulla teologia protestante contemporanea, in Humanitas 2 (1947) 681-685. 7. M. NICOLETTI, Erik Peterson e Carl Schmitt Ripensare un dibattito, in CARONELLO (ed.), Erik Peterson (n. 2), 517-537, especially pp. 520-531.

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to become a martyr, which is in opposition to Schmitt’s right to an interior exile built on the Hobbesian interpretation of 2 Kgs 5,17-18 concerning the Syrian commander Naaman, who asks for permission to kneel in a pagan temple8. In the line of argumentation developed by some other commentators on martyrdom9, my approach focuses on Peterson’s reply to Schmitt’s theories; for example, Peterson observes that “the concept of witness derives in fact from the juridical language”10, pointing out that a martyr as a witness in a trial is not an anodyne observation since it replies to Schmitt’s theory of secularization, according to which theological concepts lose their essence in the process of becoming juridical concepts. Peterson intends to overturn Schmitt’s theory by presenting the juridical roots of the concept of martyrs, as well as other concepts such as ekklesia or liturghia11. I. PETERSON’S CONCEPTION OF MARTYRDOM BEFORE WITNESS TO THE TRUTH One can notice that Peterson’s interest for martyrdom precedes the Nazi’s coming to power and coincides with his friendship with Schmitt12. As a New Testament professor, Peterson had taught a commentary of the Gospel according to Luke since 1925, where he interprets a theology of martyrdom starting from Luke 6,22-2313. To build a theology of martyrdom starting from the beatitudes is most uncommon for a classical exegesis, but for Peterson, Jesus, by announcing the future persecution of his disciples, creates the theological category of martyrdom. Peterson stresses that martyrdom starts only after the death and resurrection of Jesus with Stephen, but he emphasizes that a special beatitude is addressed to martyrs: “the fourth beatitude represented the most elevated act of 8. M. NICOLETTI, Licenza di Naaman il Siro nell’interpretazione di Carl Schmitt, in Politica e Religione (2012-2013) 353-380. 9. P.R. COOPER, Poor, Wayfaring Stranger: Erik Peterson’s Apocalyptic and Public Witness against Christian Embourgeoisement, in Religions 8/4 (2017) 1-13 and PETERSON – RANCE, Témoin de la vérité (n. 4). 10. M. PANCHERI, Pensare “ai margini”: Escatologia, ecclesiologia e politica nell’itinerario di Erik Peterson, Trento, Università degli Studi di Trento, 2013. 11. B. NICHTWEISS, Erik Peterson: Neue Sicht auf Leben und Werk, Freiburg i.Br. – Basel – Wien, Herder, 1994, p. 795. 12. Ibid., pp. 722, 758, 762. For a later development of the theology of martyrdom see E. PETERSON, La testimonianza della sposa, in Tabor 5 (1950) 19-23 and A. PETRACHE, La théologie du corps du martyr comme théologie politique, in Ephemeris Dacoromana 21 (2019) 345-353. 13. E. PETERSON, Vangelo di Luca, Brescia, Paideia, 2018, p. 305.

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beatitude”14, because it is a testimony that Jesus gives prophesying as his future persecution. Then, he continues by connecting martyrdom, the proximity of eschatological time and love for one’s enemy. He stresses that the love for one’s enemy is not a natural moral command, because it is not at all natural to do so. This command is possible only in very special times: times announcing the coming of the Kingdom, times of exception, and eschatological time. Since it is an exceptional situation and an exceptional command to love one’s enemies – normal justice does not require this – such a command applies only when the “justice of the ordinary time is overcome by a new type of justice, which is not a justice of the law, but a justice of exception”15. This emphasis on the exceptional situation needs to be interpreted by a reference to Carl Schmitt’s16 theory of sovereignty that starts in Political Theology I with the affirmation: “sovereign is the one who decides on the exception”17. Peterson’s description of the enemy follows closely Schmitt’s description of the enemy as a public enemy, and not a private one18 : “the enemies that we talk about, are not the enemies that everyone encounters in their own life, they are instead the enemies that are displayed in eschatological time, in the time when the disciples of Jesus are oppressed”19. These pages were written during the most fertile period of the PetersonSchmitt friendship, and we know from Schmitt’s diaries that Peterson had read to Schmitt his commentary on the distinction between the poor and the martyr20. Also, this hypothesis is endorsed by the fact that Peterson’s exegesis on this passage goes further beyond the text. Peterson himself acknowledges that the eschatological content of this passage can be grasped only when introducing the distinction between Christ’s friends and the Antichrist’s friends, even though the distinction doesn’t occur in the text. As he describes it: “In every act of love towards the enemy, in every work of good fortune to those who hate, in every word of blessing to those who curse, in every value to those who oppress, this bond with 14. Ibid., p. 308. 15. Ibid., pp. 325-327. 16. PANCHERI, Pensare “ai margini” (n. 10), p. 123. 17. SCHMITT, Political Theology (n. 1), p. 5. For more on the analysis of the exception in Schmitt’s see G. SCHWAB, The Challenge of the Exception, Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1970. 18. Ibid., p. 29. 19. PETERSON, Vangelo di Luca (n. 13), p. 327. 20. On 14 January 1926 Peterson read some of his commentaries concerning the distinction between the poor and the martyr to Schmitt. I thank Barbara Nichtweiss for this information in M. TIELKE – G. GIESLER (eds.), Carl Schmitt Tagebücher 1925-1929, Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 2018, p. 46.

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Christ is manifested, just as in every act of hostility on the part of the enemies their bond with the Antichrist became manifest”21. I think that the debate with Schmitt is implicit here. Indeed, the friend-enemy criterion, shaped by Schmitt, is important also for Peterson, but the theologian reverses Schmitt’s ideas about political theology from 1922 and proposes a theology of politics because, as Peterson would affirm in 1937, the political order stands either under the power of Christ or under the power of the Antichrist22; political activity cannot be a neutral activity. Peterson proposes a theological turn, (re)theologizing what Schmitt has just secularized in his account on the genealogy of the state from Political Theology I. The real core of his theology of politics is the distinction between God’s friends and enemies. In this sense, Christ’s friends, persecuted for his name, became symbols for a new way of life shaped by the eschatological promises. Before Foucault’s studies concerning parrhesia as a perfect “coincidence between belief and truth”, underlying the commitment for what he says and the risk assumed by the one who practices parrhesia23, Peterson speaks about parrhesia as being both a political and a religious virtue in an article from 192924. For him, parrhesia is a public way of life connecting freedom, truth, logos and friendship. After an inquiry into the different senses of the word parrhesia in Greek ancient literature, New Testament and the Church Fathers, Peterson closes the article focusing on martyrs, highlighting that they have a double type of parrhesia in life and after death: in life, before hostile public authority testifying for Christ; and after death with Christ. It is based on this parrhesia that martyrs can intercede for others25. Reading together the 1929 text and Witness to the truth, I argue that, in Peterson’s view, witnessing the truth is a kind of political theology challenging the authority of the political power exactly because the eschatological promises sustain another life paradigm. As Mrówczyński‐Van Allen put it, “the martyr is a witness to something 21. PETERSON, Vangelo di Luca (n. 13), p. 325. 22. PETERSON, Witness to the Truth (n. 6), p. 167. 23. M. FOUCAULT, The Meaning and Evolution of the Word Parrhesia, in Discourse & Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia, 1999, original article from 1983, consulted online at https://foucault.info/parrhesia/foucault.DT1.wordParrhesia.en/. 24. E. PETERSON, Zur Bedeutungsgeschichte von Parrhesia, in W. KOEPP (ed.), Reinhold Seeberg Festschrift. Vol. 1: Zur Theorie des Christentums, Leipzig, Deichert, 1929, 284-297. A recent study on parrhesia and a new edition of Peterson, see: C. RÜDIGER – M. WESSELS (eds.), Bella parrhesia: Begriff und Figur der freien Rede in der Frühen Neuzeit, Freiburg i.Br., Rombach Verlag KG, 2018 (ed. 347-364). 25. PETERSON, Zur Bedeutungsgeschichte von Parrhesia, ed. RÜDIGER – WESSELS (n. 24), p. 359.

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‘beyond’ the world”26. The martyr is a witness to something, and his testimony is juridical and religious at the same time. This thesis is endorsed also by Peterson’s observation that the first occurrence of the term “Christian” referred to a political group affirming itself within Judaism. It is the voluntary act of witnessing that offers an identity to the group by the proclamation of a messianic statement that stresses the difference between Jews and Gentiles27. It is very interesting to note that in Christ as Imperator (1936), there is another significant feature about the concept of the martyr, a feature that endorses this hypothesized martyrdom as an alternative political theology: “We cannot understand the early Christian concept of the martyr without recognizing its connection with early Christian eschatology. Just reading Revelation will show these connections. Christ – who is emperor – and Christians – who belong to militia Christi – are symbols of a struggle for an eschatological imperium that is opposed to all imperia of this world”28. In this paragraph, one can find in nuce a contra-political theology: while the possibility of the conflict with political imperial power still remains in the 1937 article, this emphasis on the conflict disappears. II. FROM FRIEND-ENEMY CRITERIA TO TRUE-FALSE CRITERIA As the title suggests, in Witness to the Truth (1937) Peterson defends the prominence of the martyr for the foundation of the Church. The centrality of martyrdom allows him to reunite several themes: truth, suffering, eschatology and political theology. By proclaiming Christ, the martyr is a witness to the truth, in that (s)he suffers not only for Christ but with Christ, taking part in the “shared eschatological fellowship of suffering and destiny”29, and by this suffering, (s)he challenges the political order, thus delegitimizing it. In the aforementioned article, Peterson argues, indirectly, that the only possible political theology is the public confession “I’m a Christian”, which impels a lot of political consequences, since the martyr is subject to a public judgment because of his/her allegiance to 26. A. MRÓWCZYŃSKI‐VAN ALLEN, Beyond Political Theology and Its Liquidation: From Theopolitical Monotheism to Trinitarianism, in Modern Theology 33 (2017) 570593. 27. G. CARONELLO, Nazionalismo e identità cristiana nella teologia politica di Erik Peterson, consulted online at https://books.fbk.eu/media/pubblicazioni/allegati/Caronello. pdf, 401-403. 28. E. PETERSON, Christ as Imperator, in ID., Theological Tractates (n. 6), 143-150, p. 147. 29. PETERSON, Witness to the Truth (n. 6), p. 153.

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Jesus. The act of witnessing is shaped by eschatological hope, since this confession of faith means to “give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Pet 3,15), the hope to take part with Christ in the Kingdom. This means that the witness is both witness of the eschaton and witness to Christ, since with Christ a new eon has begun, an eon that relativizes any current political power. One of the traits of the martyr is “his sharp eye”: only for him the historical context is “made visible” and things “have been revealed”30. This means that they can make judgments based on a different vision. In Peterson’s account, martyrdom is a radical ascetic practice. For him, all types of ascetic practice develop a higher ability to discern31. In the following part of my article, I will put discernment, eschatology and power into dialogue with one another. The discussion of these concepts in their interconnection is allowed by Peterson’s usage of 1 Cor 2,8 and 1 Cor 2,1032. Paul articulates in 1 Corinthians 2 the distinction between spiritual and unspiritual people: the first, enlightened by the Spirit of God, discern and decide in this light. In direct opposition to these spiritual people, we find the rulers of this age, who decide according to political criteria. In this letter, the discernment ἀνακρίνω is an important topic33, with 8 occurrences out of 14 in the New Testament. It is this particular biblical framework used by Peterson that enables me to refer to the expression discernment in interpreting his account. The article, Witness to the Truth, is concerned with the distinction between false and true order, which first appeared in Monotheism as a Political Problem (1935) following a reference to Augustine, who explains that until the end of the world, there will be a continuous fight between those who support the truth and those who support errors34, between Pagans, Jews, Christians, and heretics. In Witness to the Truth several similar expressions occur: “false political order”, “false prophet”, “false 30. Ibid., pp. 166-167. 31. For the correlation between spiritual exercises and discernment see E. PETERSON, Giudaismo e Cristianesimo, Lezioni tenute all’Università Cattolica di Milano, 1952. Archivio Erik Peterson, Universita di Trento (A.E.P.36 – E.P.7.21), pp. 30-32. It is interesting to notice that before Pierre Hadot’s thesis concerning philosophy as spiritual exercises, Peterson defends a very similar thesis in this manuscript stemming from a class held in 1952. 32. PETERSON, Witness to the Truth (n. 6), for 1 Cor 2,8 (pp. 176, 180) and 1 Cor 2,10 (pp. 166, 165). 33. D. VAN DER MERWE, Spiritual Discernment according to 1 Corinthians 2: The Spirit and Discerning the Wisdom of God, in Deel 53 (2012), Supplementum 3, 168-184. 34. AUGUSTINE, City of God, cited in E. PETERSON, Monotheism as a Political Problem: A Contribution to the History of Political Theology in the Roman Empire, in ID., Theological Tractates (n. 6), 68-105, p. 104: “aliis pro veritatis, aliis pro falsitate certantibus”.

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teacher”, and “false understanding”, indicating not different opinions, but rather that the narratives are endorsing a “perverted political order”35. This counterfeiting is, for Peterson, a usurpation and, as such, is demonic, as underlined by Senellart36. Furthermore, he distinguishes between the “knowledge of the Holy Spirit from the pneuma” and the “knowledge of the deep things of Satan”. This distinction referring to 1 Corinthians 2 can only be understood in the light of Peterson’s conception about what it means to do theology. In debate with Barth and Bultmann, Peterson argues for a type of dogmatic theology following the Incarnation that “enables us to participate in the scientia divina”37; consequently, a kind of knowledge is possible through faith. The context of the correlation between truth and politics is an interpretation of the Book of Revelation that insists on the final confrontation between Christ and the Antichrist as a confrontation between two political orders in conflict. Peterson explains that the revelation of Christ is an unveiling process that makes “visible the metaphysical disorientation of a false political order”38. Other similar expressions occur in the following pages: “became clear for the witness”, “revealing”, and “unveiling”. Peterson is in no way a liberal or a democrat. For him, political plurality is an expression of metaphysical pluralism and, therefore, challenges the priority of the kingship of Christ. Truth is represented by Christ’s promises for his followers, and since these promises sustain alternative narratives to both Jewish law and Pagan law, the truth’s witnesses will consequently enter into conflict with both theo-political orders. For the German scholar, the Book of Revelation asserts a connection between heresy and the perverted political order of the Antichrist, and it “anticipates the experience of many centuries in the Christian era”39, underlining that every real heresy stands with a political order of antiChristian stamp40. The example for that correlation is Arianism, which is an explicit reference to Eusebius, but Peterson does not develop this issue directly. He prefers to speak about it in a mediated way, using the image of the “false prophet”, who, according to Peterson, plays a specific role, 35. PETERSON, Witness to the Truth (n. 6), all expressions appear on pp. 166-167. 36. M. SENELLART, À propos des anges des nations: le problème théologico-politique du nationalisme selon Erik Peterson, in P. BÜTTGEN – A. RAUWEL (eds.), Théologie politique et sciences sociales: autour d’Erik Peterson, Paris, EHESS, 2019, 193-210, p. 209. 37. E. PETERSON, What Is Theology?, in ID., Theological Tractates (n. 6), 1-14, p. 4. 38. PETERSON, Witness to the Truth (n. 6), p. 167. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid.

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insofar as he is a theologian of the Antichrist: “It is not simply a case of rejecting the representative of a different opinion, a false understanding, as judged from a totally abstract, timeless, scientific, or scholarly perspective, on the contrary, the false teacher is seen as standing in the service of demonic power, as it has been disclosed by the revelation of Jesus Christ”41. For Peterson, the question of truth is not only epistemological, but ontological. Consequently, the question of falsehood is not an error but a voluntary activity of counterfeiting. The false prophet proposes a misleading narrative about the future – a narrative that feeds false hopes – and as such, he is an instrument in the service of evil. In the eschatological light, all concealed things will be revealed and, consequently, misleading approaches will become clear. Additionally, the article proposes a fundamental opposition between the false prophet and Christ’s witness, the martyr: the former is a friend of the Antichrist and an enemy of Christ, and the latter is a friend of Christ and an enemy of the Antichrist. When Peterson speaks about Eusebius, he chooses this example to point to Christians who had been bewitched by Nazism, which developed a mystical approach promising peace under their rule. More concretely, he aims at Schmitt’s behaviour concerning the Third Reich, and Schmitt himself acknowledges this comparison with Eusebius in Political Theology II, and even takes it as a compliment42. This parallelism between Schmitt and Eusebius is enforced by the ideological claim of the Reich to be a continuation of the Roman Empire. The image of the fourth-century bishop is at the centre of Schmitt’s Political Theology II. Schmitt uses the concept of “false eschatology” to speak about monotheism as a political problem; more exactly, to describe how Peterson portrays Eusebius of Caesarea. Schmitt observes that the main problem with Eusebius is not that he had an erroneous vision of the Trinity, being an Arian, but rather that he was “a false eschatologist, because of his exaggerated view of the Roman Empire”43. If political theology is to be understood as a reflection on the eschatological message, as has been recently underlined by many studies in the field44, false eschatology enables dangerous actions, since it promotes alternative answers to the question: “what can we hope for?”. 41. Ibid., p. 165. 42. C. SCHMITT, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of Any Political Theology, Malden, MA, Polity Press, 2008, p. 47. 43. Ibid., p. 86. 44. C. HOVEY – E. PHILLIPS (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Political Theology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

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In Schmitt’s vision, the problem that Peterson finds in the image of Eusebius is that the bishop develops a false eschatology by assigning a salvation role to the Roman Empire, which he claims brought peace to the world. Peterson does not use the expression of false eschatology, but the idea signified by this expression can be clearly found in Monotheism as a Political Problem, as well as in other articles. For Peterson, Eusebius is to be criticized for promoting imperial political theology as a consequence of his eschatological vision, that is, a vision of a realized eschatology unifying two aspects, the cessation of the persecutions against Christians and the cessations of national differences, thereby fulfilling Old Testament prophecies concerning universal peace. According to Peterson, “There is a striking lack of exegetical tact in the way that Eusebius, without further qualifications, sees the prophetic predictions of the peace among nations as being fulfilled by the Roman Empire”45. Giving a salvation role to the Roman Empire legitimizes the concept of monarchy and, for Peterson, political monarchy is just a mirror of the theological-metaphysical idea of one God. One monarch on earth corresponds to the one monarch in the Heavens. Eusebius connects empire, peace, and monotheism, justifying the special providence of God in the domain of the Roman Empire. Eusebius’ political theology concerning the Roman Empire, in this case, was the consequence of an anticipated secularization of the image of the Kingdom. This means that in Peterson’s account, Eusebius became the prototype for a mistaken political theology because of a false eschatology, a different narrative about when and how the messianic prophecies are to be fulfilled.

III. CHOOSING BETWEEN BARABBAS AND JESUS The focus of Witness to the Truth is the encounter between Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate. In this dialogue, two themes occur: the royalty of Jesus and the question of truth. In Peterson’s interpretation, these subjects are correlated. There is a relationship between the metaphysical order, the political one and the knowledge concerning these orders (this correlation is important also for Schmitt as he argues in The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations of 1929). Zooming into the fifth chapter of Revelation, which narrates the opening of the scroll by Christ, Peterson analogically implies that Christ’s victory makes a certain knowledge 45. PETERSON, Monotheism as a Political Problem (n. 34), p. 94.

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possible: “through a victory in the political order, a kind of knowledge is established”46. As a scholar of late antiquity, Peterson understands by political theology, theologia civilis, the fact that every political unity has a distinctive religious identity: “political power demands to be worshipped”47. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that Christ and the first-century martyrs were killed. The eschatological emphasis on the Kingdom is challenging the practical political power of this world, because the narrative of another Kingdom is a tool for imagining a better world and, consequently, for questioning the current status of power. For both Jewish messianism and Pagan theologia civilis there is no separation between religious and political power; the unity of power is a common assumption shared by both Schmitt and Peterson via Thomas Hobbes. The difference between Peterson and Schmitt lies in the fact that the first emphasizes the unity from the spiritual perspective, while the second emphasizes it from the political perspective. This is the reason why arguments in political theology are so entangled. The kingdom of Christ is rooted in the truth; the truth that He represents. Only those open to the truth of Christ, able to bear witness to Christ, which means to be a martyr, have access to the Kingdom, because His royalty is linked to the fact that He is born to testify to the truth (John 18,37). For Peterson, it is a Christian duty to be ready to testify to the truth. By contrast, Pilate, who remains sceptical about the nature of the truth, can only have access to the perverted order of the Roman Empire. According to Peterson, the sceptical question, “what is the truth?”, underlies every political system that does not let itself be limited by the kingship of Christ48. I believe that, for Peterson, choosing between Barabbas and Jesus represents another implicit reference to Schmitt’s idea that the specificity of politics means the possibility of conflict and, therefore, the ability to decide between friend and enemy. This distinction received its real meaning because it refers to the possibility of physical killing, as Schmitt puts it49. Peterson, Schmitt’s former friend and best man at his second wedding, sends Carl Schmitt a message replying to the decision-making metaphor proposed by Schmitt in The Concept of the Political. In his view, “political thought and political instinct prove themselves theoretically and practically in the ability to distinguish friend and enemy”50. The friend-enemy 46. PETERSON, Witness to the Truth (n. 6), p. 166. 47. Ibid., p. 167. 48. Ibid., p. 174. 49. C. SCHMITT, The Concept of the Political, Chicago, IL – London, University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 33. 50. Ibid., p. 67.

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antithesis is independent of any other antithesis, the political sphere being autonomous from any other spheres51, including the religious, the metaphysical and the ethical sphere. On the contrary, for Peterson the act to testify for the truth replaces the act of distinguishing between friend and foe. Political theology became impossible since truth inhibits choices. IV. AUCTORITAS

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Ego in hoc natus sum, et ad hoc veni in mundum, ut testimonium perhibeam veritati: omnis qui est ex veritate, audit vocem meam. Dicit ei Pilatus: Quid est veritas? (Iohannis 18,37-38)

Peterson analyses the court trial narrated in John 18–19: Pilate passes judgement on Jesus, and he is making decisions based on his interest on the friend-foe distinction (“If you release this man, you are no ‘friend of Caesar’”; John 19,12), instead of making a decision according to a process of discernment distinguishing truth from falsehood52. Pilate’s criterion in the interaction with Jesus is definitively political: choosing to his own advantage. However, Christ’s witnesses should decide according to the truth and not according to interest. The impossibility of Christian political theology means, for Peterson, the Christian impossibility to prefer political discernment over spiritual discernment and the prohibition to prioritize political decision over truth, because being Christian entails parrhesia, the courage and the duty to profess a truth that disturbs the established order.

51. Ibid., p. 27. 52. The interpretation of John 18–19 is important for the political theological debate. M. BORGHESI observes, Critica della teologia politica (n. 5), pp. 201-230 that the debate around the second wave of political theology in Germany, i.e., J.B. METZ and H. MAIER point to exactly the question about whether the encounter between Jesus and Pilate is a model for political theology, or, on the contrary, the explicit refusal of any political theology. For Metz, this encounter emphasizes the connection between the eschatological message of Jesus and the socio-political reality, and as such is the base for a critical theology of the society. Metz quotes in this place E. Peterson’s expression of “eschatological provisio” explaining that this provisio is an invitation to act, a critical and liberating imperative encouraging to fulfill Christ’s promises. In turn, his opponent, Maier, expresses his refusal to accept the legitimacy of political theology because Jesus’ mortal conflict with the public’s power springs from his refusal to accept the conceptual schema of Roman or Jewish political theology. Once again, here, one can notice an implicit reference to Peterson’s Monotheism as a Political Problem (n. 34). J. MOLTMANN, Theology of Hope, Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 1993, interprets the condemnation of Jesus as a political and not a religious condemnation. Also G. AGAMBEN revisits this encounter in Pilate and Jesus, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2015.

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Focusing on John 18–19, Peterson intends to reply to Schmitt’s analyses of “auctoritas, non veritas facit legem” developed in Political Theology I, where Schmitt contrasts authority with truth, via Hobbes53. For Schmitt, Pilate represents the potestas; he is the one from whom the concrete decision emanates, “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” (John 19,8), while Christ is the one who stands for the truth: “the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth” (John 18,37). It follows that, for Peterson, Pilate’s sceptical question “what is truth?” is not an epistemological assumption concerning the veiled nature of truth, but rather a theoretical pretext to refuse authority and power to Christ in this realm54. Since false prophets should be known by their fruits (Matt 7,15-16), Peterson reads Pilate’s rhetorical question entailing the choice between Jesus and Barabbas as a metaphysical statement refusing to assume the truth. Pilate’s positioning on the political realm of the Empire allows for a choice between a political rebel and the Messiah – the King from another world – instead of promoting a decision founded on discernment. The possibility of choosing Barabbas over Jesus makes illegitimate any choice that does not spring from the truth. Schmitt did not miss this hidden reference in the work of Peterson, and in response, he writes in the following year, 1938, in The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: “For example, the famous question of Pilate: quid est veritas? may equally be an expression of a considerate tolerance as of a general, weary scepticism or of ‘open-ended’ agnosticism. Also, it is possible to see it as an expression of state-administrative neutrality vis-a-vis the religious beliefs of subjugated peoples”55. According to Schmitt, Pilate, as a representative of the Roman Empire, has the ability to decide for a given territory what religious practices are acceptable: truth is what the political authority legitimates as being true. Interpreting Hobbes, he further explains that for him, the expression “Auctoritas (in the sense of summa potestas) non veritas”56 means the suppression of the distinction between auctoritas and potestas and, consequently, the fact that the political authority also makes decisions regarding truth and error: “Yet, Hobbes, the great decisionist, here too accomplished his typically decisive turn: Auctoritas, non Veritas. Nothing here is true, 53. SCHMITT, Political Theology (n. 1), p. 33. 54. PETERSON, Witness to the Truth (n. 6), p. 174. 55. C. SCHMITT, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2008, p. 44 original edition from 1938. NICOLETTI’s article, Erik Peterson e Carl Schmitt (n. 7), focuses on the same quotation and also notices that Schmitt had this book sent to Peterson, p. 526. 56. SCHMITT, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes (n. 55), p. 44.

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everything here is command”57. The relativization of truth endorses Schmitt’s political choices. Precisely because the act of choosing may obliterate truth, choosing an option that is not rooted in the truth is not possible in Peterson’s account. This seems to explain Peterson’s focus on martyrdom as parrhesia replacing political theology: the truth demands to be followed and witnessed, no exception can be made on this issue. It is interesting to notice that Foucault’s lectures on parrhesia underline that the truth-telling practice is constitutive to the subject. The example, offered by Foucault, is one of a philosopher practicing parrhesia with a tyrant, which supposes the courage to tell the truth when you are in a vulnerable position in front of a powerful interlocutor58. Since first-century Christians designated themselves as a community incarnating the true philosophy based on revelation opposed to pagan philosophies, this perspective can illuminate why the Christian meaning of martyrdom, underlined by Peterson, was not just a question of faith and discipleship, but also a proclamation of another order perceived in eschatological hope. CONCLUSION A key to understanding the Schmitt-Peterson debate concerning political theology is the opposition between auctoritas and veritas developed in the confrontation between Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate as narrated in the Gospel according to John. Pilate is sure on his power to decide, but the bare presence of Christ challenges Pilate’s imperial authority. Consequently, pretending that there is a truth independent of political decision, and bearing witness to this truth, is a dangerous public activity because it questions the political power to decide. In Peterson’s account, martyrs publicly affirm by their testimony that another kind of life is possible, one lived under eschatological light and hope. By this proclamation, martyrs became witnesses of the eschaton questioning all political power. For Carl Schmitt, in the centre of political thought lies the ability to distinguish between friend and enemy. To this ability to distinguish, his former friend Erik Peterson opposes the ability to discern between true and false images, which is a Christian virtue; a virtue practiced in the highest way by martyrs. While spiritual discernment is a decision-making process 57. Ibid., p. 55. For Schmitt’s interpretation of Hobbes, see M. VATTER, The Political Theology of Carl Schmitt, in J. MEIERHENRICH – O. SIMONS (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt (Oxford Handbooks Online), https://doi. org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199916931. 013 14 (2014). 58. FOUCAULT, The Meaning of the Word Parrhesia (n. 23), p. 4.

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oriented by the eschatological outcome to get closer to God’s will and founded on the distinction between true and false, the politically practical ability to distinguish between friend and enemy, as it is conceived by Schmitt, claims its autonomy from others’ criteria, such as true-false and good-evil. Discernment and discrimination have an analogous structure; they both imply an intellectual process that entails a practical election. Actually, Schmitt suggests this analogy by invoking the example of Mussolini, praised by the Catholic world for his discernment for signing the Lateran Treaties: “The gift of discernment, accredited here to Mussolini, is more the gift of the politically correct distinction between friend and enemy than the theological gift of the distinction between the orthodox and the heretical, which, according to Peterson, gives the right to be intolerant”59. Since analogy between theology and state theory is central for Schmitt’s political theology60, I guess that both Schmitt and Peterson have been aware of the similar pattern between political and religious discriminations. Acknowledging the affinity between political and religious discernment can perhaps open a new horizon to discussing together discernment and political theology. Of course, the central claim that a community should have privileged access to truth is debatable, but what counts is the power to incarnate this truth in a way of life. In that sense, witnessing is more than an act of faith; it is a socio-political way of life. It does not come as a surprise that the debate about political theology was born in the shadow of totalitarian regimes: here, in fact, the religious consequences of political narratives and the political consequences of religious narratives became manifest. Accademia di Romania Piazza José de San Martin IT-00197 Roma Italia [email protected]

59. SCHMITT, Political Theology II (n. 42), p. 90. 60. SCHMITT, Political Theology (n. 1), p. 36.

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ENMITY, THE REIGN OF GOD, AND THE GRACE OF RECONCILIATION PROLEGOMENA TO THE POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF H. RICHARD NIEBUHR

I The twentieth century American Protestant theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962), proposed that the relation in which human beings stand to one another, as members of a universal, inclusive, and interactive moral community, is fundamental to the dynamics that constitute them as finite moral agents. For Niebuhr, the very existence of a moral “world” – i.e., of a “space” for human moral interaction – arises in, and from, the enactments of mutual recognition of each other’s agency that humans accord to one another. He thus affirms that, in its fundamental constitution, the human moral world is inherently a social world, a relational world, a world structured and empowered by the interactional dynamics of reciprocal acknowledgement of one another’s moral agency1. For Niebuhr, the inherently relational character of our human agency calls upon us to bring into being, in concert with one another, a human world of universal and inclusive moral recognition in which a full range of possibilities for human good and flourishing may be enacted. On his account, moreover, the social character of the world that is constituted as space for human moral interaction does not simply arise “immanently”, i.e., this social character is not simply and solely an outcome of the internal inter-relational dynamics of human agency. There is another, more fundamental, level of relationality that his account requires 1. Niebuhr’s affirmation of the human moral world as inherently social is consonant with a central image for human moral agency that Immanuel Kant’s proposes in his account of morality: Human moral agency is constituted in and enacted by one’s participation in the mutuality of equal membership that binds us all together as a “kingdom of ends”. Such mutuality is expressed in the “respect” that enacts recognition of the dignity of each and every moral agent as “an end in itself”; see Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785) AA 4, 433-440; English translation: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Practical Philosophy: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Cambridge, Cambridge University Pres, 1996, pp. 83-89. References for Kant’s writings are to the volume and pagination of the Akademie Ausgabe (AA), the standard German edition of his works: Kants Gesammelte Schriften, Ausgabe der Königlichen Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902-, followed by reference to the English translation in the Cambridge Edition.

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as condition for the relational “space” of community to be constituted appropriately; as the field in which human moral interaction may be both adequately expressive of its origin in mutuality, and properly productive of good that is commensurate with such an origin. This condition is provided by that relation in which this socially constituted field for human interaction itself stands to what Niebuhr calls “the transcendent center of value”, which he identifies as God, “the One beyond the many”. This means that the mutuality of human community, which both enables the space for human moral interaction and renders that interaction intelligible, is itself enacted in reference to a more fundamental and overarching relation; that relation is one that capacitates human agency, in the full range of its relationality, for recognizing and for enacting good. This relationship is the one in which this human moral community, precisely in the mutuality of the recognition that its agents accord to one another, stands in function of its acknowledgement of its utter dependence upon “the One beyond the many”, i.e., the “center of value” whom Niebuhr identifies as the transcendent personal God of “radical monotheism”2. II Such an account of human agents, constituted in relation to one another as a moral community, which for its intelligibility and proper functioning, is itself referenced to a transcendent personal center of value – i.e., one that is generated not simply by human enactment, but is, and of itself, the condition for all enactment – provides the conceptual framework for what I term Niebuhr’s “inter-relational, dialogical moral ontology of agency”. He articulates this moral ontology in terms of the image of a human agent as a “responder”, an interlocutor actively engaging the world and other agents by discerning “what is going on” and then enacting a “fitting” response for that engagement. The scope of such discernment of “what is going on” encompasses not only the relational context of human interaction alone. It also includes the full array of material, biological, sociocultural, historical, psychological, and spiritual elements/conditions constituting “the world” in its totality. Such a world is one in which human 2. See H.R. NIEBUHR, The Idea of Radical Monotheism, and The Center of Value, in ID., Radical Monotheism and Western Culture, with Supplementary Essays, Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox, 1993, 24-37 and 100-113; ID., Responsibility in Absolute Dependence, in ID., The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy, with an introduction by J.M. GUSTAFSON, New York, Harper and Row, 1963, 108-126; also, ID., The Structure of Faith, in ID., Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith, ed. R.R. NIEBUHR, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1989, 46-62.

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agents dwell, upon which they exercise their agency, and which, in turn, responds in its proper ways to that exercise of human agency. The discernment of “what is going on”, as well as the response that issues from such discernment, thus includes attention to what in Niebuhr’s theological terms, is the “fitting” human place in the created cosmos with which humanity interacts3. Niebuhr presents this image of responder as the third of the “great symbol[s] for the understanding of our personal existence as self-acting beings” and designates it as “the responsible self”4, the title of the posthumously published work in which he articulates its main conceptual lineaments, its important phenomenological features, and the central elements of its moral and theological significance. He acknowledges that the first and second of these symbols for our personal existence as self-acting beings, that of “maker” and that of “citizen”, are more venerable than that of “responder” in their articulation and use. He argues, nonetheless, that this third symbol, the responsible self, is more comprehensive and adequate for registering the intelligibility of our human moral self-understanding, of the actions that are performed in accord with that self-understanding, and of what then issues in, and upon, the world out of that self-understanding, and the actions it shapes. He further contends that the greater adequacy of the symbol of responder has at least two bases: one is the fact of its emergence from the string of human historical experiences that have made manifest – sometimes painfully and even tragically – the limitations of the two earlier symbols. The second basis lies in the very dynamics of the dialogic relationality that, in constituting the social and the historical structures and contexts of human moral agency, provide the symbol of “responder” with its fundamental intelligibility.

3. An important textual locus from which elements of Niebuhr’s own theological articulation of creation can be gleaned is Responsibility in Absolute Dependence (n. 2). An argument can be made that the “radical monotheism” in which he frames his affirmation of God’s absolute transcendence with respect to all else that is (i.e., creation) as “the One beyond the many”, bears intriguing points of resemblance to the characterization of divine transcendence articulated by D.B. BURRELL, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions, Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 1993. Burrell frames divine transcendence in terms of the radical difference between Creator and creation that came to be signified in the expression creatio ex nihilo – a conceptual achievement that emerged from the extended efforts of medieval Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers to render intelligible the freedom with which God enacts creation. One point of resemblance between Niebuhr and Burrell that I consider of particular importance is the stress they each place, from strikingly different but nonetheless complementary theological perspectives, upon recognition of the radical finitude in which humanity and the cosmos stand in relation to God’s transcendence. 4. NIEBUHR, The Responsible Self (n. 2), p. 55.

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III Within Niebuhr’s own mid-twentieth-century context, his account of moral selfhood as responsible agency, embedded in the complex relationality of human social matrices, represents the achievement of a rich and challenging synthesis of conceptual and experiential/descriptive resources drawn from a diverse range of prior philosophical, theological, historical, religious, cultural reflection, and scholarship. Niebuhr does not simply assert that our human reality takes shape in a socially embedded context. He offers a significant set of considerations for taking a multi-dimensional relational matrix both to be formative for human thinking and acting in and upon the world, and to be fundamental for shaping an appropriate understanding both of ourselves as moral agents and of the world that we engage in the workings of our agency. A number of the considerations Niebuhr advances in support of this relational account of moral agency arise from the “genealogical” location of his work upon the larger terrain of twentieth-century ethics and philosophical/theological anthropology. His account of responsible moral agency as embedded in the full historicity and relationality of human mutuality represents a rich and challenging synthesis of conceptual and experiential resources drawn from the work of, among others, Immanuel Kant, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, William James, George Herbert Mead, Martin Buber, Jonathan Edwards, and Ernst Troeltsch5. Niebuhr sees each of them providing a key perspective upon the structure and operation of moral agency, as it functions in the social and historical contexts of human culture6. His engagement with these perspectives results in the construction of an account of relationality for which the mutually responsive character of human language and dialogue functions as a basic model for the dynamics of reciprocity that constitute finite human moral agency: The human moral world arises in and with language as itself a primary instance of human relationality and responsiveness, as well as a 5. For an overview of the theological context in which Niebuhr’s work took shape and an analysis of its major concerns, see the two essays by H. FREI in P. RAMSEY (ed.), Faith and Ethics: The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr, New York, Harper and Row, 1957: Niebuhr’s Theological Background, 9-64, and The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr, 65-116. For a later account and assessment of Niebuhr’s work from a perspective twenty-five years after his death, see the essays in R.F. THIEMANN (ed.), The Legacy of H. Richard Niebuhr, Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 1991. 6. See J.S. PAGANO, The Origins and the Development of the Triadic Structure of Faith in H. Richard Niebuhr: A Study of the Kantian and Pragmatic Background of Niebuhr’s Thought, Lanham, MD, University Press of America, 2005, for a detailed account of the influence of Kant, Pierce, and Royce upon Niebuhr.

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medium for engaging the responsiveness of the cosmos. This mutually responsive character of human language serves as the core paradigm from which Niebuhr articulates “responsibility” as the distinctively modern “symbol” for the structure and dynamics of moral agency exercised in recognition of the inclusive mutuality constitutive of moral community.

IV In the half century that has followed the publication of The Responsible Self, Niebuhr’s elaboration of such an inter-relational, dialogical moral ontology of agency has become an abiding touchstone for many subsequent discussions of both Protestant and Catholic theological ethics7. Yet, as this essay will argue, there is even more to be learned from Niebuhr’s work. In addition to its established significance for theological accounts of moral agency, Niebuhr’s articulation of the responsible self in terms of a relational moral ontology of agency also provides a basis for a distinctive political theology. This will be a political theology in which reconciliation provides the central dynamism for the “fittingness” that orients human mutual interaction to be properly constitutive of the realm for a public, i.e., “political”, engagement with and pursuit of a fully inclusive human good. In such a Niebuhrian political theology, reconciliation serves two key functions. First, it is formative of the polis as the proper public locus for mutual human engagement in the pursuit and constitution of a genuinely social human good. Second, it empowers the life and activity of such mutual human political engagement in ways that makes such engagement profoundly transformative for the attainment of human good. Such a political theology of reconciliation is, however, one that Niebuhr himself did not elaborate in sufficient detail. What he has provided, is, at best, a preliminary sketch, but it is a sketch that, particularly in the divisive times that have come upon us, begs for completion, especially given the resources it offers to transform the dynamics of divisiveness. It points to an important yet still mostly untapped resource for political theology that can be drawn from his work, most notably the slender volume, The Responsible Self, he intriguingly subtitled “An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy”. 7. Another aspect of Niebuhr’s influence comes through his students, such as Paul Ramsey, James Gustafson, and Hans Frei, who have produced their own notable scholarship and also trained yet another generation of theological ethicists, both Protestant and Catholic.

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Central to this resource are the dialogical dynamics of the mutual moral recognition that, insofar as they are more adequately articulated and enacted in a community, enable that community to move further along a trajectory of historical intentionality toward the concrete attainment of a fully inclusive and publicly articulated universality. Embedded in these dynamics of mutual recognition, which Niebuhr argues shape the great moral symbol of responsibility, is an acknowledgement, moreover, of the finitude in which human agency, and the community that agency constitutes, stands. Implicit in this acknowledgement of human finitude is a recognition of difference, otherness, and multiplicity as fundamental markers of the limits and the distinctions that constitute human finitude in all its particularities8. These markers of difference, otherness, and multiplicity provide central coordinates for delimiting the human contexts that provide fundamental conditions under which human divisiveness arises, persists, and imperils the dynamics of human relationality. This divisiveness, enacted in forms that Niebuhr identifies as an “ethics of self-defense”, presents a fundamental challenge to the full enactment of his relational moral ontology of agency9. The divisiveness that sets humans against one another, as “us” and “them”, and the corrosive persistence of its consequences, together mark out the fundamental challenge that his political theology is called upon to address. Niebuhr discerns with acute clarity that to the extent that the workings of human finitude have been, and continue to be, prey to the embedding of an “ethics of self-defense” into the operation of human moral agency, such embedding makes enmity, with its zero-sum contention between us and them, into the self-enclosed and self-enclosing horizon for the workings of human relationality10. In 8. For two related accounts of how the dynamic interplay of contingency plurality, and otherness opens possibilities for universal mutual inclusiveness, see P.J. ROSSI, Plurality as ‘the Grace of Secularity’: Reform, God’s Transcendence, and the Horizons of Otherness, in P. DE MEY – W. FRANÇOIS (eds.), Ecclesia semper reformanda: Renewal and Reform beyond Polemics (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 306), Leuven – Paris – Bristol, CT, Peeters, 2020, 173-187, and ID., Seekers, Dwellers, and the Plural Contingencies of Grace: Hospitality, Otherness and the Enactment of Human Wholeness, in ID. (ed.), Seekers and Dwellers: Plurality and Wholeness in a Time of Secularity (Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change. Series VIII: Christian Philosophical Studies, 20), Washington, DC, Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2016, 285-300. 9. It is by no means farfetched to take the legacy of Thomas Hobbes and his image of war as the primal (and, most likely, the perduring) dynamic of human relationality to represent the account of human relationality and moral agency that Niebuhr is most concerned to refute. 10. For a discussion how attention to “the enmity that leads to violence”, as it is paradigmatically framed in the Genesis narrative of Cain and Abel, provides an important marker for theological reflection on the centrality of relationality and mutuality as the very horizon for reconciliation and peace-making, see P.J. ROSSI, Where Is Abel Thy Brother?

