Grace, Governance and Globalization 9780567667649, 9780567667670, 9780567667656

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction: Grace, Governance and Globalization – Theology and Public Life
Part 1 Theological Hermeneutics: ‘If Politics Isn’t Everything …’
Chapter 1 God Becoming Present in the World: Sacramental Foundations of a Theology of Public Life
1 From accommodation to particularism: Three types of public theology
2 Church in the world: The sacramental ontology of Edward Schillebeeckx
3 The invisibility we live towards: Public life as sacrament
Bibliography
Chapter 2 Towards a Hermeneutic for Public Theology: Conversations with Habermas and Schillebeeckx
1 Habermas, critical theory and the public sphere
2 Schillebeeckx, hermeneutics and critical theory
3 Hermeneutics for public theology
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 3 Glimpses of Schillebeeckx in Asian Theological Hermeneutics
1 Only as starting point
2 The new hermeneutics
3 Towards a Catholic use of hermeneutics
4 It began with an experience
5 Extra mundum nulla salus
6 Church as sacrament of dialogue
7 Doing of the faith
8 Parable of God, paradigm of humanity
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 4 The Hermeneutics of Intersubjectivity: A Study of Theologies of Homelessness
1 Method in theology
2 Theologies of homelessness
3 Liturgy
4 Three notes about this theology of home
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 5 From Han to Mystical–Political Praxis: Intercultural Hermeneutics and Schillebeeckx’s Soteriology
1 Intercultural hermeneutics
2 A tentative phenomenology of Han
3 Schillebeeckx’s mystical–political praxis
4 Han, Schillebeeckx and the emerging intercultural public sphere
Bibliography
Part 2 Christology: ‘The Praxis of the Reign of God’
Chapter 6 Speaking of Jesus Today: Towards an Engaged Systematic Theology
1 Language
2 Context
3 Epistemology
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 7 Still Revealing Himself: How Jesus’ Resurrection Enables Us to Be Public Theologians
1 Responding to John Robinson
2 Jesus as the bridge between the traditions and us
3 Jesus’ resurrection: Ongoing divine presence through his humanity
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 8 Overcoming Political Nestorianism: Towards a Chalcedonian Politics
1 Political Nestorianism
2 The politics of non-dualism
Bibliography
Chapter 9 Concentrating on Creation: Following Christ in a Context of Climate Change
1 Critical negativity and critical positivity
2 Human and ecological solidarity
3 Sequela Jesu
Bibliography
Part 3 Eschatology: ‘God, the Future of Man’
Chapter 10 Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive?: Schillebeeckx’s Eschatology and Public Theology
1 Witnessing and discourse
2 Apologetic communication within a modern context
3 Schillebeeckx’ ‘honest justification of faith’
4 Framing a public theology
5 Are the last things exclusively positive?
Bibliography
Chapter 11 ‘Putting the Facts to Shame’: Eschatology and the Discourse of Martyrdom
1 The Angelus of History
2 Parables of ‘the good and honest soldier’
3 The threatened humanum
4 Expanding the theology of martyrdom
5 Ecce homo
Bibliography
Chapter 12 Schillebeeckx’s View on Eschatology as Public Theology Today
1 Setting the scene: Turning to the world and rehabilitating eschatology
2 Schillebeeckx’s eschatological reflections in 1967–8
3 Schillebeeckx’s answer to the question about the distinctive contribution of Christian eschatology to the creation of a better society
4 The public role of eschatology as public theology
Bibliography
Chapter 13 Afro-Pessimism and Christian Hope
1 Black theology
2 Afro-pessimism
3 Deep racism and secular hope
4 God, the future of Blacks
Bibliography
Part 4 Ecclesiology: ‘The Church with a Human Face’
Chapter 14 Enchantment, Idolatry and Sacrament: Looking for Grace in the Secular
1 Enchantment
2 Idolatry
3 Sacrament
Bibliography
Chapter 15 ‘Things Which Can Only Be Seen by Eyes That Have Cried’: Towards a Political Theology of Lament
1 A political theology of lament
2 Archbishop Munzihirwa: Things that only eyes that have cried can see
Conclusion: The odd gift of lament
Bibliography
Chapter 16 The Church and the Elusive ‘Public’
Bibliography
Chapter 17 The Church in the Limelight of the Public Square: An Alternative Community?
1 Public church and public theology – an exclusively Protestant paradigm?
2 What constitutes and characterizes the public square?
3 ‘It shall not be so among you’ – or a church ‘missionary by her very nature’
Bibliography
Index of Names

Citation preview

Grace, Governance and Globalization

T&T Clark Studies in Edward Schillebeeckx Series Editors Frederiek Depoortere Kathleen McManus Stephan van Erp

Grace, Governance and Globalization Edited by Stephan van Erp, Martin G. Poulsom and Lieven Boeve

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as T&T Clark 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Stephan van Erp, Martin G. Poulsom and Lieven Boeve, 2017 Stephan van Erp, Martin G. Poulsom and Lieven Boeve have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-6764-9  ePDF: 978-0-5676-6765-6 ePub: 978-0-5676-6766-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: T&T Clark Studies in Edward Schillebeeckx Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents List of Contributors

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Introduction: Grace, Governance and Globalization – Theology and Public Life  Stephan van Erp, Martin G. Poulsom and Lieven Boeve 1 Part 1  Theological Hermeneutics: ‘If Politics Isn’t Everything …’ 1

God Becoming Present in the World: Sacramental Foundations of a Theology of Public Life  Stephan van Erp 13 2 Towards a Hermeneutic for Public Theology: Conversations with Habermas and Schillebeeckx  Sebastian Kim 28 3 Glimpses of Schillebeeckx in Asian Theological Hermeneutics  Edmund Kee-Fook Chia 45 4 The Hermeneutics of Intersubjectivity: A Study of Theologies of Homelessness  Siobhán Garrigan 62 5 From Han to Mystical–Political Praxis: Intercultural Hermeneutics and Schillebeeckx’s Soteriology  Kevin Considine 77

Part 2  Christology: ‘The Praxis of the Reign of God’ 6 7 8 9

Speaking of Jesus Today: Towards an Engaged Systematic Theology  Graham Ward 91 Still Revealing Himself: How Jesus’ Resurrection Enables Us to Be Public Theologians  Erik Borgman 102 Overcoming Political Nestorianism: Towards a Chalcedonian Politics  Aristotle Papanikolaou 114 Concentrating on Creation: Following Christ in a Context of Climate Change  Martin G. Poulsom 125

Part 3  Eschatology: ‘God, the Future of Man’ 10 Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive?: Schillebeeckx’s Eschatology

and Public Theology  Christoph Hübenthal 143 11 ‘Putting the Facts to Shame’: Eschatology and the Discourse

of Martyrdom  Michael Kirwan 159

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12 Schillebeeckx’s View on Eschatology as Public Theology

Today  Frederiek Depoortere 173 13 Afro-Pessimism and Christian Hope  Vincent Lloyd 191 Part 4  Ecclesiology: ‘The Church with a Human Face’ 14 Enchantment, Idolatry and Sacrament: Looking for Grace in the

Secular  William T. Cavanaugh 209 15 ‘Things Which Can Only Be Seen by Eyes That Have Cried’: Towards a Political Theology of Lament  Emmanuel Katongole 225 16 The Church and the Elusive ‘Public’  Elizabeth Phillips 238 17 The Church in the Limelight of the Public Square: An Alternative Community?  Annemarie C. Mayer 248 Index of Names