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the context of this dark, foreboding, and in the end, death-dealing prospect upon “how we stand to one another”, Niebuhr proposes its stark and challenging contrary: Reconciliation, the dynamic of recognition and inclusion that, in response to the divisiveness empowering an ethic of self-defense along a trajectory of intractable, self-enclosed enmity, invites in its place the enactment of the radical mutuality enjoined in Luke’s Gospel – “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you” (6,27). On Niebuhr’s account of the relational ontology of human moral agency, the most fitting form of political engagement in and for the human community to which “responsible selves” are called, in the face of the divisive challenges arising from an ethics of self-defense, is to enact the radical mutuality of reconciliation. V In the context of Niebuhr’s relational moral ontology of agency, the recognition of finitude is born in and of a deep tension between its being what inescapably binds us in common “all the way down” (perhaps most acutely in the awareness of our mortality), while also providing a place from which we may each proclaim what is uniquely and solely “mine, not yours”. In clinging to this perch of possessive selfhood, we render ourselves vulnerable to a “mythology of death” and place ourselves in service of a “ethics of self-defense” that spirals further and further down into an abyss of persistent enmity11. It is over against, and as counter to, this dynamic of hostility, emergent from the divisiveness of finitude, that Niebuhr will frame the elements for his political theology of reconciliation, elements that fittingly also have their origin in the recognition of otherness embedded in the acknowledgement of finitude. Ingredient in the fundamental tension exhibited in the correlative acknowledgements of finitude and of difference and multiplicity are two “inflections” whose interplay is, unsurprisingly also, both mutually implicative and dialectically tensive. In one inflection, the acknowledgement of finitude is modulated in terms of the multiple contingencies of particularity, uncertainty, and fragility as they present themselves as both immanent conditions of the cosmos in which humanity dwells and acts, and as abiding features of the structure and working of human agency itself. Niebuhr strikingly presents this modulation at work in the dynamics of time and Reframing the Theological Horizons for Catholic Theories of Just War, in Journal of Catholic Social Thought 11 (2014) 229-240. 11. NIEBUHR, The Responsible Self (n. 2), pp. 98-107.

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history; we experience our finitude as “time-full” selves, who unavoidably encounter past, present, and future in moments of “compresence”12. As “time-full” we encounter the finitude of incompleteness, of things that “go wrong”, as the finitude in which the outcomes of what we do all too frequently turn out “otherwise” from our best intentions and careful efforts to plan and control. In this modulation one can hardly miss the undertones of the divisiveness of finitude and the dynamics of protective self-enclosure over against the threatening other. In the second inflection, the acknowledgment of finitude has a more radical modulation than that presented in recognizing the finitude of our multiple particularities, of our immanent fragility, or of our cosmic contingency. In this modulation, the acknowledgement of finitude is evoked as a recognition of an otherness that is not only more challenging than any one of its finite instances, but also more than the entirety of all finite otherness. This is the otherness that is transcendent, the otherness that Niebuhr names the “One beyond the many”: A radical otherness that, whatever way it impends, presents itself as destabilizing of any confidence we may have about our capacity to make sense of our lives, of ourselves, and of the world into which, in the unsettling and poignant Heideggerian image, we have been “thrown”13. This otherness is radically different from the “otherness” that is merely an iteration of the finitude of particularity in which we find ourselves thrust, and to which we find ourselves immediately present. It is the radical otherness of a transcendence that is divine, the otherness making all finite relationality possible, even as it lays bare the fragility and transience of that relationality. It is an otherness so compelling that, be it by invitation or by provocation, it can evoke a sense of “radical dependence”, which, on Niebuhr’s account, has an important role to play in the most morally telling acknowledgement of an agent’s finite self-identity in the face of the “One beyond the many”. VI Both modulations of the acknowledgement of finitude have an important bearing upon the political theology of reconciliation implicit in Niebuhr’s work. That import emerges from two larger dimensions of Niebuhr’s 12. Ibid., pp. 90-97. 13. A work that has become a classic point of reference for a phenomenology of the encountering of radical otherness is R. OTTO, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to The Rational, New York, Oxford University Press, 1950.

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account of the moral recognition at work in the inter-relational, dialogical moral ontology of agency. One dimension of this account is the stark dichotomy with which an acknowledgement of finitude confronts human agents when they reflectively undertake to shape a basic trajectory for their response to the relationality, otherness, and difference, which provides the context constituting each agent its particularity. This dichotomy bears upon the orientation that is to shape the fundamental direction “the responsible self” takes as it engages the otherness, difference, and plurality that marks all finitude. How is such otherness – both the otherness of the cosmos as a whole, as well as the otherness marking each particular in its finitude – to be addressed and engaged? Will it be oriented in the fear and the self-protective hostility of the Hobbesian “state of nature”, or in the openness and welcome of a community of expansive mutuality and inclusive respect? The political theology of reconciliation that emerges from Niebuhr’s dialogic account of the relational moral ontology of agency sees the choice starkly posed here as a fundamental marker of the political import of that relational ontology. Put in terms of that image that has long provided a dark, even despairing, take upon the political dynamics of human relationality – Hobbes’ trope of “the state of nature” as bellum omnium contra omnes – Niebuhr’s relational moral ontology stands in both metaphysical and political opposition. Even as Niebuhr recognizes the depth to which divisiveness can mar human relationality, he does not, in contrast to Hobbes, take it to be the inevitable last word about the character of that relationality. The import that the recognition of finitude has for Niebuhr’s political theology of reconciliation, however, entails more just its resistance to the Hobbesian trope of endless war. The dynamic of multiplicity and otherness acknowledged in the recognition of finitude plays a fundamentally positive role in empowering Niebuhr’s inter-relational, dialogical moral ontology of agency. On Niebuhr’s account of human finitude, the relationality of otherness in which dialogue is embedded enables us to recognize such otherness as itself a constitutive feature of our mutual human finitude: We are, each and all, constituted in and by otherness and its finitude. Such recognition of our own otherness thereby renders us open to encountering otherness not just as a neutral – or perhaps even an unfortunate – feature of shared human finitude. The context of our human dialogical relationality empowers a recognition of human finitude not as mere naked contingency, nor as an epiphenomenal surd that is a bare and often tragic “fact” about both our common humanity and our own individual selves. The dynamics of dialogue attentive to its formative relational matrix enables us to envision our finitude in the first instance as

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one that thoroughly “inhabits” a context of mutual and formative otherness: This is the otherness encountered in the world, encountered in those with whom we dialogue, encountered in the discourse and activities emergent in such engagements – and encountered in ourselves. This otherness of finitude, however, is itself constituted and framed in and by a further otherness, one that is radically different in kind from any finite otherness we may encounter, engage, and perhaps even resist; it is itself something “other” than merely a further iteration of the finitude in which we find ourselves thrust, and to which we find ourselves immediately present14. It also opens us to the horizon of the unique radicality of divine transcendent Otherness, the “One beyond the many”, on which all that is not divine is (graciously) dependent15. This radical otherness of divine transcendence is the otherness that makes finite relationality possible and constitutes finitude as the worldly otherness proper to the human. In the light of this divine otherness, the dynamic of human mutuality has, as a fundamental condition for its possibility, the recognition of otherness as requisite for any adequate self-recognition, as well as for any adequate mutual recognition. In short, his work provides an account of human finitude for which the mutually responsive character of human language and dialogue functions as a basic model for the dynamics of human relationality to otherness, including both the otherness of creation and the radical otherness named “God”16. By encompassing both the radical otherness 14. This could be rendered in Kantian terminology as: Transcendent otherness is the condition of possibility for finite otherness, including the totality of finite otherness that constitutes the “world”. 15. This is a point on which Burrell’s account of construing human finitude in relation to creatio ex nihilo converges with Niebuhr’s account of human finitude as “the worldly otherness proper to the human”. See D.B. BURRELL, Creation as Original Grace, in P.J. ROSSI (ed.), God, Grace, and Creation (Annual Publication of the College Theology Society, 55), Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2010, 97-106. 16. Niebuhr’s discussion of these dynamics of moral recognition and the recognition of finitude, which he frames in terms of the “absolute dependence” that is fundamental to the acknowledgment of our finite self-identity may also be read as a partial elaboration of an implicit metaphysics/theology of creation. The “absolute dependence” that Niebuhr articulates does at least some of the important conceptual labor to which the notion of creatio ex nihilo has long been assigned in classical Christian accounts of creation. In the context of Niebuhr’s overarching account of responsibility, however, the “absolute dependence” that calls upon the self for a fitting response is not simply a pointer to creatio ex nihilo as an index of the utter contingency of the cosmos and, a fortiori, of the humans who dwell therein. It is – and more centrally for Niebuhr’s purposes – a marker for a crucial juncture from which the self, in the apprehension of its own finitude, is confronted with a stark dichotomy presented by the multiple faces of otherness that is constitutively embedded in finitude. How is the otherness of the cosmos – not just of the cosmos as a whole, but also the otherness marking each particular in its finitude – to be addressed and engaged? Is it to be in hostility, or is it to be welcome? G. STEINER, Grammars of Creation, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2001, offers an elaboration of a metaphysics of creation that may

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of God’s sovereignty and the radical finitude of the mutuality in which we stand to one another, it empowers human agency to participate in the enactment of the grace of reconciliation that can heal the divisiveness of differences. Such enactment makes it possible to overcome the divisiveness of an “ethics of self-defense” that, deeply rooted in the distrust of the other that Niebuhr calls a “mythology of death”, fuels human contention and enmity: In its place, Niebuhr’s political theology enables a mutuality of responsible selves who empower one another to envision themselves as participants in the enactment of a “history of life” in which, in concert with one another, they help to bring into being conditions that enable a world to be the locus for a full range of human good and flourishing17. Marquette University Department of Theology Marquette Hall 115 1217 Wisconsin Avenue Milwaukee, WI 53233 USA [email protected]

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be considered complementary to Niebuhr’s, particularly with respect to the significance of the dynamics of otherness. 17. An intriguing prefiguration of the distinction between the “ethics of self-defense” and the “history of life” – framed in terms of the possibility and the importance of social dynamic of reconciliation – may be operative on H. Richard’s side of an exchange with his brother, Reinhold, published in The Christian Century in March and April of 1932, about the appropriate response of the United States to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. John D. Barbour suggests as much in his reading of the position of the non-violent Christian pacifism that H. Richard favors in this exchange in contrast to the just war “realism” espoused by Reinhold: “The Christian faces an ultimate either-or choice: the way of selfassertion – which can only bring counter assertion and conflict – or the way of repentance and forgiveness. The choice of repentance, he maintains, is as valid for entire societies as it is for individuals, and it is the only way to avoid the ceaseless cycle of assertion and counter assertion that leads to war” (emphasis mine). See J.D. BARBOUR, Niebuhr versus Niebuhr: The Tragic Nature of History, in The Christian Century 101/36 (1984) 1096-1099.

ADAM AND CHRIST IN BONHOEFFER ANALOGIA RELATIONIS, THE IMAGO DEI, AND THE BODY POLITIC

INTRODUCTION The aim of this paper is to diagnose a sickness in the contemporary body politic, and to suggest how the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer might point to the remedy. The key concept is the analogia relationis. This doctrine permeates Bonhoeffer’s work on the theology of creation and his understanding of the church. The analogia relationis, which is based in Christology, offers another alternative to the doctrines of the analogia entis and analogia fidei1. It arises in the early works of Bonhoeffer, but it is rather an underused resource for political theology and ethics – Bonhoeffer’s later work in these areas has generally attracted more attention. This paper argues that Bonhoeffer’s explicitly Christocentric understanding of creation and community is crucial to interpreting his political theology of the analogia relationis, and that this political theology is of particular use to combat the ailing of the body politic in modern liberal democracies. Bonhoeffer’s view of the analogia relationis is explicated as the universal observance of mutual love in the free, social relationships of the human community. The bodily being of human persons with each other is also, analogously, their being with God2. The implications of Bonhoeffer’s conception of a natural relationship between the human being, the other, and the Incarnate God will be shown to breakdown the bubbles of social media. In addition, Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric understanding of creation, and the interrelationships within it, will be used to emphasise the importance of social and political relations in the body politic that are proper to the sacred dignity of every human being. My argument is that there is a fundamental relationality to the embodied nature of human personhood that is undervalued in many modern Western democracies. First, I turn to the notion of the “body politic” and its contemporary health.

1. See, e.g., K. BARTH, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 21975, pp. 243-245; E. PRZYWARA, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2014, pp. 192-314. 2. Two types of body discussed in this paper: (1) the embodied human person’s physical life; and (2) the body politic, which is constituted by a communal political life.

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I. RES PUBLICA The notion of a collective “body politic” has a long history. In Ancient Greece, Plato used it in the context of creation, as giving coherence to earthly existence and the organisation of society3. Xenophon talks of the illogicality of the members of one body working against each other4. Aristotle used the notion in a more explicit sense with regard to the citizenry of a polis5. In Ancient Rome, Cicero spoke of the deleterious effect on the health of the body as a whole were but one limb to overpower another unjustly6. Titus Livius writes of how different parts of the body must rely upon each other in order to function effectively7. Likewise, Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes how a commonwealth resembles a human body, for both consist of many parts that provide unique and indispensable service to the whole8. In one of the most famous passages in the New Testament, Saint Paul used this metaphor to illustrate the way in which God has arranged members in the body of Christ with equality and love to prevent dissension9. The common thread in all of these examples is the need for harmonious relationships between the different parts of the body politic. In the modern Anglosphere, the notion of the “body politic” tends to be used in a positive way, to denote the political system, the polis, or the institutions of a liberal democracy. However, in Bonhoeffer’s Germany, Volkskörper was used differently: to denote the ethnically pure Germans who made up an idealised Nazi society. The metaphor took on a unique phenomenality that inspired Nazi culture and politics10. Its use bore real consequences for those undesirables, the “parasites”, who were seen to 3. See, e.g., PLATO, Timaeus, in Timaeus and Critias, trans. R. WATERFIELD, introd. A. GREGORY, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, 1-99, pp. 68-69 [69b-70b]; PLATO, The Republic, ed. G.R.F. FERRARI, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 129143 [434d-445e]. 4. XENOPHON, Memorabilia, trans. A.L. BONNETTE, introd. C.J. BRUELL, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2018, p. 49 [II.III.18]. 5. ARISTOTLE, The Politics, ed. E. BARKER – R.F. STALLEY, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 11-12 [1253a18-39]. 6. Marcus Tullius CICERO, On Duties, ed. M.T. GRIFFIN – E.M. ATKINS, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 108 [III.V.22]. 7. Titus LIVIUS, Livy: Books I-II, trans. B.O. FOSTER (Loeb Classical Library, 114), Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 322-325 [II.XXXII.8-12]. 8. DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS, The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus: Books VI.49-VII (Loeb Classical Library, 364), Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1986, pp. 108-113 [VI.LXXXVII.1-5]. 9. 1 Cor 12,12-27. 10. B. NEUMANN, The Phenomenology of the German People’s Body (Volkskörper) and the Extermination of the Jewish Body, in New German Critique 106 (2009) 149-181.

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be feeding off the perfect, healthy body11. A more recent idea of the “body politic” is alluded to in Judith Butler’s reflections on the political reaction to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Her focus is on the permeability of the body and its social constitution. The body is a “social phenomenon” that has “an invariably public dimension”12. To conceive of one’s body as autonomous is thus to deny its social condition. The body bears the imprint of others and is formed within the crucible of social life. The inescapably public, socially constituted, and permeable nature of the body that Butler describes lays the backdrop for this discussion of the fragmentary state of the current body politic, and how the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer might offer some insight as to the reincorporation of the dismembered. II. SCHISMA In many Western democracies, the body politic has become fractured and society is not harmonious. Partisanship has become more widespread and imbued with greater invective. On the left and the right, a politics of identity champions the atomisation of the individual13. The operation of the financial markets, modern technology, and the bureaucratic state have contributed to an instrumental concept of the human person14. Individual humans are perceived as discrete units that, by themselves or in bubbles of the likeminded, can be isolated from their neighbours. If a person is not useful to an objective, or does not harmonise with the members of the bubble, then they are to be quickly disposed of15. The casual dismissal of people inherent in labels (e.g., “snowflakes” or “deplorables”) only prevents reconciliation and perpetuates polarisation. 11. A. HITLER, Mein Kampf, Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943, p. 304. 12. J. BUTLER, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, New York – London, Verso, 2006, p. 26. 13. C. TAYLOR, Philosophical Papers: Philosophy and the Human Sciences, vol. 2, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 187-210; ID., Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 193-195. 14. C. TAYLOR, The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1992, p. 111. 15. See Ghosting | Definition of Ghosting by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico.Com Also Meaning of Ghosting, Lexico Dictionaries | English, n.d., https://www.lexico.com/ definition/ghosting; L.E. LEFEBVRE, Phantom Lovers: Ghosting as a Relationship Dissolution Strategy in the Technological Age, in N.M. PUNYANUNT-CARTER – J.S. WRENCH (eds.), The Impact of Social Media in Modern Romantic Relationships, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2019, 219-235.

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Social fragmentation reinforces itself. The retreat from broad communities forces citizens to rely more on themselves, as they fragment into smaller social groups16. This means that the electoral power of those citizens is reduced, and a lack of political influence can fuel feelings of helplessness, alienation, and resentment. Such a fragmented society is vulnerable to even greater partisanship and polarisation, as public debate becomes less like a dialogue and more like two competing monologues17. Democracy loses its vitality when there is no genuine engagement or deliberation18. In many Western countries, political parties (on the right and on the left) have moved away from the centerground, and the democratic institutions that were intended to ensure the peaceful tolerance of dissenting voices have become weapons in a culture war19. Social media is the frontline. Social media empowers its users to choose who, and what, they connect with exactly20. Often, a user will insulate themselves from any content that makes them feel uncomfortable or challenges their opinions. It is easier to ignore other perspectives when they are on a screen and not communicated in person21. Over time, repeated falsehoods, or a lack of exposure to alternate viewpoints, leave users of social media misinformed, but nevertheless convinced that every other “sensible” person agrees with them22. As Cass Sunstein wisely points out: “it is precisely the people most likely to filter out opposing views who most need to hear them”23. A further problem occurs when the users of social media join groups with likeminded 16. TAYLOR, The Ethics of Authenticity (n. 14), p. 117. 17. B. BARRY, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2001, p. 11. 18. S. LEVITSKY – D. ZIBLATT, How Democracies Die, London, Penguin, 2019, pp. 204-207; L. DIAMOND, Facing Up to the Democratic Recession, in ID. – M.F. PLATTNER (eds.), Democracy in Decline, Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015, 98-118; J. ENGELS, The Politics of Resentment: A Genealogy, University Park, PA, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015, p. 70; W. KYMLICKA, The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism? New Debates on Inclusion and Accommodation in Diverse Societies, in S. VERTOVEC – S. WESSENDORF (eds.), The Multiculturalism Backlash: European Discourses, Policies and Practices, London, Routledge, 2010, 32-49. 19. A. ABRAMOWITZ, The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2018, p. 104; LEVITSKY – ZIBLATT, How Democracies Die (n. 18), p. 212. 20. C.R. SUNSTEIN, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2017, p. 1; M. VAN ALSTYNE – E. BRYNJOLFSSON, Global Village or Cyber-Balkans? Modelling and Measuring the Integration of Electronic Communities, in Management Science 51 (2005) 851-868, p. 852. Nicholas Negroponte foresaw the rise of this phenomenon in his concept of the “Daily Me”. See N. NEGROPONTE, Being Digital, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1995, p. 153. 21. P.M. WALLACE, The Psychology of the Internet, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2016, p. 88. 22. SUNSTEIN, #Republic (n. 20), p. 5. 23. Ibid., p. 71.

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people (Facebook) or are followed by them (Twitter). The potential for positive recognition from people on the same wavelength drives users to post things that they envisage will be “liked” by their audience. The objective is not necessarily to express genuine sentiment, but to express an appropriate sentiment for that group24. This is because the aim of the user is to generate adulation and popularity for themselves. They want to be seen to be doing the right thing so that their own social standing is reinforced. This leads to more extreme and competitive behaviour. Another kind of reinforcement is also at work in group discussions. The discussion of political issues on social media usually results in increased partisanship and polarisation25. The interaction of a user with likeminded others invariably strengthens the convictions of everyone involved and pushes them to more extreme conclusions. Attempts to correct potential inaccuracies or diverge from a group consensus will backfire and produce further polarisation. Aggression runs high, and facile caricatures are often utilised to dismiss dissenting voices26. Emboldened by the rhetoric of others, one’s hatred of the opposition becomes a virtue27. This effect mirrors broader trends of political polarisation in the West, but it is twice as strong in online communities28. Interactions on social media, thus, remain insubstantial and one-dimensional because people want to be popular within an insular bubble. In the face of such social disintegration, talk of a “body politic” as a unified whole becomes more difficult. What relevance, then, is the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer? 24. Virtue Signalling | Definition of Virtue Signalling by Oxford Dictionary on Lexico. Com Also Meaning of Virtue Signalling, Lexico Dictionaries | English, n.d., https://www. lexico.com/definition/virtue_signalling (accessed 21 June 2020). 25. See SUNSTEIN, #Republic (n. 20), pp. 74-77. 26. See TAYLOR, Sources of the Self (n. 13), p. 503. 27. ENGELS, The Politics of Resentment (n. 18), p. 150. One way this can be seen in the USA is the rate of inter-party marriages, which is at a record low. Public disapproval of marrying across the aisle has risen eightfold since 1960. Having compatible political affiliations is now seen as being more important to a successful relationship than physical or personality attributes. See L. WEINBERG, Fascism, Populism and American Democracy, London, Routledge, 2019, pp. 35-36; S. IYENGAR – S.J. WESTWOOD, Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization, in American Journal of Political Science 59 (2015) 690-707, p. 692; J.R. ALFORD et al., The Politics of Mate Choice, in The Journal of Politics 73 (2011) 362-379. 28. L.M. VAN SWOL, Extreme Members and Group Polarization, in Social Influence 4/3 (2009) 185-199; WALLACE, The Psychology of the Internet (n. 21), p. 84; C. TAYLOR, The Politics of Recognition, in ID., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1994, 25-73; P. SHELDON – P. RAUSCHNABEL – J.M. HONEYCUTT, The Dark Side of Social Media: Psychological, Managerial, and Societal Perspectives, London, Academic Press, 2019, pp. 23-42. In the USA, the most influential factor upon voting habits is dislike of the opposition. See ABRAMOWITZ, The Great Alignment (n. 19), p. 164.

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Political interaction and personal encounter are key to Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of the analogia relationis, which describes the relationship of embodied human persons to each other and to God. It works in the background of Bonhoeffer’s theology of creation and sociology of the church. To help to dig out any practical wisdom it is necessary to engage with a theological trope: Adam and Christ, the First and the Second, the sinner and the Saviour29. There is a strong connection in the theology of Bonhoeffer between that typology and political theology and ethics. The ways of Adamic community and Christic community differ, though even Adam is analogically related to God through Christ, in, by, and through whom all things were made30. The analogia relationis, manifested through the imago Dei, means that personhood is in itself political, as it necessarily involves an encounter with a You, or a group of Yous. Human bodies are political entities by virtue of their relationship to their Creator and to other created entities. I argue that this means that human persons should not be ignored or marginalised from the “body politic” proper. To put some meat on these bones, I turn to the universal creation of human persons in the image of God. III. IMAGO DEI Humanity is created according to the image and likeness of God31. For Bonhoeffer, this means that humankind is like the Creator in that it is free, but it is only so through God’s act of creation in the Word of God32. The human being is the final work of God’s self-glorification, the very mirror of the Creator33. Yet, also a human person is formed out of the dust of the ground, which gives substance to humanity’s embodied mode of existence. The earthy body is essential to the person, and material resources are used up in Adam’s constitution34. Even at the instance of creation, the human bears relation not only to God, but also to a wider created environment. The body is key to the relationality of human being. Moreover, according to Bonhoeffer, from the very moment of creation human being really is being-as-a-body, as Christ is wholly one body and the church is the body 29. Rom 1,18-32; 5,12-21, 8,18-30; 1 Cor 15,21-22.45-49; Phil 2,6-8; 3,21. 30. Cf. John 1,3; Col 1,16. 31. Gen 1,26. 32. D. BONHOEFFER, Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3, ed. J.W. DE GRUCHY (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 3), Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 2004, p. 62. 33. Ibid., p. 72. 34. Ibid., p. 76.

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of Christ35. Embodiedness is integral to, and inseparable from, a free human being-in-relation36. Humankind is “the image of God not in spite of but precisely in its bodily nature. For in their bodily nature human beings are related to the earth and to other bodies; they are there for others and are dependent upon others”37. To reject one’s body is thus to reject one’s existence in the image of God, which is freedom-in-relationship to the material world. There is a another, ethical element to the doctrine of the image of God in the work of Bonhoeffer. Being a person in the image of God means beingin-relation, as I have laid out. In Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer writes that “the I comes into being only in relation to the You”, and further that “every human You is an image of the divine You”38. This clearly fits with the narrative in Genesis, where God is the inaccessible Divine You. Even the human person-creating efficacy of the Divine You is independent of Divine personhood itself. Creation exists wholly by God’s freedom, in the midst of nothing39. In this way the first woman and the first man are also You to each other, as reflections of the Divine You to whom they owe their creation. They co-constitute each other as human persons in a larger divine context of creation; they are not the sole creators of the ethical person of the other. It is through God’s active work, joining the concrete You through the Holy Spirit, that an other becomes a “You to me from whom my I arises”40. This You-ness is critical to the analogia relationis. The You-character is the form in which the Divine is experienced, and every human You is a You only by virtue of the Divine You-ness. However, human persons do not “borrow” their You-ness from God. The Divine You creates and wills the human You, so that it is a real, absolute, and holy You. This means that the human being is the image of God with respect to the effect a person has on an other, through their relation to that other. God enters into creation through the human person to reveal the fundamental relationality of human and Divine freedom: “God is in humankind as the very image 35. Ibid., p. 77. 36. See E. BRUNNER, God and Man: Four Essays on the Nature of Personality, London, Student Christian Movement Press, 1936, p. 154. Bonhoeffer’s copy of Brunner’s book bears many markings. 37. BONHOEFFER, Creation and Fall (n. 32), p. 79. 38. D. BONHOEFFER, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, ed. C.J. GREEN (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 1), Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 1998, pp. 54-55. 39. BONHOEFFER, Creation and Fall (n. 32), p. 34. Cf. BARTH, Church Dogmatics (n. 1), p. 307. 40. BONHOEFFER, Sanctorum Communio (n. 38), p. 55. Bonhoeffer borrows this language from M. BUBER, I and Thou, Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1937.

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of God in which the free Creator looks upon the Creator’s own self”41. The relation of a human I to a human You is therefore analogous to the relation of the Divine I to the Divine You. However, can we say more about the importance of the individual in this interpersonal co-constitution between human and human, and between human and God? IV. ANALOGIA RELATIONIS For Bonhoeffer, the separation between God and human is clear. Even the relation of the creature to its Creator cannot “be interpreted in terms of cause and effect, because between the Creator and the creature there stands … simply nothing”42. This separation holds true for the relation of a human I to a You, whether that “You” be a Divine or a human one. The inaccessibility of the You enforces separation: I have no knowledge of the I-ness of the You. The I comes into being only in relation to the You, but that “You”, which I come into being in relation to, says nothing to my I about the You’s own being43. This is constitutive of human personhood, because to be a free human person means that I am not bound to the I-ness of the other, just as God is not bound to what is created. Yet, I only become aware of the discreteness of my “I” by encountering a “You”, which enlightens me to the barrier that demarcates I-ness. In fact, the human I originates only in an absolute duality, that of humanity and God44. Yet, though God is not bound to creation, God also binds creation to Godself through the image of Godself, at work in each human person, by the power of the Holy Spirit45. On the one hand, experiencing the barrier imposed in the I-You dualityin-relationship of humanity and God raises an awareness in the human I of its political mode of existence. This is because, for Bonhoeffer, God is “an impenetrable You whose metaphysical personhood, which presupposes absolute self-consciousness and spontaneous action, implies nothing at all about God being an I”46. The more the human I perceives the barrier, the clearer the I’s responsibility to the You becomes – whether that You is Divine or human. It is in the context of responsibility that the concept of value is employed in relation to discrete, ethical, human personhood. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

BONHOEFFER, Creation and Fall (n. 32), p. 64. Ibid., p. 32. BONHOEFFER, Sanctorum Communio (n. 38), p. 54. Ibid., p. 49. See BONHOEFFER, Creation and Fall (n. 32), p. 41. See BONHOEFFER, Sanctorum Communio (n. 38), p. 52.

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A Christian person does not necessarily possess the highest set of values, but instead recognises that the concept of value is applicable only to the creatureliness of other personal, human beings, who are themselves political bodies. Hence, the I and the You are “not simply interchangeable concepts, but comprise specific and distinct spheres of existence”47. The I can never experience itself as You, and vice versa. On the other hand, the barrier between the I and the You is not absolutely impermeable, though it is impossible for a human I to leap over the barrier for an unmediated experience of the I-form of the other48. As soon as the concrete ethical barrier that separates the I from the other person is acknowledged, the I makes a crucial step that allows that I to grasp the social ontic-ethical basic-relations of persons. The You-form is realised as “the other who places me before an ethical decision”49. In this realisation, the I moves beyond a purely epistemological subject-object-relation, in anticipation of the sanctorum communio. If this is accomplished, the Holy Spirit, at work in each person, brings Divine love to the human heart50. Only in this way can the human I love the real, concrete You: by placing itself, its entire will, in the service of the You. Thereby, the barrier that separates the I from the You is overcome51. Relationality is key to the actuality of creation in general for Bonhoeffer. If God withdrew from creation, it would sink back into nothingness52. This constant relationship with the Divine is especially significant for humankind, which is created in the image of God. God-given relationality straddles and, simultaneously, makes possible the individuation of the human I from the human or Divine You. Bonhoeffer argues that the creature is free only in that one creature “exists in relation to another creature, in that one human being is created for another human being”53. This is a given relation which is set, it is not a potential of human existence. The likeness of humankind to God is its analogous relationality. The relations between creature and creature are established by God, because freedom, of which relationship consists, comes from God54. These relationships can be partly actualised by humankind from within creation. They will only be actualised fully after Christ has broken through the fractured unity of 47. Ibid. 48. This could be seen as analogous to God’s freedom from and for creation. See BARTH, Church Dogmatics (n. 1), I.I, pp. 305-306, 320. 49. BONHOEFFER, Sanctorum Communio (n. 38), p. 52. 50. Ibid., p. 165. 51. Ibid., p. 169. 52. BONHOEFFER, Creation and Fall (n. 32), p. 58. 53. Ibid., p. 64. 54. Ibid., pp. 65-66.

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humanity to usher in the Kingdom of God, because sinful human beings cling primarily to themselves. This reflects the eschatological tension within which human beings currently exist. The sinful self-centredness of Adamic humanity can also produce the illusion that an individual is entirely discrete from another, with its own monopoly on “truth”55. The ability of a human being to relate to and move toward the other is undoubtedly limited due to sin, but a human being can never be fully isolated from an other. Humanity is held in relation – by the contingency of its creation, if nothing else.

V. CORPUS CIVITATIS Human beings are citizens of the physical, created world. In their creatureliness they are bound by the contingency of creation, which requires a constant presence of, and relation to, the Divine. They are bound to, and set over against, the rest of creation by nothing else than God’s Word56. They are also members of the sanctorum communio, which is completed but not yet fully actualised, by the salvific work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, human beings still exist in sin as an infinitely fragmented collective. They remain Adamic. For Bonhoeffer, all individuals are themselves and are Adam, and, when they recognise this, they join the peccatorum communio57. He writes: “The reality of sin and the communio peccatorum remain even in God’s church community; Adam has really been replaced by Christ only eschatologically, [in hope]”58. What may we draw from this concurrence of sinfulness and sanctity for the operation of the worldly “body politic” in our own time? First, Bonhoeffer tells us that there is no such thing as a pure, organic community life in the here and now59. Other than the body of Christ, it is an illusion to regard anybody or any body politic as pure instruments of the Holy Spirit. Worldly bodies are to be repeatedly broken and renewed. This serves as a warning to Christians not to subscribe to overly partisan political ideologies or become too idealistic about a kingdom of man. Any society in this world is inevitably imperfect and should be built on 55. D. BONHOEFFER, Act and Being (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 2), Minneapolis, MN, Augsburg Fortress, 2009, p. 141. 56. BONHOEFFER, Creation and Fall (n. 32), p. 66. 57. BONHOEFFER, Sanctorum Communio (n. 38), p. 121. 58. Ibid., p. 124. 59. Ibid., p. 213.

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compromise and pragmatism. Civil discourse is hampered by the blinkers one chooses to wear and the echo chamber one chooses to inhabit. However much one walls oneself off from the undesirable, the peccatorum communio continues to coexist within the sanctorum communio, just as the individual person is iustus-peccator60. Therefore, the church, or any other earthly reality, is not one and the same with the Realm of God, which is fully actualised only at the eschaton. This is a difficult tension in which to hold the relationality of human existence in the here and now, but what it means is that, on earth at least, there is no ideal community or political system. Without exception, the political structures of creaturely existence – at the international, national, or local level – are imbued with the sin of Adam. Second, to be “in Adam” means to be at least partly in untruth, to be culpable before God for the corruption of the will, of human essence61. Through sin human persons curve in upon themselves, withdrawing from community with God and other human beings. They may even fall victim to the solipsistic illusion that I mentioned above; but no person can really stand in an echo chamber. This is true both for the xenophobic nationalist and for the metropolitan liberal elite who no-platforms them62. In their own ways, both are attempting to exclude an other to whom they are inescapably related. Human persons are corporate members of the churchcommunity: the body of Christ. This body is not to be confused with an individual body, and neither can it be objectively measured63. However, it is as real as my body, and the “body politic”. The atomisation of society speaks to the need for a reintegration of maligned bodies into the body politic and into the body of Christ. What is more, as Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of the analogia relationis implies, and a recent work of Julia MetzgerTraber explicitly states: a body is not a thing, but “a constantly transforming process, and … the boundary which connects me with world, is dynamically permeable, and always open, breathing, taking in, and letting out”64. Therefore, when any human person denies their fundamental relationality, the body politic is made impermeable: it is broken and needs once again to be made anew. In such cases, “the human body – the corpus Adae – 60. See M. LUTHER, A Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, Philadelphia, PA, John Highlands, 1891, p. 227. 61. BONHOEFFER, Act And Being (n. 55), p. 137. 62. See No-Platform | Meaning of No-Platform by Lexico, Lexico Dictionaries | English, n.d., https://www.lexico.com/definition/no-platform. 63. BONHOEFFER, Sanctorum Communio (n. 38), p. 104. 64. J. METZGER-TRABER, If the Body Politic Could Breathe in the Age of the Refugee, New York, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2018, p. 6.

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has to be broken, in order for the body of the resurrection – the corpus Christi – to be created”65. This is a natural function of the Divine economy of salvation-history. Moreover, the genuine repentance of the churchcommunity of Christ, being with and for each other in the Holy Spirit, can bear the weight of all sins66. The disintegration of German society, against which Bonhoeffer protested, was only just beginning to become apparent when he was giving his lectures on Genesis. It could be argued that in the political world of today – without being too specific – we can see similar emergent trends: authoritarianism, disregard for truth, contempt for the dēmou anēr, and the subversion of the vox populi. The temptation to atomise oneself, to absolutise one’s own worldview in wilful ignorance of otherness, is misleading. We are all contingent, vulnerable, and permeable beings, flowing from our existence as socially constituted bodies, attached to others in the analogia relationis67. No one can exist without an other. The truth of human relationships is not to be found in bubbles on social media. The rise of identity politics threatens the proper functioning of democracy in the twenty first century68. To avoid a perpetual culture war, we must rediscover more universal understandings of human dignity. This work can begin by meeting peacefully, dialoguing respectfully, and breaking bread together69. We may be the corpus Adae, but we can also be the corpus Christi. Torn between Adam and Christ, human beings need to escape from their echo chamber, to burst the social media bubble and to fight back against silos. There is no way forward, except via God, and our fellow human beings70. Dublin City University Dr. David Mark DUNNING School of Theology, Philosophy, and Music All Hallows Campus Dublin 9 Ireland [email protected]

65. BONHOEFFER, Sanctorum Communio (n. 38), p. 147. 66. Ibid., pp. 182-183, 190. 67. BUTLER, Precarious Life (n. 12), p. 20. 68. F. FUKUYAMA, Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition, London, Profile Books, 2019, p. xvi. 69. S.E. HOBFOLL, Tribalism: The Evolutionary Origins of Fear Politics, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, p. 199. 70. BONHOEFFER, Creation and Fall (n. 32), p. 67.

ECCLESIAL DISCERNMENT AND ACTION IN LONERGAN’S THEOLOGY INTRODUCTION Bernard Lonergan is known primarily for his work on cognition and theological method, but he attends to these foundational topics with the intention of applying them to social concern, an approach that Gerard Whelan describes as “withdrawal and return”1. Although Lonergan himself never had the chance to enact his “return”, a project instead undertaken by students such as Robert Doran and M. Shawn Copeland, his philosophical system is intended to serve as the basis for a social ethic by offering explanations of the relationship between individual cognition, intersubjective meaning, and human flourishing. At the heart of his system is an account of various components of what we might consider discernment – the careful attention to reality, the responsible exercise of judgment, and the assumption of a loving commitment to the well-being of society. Although Lonergan himself uses the term “discernment” only sparingly, I argue that, considered holistically, his thought offers not only an ethic of personal discernment, but also a distinctive sense of the Church as a redemptive society that embodies and models the practice of discernment for the common good. In this article, I will examine Lonergan’s thought as a possible resource for an understanding of ecclesial discernment within political theology. I will begin by summarizing Lonergan’s understanding of the possibility of taking action to foster progress and reverse decline in society. Within this framework, he describes the Church as a structured process of selfconstitution that fosters the intellectual, moral, and religious conversion that is necessary to heal unjust social situations. I advocate an interpretation of Lonergan’s thinking on the Church that recognizes a call for Christians to act as public facilitators and exemplars of discernment. As a communicator of the gospel in the world, the Church brings redemptive results to human society in part because of its enactment and demonstration of a visible ethic of discernment.

1. G. WHELAN, Redeeming History: Social Concern in Bernard Lonergan and Robert Doran, Roma, Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2013, p. 8.

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Throughout this article, I intend the term “discernment” to refer to a prayerful practice of decision-making through which values informed by faith are applied to concrete choices in the context of a community setting. As understood by Ignatian spirituality, this involves first an alignment of one’s values and priorities with the will of God and then a practical application of the divine will to concrete situations. Discernment is typically structured according to spiritual practices, such as the examination of conscience. In his theological examination of discernment, William Barry observes that even an individual’s discernment of personal questions assumes a collective outlook, because the guidance of others and the data of experience involves a person’s place in a greater whole, the world for which God has a redemptive plan. He explains, “In the ideal order … my desire as a Christian is to have all my actions in tune with the one action of God which involves a world community of perfect love”2. Common discernment for shared action in institutional settings is therefore required as well3. In this article, I focus in particular on discernment within the Church as an institution, which understands itself as a sign of God’s love in the world. I. PROGRESS, DECLINE,

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Lonergan’s account of deliberation and action is set within his description of a heuristic for understanding historical development that he terms emergent probability, which combines the consistent laws of classical investigations with the probabilistic variance observed by statistical investigations4. The natural world contains schemes of recurrence, or processes that repeat according to various probabilities. The repetition of these schemes is not static, because the conditions created by a set of processes can create the possibility for the emergence of new schemes5. For example, the processes of planetary formation create the conditions of possibility for the emergence of atmospheric systems, which in turn creates the conditions conducive to the emergence of life. Emergent probability offers an explanatory framework that accounts for the appearance of new phenomena, while recognizing that such development is subject to limits 2. W. BARRY, Toward a Theology of Discernment, in The Way 64 (1989) 129-140, p. 135. 3. Ibid., p. 138. 4. B.J.F. LONERGAN, Insight, A Study of Human Understanding, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2005, p. 137. 5. Ibid., p. 145.

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and laws. In Lonergan’s words, the “world process is open” but “increasingly systematic”, and growing in complexity6. Processes and realities unfold successively, but contingently. Emergent probability applies not only to physical processes, but also to social configurations. Human beings participate in emergent probability through self-transcendence, the accumulation of insights and judgments, and the application of new knowledge to the social order. For example, consider the internet. The development of telecommunications infrastructure and the service industry in the twentieth century has made possible the extension of the internet to ever-broader groups of people, which in turn has facilitated the emergence of liberative cultural communities that had not been previously possible. For each of these steps, human inquiry and judgment drive the unfolding of progress. Human society and culture develop when people take responsibility for their own self-transcendence to advance in understanding and seek the universal expansion of human good7. Lonergan terms this universal expansion of goods as the good of order8. Progress in society is made possible by shared meaning as determined intersubjectively. Shared meaning performs a variety of practical roles in human life, but its core function is to move human beings away from the world of immediacy toward “a world mediated by meaning” that contains understandings beyond one person’s direct experience9. It enlarges the world of an individual to the combination of memories, insights, and feelings of other people in a community or a society. Lonergan writes, “A community is not just a number of [human beings] within a geographical frontier. It is an achievement of common meaning, and there are kinds and degrees of achievement”10. The human good is enlarged, in part, through the achievement of common or differentiated meaning across difference. The good of order and the communities that make it possible function not by subsuming individual freedom and initiative, but instead by enabling new possibilities through which social relations enable the practice of individual freedom in ways that uphold the common good. On this point, M. Shawn Copeland explains, “The good of order is intrinsically ordered toward the exercise of human liberty in the context of interpersonal relations and human cooperation. The good of order emerges in the struggling 6. Ibid., p. 149. 7. Ibid., p. 234. 8. Ibid., p. 237. 9. B.J.F. LONERGAN, Method in Theology, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1971, p. 76. 10. Ibid., p. 79.

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effort of a whole people to master the drift toward disorder and to realize true instances of vital, social, cultural, personal, and religious value”11. The progress that unfolds through emergent probability, particularly in the realm of the human good, is not inevitable. Processes and goods can take a turn toward harm, a reality that we cannot help but recognize in the pathologies of some of the internet cultures I mentioned previously. The possibility of development depends on the continuation of the schemes of recurrence that set the conditions for the emergence of a process in the first place. For example, economies that deplete or pollute natural resources destroy the conditions for the continued flourishing of those economic systems. In the realm of shared meaning, when human beings exercise agency over certain schemes of recurrence, insights and judgments of individuals and groups can be, and often are, tainted by bias that judges egotistically, rather than according to standards of intelligibility and authenticity. Consequently, “the group is prone to have a blind spot for the insights that reveal its well-being to be excessive or its usefulness at an end”12. The effects of bias on shared common sense accumulate, dragging societies into cycles of decline that are difficult to correct. Injustices are tolerated and social order “becomes to a greater or less extent the instrument of a class”13. Disoriented by bias, human beings can distort systems to the point of unintelligibility, threatening the sustainability of shared order and closing possibilities for further development. For Lonergan, reversals in decline and the achievement of new realizations of human good are possible by attaining higher viewpoints from which one might correct mistakes in judgment or untangle systems of bias. He describes this possibility in terms of conversion, which involves an expansion of one’s horizon, or “the objects that can now be seen”14. He identifies three types of conversion: intellectual conversion, which involves a movement from the “world of immediacy” toward “the world mediated by meaning”; moral conversion, which changes the basis of one’s decisions from personal satisfaction to values; and religious conversion, which involves falling in love with ultimate concern15. Through conversion, the individual is aware of a broader range of considerations and possibilities. For example, consider the changes in horizon 11. M.S. COPELAND, A Genetic Study of the Idea of the Human Good in the Thought of Bernard Lonergan, PhD Diss., Boston College, 1991, ProQuest (PHL2315417), p. 322. 12. LONERGAN, Insight (n. 4), p. 234. 13. LONERGAN, Method in Theology (n. 9), p. 54. 14. LONERGAN, Insight (n. 4), p. 236. 15. Ibid., pp. 238-240.

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necessary for a person to make an active commitment to racial justice16. A theoretical understanding of systemic racism made possible by intellectual conversion can help a person identify the implicit biases embedded in her/his common-sense judgments, and in the systems in which she/he participates. Moral conversion convinces her/him to take costly action in support of racial justice that might be against her/his immediate self-interest. Religious conversion motivates these actions with reference to an experience of ultimate love. Conversion makes possible the self-transcendence necessary to identify and move beyond bias and heal instances of decline such as racism. Conversion requires a response not only in hearts and minds, but also through action in a particular social situation. At times, this action is costly. Lonergan describes the divine solution to human decline as the “Law of the Cross”. According to this precept, God reveals the solution to evil through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which serves to convert an evil situation to a redeemed one17. The redemption of evil continues to take place when human beings follow the example of Jesus Christ by freely responding to the suffering of others with love, repentance, and self-sacrifice. Christians take up the Law of the Cross in their self-appropriation of the life of discipleship, which takes place within the probabilities of human society and context. Cynthia Crysdale explains further how the realization of the Law of the Cross by human beings demonstrates the logic and possibility of emergent probability. She explains that shifts in human meaning that increase the probability of reversing decline arise from higher integrations of human experiences and judgments, which requires loving sacrifice because such higher integrations require the dismantlement of distorted schemes of recurrence through interventions that take place at the level at which the problem of evil emerges18. In this way, “it is precisely through allowing the evil embedded in [these distortions] to be exposed for what it is that this dismantling can occur”19. 16. Drawing on Lonergan’s notion of a horizon, Copeland describes the construction of race ideology as “a privileged and privileging worldview; skin morphs into a horizon funded by bias”. See: M.S. COPELAND, Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being, Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 2009, p. 13. 17. B.J.F. LONERGAN, The Redemption (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, 9), Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2007, pp. 197-205. 18. C. CRYSDALE, The Law of the Cross and Emergent Probability, in C.D. DENNY – C. MCMAHON (eds.), Finding Salvation in Christ: Essays on Christology and Soteriology in Honor of William P. Loewe, Eugene, OR, Pickwick, 2011, 193-214, p. 209. 19. Ibid., p. 210.

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Students of Lonergan later carried out his intended return to issues of social concern with reference to his articulation of emergent probability, the good of order, and the Law of the Cross. For example, M. Shawn Copeland argues that Lonergan’s framework for interpreting the human good and social responsibility lends itself to a recognition of theology as politically relevant. She demonstrates this through an examination of the history of racism and anti-racism in Detroit using Lonergan’s notions of emergent probability and the human good. She argues that Lonergan offers distinctive insights to theologies of liberation, because of his recognition of theology as a “matrix discipline” that can address politics by mediating values related to human good to the logic of the current situation20. Summarizing the implications of Lonergan’s recontextualization of theology, Copeland writes that responsible religion “opposes institutionalized divisions within the human community; it promotes a love which meets the concrete demands of legal and distributive justice in the name of the common human good, but which surpasses those demands in building community; and progress is liberated from the distortions and manipulations provoked by inattention, oversight, stupidity, and the irresponsibility of decline”21. Lonergan’s account of the links between personal responsibility, selftranscendence, and collective progress and decline provides us with the outline for an ethic of institutional discernment. He summarizes the need for human beings to take responsibility for their own reasoning and judgment in his transcendental precepts: “Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable. Be responsible”22. The deepening of intersubjective meaning and the expansion of the human good calls for an intentional exercise of these precepts in pursuit of ongoing conversion and practice of responsibility. II. COMMUNITY AS A SETTING FOR DISCERNMENT Within his description of social progress and decline, Lonergan has in mind a role for groups within society. The individual is not isolated, but instead embedded in community. Lonergan defines such community as united by “an ongoing process of communication, of people coming to share the same cognitive, constitutive, and effective meanings”23. Community serves as the ideal foundation of social arrangements, because of 20. 21. 22. 23.

COPELAND, A Genetic Study of the Idea of the Human Good (n. 11), p. 7. Ibid. LONERGAN, Method in Theology (n. 9), p. 231. Ibid., p. 357.

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its generation of common meaning and its success at weaving relationships of interdependence that grow beyond their points of origin. Therefore, community is the starting point for the universal expansion of meaning and human goods. Lonergan explains, “Advance [in the common good] occurs first in pockets. Next it is diffused across frontiers. Finally, as it is generalized, interdependence grows”24. Building on Lonergan’s account of the advance of the common good through intersubjective community meaning, Robert Doran describes the necessity of a cosmopolis that serves as “a transformation of intelligence that enables a collaborative intellectual enterprise committed to understanding and implementing the integral dialectic of community”25. This dialectic is a creative tension between two “linked but opposed principles of social change”: the intersubjectivity that arises organically as a result of shared experiences of life together and the practical intelligence that informs formal communal decision-making, such as political structures and economic arrangements26. A healthy dialectic between these two principles requires creative freedom for individuals, as well as the responsible use of judgment in the context of this freedom. Maintaining a cohesive sense of meaning across a society becomes increasingly difficult as the society grows more complex. Lonergan writes, “The larger and more complex society becomes, the longer and more exacting becomes the training needed for a fully responsible freedom to be possible”27. The administrative state plays an important role in promoting specialized ends and in creating safeguards against the excesses of the bias that appears in local community, but governmental bodies depend upon the meanings of community for legitimacy and renewal. He observes that as a result, “There are needed … individuals and groups and, in the modern world, organizations that labor to persuade people to intellectual, moral, and religious conversion and that work systematically to undo the mischief brought about by alienation and ideology. Among such bodies should be the Christian church”28. Lonergan devotes the final pages of his Method in Theology to describing the call of the Church to influence and to persuade individuals and groups in the broader society toward the conversion necessary to maintain, heal, and develop universal goods and values. He does so mostly in 24. Ibid., p. 360. 25. R.M. DORAN, Theology and the Dialectics of History, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1990, p. 364. 26. Ibid. 27. LONERGAN, Method in Theology (n. 9), p. 360. 28. Ibid., p. 361.

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his chapter on the functional specialty of Communications, which promotes common meanings and horizons and therefore expand the possibilities of unity and cooperation in society. Lonergan does not have in mind an arrangement in which the Church dictates values to other groups, but instead a situation in which it plays a persuasive role analogous to God’s exercise of loving authority through self-gift, and through Jesus’s incarnation, sacrifice, and resurrection. In a separate essay, he explains on this point, “Religion … in an era of crisis has to think less of issuing commands and decrees and more of fostering the self-sacrificing love that alone is capable of providing the solution to the evils of decline and of reinstating the … progress that is entrained by sustained authenticity”29. The Church serves as a facilitator of the good and an instigator of conversion as defined not exclusively in terms of formal religious affiliation, but also as a general widening of moral and intellectual horizons. With this ecclesial mission in mind, Lonergan defines the Church as “a process of self-constitution occurring within worldwide human society”. Ecclesiologist Joseph Komonchak characterizes Lonergan’s sense of the Church as an “event in progress”30. This sense of motion and constitution echoes traditional ideas of the Church as congregatio fidelium, the assembly of disciples, and the communion of believers31. The Church is called into being by “the outer communication of Christ’s message and from the inner gift of God’s love” as experienced through every knowers’ self-transcendence and possibility of conversion. The process of the Church, necessarily, includes the institutional structures that seek “a good of order in which Christian needs are met regularly, sufficiently, efficiently” so that its members can “transform by Christian charity their personal and group relations”32. The primary sense in which the Church is understood as constituting itself is not so much administrative as it is cooperative. The Church coordinates relationships between believers in pursuit of interdependence and cooperation, and in doing so sets the conditions for higher realizations of the good. The goal of the Church’s selfconstitution is the undoing of alienation and bias and the redemption of social relations beyond even the Church’s body of membership. Through the practice of responsible judgment and the attentive application of the various functional specialties, Christians exercise discernment 29. B.J.F. LONERGAN, Dialectic of Authority, in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J, ed. F.E. CROWE, New York, Paulist, 1985, 5-11, pp. 10-11. 30. J. KOMONCHAK, Lonergan and Post-Conciliar Theology, paper presented at Regis College, Toronto, November 2005, p. 3. 31. Ibid., p. 6. 32. LONERGAN, Method in Theology (n. 9), p. 363.

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as they participate in the constitution of the Church, and as they apply the fruits of their intellectual, moral, and religious conversion to the prophetic critique and ongoing renewal of their cultures. Discernment in the context of Lonergan’s thought consists of faithfully following the transcendental precepts, taking responsibility for one’s knowing, and following the logic of one’s judgments to confront evil and decline with persistent, self-sacrificial love. The Church, at its best, prepares its members for this task, strives to expand the horizon of the surrounding society, and courageously embraces sacrifice for the sake of reversing social sin and decline. III. MODELLING DISCERNMENT AS A FORM OF COMMUNICATION I argue that Lonergan’s understanding of the Church as a body that labors to bring others to conversion implies an additional level of responsibility for Christians. One way to create occasions of conversion for others is to demonstrate the practice of a discernment that is itself open to conversion in a public and transparent way. The Church, as a process and a community, can teach by example. A sensibility of doing one’s thinking, discerning, and judging in the open creates pedagogical opportunities for outside observers to expand their own horizons. The call to serve as an exemplar of right relationship refers to the Church’s self-understanding as an expression of divine love in the world. Jesus instructs his disciples, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”33. Karl Rahner remarks that a modern expression of such love must recognize the spiritual maturity and freedom of fellow Christians. Following the Second Vatican Council, he observes that the Church faces the same dilemma as other institutions in an era of increased commitment to democracy and individual freedom: how to balance the need for freedom that makes individual responsibility possible with social cohesion and, in the case of the Church, the responsible stewardship of the magisterium. For Rahner, the Church can therefore serve as an exemplar of balanced commitment to freedom by cultivating skepticism of worldly utopias, while providing a point of reference for possibilities not yet considered. Making a reference to Jesus’s instruction in John 13, Rahner hopes for a future in which those outside the Church might say, “See how they live with one another in freedom and with as few constraints as possible”34. 33. John 13,35. 34. K. RAHNER, Concern for the Church, New York, Crossroad, 1981, p. 63.

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Such a possibility, in which the Church enables both freedom and collective meaning and action, is sought in the institutional practice of synodality, a principle of Church governance that involves structured dialogue and common discernment. Ecclesiologist Bradford Hinze describes synodality in terms of “the dialogical practices of communal discernment and decision making, especially but not exclusively as exercised in parish and diocesan pastoral councils, presbyteral councils, episcopal conferences, diocesan synods, and synods of bishops”35. Hinze examines the relationality of synodality in terms of the category of prophetic obedience, by which he means “attentive listening to the presence and voice of the other, receptivity to this presence and voice, and a response”, an ethic of relationship that can be recognized analogically in the Trinitarian relationship36. Synodality serves not only as a practical approach to structuring ecclesial decision making, but also as an expression of the Church’s mission to reflect the love of God’s inner life to the world. Lonergan notes that the Church is animated by two communications from God: the universal, inward self-communication that makes possible human acts of knowing and loving and the outward message of the incarnate Jesus37. The Church can embrace these foundations by witnessing to the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit by modelling practices of discernment to the world in addition to communicating the explicit teachings of Jesus. The inner life of the Church might serve as a communication of the message of the gospel insofar as the Church can demonstrate an ethic for navigating controversy and conflict in a manner that shows a commitment to loving relationship, and a respect for the freedom that is necessary for authentic conversion to take place. From a Lonerganian perspective, synodality serves not only as a method of discerning common meaning within the Church, but also as an exemplar of common dialogue and decision making that demonstrates effective practices of facing conflict, disagreement, and ambiguity, with openness and love. It is helpful both to the authenticity of the Church as community and to its Spirit-driven mission for members to be forthright about instances of conflict, disagreement, and sin within its bounds. Christians need to be courageous about navigating the ambiguous or fallen dimensions of church life rather than avoiding discussion of them out of fear of public 35. B. HINZE, Prophetic Obedience: Ecclesiology for a Dialogical Church, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2016, p. 73. 36. Ibid., p. 92. 37. B.J.F. LONERGAN, The Divine Missions, in ID., The Triune God: Systematics, ed. R.M. DORAN – H.D. MONSOUR (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, 12), Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2007, 479-483.

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scandal, because the forthright correction of the Church can provide a model for confronting injustice in society at large. For instance, imagine the powerful example that would have been set by an open, transparent, and self-sacrificial treatment of the sexual abuse crisis within the Roman Catholic hierarchy, as opposed to the culture of secrecy that continues to fuel doubts and undermine the faith and integrity of the Church, its members, and the communities in which it participates. Rather than fearing open and public discernment as risking confusion among those within and outside of the Church, Christians need to consider it as part of the Church’s very mission: to discern the way of Jesus openly and honestly even (perhaps especially) when it is most costly and difficult. By taking the risk and paying the cost of authentic public conversation and reckoning, the Church can teach habits and values of discernment beyond itself. CONCLUSION In conclusion, I suggest that Lonergan’s theology offers a robust understanding of the practice of discernment in terms of an individuals’ pursuit of self-appropriation, the guiding role that responsible judgment plays in the unfolding of new possibilities through the process of emergent probability, and the Church’s role as a redemptive agent in human society. A compelling way in which the Church can witness to the gospel is through its own courageous modelling of responsible discernment, deliberation, and action. In doing so, it is contributing to the workings of emergent probability as they relate to the development of shared social meaning, and societal configurations that reinforce the human good. The Church is the self-constituting process that arises in response to God’s grace. It therefore can serve as a teacher for the broader society by demonstrating how to cooperate with this grace through a discernment that is both risky and responsible. In this way, the Church witnesses to the power of the Holy Spirit that animates responsible common deliberation and action. Albertus Magnus College The Meister Eckhart Center for Catholic and Dominican Life 700 Prospect Street New Haven, CT 06511 USA [email protected]

Edward DUNAR

UNITING ROWAN WILLIAMS’S NON-COMPETITION THEO-POLITICS AND JOHANN BAPTIST METZ’S INTERRUPTIVE THEO-POLITICS A FUNDAMENTAL POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF GRACE AND OPPOSITION

INTRODUCTION Rowan Williams and the late Johann Baptist Metz have made crucial contributions to political theology, but their positions move away from one another, as if on diverging vectors1. Williams has described a winsome account of God’s non-competitive relation to humanity; however, therein Williams resists divine in-breaking that is so often the basis for resistance in political theology. Possibly then – I say with intended exaggeration – Williams can appear to opt for nature over grace. Metz has given a powerful account of precisely the kind of interruption that Williams seems to avoid; yet, to emphasize so strongly God’s interruption of humanity can appear as if Metz lacks a sufficient account of grace. While there are important qualifications for the respective positions that cast doubt on the appearances, the qualifications still do not, on their own, shift the basic direction and movement of their positions. After establishing this problem, my solution is part of an answer to a larger problem. I will argue that, if we creatively re-frame Williams and Metz in a broader understanding of grace, not only do their respective positions each have voice that can be united in an account of grace. But also, the fusion of Williams and Metz can – in fact I unite them for the following purpose – confront former President Trump’s most consistent supporters, white US evangelical Christians2. 1. For my purposes here, I use the terms theopolitics and political theology interchangeably. As for political theology, I define it as stressing an exploration of the fundamental assumptions of faith communities and of their broader social world within the continuity of their self-understandings, their practices, and their interactions. This definition has a longer and more complex delineation attentive to other disciplines because political theology’s social vision of politics is broader than the language of the modern nation-state. But, for here, of primary importance is the emphasis on the continuity that goes from deep in doctrine and to action – the deep interrelatedness of faith and activism, of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. How Christianity understands who God is shapes the relation between God and humanity, and in turn, how humans relate to one another. Hence the subtitle for this argument is: A Fundamental Political Theology of Grace and Opposition. 2. The argument here is an extension of my forthcoming book, Transforming Sovereignties: Gary Dorrien, Stanley Hauerwas, and Rowan Williams, under contract with Lexington

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I. ROWAN WILLIAMS: GOD AND HUMANITY

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Williams has developed a winsome and persuasive account of the triune God’s “non-competitive” relation with humanity3. God’s triune sovereignty is not realized in the competitive tension of command-obedience, but rather in the intimate mutuality, reciprocity, and plenitude of the triune relations. This is not only a form of divine sovereignty because God is self-sufficient, but also because the way-God-is is the way God is sovereign to humanity. The pattern of the trinitarian relations in se – the Trinity’s kenotic mutuality in love, gift, creativity, and divine plenitude – also, characterizes the relation between the economic Trinity and human creatures4. Therein “humanity is defined by [God]” and, in some respect “for us, God is defined by humanity also”, since God has given God’s self to humanity5. However, as an analogy, this reciprocal relationship need not imply any essential similarity. The analogy is only possible because of a more fundamental asymmetry: the triune God freely and humbly shares God’s eternal, inexhaustible life with finite humanity. Due to the latter difference, “the relation is always a restless and growing one”; humanity’s efforts to name God – to “define” God – are always developing but are never “complete” nor “adequate”6. Williams opts, then, for what I call an analogy of reciprocal relation: the relation between God and humanity is marked by the same pattern as the triune relations, while bounded by an apophatic qualification of divine plenitude that rejects univocity7. God’s Books. Some of the initial portions in the argument here about Williams rely on the book, but the work on Metz does not. The synthesis of Williams and Metz, in the argument here, develops what is only gestured to in the conclusion of the book. 3. R. WILLIAMS, On Christian Theology, Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2000, pp. 247-253. 4. Ibid., pp. 69-78, 121-126, 138-142, 147, 158-160, 234-235, 247-253, 256-257, 287289. As Williams puts it simply, the “eternal pattern of the Father, the Son and the [Holy] Spirit is translated … into the relation of God and creation”. However, if that summary of Sergei Bulgakov does not seem normative for Williams, he also writes elsewhere: “God desires us, as if we were God, as if we were that unconditional response to God’s giving that God’s self makes in the life of the Trinity. We are created so that we may be caught up in this, so that we may grow into the whole hearted love of God by learning that God loves us as God loves God”. R. WILLIAMS, Creation, Creativity and Creatureliness: The Wisdom of Finite Existence, in B. TREANOR – B. ELLIS-BENSON – N. WIRZBA (eds.), Beingin-Creation: Human Responsibility in an Endangered World, New York, Fordham University Press, 2015, p. 28; R.D. WILLIAMS, The Body’s Grace, in E.F. ROGERS, JR. (ed.), Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2002, 309321, pp. 311-312. Williams’s emphasis. 5. WILLIAMS, On Christian Theology (n. 3), p. 288. 6. Ibid., p. 288. 7. Dependent on multiple and older sources like On Christian Theology, I wrote this sentence and ones before it, years prior to R. WILLIAMS, Christ: The Heart of Creation, London, Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018, pp. 221-223, 226. While I am not in debt to

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sovereignty is not, then, exercised as lording over humanity, but more akin to a gardener or – the analogy I prefer – like the relation of a human caring for, talking to, and playing with a puppy, with its exploration, with its joy, with its fear, with its exuberance. This theme of non-competition runs through much of Williams’s work. While his recent Christ: The Heart of Creation may have his most sustained use of the theme, my delineation of the non-competitive relation above is drawn from his On Christian Theology, and other sources. Even in Wrestling with Angels, the import of Williams’s account of non-competition underlies his incisive critique of Karl Barth’s Christology and Trinitarian theology8. I have not only embraced Williams’s account of non-competition and the critique of Barth, I have also leveraged Williams’s point to critique Stanley Hauerwas. The latter’s absorption of Barth’s competitive Godhuman relation is a direct source of Hauerwas’s difficulties in the churchworld relation. By contrast, and what has contributed to making Williams’s work so persuasive, for myself, is that he develops an alternative account of divine sovereignty. In it he maintains a coherent continuity of a relational pattern from the intra-triune relations to the God-human relation to intrahuman relations. So, the non-competition of the triune life – its mutuality, love, gift, etc. – marks the human life together. The problem is, in earlier years and arguably still, Williams resists some sort of divine interruption. If, for instance, God had to intercede in evolutionary development, then there are two problems. First, God would be on the same sort of plane as humanity, setting up a conflict or competition – at least in terms of “same space” and implicitly more – between God and humanity9. Second, God continually correcting something in creation by way of interruption could tacitly acknowledge that God did not create correctly in the first place10. While Williams does in fact have a soteriology Williams’s recent work articulating most of the same point in one spot, it is, nevertheless, good to see it done so and, therefore, worthy of citation. I do not take the shared use of some terms between Williams and I as self-flattery, but rather an indication of Williams’s consistency over decades. 8. R. WILLIAMS – M. HIGTON (eds.), Wrestling with Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2007, pp. 114-136, 140-142; WILLIAMS, On Christian Theology (n. 3), pp. 76, 121-122. 9. R. WILLIAMS, Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgement, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2000, p. 69; ID., Lost Icons: Reflections on Cultural Bereavement, Harrisburg, PA, Morehouse, 2000, p. 183. 10. Dawkins Interviews Rowan Williams, 20 September 2008, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=2DcySbAt-l4. The short interview is explicitly about biological evolution. However, while Dawkins clearly has an agenda that is manifest in selecting parts of what is clearly a longer interview, in this case, Dawkins got a succinct statement from Williams that describes a key characteristic in his accounts for divine-human interaction.

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and it, in his Trinitarian-Christological theology, does connect to his discursive politics, he may nevertheless inadvertently separate creation and redemption in order to keep God and humanity from being in a conflicting situation. If those two forms of separation are taken to an extreme, Williams might be seen as raising nature (creation) over grace (redemption). This is an over-statement, but it is an exaggeration to indicate the vector, the direction and movement, of Williams’s position. It tends to characterize an active pneumatology in terms of “pressure”, which is well-stated and important in its own right11. Yet, the rhetoric matters here and in general. Little to no room is left for divine interruption, but a nonviolent interruption is needed when a ten-week-old puppy decides to love you with all its small but sharp teeth. With little room for interruption, Williams arguably undermines an important basis for political theology. II. JOHANN BAPTIST METZ: INTERRUPTION Famous for articulating a fundamental, political theology against the closed history of evolutionary progressivism, Metz did so by his stress on divine interruption12. God interrupts humanity through Jesus – whose life, death, and resurrection were deemed dangerous to the status quo – as well as through disciples formed in that interruptive image13. In this faithful discipleship, God’s interruption continues into intra-human relations. Faithful discipleship means moving out of and standing against the bourgeois class and its perversion of Christianity; or in short, “discipleship [is] class treason”14. The issue is that even though Metz’s account could be construed as heavy on grace in terms of redemption, therein, grace is about a kenotic spirit of poverty that is not cheap but costly and, thereby, 11. WILLIAMS, On Christian Theology (n. 3), p. 124. For another example, take note that for Williams, ecclesial witness to society at large follows the same kenotic pattern of divine sovereignty (ibid., pp. 233-234). When he turns to an ecclesial confrontation of the Third Reich, he says “resistance” and then spends time on the rationale for it: Christian loyalty (ibid., p. 236). The ground is laid for developing an account of interruption, but then he focuses on simply what question the church should ask, and thereby be an “irritant” (ibid., p. 237). Williams effectively danced around interruption. The same goes for WILLIAMS, Christ: The Heart of Creation (n. 7), pp. 209, 212-217. 12. J.B. METZ, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, New York, Herder & Herder, 2007, pp. 156-165. 13. Ibid., pp. 87-113. 14. J.B. METZ, The Emergent Church: The Future of Christianity in a Postbourgeois World, New York, Crossroad, 1981, p. 14.

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liberative15. Of course, grace delineated as such is certainly to be upheld; the bourgeois self-delusion must be stripped away. The problem is not with Dietrich Bonhoeffer nor Metz’s use of him. Rather, such grace is almost one-note and in the negative, and at best, makes way for a new positive, a solidarity. Grace as liberative, but not itself developed in the positive, in turn, may not sufficiently extend a gracious allowance to nature – the nature that is not bourgeois but the product of a gift economy. III. WILLIAMS AND METZ: TENSION AND RESOLUTION IN SYNTHESIS To address this tension between Williams and Metz, we could proceed toward a solution in two ways. First, we could argue that to isolate the critical points about Williams and Metz above from the rest of their frameworks can be distorting. Although the above may be accurate, it is also only true by half. Williams is not semi-Pelagian with nature over grace, nor some sort of Deist who relegates God to remaining in transcendence. Metz is not on the road to 5-point Calvinism starting with total depravity, nor is he a Calvinist iteration of interruptive grace against nature. Second, we can creatively interpret and incorporate Williams’s and Metz’s positions into a broader horizon. Since the two options are not mutually exclusive, I will incorporate the first into the second through the primacy of grace re-understood. The categories of nature as creation and grace as redemption can be distorting in this instance. To take a point from Stanley Hauerwas, nature is creation, which is itself a gift freely given and fundamentally shaped by its Triune creator16. In this sense, Williams’s position is brimming with grace, even as delineated above. His emphasis on relational reciprocity, of mutual recognition and (kenotic) gift-giving, characterizes the relation between God and humanity, and in turn, relations among human creatures. Accordingly, the gift economy is the basis for both Williams’s discursive politics and his eschatological reserve. His political framework, of human beings discussing and then working together toward the common good, is about opening up future horizons and growth through the mutual reception 15. J.B. METZ, Poverty of Spirit, Mahwah, NJ, Paulist, 1998, pp. 20-21; ID., Followers of Christ: The Religious Life and the Church, New York, Burns & Oates – Paulist, 1986, pp. 38-39; ID., The Emergent Church (n. 14), pp. 53-62, 88. 16. S. HAUERWAS, Sanctify Them in the Truth, Nashville, TN, Abingdon, 1998, pp. 2627, 38-39, 44-45, 54-55.

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of one another as gift. However, he allows that such work of growth may never be complete, and he relativizes idolatrous political forms since only God can fully actualize the eschaton. Now, we have moved to the eschatological proviso. Humanity’s participation in the Triune economy of love-gift explores divine mystery, but humanity cannot find the end of God’s plenitude17. Williams holds, accordingly, that human efforts to replace God through “excessive political claims” are contravened by an “eschatological reserve” that recognizes human finitude18. Therefore, we can obviously tie Williams to Metz since it was the latter that made famous the “eschatological proviso”19. However, I am not content with only relying on a union through an eschatological reserve. Metz’s emphasis on interruption could be framed as grace: the gift of a sharp no to sin within a larger yes to creation20. Here, interruption is in fundamental continuity with the divine vision of and for creation. In this instance, interruption is part of God’s conversation with humanity, calling humanity back to God, and thereby humanity to its true telos. Interruption need not be understood here as competitive, but instead as oppositional. God’s opposition here need not be read as God lording over humanity. The dangerous memory of Jesus is not only one that, on Metz’s terms, points to God joining humanity in human suffering. Also, on Williams’s terms, Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit showed that death could not plumb the depths of God who continued to love and self-give to humanity before, during, and after Jesus’s life on Earth. Interruption is then fundamentally an embrace. It is sheer embrace of the marginalized, and for those who are being told no, the embrace is hidden initially in the garb of opposition. IV. APPLICATION Consider how we might apply this framework. If the US political situation today was conventional, I would explore two points of fusion. First, Metz adds sharper teeth to Williams’s underdeveloped Christian 17. R. WILLIAMS, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction, Waco, TX, Baylor University Press, 2008, pp. 206-207; ID., On Christian Theology (n. 3), pp. 288-289. 18. R. WILLIAMS, Faith in the Public Square, London, Bloomsbury, 2012, p. 83. See also ibid., pp. 73-74; ID., On Christian Theology (n. 3), pp. 173-174. 19. In the same manner as Williams, for “eschatological proviso”, see METZ, Faith in History and Society (n. 12), pp. 88-90; J.B. METZ, Theology of the World, New York, Herder and Herder, 1971, pp. 114-115, 152-154. For “eschatological reserve”, see ID., Faith in History and Society, p. 112. 20. See parallels in METZ, Poverty of Spirit (n. 15), p. 5.

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guild socialist critique of capitalism21. Williams does not focus much on economics itself. However, the guild socialist endeavor can have fairly sharp teeth critical of capitalism, and a theological way to that critique is “discipleship as class treason”. Second, although the sharper teeth of “discipleship as class treason” dovetails into Metz’s own affinity for democratic socialism, both need the more communal frame of guild socialism. “Discipleship as class treason” summarizes a critical aspect of the constructive project: a “conversion of hearts” into a “new consciousness of solidarity” – of moving to live in solidarity with oppressed, marginalized, etc., and in those peoples fit, historically, laboring classes22. The politics here, from a theological-“socialist inspiration”, must be realized democratically for Metz in Germany, or in a term, democratic socialism23. The same is also developing in the US today, sometimes under the label of economic democracy, but the positions are the same: of workers as co-owners, of co-operatives, of trade unions, etc. that form alternatives to capitalist ownership24. However, this democratic socialist move, even when trying to update the economic democracy of guild socialism, can still pale in comparison to the stress on social bodies as found in guild socialism25. The church of solidarity can be co-laborers with democratic socialist movements, because the church of solidarity is one that is formed by discipleship and, in this colaboring, the church shows the importance of social bodies that have been written out of the privatizing political script. Williams and Metz both oppose, in vital ways, the privatization of faith. Williams brings back in the absolutely necessary recognition of social bodies that have been excluded from political arrangements; Metz shows the absolutely necessary implications of what it means for the body of Christ to be formed in Jesus’s dangerous memory. 21. For example, compare WILLIAMS, Faith in the Public Square (n. 18), pp. 11-96 to pp. 211-232. 22. METZ, The Emergent Church (n. 14), pp. 71, 74. 23. Ibid., pp. 78-81. For a history of democratic socialism and social democracy in Europe, see G. DORRIEN, Social Democracy in the Making: Political and Religious Roots of European Socialism, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2019. 24. G. DORRIEN, American Democratic Socialism: History, Politics, Religion, and Theory, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2021. See also Gary Dorrien’s past work on the subject: G. DORRIEN, Economy, Difference, Empire: Social Ethics for Social Justice, New York, Columbia University Press, 2010, pp. 3-28, 87-184, 304-335; ID., Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition, Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 674-688. 25. For recent work on community organizing and more, which dovetails with Williams’s work, see L. BRETHERTON, Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of a Common Life, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

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The above is necessary, since almost all US politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, hold to a neoliberal economy and the private-public language of the modern nation-state. With the election of President Biden, whose platform remains largely center-right, the economic problems of the Clinton and Obama presidencies will assuredly return. That I will leave for a later project, however, because in the US, we have also gone through the Trump presidency. Of all the many scandals in his administration, there is also the scandal of his supporters to consider. Many remain confused why white evangelicals would so strongly and uniformly support a man for political office when he has violated everything that they have asserted, for decades, as essential for both the politician and society. Is there incoherence here? Yes26. Is it confusing? Initially, yes. Is it disconnected from the history of white evangelicals? No, so we will start here, which itself can be, as speech-act, interruptive. Hopefully, just such interventions, for years to come, can help rehabilitate our kindred. White evangelicals have been Constantinian – baptizing state power in order to be recognized, protected, and supported by it – for a century, if not two, with one notable exception. After the public embarrassment of the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial, the fundamentalist-conservative white evangelicals withdrew in significant ways from public view for decades to, in their seclusion, build radio broadcasting empires, develop more missionary work, and construct their own institutions of higher education27. The visible public return of white evangelicals is often associated with the rise of Billy Graham, who held stadium revivals and firmly re-established the Constantinian link. Although that emergence was slightly ahead of the fundamentalist return, the latter’s own rise was through it merging with white evangelicals28. This pulled the evangelical movement to the right politically, and eliminated any significant center or left version of 26. T.S. KIDD, Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2019, pp. 91-92. 27. For famous coverage of this historical legacy, see R. BALMER, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014. 28. I am partial to the reading of white evangelicalism, from the 1942 establishment of the National Association of Evangelicals, as a rebranding of Christian fundamentalism that won the literal trial but lost the public relations war, as Dorrien and Kobes Du Mez argue. I highlight the chronological difference for white evangelical and fundamentalists in my argument to note what seems like different waves with different political methods, with Billy Graham on one side, and on the other, Bob Jones Sr. and Jerry Falwell Sr. G. DORRIEN, The Remaking of Evangelical Theology, Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox, 1998, p. 9; K. KOBES DU MEZ, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, New York, Liveright, 2020, pp. 11, 21.

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the movement that had not gone into seclusion or had emerged while the conservatives were secluded29. For just about as long, or longer than the white evangelicals have been Constantinian, they have also been Christian nationalists, depending on how broadly the term is defined at the intersection of Christianity, nationalism, and racism. In the US, there is a long-held narrative of US Christianity’s mission to Christianize the US, and in turn, the US’s divinely given manifest destiny to Christianize the continent and beyond. This narrative is as much a theological claim about Christian missions (its success and continued need to be successful) as it was a claim to US exceptionalism, no matter if the US was viewed with theological optimism or pessimism30. While that narrative may have lost some white fundamentalistevangelical support during the self-seclusion after 1925, the narrative was revived as the evangelicals and fundamentalists came back into public view31. In the US, that narrative is always at the cost of people of color, with the effect remaining even during the seclusion. White evangelicals have been white supremacist insomuch as white normativity was long assumed and it is still framed this way, as there was an ambivalence to, equivocation of, silence on, and explicit support for slavery (pre-Civil war) and lynching and segregation (post-Civil war) of African Americans. On issues like race, there was a separating of spiritual conversion from Jesus’s politics and, thereby, separating from social, economic, and political issues, which astounded evangelicals of color32. This racist background remains significant. The religious right’s rise was not initially on the basis of eliminating abortion, as fundamentalist-evangelicals still assert today, but on resisting desegregation while seeking to retain tax exempt status. The issues of suppressing abortion and homosexuality, key tentpoles still in white evangelicalism, came years later, near the 1980s, for white evangelicalism’s growing political voice. That is the beginning of 29. There are some remaining voices of a semi-left evangelicalism, like Sojourners, but there are no more Colleges or Universities remaining as bastions of central or left Evangelicalism. 30. M.A. NOLL – N.O. HATCH – G.M. MARSDEN (eds.), The Search for Christian America, expanded ed., Colorado Springs, CO, Helmers and Howard, 1989, pp. 61-64, 115-116; G.M. MARSDEN, Fundamentalism and American Culture, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2 2006, pp. 11-39, 48-51, 80-93. 31. NOLL – HATCH – MARSDEN, The Search for Christian America (n. 30), pp. 125-126. 32. KIDD, Who Is an Evangelical? (n. 26), pp. 23-26, 47-50, 63-66, 76-77, 94-95, 101-108. Kidd’s narrative for Billy Graham, if read without more context, may seem much less ambiguous and stronger on racial issues than he was, especially when compared to other figures of the time who were not avowed segregationists. See DORRIEN, Economy, Difference, Empire (n. 24), pp. 66-84.

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how fundamentalists emerged from their reclusive holes, began forcing a merger with white evangelicals, and fashioned themselves into a voting block by their own leaders and political strategists for winning the latter’s elections, with the expectation of political quid pro quo in pushing agendas, appointing judges, and the like33. This tradition of white evangelical leaders “lobbying” their own constituencies remains strong as ever. Wayne Grudem, a biblical scholar, famous for his systematic theology within the fundamentalist-evangelical bubble but not taken seriously as a theologian or ethicist elsewhere, claimed to write a moral “analysis” for the need to elect Trump in 2016. That was ostensibly in good faith but it is, in fact, a list – theologically deficient while trafficking in fear mongering and relying on proof texting and untruths – in support of a culture war34. Grudem continued to publicly argue for supporting Trump throughout the latter’s impeachment and 2020 re-election campaign35. Grudem did so on the basis of and for a Constantinian nationalism that continues to functionally marry and amplify the worst parts of the Social Gospel’s Christianizing self-justification, Reinhold Niebuhr’s realpolitik, and John Wayne’s strongman ideal36. For all the systematic construction and Bible quoting, Grudem’s foray into ethics and politics, far afield from his New Testament focus, defines the term parochial. This is deeply ironic considering not only that his treatment on the Bible and politics depends upon his stress on Christian influence, the influence of the “inwardly 33. R. BALMER, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter, New York, Basic Books, 2014, pp. 101-112, 166-170, 180-181; KIDD, Who Is an Evangelical? (n. 26), pp. 118-120. 34. W. GRUDEM, Why Voting for Donald Trump Is a Morally Good Choice, in Townhall, 28 July 2016, https://townhall.com/columnists/waynegrudem/2016/07/28/why-voting-fordonald-trump-is-a-morally-good-choice-n2199564. Contrast with S. HAUERWAS, Christians, Don’t Be Fooled: Trump Has Deep Religious Convictions, in Washington Post, 27 January 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/01/27/christians-dontbe-fooled-trump-has-deep-religious-convictions/. 35. W. GRUDEM, Trump Should Not Be Removed from Office: A Response to Mark Galli and Christianity Today, in Townhall, 30 December 2019, https://townhall.com/ columnists/waynegrudem/2019/12/30/trump-should-not-be-removed-from-office-aresponse-to-mark-galli-and-christianity-today-n2558657; W. GRUDEM, Letter to an AntiTrump Friend, in Townhall, 8 August 2020, https://townhall.com/columnists/waynegrudem/ 2020/08/08/letter-to-an-antitrump-christian-friend-n2573909. Contrast with P. WEHNER, There Is No Christian Case for Trump: When Faith Is Treated as an Instrumentality, It’s Bad for Politics and Worse for the Christian Witness, in Atlantic, 30 January 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/there-no-christian-case-trump/ 605785/. 36. For the Social Gospel and Reinhold Niebuhr, see DORRIEN, Economy, Difference, Empire (n. 24), pp. 3-84; ID., Social Ethics in the Making (n. 24), pp. 60-130, 226-294. For masculinity, see KOBES DU MEZ, Jesus and John Wayne (n. 28), pp. 239-240, 261, 266-271 that, while referring to the 2016 presidential election, can be seen just as clearly in the 2020 presidential election.

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transformed” as a form of indirect grace on lapsarian humanity37. But also, that framework of influence is functionally a delayed form of the dreaded “liberal” Social Gospel run through the meat grinder of political privatization, conservative tropes, and neoliberal economic policies. Now, we can consider the past few years and the questions about them. How can the once self-named Moral Majority – which made its politics explicitly ad hominem regarding personal character – so loudly and enthusiastically, embrace and seemingly ordain with divine legitimation, a man who is anything but moral by almost any rubric? His list of character failings is long and public, and some would point to his narcissism, racism, sexism, pathological distortions of reality, and more. However, those vices are in continuity with issues raised already in white evangelicalism: its grandiose self-important theology; its baptizing of the state to claim it; its racist theopolitics; its elevation of a strongman patriarchy; its revisionist histories can be likened with hagiography; its leaders terrorize constituents with visions of lurking cultural enemies, in order to galvanize support and encourage donations. That is not far removed from Trump’s own modus operandi. The issue was, for white evangelicals, to overcome their most significant concerns regarding personal sexual activity: his adulterous affairs, divorces, and sexual predation, including Trump famously bragging about sexually assaulting women caught on tape and later aired less than a month before the 2016 election. In order to avoid this awkwardness, white evangelicals transitioned from a focus on the person to policies. There are problems here, beside the fact that Trump, just Trump, loyalty to Trump, was essentially the platform for the 2020 Republican National Convention38. Let us consider a policy issue. How could white evangelicals, who stress following the biblical text in both personal life and national policies, maintain support for his administration’s policies that intentionally, consistently, and programmatically violated the creaturely dignity of immigrants? The racism can be blinding, apparently because the policies not only go against Jesus’s call to visit those imprisoned39. Trump’s administration made that unjust 37. W. GRUDEM, Politics according to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture, Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 2010, p. 96. 38. See The Republican Party Platform, 2020, in Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/ The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2020. 39. It is worth considering that the images and stories of Latin Americans, in cages and abused at the hands of the Border Patrol, are not shocking for white evangelicals who are already comfortable with US prisons having established Jim Crow in another vein. For the latter, see M. ALEXANDER, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, rev. ed., New York, The New Press, 2012.

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jail, imprisoned the least of these, treated them horribly to even death, and works to throw them out of the country – which on Jesus’s explicit terms is to treat him horribly, kill him, and exclude him40. Accordingly, through this pattern of abuse, with the vision of a strongman doing God’s work, Trump asserts an identification with divinity – or perhaps, divine identification with him. In the wake of mass protesting against George Floyd’s murder by police and during Trump’s national speech threatening to call in the regular military against even the protesters, Trump infamously had the peaceful protesters and ministering clergy violently cleared from the nearby Lafayette Square and patio of St. John’s Episcopal Church41. Trump did this for a campaign photo-op of him holding a random Bible awkwardly and upside down in front of St. John’s. We have words for this. In general terms, he profaned the sacred. More specifically, it was blasphemy and, as Rowan Williams called it, “idolatry”42. Trump was elected and remained in power because the part of his base that remains unmoved is largely constituted by white evangelical Christians43. They support him in a naked Constantinian fashion. He grants them political access, he appoints their type of judges, etc. so that the white evangelicals can wage their culture war under the fallacious guise of doing God’s work44. Consequently, as Trump gives them access to power for their vision, while he claims that “God is ‘on [their] side’”, they have increasingly seen him as God’s “anointed”45. Trump, it seems, 40. Matt 25,31-46. 41. “This Can’t Be Happening”: An Oral History of 48 Surreal, Violent, Biblical Minutes in Washington, in Washington Post, 2 June 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ lifestyle/style/this-cant-be-happening-an-oral-history-of-48-surreal-violent-biblicalminutes-in-washington/2020/06/02/6683d36e-a4e3-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html. 42. Trump Brandishing a Bible “An Act of Idolatry”, Says Former Archbishop of Canterbury, in Episcopal News Service, 5 June 2020, https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2020/ 06/05/trump-brandishing-a-bible-an-act-of-idolatry-says-former-archbishop-of-canterbury/. 43. S.P. BAILEY, White Evangelicals Voted Overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, Exit Polls Show, in Washington Post, 9 November 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ acts-of-faith/wp/2016/11/09/exit-polls-show-white-evangelicals-voted-overwhelminglyfor-donald-trump/; E. SCHOR – D. CRARY, AP VoteCast: Trump Wins White Evangelicals, Catholics Split, in APNews, 6 November 2020, https://apnews.com/article/votecast-trumpwins-white-evangelicals-d0cb249ea7eae29187a21a702dc84706. 44. Rev. Rob Schenck: Pres. Trump “Used the Bible as a Prop”, in PBS, 16 June 2020, https://www.pbs.org/video/rev-robert-schenck-evangelicals-listen-more-deeply-vtakbc/. 45. J. MEDINA – M. HABERMAN, In Miami Speech, Trump Tells Evangelical Base: God Is “on Our Side”, in New York Times, 3 January 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/ 01/03/us/politics/trump-miami-rally-evangelicals.html; P.A. DJUPE – R.P. BURGE, Trump the Anointed?, in Religion in Public, 11 May 2020, https://religioninpublic.blog/2020/ 05/11/trump-the-anointed/; J. SHARLET, “He’s the Chosen One to Run America”: Inside the Cult of Trump, His Rallies Are Church and He Is the Gospel, in Vanity Fair, 18 June

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did nothing to shake their support for him, and when confronted with his deficient character and his anti-Christ work, the white evangelicals further assert their dubious claims about Trump and their support for him. Only rarely does a measurable segment of white evangelicals take pause, seen as a small but noticeable drop in the polls, and Trump, then, recovers as his “unpalatable” actions are written off. This is the pattern in which the white evangelical reaction to Trump’s profanation was understood, so even with Trump’s 2020 loss, the problems remain46. To be faithful to God’s economy means an opposition to not only Trump’s horrifying policies and practices, but also the incoherent pastoral proclamations by white evangelicals, that such opposition supposedly goes against God’s hand. Thankfully we have resources for opposition. Metz’s eschatological reserve builds on Erik Peterson’s confrontation of Roman imperial identification with divinity, in which “to the one king on earth [Constantine] corresponds the one God, the one King in heaven and the one royal Nomos and Logos”47. In parallel, recall, Williams also maintains an “eschatological reserve” against “excessive political claims”48. What Metz adds here is the dangerous memory of Jesus, and the result is a two-pronged intervention: to oppose the white evangelical identification of Trump with divinity on the one hand, and to orient them back to the dangerous memory of Jesus the autobasileia on the other hand. It is past time that the white evangelicals were saved from God’s wrath as described in Romans 1, wherein wrath is being given what you want, demand, throw a tantrum over, rather than getting what you need. However, that much indicates how far white evangelicals have strayed from their own stated convictions. Is the white evangelical support of Trump, then and still now as I write, hypocrisy that comes from giving into Machiavellian temptation? Yes, but it is not out of step with white evangelical history. We can begin to see, then, how a Metzian interruption 2020, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-trump-his-rallies-arechurch-and-he-is-the-gospel. 46. B. FEARNOW, Vast Majority of White Catholics, Evangelicals Support Trump over Biden: Polls, in Newsweek, 23 June 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/vast-majority-white-catholics-evangelicals-support-trump-over-biden-polls-1512840. 47. E. PETERSON, Theological Tractates, ed. and trans. M.J. HOLLERICH, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2011, p. 94. The English translation of Metz’s Theology of the World omits on p. 114 a footnote from the original German text, J.B. METZ, Zur Theologie der Welt, Mainz, Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1968, pp. 105-106, n. 5, in which Metz directly cites Peterson’s “Monotheism as a Political Problem”, now chapter five (pp. 86105) in Theological Tractates. Also, Peterson’s functional use of the eschatological reserve in Theological Tractates, pp. 89, 103-105 against the Nazis is functionally the same as METZ upholding the eschatological reserve against “totalitarian systems of control” in Faith in History and Society (n. 12), p. 90. 48. WILLIAMS, Faith in the Public Square (n. 18), p. 83.