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List of Contributors Lieven Boeve is professor of systematic theology at KU Leuven and director general of the Flemish Secretary for Catholic Education. Recently he has published Theology at the Crossroads of University, Church and Society. Dialogue, Difference and Catholic Identity (Bloomsbury, 2016) and Lyotard and Theology (Bloomsbury, 2014). Erik Borgman is professor of public theology at Tilburg University and a lay dominican. He is a member of the editorial board of Concilium. He is the author of Dominican Spirituality: An Exploration (Bloomsbury, 2002) and Edward Schillebeeckx: A Theologian in His History, Vol. I: A Catholic Theology of Culture (Bloomsbury, 2003). William T. Cavanaugh is professor of Catholic studies and director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University in Chicago. His degrees are from the universities of Notre Dame, Cambridge, and Duke. He is the author of six books – most recently Field Hospital (Eerdmans, 2016) – and editor of three more. His books and articles have been translated into ten languages. He is also co-editor of the international journal Modern Theology. Edmund Kee-Fook Chia is from Malaysia and served from 1996 to 2004 as executive secretary of interreligious dialogue for the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences. He completed his PhD in intercultural theology at Nijmegen where Edward Schillebeeckx witnessed his promotion. He then joined Catholic Theological Union in Chicago where he last served as associate professor and chair of the Doctrinal Studies Department. Since 2011 he has been on the faculty of the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne where he also serves as coordinator for interreligious dialogue. Kevin P. Considine is assistant professor of religious studies at Calumet College of St  Joseph in Whiting, Indiana, USA. His research focuses on Roman Catholic soteriology, intercultural hermeneutics, Korean-American anthropologies of han and theologies of racialized suffering in the United States. His recent book, Salvation for the Sinned-Against: ‘Han’ and Schillebeeckx in Intercultural Dialogue (Pickwick, 2015), focuses upon these areas, and his articles have appeared in: Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society, Tijdschrift voor Theologie, New Theology Review, and Black Theology: An International Journal. Frederiek Depoortere is assistant professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, where he is a member of the Pastoral and Empirical Theology Research Unit. He teaches Catechetics and courses on Religion, Meaning and World Views at different departments and campuses of the university (in particular to students studying Science and Engineering Technology). His current research interests include communication and transmission of the faith in the contemporary context,

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public theology, theology and (postmodern) culture, science and religion, faith and politics, and spiritual and religious aspects of technology. Stephan van Erp is professor of fundamental theology at KU Leuven, Belgium. Among his research interests are philosophical theology, political theology, theology and aesthetics, and the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx and Hans Urs von Balthasar. He is the author of The Art of Theology (Peeters, 2004), and editor of fifteen volumes, among which Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology (Bloomsbury, 2010), and Conversion and Church. The Challenge of Ecclesial Renewal (Brill 2015). He is editorin-chief of Brill Research Perspectives in Theology, managing editor of Tijdschrift voor Theologie and editor of the T&T Clark Studies in Edward Schillebeeckx (Bloomsbury) and of Studies in Philosophical Theology (Peeters Publishers). Siobhán Garrigan is Loyola Professor of Theology at Trinity College Dublin. By looking at theology’s implication in social and political difficulty, her research highlights the ways theology might also be a force for positive transformation regarding matters such as sectarianism, poverty and discrimination. Her most recent book is The Real Peace Process: Worship, Politics and the End of Sectarianism on the Irish-British conflict in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Christoph Hübenthal is professor of systematic theology at Radboud University Nijmegen. He is also co-director of the Center for Catholic Studies at this university. His current research focuses on public theology as an apologetically inspired form of social ethics. One of the application areas of such a public theology is the field of sport. In 2012, he co-edited Sport and Christianity: A Sign of the Times in the Light of Faith (Catholic University of America Press). Emmanuel Katongole is associate professor of theology and peace studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. He is the author of A Future for Africa: Critical Essays in Christian Social Imagination (University of Scranton Press, 2005), The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa (Eerdmans, 2010), and Born of Lament: On the Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa (forthcoming, Eerdmans 2016). Sebastian Kim holds the chair in Theology and Public Life in the Faculty of Education & Theology at York St John University. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and the author of In Search of Identity: Debates on Religious Conversion in India (Oxford University Press, 2003), Theology in the Public Sphere (SCM, 2011) and co-author of Christianity as a World Religion (Continuum, 2008) and A History of Korean Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2014). He is a Fellow of Royal Asiatic Society, Editor of the International Journal of Public Theology and executive member of the Global Network for Public Theology (GNPT). Michael Kirwan is a British Jesuit priest, lecturing in systematic and pastoral theology at Heythrop College, University of London. He is also director of the Heythrop Institute: Religion and Society. His doctoral research explored the theology of martyrdom in the light of the mimetic theory of the French American cultural theorist, René Girard. He is