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must become a protracted intervention, excising what has so long been part of the white evangelical DNA. The gift of the white evangelicals returning to the fold could issue forth in a gift to, and an embrace of, the least of these; or in Williams’s terms, come back to giving and loving as the Triune God does because, in evangelical terms, that is what Jesus did. Remember that memoria. Carroll University David HORSTKOETTER Department of History, Politics, and Religion Enterprise House 101 202 Wright St. Waukesha, WI 53186 USA [email protected]

“TALKIN’ ’BOUT A REVOLUTION” POLITICAL SPIRITUALITY BETWEEN PRACTICE AND EVENT FOLLOWING THE DETOURS OF MICHEL DE CERTEAU

Don’t you know They’re talkin’ ’bout a revolution It sounds like a whisper1.

INTRODUCTION With her song “Talkin’ ’bout a revolution”, the American singer Tracy Chapman (born 1964) released one of her great hits that quickly gained international acclaim. The lines express the hope for a change in society (“Cause finally the tables are starting to turn”) and projects a vision of justice in which the poor seize their due part of social goods and welfare: “Poor people gonna rise up / And get their share / Poor people gonna rise up / And take what’s theirs”. The song was frequently broadcast via radio in Tunisia during the Tunisian Revolution in 2011, and it accompanied the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016. However, this ambivalent topos is not only a recurring theme in politics. In the 1960s it became a popular term in the context of liberation theology. Under Pope Francis, the term has even found its way into official papal vocabulary. This article explores the category of revolution based on the texts of the Jesuit intellectual Michel de Certeau (1925-1986). The main object is to examine the ways in which revolution can be understood as a spiritual praxis of socio-political, symbolic and aesthetic renewal. To achieve this, it is necessary first to have a look at de Certeau’s reflections on violence, which is one of the points of critique concerning the topic of revolution. Second, we will establish the distinction between different concepts of revolution and the conceptions of history they entail as well as de Certeau’s proposal of how to deal with revolutionary events theologically. The third section turns to de Certeau’s studies on the mystic spirituality of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, in which the rise of modern mysticism becomes apparent as a revolution of the dominant symbolic 1. Song: T. CHAPMAN, Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution (1988).

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tradition of the Middle Ages. The fourth section deepens the reflection on mystic discourse by highlighting some of its characteristics and linking them to contemporary forms of cognition. Finally, we shall shed some light on the current global crisis and the revolutions caused thereby in both the secular and theological symbolic orders. A short conclusion will sum up the quintessence of the political impetus of the delineated spirituality. I. ON VIOLENCE In his text “Le temps de la Révolution”2, de Certeau questions the topos of revolution as an event of communal transformation and spiritual renewal of the Christian tradition. Concrete historical events serve as points of departure and constant reference for his reflections; namely the Cuban revolution – due to de Certeau’s foregoing teaching tour through Latin America – though he also takes the conditions in the USSR and China into consideration. De Certeau draws particular attention to the problem of violence. For him, outbreaks of violence, which often accompany revolutionary processes, are the results of already long-lasting disruptions and divisions in the social texture of a nation and its symbolic representations. “[T]heoretically”, de Certeau states, “the violent revolution replaces a practice of reform”3. It occurs when the usual rituals and reactions that used to ward off or pacify this lack of representation can no longer close the gap. Thus, “[v]iolence expresses a deficiency of words or institutions”4. De Certeau seems to have adopted some of the ideas of psychoanalysis, which he studied intensively over many years. According to Sigmund Freud and his theory on sublimation, practices of symbolization aim to convert the power of the affects to some degree and to prevent the affects from bursting out in the form of sheer physical destruction. Conflict emerges when the institutions and dominating discourses of a society do not correspond anymore to the real experiences of the people: 2. The text was first published as an article, La revolution fondatrice ou le risque d’exister, in Études 329 (1968) 80-101. After the revolts of students and workers in 1968 in France, de Certeau included the text under a new title in an anthology on spiritual experience, cf. Le temps de la Révolution, in M. DE CERTEAU, L’Étranger ou l’union dans la différence, Paris, Desclée De Brouwer, 1991, 97-126. 3. “Dans la théorie, la revolution violente remplace l’action réformatrice” (DE CERTEAU, Le temps de la Révolution [n. 2], p. 104). 4. “La violence traduit un deficit des mots ou des institutions” (ibid., p. 99).

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“violence arises in the first place from a rebellion against institutions and forms of representation that have become ‘incredible’”5. This happens, when the official languages and institutions are no longer affected by the lived experiences and needs of the people, or if they are only dedicated to the reality of a small part of society. When the people’s actual experience of the past and the present is neglected, or structurally excluded from the vivid process of symbolization, it silently remains operative underneath the surface of official discourses. It returns symptomatically in distorted forms, and intervenes unexpectedly without the tempering effects of symbolic mediation. Affects that linger in the deeper layers of a society’s social web, and which have no space for effective symbolic expression, tend to erupt as sudden chaotic explosions in the realm of corporeality and materiality. Thus, violence can be understood as the result of suppressed needs and affects that did not manage to find any proper form of symbolization in a commonly acknowledged discourse over a prolonged period of time. De Certeau’s stance concerning the necessity of violence in regard to sociopolitical renewal remains ambivalent. Although he would never consider it as a necessity based on a natural law, it has to be recognized as mere “fact”6 and as a last option in the search for truth and personal existence. This perspective also dominates his evaluation of the student strikes in Paris in May 1968, to which he reacted by means of several articles, later collected in a book, The Capture of Speech [La Prise de parole]7. He calls these events a “symbolic revolution, … because it signifies more than it effectuates, or because of the fact that it contests given social and historical relations in order to create authentic ones”8. The “capture of speech”, by the students and workers was symbolic in so far as it pointed out the lack of representation in the traditional order, and the existential demand to have the right to speak and to participate in the shaping of a new society built on equality. However, this does not yet say anything about what such events mean for Christians and theologians. Before we can turn explicitly to this question, we have to reflect on the conception of history and time underlying such revolutionary events.

5. M. DE CERTEAU, Revolutions in the “Believable”, in Cross Currents 20 (1970) 276286, p. 282. 6. Cf. ibid. 7. M. DE CERTEAU, The Capture of Speech and Other Political Writings, ed. L. GIARD, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 8. Ibid., p. 5.

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II. INVERSION: FROM A THEOLOGY OF REVOLUTION TO A THEOLOGY OF EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY In order to explore the relationship between revolution and history, de Certeau turns to On Revolution9 by the political scientist Hannah Arendt10. Therein, she points out that the conception of revolution radically changed precisely during the French and the American Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. “Revolution” used to refer to the ever-lasting circling of the planets in their orbits. It meant to return to the point of origin, to turn back towards the past. Arendt shows that the revolutionaries who were involved in the French Revolution of 1789 at first still interpreted their acts based on this first understanding of revolutionary action. They thought that they were fostering the good old ways – as they had always been – and, at first, did not intend to bring up something completely new. Only the progression of the revolutionary process brought about a transformation in the French revolutionaries’ understanding of their own doing. The idea of a break with the past, of beginning a new era in history, and of founding a new world emerged together. Their idea was to lay the groundwork for a new order of society oriented towards an open future and based on collective participation and individual freedom. This understanding of history presupposed the notion that a fundamental break with the past was needed, that such a break was possible, and that the creation of a new system could be deliberately administered by free will and the power of the demos, the egalitarian people. It configured the past as other, as something different from the present and the future. In the 1960s and 1970s the topos of revolution, too, became popular in the context of liberal and political theology. De Certeau appears critical regarding a “theology of revolution”11, since such a conception implies a continuity of (the biblical) past and present, which the modern idea of revolution precisely negates12. Referring again to Arendt he confirms that, until modernity, revolutions were never proclaimed in the name of Christianity13. The modern revolutions were not products of explicit Christian provenience, neither were the fundamental historical developments of modernity in general. Due to the significant loss of influence of the ecclesial tradition in the course of Western secularization, according 9. H. ARENDT, On Revolution, London, Penguin, 1990. 10. DE CERTEAU, Le temps de la Révolution (n. 2), pp. 105-108. 11. The book Containment and Change by R. SHAULL and C. OGLESBY from 1967 became quite famous. 12. Cf. DE CERTEAU, Le temps de la Révolution (n. 2), pp. 117-119. 13. Cf. ibid., p. 119.

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to de Certeau, it has become impossible for Christianity to define a social, political or mental organization on a general level14. This leads to the necessity to root one’s spiritual discernment in societies in which religions are still present, but which no longer represent the determining aspect of civilization15. That is one reason, among others, why de Certeau does not view social and political revolutionary outbreaks as primary contexts of Christian action, nor of theological theory. Rather, he values them as extraordinary moments and spaces, starting from where Christians should reflect on history16. These breakups and striking events function like big questionnaires. They “oblige us to interrogate ourselves” and urge Christians to exercise their discernment in the context of an “uncertain future”17. Such an interpretation of history can never mean a simple return to an ideal and sacred origin as it was understood in the Middle Ages. Neither can it be based on the total negation of the old order, as it started to be conceived in the course of the modern revolutions. As de Certeau states unmistakably, Christians (even more so than others) cannot forget what history means for them18. Spiritual renewal ties rupture, break and continuity to each other. Consequently, I suppose that one could view the Christian concept of time itself as revolutionary in a very specific sense, since, according to de Certeau’s reading, the event of revelation inseparably interconnects present, past, and future in a dialectical dynamic. “Tradition means to rethink …”19, de Certeau would say, and he sees the model for such a reading of history and Scripture prefigured in the relation of the Old and the New Testament20 – a conversion which has to be prolonged infinitely by the Christian community in its encounters with the actual others21. It does not mean to simply negate or destruct all 14. Ibid., pp. 119-120: “… les ruptures que provoque l’ambition révolutionnaire en créant notre conception moderne de passés autres et d’une histoire qui ne soit plus retour, nous amènent à envisager aujourd’hui la fidélite à Dieu selon le mode de sociétés où la religion n’est plus l’élément déterminant de la civilization”. 15. Cf. ibid., p. 120: “Il faut desormais éliminer d’emblée, pour les chrétiens, la possibilité de définir une organisation sociale, politique ou mentale”. 16. Cf. ibid., p. 121: “La révolution est moins pour le théologien ce dont il parle, que ce en fonction de quoi il doit parler”. 17. DE CERTEAU, The Capture of Speech (n. 7), p. 5. 18. “Moins que d’autres, les chrétiens ne peuvent oublier ce que leur signifie une histoire; plus que les autres, ils ont à en entreprendre l’exégèse en fonction de problématiques et d’exigences nouvelles” (DE CERTEAU, Le temps de la Révolution [n. 2], p. 124). 19. “La tradition est à repenser …” (ibid., p. 123). 20. Ibid., p. 124: “C’est envisager comme clarificatrice, et encore à élucider, la dialectique essentielle au christianisme: le rapport du Nouveau à l’Ancien Testament”. 21. “La conversion de l’Ancien en Nouveau Testament se prolonge au cours d’une histoire imprévisible” (M. DE CERTEAU, Comme un voleur, in L’Étranger [n. 2], 189-205, p. 201).

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authorities22. It rather implies a rereading (relecture) of tradition in a critical moment, starting from the hospitable perception of the questions and disruptions of the events of today, and from the personal involvement in the historical struggles of one’s contemporaries23. The understanding of tradition as revolutionary relecture implies to view the present moment – as well as the past – as not yet manifest in what it is, or was meant to be. The significance of the present, and even of the past, will again result in future relectures. Although discernment is a necessary venture, the significance of an event is never ultimately given. I want to illustrate this by referring to de Certeau’s studies on modern mysticism. III. MODERN MYSTICISM AS REVOLUTION … As becomes apparent in his profound work The Mystic Fable, de Certeau interprets the emergence of modern mysticism in the sixteenth and seventeenth century as the symptom of a fundamental crisis: the antique and medieval idea of a well-ordered cosmos had started to erode24. It was no longer evident that the world represented God’s presence. De Certeau considers this as the aftermath of a sense of uncertainty concerning symbolic representation, which found its primer expression in the Franciscan teaching of nominalism in the thirteenth century. In addition, he links the rise of modern mysticism to concrete socio-political changes as well as to the epistemic transformations due to the pluralization of scientific perspectives. At the beginning of modernity, some significant explorations and new technological inventions have led to decisive shifts in common knowledge (the heliocentric system proposed by Galileo Galilei for example). These transformations correlated with the chaos in the institutional and socio-political sphere due to the confessional wars, as well as to several kinds of schismatic or heretical spiritual reform movements25. The Western division of the church caused a loss of authority of the ecclesial institutions. Thus, a general perception of “corruption” and 22. As de Certeau makes clear in his text Comme un voleur, in which he especially reflects on the character of the “event”, i.e., the coming of Jesus Christ, that Jesus confirmed the old given alliance between God and Israel exactly in the act in which he modified and renewed it (cf. ibid., p. 190). 23. Cf. “Cela conduit nécessairement l’expérience chrétienne à retrouver en elle-mȇme les problèmes de l’homme contemporain” (DE CERTEAU, Le temps de la Révolution [n. 2], p. 123). 24. M. DE CERTEAU, The Mystic Fable, vol. 1, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1992. 25. Cf. ibid., pp. 17-21.

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decadence rendered the institutional mediation of the divine word and grace uncertain26. De Certeau interprets the ensuing rise of mysticism as a reaction to these crises of authority and representation. The mystics – he above all refers to John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila and the French Jesuit Jean Joseph Surin – developed a completely new theological discourse based on their inner experience, ultimately resulting in the establishment of an acknowledged mystic tradition and mystic science27. As de Certeau points out, it is not that the mystics opposed the content of traditional scholastic teachings; what they did was develop a new style of doing theology28. They used negative metaphors, oxymora and paradoxes to “refer” to the dark God29 who was no longer directly representable in the system of traditional language. This means that, through an inversive appropriation, which fractured the old theological order of scholastic teaching, the mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth century invented a theological style that was able to symbolize the experience of the absence of the divine logos that had become noticeable at the beginning of modernity. It is quite illuminating to have a closer look at how these new voices emerged in the domain of theology at all. First, the different tone of the mystic discourse was due to the strong reception of the scriptures of PseudoDionysius the Areopagite, who then was still reckoned to be a contemporary of Saint Paul and therefore gained quasi canonical status. This voice from the East introduced a significant influence of Plotinism and negative theology, leading the logo-centred tradition of the ecclesial Occident back to a “great Silence”30 which could neither be met through words nor thought. Second, de Certeau highlights the foreign provenance of the Spanish mystics themselves. They often stemmed from families of converts, immigrants, or marginalized groups of society and, due to their strangeness, introduced a foreign spirit, full of the desire for another future, into the established theological discourses: In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the mystics most often belonged to the regions and social categories that were going into a socioeconomic 26. Ibid., p. 14. 27. Ibid., pp. 101-112. 28. Cf. Chapter Four, “Manner of Speaking”, ibid., pp. 113-156. 29. Ibid., p. 6. De Certeau views these mystic experiences not as merely individual but as some early expressions of a general transformation of the religious scenery. See also Philipp Sheldrake, “De Certeau asserted that the ‘dark nights’ expressed in various mystical texts refer not merely to interior, subjective states of spiritual loss and absence but also to the ‘global situation’ of religious faith in Western culture” (P. SHELDRAKE, Unending Desire: De Certeau’s ‘Mystics’, in The Way. Supplement 102 [2001] 38-48, p. 40). 30. DE CERTEAU, The Mystic Fable, vol. 1 (n. 24), p. 115.

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recession, were disfavored by change, pushed aside by progress, or financially ruined by the wars. That impoverishment developed the memory of a lost past; it clung to models deprived of efficacy and available for an “other world”. It redirected toward the spaces of utopia, of dreamy imaginings or writings, aspirations before which the doors of social responsibilities were closed31.

By now it should have become clear that, for de Certeau, mysticism did not primarily designate extraordinary experiences of ecstatic unity. Experience was important, of course, since it functioned as a shifter that made the mystics’ new ways of speaking and writing possible. However, experience always slips away. Only the effects of these experiences in language can lead to a spiritual renewal on a level that can be shared with everyone. IV. … OR MYSTICISM AS REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE In the last section I described modern mysticism as a revolution in the sense of a relecture of Christian tradition in relation to the experience of a fundamental crisis. It pointed out that the modern mystics’ new style of theology was partly due to the integration of foreign voices and experiences that shook up the traditional theological discourse. That is why de Certeau characterizes the mystical discourse as a “discourse on the Other”, a “heterology”32, which stresses the mystics’ constitutive relation to an alterity, as well as the foreignness and strangeness that they experienced in this relation; and, not least, the new manner in which they spoke about their experiences. Their speech bore witness to the elusiveness and ineffability33 of the divine Other as well as the (mystic) subject34. In the text that Luce Giard put at the beginning of L’Étranger, de Certeau characterizes the Other of this mystical experience as the God who is “always greater”, semper maior [plus grand]35. De Certeau thereby picks up a phrase by the founder of his order, Ignatius of Loyola. This formulation, 31. Ibid., pp. 21-22. Teresa, for instance, stemmed from a family of conversos. Her grandfather, a Sephardic Jew from Toledo, converted to Christendom together with his family when Teresa’s father, Alonso, was 14 years old. Similarly, the father of John of the Cross was the descendent of a Jewish family. His mother, a weaver, had a Moorish background, and because her husband died when John was only a toddler, she had to raise her three sons by herself in extreme poverty. 32. Cf. M. DE CERTEAU, Mystic Speech, in ID., Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, Minneapolis, MN – London, University of Minnesota Press, 62000, 80-100. 33. DE CERTEAU, The Mystic Fable, vol. 1 (n. 24), p. 114. 34. Cf. ibid., pp. 179-187. 35. M. DE CERTEAU, L’expérience spirituelle, in ID., L’Étranger (n. 2), 1-12, p. 7.

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simultaneously, emphasizes a particular (spiritual, theological, theoretical, moral etc.) position and relativizes it, since the encounter with other people or events provokes the breakup, revision, and transgression of once accepted stances. The experience, testimony, and preservation of the greater Other mutually allows a constant spiritual process of working together on the reinvention of a common language. What de Certeau emphasizes, besides the strangeness of the mystic discourse, is that the mystical re-invention of tradition remained linked to a communal practice: the mystics tried to stick to a twofold practice of conversation [Spanish: conversar]. In addition to the conversation in prayer, i.e., “speaking with God” [conversar con Dios], they also upheld “speaking with other people” [conversar con otros], and always made sure not to give up the continuity of conversation36. Even though their style obviously differed from the official theological discourse, they were eager to confirm that it was the same spirit that spoke through the apostolic tradition and through themselves37. Indeed, even though assuring the sameness of spirit undermined the novelty of the mystic discourse, this also allowed the mystics to carry out an antiBabelian gesture against the disintegration of language and community38. That is why de Certeau designates the speech of the mystics as “translational”39: The mystical authors not only developed a genuine style of metaphorical interpretation of the Holy Scriptures; they also played a decisive role in the production, translation and spreading of spiritual texts in the various vernaculars40. Mysticism thus can be viewed as an internal revolution that did not completely abandon commonly accepted authorities, but converted and translated them in the context of the new multiplicity of languages and customs that emerged at the beginning of modernity41. 36. DE CERTEAU, The Mystic Fable, vol. 1 (n. 24), p. 158. 37. Cf. the analysis of the apology of the mystics by Archbishop François Fénelon ibid., pp. 110-112. 38. See especially ibid., Chapter 5 (pp. 157-176), where de Certeau analyzes the topology, circumstances and preliminaries of this conversation, which has become so problematic. 39. Ibid., p. 118. 40. De Certeau characterizes their gesture as “ethical” (ibid., p. 119) due to the production of otherness in opposition to the “incarnational” gesture of the medieval “copyist” (ibid.) who practiced the manifestation of sameness. 41. In the discourse of the mystics, the spiritual dimension of the conversational act appears as a practice which focuses on some outstanding individuals. However, the renewal of language – and simultaneously the renewal of the speakers – can also occur through the encounters with the other in everyday life. Besides one political article, L’Étranger gathers several contributions referring to diverse unspectacular daily situations of revolution: pupils, for instance, who challenge the well-ordered cosmos of the teacher with their questions and their different perspectives on life (cf. Donner la parole, ibid., 45-66); or indigenous peoples who force the missionary to listen first and to detect his own God in foreign lands and languages (cf. La vie commune, ibid., 67-96).

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As Luce Giard indicates, in the introduction to The Capture of Speech, it was among other things the intensive dedication to the texts of the mystics that laid the ground for de Certeau’s unconventional view on the events of the May revolution in France42. The fundamental apophatic gesture of the mystics – saying: “this isn’t it”43 – made him oppose every totalizing answer to the disquieting question of the event44, as modern heterologies (e.g., psychoanalysis, historiography and ethnology45) tend to do. Regarding all these heterological discourses, de Certeau was eager to highlight the limits of methods as such. He reminds these disciplines not to “forget” and negate that the historical event, the plurality of cultural practices as examined in the ethnological or cultural studies, as well as (un-)conscious human fears and motivations never become completely transparent and understandable, due to the specific perspectives through which the scientific methodologies view their objects. That is why de Certeau opts for multi-disciplinary approaches – not as if through a plurality of perspectives, through which the event would ultimately be captured and totally understood –, but rather because the confrontation of different methodological perspectives challenges the monological framing based on the limited preliminaries of every discipline46. V. REVOLUTION REVISITED As we have seen regarding the mystics, symbolic orders can be revolutionized and undergo a process of renewal if foreign voices are not repressed, or if they manage to subtly introduce some shifts into well-established 42. L. GIARD, Introduction: How Tomorrow Is Being Born, in DE CERTEAU, The Capture of Speech (n. 7), x. 43. DE CERTEAU, The Mystic Fable, vol. 1 (n. 24), p. 289. 44. De Certeau’s interpretation of the “event” was strongly influenced by the intense French reception of the works of Martin Heidegger in the 1950s and 60s. 45. See the composition of contributions in his anthology Heterologies (n. 32). De Certeau does not imply that the mystic discourse replaces other discourses but highlights structural and functional analogies (and differences) between modern mysticism and the human sciences. All of these discourses share the constitutive relation to an alterity, which on the one hand piques the subject’s curiosity due to its enigmatic character, and which, on the other hand, disquiets and questions the subject’s stability and identity through its strangeness. 46. Cf. the great article of W. WEYMANS, Michel de Certeau and the Limits of Historical Representation, in History and Theory 43 (2004) 161-178, http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1111/ J.1468-2303.2004.00273.X, wherein he illustrates de Certeau’s style of historiography referring to his study The Possession of Loudun, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2000. In the respect of multi-perspective cognition de Certeau’s text “The Look” about an iconological experiment of Nicholas of Cusa is very enlightening as well, cf. M. DE CERTEAU, The Mystic Fable, vol. 2, Chicago, IL – London, University of Chicago Press, 2015, 23-70.

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languages. In this perspective, we are currently witnessing a quite interesting evolution that could cause, or is already causing, a revolution on a global level. A fundamentally new constellation of discourse has developed due to the circumstance that an unexpected protagonist has appeared on the political stage: the earth with its climate, its ecosystem, flora and fauna has become a central party in the scientific discourse. Scientific facts from recent years concerning the scarcity of earth resources, and the ecological limits of a habitable planet, have even led to the rewriting of earth history: acknowledging that humanity has induced a new geo-historical epoch: the Anthropocene. On 29 August 2016, the Anthropocene Working Group47 officially proposed to proclaim this new epoch, the one before it having been called the Holocene (which started about 10-11.500 years ago). This happened because, at least since the 1950s, the human species has raised its impact on the ecosystem to such a scale that scientists have already asserted the first anthropogenic fossil sedimentations. Aside from widely differing strategies of solutions, it is interesting how this event is leading to a complete relecture of the Western tradition. Bruno Latour and other philosophers, like Donna Haraway, even question the fundamental dichotomies between humans and environment, culture and nature, human and non-human actors48. Not least, Pope Francis has started an intensive process of conversation about the issue. In his encyclical letter Laudato Si’49, which has attracted broad attention from the general public and society. Here, he is extending the “revolution of tenderness”50, which he had proclaimed in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, to all of creation. In Laudato Si’, the shed blood of Abel no longer solely refers to the cry of the poor and enslaved human brothers and sisters51, but also encompasses “the cry of nature itself”52. Thus, the text reacts to a 47. Cf. the homepage “Working Group on the ‘Anthropocene’”, Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/working-groups/anthropocene/. 48. See, for instance, B. LATOUR, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime, Cambridge – Medford, MA, Polity Press, 2017; D. HARAWAY, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2016. 49. Pope FRANCIS, Laudato Si’, 24 May 2015, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/ en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. 50. Pope FRANCIS, Evangelii Gaudium, 24 November 2013, art. 88, http://www.vatican. va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_ 20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html. 51. Ibid., art. 211 52. Pope FRANCIS, Laudato Si’ (n. 49), art. 117. As Felix Wilfred points out, Laudato Si’ therewith represents an actual turning point in the tradition of Christian social teaching. Cf. F. WILFRED, Die theologische Bedeutung von Laudato Si’ in asiatischer Lektüre, in K. APPEL – J.H. DEIBL (eds.), Barmherzigkeit und zärtliche Liebe: Das theologische Programm von Papst Franziskus, Freiburg i.Br., Herder, 2016, 305-322, p. 306.

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double crisis: the crisis of human solidarity and the crisis of nature53. On this behalf, Pope Francis subjects Christian anthropology, as well as Christian soteriology, to a profound relecture54. He shifts the “distorted”55 and “excessive”56 anthropocentrism, which according to him arose in modernity, together with its technocratic logic to a perspective that emphasizes the interconnectedness of all being57. He even quotes great Christian and Muslim mystics in order to animate the readers to find God in all things58. The current crisis rearranges the global topography and shifts the former focus from the Northern to the Southern hemisphere. This new topography finds its emblematic center in the Amazonian region, which becomes most significant in the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia59. Due to its universal issue the Pope from Latin America addresses the exhortation – like Laudato Si’, which was already directed to “all people”60 – not only to the people of God but “to all persons of good will”. The document constitutes the response to a participatory process of “dialogue and discernment”61, though it does not intend to give a definite answer to or replace the polyphony of the synodal process itself. It merely wants “to propose a brief framework for reflection … that can help guide us to a harmonious, creative and fruitful reception of the entire synodal process”62. In its utopian visions (similar to Tracy Chapman, who in her song announces the poor getting their share), the exhortation expresses the dreams “of an Amazon region that fights for the rights of the poor … where their voices can be heard and their dignity advanced”63. The global crisis and the dramatic fate of the indigenous people demand a revolution of the ecclesial language, as well as a new kerygmatic style. Unlike Laudato Si’, which gives a lot of room to the universal voice of science, Querida Amazonia prefers the voices of local poets. Poetry knows better how to express the pain about the suffering of “so much life” and the loss of “so much beauty”64, which the indigenous people experience 53. Cf. ibid., p. 307. 54. Cf. ibid., pp. 308-311, 313. 55. Pope FRANCIS, Laudato Si’ (n. 49), art. 69. 56. Ibid., art. 116. 57. Ibid., art. 70. 58. Ibid., art. 233-234. 59. Pope FRANCIS, Querida Amazonia, 20 February 2020, http://www.vatican.va/content/ francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20200202_ querida-amazonia.html. 60. Pope FRANCIS, Laudato Si’ (n. 49), art. 3. 61. Pope FRANCIS, Querida Amazonia (n. 59), art. 2. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., art. 7. 64. Ibid., art. 47.

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in the “green lung” of the Amazonian territory. As Isabella Guanzini emphasizes in her contribution in this volume, this points to a kind of geo-aesthetics that creates new “relationships among subjects, as well as between humanity and earth”65. Thus, the topographical shift from the North to the South correlates with the poetic revision of the cartography of our fundamental affects, and the re-organization of our sensation. Therefore, Laudato Si’ and Querida Amazonia clearly state the necessity for change on a political level, but the documents testify that this is only possible in accordance with the revolution of our fundamental aesthetics and social relations. It relies on the detection and cultivation of another mysticism, a revolution of tenderness, which is sensible to the “interdependence of the whole of creation”66, and which knows to wonder before the graciousness of the fragile beauty of life.

CONCLUSION In this article, I tried to understand and argue for the theologically relevant topos of revolution as a revolution of the symbolic order, which means primarily a revolution of language (though language always correlates with the sphere of aesthetics as well). As we saw in the first section, the symbolic dimension bears the power to sublimate human affects. Thus, different practices of symbolization (besides speech one could also mention the arts) may not only prevent violent outbreaks, but also provide a tempering mode of dealing with one’s sorrows and fears. However, speaking always seeks to be heard. In order to be able to operate and deploy its mediating effect, an act of speech needs to be acknowledged, and this can only be the case if the discourse corresponds with the real experience of the people. As we saw, in a revolutionary gesture the mystics eagerly worked on re-inventing the theological and Christian tradition as a common language, i.e., in fundamental dialogical process (conversar). Thus, the texts of the mystic tradition, though often formally held in an apparently unpolitical style (namely poetics, autobiographical narrations or personal letters), definitely had a political impact. They not only testify to the revolution of spiritual expression, but also functioned as the symbolic point of reference for a whole lot of newly founded communities. The mystics understood 65. See. I. GUANZINI, Geo-Aesthetics and the Politics of Relations: Rethinking Migration with Édouard Glissant, in this volume, 193-205, p. 196. 66. Pope FRANCIS, Querida Amazonia (n. 59), art. 73.

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their writings as elements of a concrete responsive network, and thus did not let their discourse emerge from a position so neutral and omniscient that it cannot be located anywhere. Rather, they believed that establishing a community and a common language would be an “infinite task”67, which would remain open in the future and was not yet completely manifest concerning its meaning68. This “political engagement” of the modern mystics, the building of a new common language, for de Certeau represents one of the most important tasks of a nowadays’ Christian mission in a plural society69. After the modern crisis of representation, one of the main problems of this task is finding a believable new common ground. Pope Francis proposes the earth as this common ground, which does not only serve as a fundamental reference point for religious communities, but for all human beings. The “cry” of the earth and of the poor, who are suffering the most from the destruction of the environment, can no longer be ignored, but demand the mystic sense of listening, rearranging our elementary relations, and giving voice to what has been muted so far in the form of a new song. A relecture of the old order has begun. It is not yet sure what this decisive moment will have been meant to be – and we will only see in the future if utopian dreams will have been able to come true … Pontificio Ateneo Sant’Anselmo Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta 5 IT-00153 Rome Italia [email protected]

Isabella BRUCKNER

67. M. DE CERTEAU, Culture in the Plural, ed. and introd. L. GIARD, trans. and afterword T. CONLEY, Minneapolis, MN – London, University of Minnesota Press, 1997, p. 14. 68. Cf. de Certeau’s comments on John of the Cross Dichos de luz y amor: M. DE CERTEAU, Shards of Speech, in ID., The Mystic Fable, vol. 2 (n. 46), 88-97. 69. Cf. M. DE CERTEAU, La parole du croyant, in L’Étranger (n. 2), 129-150, p. 147.

CULTURAL CRITICS IN A POST-CHRISTIAN OR APOCALYPTIC AGE THE COMPLICATED LEGACY OF IVAN ILLICH

“Apocalypse is and must remain the mystical counterpart of a lived political reality … Times of crisis, when people suffer persecution and when injustice and inhumanity have reached massive proportions, inspire and drive forward the pious and devoted towards apocalyptic longing”1.

INTRODUCTION Apocalyptic contagion is currently upon us, regardless of whether or not one delights in the promise of a bourgeoning revolutionary ethos and the unfurling of justice’s banner, or is rather abhorred by the spectacle of the violent mob, all the while nourishing the doubt that such a standard may well be nothing other than a diabolic counterfeit. Our present historical moment is symbolically and semantically over-saturated with narrative foretelling and counter-narratives alike. One particularly trustworthy Virgilesque guide, the late René Girard, immediately comes to mind as he increasingly applied in his later years his reading of mimetic theory and the function of the scapegoat mechanism as foundational to societal cohesion rooted in violence, while strongly contrasting such mythic, originary violence by way of his distinctly anthropological approach towards what he regarded as the decisive truth of Christian Revelation2. For Girard, the terrifying meaning of history is that such apocalyptic contagion and its ever-greater intensification of violence is, simultaneously, set in proportion not with the expansion, but rather the contraction of difference between rivals, an aping of what he calls “mimetic doubling”. Such contagion of aping rivals, of nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom (Luke 21,10), Girard regards as the mimetic cycle itself, one that continues 1. J.B. METZ, Followers of Christ: The Religious Life and the Church, New York, Paulist, 1978, p. 80. 2. See R. GIRARD, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre, East Lansing, MI, Michigan State University Press, 2010, especially ch. 1 for an expansion of Girard’s principal analysis of mimesis as supported by the famous Prussian military strategist, von Clausewitz, and his understanding of political conflict as but an extension of the warring “duel” and its perpetual escalation to the extremes.

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to accelerate in extremis. Herein, history’s unveiling as one of progressive escalation of violence and mimetic conflict justifiably warrants “apocalyptic” description; paradoxically enough neither from the popular specter of cataclysmic annihilation nor from the any purported moralism. Rather, Girard regards the distinctly “apocalyptic” character of such conflict as necessarily stemming from the dramatic stage of history, one that is inaugurated by the historical realization of the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Word Incarnate, the decisiveness of the slain Lamb, as the innocent victim triumphantly standing at the center of the throne, one that yields to the proliferation of both witnesses and counterfeits alike. This confrontation over the mantle of the slain Lamb as victim has not, however, progressively subsided into some faded, “post-Christian” murmur but has, instead, become mimetically radicalized into a “caricatural ultra-Christianity”, a “victimology” of “totalitarian command, and a permanent inquisition”3, juxtaposed against a backdrop of what Girard describes, not in terms of God’s pending wrath, but the surfeit of our all-too-human apocalyptic failure. For Girard and others4, the drama of this conflict has become endemic of a new form of totalitarianism, one that regards the inescapability of such mimetic doubling as transposed upon an ideologically immanent, politicization of all things. Such a transposition of mimetic doubles, within an ideological frame, renders opponents immune from any and all shared mutually responsive critique, and is a natural outcome of the “subordination of culture to politics”5. The contagion of such human failure is mimetically sustained, as well as amplified, by a cacophony of voices that exhibit an endless lust for dissent and differentiation, which riotously crescendos by consuming and eclipsing into a fraught ambiguity over the very transcendent nature of act itself. Herein, a significant feature of the apocalyptic dramatic stage emerges precisely amid the personal and societal confusion over the nature of human action itself, the origins of such volition, our desires, and the dazzling mysterion of who is in fact acting. Such dazzling mysterion both intensifies the various intermediations of being acted through and upon – whether they be seen as providential acts of God, acts of nature, acts of man and 3. See R. GIRARD, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2001, pp. 178179: “The current process of spiritual demagoguery and rhetorical overkill has transformed the concern for victims into a totalitarian command and a permanent inquisition … The majestic inauguration of the ‘post-Christian era’ is a joke. We are living through a caricatural ‘ultra-Christianity’ that tries to escape from the Judeo-Christian orbit by ‘radicalizing’ the concern for victims in an anti-Christian manner”. 4. Cf. C. LANCELLOTTI, Augusto del Noce on the “New Totalitarianism”, in Communio 44 (2017) 323-333. 5. Ibid., p. 324.

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society, acts of grace or perditious violence, etc. – intermediations, all of which highlights the very ambiguity surrounding both individual and collective forms of moral responsibility at this time in history. The trajectory of this line of cultural criticism, and the denunciation of its then ideological subordination, became ascendant in the immediate post-war years6, with thinkers such as Picard and Marcel, and most notably Guardini, all of whom raised a similar alarm of substantial concern, which in turn was substantially amplified by Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015), over the diabolical anonymity of the technocratic paradigm within both culture and politics and its purported claims of neutral progress that only furthered the romantic tragedy of humanity, woefully, playing God. Aesthetically, we can go much further back, as such description of abounding confusion, and its apocalyptic moment, is famously conveyed symbolically by the Renaissance frescoes of Luca Signorelli and his memorable “Sermons and Deeds of the Antichrist” (1502) in the San Brizio chapel in the Cathedral of Orvieto. The concealment and ambiguity of who’s hand is at work in pointing towards the slanderous division and uproar of calumny is Signorelli’s ingenious detail, which otherwise dramatizes the serene, Savonarola-inspired preacher of iconoclastic poverty, who’s political messianicity obliquely holds the political center and restrains further violent contagion from escalating by gesturing quite obtusely with all four of his fingers towards his own heart and self as indeed worthy of diabolic, anti-Christic imitation. Modestly, this present reflection stems from a sustained historical and systematic analysis of the espousal as well as the separation between this historical contagion and the mysterion, which is to say between the apocalyptic and the mystical dimensions of Christian discourse and its consequences for Catholic theology in particular. The robust flourishing of such discourse, when these “two eyes” of seemingly disparate disciplines commences, has invariably ushered forth a full-scale immersion of our theological gaze into culture and history, acting both as a firm rebuttal of positivist and totalitarian ideological obfuscation, while equally affirming such history as a subject rightfully characteristic of salvation itself. By such conjunction, the continuous task of vigilance and “staying awake” at this present hour is paramount, and all that this entails can be rightfully characterized as a question of a certain form of reading, one that is responsive to compunction7, a double aspect of both yearning for God and prophetic 6. Cf. R. STAAL, The Forgotten Story of Postmodernity, in First Things, December 2008, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/12/004-the-forgotten-story-of-postmodernity. 7. Cf. J. LECLERCQ, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, New York, Fordham University Press, 1961, pp. 29-30.

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denunciation alike; the vectors of which give rise to a distinct, radical, theological grammar, especially characteristic of the “monastic” legacy, which Jean Leclercq memorably termed as the union of “grammar and eschatology”. Presently, this unique Christian eschatological grammar will be assessed in the complicated legacy of the infamous mid-to-late twentieth-century rogue priest and cultural critic extraordinaire, Msgr. Ivan Illich (19262002). Illich’s own ruthless cultural criticism of modernity and its institutions of education, health, transportation, and economic development are legendary, as is his singularly prophetic and iconoclastic role in the 1960s-70s, which gained him both temporary notoriety and public enthusiasm. However, such a popular reception, equally and predictably, turned on Illich in the end, as is the case for all prophets who are either stoned, expelled from the city, or, as is custom today, “cancelled”. However, what is not so well-known to the wider public and yet has become the predominant hermeneutic in retrospective studies on Illich’s life and thought8, are the very theological and ecclesial continuities in his thought, both prior to and after 1970 when he purportedly entered into his “secular period” by renouncing all public rights, responsibilities, and privileges of his priestly ministry9. Illich therein entered into what his close friend and colleague, the Dominican Lee Hoinacki, described as his “apophatic mode” in both “public life” and ongoing historical research wherein his cultural criticism of modernity matured and expanded. In his influential obituary, Hoinacki repeatedly underlines this submerged, apophatic mode of his close friend as an underlying hermeneutic for understanding Illich in all of his diverse roles and scholarship, as such diversity of subjects suggests that there are an “infinite number of ways to say what God is not”. From this seemingly diverse, highly eclectic topic of interest, to put it mildly, Hoinacki’s remarks can be seen as a necessary form of measured, theological restraint, a reining in, so as to more abundantly release Illich’s attempts to map out the birth of modernity in the West. Subsequently, appreciation for 8. L. HOINACKI, The Trajectory of Ivan Illich, in Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 23 (2003) 382-389. 9. Cf. T. HARTCH, The Prophet of Cuernavaca: Ivan Illich and the Crisis of the West, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 90-91: “Illich also wrote to the Archbishop of New York (still his official ecclesiastical home) and secured permission ‘to live as a layman without faculties for one year’ and, then, ‘definitively’ renounced his privileges and powers as a priest on 14 January 1969. He told Cardinal Cooke of New York, ‘I now want to inform you of my irrevocable decision to resign entirely from Church service, to suspend the exercise of priestly functions, and to renounce totally all titles, offices, benefits, and privileges due to me as a cleric’, but he would not ask to be relieved of the priestly duties of celibacy and daily prayers”.

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this continuous, apophatic mode, thereby forms the necessary contextualization and the legitimate surprise for which Illich began to kataphatically ascend only late in life, most notably in his repeated publicized conversations with David Cayley10. From this overall theological vista of Illich’s life and thought, Hoinacki rightly suggests that the attentive reader can best understand Illich’s otherwise ruthless assaults against institutions as a theological critique aiming at what he regarded as a corrupt inversion of the very metaphysical contingency of creaturely being and its orientation towards the eschatological. Such an institutional inversion would become, in Illich’s view, a degenerate perversion of Christian charity and its “eschatological hope”, while supplanting it with “expectation” and the very creation of needs. In other words, Illich’s critique amounts to a charge of the systematization of poverty itself – a perverse “doubling” of the metaphysical contingency of creaturely being – that only modern institutions could themselves fulfil. Whereas, as a necessary counter, for Illich, eschatological hope is inseparably charged with the contingency of being and it must be distinguished from the calculus of said expectations and norms that only institutions can fulfill. From this diagnostic, Illich will maintain that modernity and its institutions precisely seek to reduce the threat and unpredictability of the contingency of creaturely being and thus, in turn, attack the very basis of Christian charity and discipleship, a perversion functioning explicitly as a counterweight against the witness and proclamation of the eschatological Kingdom. Against this submerged theological backdrop, in the main I will argue that the admittedly complicated legacy of Msgr. Illich is but a modern instantiation of this prophetic tradition and its espousal of the mystical and apocalyptic. For Illich specifically, one significant point of entry can be seen in his long historical interest in Hugh of St. Victor that culminates in his work In the Vineyard of the Text (1993), an elegant study that functions both as a loose commentary on the Victorine’s Didascalion and its systematic integration of the “four senses”, which encapsulates the Liberal Arts on the border between the then twelfth-century Augustinian monastic synthesis and the watershed transition to the Thomistic synthesis of High Scholasticism. Poised between these two historical and intellectual eras and their cultural predominance, Illich in particular seizes upon approaches to reading and, in particular, Hugh’s systematization of 10. Cf. I. ILLICH – D. CAYLEY, Ivan Illich in Conversation, Toronto, Anansi, 1992. See, especially pp. 241-243, wherein Illich lays out the primary contours of what would become his later published work, I. ILLICH – D. CAYLEY, The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich as Told to David Cayley, Toronto, Anansi, 2005.

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stadium, with his heavy stress upon the necessity of history, and typified by what Illich calls the “monastic book” as decisively distinct from the scholastic and proto-modern “bookish text”. With the former “monastic book”, Illich characterizes Hugh’s tutelage of learning how to read itself as a remedium. Herein, the grammatical task of learning how to read the “monastic book” is compunctiously regarded as healing and restoring our sight of the contingency of the world, as created and imbued with the wisdom and ordering of God. Likewise, the revelatory breadth of the “book of nature” and its endless fecundity, which invites Illich’s historical and genealogical probing, cannot be brushed aside as a matter of sheer eclecticism. Rather, the elegance of Illich’s retrieval of such a dormant, monastic book, and its distinct manner of reading after nature’s book in a continual readerly pilgrimage towards “all things impregnated with sense”, is manifestly depicted neither as Romantic escapism nor simply a dead metaphor. Rather, as it will be shown, for Illich, history abundantly retains its unavoidable theological character, which gives impetus to his expansive genealogical pilgrimage. Illich reads history both in light of its origins and towards its ends, which both inform, order, and exceed the immanent historical frame from which he comes to prophetically decry as the perverse monstrosity of modernity. Thus, by understanding Illich’s genealogical exposition of the monastic book as remedium to the divide between history and allegory, or reading history theologically, can we, in turn, better appreciate the cultural and political application of Illich’s prophetic criticism, with history seen as a “book” from which one mystically ascends in contemplation, as well as descends in discerning the “signs of the times”. My argument herein consists that only by understanding such a double movement, these two eyes that ultimately yields a proper Christian eschatological grammar of history and allegorical proliferation alike, can we, thus, appreciate Illich’s own late-twentieth-century “radical orthodoxy” that has resurfaced, as well as the greater theological continuities of his complex life and work by which, late in life, Illich once again shocked the world (or at least those still willing to listen) with his daring apocalyptic reading of modernity. The conjunction and tensing of mysticism and apocalyptic in figures such as Illich, who is both thoroughly historically minded and yet equally equivocal in his aptitude for apophatic difference, forecloses in the main any attempt of portraying such apocalyptic/prophetic critique from charges of mere anti-modernism. Instead, Illich’s daring apocalyptic reading of modernity, which surprised and won over, among others, the strong admiration of Charles Taylor, would prove to completely run afoul and overturn the secular

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post-Christian thesis and instead boldly proclaims modernity in mimetic fashion as a monstrous institutional “perversion of Christianity”; thus, worthy of Illich’s full prophetic ire as a corruptio optimi pessima [corruption of the best is the worst]. Hence, by situating Illich’s prophetic critique of modernity and its institutions in this theological hermeneutic can we thus appreciate the esteem the perspective that Illich’s Florentine friend, Giannozzo Pucci, describes as allow[ing] him to recognize the subtle restrictions on freedom that arise from bureaucratic ideology – professional, political, technological – that is the modernist religion … [H]e unmasked this neopaganism as a degeneration of the Catholic Church, as a kind of anti-Church and anti-Christ that has transformed the human person, created in the image and likeness of God, into a formless being driven by needs defined and delivered by regulations and the technostructure11.

I. THEOLOGICAL CONTINUITIES IN IVAN ILLICH As previously stated, Illich’s own ruthless cultural criticism of modernity and its institutions of education, health, transportation, and economic development are legendary from the 1960s-70s, however woefully incomplete apart from its theological grounding and eschatological terminus. This period centered around his work at the CIF (Center for Intercultural Formation), later renamed as CIDOC, which Illich established in Cuernavaca, Mexico as a linguistic and cultural missiological formation institute created for North Americans prior to their missionary service in Central and South America. CIDOC, and its distinctly experimental intellectual and cultural milieu12, would become the genesis for works such as Celebration of Awareness, De-schooling Society, Medical Nemesis, and Tools for Conviviality. Such works of cultural and political criticism made Illich a vanguard of the progressive left, that is, until he increasingly started to shun the public spotlight. This is perhaps definitively marked by his strong defense of the complimentary of the sexes that beguiled both “feminist Marxists and socio-biologists” alike in his early 1980s’ work, Gender, an unforgivable sin of nuanced, historical 11. HOINACKI, The Trajectory (n. 8), p. 383. 12. See, generally, HARTCH, The Prophet of Cuernavaca (n. 9), for his excellent documented historical portrait of Illich vis-à-vis the mid-Twentieth century missionary effort in Central and South America, as well as its European and North American ecclesial networks; all of which are necessary to understand Illich’s own missionary service and his eventual strident critique of such “developmental” efforts.

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inquiry for which he was quickly abandoned and forgotten by all, except for his most ardent supporters13. This segment of Illich’s story is relatively well-known, however, the public and scholarly fall-out (not exclusive of, yet certainly including works such as Gender and its reception) only further adds to the exaggerated mystique surrounding Illich’s early 1970s’ works. Such is the case, irrespective of his later, mature, historical thinking, and what Hoinacki describes as his “apophatic mode” in both “public life” and ongoing historical research, and cultural criticism of modernity. Yet, irrespective of some of his closest friends, much of the public was otherwise largely unaware of these submerged, “apophatic” theological continuities in Illich’s thought. Thus, it came as somewhat of a proverbial “apocalyptic shock” that Illich, nearing the end of his life, did indeed turn over the money tables in the temple one last time, with equal trepidation and resolve, as he spoke to David Cayley arguing that “We are not living in a ‘post-Christian’ era; yet, in an apocalyptic age” and, furthermore, such an age is nothing other than a “perverted Christian reality”. In his extended interviews with Cayley, intermittently recorded in 1996 and 1998 and, thereafter, first broadcast for the CBC program, Ideas in 200014, Illich would go on to provide somewhat of a hermeneutical key for his diverse historical genealogies and social critical works. This key centers upon the vast discernment of such a perversion, which one can say, has informed his critical historical eye all along. Herein, while borrowing the Pauline expression, Illich describes this perverse monstrosity as none other than the: mysterium iniquitatis … the nesting of an otherwise unthinkable unimaginable and nonexistent evil and its egg within the Christian community … Anti-Christ, which looks in so many things just like Christ and which preaches universal responsibility … The Anti-Christ is the conglomerate of a series of perversions by which we try to give security, survival ability and independence from individual persons to the new possibilities that were opened through the Gospel by institutionalizing them. I claim that 13. Cf. I. ILLICH, Gender, London, Marion Boyars, 1982. In this relatively obscure work, Illich strongly opposes the loss of the doubling of gender, of an “ambiguous complementarity” (p. 75, footnote 57), while supported with a partially submerged, dynamic reading of analogy that is twinned by the Trinitarian, “scholastic concept of relatio subsistens” (p. 74) in the end amounts to what his Dominican friend and close colleague, Lee Hoinacki OP, argues as Illich’s overall “strong theological judgment on the character and place of economics in today’s world … that would directly confront both the Gospel and homo economicus, that would be at once more inclusive and more incisive than traditional condemnations of avarice” (HOINACKI, The Trajectory [n. 8], p. 386). 14. One can access the radio broadcasts here: http://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts/ category/Ivan+Illich.

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the mysterium iniquitatis has been hatching. I know too much of Church history to say that it is now breaking its shell, but I dare to say that it’s now more clearly present than ever before15.

While adamantly seeking to preserve the difference between contingency and gratuity from that of a certain inescapable institutionalization of expectation and norms, wherein Illich’s prophetic analysis ensues, the emerging theological profile of Ivan Illich does not simply reveal him to be a theologically submerged thinker of difference. Instead, the portrait that emerges depicts Illich inclining towards a proto-radical orthodoxy. Todd Hartch’s historical portrait, The Prophet of Cuernavaca, patiently demonstrates as much in various instances; first, situating the historical context for which Illich’s sense for the revolutionary political implications of Christian principles grew out of, namely in the spirit of Maritain’s Thomism and, second, an influential Roman seminar in which Illich participated immediately after the war that held an indelible initial influence of Illich’s critique of modernity16. This perspective is key when Hartch tells the story that just a year prior to Illich’s consultation with the second (fall 1963) and third sessions (fall 1964) of the Second Vatican Council by the invitation of Cardinal Suenens, Illich was hospitalized for an extended period of time in Frankfurt. During this period of convalescence, Illich read voraciously and underwent, what he said in correspondence to his friend Joseph Fitzpatrick, a “second conversion to theology”, prior to which Illich had for a while “despaired of the possibility of a ‘theological synthesis out of which modern man could act’”17. This frustration was attenuated by Illich’s increasing apophatic tendencies that aggressively emphasized the difference between the “transcendent God & society which is political”. However, while hospitalized, his “second theological conversion” reignited his prophetic and political theological engagement precisely by focusing intensely on “penetrating that little &”18. This distinctly theological imperative towards action becomes, in retrospect, immensely instructive of his more controversial essays of the later 1960s, most notably “The Seamy Side of Charity” (1967), which underscores his critique of Western development agencies that acted, as Illich argues, in concert in a perverse aping of missiological programs towards Latin 15. ILLICH – CAYLEY, The Rivers North of the Future (n. 10), p. 169. 16. Cf. HARTCH, The Prophet of Cuernavaca (n. 9), p. 8. See also ILLICH – CAYLEY, The Rivers North of the Future (n. 10), p. 67 on how Illich took over Maritain’s teaching responsibilities and his semester course on Thomism while at Princeton due to Maritain suffering from a heart attack. 17. HARTCH, The Prophet of Cuernavaca (n. 9), p. 57. 18. Ibid.

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America. Likewise, it is instructive of the essay “The Vanishing Clergyman” (1967), which sparked anger around the world in those that assumed that Illich was calling for the end of priestly celibacy and abolishing the ordained priesthood entirely; neither of which would be the case. Rather, as he himself argues in “The Vanishing Clergyman”, which aside from its acerbic, rhetorical excess, is, indeed, far more apparent today when revisiting these older works. Namely, the changes that Illich advocated for were “consistent with the most radically traditional theology … and that He did not want to say ‘anything theologically new, daring or controversial’ but to emphasize, rather, that little analogical ‘&’”. That is to say, the radical “social consequences” that obtain in espousing such traditional theological views of the Church, and the ordained ministerial priesthood in particular, all of which, for Illich, firmly resisted and ran counter to modern correlation19. With his principled and uncompromising Kierkegaardian stance, modernity, in all of its principal institutions, increasingly signaled for Illich a clear time for martyrdom for the Church. In retrospect, understanding this little analogical “&” clearly highlights both Illich’s emerging proto-radical orthodoxy, as well as distinguishes him with more progressive, reform-minded theologians20, in particular, the development of liberation theology21, for which Illich remained at best ambivalent toward. The emerging hermeneutic of Illich’s own theological continuities has only been bolstered once more by the recently released publication of 19. Ibid., p. 92. 20. Cf., ILLICH – CAYLEY, Ivan Illich in Conversation (n. 10), pp. 100-101. Once again, Illich’s acerbic rebuke of Cardinal Suenens’ commission, as well as the general direction of his principled frustrations with the general tenor of the Council’s rapprochement with modernity are illustrative: “[T]he bishops had accepted the fact that the document which would come out on the Church and the world would say that the Church could not as yet condemn governments for keeping atomic bombs … It was a wise decision, world-wise. And I gave Suenens a little caricature which somebody had drawn up for me. In that cartoon you see five popes, with their characteristic noses, one behind the other, all pointing with one finger at one of two objects standing there – an already slightly flaccid penis with a condom … and an atomic rocket, ready for takeoff. In the balloon was written, ‘It’s against nature!’ I am proud to have been and to be associated with, and to be loyal to, an agency, a worldly agency, which still has the courage to say, even today, ‘It’s against nature’. The finger might be pointing at the wrong object. There is my issue. I do not believe that the major churches, as organizations today, can take the stand demanded by the times, on the principles they hold”. 21. Cf. HARTCH, The Prophet of Cuernavaca (n. 9), p. 64: “It is worth noting that, even though Illich played a major role in fostering liberation theology, he did not take the theology itself very seriously. He thought highly of Camara as a friend, bishop, and activist, but referred to ‘his foolishness and statements I couldn’t agree with on liberation and such stuff’”.

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selected writings, The Powerless Church22. These early, selected writings were assembled by Illich’s literary executor and long-time collaborator, Valentina Borremans, per Illich’s wish to have these early published writings, composed as a “clergyman to Catholic faithful”, many of which had fallen into obscurity, to be reprinted after his death. Writing in the Foreword to these assembled writings, Giorgio Agamben indeed acknowledges and furthers this hermeneutic of theological continuity, noting that there is a remarkable “proximity” of ideas and themes for which Illich writes prior to and post 1970, at which time Illich freely lays down his ecclesial faculties in a bid of self-laicization. Agamben situates this proximity, ranging from the parish priest in a largely Puerto Rican parish in Manhattan, and later on as Vice-Rector of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, as well as an early invited participant by Cardinal Suenens’ commission for the second and third sessions of the Second Vatican Council, to that of the well-known cultural critic of modernity and its institutions. Despite, what appears on the surface as none other than clear rupture and disjointedness, Agamben argues that a patient and discerning analysis of Illich’s earlier and explicitly ecclesial thinking, from within the Church, shows a “radical and coherent development of theological categories already present in the thought of the priest”23. However, in characteristic Agambian fashion, the hermeneutic he performs on Illich’s work is severely violent and ultimately self-appropriating. In brief, he identifies the proximity between the clerical and the self-laicized Illich post-1970, and the “radical and coherent development of theological categories” that hold together such discontinuities, as none other than revealing the eschatological centrality of Illich’s thought as mirrored in his life. Yet, the violent hermeneutic that Agamben performs not only completely immanentizes, as well as de-temporalizes, such an eschatological center of any and all sense of future hope. Furthermore, Agamben grossly perverts Illich’s eschatological core, reading his own self-laicization as a continuous outgrowth from his theological position as none other than a bid to dissolve both the Church and the eschatological Kingdom from identification and its political manifestation that has likewise dominated Western politics. Now, Illich’s personal and ecclesial history is at best a complicated legacy24 that most certainly warrants critical theological scrutiny; and, 22. I. ILLICH, The Powerless Church and Other Selected Writings 1955-1985, ed. V. BORREMANS – S. SAMUEL, University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. 23. Cf. G. AGAMBEN, Foreword, in ILLICH, The Powerless Church (n. 22), p. viii. 24. See, generally, HARTCH, The Prophet of Cuernavaca (n. 9), for an excellent historical analysis of the situation surrounding Illich’s self-laicization.

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in particular, his ecclesiology at the very minimum, of which it is not my intention to interrogate in this present contribution. However, in the hands of Agamben, the perversion of his macabre performative reading is feverish, as he appropriately entitles his Foreword, “Laughter and the Kingdom”, while honing in upon the eschatological sections in one of Illich’s lengthiest and most substantial early theological essays, “Aesthetic and Religious Experience” (1966). This essay contains many threads that Illich would expand upon in his more mature writings, from his abiding concerns with hospitality and the institutionalization of Christian charity that amounts to its corruption, to that of the broad dimensions of his apophatic thinking. However, in this essay in particular, Illich deals most explicitly with the question of mysticism; first approaching (Part I of the essay) the matter phenomenologically, so as to distinguish it from that of myth and the realization of political fanaticism by the “pseudo-mystic”, which Illich contrasts with the “sober drunkenness” that transcendent “mystery engenders”, which is rightfully characteristic of mysticism proper25. From these phenomenological distinctions, Illich, then (part II of the essay), engages in a more explicit theological treatment of mysticism and, in particular, the relationship between mysticism and apocalyptic as he seeks to constructively engage in the analogy between mystical experience on the one hand, with that of the gospel’s depiction of the Kingdom of God on the other. Illich advances the theological distinctiveness of legitimate, mystical experience, in both its social and ecclesial-liturgical nature by noting these productive analogies between mysticism and the Kingdom elaborated upon by the gospel parables of Jesus, while equally noting the newness that this vision of the eschatological Kingdom introduces specifically in terms of its social dimensions. By establishing these analogies, Illich advances the definitive position that under this theological perspective, “the kingdom is what constitutes authentic mystical experience … The mystical experience of the believer is the conscious experience of the kingdom before the parousia”26. Herein, Illich’s earlier phenomenological contrasts between the authenticity of mysticism’s patient, “sober drunkenness” towards transcendent mystery, and that of mythical thinking and its proclivities towards the “equivocal vagueness and the enthusiasm of the pseudo-mystic (the Viva! Heil! The a-gogó and fanaticism)”27 come to fruition as he theologically situates the experience of the “already” of 25. 67-89, 26. 27.

I. ILLICH, Aesthetic and Religious Experience, in ID., The Powerless Church (n. 22), p. 74. Ibid., pp. 85-86. Ibid., p. 74.

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the Kingdom, initiated in and through Christ Incarnate and extended sacramentally by the Church. Such “fruits of faith” are thus “available only to the believer”, and are distinguished from the eschatological notyet of its parousiaic fulfilment. For the latter is indeed social and contingent, yet of marked contrast with the politico-mythical fanaticism characteristic of pseudo-mysticism. The ecclesial dimensions of this authentic mystical experience of the kingdom are, for Illich, noticeably equivocal, and while he never misses an opportunity for a certain acerbic, prophetic scolding, however, the eschatological Kingdom is, clearly and inescapably, affirmed as a “social reality at a transcendental level” that refuses mythical, political immanentization28. Hence, the eschatological nature of Kingdom, which for Illich constitutes authentic, mystical experience, both apophatically refuses mythical appropriation and instead summons believers in their convivial bonds “by means of communion of faith and messianic hope of a fraternal community”. This is attenuated by Christian dogmas, with Illich’s clear apophatic emphasis, which states “they are negations that exclude the intrusion of myth in the search of mystery”29. Returning back to Agamben’s reading, he seizes upon Illich’s own recognition of the eschatological proviso – the already and not-yet – and its basic three temporal instances: in the present moment, at the moment of death and at the parousia, whereby Illich indeed characteristically maintains, as an equivocal apophatic thinker, that it is “difficult to distinguish” these three times of the eschatological Kingdom. Agamben proceeds to completely eliminate any and all future sense of the Kingdom, and with it, its socio-political and ecclesial identification. In so doing, Agamben eschews Illich’s distinction between the political messianism of the mythical from that of mysticism’s “sober drunkenness” as enfleshed in the ecclesial bonds of conviviality that is responsive to Jesus’ question: “Who are my mother and [my] brothers?” (Mark 3,33). Agamben’s, largely, non-eidetic, kenomatic, apocalyptic approach30 vigorously seeks to maintain and enforce the incompletion, dissociation, and the historical permanence of the not-yet of the Kingdom from any and all ecclesial 28. Ibid., p. 87. 29. Ibid. 30. See, generally, C. O’REGAN, Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic, Milwaukee, WI, Marquette University Press, 2009, for O’Regan’s taxonomy of kenomatic, metaxic, and pleromatic apocalyptic approaches. See also, ID., Two Forms of Catholic Apocalyptic Theology, in International Journal of Systematic Theology 20 (2018) 31-64, whereby O’Regan specifies his engagement of these taxonomies by the specific examples of Metz and von Balthasar respectively as two distinct forms of Catholic apocalyptic and what O’Regan argues to be their competing ecclesiologies, which either facilitate (Balthasar) or are consumed by such prophetic, apocalyptic critique (Metz).

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and political identification, those for whom Christ answers, “My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8,21). In so doing, Agamben violently reads Illich’s own analogy between the Kingdom with that of mystical experience, obfuscating the distinctions Illich makes with Agamben’s own social-ecclesial criterion, surreptitiously acting as the latter’s theological authenticity. We can understand Agamben’s violent hermeneutic as he seeks to enlist Illich in his own primary opposition towards such identification as found in the pleromatic, apocalyptic approach by the likes of Erik Peterson31. Again, Agamben seeks such enlistment not only by otherwise obscuring Illich’s own distinctions between myth and the mystical that, if anything, problematize such efforts, but furthermore, he exploits Illich’s tentative reluctance at distinguishing the various times of the Kingdom by way of erasure and treating this “mystical” sense as entirely immanentized and spiritualized. Thus, hollowed of any form of dramatic historical tension that issues in eschatological hope – an already that remains incomplete, untethered and roaming by eliding the historical, parousiaic not-yet. Hence, Agamben reads the mysticism of Illich as de-temporalized, the Maranatha of this moment alone, wherein the Kingdom presently dwells in Agamben’s larger attempts to unveil both the illegitimacy of political authority of the hegemonic state, and the visibility of the institutional Church alike. In so doing, he falls into a massive trap, for which de Lubac massively shows in Medieval Exegesis, in the very divorce of mysticism and apocalyptic precisely by way of disassociating the anagogic, contemplative drive upwards towards the higher, invisible things from that of social and eschatological hopeful yearning for future things, and the very terminus of history itself32. Instead, 31. See AGAMBEN, Foreword (n. 23), p. ix. 32. For more on this eschatological grammar that holds together the mystic and apocalyptic, see my forthcoming title, P. COOPER, Mystical Theology & Apocalyptic (Wipf & Stock). By necessity, narrating the general contours of their disentanglement are to be found in de Lubac’s four-volume work, Medieval Exegesis and the “fourfold” sense, which includes pairing together history, apocalyptic and the eschatological on the one hand and the anagogic drive upwards on the other. Subsequently, de Lubac’s treatment of the “theological mentality” in Patristic and early medieval exegesis and the four-fold sense of Scripture shows itself as a major rebuttal of the decisive Pseudo-Dionysian influence that was later on rehabilitated in high scholasticism, wherein the anagogic, contemplative drive upwards, towards the higher, invisible things, became thoroughly disentangled not only with scriptural exegesis proper, but, moreover, with future things, things pertaining to the terminus of history itself. A predominant theme in de Lubac’s massive historical work is to isolate this Dionysian trajectory that otherwise severs history from anagogy itself, which he explosively charges is none other than the advent of natural theology itself, on the one hand, and natural mysticism, on the other. Counter-posing such disentanglement, de Lubac locates in the alternative trajectory of Origen, Augustine, and Gregory precisely whereby the fullness of the anagogic sense can indeed come to flourish,

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Agamben compares what he regards as Illich’s de-temporalized eschatology to that of a joke, likening the spiritual exegesis of history to that of two men, both of whom hear a story, yet only one of them “laughs and grasps the point of the story”. For Agamben’s reading of Illich, such laughter “fully coincides with the present moment”, wherein the complete and total dissolution of the Church and the Kingdom to come in no way entails any futurity, thereby eschewing political theology at one and the same time as a discourse of identity that has ended in the witness, not of the martyr, but that of the comedian. Against the perversity of Agamben’s reading, understanding the theological continuities amid the otherwise complicated legacy of Illich is, I maintain, but a modern instantiation of the prophetic tradition and its espousal of the mystical and apocalyptic, which both builds from the early essay “Aesthetic and Religious Experience” and furthermore comes to maturity in his work In the Vineyard of the Text (1993). II. READING HISTORY TOWARDS ITS ENDS: HUGH OF ST. VICTOR AND THE MONASTIC BOOK In his penetrating genealogical read In the Vineyard of the Text (1993), which functions as a loose commentary upon Hugh of St. Victor’s Didascalicon (ca. 1120), Illich’s interests in Hugh are characteristically manifold, and yet, he evinces a decisive maturity and elegance in his approach. Illich is far less cryptically evasive and more unapologetic in his clear admiration for the Victorine in what amounts as a kataphatic counterpoint to his other works. In the main, Illich advances the main argument whereby he regards the Victorine in general as representing a liminal point of cultural resistance in the twelfth century, from the otherwise as evidenced in the interior unity of the four-fold sense of Scripture. De Lubac argues, this flourishing expressed itself as a doubling of the horizontal and the vertical, as both an eschatological and doctrinal component on the one hand, with that of a contemplative and mystical component on the other. De Lubac thus seeks to push back against these diverse currents by marshalling this counter-tradition of the mystic and the eschatological apocalyptic such that in no way is the anagogic drive upwards in any way a dismissal of history and doctrine itself. Rather, “for the Fathers, the essential mainspring of thought was not identity, or analogy, but anagogy” and this anagogic “mainspring of thought” clearly reveals itself how best to read the signs of the times; that is, not by immanentizing and thus substituting historical realities as symbolic and figurative of other historical realities to come – in other words, to make things a matter of prediction – rather, the fruit of such senses held together is found in allowing us to see, discern and read the signs of the times as indeed the book of nature was paired with that of Scriptures itself, to regard “bodily things as figures of spiritual ones, historical things of intelligible ones”.

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impending watershed that would witness the transition from that of the monastic to the scholastic as the predominant cultural force. Illich’s own sympathies are immediately visible as he seeks to extrapolate, and by a certain measure retrieve, the “dormant”, yet fully intact, example of Hugh for that of the twentieth century and its own ongoing technological upheaval; this time around, not from the “book” to the “text”, but rather the text to that of the screen. In so doing, Illich argues that “by developing the concept of remedium”, as applied to studium, Hugh “provides for the twentieth century thinker a unique way to address the issue of technique or technology” amid the decline of what he calls the bookish text33. To understand this genealogical claim, one must first understand the remedium itself as Hugh relates it to his systematization and integration of studium. Illich sets out by anchoring his analysis of Hugh vis-à-vis the Victorine’s Augustinian doctrine of the spiritual senses from which one obtains the contrast between prelapsarian man, “created with eyes so luminous that they constantly contemplated what one now must painfully look for”, whereby Hugh, in turn, presents the book as “medicine for the eye … the book-page is a supreme remedy”. Through studium, Hugh states, “this allows the reader to regain in some part that which nature demands, but which sinful inner darkness prevents”34. The order of studium, facilitated and enshrined in what Illich will call the “monastic book”, stands in terms of a diagnostic remedy for the very rupture in which the order of sin enacts. Absent this remedium, “nature’s demands” remain unjustly heeded and persist in discord and generalized ignorance. Regarding nature and her demands, it is crucial for the Victorine to heed the cosmological injunction as governed both by determinate laws and yet impregnated with the very contingency of creation itself, a necessary paradox that will be returned to when considering both the strenuous and leisurely dimensions of studium itself. In Illich’s reading of Hugh, such a monastic book stands uniquely, historically, in contrast with both the “scroll” of antiquity and the scholastic bookish text of early modernity. For classical antiquity, whereby the book – as scroll – symbolically stands for “fate, roll call and debt registry”, Augustine in De Genesi ad litteram makes, what Illich argues as, an “unprecedented distinction” in relating the two books of God’s Revelation – that of creation and salvation – for which Hugh, subsequently, relays 33. I. ILLICH, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 11. 34. Ibid., pp. 20-21.

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with particular force: “All nature tells of God; every nature teaches man; every nature reproduces its essential form, and nothing in the universe is infecund”35. By this remarkably strong statement from the Victorine, not only do we see a certain rationale for a certain liberality within the monastic ethos, and its strong predilection for promoting and preserving not simply Scriptural sources and those of the Fathers naturally, but also the works of classical antiquity, a point that Leclerq strongly makes. Under the aegis of such a sapiential discipline, wisdom entices and evokes from a plurality of fecund sources, reminiscent of the Justin Martyr tradition of logos spermatikos. However, we exaggerate the point if we simply adduce the openness to this plurality of sources within this sapiential disposition, merely as a reflection of a particularly liberal, humanist, idealist, cultural milieu. Creation, for the resilient Augustinian tradition that Hugh embodies, is given to us as a “book, picture and a mirror”, recalling Hugh’s systematic ordering of studium along the disciplines of history, allegory and tropology36. Thus, Illich is keen on qualifying this sapiential monastic disposition of studium as remedium, not so much as a historical celebration, but as the flowering renaissance of a religious, humanist temperament. Instead, to account for the plurality of sources, emphasis is strongly placed upon the “orality and physicality” of the monastic book, as well as its interplay between the strenuous demands of the grammatical, which Hugh aligns with the historical, with the leisure of the meditatio, as seen in terms of the eschatological. Herein, both the strenuousness of historical form and the leisure of the contemplative assent function as a necessary interplay, such that the universal fecundity, wherein all of nature “tells of God”, is held precisely in virtue of the realism of the monastic book itself, pointing to the picture of the world, in both its laws and contingency alike. Illich tells this story in part by way of contrast, with the advent of the “scholastic bookish text” that significantly departs from the “monastic book” on the basis of the increasing “detachment of the text from the physical object … nature itself ceased to be an object to be read and, [instead], became the object to be described. Exegesis and hermeneutic became operations on the text, rather than on the world”37. Creation and history alike, in consequence to this massive shift, Illich argues, are no longer read themselves, let alone read within an ordering of beginning 35. HUGH OF ST. VICTOR, The Didascalicon: A Medieval Guide to the Arts, New York, Columbia University Press, 1961, Bk VI, p. 145. See also ILLICH, In the Vineyard (n. 33), pp. 121-124. 36. ILLICH, In the Vineyard (n. 33), p. 21. 37. Ibid., p. 117.

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and end and, subsequently, the world as a book, one of the two books of God’s revelation, wherein the presence of God, and the finality of man and its gratuitous fecundity are to be read, most simply, as a metaphor. Subsequently, the bookish, scholastic text becomes increasingly seen as the harbinger for information, as a tool, as an “instrument” for theory and the conceptual, as the book is no longer a “pointer to nature”, but instead becomes a “pointer to mind”. Given that this is one of the causes for this speculative transition, which acts as a seedbed for the technological age, Illich argues, precisely for the increasing degree of abstraction of the bookish text as it is uprooted from its orality and physicality38. One such strategy of Illich’s analysis of the Victorine is not so much a romantic desire of return, as it is to significantly emphasize the distance that we inhabit in our technological age of the “ocular screen” that is excessively flat, untextured, solely visual and ultimately indigestible (i.e., resistant to mastication and rumination) in its consumption. “For an ocular reader, this testimony”, regarding the sheer physicality of reading and its strenuous level of exertion, that is otherwise restricted for those suffering illness and infirmity, the sheer difference between the monastic book, and by extension, the remedium of studium, and its overall lectio divina “can be shocking: such a reader cannot share the experience created by the reverberation of oral reading in all the senses”39. In the main, understanding this shocking contrast between the sacred monastic book and the grammar of its studium, which is espoused to the contemplative leisure of the eschatological, from that of the bookish, scholastic text is necessary to grasp, without which, Illich argues, the later invention of the printing press and moveable type as a reified mold, an institutionalized reproduction, an anonymous copy, and a “stamp” would be otherwise unthinkable40. For Illich, the reason why Hugh is such a central figure is that we can glimpse this subtle yet massive transformation from the traditional monastic book as remedium to the beginnings of the scholastic text, 38. Ibid., p. 119. 39. Ibid., p. 57. Despite the increasing isolation and obscurity of Illich’s research in the later years, his work on Hugh and, in particular, his reflections on lectio divina is responsible for its widespread dissemination within monastic communities and their ongoing theological reflections. Principally, Illich’s stress upon the physicality and orality of the monastic book, in contrast with the scholastic text, contributes widely to his approach to lectio divina as less a prescribed technique or approach, but rather as simply a way of life, not as a regulum, in keeping with Benedict’s Regula. Instead, Illich reads Benedict’s Rule as dividing the day into two primary activities – ora et labora – wherein communal and liturgical recitation of the Psalms are then picked apart and individually dwelt upon in the monk’s physical work in such a manner that “reading impregnates his days and nights” (p. 59). 40. Ibid., p. 115.

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the bookish text that becomes more and more an instrument, a tool, a source, a manual of commentaries and disputations. At the heart of his genealogy, the intuition that Illich advances, which will forcefully reappear in his thinking of the Good Samaritan, is none other than the eclipse of the sense of contingency in the world, only to be replaced with a technological age of the tool, a significant chapter in his claims of the rise of modernity in its mimetically perverse corruption of Christianity. If the world of contingency and of gift is aptly described as the “universe in God’s hands”, then only such a contingent world as such could perversely give rise to the technological age, such that the “sunset and eventual disappearance of the sense of contingency, when the world fell from the hands of God into the hands of man, and constraints on technological development began to fall away, that the tool could be unreservedly glorified, and the way opened for a fully technological society”41. For Hugh, not only is the monastic book an iconic picture that through the remedium of its studium points towards the realism of the created world and its abundant fecundity, but it functions as a “mirror” pointing towards the self. As a mirror, and unlike what Illich will argue in terms of the scholastic text, the monastic book interrogates the reader, for which the reader is called to expose and ultimately recognize himself, as Illich himself was regularly fond of recalling St. Jerome’s phrase, to “nakedly follow the naked Christ” (nudus nudum Christum sequi). Of course, the wisdom injunction as the task of self-knowledge is nothing new. Rather, Illich is specifically here interested at the threshold upon which Hugh stands, as the emergence of this “self” parallels the increasing abstraction, systematization of the scholastic “text” as distinct and separate from the monastic book. Whereas in the monastic vector, for which Hugh still very much resides, the physicality of the page is essential for the reader as pilgrim, so that he “exiles himself to start on a pilgrimage that leads through the pages of a book”42. As both “picture” and “mirror”, Illich’s argument rests upon the transformation of the very physicality and orality of the monastic book, and by extension, its readers in their embodiment of this page, strolling, wandering about in the vineyard of the text, like constantly murmuring bees seeking to “eat the scroll” (Ezek 3,1-3), only to discover the sweetness of the honey therein. Illich delights in the physicality of the monastic book, as carried forth within Benedictine communities and its uninterrupted reading habits, the lege that binds their principle and divine 41. ILLICH – CAYLEY, Rivers North of the Future (n. 10), p. 76. 42. Ibid., p. 25.

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work of ora from that of their physical labora. In so doing, Illich rightly and convincingly argues against the tendency to reduce the mystical, and by extension lectio divina, to some programmatic technique, a technique that becomes set aside, exceptional; in other words, a devotional instrument such as lectio spiritualis. Instead, this decidedly non-systematized, integrated lectio is profoundly more in continuity with Jewish origins, with the desire to “live with the book” is part and parcel of the eschatological bent of Jewish mysticism43. The continuity of this Jewish disposition, its historical and thoroughly eschatological sense, which is carried over within Benedictine monasticism, is once again, as argued earlier, a matter of reading, an eschatological grammar, such that “God does not pre-dict but pre-scribes” the historical fate of the people of God, which, in it, one discovers his own destiny as a post-script44. Not only does Illich stress the continuity of this Jewish sense within Benedictine monasticism, which is radically set in contrast to both Greek and Roman antiquity, neither of whom were “people of the book” and had “no one book that could be swallowed”. Furthermore, by Illich’s stress upon the contrasting grammars of the physical monastic book from that of the emerging scholastic text, the latter from which the manual arises, with its titles, sub-headings, indexes, originality of authorship, etc., as a necessary consequence, so too does the directionality of its eschatology ultimately shift as well. This is not, for Illich, simply a hermeneutical shift alone, of lectio being divided from meditatio, of theology divorced from spirituality, as the common theological narrative from the transition from monasticism to scholasticism assumes. Illich, it must be said, does not seek to go against this common, historical, theological narrative, so much as he wants to, more precisely, underscore the shifting grammars between the monastic book from that of the scholastic text. Such a dramatic shift in turn, Illich will argue, subdivides and thereby autonomizes the bookends of the historical from that of the eschatological as increasingly distinct and incommensurate. Such bookends come to demand differing grammars that are indeed incommensurate, which, analogous to his arguments re the formation of the bookish, scholastic text as predating the later inventions of the mass-produced printing press, a necessary cultural development for which the invention would otherwise be unthinkable, so, too, does Illich advance the implication of these incommensurate grammars between the strenuous determinacy of the historical, as foundational, from that of the contemplative leisure of 43. Ibid., p. 59. 44. Ibid.

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the allegorical, as “picture”, and the tropological sense, as a “mirror” of self-scrutiny and interiorization. Herein, unlike the Carthusian Guigo’s famous four-step process of lectio, Hugh rather sees the eschatological grammar of the monastic book as comprising two distinct yet complementary moments: the “strenuous lectio and the leisurely meditatio”45, which taken together are regarded as the same studium. Illich rightly attributes this complementarity as the Victorine’s true Augustinian form that does not perceive a rigid differentiation between philosophy and theology, as signified by the assertion that of strenuous lectio and leisurely meditatio. This is a stress that is at once familiar, and yet uniquely pronounced and systematized in Hugh as entailing no break between the determinacy of history from that of the open searching of the eschatological, which both ascends in the mystical and descends once again in the historical apocalyptic. From the thirteenth century onwards, and with the fracturing of this Augustinian synthesis, it would only be lectio and its strenuous pursuits that would increasingly come to define studium, whereas private, pious reading became a remedium for a separate illness, one that required a different set of tools. Creation and history alike, Illich profoundly argues, increasingly are no longer read themselves, let alone read within an ordering of beginning and end and, subsequently, the world as a “book”, wherein the presence of God and the finality of man are to be read, becomes, at most, simply a rootless metaphor, a reading divorced of history and eschatological finality and instead becomes alone “spiritualized” in its dehistoricized plane, a matter of lectio spiritualis that is essential a private, pious affair46. Rather, by such an ordering between the historical and the eschatological, the bookends of the beginning and the end, the Fathers will emphasize reading history symbolically in such a grammatical key as the bringing or throwing together, as the act of symballein, which will in turn come to be translated as signs, signum, that both presupposes such a historical ordering, as well as opens onto a participation towards the eschatological ends. The act of symballein is thus rooted in the strenuous grammar of “careful 45. Ibid., p. 63. 46. Cf. ILLICH, In the Vineyard (n. 33), p. 118 on the relative historical inescapability to return to this monastic book and Illich’s own fascinating admission: “For some twenty generations, we were nourished under its aegis [the scholastic, bookist text]. I, for one, am irremediably rooted in the soil of the bookish book. Monastic experience has given me a sense of lectio divina. However, reflection on a lifetime of reading inclines me to believe that most of my attempts to let one of the early Christian masters take me by the hand for a pilgrimage through the page have at best engaged me in a lectio spiritualis as textual as the lectio scholastica practiced not at the prie-dieu but at the desk. The bookish text is my home, and the community of bookish readers are those included in my ‘we’”.

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reading [that] always picks and chooses bits that then must be bundled, sifted and arranged. But this process of ordering will be effective only when the reader remembers one fundamental point: all things and events of this world acquire their meaning from the place in which they are inserted in the history of creation and salvation … in the historia between Genesis and Apocalypse. Only by doing this will he advance toward wisdom through reading”47. Hence, apart from its strenuous, historical grammatical ordering of careful reading Illich reminds us, the signum cannot rise with leisurely assent nor be thrown above; its wings will remain not only bound yet increasingly obsolete, abstract, aloof, mythological, and/or random. Here, we may say, Illich finally comes to that little, yet all important “&”, as he encapsulates Hugh’s foundational linkage between the strenuous grammar of the historical, from that of the leisurely contemplation of the eschatological, both of which, compromising one’s studium with the monastic book, stand as a remedium in leading both towards the fecundity of creation and the prophetic vision that stems from its moral interiorization. Such a synthesis, and its difference from the scholastic, bookish text, Illich argues, presents, by way of the Victorine’s heavy stress upon the historical, a robust contrast for our progressive loss of sensitivity towards allegory, and the theological reading of history as largely perceived as random, meandering, endlessly contradicting, and, otherwise, inaccessible. CONCLUSION: HOSPITALITY AND THE CORRUPTION OF THE BEST IS BUT THE WORST In closing, it has been argued that both the conjunction and tensing of mysticism and apocalyptic, in figures such as Ivan Illich, foreclose any attempt of regarding such apocalyptic and prophetic critique from charges of mere “anti-modernism”. Rather, as the mysterium iniquitatis and the genealogical view of modernity as a perverse, mimetic corruption of Christianity, arguably, the enduring relevance of Illich’s utterly unique and seething critique, his “proto radical Orthodoxy” is, indeed, precisely his genealogical focus upon the ways of modernity in both its political and economic arenas are otherwise unimaginable apart from the radical newness of the Incarnation of Christ. Thus, in turn, its living historical extension as the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, for which modernity invariably apes, as the corruptio optimi quae est pessima. 47. Ibid., pp. 32-33.