List of Contributors

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the author of Discovering Girard (DLT, 2004) and Girard and Theology (Continuum T&T Clark, 2010), and has been extensively involved in the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R), which exists to explore and promote Girard’s mimetic theory. He has also written Political Theology: A New Introduction (DLT, 2009), and is interested in the conversation between theology and literature. Vincent Lloyd is associate professor of theology and religion studies at Villanova University where his scholarship focuses on the intersection of religion, race and politics using the tools of critical theory. His most recent books are Black Natural Law (Oxford, 2016) and a co-edited volume, Race and Secularism in America (Columbia, 2016). He also co-edits the journal Political Theology. Annemarie C. Mayer is professor of systematic theology and the study of religions at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of KU Leuven, Belgium. She is on the editorial board of the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, and of Louvain Studies. Until 2013 she held the post of Catholic Consultant to the World Council of Churches in Geneva and taught Fundamental Theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Until 2010 she taught dogmatic and ecumenical theology at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in the Catholic Faculty of Tübingen University, Germany. Aristotle Papanikolaou is professor of theology and holds the Archbishop Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture at Fordham University. He is also senior fellow and co-founder of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University. He has authored two monographs: Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism and Divine-Human Communion (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006) and The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). He has also co-edited numerous books, most notably, Orthodox Readings of Augustine (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008) and Orthodox Constructions of the West (Fordham University Press, 2013). Elizabeth Phillips teaches ethics and political theology at Westcott House, an Anglican theological college affiliated with the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Theological Federation. She has published numerous articles and chapters on subjects including virtue ethics, eschatology and politics, theological ethnography and American Christian Zionism. She is author of Political Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (T&T Clark, 2012), and co-editor with Craig Hovey of The Cambridge Companion to Christian Political Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Martin G. Poulsom is head of Theology at Heythrop College, University of London, where he has been teaching Systematic Theology for more than ten years. His first monograph, The Dialectics of Creation: Creation and the Creator in Edward Schillebeeckx and David Burrell, was published by Bloomsbury T&T Clark in 2014. He specializes in the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx and in theology of creation, and has also published articles on science and religion, religious life in the Roman Catholic Church and the relation between theory and practice in theology.

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Graham Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and Extraordinary Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology at the University of Stellenbosch. Among his books are Cities of God (Routledge, 2000), Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2004), True Religion (Blackwell, 2002), Christ and Culture (Blackwell, 2005), The Politics of Discipleship (Baker Academic, 2009), Unbelievable (I.B. Tauris, 2014) and How the Lights Gets In (Oxford University Press, 2016). Along with Michael Hoelzl, he is also the translator of two of Carl Schmitt’s works: Political Theology II (Polity, 2008) and Dictatorship (Polity, 2013).

Introduction: Grace, Governance and Globalization – Theology and Public Life Stephan van Erp, Martin G. Poulsom and Lieven Boeve