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Illich maintains the position that he speaks not as a theologian yet as a believer, and as a historian. He does not subscribe to the modern methodological atheism of the historical critical method. Rather, he acknowledges that while the object of faith is, indeed, rightly beyond history, it is equally of profound historical importance, and cannot be ignored. “Belief”, Illich writes, “refers to what exceeds history, but it also enters history and changes it forever”48. The historicity of faith, and its eschatological grammar, was crucial for Hugh of St. Victor, and is, invariably, of equal concern for Illich, as the adventitious revelation of the Incarnation and its profound newness is “something that cannot be ignored by the historian”, a position that Charles Taylor acknowledges as having effectively “chang[ed] the very terms of the debate. For him, modernity is neither the fulfilment nor the antithesis of Christianity, but its perversion”49. I have gauged this assessment, specifically, in terms of Illich’s eschatological grammar of history and, moreover, its tensing of apocalyptic and the mystical alike, as two sides of one coin; as precisely what allows us to see Illich’s prophetic genealogical vision in neither Church-world form of identity, polarization, and/ or secularization, but rather as genuinely apocalyptic, the unveiling of that which is inexorably beyond the historical, while firmly within it. Directly, in Illich’s own words: “Whenever I look for the roots of modernity, I find the attempts of the Churches to institutionalize, legitimize, and manage Christian vocation”50. The power, and the subsequent ambiguity of this vocation, is only made possible by way of the very historicity and corporeality of the Incarnation, of the Word made flesh in our Lady and its continuation in the mystical Body of Christ, the Church. Ever close to the realm of his own complex biography, Illich portrays this story of vocation poignantly in terms of the parable of the Good Samaritan, which he insists, drawing upon his study of Hugh of St. Victor, does not principally provide for us an instrumentalist and universal moral code; rather, it is a story in response to the question “who is my neighbor?”. For Illich, the relation between the wounded Jew and the Samaritan is adventitious, contingent, a complete surprise, which only subsequently unveils a deeper ontological fittingness and proportionality of relations, what he refers to as the agapeic. Despite the risk and danger that Illich freely approaches in terms of this unbounded ambiguity and contingency that he sees in the parable, understanding such contingency is crucial for his argument. If anything, because it equally explains the temptation to manage and precisely 48. ILLICH – CAYLEY, Rivers North of the Future (n. 10), p. 48. 49. TAYLOR, Foreword, in ILLICH – CAYLEY, Rivers North of the Future (n. 10), p. ix. 50. ILLICH – CAYLEY, Rivers North of the Future (n. 10), p. 48.

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institutionalize these relationships in the first place. This is, precisely, the very heart of Illich’s historical reading, of the perverse triumph of the univocal determinacy of the visible institution over against the surprise and gratuitousness of the equivocal. However, when the very equivocal dimensions of the Good Samaritan parable are eclipsed and systematized, Illich argues, the very power of the story becomes utterly ignored. “A world ordered by this system of rules, disciplines, organizations can only see contingency as an obstacle, even an enemy and a threat. The ideal is to master it … so that contingency is reduced to a minimum. By contrast, contingency is an essential feature of the story [of the Good Samaritan], as an answer to the question that prompted it. Who is my neighbor? The one you happen across, stumble across … Sheer accident [or adventitious surprise, interruption] also has a hand in shaping the proportionate, the appropriate response”51. However, to the institution, by contrast, such contingency amounts to an equivocal threat. It is here, in miniature, that we see a kernel of Illich’s historical thinking wherein the vocation of hospitality, to receive and worship the unexpected guest knocking outside the gates as an alter Christus, becomes instead perverted in the service sector and educational guises, wherein the energies expended are to minimize surprise and fill empty rooms and enrolment figures. For Illich, the gulf of this perversion is uncrossable and definitive, from the sudden interruption and the prostration at the reception of such a stranger to an algorithm that can indeed make us more efficient at welcoming and stay in the business of hospitality in the first place. To speak of Western modernity as a perversion, as a counterfeit, it is not simply to speak in terms of values nor as a moral judgment. Rather, it is a historical vision that opens onto the theological and, therefore, is decisively apocalyptic: Corruptio optimi quae est pessima – the historical progression in which God’s Incarnation is turned topsy-turvey, inside out. I want to speak of the mysterious darkness that envelops our world, the demonic night paradoxically resulting from the world’s equally mysterious vocation to glory. My subject is a mystery of faith, a mystery whose depth of evil could not have come to be without the greatness of the truth revealed to us52.

Saint Martin’s University 5000 Abbey Way SE Lacey, WA 98503 USA [email protected]

Patrick Ryan COOPER

51. TAYLOR, Foreword (n. 49), pp. xii-xiii. 52. ILLICH – CAYLEY, Rivers North of the Future (n. 10), p. 29.

NAVIGATING PLURALISM IN POLITICAL THEOLOGY DISCERNMENT FROM INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

INTRODUCTION By its very nature, political theology is pluralistic in its models, approaches, issues, and aspirations. Its diversity increases when the number of political systems is multiplied by the number of different religious traditions. Global advances in communication and transportation accentuate society’s awareness of distinctions among political systems and religions. Such plurality occurs in the public square through daily encounters, discussions, and shared experiences that challenge notions of the modern political nation-state as well as religious identity. Amid this complexity, people become suspicious of national or religious others, and react with rhetoric that calls for policies to implement religious bans or to obstruct asylum seekers at national borders. Political and social tendencies toward xenophobic behavior that ostracizes others, reflect similar concerns confronting interreligious dialogue. This mindset manifests as disproportionate hegemony, especially Western privilege, which fosters elitism, marginalization, and tensions between the diametric concepts of unity versus particularity. Hence, to resolve sensitive issues affecting the polis, political theology seeks inspiration from the Theos. Peter Berger suggests “that some methodological lessons [for political theology] could be drawn from the experiences of interreligious dialogue, which has multiplied in recent decades”1. As a methodology, interreligious dialogue provides solutions for addressing difficult matters occurring within political discourse. Resolutions entail selecting appropriate dialogic partners and increasing participation without alienating or ignoring society members who offer diverse, valuable contributions to political theology.

1. P.L. BERGER, Conclusion, in ID. (ed.), The Limits of Social Cohesion: Conflict and Mediation in Pluralist Societies. A Report of the Bertelsmann Foundation to the Club of Rome, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1998, 352-372, p. 368.

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I. PARALLELS BETWEEN POLITICAL THEOLOGY AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE Whether interreligious or political, dialogue is a form of relational2 engagement. Shared discussion establishes relationships through encounters with others and their religious, political, social, or economic truths. When performed with patience, mutual respect, and friendship, interreligious dialogue advances “reciprocal communication, leading to a common goal or, at a deeper level, to interpersonal communion”3, insight, and understanding. Likewise, political diplomacy involves negotiation and shared trust; it is “communication between different parties with the goal of reaching agreement on an issue or on a basis for state interaction”4 without provoking animosity. Political and interreligious discourse possesses the mutual objectives of reducing conflict, encouraging reconciliation, and developing a shared vision of a more peaceful future. However, dialogue does not imply, nor always achieve, complete agreement. It is not a speech, lecture, or sermon, nor does it entail polemics, debate, or proselytizing. Instead, dialogue is practical collaboration and active listening among participants willing to contribute differing religious or political viewpoints to gain new perspectives and enrichment. Political theology encompasses a wide range of religious, governmental, economic, and social topics. These integrated theories and theologies “are increasingly in need of careful description and comparative analysis”5 as well as authentic dialogue. Interestingly, if “consensus cannot be reached through public reason, people frequently turn [or] return to religion, ethics, and personal convictions to determine political principles”6. This seems logical since interreligious discourse and political diplomacy advocate 2. My work employs relational ontology and epistemology to mitigate challenges during interreligious dialogue. Another effective process is relational constructivism, which starts with social constructivism then moves toward a relational politics that derives meaning through relationships. For more information, refer to J. KAIPAYIL, Human as Relational: A Study in Critical Ontology, Bangalore, Jeevalaya Institute of Philosophy Publications, 2003; An Essay on Ontology, Kochi, Karunikan Books, 2008; Relationalism: A Theory of Being, Bangalore, Jeevalaya Institute of Philosophy Publications, 2009; and K.J. GERGEN, Social Construction in Context, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage, 2001. 3. Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, Dialogue and Proclamation, par. 9, https://w2.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html. 4. P. KREUTZER, Ten Principles of Operational Diplomacy, American Diplomacy Website, http://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2014/06/ten–principles–of–operational–diplomacy– a–proposed–framework/. 5. M.J. KESSLER, Difference, Resemblance, Dialogue: Some Goals for Comparative Political Theology in a Plural Age, in ID. (ed.), Political Theology for a Plural Age, New York, Oxford University Press, 2013, 133-160, p. 133. 6. R. LOVIN, The Future of Political Theology: From Crisis to Pluralism, in KESSLER (ed.), Political Theology for a Plural Age (n. 5), 181-200, p. 191.

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mutual principles, such as clarity, credibility, completeness, understanding, decisiveness, and perseverance7. The two disciplines also share similar goals; both seek deeper understanding between participants and greater comprehension of different representative views. Political collaboration along with interreligious empathy are critical components for achieving a functional, democratic consensus. Comparable to economic and social input, interreligious insights enrich political arguments by searching for common ground from which to address systemic injustice and to promote peace. Nevertheless, interreligious and political discourse experience corresponding roadblocks to effective dialogue. During political and interreligious engagement, participants seek to avoid disproportionate forms of power and privilege, which encourage elitism and marginalization. Unfortunately, hidden dialogue partners sometimes promote personal opinions or private agendas, which manipulate conversations toward veiled stakeholder interests at various levels throughout religious or political organizations. Another dialogic challenge involves unity, otherness, and identity. To de-emphasize prevalent autonomous philosophies, Martin Buber explores the concept of an I–Thou relationality. Buber’s focus is not on the self (I) or the other (Thou), but where two subjects in dialogic mutuality meet, which he calls “the realm of between”8. In this sacred, spiritual connection, humans intimately relate in a mystical manner to the world (I–It), to each other (I–Thou), and by extension to a hidden dialogic partner, the ultimate or eternal Thou, thereby forming a trialogue. When genuine discourse combines with religious praxis and political action, the alliance neutralizes the tensions and other challenges caused by religious and political plurality to form diverse international communities committed to achieving global security and prosperity. II. COMMON CHALLENGES AFFECTING DIALOGUE Globalization and shifting worldviews increasingly heighten society’s awareness of political and religious plurality. Paradigm shifts regarding diversity introduce several critical dialogic challenges among, and between, the two disciplines. Disparate notions of unity and particularity create concerns for religious or political identity, which elicit a variety of reactions to alterity. Consequently, how people relate to difference and otherness remains a vital question, because uniqueness provides a surplus of meaning 7. KREUTZER, Ten Principles of Operational Diplomacy (n. 4). 8. M. BUBER, Between Man and Man, New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 242ff.

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and historical consciousness with which to interpret religious or political language and concepts. A positive approach addresses plurality through openness and dialogic engagement. For effective dialogue, all participants must possess equivalent amounts of influential power; otherwise, issues resulting from hegemony and marginalization negatively influence the results of interreligious or political discourse. 1. Unity-Particularity Dichotomy Prevailing postmodern views assert that all religious traditions and political systems are different due to changing cultural and historical contexts. However, the shift toward emphasizing particularity supersedes modernity’s preferences for unity, especially the use of metanarratives to describe absolute truths. This rejection of a single reality in favor of multiple perspectives is problematic for some religious and political beliefs. Hence, the dichotomy between unity and particularity generates tension during political or interreligious discussions. In response to a postmodern, religiously pluralistic world, Alan Race describes his now classic Theology of Religions to address the unityparticularity conundrum. This method contains three approaches: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism9. An exclusivist believes divine truth is found only in one’s religious tradition. However, unity within the one true faith provokes radical particularity and polarization. Inclusivists admit truth may exist in other traditions, but frames it within their own religious tenets; therefore, achieving unity costs other religions their distinctiveness. Religious pluralism acknowledges unique religious traditions’ truths resulting from diverse peoples’ encounters with the divine throughout history. Pluralists realize unity through commonly held beliefs while honoring each religion’s distinctiveness. Interestingly, these theological approaches to pluralism share similarities with what Maureen O’Connell calls the three cults of political theology. The cult of identity emphasizes independence and difference to retain particularity within the worldwide, virtual public square. Influenced by international conflicts and acts of terrorism, the second cult idolizes security; its followers reject relationships and unity “in favor of worry-free 9. A. RACE, Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions, London, SCM, 1993, p. 3. For more information on Theology of Religions typologies, refer to D. ECK, Is Our God Listening? Exclusivism, Inclusivism, Pluralism, in R. BOASE (ed.), Islam and Global Dialogue: Religious Pluralism and the Pursuit of Peace, Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2005, 21-50; V.M. KÄRKKÄINEN, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions: Biblical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity, 2003, p. 20.

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self-sufficiency”10. The third cult of amnesia flourishes in nations possessing selective memories regarding past truths. When nations ignore or dismiss marginalized members’ historical narratives, they create a false, incomplete, communal identity that forges unity through tolerance. Yet, by humbly listening to all voices, authentic interreligious or political discourse strives for harmony and co-operation without losing individual religious or national character. Successful dialogue achieves balance between honoring particularity and respecting unity. The Buddhist principle of eclecticism states, “differences between faiths [or politics or cultures] should not be overdrawn or created where none exist [however] we must be no less candid about our differences than we are sanguine about our similarities”11. Often, dialogue participants minimize internal religious or political variances in order to present their thoughts as consistent, universal truths. Such attempts at uniformity, with an emphasis on sameness, ignore or discount uniqueness. Genuine dialogue reveals examples of plurality between, and among, religious and political systems. Still, acknowledging dissimilarities is one of the most difficult challenges in discourse; it is easier to gloss over or avoid distinctions, rather than generate and discuss disagreements12. Although tempting to generalize or downplay religious and political variability, inherent particularity provides dialogic space for addressing the political or religious other. Participants gain very little knowledge when surrounded by likeminded people who quote corroborating precepts. Only acknowledging similarities does not negate a belief or political system’s particularity; instead, validating diversity contributes to greater understanding and highly effective communication. 2. Identity Perceptions regarding sameness and difference originate, in part, from religious or political identity. Prior to the advent of globalization, many religious traditions considered themselves as independent entities with unique characteristics having little or no need to interact with each other. 10. J.K. DOWNEY et al., Theological Roundtable: The Future of Political Theology, in Horizons 34 (2007) 306-328, p. 313. 11. H. RATANASARA, Interfaith Dialogue: A Buddhist Perspective. An Examination of Pope John Paul II’s Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Presentation at the Intermonastic Dialogue Gethsemani Monastery, Louisville, KY, July 1996, http://www.urbandharma. org/bcdialog/bcd2/interfaith.html. 12. M.J. BARNES, Christian Identity and Religious Pluralism: Religions in Conversation, Nashville, TN, Abingdon, 1989, p. 80.

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Nevertheless, religion is “a ‘first-level’ association”13 that plays a central role in defining the socio-political identities of its adherents. Notions of oneself shape “thinking about and acting in the world in territorial terms”14 when discussing human rights, political agency, and national sovereignty. Unhealthy autonomous selves marginalize alterity by establishing a “them-versus-us” paradigm in religious, political, and social situations. These thoughts manifest as extreme fundamentalism, nationalism, or fanaticism, respectively. A healthy relational notion of oneself welcomes social interaction, which constructs positive personal and corporate identities with others. The concept of identity is an ambiguous, difficult term to define in both form and function. A person’s or organization’s character provides distinctness, but defines clear boundaries over and against others. The use of specific language, symbols, and rituals, likewise promotes intra-group relations and unity yet these same components reveal religious or political differences. However, global enterprises, which connect societies, integrate economies, and unite cultures, tend to blur national and religious identities. During dialogue, participants acknowledge and comprehend new perspectives through relationships that eventually influence, without necessarily diminishing, their own unique identities. The challenge is how to retain one’s individuality while remaining open to others’ thoughts. Given that identity formation is fluid, people fear losing their sense of self or eroding their own beliefs for the sake of harmony. However, effective dialogue necessitates a clear understanding and a firm foundation of a person’s actual religious or political convictions, especially when engaging others with dissimilar, persuasive viewpoints. From a secure grounding in one’s beliefs, morals, and ethics, dialogue intensifies rather than threatens individuality15. Dialogic engagement thus provides a radical opportunity to re-evaluate and affirm one’s self and one’s values since “the old does not disappear; it becomes more highly prized”16. Validating oneself is important, yet relating to people with empathy, and making a positive effort to understand various opinions, conveys respectful appreciation for others’ unique identities formed by different experiences and views. Otherwise, participating in discourse from inflexible religious 13. M.D. CHAPMAN, Rowan Williams’s Political Theology: Multiculturalism and Interactive Pluralism, in Journal of Anglican Studies 9 (2011) 61-79, p. 76. 14. J. AGNEW, Borders on the Mind: Re-Framing Border Thinking, in Ethics & Global Politics 1/4 (2008) 175-191, p. 175. 15. P.C. PHAN, Being Religious Interreligiously: Asian Perspectives on Interfaith Dialogue, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2004, pp. 52, 59. 16. J.W. DEVLIN, The Bridge of Partnership: Christians, Jews, and Muslims as Participants in the Struggle for World Transformation, in G.S. SLOYAN (ed.), Religions of the Book, New York, University Press of America, 1996, 11-22, p. 15.

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or political positions leads to stereotyping alterity, which perpetuates hegemony and marginalization. 3. Hegemony Politics is frequently about acquiring power and exploiting control. Many of the earliest political and interreligious encounters resulted from colonialism with its associated missionary activities. Expansionist ideologies perceived hegemony to be a scarce, zero-sum quantity, thereby establishing it as oppositional and unitary. This notion “provides the deep infrastructure for the manufacturing of inequality and the hierarchical coding of social difference”17. Consequently, a combination of arrogance and supremacy historically imposes distorted cultural norms on society, such as the patriarchal portrayal of women as weak victims, which is so “deeply ingrained as to be almost invisible and to function as ‘common sense’”18 without further critical appraisal. Michael Jon Kessler acknowledges that political theorists “cannot maintain an imperialistic position of the supremacy of their own political ideas, but must move to dialogical interaction and engagement with those beyond one’s own theoretical tradition”19. Nevertheless, the lingering effects of Western imposition often thwart political and interreligious discussion. Some religious doctrines exacerbate the problem of hegemony by implying authority is a divine right or God’s revelation, which is why political theology continually must critique power structures along with their associated symbols. Biased ideologies corrupt the proper functioning of political and religious institutions at interreligious or international levels, and within the hierarchical organizational structures of specific religions or nations. By carefully selecting language phrases and word choices during dialogue and decision-making processes, those in power maintain and protect their existing advantages of supremacy, dominance, or wealth20. Negative tactics of ignoring or excluding others are also effective power politics used to manipulate dialogic situations. During interreligious dialogue, one example is “Abrahamic exclusion”21, which occurs when representatives 17. M.S. HOGUE, Toward a Pragmatic Political Theology, in American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 34 (2013) 264-283, p. 267. 18. DOWNEY, Theological Roundtable: The Future of Political Theology (n. 10), pp. 322-323. 19. KESSLER, Difference, Resemblance, Dialogue (n. 5), p. 135. 20. P.F. KNITTER, Toward a Liberative Interreligious Dialogue, in Cross Currents 45 (1995-1996) 451-468, p. 459. 21. K.P. PEDERSEN, The Interfaith Movement: An Incomplete Assessment, in State of the Interreligious Movement Report, June 2008, compiled by the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, pp. 228-257.

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from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam determine agendas that restrict contributions from non-Abrahamic religions’ delegates. In politics, restricting voters’ access to polling locations or intimidating dissenting voices at rallies are additional examples. Yet, when authoritative entities paradoxically emphasize equality among participants, it sends mixed messages that cause confusion during dialogue. Those in control “may be unconsciously promoting the status quo of dominance”22 by fostering mutuality and universality. Dominant groups frequently highlight affinity, cooperation, and equal contribution in dialogic exchanges to “deflect attention from the unequal distribution of power underlying it”23. An overemphasis on parity obscures dominancesubmission patterns, thereby perpetuating a hierarchy of nations or faiths24. Unfortunately, people most likely or willing to embrace the other in dialogic encounters often are unaware of how hegemonic imbalances affect the motivations or intentions of discourse25. Power and privilege restrict communication’s effectiveness, because imbalances are not unidirectional; who constitutes the marginalized other depends on who has a position at the center of power and who resides at the borders of societal influence. 4. Marginalization Authentic interreligious or political dialogue resists inaccurate, biased social norms that privilege or exclude certain people’s ideas. Regrettably, influential people tend to silence and marginalize others who are radically different from themselves. Each person, however, possesses inherent dignity as well as uniqueness derived from specific religious practices, political worldviews, socio-economic and cultural demographics, as well as distinct life experiences. These differences define a person’s identity, beliefs, and perspectives, but they also establish boundaries with other people. Hence, every person exists at the margins of the other. Tactics that ignore, discredit, or discourage contributions from marginalized others, eventually prevent people from participating in dialogue or political decisions. Nevertheless, as with religious involvement, “one 22. P.F. KNITTER, Introducing Theologies of Religions, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 2002, p. 161. 23. Ibid., p. 162. 24. P.L. KWOK, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology, Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox, 2005, p. 205. 25. P. HEDGES, Controversies in Interreligious Dialogue and the Theology of Religions, London, SCM, 2010, p. 99.

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needs to be part of a polis in order to act for political change”26. This is especially true for immigrants, refugees, and other stateless people who have no political voice and, subsequently, few human rights. When historically disregarded women, minorities, impoverished, and elderly people are silenced, they become invisible. Consequently, they lack substance, esteem, and the ability to be present and relate to others. In some cases, radical marginalization abandons or ostracizes subaltern members of society; while in extreme situations, it simply eradicates people who differ from socially defined norms. III. FORMS

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Participation is clearly a critical component for political and interreligious dialogue. Within political theology, the challenge is how to “rethink political space and voice to move beyond the impasse of representation, domination, and exclusion”27. Interreligious dialogue has comparable concerns. The Roman Catholic Pontifical Council for InterReligious Dialogue document, Dialogue and Proclamation, describes four forms of interreligious engagement that are likewise applicable to political situations28. One mode is theological exchange, which is reserved for discussions between religiously diverse academic specialists. This dialogic form equates to high-risk political peace-building deliberations, international summit meetings involving top leadership, or interventions between civil organizations. The other three dialogic types of life, action, and religious experience occur in the community public square. Their purpose is to encounter others and learn about different religious or political truths through shared words, deeds, and experiences that happen in daily life. These types of discourse are comparable to multi-level political encounters, which engage citizens to build consensus on critical problems. As a result, participants forge relationships that inspire sincere conversation and deep listening. All people are encouraged to partake in dialogue “although not always to the same degree or in the same way”29. Thus, participation ranges from exclusive exchanges between expert leaders to including everyone who desires to contribute. 26. R. ADAMI, Human Rights for More Than One Voice: Rethinking Political Space beyond the Global/Local Divide, in Ethics & Global Politics 7/4 (2014) 163-180, p. 169. 27. Ibid., p. 164. 28. Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, Dialogue and Proclamation, par. 42. 29. JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Missio (Mission of Christ the Redeemer), art. 57, https://w2.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html.

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Although citizens or religious adherents are willing and able to engage in dialogue, at times it may be appropriate for political or religious specialists to manage delicate or contentious situations. Persuasive arguments in favor of limiting deliberation to specialists recognize that significant amounts of education and preparation are essential to enter interreligious or political engagement. Therefore, some scholars advocate for “representative intellectuals”30 who accurately articulate variances within and between religious traditions, or describe subtle nuances in political positions without distortion. Appropriate credentials also place participants on equal terms with comparable subject-matter experts, thereby promoting more effective communication. In political discourse, the imperative model engages powerful authoritative people to address critical circumstances utilizing structured, pragmatic negotiation and dialogic mediation, then, respectfully, discuss genuine differences to eventually obtain political consensus31. Negotiating peace treaties and participating in global economic or environmental summits are a few examples where highly trained national leaders and advisors with impeccable negotiation skills are vital for productive conversations. Similarly, religious leaders and specialists such as the Pope for Catholics, the Dalai Lama for Tibetan Buddhists, the Archbishop of Canterbury for Anglican groups, and recognized research experts from non-hierarchical religious communities possess specific knowledge, symbolic language, and sensitivity to navigate sensitive, complex interreligious issues. Limiting participation to experts also prevents dialogue from becoming trivialized at the level of popular religion or digressing into politics of distraction. However, representative participation raises questions about whether specialists represent their own, an organization’s, or the people’s ideas. Dominant religious or political leaders frequently control the agenda, as well as determine who participates in dialogic encounters. Nations predominately influenced by Islam and Judaism, for instance, have clearly defined forms of political theology originating from shari’a and Torah laws, respectively. In other governments, the people “contract with each other to set up a unified central political power in order to ‘represent’ both their several and their aggregated interests”32. Having powerful representatives “does not rule out suppression of the opinions of individuals, minority 30. P.J. GRIFFITHS, An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue, Eugene, OR, Wipf & Stock, 1991, p. 3. 31. C.H. GRUNDMANN, Living with Religious Plurality: Some Basic Theological Reflections on Interreligious Dialogue, in Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 19 (2009) 133-144, p. 135. 32. J. MILBANK, Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People, West Sussex, Wiley Blackwell, 2013, p. 171.

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groups, or those who deviate from society at large”33. One voice or vote substituting for many can be effective, unless representatives usurp this authority to further their own personal interests or when their constituents’ cultures, political philosophies, theologies, or economies vary considerably. In either scenario, people at society’s borders lose the ability to voice their distinctive concerns in matters of politics or religion. When dialogue occurs exclusively between scholars and other authoritative representatives, viewpoints representing people at society’s borders are less likely to be heard or be taken seriously. For instance, religious or political officials consider deliberation to be a low priority and, thus, delegate associated dialogical tasks accordingly. Consequently, these leaders do not participate in discourse, at least not initially, until they deem it to be important or safe enough to proceed. In the meantime, they “leave interreligious dialogue to those who are somewhat marginal within their own structures”34. This situation creates hegemonic disparity at interreligious or political meetings, which promotes yet another form of marginalization since “the conversation involving two or more participants is only fruitful if there exists a certain equality of power among them”35. Inequalities related to authority occur among individual national leaders, as well as between and within countries due to political, social, or economic disparities. Unpleasant historical events also generate animosity and disparity during political or interreligious discourse. Participating in dialogue entails risks, especially for people without political power or economic influence within society. A person who is ostracized from the political or social centers of control perceives a lack or imbalance of authority as a “threat to his or her status before the dialogue even begins”36. The psychological feelings of danger, and subsequent nervousness, originate not only from a sense of inequality in the relationship, but from the novelty of participation, fear of losing one’s identity, or previous dialogic experiences that were uncomfortable or embarrassing. Hence, people who engage in communication from weakened subaltern positions frequently are frightened and consequently remain silent, which means they rarely take advantage of an opportunity to share 33. GRUNDMANN, Living with Religious Plurality (n. 31), p. 135. 34. J. BALDOCK, Responses to Religious Pluralism in Australia, in Australian Religion Studies Review 7/1 (1994) 21-31, p. 27. 35. G. BAUM, The Social Context of American Catholic Theology, in G. KILKOURSE (ed.), Catholic Theology in North American Context: Current Issues in Theology (Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America), Macon, GA, Mercer University Press, 1987, 83-100, p. 92. 36. J. MAGONET, Talking to the Other: Jewish Interfaith Dialogue with Christians and Muslims, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p. 91.

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and compare their narratives with others, specifically people in leadership positions. Uncertainty and fear lead to confusion, which thwarts the purposes of discourse; because to appease powerful people, the disenfranchised become anxious about offending others. Nevertheless, including a variety of participants within political or interreligious dialogue ensures multiple viewpoints are presented. This approach counteracts the notion that “one voice from a culture, socioeconomic class, or religious tradition purportedly speaks for the whole group in all its diversity”37. During one interreligious dialogue seminar, for example, “a practicing Reform Jew presented as ‘the Jewish position’ a particular emphasis on the Holocaust, to which another Jewish person, who was present, strongly objected … So, the absence of this dissenting participant would have been a silent disservice”38 to expressing diverse thoughts on the subject. In Germany, Muslim scholars argue that dialogic participants are often “white German converts to Islam – hardly representative of the Muslim population in the country, which is made up primarily of immigrants”39 who lack political influence or adequate language skills to convey their points. These situations exemplify the challenges of representation and of privilege at society’s center of power. To counter elitism, privilege, and marginalization, some scholars propose all people have a voice in the public square. The realities of pluralism and globalism necessitate unique views from the center and the borders of society; thus, “dialogue should involve every level of the religious, ideological communities, all the way down to the ‘persons in the pews’”40. The greater the diversity, the greater the creativity, especially when discussing different political perspectives or learning to appreciate distinct religious traditions. These “genuine dialoguers, while deeply rooted in their faith, are the risk takers, the radicals, the prophets who are not afraid to affirm wonder wherever it is revealed”41. The result is an assortment of religious or political participants that ensures a plethora of opinions. Public squares “should be big, bustling, semi-chaotic ‘places’, rife with ideas, questions, passion, and curiosity, yet measured by standards 37. J. SHEETZ-WILLARD et al., Interreligious Dialogue Reconsidered: Learning from and Responding to Critique and Change, in Journal of Ecumenical Studies 47 (2012) 249-271, p. 255. 38. Ibid., p. 256. 39. Ibid., p. 264. 40. L. SWIDLER, A Dialogue on Dialogue, in ID. – J.B. COBB, JR. – P.F. KNITTER – M.K. HELLWIG (eds.), Death or Dialogue? From the Age of Monologue to the Age of Dialogue, London, SCM, 1990, 56-78, p. 60. 41. R.M. SHAPIRO, Moving the Fence: One Rabbi’s View of Interreligious Dialogue, in M.D. BRYANT – F. FLINN (eds.), Interreligious Dialogue: Voices from a New Frontier, New York, New Era/Paragon House, 1989, 31-40, p. 35.

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of decorum, listening, and mutual respect”42. Moreover, religion “must participate in the public square as a negotiating partner with the state whose role is to arbitrate unjust social imbalances”43. Broad participation in both religious and civic matters acknowledge plurality, while providing an outlet for voicing differences. IV. METHODS TO INCREASE PARTICIPATION Several methods exist for increasing varied, multicultural participation in interreligious or political discourse. For diverse people to come together and engage in discussion, they first must learn how to conscientiously communicate with each other. The organizers of interreligious or political encounters should be sensitive to participants’ differing educational, social, and economic status in addition to their religious or political affiliation. Sometimes training is necessary to enhance dialogic techniques, such as negotiation, conflict resolution skills, and deep listening. Reasonable dialogue therefore recognizes and respects the numerous skill levels, talents, and attitudes that exist among participants and seeks outlets for utilizing this broad range of abilities. Each method to increase dialogic participation should invite participants to discuss and explore the differing truths, complexities, and ambiguities associated with interreligious or political engagements without necessarily acquiescing to them. Instead, the goals are to build mutual trust and understanding among open-minded participants. One approach is to employ Natural Law theory, which increases participation within interreligious and political deliberation as well as across the disciplines. Natural Law theory enables religious participants to escape specific scriptural interpretations of partisan engagement and ethics when engaging in political discourse44. Likewise, Natural Law theory provides an opening for secular participants from multiple disciplines to discuss theological problems without feeling religiously conspicuous or ostracized. Natural Law theory also resolves unbalanced power issues, since it applies equally to everyone within a community. Accepting the margins as places of dialogic opportunity is another strategy to increase participation and involvement. One of the most effective places discourse occurs is at intersections of difference, that is, at the 42. P. ADMIRAND, Humbling the Discourse: Why Interfaith Dialogue, Religious Pluralism, Liberation Theology, and Secular Humanism Are Needed for a Robust Public Square, in Religions 10/450 (2019) 1-16, p. 1. 43. CHAPMAN, Rowan Williams’s Political Theology (n. 13), pp. 70, 64. 44. D. NOVAK, Doing Political Theology Today, in KESSLER (ed.), Political Theology for a Plural Age (n. 5), 201-217, p. 215.

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borders of political or religious ideology. Rather than being divisive, “we can see borders as the privileged meeting places where different persons and peoples will come together to form a new and most inclusive humanity”45. The political space where people interact is what Hannah Arendt calls “the absolute local”46. Marginal boundaries function as frontiers to cross and explore; they foster empathetic relationships through shared experiences and communication. The act of crossing over borders then crossing back to one’s original position yields new perspectives that increase pluralistic understanding. Double belonging across cultural, social, political, or religious boundaries is a strategy that facilitates efficient border crossing. Compound identities such as “Buddhist-Christian” or “progressive conservatist”, mitigate negative viewpoints associated with people at the borders of religion or political theology. In this paradigm, no center exists, for “when one margin meets another, there is a [new] margin of marginality, the creative core”47 where genuine interreligious or political dialogue happens. Through double belonging, people gain a better understanding of multiple traditions and their customs, or they comprehend diverse political views in greater depth. As a result, participants articulate this new knowledge more accurately during discourse. Some groups such as minorities, women, the poor, and other subaltern people, experience a double belonging as citizens and as marginalized members at society’s borders. Usually their opinions are trivialized, ignored, or rejected; however, including their voices contributes different ideas to interreligious or political discussions. Disenfranchized groups often possess negative feelings based on oppressive life experiences and therefore “can offer insights into social, [religious,] and political realities that those in the center simply cannot have”48. While advantageous for actual dialogue, the expanded experiential understanding from double belonging also challenges a person’s original religious or political beliefs, one’s sense of self-identity, and previously harmonious relationships with others. The theological practice of self-emptying minimizes aspects of the self that thwart interreligious or political communication while increasing involvement, especially from subaltern members. The act of self-emptying involves removing arrogance and notions of superiority in order to become 45. V. ELIZONDO, Transformation of Borders: Border Separation or New Identity, in M.P. AQUINO – R.S. GOIZUETA (eds.), Theology: Expanding the Borders, Mystic, CT, Twenty-Third Publications, 1998, 22-39, p. 34. 46. ADAMI, Human Rights (n. 26), p. 173. 47. J.Y. LEE, Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology, Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 1995, p. 151. 48. P.F. KNITTER, One Earth Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue & Global Responsibility, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis, 1995, p. 92.

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more open and welcoming, particularly when approaching vulnerable people. This technique achieves a more equitable relationship of solidarity between groups at the center of power and members at the weaker edges of society. Authentic encounters occur within an atmosphere of mutual respect and acceptance; thus, dialogue is effective “according to the degree of awareness would-be members show for the interests of others”49. Engaging in political or interreligious discussions with an attitude of humility honors everyone’s intrinsic dignity and values their unique contributions. Another approach involves forming dialogic teams that include a wide range of stakeholders. Clergy might partner with politicians, for example, or scholars could engage with community members interested in political or interreligious activities. Each group contributes to deliberations from diverse perspectives and, together, they provide a more complete account of their political or religious viewpoints. During dialogue, group members avoid situations that create dominance, dependence, resentment, or loss of self-esteem. Instead, each member seeks ways to collaborate and celebrate differences. This method utilizes proven communication processes and best practices of engagement to ensure all participants have opportunities to express their opinions and to acknowledge each other’s concerns. To extend dialogic participation, interreligious and political organizations utilize various forms of social media. Grassroots efforts, particularly, benefit from the popularity of the internet, since it allows for quick organization, easy dissemination of information, and expansive interpersonal networks that cross geographical boundaries50. Furthermore, internet technologies have policies that promote an open access and exchange of data, such as communicating effective practices for coordinating social justice projects and sharing ways to improve dialogic engagements. Anonymous identities used to log into discussion groups also eliminate exclusion and marginalization based on personal characteristics prone to bias. The internet is especially advantageous for distributing results from interreligious or political encounters, including successful narratives about diverse people living, working, and flourishing together. CONCLUSION Doing political theology in the public square inevitably brings together citizens with pluralistic views on politics and divergent political systems. As the public square becomes more global, the number of diverse political 49. Z. OKLOPCIC, Beyond Empty, Conservative, and Ethereal: Pluralist Self-Determination and a Peripheral Political Imaginary, in Leiden Journal of International Law 26 (2013) 509-529, p. 514. 50. SHEETZ-WILLARD, Interreligious Dialogue Reconsidered (n. 37), p. 267.

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opinions increases along with notions of otherness. Therefore, navigating political theology pluralism entails responses to alterity as well as associated participation and communication challenges. Genuine dialogue advances a contemporary awareness of religious or political diversity, not as a situation to be remedied, but as a reality to be embraced and realized. Lessons learned from the development and practice of interreligious dialogue offer efficient methods for dealing with difficult problems common to both religious and political disciplines. One shared dialogic issue for political and interreligious discourse is the unity-particularity conundrum, which involves disparate thoughts advocating singular metanarratives and truths on the one hand, and multiple accounts about truths on the other hand. Interreligious dialogue offers a both/and solution that highlights similar narratives and values, while exploring differences in order to develop deeper religious or political insights. By embracing both sides of the unity-particularity conundrum, religious traditions and political theology retain their unique identities and ideologies yet establish relational unity with others. Although loss of self is a legitimate concern in relationships, political or interreligious deliberations enhance identity when participants learn about, and respect their own, as well as different religious or political tenets. Disproportionate hegemony and the subsequent marginalization of subaltern people are human-defined and human-imposed constructs that must be eradicated. During dialogue, power imbalances privilege the experiences of people at the center of society as normative behaviors. However, identifying and then including previously disregarded, silenced voices extends the theological or political conversation to encompass additional narratives about various ethical beliefs and political values. These stories, when combined, provide a more accurate description of the human condition. To be more inclusive, interreligious dialogue exemplifies how to extend participation to non-traditional members at the borders of society and embrace their diverse perspectives and outlooks. Some suggestions include utilizing new forms of social media, employing philosophical concepts related to Natural Law theory, practicing theological self-emptying approaches, exploring double religious belonging, recognizing grassroots efforts, and coordinating cross-functional team endeavors. These methods encourage novel contributions from previously ostracized religious and political groups thereby inspiring innovative answers to life’s ultimate questions. In order to reduce hegemonic imperialism and imposition that cause marginalization, political or interreligious engagement requires selecting an appropriate group of participants. Effective dialogue strives to involve contributors from diverse epistemological groups, including religious,

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political, economic, and social sciences to examine, and then improve humanity’s relationships with well-being and flourishing. Yet, opinions vary on including only religious or political leaders, choosing representatives, favoring subject-matter experts, or opening the discussion to the general public. In some forms of dialogue, such as theological exchange or international negotiations, well-educated religious representatives and national political leaders are certainly appropriate. However, as with voting and political action, participation is vital to promote healthy discourse. Since political and interreligious engagement occur during everyday life events and encounters, experts, as well as citizens and lay people, are essential participants. Lessons learned from interreligious dialogue offer guidance to political theology on how to actively listen and to communicate with empathy, trust, and respect at meetings between citizens who possess different viewpoints. The goal is not unity as sameness; instead, authentic dialogue highlights the unique nature of each religious or political entity and acknowledges each person’s efforts through welcoming, cooperative, social interactions. Generating confidence among pluralistic participants removes fear of the other and of divergent thoughts. Furthermore, the moral character of interreligious engagement supports and values each participant’s intrinsic dignity, religious or political identity, and diverse opinions, all of which contribute to the common good. As the theos increasingly affects the polis, interreligious dialogue transcends theological problems to incorporate political and social issues. One shared concern among major world religions, for example, is a sense of responsibility to those who suffer from many forms of injustice. Through sensitivity and compassion for others, interreligious dialogue shifts from mere words to awareness and praxis. Ideas generated during discussions culminate in actions that improve political, economic, and social conditions. The future of interreligious engagement promises innovative, allencompassing trends that focus on and value multiple cultures, challenging social issues, and diverse, inclusive participation. Consequently, interreligious dialogue is a powerful example and method for political theology to resolve issues and build relationships throughout the world. DePaul University Department of Religious Studies 2333 N Racine Ave Chicago, IL 60614 USA [email protected]

Joyce Ann KONIGSBURG

EPILOGUE

REDEEMING VULNERABILITY? QUESTIONS FOR POLITICAL THEOLOGY*

I. DISCERNMENTS PAST AND FUTURE My inquiry begins from the observation that appeals to the significance of vulnerability, in one form or another, have become a key marker in discussions of the task and character of political theology. Given the widely acknowledged diversity in what is said to define political theology, I should specify that my focus in this short piece lies in a theological tradition with roots in the Christian movements that arose in Europe following the Second World War, and across the Americas and beyond, under the aegis of liberation1. Though still a broad trajectory, it is significantly narrowed insofar as its interest in the relation between theos and polis is oriented primarily by a concern to address the presence of imposed suffering in the world. Such suffering is seen, simultaneously, as a worldly injustice and as an affront that calls out to God. Crucially, the forms of suffering in question are neither universal nor random, but instead are patterned by systems of exclusion, victimisation, and marginalisation. An ethical and theo-political focus on vulnerability emerges at this nexus of suffering and otherness2. A sizeable cohort of contemporary thinkers, who develop, adapt, and interrogate aspects of formative mid-twentiethcentury paradigms, do not dislodge their basic twofold premise: that God * I am grateful to the organisers of the 2019 Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology conference, “Theos and Polis: Political Theology as Discernment”, for the invitation to participate in the concluding plenary panel. This article follows in part on that opportunity, with thanks to keynote speakers and other presenters for their thoughtful contributions. 1. C. HOVEY – E. PHILLIPS, Preface, in IID. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Political Theology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015, xi-xiv, http://doi. org/10.1017/CCO9781107280823. I delimit a confessional scope that reflects LEST’s disciplinary approach; for other approaches across the humanities; see, e.g., H. DE VRIES – L.E. SULLIVAN (eds.), Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, New York, Fordham University Press, 2006. 2. “Vulnerability” is an idiom that bridges at least two generations in this tradition, e.g., from D. SÖLLE, The Window of Vulnerability: A Political Spirituality, Minneapolis, MN, Fortress, 1990; also, C. MENDOZA-ÁLVAREZ, The Theology of the People: An Urgent Call to Listen to the Otherness in a Globalized World, in Catholic Theology and Thought 81 (2018) 210-234, http://dx.doi.org/10.21731/ctat.2018.81.210.

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is present especially with, and in, the least, the downtrodden, the victims of history; and that the forces perpetuating these differential vulnerabilities must be resisted3. So, in this sense, I treat a strand of political theology that has discerned the centrality of suffering and vulnerability in its engagement with the world. Yet, in another sense, the interpretation of vulnerability – and a nexus of related concepts including not only suffering, but also finitude, fragility, precarity, and kenosis4 – remains the hinge on which key points of political-theological discernment depend. Moving between the conference and recent publications, this article explores several modalities of theological appeal to the importance of vulnerability and its kin, alongside several critical perspectives. My purpose is to highlight areas of possibility, tension, and circumspection. If, indeed, political theology is discernment, as the LEST XII conference title proposes, then I would maintain that questions about how political theology engages the category of vulnerability are at the heart of what it endeavours to be. II. A VULNERABILITY THAT REDEEMS The 2019 LEST gathering echoed with invitations for participants – and by extension the academic, ecclesial, and civic communities of which they are a part – to enter into sites of conflict, brokenness, and woundedness across the world: forced migration, gender-based violence, racism, heterosexism, xenophobia, political repression, ecological degradation, and economic exploitation. Motivated by the pressing demand to respond theologically and practically to these ruptures in common life, a number of authors turned to the importance of recognising and affirming a shared 3. This framing emphasises sources that do not lie in the work of Carl Schmitt; on differing trajectories, see J. MOLTMANN, European Political Theology, in HOVEY – PHILLIPS (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Political Theology (n. 1); R.R. RODRÍGUEZ, Political Theology as Liberative Theology, in Political Theology 19/8 (2018) 675-680, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2018.1520814; and V. LLOYD – D. TRUE, What Political Theology Could Be, in Political Theology 17/6 (2016) 505-506, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 1462317X.2016.1241062. 4. To narrow an inquiry to the term “vulnerability” would miss clear connections with concepts functioning similarly, while to expand it to any mention of finitude or cruciform suffering throughout Christian tradition would lose the specificity of contemporary interest. Without sufficient space to address all relevant distinctions, I aim to strike a balance. Karen Kilby refers to kenosis as “a kind of churchgoing cousin of a more widespread appeal of notions of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘fragility’”; K. KILBY, The Seductions of Kenosis, in R. DAVIES – K. KILBY (eds.), Suffering and the Christian Life, London, T&T Clark, 2019, 163-174, p. 165. The prominence of “fragility” and “precarity” owe much to J. BUTLER, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, New York – London, Verso, 2006.

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condition of vulnerability. As Jacques Haers argued in his chapter, “Out of Gethsemane: An Essay on Theology as Common Apostolic Discernment”, consciously inhabiting this creaturely condition is fundamental to the church’s common apostolic discernment. It is key to forming subjects guided by a “new rationality”, one that fosters perceptivity to the needs of those the world deems to be “other” and facilitates empathetic modes of connection with them5. In his mention of “other others”, Haers aligns with Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez, who claimed that vulnerability needs queering and decolonising in order to encompass those most on the margins, whose plight is too easily ignored. Thus revised, the concept is stitched into Mendoza-Álvarez’s vision of communities that venture precarious intersubjectivity in spaces of exclusion and suffering, thereby demonstrating both resiliency against state power and glimmers of the Reign of God6. Christology is a powerful touchpoint for the vulnerable posture that should characterise theological anthropology and ecclesiology. In Haers’ words, “Jesus enters in the wound”; his life and death give supreme witness to God’s vulnerable alliance with a finite and sinful world, and to possibilities for solidarity within it. In a reflection on what makes for sustainable justice movements, Rowan Williams developed the significance of the Incarnation and spiritual disciplines of selfrestraint for discerning a reality in which respect for limitation is constitutive of communal well-being7. This partial recounting of more and less direct appeals to embrace vulnerability, relationality, and finitude – and to do so in the service of redressing unjustly distributed vulnerabilities – converges with a trend found more widely in contemporary political theology. One aspect of the explanation for the seemingly curious conclusion that vulnerability is the answer to the problem of vulnerability lies in the diagnosis of what causes a great deal of unnecessary suffering. Arguments for the salutary effects of recognising and affirming vulnerability typically appear in tandem with a critique of the deleterious consequences of forgetting or disavowing it. Such rejection, theologians contend, issues in a way of being in the world that is both false and actively harmful. Given that vulnerability is a fundamental descriptor of human existence – we are relational and dependent creatures – any denial thereof inevitably becomes 5. J. HAERS, Out of Gethsemane: An Essay on Theology as Common Apostolic Discernment, in this volume, 51-66. 6. See, C. MENDOZA-ÁLVAREZ, Violence, Vulnerability, and Resistances: Discernment to Decolonise Theology in Times of Systemic War, in this volume, 141-155. 7. See, R. WILLIAMS, Justice, Distance, and Love: What Would Be a Contemplative Stance in Politics?, in this volume, 27-34.

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a displacement onto others. Some persons seek to live a fantasy of invulnerability, while others bear the symbolic and material burdens of what is cast off – and then some. An externalised denial of vulnerability thus fuels a toxically self-fulfilling feedback loop, which intensifies and multiplies asymmetries in who suffers. Theological advocates of vulnerability often indict this characteristic pattern in the construction of the modern subject: to the extent that values such as autonomy, self-transparent rationality, and self-determination are prized, their purported lack in some beings (e.g., women, colonised, and racialised peoples) can be used to call into question these groups’ status as human and justify their subjugation – along with that of nonhuman animals, whose association with bodied vulnerability is paradigmatically shunned8. Other critics who hold that “[t]he dream of invulnerability, the longing for complete certitude or securitas, seems to be a constant feature across times, cultures, and societies”, nonetheless concur as to damage it inflicts: “The many attempts at escaping human vulnerability, although impossible, have caused countless intended and unintended acts of inhumanity”9. In this light, we can see how political theologians’ calls to acknowledge vulnerability are intended to intervene in a cultural status quo that perpetuates grievous offenses against vulnerable others. The hope is that exposing the illusory nature of the sovereignty claimed by individuals and collectives through compelling presentations of vulnerability, as an inherent feature of human existence, will “allow for solidarities that will then transform the conditions of political action”10. This political potential has been explored in regard to a range of issues, including: terrorist attacks11; fractured ecological relationships, especially with nonhuman animals12; migrants’ experiences of indefinite detention13; the addictive power of 8. E.T. ARMOUR, Signs and Wonders: Theology after Modernity, New York, Columbia University Press, 2016; see also L. TONSTAD, On Vulnerability, in DAVIES – KILBY (eds.), Suffering (n. 4), 175-188, pp. 175-176. 9. S.J. STÅLSETT, Towards a Political Theology of Vulnerability: Anthropological and Theological Propositions, in Political Theology 16/5 (2015) 464-478, p. 468, http://dx.doi. org/10.1179/1462317X14Z.000000000115. 10. TONSTAD, On Vulnerability (n. 8), p. 177. 11. STÅLSETT, Political Theology (n. 9). 12. E.D. MEYER, The Political Ecology of Dignity: Human Dignity and the Inevitable Returns of Animality, in Modern Theology 33/4 (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/moth. 12355. 13. A. ROWLANDS, Reading Simone Weil in East London: Destitution, Decreation and the History of Force, in DAVIES – KILBY (eds.), Suffering (n. 4), 113-132, p. 114. I include Rowlands’ interpretation of “decreation” – i.e., “the recognition of one’s being subject to necessity (what is)” – as a strategy that resembles the other direct references to vulnerability in key respects.

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white supremacist hate-groups14; and polarisation that impedes civil democratic exchange15. With different accents, these proposals elucidate the goods that become possible when the reality of shared vulnerability is granted as a constitutive feature of common life, rather than something to be excised; it is integral to, if not the basis of, genuine attention to the world, non-dominating relationality, ethics, love, authentic selfhood, and virtuous communication amidst conflict. While vulnerability also has a wider theoretical currency, the projects under consideration here take seriously the theological character of their socio-political and cultural analysis. Their objective is not only a critique of existing identity formations and power structures, but also a refiguring of personhood and power16. To this end, authors articulate the indispensable value of vulnerability in biblical and doctrinal terms, variously seeking to demonstrate its resonance with, relative adequacy to, or superior expression of, Christian faith claims. So, for instance, Sturla J. Stålsett contends that while the Christian tradition has been inclined to assign vulnerability to the wages of sin, there are persuasive grounds for a positive theological account of this inherent condition17. In an ecological context, Eric Daryl Meyer argues that, although Catholic support for human dignity has been wedded to a view of anthropological exceptionalism which reduces the moral status of nonhuman animals and invariably participates in the kind of violent feedback loop described above, it is in fact more consonant with the core sources of theological anthropology to prioritise the “commonbut-differentiated vulnerability” of creaturely blood and flesh18. The move to refigure selfhood around a constitutive vulnerability (one that is nevertheless an ethical project and spiritual discipline) is often paired with or grounded in reference to divine vulnerability; the scriptural language of kenosis is a principal locus for imaging a loving response to a suffering world19. 14. H.M. DUBOIS, “There Is Still a Lot of Pollution in There”: Undoing Violent Ideologies, Undoing the Self, in DAVIES – KILBY (eds.), Suffering (n. 4), 105-112. Her key terms for the undoing in question are “purgation” and “critique”; the latter channels Butler’s work on precarity. As in Rowlands’ text, these concepts have both explicit and implicit ties to the category of vulnerability. 15. M. FARNETH, The Power to Empty Oneself: Hegel, Kenosis, and Intellectual Virtue, in Political Theology 18/2 (2017) 151-176, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2016. 1224050. 16. STÅLSETT, Theology of Vulnerability (n. 9), p. 477. 17. Ibid., pp. 468, 471. 18. MEYER, The Political Ecology of Dignity (n. 12), pp. 563-569. 19. STÅLSETT, Theology of Vulnerability (n. 9), pp. 471-476; for one critique of this move, see TONSTAD, On Vulnerability (n. 8), pp. 181-186.

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As may be evident from these few examples, such discernment of the rightful place of vulnerability at the heart of a political theology called to respond to suffering and violence involves scrutiny of the tradition’s shortcomings and failures. History has too often found the church on the wrong side of vulnerable people’s struggles against dominant institutions; it has witnessed – and still does – too many versions of triumphalist ecclesiology and clericalism, too many manifestations of a theology that betrays the God it worships and the saviour it proclaims by seeking and sanctioning power-over others20. Against this background, retrieving the theological basis of vulnerability is positioned as a critical antidote, both in respect of the inevitably political dimension of ecclesial communities and to the extent that theological concepts are imbricated in broader philosophical and political configurations. Theologians in this normative mode of political theology proceed on the conviction that the Christian message of salvation, authentically lived, must translate into transformative action on behalf of vulnerable others. We might say that the turn to vulnerability, as the central feature of such a life, is at the same time understood, whether implicitly or explicitly, to be the angle of discernment that thereby redeems political theology for this work in the world. III. VULNERABILITIES PLURAL AND CONTESTED The prominence of appeals to vulnerability as a defining characteristic of political theology also spurs critical questions. It is important to note that these questions, as I see them, do not displace the basic presupposition that responding to suffering and injustice manifested by differential vulnerabilities is central to the mandate of political theology. Rather, they have to do with the nature of Christian responses, and the manner in which vulnerability appears therein as a quality to be recognised, affirmed, and even cultivated. In this second sense, the meaning and position of the category of vulnerability with respect to political theology’s redemptive aims remains an area of discernment. Some critics agree that fantasies of autonomous and inviolable selfsovereignty are deeply problematic, while, nevertheless, hesitating at a prescription that revolves around vulnerability and its kin to counter their deleterious effects. Linn Tonstad surfaces several lines of concern in this regard, one of which is the dubious efficacy of pitting vulnerability 20. STÅLSETT, Theology of Vulnerability (n. 9), p. 466; MEYER, The Political Ecology of Dignity (n. 12), p. 565.

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against sovereignty or mastery “because [strategies of reversal] are prone to accept the terms on which a problem is posed within the system of value that the strategy of reversal seeks to correct”21. Her worry here reflects, though is not limited to, observations that putatively destabilising or radical claims for Christian doctrine in regard to subordination based on sexual difference consistently prove to be anything but. Feminist theology has been an arena of intense debate about how, if at all, theological valuation of a family of concepts tied to suffering, sacrifice, and the cross – including vulnerability, fragility, obedience, submission, undoing, and especially kenosis or self-emptying – might present an alternative to idealisations of power and their effects in the world. Whereas some feminists find in these images both an integral theological model of faithfully relational personhood and a disruptive force against systems that wield power unjustly (e.g., patriarchy), others worry that such validation cannot but remain a conduit of gendered oppression. As Annie Selak summarises: “Christian theology has a long history of distorting the issue of suffering and sacrifice, especially as related to women”22. What becomes essential are efforts to (1) distinguish authentic theological vulnerability – recognised as an inherent condition of human beings before God and in relation to one another, and/or as a spiritual discipline to be undertaken in imitation of Christ – from enforced vulnerabilities, such as those resulting from sexism; (2) show not only that the former does not rationalise the latter, but also stands to contest them. Some appreciation for the necessity of such distinctions appears across recent promotion of vulnerable subjectivities under the umbrella of political theology. Authors mentioned above aver that recognition of non-sovereignty does not amount to selfabnegation; that humility is not tantamount to humiliation; and that although non-violent identity transformation may involve pain and existential insecurity, this intensified vulnerability is not equivalent to masochism, self-hatred, or despair23. For Heather DuBois, both of the following 21. TONSTAD, On Vulnerability (n. 8), p. 176 (original emphasis). Concerning sexual difference and trinitarian theology, see L.M. TONSTAD, God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude, New York, Routledge, 2016. Her careful work repeatedly shows that promises to figure alternatives to the association of (feminine) difference with subordination often collapse, when scrutinised, back into “masculinism and (symbolic) heterosexuality” (ibid., p. 1). However, she does not rule out reference to kenosis or vulnerability per se, as evident in her reading of Marcella Althaus-Reid on this theme; see ibid., pp. 133-143. 22. A. SELAK, Orthodoxy, Orthopraxis, and Orthopathy: Evaluating the Feminist Kenosis Debate, in Modern Theology 33/4 (2017) 529-548, p. 529. 23. ROWLANDS, Reading Simone Weil (n. 13), pp. 125-129; FARNETH, The Power to Empty Oneself (n. 15), pp. 158, 168-169; DUBOIS, “There Is Still a Lot of Pollution” (n. 14), p. 109.

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are true: “processes of undoing are a vital resource for political theology, and we must be careful in recommending them”24. For Tonstad, however, attempts to clarify what kind of vulnerability is in view and to specify how it functions differently seem to multiply the reasons for caution. The relationship between a universally shared finite condition that includes susceptibility to harm, which is coded positively, and specific instances of differential susceptibility to harm, or the fact of being harmed, which are typically coded negatively, represents an area of substantial difficulty. Authors who expound the ameliorative effects of taking vulnerability as a constitutive feature of subjectivity and common life attach varying degrees of emphasis to the ineradicable ambiguities of the human condition25. A certain porosity between being affected by one’s world and being harmed by others is necessary to the argumentative structure supporting the politico-theological importance of human vulnerability, but also presents thorny questions about what exactly a subject is called upon to recognise, affirm, and perhaps express gratitude for. In what sense is it good that we can be damaged or wounded by one another? Does this goodness obtain when it is recognised in its potential form, or must it be actualised in order to be meaningful? For her part, Tonstad suggests that making further distinctions – between vulnerability and contingency and between acknowledging and affirming vulnerability – would facilitate a more accurate description of the range of scenarios in which non-equivalent kinds of loss occur26. Similarly concerned about slippage in meaning that ends up rationalising suffering, Karen Kilby is suspicious of a contemporary default to kenotic exhortations in the face of a broken world; with respect to the term “vulnerability”, she, like Tonstad, settles on the language of “recognition”, rather than “embrace”, to point toward a Christian way of living that neither avoids the ambiguity of created finitude nor is seduced into calling suffering good or desirable27. Meyer’s case for vulnerability’s eco-political import draws the salient distinctions elsewhere within the lived ambiguity of creaturely relations. Seeking to fend off sentimental readings of “dignity-as-vulnerability”, he negotiates a rejoinder to the violence of dominant conceptions of 24. DUBOIS, “There Is Still a Lot of Pollution” (n. 14), p. 112. 25. Stålsett mentions the negative side of vulnerability but quickly moves on (STÅLSETT, Theology of Vulnerability [n. 9], pp. 467-468); see TONSTAD, On Vulnerability (n. 8), p. 176 for comment on this pattern. 26. TONSTAD, On Vulnerability (n. 8), pp. 178-181, 186. 27. KILBY, Seductions (n. 4), p. 172. Kilby’s primary concern in this chapter is not to address the kinds of suffering that flow from injustice; in passing, however, she suggests that those who adopt a kenotic posture to counter their own misuse of privilege and power in church and society would usually do better to speak of “repentance” (p. 166).

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“humanity” amidst ecosystemic interdependencies, which include violence, predation, and consumption; this leads him to highlight “the world of difference” between, for example, indigenous hunting practices and industrial agriculture28. Without exactly celebrating the association of vulnerability with some kinds of suffering, harm, and violence, Meyer nevertheless maintains that both this fundamental condition and its realisation can be affirmed under the heading of creaturely finitude rather than sin; from his perspective, a theological reformulation of human subjectivity rooted in this affirmation throws a wrench in the gears of insidious systems that position the aspirational invulnerability of some against the all-too evident vulnerability of others. IV. CONTEXTS OF REDEMPTION, REDEMPTION IN CONTEXT The self-critical honesty that Meyer holds to be crucial – that which would allow us to distinguish the kinds of harm consistent with dignity from those we have an obligation to resist – depends on a capacity for attention to particular creatures: to their individual needs and their plural, nongeneralisable, vulnerabilities29. Insofar as the priority of refining such attention not only prompts a turn to vulnerability, but also follows from it – as evidenced by both advocates and critics of this turn – one is able to better appreciate how appeals to this category throw us back into fraught processes of discernment30. Vulnerability provides no obvious escape route from the ideologies that sustain both mundane and catastrophic forms of violence. Tonstad, rightly, presses the point that reversing their effects requires more than an assertion that there is something different in a Christian re-sourcing of vulnerability; the task must be to articulate how prioritising vulnerability clarifies and disentangles the subject’s role in cycles of violence, or reframes the terms of the debate. The extent to which existing endeavours are persuasive in these respects remains an important area of assessment. My contention is that a correlative alertness therefore remains prudent when it comes to the redeeming quality of vulnerability (which is always, really, vulnerabilities) within political theology. Where it is assumed, whether explicitly or implicitly, that adopting a posture of vulnerability as the marker of one’s theology enables 28. MEYER, The Political Ecology of Dignity (n. 12), pp. 567-569. 29. Ibid., pp. 566-567. 30. On the need for such attention, see TONSTAD, On Vulnerability (n. 8), pp. 186-188; ROWLANDS, Reading Simone Weil (n. 13), pp. 115-118, 130-131; and WILLIAMS, Justice, Distance, and Love (n. 7).

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superior discernment of what brings about redemption in a suffering world, there is need for caution. Where such caution already exists, it might be further accented in view of the ambiguities regarding vulnerability’s status in the present political and cultural order. The question of context invites us to circle back to LEST XII, where speakers wrestled with how best to bear witness to the suffering of the most vulnerable and, in so doing, hinted at multiple and shifting configurations of vulnerability, politics, and Christian faith. In her reading of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Cecilia González-Andrieu analysed how “Trumpism” deployed glamour in tandem with the politics of fear31. In many ways, Trump’s self-presentation represents an exemplary case of the phenomenon by which disavowed vulnerability is heaped on others – in this case, especially on racialised migrants from the south. However, his invitation to supporters did not appeal (at least not straightforwardly) to a shared experience of stability or security, but instead capitalised on “the promised invulnerability of glamour” inasmuch as it appeared as something to be sought, stolen, or otherwise secured by a variety of people convinced that what was due to them was being denied. Instilling this widespread fear, González-Andrieu argued, is precisely what Trump set out to do. While she holds it essential to unmask the falsehoods bound up in his manipulative depiction of “Others” as, simultaneously, threatening enemies and the scorned vulnerable, González-Andrieu’s commentary points away from embracing vulnerability as a corrective. Her concern with the aesthetic register of solidarity and, equally, with what undermines it, suggests a dynamic in which a theological foregrounding of vulnerability and fragility is too easily co-opted in a milieu saturated by Trumpian styles of rhetoric32. It is also González-Andrieu’s commitment to “de-spiritualise” Jesus’s message of coming salvation for the poor and marginalised that leads her to position vulnerability as that which bespeaks the dire need for redemption, and to lay claim to the gospel as an active liberating power, here and now. Reflecting elsewhere on the relationship between power and 31. See, C. GONZÁLEZ-ANDRIEU, “In Glamour We Trust”: The Aesthetics of Deception and the World’s Displaced Persons, in this volume, 207-218. 32. Focusing on the role of affect, Tonstad raises a similar concern in her critique of theologies of vulnerability; she writes, “[T]he contemporary socioeconomic and political order doesn’t necessarily work by denying vulnerability, but by intensifying it. We’re not told that we are safe and secure and have nothing to worry about. Instead, we’re told that our way of life is under threat, that we need to protect our borders – because we are vulnerable, that we need to work harder and accomplish more because our futures are unstable and insecure. So, making the intensification and appropriation of vulnerability one’s project can – it doesn’t have to, but it can – make the project of self-securitization more, rather than less, subjectively powerful” (TONSTAD, On Vulnerability [n. 8], p. 178).

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vulnerability from the perspective of undocumented students and families in California, she elaborates the “meek” of Matthew’s third beatitude (Matt 5,5) as descriptive rather than prescriptive – a condition that calls for visibility, but is not to be hypostasised – and their promised inheritance of the earth as a passage away from meekness or vulnerability – toward the beauty and blessing God intends for creation33. While she can also refer to the Christian imperative to enter into the suffering of vulnerable migrants, it is this discernment and actualisation of “power as a verb” that is of primary importance in her outline for transformative political theology. Theologians who, like González-Andrieu, locate the ultimate political questions in the experience of the most vulnerable and in a history of suffering are intent on showing their mysterious proximity to a narrative of eschatological hope. In seeking to both validate that experience without resignation and articulate the hope of salvation without triumphalism, they arrive at differing accounts of the degree to which such political theology’s narratives around creaturely vulnerability should be oriented by the language of continuity, ambiguity, or contrast34. Contextual evaluations of the possibilities for political solidarities rooted in experiences of vulnerable finitude and suffering are thus closely aligned with questions that go to the heart of Christian understandings of redemption. On both fronts, discernment of the meaning and significance of vulnerability is and, I would emphasise, must be, ongoing. Mercyhurst University 501 East 38th Street Erie, PA 16546 USA [email protected]

Elizabeth PYNE

33. C. GONZÁLEZ-ANDRIEU, Vulnerability and Power, Edward Schillebeeckx Lecture, presented at Radboud University, October 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= cITd6f-jDLM. In line with feminist critiques of kenosis, she laments that interpretations of this scriptural passage (so, for instance, Augustine’s) have licensed passivity. Compare her interpretive listening exercise to the themes articulated by interviewees in ROWLANDS, Reading Simone Weil (n. 13). 34. Tonstad, for instance, prioritises a contrastive paradigm in emphasising finally the “saving paradox” of life over death (TONSTAD, On Vulnerability [n. 8], pp. 187-188; see also KILBY, Seductions [n. 4], pp. 163, 174), whereas Judith Gruber’s argument for “soteriological ambivalence” ventures a rethinking of redemption continuous with a history of trauma in her chapter, Where Death Is the Currency of Life: Political Theology in the Wake of Trauma, in this volume, 157-179.

INDEX OF NAMES ABBOTT, C. 7 ABELA, K. 281 ABRAHAM, N. 219, 221 ABRAHAM, S. 22 ABRAMOWITZ, A.I. 360-361 ABŪ ṢĀWĪ, S. 246 ACEVEDO, J. 249-250 ADAMI, R. 441, 446 ADAMS, J. 164 ADMIRAND, P. 445 ADORNO, T. 20, 40, 48 ‘AFĪFĪ, M. 241 AGAMBEN, G. 10, 21, 36-39, 46, 143, 175, 197, 313-327, 340, 419-423 AGIUS, M. 281 AGNEW, J. 438 AGUILAR, F. 256 ALESINA, A. 183 ALESSIA, M. 241 ALEXANDER, M. 391 AL-FĪRŪZĀBĀDĪ, M. 236 ALFORD, J.R. 361 ALMONĪR, M. 242 AL TAYEB, A.-A.A. 242 ALTHAUS-REID, M. 176, 457 ALTIZER, T.J.J. 45, 315 ALTMAIER, E.M. 295 AL-ṬUBRUSĪ, F.H. 236 ANDRADE, G. 218 ANTHONY OF THE DESERT (SAINT) 238 APPEL, K. 405 AQUINAS, T. 78 AQUINO, M.P. 446 ARENDT, H. 142, 176, 398 ARISTOTLE 358 ARMOUR, E.T. 454 ARMSTRONG, E.A. 251, 261 ARMSTRONG, P. 170 ASHTON, L.S. 136 ATKINS, E.M. 358 AUGUSTINE 27, 29, 210, 213, 313, 323, 325, 335, 422, 424, 461 AYANGA, H. 226-227

BACANI, T.C., JR. 274 BACHMANN, M. 123 BACQ, M. 51 BADIOU, A. 21, 319 BAILEY, J. 251 BAILEY, S.P. 392 BAIRD, M. 10, 192 BAKHTIN, M. 159, 163-165, 168, 170173 BAKUNIN, M. 317 BALDOCK, J. 443 BALIBAR, É. 39-42 BALMER, R. 388, 390 BALTHASAR, H.U. VON 87, 204, 314, 316-318, 323-324, 326, 421 BALZER, J. 158 BARBOUR, J.D. 355 BARKER, E. 358 BARNES, J. 181 BARNES, M. 437 BARRY, B. 360 BARRY, W.A. 51, 370 BARTH, K. 336, 357, 363, 365, 383 BARTHES, R. 59 BASHAM, R. 254 BAUM, G. 443 BEINERT, W. 88-89 BELLO, W. 273 BENEDICT (SAINT) 426 BENEDICT XVI (POPE) 3, 315 BENJAMIN, A.E. 174 BENJAMIN, W. 16, 20-21, 145, 152153, 159-163, 166-169, 171-172, 174, 178, 315, 319 BENNET, T.W. 68, 70, 82 BERGER, P.L. 43, 120, 127-129, 131132, 136, 433 BERGO, B. 181 BERMUDEZ, J. 112 BERSHIDSKY, L. 157-158 BEVANS, S.B. 292 BHENGU, J.M. 73 BIBLER COUTIN, S. 303

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INDEX OF NAMES

BIDEN, J.R. 388 BINGEMER, M.C. 23 BISMARCK, O. VON 157 BLANCHOT, M. 44, 47 BLOCH, E. 315 BOASE, R. 436 BOEVE, L. 4, 120 BOFF, L. 147, 234 BONAVENTURA 16, 18-19 BONGIORNO, R. 261 BONHOEFFER, D. 10, 30-34, 357-368, 385 BONNETTE, A.L. 358 BORGHESI, M. 330, 340 BORREMANS, V. 419 BOTTICELLI, S. 257 BOYNTON, E. 173-174 BRACKLEY, D. 21 BRADLEY, G.V. 4 BRANHAM, R.B. 164 BRASSIER, R. 44 BRAZAL, A.M. 254, 263 BREINES, I. 223 BRETHERTON, L. 387 BRETON, S. 320 BRIGGS, S. 176 BRILLANTES, G. 127 BRINGHURST, R. 34 BROEKSTEEG, H. 299 BRUCKNER, I. 10, 408 BRUELL, C.J. 358 BRUNNER, E. 363 BRYANT, M.D. 444 BRYNJOLFSSON, E. 360 BUBER, M. 348, 363, 435 BUDICK, S. 22 BÜTTGEN, P. 336 BULGAKOV, S. 316, 382 BULTMANN, R. 336 BURGE, R.P. 392 BURRELL, D.B. 347, 354 BUTLER, J. 20, 22-23, 359, 368, 452, 455 BYRNE, P.H. 81 CABATO, R. 265 CABRERA, R. 253 CÂMARA, H. 418 CAMPESE, G. 194, 288, 291

CANNUYER, C. 243 CANO, M. 284 CAPRETTO, P. 173-174 CAPUTO, J.D. 45-46, 315 CARDIJN, J. 249 CARLSON, D.G. 20 CARONELLO, G. 330, 334 CARTER, C. 219 CARTER, J.E. 241 CARUTH, C. 161-163, 166, 168, 173 CASIDAY, A.M. 28 CASTLES, S. 193 CASTRO, F. 253 CATHERINE OF SIENA (SAINT) 25 CAVANAUGH, W.T. 4, 92-93 CAYLEY, D. 315, 413, 416-418, 427, 431-432 CEPEDA, M. 267 CHAKAIPA, P. 73 CHANTER, T. 173 CHAPMAN, M.D. 438, 445 CHAPMAN, T. 395, 406 CHARLIER, J. 51 CHUA, Y. 266 CHU ILO, S. 70 CICERO 358 CLAUSEWITZ, C. VON 409 CLEMENTE, M. 308 CLIFFORD, A.M. 254 CLINTON, B. 388 CLINTON, H. 124 COBB, J.B., JR. 444 COLLINS, P.H. 229 COLVIN, C.J. 221, 223, 225 CONE, A. 209 CONGAR, Y. 90 CONNELL, R.W. 223 CONRAD, P. 124, 129 COOKE, T.J. 412 COOPER, P.R. 10, 331, 422, 432 COPELAND, M.S. 23, 369, 371-374 CORNELIO, J. 277 CORNELL, D. 20 CORTÉS, D. 313, 317 COSTA, R. 208 COURAU, T.-M. 144 CRAIG, M.A. 183 CRARY, D. 392 CRICHLOW, M.A. 170

INDEX OF NAMES

CRITCHLEY, S. 44 CROWE, F.E. 67, 376 CRUZ, G.T. 287, 290-291 CRUZ, I. 127 CRYSDALE, C. 373 CULLEN, C. 19 CURATO, N. 254, 265 CYRIL VI 239-240 DADOSKY, J.D. 71-72 DAFERMOS, M. 165 DALY, M. 259 DAS, V. 171 DASH, J.M. 199 DAVID, C.C. 261 DAVID, P.V. 272-274 DAVIE, G. 131 DAVIES, R. 452, 454-455 DAVIS, C. 319-320 DAWKINS, R. 383 DAY, D. 16, 25 DAYAN, R. 253 DE BOER, E.A. 256, 258-259 DE BONALD, L. 313, 317 DE CERTEAU, M. 10, 22-23, 395-408 DE GRUCHY, J.W. 362 DEIBL, J.H. 405 DE KLERCK, B. 255-257 DE LIMA, L. 249-250, 252-256, 260, 262-263 DE LUBAC, H. 422-423 DE MAISTRE, J. 313, 317 DEMARTINI, A. 251 DE MESA, J. 288 DEMETZ, P. 20 DE MEY, P. 350 DENNY, C.D. 373 DE REUVER, R. 306 DERRIDA, J. 18, 20, 22, 43, 46-47, 314-315 DESMOND, W. 37 DE SOUSA SANTOS, B. 143 DETHLOFF-SCHIMMER, F. 303 DE VITRY, A. 16 DEVLIN, J.W. 438 DE VORAGINE, J. 256-257 DE VRIES, H. 20, 23, 451 DIAMOND, L. 360 DICHY, A. 40

465

DICKINSON, C. 9, 49, 158-159, 161, 167 DIMECH, P. 10, 292, 297 DIOKNO, J.M. 253 DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS 358 DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE 16-19, 132, 401 DJUPE, P.A. 392 DORAN, R. 67, 71, 369, 375, 378 DORRIEN, G. 381, 387-390 DOUDE VAN TROOSTWIJK, C. 178, 308 DOWNEY, J.K. 437, 439 DRABINSKI, J.E. 201 DREYER, J.S. 72, 74 DRONKERS, P. 299 DUBOIS, H.M. 455, 457-458 DUBREUIL, L. 42 DULLES, A. 85, 89 DUMDUM, S., JR. 128, 133 DUNAR, E. 10, 379 DUNNING, M.D. 10, 368 DUPUY, J.-P. 143 DUSSEL, E. 23, 152 DUTERTE, R. 252-255, 265-279 DWYER, J. 250 EAGLETON, T. 37 ECK, D. 436 ECK, J.M. 284 EDWARDS, A. 164 EDWARDS, J. 348 EIDE, I. 223 EILAND, H. 160, 168, 178 ELIZONDO, V.P. 446 ELLACURÍA, I. 147 ELLIOTT, N. 2 ELLIS-BENSON, B. 382 ELLSBERG, R. 25 EL MESKEEN, M. 244-246 ELTROP, B. 165 ENGELS, J. 360-361 ESGUERRA. D.J. 268 ESPOSITO, R. 41 EUGENIO, D.L. 124-125 EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA 324, 336-338 EVAGRIUS OF PONTUS 28, 32, 34 EVANGELISTA, J.A.G. 253-255 FAGGIOLI, M. 97, 99-100 FALWELL, J., SR. 388

466

INDEX OF NAMES

FANON, F. 143 FARNETH, M. 455, 457 FAULKNER, W. 184 FEARNOW, B. 393 FEINER, J. 6, 62 FÉNELON, F. 403 FENVES, P. 314 FERRARI, G.R.F. 358 FEUERBACH, L. 300 FINALDI, G. 214 FINNIS, J. 4 FITZPATRICK, J. 417 FLETCHER, J. 31 FLINN, F. 444 FLOYD, G. 181 FLOYD, J. 392 FORNET-BETANCOURT, R. 147-148 FOSTER, B.O. 358 FOUCAULT, M. 142, 171, 333, 342 FRANCIS (POPE) 89-91, 95-97, 99100, 182, 191, 252, 258, 277-279, 282, 292, 395, 405-408, 411 FRANCIS OF ASSISI 18-19, 25, 132, 214 FRANCK, K.A. 110 FRANÇOIS, W. 350 FRANK, A. 158 FRANKE, W. 46-48 FREI, H. 348-349 FREUD, S. 396 FROLOV, S. 2 FUKUYAMA, F. 368 FULKERSON, M.M. 176 GAILLARDETZ, R. 88-89, 99 GALILEI, G. 400 GALLARES, J.A. 254, 259 GARCÍA DE CASTRO, J. 51 GARCÍA-RIVERA, A. 210, 213-214 GAUT, W. 9, 104 GEERTSEMA, K. 303 GENET, J. 40 GERE, C. 44 GERGEN, K.J. 434 GIARD, L. 397, 402, 404, 408 GIESLER, G. 332 GILLESPIE, M. 48 GIRARD, R. 143, 315, 317-318, 409410

GLISSANT, É. 23, 193-205 GODZIEBA, A.J. 9, 98, 109, 120, 122 GOIZUETA, R.S. 446 GOLDBERG, D.T. 172 GONZALES, P.J.P. 10, 314-316, 323, 327 GONZALES, Y.V. 263 GONZALEZ, D.T. 10, 138 GONZALEZ, M.A. 250 GONZÁLEZ, Y. 153 GONZÁLEZ-ANDRIEU, C. 10, 218, 460461 GOSS, R.E. 261 GRAF, A.O. 226 GRAHAM, B. 388-389 GREEN, C.J. 363 GREGORY OF NYSSA 422 GREGORY THE GREAT 136, 256-257 GREGORY, A. 358 GREGORY, W. 189 GREY, M. 169 GRIFFIN, M.T. 358 GRIFFITH, M. 197 GRIFFITHS, P.J. 442 GROODY, D.G. 286 GROSFOGUEL, R. 143 GROSS, R. 20 GRUBER, J. 10, 179, 461 GRUDEM, W. 390-391 GRUNDMANN, C.H. 442-443 GUANZINI, I. 10, 135, 205, 407 GUARDINI, R. 411 GUIGO OF SAINT-ROMAIN 429 GUSTAFSON, J.M. 346, 349 GUTIÉRREZ, G. 23, 194, 250 GUTIERREZ, P. 266 HABERMAN, M. 392 HABERMAS, J. 3, 69, 71, 75-76, 7981, 101 HADEBE, N. 10, 234 HADOT, P. 335 HAERS, J. 6, 9, 11, 51, 66, 453 HAGAN, J. 292 HAKER, H. 167, 169 HANKS, T. 261 ḤANNĀ, M. 237 HANNA, M.W. 240 HARAWAY, D. 178, 405

INDEX OF NAMES

HARBERS, M. 304 HARINK, D. 319-320 HARRIES, K. 110 HART, D.B. 316 HARTCH, T. 412, 415, 417-419 HASKINS, S. 256, 258 HASSAN, A. 217 HATCH, N.O. 389 HAUERWAS, S. 381, 383, 385, 390 HAUGHEY, J.C. 68, 79-80, 82 HAYES, M.E. 169 HEDGES, P. 440 HEGEL, G.W.F. 2, 455 HEID, S. 330 HEIDEGGER, M. 37, 106, 142, 153, 404 HEIKAL, M.H. 239-241, 247 HELLWIG, M.K. 444 HERMAN, J.L. 162-163, 173 HERRERO, M. 318 HETTEMA, T.L. 10, 307-309 HETZEL, A. 102 HEYDARIAN, R.J. 275 HIGTON, M. 383 HILDEGARD OF BINGEN 132 HILKERT, M.C. 226 HILL, C.L. 284 HIMES, K.R. 3 HINGA, T.M. 227 HINZE, B. 98-100, 109, 378 HIRSCH, E. 185 HIRTH, B. 162 HITLER, A. 270, 359 HOBBES, T. 19-21, 317, 339, 341-342, 350, 353 HOBFOLL, S.E. 368 HÖLZL, M. 169 HOGUE, M.S. 439 HOINACKI, L. 412-413, 415-416 HOLLERICH, M.J. 323-325, 330, 393 HONEYCUTT, J.M. 361 HONG, E.H. 20 HONG, H.V. 20 HORAN, D. 94, 96-97 HORNUFF, D. 157 HORSTKOETTER, D. 10, 394 HOVEY, C. 337, 451-452 HUGH OF SAINT VICTOR 413-414, 423-427, 429-431

467

HUSSEIN, T. 237-238 HUSSERL, E. 106 IBN BAZ 246 IBN KAṮĪR 236 IBRAHIM, E. 242 IDLER, E. 129-130 IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA 16, 20-21, 51, 54, 56, 58, 60, 402 ILLICH, I. 10, 142, 315, 409-432 IRENAEUS 86 IRIGARAY, L. 22-23 ISAAC, G. 242 ISER, W. 22 ISKANDAR, A. 242 IYENGAR, S. 361 JAMES, W. 348 JENKINS, P. 193 JENNINGS, M. 160 JEROME (SAINT) 427 JOHN OF THE CROSS 401-402, 408 JOHN XXIII (POPE) 249-250 JOHN PAUL II (POPE) 213-214, 258, 315, 441 JOHNSON, E. 133, 250 JOHNSTON, S. 73 JONES, B., SR. 388 JONES, B.K. 295 JONES, S. 173 JUSTIN MARTYR 425 KÄRKKÄINEN, V.-M. 436 KAIPAYIL, J. 434 KANT, I. 47, 314, 345, 348 KANYORO, M.R.A. 221, 231 KASPER, W. 88, 285 KAVENY, C. 33 KEARNEY, R. 45, 307-309 KELLER, C. 131-132, 134, 178, 315 KELLY, A. 219 KELLY, M. 209, 218 KELLY, R. 262 KENNEDY, T.M. 259 KENT, C. 212 KESSLER, G. 218 KESSLER, M.J. 434, 439, 445 KHALIL, J.G. 10, 248 KHUMALO, B. 225

468

INDEX OF NAMES

KIDD, T.S. 388-390 KIERKEGAARD, S. 16, 20-21, 330 KILBY, K. 452, 454-455, 458, 461 KILKOURSE, G. 443 KIMMEL, M. 223 KISER, M. 129 KLINGEN, H. 169 KNAUSS, S. 148 KNITTER, P.F. 439-440, 444, 446 KOBES DU MEZ, K. 388, 390 KOMONCHAK, J. 98, 376 KONIGSBURG, J.A. 10, 449 KOTSKO, A. 21 KREUTZER, P. 434-435 KUMAR, S. 136 KWOK, P.L. 440 KYMLICKA, W. 360 LĀBĪB, H. 235, 239, 241 LABISTE, M.D. 266 LACLAU, E. 15, 21, 23 LACOUE-LABARTHE, P. 21 LAKSANA, A.B. 244 LANCELOTTI, C. 410 LARDINOIS, A. 255 LATOUR, B. 405 LA VIÑA, T. 275 LAZARUS, E. 217 LECLERCQ, J. 411-412, 425 LEE, J.Y. 446 LEFORT, C. 21 LEUNG, R. 262 LEVEBVRE, L.E. 359 LEVI, P. 186, 202 LEVINAS, E. 47, 181, 183, 185-188, 191-192 LEVITSKY, S. 360 LEWIS, C.S. 126 LEYVA, X. 146 LIEW, B.T. 175-177 LINDEMAN, T. 158 LIVIUS 358 LLYOD, A. 158, 170 LLYOD, V. 2, 452 LÖHRER, M. 6, 62 LONERGAN, B. 10, 67-69, 71-79, 81-82, 369-379 LÓPEZ PÉREZ, E. 6, 51, 57 LOPEZ, V. 267 LOUTH, A. 18-19

LOVIN, R. 434 LUKÁCS, G. 20 LUTHER, M. 367 MACINTYRE, A. 38 MACKENDRICK, K. 46 MAGONET, J. 443 MAIER, H. 330, 340 MAISCH, I. 258 MALONE, M.T. 256-258 MANALASTAS, E.J. 261 MANANZAN, M.J. 254 MANDELA, N. 70 MARCEL, G. 411 MARCHART, O. 21 MARCO, D. 241 MARCOS, R. 142 MARDER, M. 21 MARITAIN, J. 21, 417 MARSDEN, G.M. 389 MARTIN, T. 184 MARTYN, L. 319-320 MARX, K. 157, 171, 300, 309 MAURIN, P. 25 MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR 16, 18-19 MBEMBE, A. 143, 159, 170-176 MCADAMS, D.P. 295 MCCOSKER, P. 87 MCDONALD, L. 181 MCGILCHRIST, I. 111 MCINTOSH, M.A. 307 MCLAUGHLIN, K. 178 MCMAHON, C. 373 MEAD, G.H. 348 MEDINA, J. 392 MEIERHENRICH, J. 342 MEINTJES, S. 222 MELANCHTON, P. 284 MENDOZA, R.C. 10, 279 MENDOZA, T.L. 261 MENDOZA-ÁLVARES, C. 10, 144, 148149, 155, 451, 453 MERCIECA, E. 51 MERLEAU-PONTY, M. 106-108, 111, 120 MESING, D. 18 METZ, J.B. 4, 10, 16, 23, 122, 159, 165-169, 203, 238, 244, 248, 315, 329, 340, 381-394, 409, 421 METZGER-TRABER, J. 367

INDEX OF NAMES

MEYER, E.D. 454-456, 458-459 MEZEI, B.M. 86 MIANO, A. 183 MICHIELS, R. 6, 51 MILBANK, J. 285, 316, 319-320, 442 MILLER, M.J. 193 MINA, D. 244 MITTERMAIER, V. 303 MOLTMANN, J. 4, 122, 316, 329, 340, 452 MONAGHAN, C. 296 MONSOUR, H.D. 378 MOORE, S.D. 175 MORRELL, R. 223-224 MORSI, M. 242 MOSHER, D.L. 254 MOUFFE, C. 15, 21, 23, 101-103 MRÓWCZYŃSKI-VAN ALLEN, A. 333334 MUBARAK, H. 241, 247 MUSSOLINI, B. 343 NADAR, S. 221 NAGENGAST, C. 226 NALCKER, I. 74 NANCY, J.-L. 21, 47-48 NASSER, G.A. 239 NEEFS, G. 6, 62 NEGROPONTE, N. 360 NEMO, P. 186 NEPA, S. 115 NEUMANN, B. 358 NEWMAN, J.H. 71 NICHOLAS OF CUSA 404 NICHTWEISS, B. 331-332 NICOLETTI, M. 330-331, 341 NIEBUHR, H.R. 10, 345-355 NIEBUHR, R. 346, 355, 390 NIEHAUS, I. 224 NOLL, M.A. 389 NORDQUIST, R. 284 NORMAN, J. 208 NOUSS, A. 196 NOVAK, D. 445 OBAMA, B. 209, 388 O’CONNELL, M. 436 ODUYOYE, M.A. 221 OGLESBY, C. 398 OKLOPCIC, Z. 447

469

O’MALLEY, J. 91 O’MEARA, D. 17 ONGTIOCO, H.F. 274 ONISHI, B. 44 ORCHARD, H.C. 175 O’REGAN, C. 314-316, 323-324, 326, 421 ORIGEN 422 ORJI, C. 9, 68, 83 OSHEIM, A. 95, 98, 100 OSTOVICH, S. 330 OTTO, R. 352 OUZGANE, L. 224 OZDOWSKI, S. 296 PADILLA, E. 286 PAGANO, J.S. 348 PAGELS, E. 259 PALLASMAA, J. 108-112, 114, 116117, 121 PALMER, E. 253 PANCHERI, M. 331-332 PANTI, L.P. 254 PAPANIKOLAOU, A. 16 PASENADI (KING) 136 PATKE, R.S. 165 PAUL VI (POPE) 212-213 PAUL THE HERMIT 238 PEACOCK, D. 225 PEDERSEN, K.P. 439 PÉGUY, C. 16 PERI, V. 99 PETERSON, E. 10, 313-327, 329-343, 393, 422 PETRACHE, A. 10, 331, 342 PETRONIS, L.A. 295 PHAN, P.C. 286, 289-291, 438 PHILIPS, G. 97 PHILLIPS, E. 337, 451-452 PHIRI, I.A. 221 PICARD, M. 411 PICARDAL, A. 272-273 PIERCE, C.S. 210, 348 PIERIS, A. 8 PILARIO, D.F. 137, 284-285 PILLAY, A. 222 PIUS X (POPE) 90 PLACIDO, D. 262, 268 PLANS, J.B. 284 PLATO 15-18, 27, 358

470

INDEX OF NAMES

PLATTNER, M.F. 360 POIRIE, F. 191 POLAK, R. 287-289 POL-DROIT, R. 181 POLLISCO, A. 256 PORCALLA, D. 253 POULSOM, M.G. 4 POWELL, J. 295 PREVOT, A. 9, 26 PRIESTER, K. 16, 23 PROUDHON, P.-J. 317 PRUSAK, B. 4 PRZYWARA, E. 314, 316, 357 PUCCI, G. 415 PULIDO, C. 263 PUNYANUNT-CARTER, N.M. 359 PYNE, E. 10, 461 QUIJANO, A.

143

RACE, A. 436 RAFAEL, V.L. 253 RAHNER, K. 6, 61-62, 377 RAJENDRA, T.M. 283, 290, 294 RAMBO, S. 161, 177-178 RAMSEY, P. 348-349 RANCE, D. 330-331 RANCIÈRE, J. 18, 101-103, 146 RAÑADA, P. 255, 267-268 RARA, M.C. 266 RATANASARA, H. 437 RAUHALA, E. 270 RAUSCHNABEL, P. 361 RAUWEL, A. 336 RAWLS, J. 3, 101 REGENCIA, T. 268 REID, G. 222, 224 REROPA, V. 73 REYES, D.A. 269 RICE, T. 185 RICHESON, J.A. 183 RICOEUR, P. 38, 159, 307 RIVERA-CUSICANQUI, S. 143 RIZAL, J. 267 RIZZO, S. 218 ROBBINS, J. 181, 186, 188, 191 ROBREDO, L. 262 RODRÍGUEZ, R.R. 2, 452 ROEBBEN, B. 293

ROGERS, E.F., JR. 382 ROGERS, P. 7 ROMERO, P. 253 ROQUE, H. 254 ROSA, H. 109 ROSEN, S. 43 ROSENFELD, M. 20 ROSSI, P.J. 10, 350, 354-355 ROTSAERT, M. 51 ROUSSEAU, J.-J. 21 ROWLANDS, A. 3, 454-455, 457, 459, 461 ROY, L. 68 ROYCE, J. 348 RUBENSTEIN, M.-J. 174 RUCKER, J.M. 183 RÜDIGER, C. 333 RUETHER, R.R. 259 RUIZ JURADO, M. 6 RUIZ, S. 141 RUNIONS, E. 177 RUSH, O. 90-92, 96-100 RYAN, B. 20 SADAT, A. 235, 240-241 SAFFRON, I. 117 SAMUEL, S. 419 SANCHEZ, R.J.M.O. 10, 254, 264 SANDERS, B. 395 SANTIBAŃEZ, S. 129 SARACINO, M. 120 SAVONAROLA, G. 411 SCHELER, M. 74 SCHERDER, E. 303 SCHILLEBEECKX, E. 4, 23, 106 SCHINDLER, D.C. 86 SCHINDLER, O. 157 SCHMIDT PASSOS, E. 330 SCHMIEDEL, U. 289 SCHMITT, C. 2, 10, 15, 19-22, 25, 102, 157, 313-327, 329-343, 452 SCHOR, E. 392 SCHREITER, R. 136-137, 285 SCHÜSSLER, M. 169, 176 SCHWAB, G. 332 SCOTT, P.M. 4 SEGATO, R.L. 144 SEIF, Y.A. 239, 244 SELAK, A. 457

471

INDEX OF NAMES

SENELLART, M. 336 SEVERINO, E. 43 SHALĀBI, A. 240 SHAPIRO, R.M. 444 SHARIFF, S. 251 SHARLET, J. 392 SHAULL, R. 398 SHEETZ-WILLARD, J. 444, 447 SHELDON, P. 361 SHELDRAKE, P. 401 SHENOUDA III (PATRIARCH) 240-245, 247 SIDNEY, A. 124 SIEDENTOP, L. 36, 48 SIGNORELLI, L. 411 SIGSWORTH, R. 221-223 SILBERSCHMIDT, M. 224 SIMELANE, E. 219 SIMONS, O. 342 SLOBODA, J. 7 SLOTERDIJK, P. 204 SLOYAN, G.S. 438 SMITH, G. 289 SMITH, T.W. 131, 135-136 SOBRINO, J. 8, 23 SÖLLE, D. 125, 129, 451 SOPHOCLES 197 SPADARO, A. 91 SPARKS, S. 21 SPICQ, C. 195 SPREEN, C.A. 296 STAAL, R. 411 STALLEY, R.F. 358 STÅLSETT, S.J. 454-456, 458 STANTCHEVA, S. 183 STEEVES, V. 251 STEGEMAN, D. 300, 306 STEINER, G. 354 STEVENS, E.P. 254 SUENENS, L.-J. 97, 417-419 SULLIVAN, L.E. 20, 23, 451 SUNSTEIN, C. 360-361 SURIN, J.J. 401 SWARR, A.L. 221, 224 SWIDLER, L.J. 444 SYMONS, S. 161, 167

TAWADROS II (PATRIARCH) 242, 247 TAYLOR, C. 121, 359-361, 414, 431432 TEJIDO, M. 249-250 TERESA OF ÁVILA 25, 401-402 TERLOUW, A. 299 THATCHER, T. 175 THIEMANN, R.F. 348 THOMPSON, J. 136 THOMPSON, M.R. 259 TIELKE, M. 332 TILLNER, G. 223 TIMANI, H. 136 TOMBS, D. 169 TONSTAD, L. 454-461 TORRES, J. 273 TREANOR, B. 382 TROELTSCH, E. 348 TRUE, D. 2, 452 TRUMP, D.J. 123, 208-211, 214, 217218, 381, 388, 390-393, 460 TURNER, D. 18 TURSHEN, M. 222 TUTU, D. 70, 74 TUTUOLA, A. 171-172

TANTIANGCO, A. 262 TAUBES, J. 313, 316, 319, 323

WALCOTT, D. 199 WALKER, L. 222, 224

USON, M.

262-263

VALENCIA, S. 143 VALLES, R. 271-272, 274 VAN ALSTYNE, M. 360 VAN BIJSTERVELD, S.C. 299 VAN BROECKHOVEN, E. 6, 62 VAN DER MEIDEN, W. 300, 306 VAN DER MERWE, W. 335 VAN ERP, S. 4, 9, 11, 104 VAN OS, C. 303 VAN SWOL, L.M. 361 VARUS 158, 162, 165 VATTER, M. 342 VATTIMO, G. 48, 315 VERA, R. 141 VERTOVEC, S. 360 VIITANEN, A.P. 221, 223, 225 VILLEGAS, S. 271-272, 274 VOGT, V.O. 211-213 VORGRIMLER, H. 97

472

INDEX OF NAMES

WALLACE, P.M. 360-361 WALLERSTEIN, I. 143 WALSH, C. 143 WATERFIELD, R. 17, 358 WAYNE, J. 390 WEHNER, P. 390 WEIL, S. 54, 461 WEINBERG, L. 361 WESSEL, S. 135 WESSELS, M. 333 WESSENDORF, S. 360 WEST, M. 261 WESTWOOD, S.J. 361 WEYMANS, W. 404 WHELAN, G. 369 WILFRED, F. 130-131, 136, 405 WILLIAMS, R. 9-10, 27, 33-34, 262, 284, 381-394, 453, 459 WIRZBA, N. 382 WITTGENSTEIN, L. 46 WITTMANN, S. 102

WOODWARD, B. 208 WOSTYN, L. 288 WRENCH, J.S. 359 WUNDER, B. 167-169 XENOPHON

358

YAP, C. 268 YONG, W. 87 YUSĀB II, J. 239 YUSUF ALI, A. 236 ZAJDA, J. 296 ZAKHER, K. 244 ZEILLINGER, P. 169 ZIBECHI, R. 143-144 ZIBLATT, D. 360 ZIJLSTRA, E. 303 ŽIŽEK, S. 38, 45, 319-320 ZUCKERMAN, P. 37 ZWICKY, J. 34

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p. 60 € J. VAN RUITEN & M. VERVENNE (eds.), Studies in the Book of Isaiah. 75 € Festschrift Willem A.M. Beuken, 1997. XX-540 p. M. VERVENNE & J. LUST (eds.), Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature. 75 € Festschrift C.H.W. Brekelmans, 1997. XI-637 p. G. VAN BELLE (ed.), Index Generalis ETL / BETL 1982-1997, 1999. IX337 p. 40 € G. DE SCHRIJVER, Liberation Theologies on Shifting Grounds. A Clash of 53 € Socio-Economic and Cultural Paradigms, 1998. XI-453 p. A. SCHOORS (ed.), Qohelet in the Context of Wisdom, 1998. XI-528 p. 60 € W.A. BIENERT & U. KÜHNEWEG (eds.), Origeniana Septima. Origenes in 95 € den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts, 1999. XXV-848 p. É. GAZIAUX, L’autonomie en morale: au croisement de la philosophie et 75 € de la théologie, 1998. XVI-760 p. 75 € J. GROOTAERS, Actes et acteurs à Vatican II, 1998. XXIV-602 p. F. NEIRYNCK, J. VERHEYDEN & R. CORSTJENS, The Gospel of Matthew and the Sayings Source Q: A Cumulative Bibliography 1950-1995, 1998. 2 vols., VII-1000-420* p. 95 € 90 € E. BRITO, Heidegger et l’hymne du sacré, 1999. XV-800 p. 60 € J. VERHEYDEN (ed.), The Unity of Luke-Acts, 1999. XXV-828 p. N. CALDUCH-BENAGES & J. VERMEYLEN (eds.), Treasures of Wisdom. Studies in Ben Sira and the Book of Wisdom. Festschrift M. Gilbert, 1999. XXVII-463 p. 75 € J.-M. AUWERS & A. WÉNIN (eds.), Lectures et relectures de la Bible. Festschrift P.-M. Bogaert, 1999. XLII-482 p. 75 € C. BEGG, Josephus’ Story of the Later Monarchy (AJ 9,1–10,185), 2000. X-650 p. 75 € J.M. ASGEIRSSON, K. DE TROYER & M.W. MEYER (eds.), From Quest to Q. Festschrift James M. Robinson, 2000. XLIV-346 p. 60 € T. ROMER (ed.), The Future of the Deuteronomistic History, 2000. XII265 p. 75 € F.D. VANSINA, Paul Ricœur: Bibliographie primaire et secondaire - Primary 75 € and Secondary Bibliography 1935-2000, 2000. XXVI-544 p. G.J. BROOKE & J.-D. KAESTLI (eds.), Narrativity in Biblical and Related 75 € Texts, 2000. XXI-307 p.

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150. F. NEIRYNCK, Evangelica III: 1992-2000. Collected Essays, 2001. XVII666 p. 60 € 151. B. DOYLE, The Apocalypse of Isaiah Metaphorically Speaking. A Study of the Use, Function and Significance of Metaphors in Isaiah 24-27, 2000. XII-453 p. 75 € 152. T. MERRIGAN & J. HAERS (eds.), The Myriad Christ. Plurality and the Quest 75 € for Unity in Contemporary Christology, 2000. XIV-593 p. 153. M. SIMON, Le catéchisme de Jean-Paul II. Genèse et évaluation de son 75 € commentaire du Symbole des apôtres, 2000. XVI-688 p. 154. J. VERMEYLEN, La loi du plus fort. Histoire de la rédaction des récits 80 € davidiques de 1 Samuel 8 à 1 Rois 2, 2000. XIII-746 p. 155. A. WÉNIN (ed.), Studies in the Book of Genesis. Literature, Redaction and 60 € History, 2001. XXX-643 p. 156. F. LEDEGANG, Mysterium Ecclesiae. Images of the Church and its Members 84 € in Origen, 2001. XVII-848 p. 157. J.S. BOSWELL, F.P. MCHUGH & J. VERSTRAETEN (eds.), Catholic Social 60 € Thought: Twilight of Renaissance, 2000. XXII-307 p. 158. A. LINDEMANN (ed.), The Sayings Source Q and the Historical Jesus, 2001. XXII-776 p. 60 € 159. C. HEMPEL, A. LANGE & H. LICHTENBERGER (eds.), The Wisdom Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought, 2002. XII-502 p. 80 € 160. L. BOEVE & L. LEIJSSEN (eds.), Sacramental Presence in a Postmodern 60 € Context, 2001. XVI-382 p. 161. A. DENAUX (ed.), New Testament Textual Criticism and Exegesis. Festschrift 60 € J. Delobel, 2002. XVIII-391 p. 162. U. BUSSE, Das Johannesevangelium. Bildlichkeit, Diskurs und Ritual. Mit einer Bibliographie über den Zeitraum 1986-1998, 2002. XIII-572 p. 70 € 163. J.-M. AUWERS & H.J. DE JONGE (eds.), The Biblical Canons, 2003. LXXXVIII-718 p. 60 € 164. L. PERRONE (ed.), Origeniana Octava. Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition, 180 € 2003. XXV-X-1406 p. 165. R. BIERINGER, V. KOPERSKI & B. LATAIRE (eds.), Resurrection in the New 70 € Testament. Festschrift J. Lambrecht, 2002. XXXI-551 p. 166. M. LAMBERIGTS & L. KENIS (eds.), Vatican II and Its Legacy, 2002. XII-512 p. 65 € 167. P. DIEUDONNÉ, La Paix clémentine. Défaite et victoire du premier jansénisme français sous le pontificat de Clément IX (1667-1669), 2003. XXXIX302 p. 70 € 168. F. GARCIA MARTINEZ, Wisdom and Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls 60 € and in the Biblical Tradition, 2003. XXXIV-491 p. 169. D. OGLIARI, Gratia et Certamen: The Relationship between Grace and Free Will in the Discussion of Augustine with the So-Called Semipelagians, 75 € 2003. LVII-468 p. 170. G. COOMAN, M. VAN STIPHOUT & B. WAUTERS (eds.), Zeger-Bernard Van Espen at the Crossroads of Canon Law, History, Theology and Church80 € State Relations, 2003. XX-530 p. 171. B. BOURGINE, L’herméneutique théologique de Karl Barth. Exégèse et dogmatique dans le quatrième volume de la Kirchliche Dogmatik, 2003. XXII-548 p. 75 €

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172. J. HAERS & P. DE MEY (eds.), Theology and Conversation: Towards a 90 € Relational Theology, 2003. XIII-923 p. 173. M.J.J. MENKEN, Matthew’s Bible: The Old Testament Text of the Evangelist, 60 € 2004. XII-336 p. 174. J.-P. DELVILLE, L’Europe de l’exégèse au XVIe siècle. Interprétations de la parabole des ouvriers à la vigne (Matthieu 20,1-16), 2004. XLII-775 p. 70 € 175. E. BRITO, J.G. Fichte et la transformation du christianisme, 2004. XVI808 p. 90 € 176. J. SCHLOSSER (ed.), The Catholic Epistles and the Tradition, 2004. XXIV569 p. 60 € 177. R. FAESEN (ed.), Albert Deblaere, S.J. (1916-1994): Essays on Mystical Literature – Essais sur la littérature mystique – Saggi sulla letteratura 70 € mistica, 2004. XX-473 p. 178. J. LUST, Messianism and the Septuagint: Collected Essays. Edited by 60 € K. HAUSPIE, 2004. XIV-247 p. 179. H. GIESEN, Jesu Heilsbotschaft und die Kirche. Studien zur Eschatologie und Ekklesiologie bei den Synoptikern und im ersten Petrusbrief, 2004. XX578 p. 70 € 180. H. LOMBAERTS & D. POLLEFEYT (eds.), Hermeneutics and Religious 70 € Education, 2004. XIII-427 p. 181. D. DONNELLY, A. DENAUX & J. FAMERÉE (eds.), The Holy Spirit, the Church, and Christian Unity. Proceedings of the Consultation Held at the Monastery 70 € of Bose, Italy (14-20 October 2002), 2005. XII-417 p. 182. R. BIERINGER, G. VAN BELLE & J. VERHEYDEN (eds.), Luke and His Readers. 65 € Festschrift A. Denaux, 2005. XXVIII-470 p. 183. D.F. PILARIO, Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis: Exploring Theological 80 € Method with Pierre Bourdieu, 2005. XXXII-584 p. 184. G. VAN BELLE, J.G. VAN DER WATT & P. MARITZ (eds.), Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel: Essays by the Members of the SNTS 70 € Johannine Writings Seminar, 2005. XII-561 p. 185. D. LUCIANI, Sainteté et pardon. Vol. 1: Structure littéraire du Lévitique. 120 € Vol. 2: Guide technique, 2005. XIV-VII-656 p. 186. R.A. DERRENBACKER, JR., Ancient Compositional Practices and the Synoptic 80 € Problem, 2005. XXVIII-290 p. 187. P. VAN HECKE (ed.), Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible, 2005. X-308 p. 65 € 188. L. BOEVE, Y. DEMAESENEER & S. VAN DEN BOSSCHE (eds.), Religious Experience and Contemporary Theological Epistemology, 2005. X-335 p. 50 € 189. J.M. ROBINSON, The Sayings Gospel Q. Collected Essays, 2005. XVIII888 p. 90 € 190. C.W. STRUDER, Paulus und die Gesinnung Christi. Identität und Entschei80 € dungsfindung aus der Mitte von 1Kor 1-4, 2005. LII-522 p. 191. C. FOCANT & A. WÉNIN (eds.), Analyse narrative et Bible. Deuxième colloque international du RRENAB, Louvain-la-Neuve, avril 2004, 2005. XVI-593 p. 75 € 192. F. GARCIA MARTINEZ & M. VERVENNE (eds.), in collaboration with B. DOYLE, Interpreting Translation: Studies on the LXX and Ezekiel in Honour of 70 € Johan Lust, 2005. XVI-464 p. 87 € 193. F. MIES, L’espérance de Job, 2006. XXIV-653 p.

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194. C. FOCANT, Marc, un évangile étonnant, 2006. XV-402 p. 60 € 195. M.A. KNIBB (ed.), The Septuagint and Messianism, 2006. XXXI-560 p. 60 € 196. M. SIMON, La célébration du mystère chrétien dans le catéchisme de Jean85 € Paul II, 2006. XIV-638 p. 197. A.Y. THOMASSET, L’ecclésiologie de J.H. Newman Anglican, 2006. XXX748 p. 80 € 198. M. LAMBERIGTS – A.A. DEN HOLLANDER (eds.), Lay Bibles in Europe 145079 € 1800, 2006. XI-360 p. 199. J.Z. SKIRA – M.S. ATTRIDGE, In God’s Hands. Essays on the Church and 90 € Ecumenism in Honour of Michael A. Fahey S.J., 2006. XXX-314 p. 200. G. VAN BELLE (ed.), The Death of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, 2007. XXXI1003 p. 70 € 80 € 201. D. POLLEFEYT (ed.), Interreligious Learning, 2007. XXV-340 p. 202. M. LAMBERIGTS – L. BOEVE – T. MERRIGAN, in collaboration with D. CLAES (eds.), Theology and the Quest for Truth: Historical- and Systematic55 € Theological Studies, 2007. X-305 p. 203. T. RÖMER – K. SCHMID (eds.), Les dernières rédactions du Pentateuque, 65 € de l’Hexateuque et de l’Ennéateuque, 2007. X-276 p. 204. J.-M. VAN CANGH, Les sources judaïques du Nouveau Testament, 2008. XIV718 p. 84 € 205. B. DEHANDSCHUTTER, Polycarpiana: Studies on Martyrdom and Persecution in Early Christianity. Collected Essays. Edited by J. LEEMANS, 2007. XVI286 p. 74 € 206. É. GAZIAUX, Philosophie et Théologie. Festschrift Emilio Brito, 2007. LVIII-588 p. 84 € 207. G.J. BROOKE – T. RÖMER (eds.), Ancient and Modern Scriptural Historiography. L’historiographie biblique, ancienne et moderne, 2007. XXXVIII372 p. 75 € 208. J. VERSTRAETEN, Scrutinizing the Signs of the Times in the Light of the 74 € Gospel, 2007. X-334 p. 209. H. GEYBELS, Cognitio Dei experimentalis. A Theological Genealogy of 80 € Christian Religious Experience, 2007. LII-457 p. 210. A.A. DEN HOLLANDER, Virtuelle Vergangenheit: Die Textrekonstruktion einer verlorenen mittelniederländischen Evangelienharmonie. Die Hand58 € schrift Utrecht Universitätsbibliothek 1009, 2007. XII-168 p. 211. R. GRYSON, Scientiam Salutis: Quarante années de recherches sur l’Antiquité 88 € Chrétienne. Recueil d’essais, 2008. XLVI-879 p. 212. T. VAN DEN DRIESSCHE, L’altérité, fondement de la personne humaine dans 85 € l’œuvre d’Edith Stein, 2008. XXII-626 p. 213. H. AUSLOOS – J. COOK – F. GARCIA MARTINEZ – B. LEMMELIJN – M. VERVENNE (eds.), Translating a Translation: The LXX and its Modern Translations in 80 € the Context of Early Judaism, 2008. X-317 p. 214. A.C. OSUJI, Where is the Truth? Narrative Exegesis and the Question of 76 € True and False Prophecy in Jer 26–29 (MT), 2010. XX-465 p. 215. T. RÖMER, The Books of Leviticus and Numbers, 2008. XXVII-742 p. 85 € 216. D. DONNELLY – J. FAMERÉE – M. LAMBERIGTS – K. SCHELKENS (eds.), The Belgian Contribution to the Second Vatican Council: International Research Conference at Mechelen, Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve 85 € (September 12-16, 2005), 2008. XII-716 p.

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217. J. DE TAVERNIER – J.A. SELLING – J. VERSTRAETEN – P. SCHOTSMANS (eds.), Responsibility, God and Society. Theological Ethics in Dialogue. 75 € Festschrift Roger Burggraeve, 2008. XLVI-413 p. 218. G. VAN BELLE – J.G. VAN DER WATT – J. VERHEYDEN (eds.), Miracles and Imagery in Luke and John. Festschrift Ulrich Busse, 2008. XVIII-287 p. 78 € 219. L. BOEVE – M. LAMBERIGTS – M. WISSE (eds.), Augustine and Postmodern 80 € Thought: A New Alliance against Modernity?, 2009. XVIII-277 p. 220. T. VICTORIA, Un livre de feu dans un siècle de fer: Les lectures de l’Apocalypse 85 € dans la littérature française de la Renaissance, 2009. XXX-609 p. 221. A.A. DEN HOLLANDER – W. FRANÇOIS (eds.), Infant Milk or Hardy Nourishment? The Bible for Lay People and Theologians in the Early Modern 80 € Period, 2009. XVIII-488 p. 222. F.D. VANSINA, Paul Ricœur. Bibliographie primaire et secondaire. Primary and Secundary Bibliography 1935-2008, Compiled and updated in colla80 € boration with P. VANDECASTEELE, 2008. XXX-621 p. 223. G. VAN BELLE – M. LABAHN – P. MARITZ (eds.), Repetitions and Variations 85 € in the Fourth Gospel: Style, Text, Interpretation, 2009. XII-712 p. 224. H. AUSLOOS – B. LEMMELIJN – M. VERVENNE (eds.), Florilegium Lovaniense: Studies in Septuagint and Textual Criticism in Honour of Florentino García 80 € Martínez, 2008. XVI-564 p. 225. E. BRITO, Philosophie moderne et christianisme, 2010. 2 vol., VIII-1514 p. 130 € 85 € 226. U. SCHNELLE (ed.), The Letter to the Romans, 2009. XVIII-894 p. 227. M. LAMBERIGTS – L. BOEVE – T. MERRIGAN in collaboration with D. CLAES – 74 € M. WISSE (eds.), Orthodoxy, Process and Product, 2009. X-416 p. 228. G. HEIDL – R. SOMOS (eds.), Origeniana Nona: Origen and the Religious 95 € Practice of His Time, 2009. XIV-752 p. 229. D. MARGUERAT (ed.), Reception of Paulinism in Acts – Réception du 74 € paulinisme dans les Actes des Apôtres, 2009. VIII-340 p. 230. A. DILLEN – D. POLLEFEYT (eds.), Children’s Voices: Children’s Perspectives in Ethics, Theology and Religious Education, 2010. x-450 p. 72 € 231. P. VAN HECKE – A. LABAHN (eds.), Metaphors in the Psalms, 2010. XXXIV363 p. 76 € 232. G. AULD – E. EYNIKEL (eds.), For and Against David: Story and History in the Books of Samuel, 2010. x-397 p. 76 € 233. C. VIALLE, Une analyse comparée d’Esther TM et LXX: Regard sur deux 76 € récits d’une même histoire, 2010. LVIII-406 p. 234. T. MERRIGAN – F. GLORIEUX (eds.), “Godhead Here in Hiding”: Incarnation and the History of Human Suffering, 2012. x-327 p. 76 € 235. M. SIMON, La vie dans le Christ dans le catéchisme de Jean-Paul II, 2010. xx-651 p. 84 € 236. G. DE SCHRIJVER, The Political Ethics of Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida, 2010. xxx-422 p. 80 € 237. A. PASQUIER – D. MARGUERAT – A. WÉNIN (eds.), L’intrigue dans le récit biblique. Quatrième colloque international du RRENAB, Université Laval, 68 € Québec, 29 mai – 1er juin 2008, 2010. xxx-479 p. 238. E. ZENGER (ed.), The Composition of the Book of Psalms, 2010. XII-826 p. 90 €

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239. P. FOSTER – A. GREGORY – J.S. KLOPPENBORG – J. VERHEYDEN (eds.), New Studies in the Synoptic Problem: Oxford Conference, April 2008, 2011. XXIV-828 p. 85 € 240. J. VERHEYDEN – T.L. HETTEMA – P. VANDECASTEELE (eds.), Paul Ricœur: 79 € Poetics and Religion, 2011. XX-534 p. 241. J. LEEMANS (ed.), Martyrdom and Persecution in Late Ancient Christianity. 78 € Festschrift Boudewijn Dehandschutter, 2010. XXXIV-430 p. 242. C. CLIVAZ – J. ZUMSTEIN (eds.), Reading New Testament Papyri in Context – Lire les papyrus du Nouveau Testament dans leur contexte, 2011. XIV-446 p. 80 € 243. D. SENIOR (ed.), The Gospel of Matthew at the Crossroads of Early 88 € Christianity, 2011. XXVIII-781 p. 244. H. PIETRAS – S. KACZMAREK (eds.), Origeniana Decima: Origen as Writer, 105 € 2011. XVIII-1039 p. 245. M. SIMON, La prière chrétienne dans le catéchisme de Jean-Paul II, 2012. XVI-290 p. 70 € 246. H. AUSLOOS – B. LEMMELIJN – J. TREBOLLE-BARRERA (eds.), After Qumran: Old and Modern Editions of the Biblical Texts – The Historical Books, 84 € 2012. XIV-319 p. 247. G. VAN OYEN – A. WÉNIN (eds.), La surprise dans la Bible. Festschrift 80 € Camille Focant, 2012. XLII-474 p. 248. C. CLIVAZ – C. COMBET-GALLAND – J.-D. MACCHI – C. NIHAN (eds.), Écritures et réécritures: la reprise interprétative des traditions fondatrices par la littérature biblique et extra-biblique. Cinquième colloque international du RRENAB, Universités de Genève et Lausanne, 10-12 juin 2010, 2012. XXIV-648 p. 90 € 249. G. VAN OYEN – T. SHEPHERD (eds.), Resurrection of the Dead: Biblical 85 € Traditions in Dialogue, 2012. XVI-632 p. 90 € 250. E. NOORT (ed.), The Book of Joshua, 2012. XIV-698 p. 251. R. FAESEN – L. KENIS (eds.), The Jesuits of the Low Countries: Identity and Impact (1540-1773). Proceedings of the International Congress at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven (3-5 December 2009), 65 € 2012. X-295 p. 252. A. DAMM, Ancient Rhetoric and the Synoptic Problem: Clarifying Markan 85 € Priority, 2013. XXXVIII-396 p. 253. A. DENAUX – P. DE MEY (eds.), The Ecumenical Legacy of Johannes 79 € Cardinal Willebrands (1909-2006), 2012. XIV-376 p. 254. T. KNIEPS-PORT LE ROI – G. MANNION – P. DE MEY (eds.), The Household of God and Local Households: Revisiting the Domestic Church, 2013. XI-407 p. 82 € 255. L. KENIS – E. VAN DER WALL (eds.), Religious Modernism of the Low Coun75 € tries, 2013. X-271 p. 256. P. IDE, Une Théo-logique du Don: Le Don dans la Trilogie de Hans Urs von 98 € Balthasar, 2013. XXX-759 p. 257. W. FRANÇOIS – A. DEN HOLLANDER (eds.), “Wading Lambs and Swimming Elephants”: The Bible for the Laity and Theologians in the Late Medieval 84 € and Early Modern Era, 2012. XVI-406 p. 258. A. LIÉGOIS – R. BURGGRAEVE – M. RIEMSLAGH – J. CORVELEYN (eds.), “After You!”: Dialogical Ethics and the Pastoral Counselling Process, 79 € 2013. XXII-279 p.

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259. C. KALONJI NKOKESHA, Penser la tradition avec Walter Kasper: Pertinence d’une catholicité historiquement et culturellement ouverte, 2013. XXIV320 p. 79 € 260. J. SCHRÖTER (ed.), The Apocryphal Gospels within the Context of Early 90 € Christian Theology, 2013. XII-804 p. 261. P. DE MEY – P. DE WITTE – G. MANNION (eds.), Believing in Community: 90 € Ecumenical Reflections on the Church, 2013. XIV-608 p. 262. F. DEPOORTERE – J. HAERS (eds.), To Discern Creation in a Scattering 90 € World, 2013. XII-597 p. 263. L. BOEVE – T. MERRIGAN, in collaboration with C. DICKINSON (eds.), Tradi55 € tion and the Normativity of History, 2013. X-215 p. 264. M. GILBERT, Ben Sira. Recueil d’études – Collected Essays, 2014. XIV-402 p. 87 € 265. J. VERHEYDEN – G. VAN OYEN – M. LABAHN – R. BIERINGER (eds.), Studies in the Gospel of John and Its Christology. Festschrift Gilbert Van Belle, 94 € 2014. XXXVI-656 p. 266. W. DE PRIL, Theological Renewal and the Resurgence of Integrism: The 85 € René Draguet Case (1942) in Its Context, 2016. XLIV-333 p. 267. L.O. JIMÉNEZ-RODRÍGUEZ, The Articulation between Natural Sciences and Systematic Theology: A Philosophical Mediation Based on Contributions 94 € of Jean Ladrière and Xavier Zubiri, 2015. XXIV-541 p. 268. E. BIRNBAUM – L. SCHWIENHORST-SCHÖNBERGER (eds.), Hieronymus als Exeget und Theologe: Interdisziplinäre Zugänge zum Koheletkommentar 80 € des Hieronymus, 2014. XVIII-333 p. 269. H. AUSLOOS – B. LEMMELIJN (eds.), A Pillar of Cloud to Guide: Text-critical, Redactional, and Linguistic Perspectives on the Old Testament in Honour 90 € of Marc Vervenne, 2014. XXVIII-636 p. 270. E. TIGCHELAAR (ed.), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the Scriptures, 95 € 2014. XXVI-526 p. 271. E. BRITO, Sur l’homme: Une traversée de la question anthropologique, 2015. XVI-2045 p. (2 vol.) 215 € 272. P. WATINE CHRISTORY, Dialogue et Communion: L’itinéraire œcuménique 98 € de Jean-Marie R. Tillard, 2015. XXIV-773 p. 273. R. BURNET – D. LUCIANI – G. VAN OYEN (eds.), Le lecteur: Sixième Colloque International du RRENAB, Université Catholique de Louvain, 85 € 24-26 mai 2012, 2015. XIV-530 p. 274. G.B. BAZZANA, Kingdom of Bureaucracy: The Political Theology of Village 85 € Scribes in the Sayings Gospel Q, 2015. XII-383 p. 275. J.-P. GALLEZ, La théologie comme science herméneutique de la tradition de foi: Une lecture de «Dieu qui vient à l’homme» de Joseph Moingt, 2015. XIX-476 p. 94 € 276. J. VERMEYLEN, Métamorphoses: Les rédactions successives du livre de Job, 84 € 2015. XVI-410 p. 277. C. BREYTENBACH (ed.), Paul’s Graeco-Roman Context, 2015. XXII-751 p. 94 € 278. J. GELDHOF (ed.), Mediating Mysteries, Understanding Liturgies: On Bridging the Gap between Liturgy and Systematic Theology, 2015. X-256 p. 78 € 279. A.-C. JACOBSEN (ed.), Origeniana Undecima: Origen and Origenism in the 125 € History of Western Thought, 2016. XVI-978 p.

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280. F. WILK – P. GEMEINHARDT (eds.), Transmission and Interpretation of the Book of Isaiah in the Context of Intra- and Interreligious Debates, 2016. XII-490 p. 95 € 281. J.-M. SEVRIN, Le quatrième évangile. Recueil d’études. Édité par G. VAN 86 € BELLE, 2016. XIV-281 p. 282. L. BOEVE – M. LAMBERIGTS – T. MERRIGAN (eds.), The Normativity of History: Theological Truth and Tradition in the Tension between Church 78 € History and Systematic Theology, 2016. XII-273 p. 283. R. BIERINGER – B. BAERT – K. DEMASURE (eds.), Noli me tangere in Interdisciplinary Perspective: Textual, Iconographic and Contemporary Inter89 € pretations, 2016. XXII-508 p. 284. W. DIETRICH (ed.), The Books of Samuel: Stories – History – Reception 96 € History, 2016. XXIV-650 p. 285. W.E. ARNAL – R.S. ASCOUGH – R.A. DERRENBACKER, JR. – P.A. HARLAND (eds.), Scribal Practices and Social Structures among Jesus Adherents: 115 € Essays in Honour of John S. Kloppenborg, 2016. XXIV-630 p. 286. C.E. WOLFTEICH – A. DILLEN (eds.), Catholic Approaches in Practical Theology: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2016. X-290 p. 85 € 287. W. FRANÇOIS – A.A. DEN HOLLANDER (eds.), Vernacular Bible and Religious Reform in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era, 2017. VIII-305 p. 94 € 288. P. RODRIGUES, C’est ta face que je cherche … La rationalité de la théologie 92 € selon Jean Ladrière, 2017. XIV-453 p. 289. J. FAMERÉE, Ecclésiologie et œcuménisme. Recueil d’études, 2017. XVIII668 p. 94 € 290. P. COOPER – S. KIKUCHI (eds.), Commitments to Medieval Mysticism within 79 € Contemporary Contexts, 2017. XVI-382 p. 291. A. YARBRO COLLINS (ed.), New Perspectives on the Book of Revelation, 98 € 2017. X-644 p. 292. J. FAMERÉE – P. RODRIGUES (eds.), The Genesis of Concepts and the 78 € Confrontation of Rationalities, 2018. XIV-245 p. 293. E. DI PEDE – O. FLICHY – D. LUCIANI (eds.), Le Récit: Thèmes bibliques et 95 € variations, 2018. XIV-412 p. 294. J. ARBLASTER – R. FAESEN (eds.), Theosis/Deification: Christian Doctrines 84 € of Divinization East and West, 2018. VII-262 p. 295. H.-J. FABRY (ed.), The Books of the Twelve Prophets: Minor Prophets – 105 € Major Theologies, 2018. XXIV-557 p. 296. H. AUSLOOS – D. LUCIANI (eds.), Temporalité et intrigue. Hommage à 95 € André Wénin, 2018. XL-362 p. 297. A.C. MAYER (ed.), The Letter and the Spirit: On the Forgotten Documents 85 € of Vatican II, 2018. X-296 p. 298. A. BEGASSE DE DHAEM – E. GALLI – M. MALAGUTI – C. SALTO SOLÁ (eds.), Deus summe cognoscibilis: The Current Theological Relevance of Saint Bonaventure International Congress, Rome, November 15-17, 2017, 2018. XII-716 p. 85 € 299. M. LAMBERIGTS – W. DE PRIL (eds.), Louvain, Belgium and Beyond: Studies in Religious History in Honour of Leo Kenis, 2018. XVIII-517 p. 95 € 300. E. BRITO, De Dieu. Connaissance et inconnaissance, 2018. LVIII-634 + 635-1255 p. 155 €

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301. G. VAN OYEN (ed.), Reading the Gospel of Mark in the Twenty-first Century: Method and Meaning, 2019. XXIV-933 p. 105 € 302. B. BITTON-ASHKELONY – O. IRSHAI – A. KOFSKY – H. NEWMAN – L. PERRONE (eds.), Origeniana Duodecima: Origen’s Legacy in the Holy Land – A Tale of Three Cities: Jerusalem, Caesarea and Bethlehem, 2019. XIV-893 p. 125 € 303. D. BOSSCHAERT, The Anthropological Turn, Christian Humanism, and Vatican II: Louvain Theologians Preparing the Path for Gaudium et Spes 89 € (1942-1965), 2019. LXVIII-432 p. 304. I. KOCH – T. RÖMER – O. SERGI (eds.), Writing, Rewriting, and Overwriting in the Books of Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets. Essays in Honour 85 € of Cynthia Edenburg, 2019. XVI-401 p. 305. W.A.M. BEUKEN, From Servant of YHWH to Being Considerate of the Wretched: The Figure David in the Reading Perspective of Psalms 35–41 69 € MT, 2020. XIV-173 p. 306. P. DE MEY – W. FRANÇOIS (eds.), Ecclesia semper reformanda: Renewal 94 € and Reform beyond Polemics, 2020. X-477 p. 307. D. HÉTIER, Éléments d’une théologie fondamentale de la création artistique: Les écrits théologiques sur l’art chez Karl Rahner (1954-1983), 2020. XXIV-492 p. 94 € 308. P.-M. BOGAERT, Le livre de Jérémie en perspective: Les deux rédactions conservées et l’addition du supplément sous le nom de Baruch. Recueil de ses travaux réunis par J.-C. HAELEWYCK – B. KINDT, 2020. LVIII-536 p. 95 € 309. D. VERDE – A. LABAHN (eds.), Networks of Metaphors in the Hebrew Bible, 85 € 2020. X-395 p. 310. P. VAN HECKE (ed.), The Song of Songs in Its Context: Words for Love, 95 € Love for Words, 2020. XXXIV-643 p. 311. A. WÉNIN (ed.), La contribution du discours à la caractérisation des personnages bibliques. Neuvième colloque international du RRENAB, Louvain95 € la-Neuve, 31 mai – 2 juin 2018, 2020. XX-424 p. 312. J. VERHEYDEN – D.A.T. MÜLLER (eds.), Imagining Paganism through the Ages: Studies on the Use of the Labels “Pagan” and “Paganism” in 95 € Controversies, 2020. XIV-343 p. 165 € 313. E. BRITO, Accès au Christ, 2020. XVI-1164 p. 314. B. BOURGINE (ed.), Le souci de toutes les Églises: Hommage à Joseph 93 € Famerée, 2020. XLIV-399 p. 315. C.C. APINTILIESEI, La structure ontologique-communionnelle de la personne: Aux sources théologiques et philosophiques du père Dumitru Stăniloae, 90 € 2020. XXII-441 p. 316. A. DUPONT – W. FRANÇOIS – J. LEEMANS (eds.), Nos sumus tempora: Studies on Augustine and His Reception Offered to Mathijs Lamberigts, 98 € 2020. XX-577 p. 317. D. BOSSCHAERT – J. LEEMANS (eds.), Res opportunae nostrae aetatis: Studies on the Second Vatican Council Offered to Mathijs Lamberigts, 2020. XII578 p. 98 € 318. B. OIRY, Le Temps qui compte: Construction et qualification du temps de l’histoire dans le récit des livres de Samuel (1 S 1 – 1 R 2), 2021. XVI-510 p. 89 €

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319. J. VERHEYDEN – J. SCHRÖTER – T. NICKLAS (eds.), Texts in Context: Essays on Dating and Contextualising Christian Writings from the Second 98 € and Early Third Centuries, 2021. VIII-319 p. 320. N.S. HEEREMAN, “Behold King Solomon on the Day of His Wedding”: A Symbolic-Diachronic Reading of Song 3,6-11 and 4,12–5,1, 2021. XXVIII-975 p. 144 € 321. S. ARENAS, Fading Frontiers? A Historical-Theological Investigation into 80 € the Notion of the Elementa Ecclesiae, 2021. XXXII-261 p. 322. C. KORTEN, Half-Truths: The Irish College, Rome, and a Select History of 98 € the Catholic Church, 1771-1826, 2021. XII-329 p. 323. L. DECLERCK, Vatican II: concile de transition et de renouveau. La contri97 € bution des évêques et théologiens belges, 2021. XVIII-524 p. 324. F. MIES, Job ou sortir de la cendre: étude exégétique, littéraire anthropologique et théologique de la mort dans le livre de Job, 2022. XVI-791 p. 195 € 325. J. LIEU (ed.), Peter in the Early Church: Apostle – Missionary – Church 160 € Leader, 2021. XXVIII-806 p. 326. J.Z. SKIRA – P. DE MEY – H.G.B. TEULE (eds.), The Catholic Church and Its Orthodox Sister Churches Twenty-Five Years after Balamand, 2022. XXII-304 p. 75 € 327. J. VERHEYDEN – J.S. KLOPPENBORG – G. ROSKAM – S. SCHORN (eds.), On Using Sources in Graeco-Roman, Jewish and Early Christian Literature, 93 € 2022. XVI-430 p. 328. J.W. VAN HENTEN (ed.), The Books of the Maccabees: Literary, Historical 185 € and Religious Perspectives, 2022. XXII-734 p. 329. J. VERHEYDEN – G. ROSKAM – A. HEIRMAN – J. LEEMANS (eds.), Reaching for Perfection: Studies on the Means and Goals of Ascetical Practices in 80 € an Interreligious Perspective, 2022. VIII-227 p. 330. H.J. DE JONGE – M. GRUNDEKEN – J.S. KLOPPENBORG – C.M. TUCKETT (eds.), The Gospels and Their Receptions: Festschrift Joseph Verheyden, 2022. XCII-621 p. 145 €

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