In the past decade, a new generation of scholars has engaged in the study of the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx. Both in and outside the Low Countries, the work of this well-known Dominican theologian has spurred a new historical-theological and systematical-theological interest. The present volume, the very first in the T&T Clark Studies in Edward Schillebeeckx, is a product of this renewed and intensified research into Schillebeeckx’s theology, not only at KU Leuven, but at many universities worldwide. It contains the results of an international conference in Ravenstein near Nijmegen in the Netherlands, held between 27 and 30 August 2014, in commemoration of Schillebeeckx’s 100th birthday. Although there has previously been some collaboration among others in the context of Schillebeeckx’s own academic journal Tijdschrift voor Theologie, it was the formal agreement between the two Catholic universities, Leuven and Nijmegen in 2006 that reinforced the efforts to create a network for a collaborative Schillebeeckx research project. The research of Stephan van Erp and Erik Borgman in the Netherlands was allied with the research efforts of Lieven Boeve and Frederiek Depoortere in Leuven, which resulted in an international symposium organized in Leuven, from 3 to 6 December 2008, bearing the title: ‘Theology for the 21st Century’: The Enduring Relevance of Edward Schillebeeckx for Contemporary Theology, the proceedings of which were published as Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, by T&T Clark in 2010. The aim of this international expert symposium was not so much to corroborate the continuing importance of Schillebeeckx, but rather to undertake a broader reflection on the state of contemporary theology, starting from what Schillebeeckx’s theology has to offer in this regard. Rather than dealing with Schillebeeckx’s work as such, the participants – as Schillebeeckx did it in his own time – confronted the contemporary challenges to theology and attempted to meet them in an adequate way. Profiting from this collaboration and the international expert symposium, a research proposal was accepted by the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO), which provided our consortium with a four-year research fund at KU Leuven (2010–14). Sometime later, funding was also secured in Nijmegen to continue and intensify the ongoing Schillebeeckx research (2013–17). Finally, our colleagues from Heythrop College in London also agreed to join this research initiative. The conference was an important outcome of these joint research projects. The intent has not only been to retrieve Schillebeeckx’s thought historically, but also systematically,

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and particularly politically. The political relevance of Schillebeeckx’s theology today is intrinsically linked to the evaluation of the hermeneutical turn in modern theology, and the research hypothesis is that, in order to safeguard Schillebeeckx’s notion of contrast experience as the cornerstone of a critical-liberative theology, we will need to pursue his hermeneutical turn. Schillebeeckx’s notion of contrast experience and his theory of anthropological constants can be retrieved from the perspective of a radical-hermeneutical theology. This entails that contrast experiences are no longer rooted in a fundamental continuity between Christianity and the political situation, but this need not, of course, imply that the dialogue of theology with the political situation should be abandoned. Today especially, a theological reading of Schillebeeckx’s concept of contrast experience and the undergirding theology of grace is quite able to disclose dimensions of theological interpretations in political conflict, raising again in contextually appropriate ways the question for human integrity and wholeness, but this time from the particular Christian hermeneutical horizon of grace. Situated in a context marked by globalization and (religious) pluralization, this hermeneutically embedded concern for human integrity and wholeness then forms the starting point for engaging other (non-religious) perspectives, in view of coming to terms with the challenges of suffering and the quest for grace in the world of today. The chapters in this volume are presented in four parts, each drawing on an important theme in Schillebeeckx’s work. The first part of this volume considers theological hermeneutics, placing Schillebeeckx’s hermeneutics into dialogue with different situations in public life and discourse. In his opening article, Stephan van Erp (KU Leuven) shows how Schillebeeckx’s theological metaphysical framework could serve as a constructive criticism of contemporary public theologies. First, he explores the recent attempts to reconnect theology and secular culture under the heading of ‘public theology’ and show how these attempts have failed to maintain a theological position. Van Erp claims that public theology had to construct a clear disjunction between the church and the public, in order to account for its self-declared bridgebuilding tasks. Second, he describes how Catholic theology in the twentieth century, most notably Nouvelle théologie, provides a different, sacramental ontology that allows for a less disjunctive representation of the relationship between the church and the secular. This however, poses the question whether such an ontology is a convincing account of reality that could provide a possible appeal of the church to the public today. The sacramental ontology of twentieth-century Catholic theology might need to be complemented by reflections on the responsive act of faith that this ontology calls for. Third and finally, Van Erp proposes that public life – both in its secular and religious forms – could itself be regarded as a sacramental practice of response or witnessing. This sacramental view will offer new opportunities for understanding how the church becomes church in that practice, and how public life can be viewed as already participating in that becoming. Sebastian Kim (York St John University) explores the meaning of ‘public’ in public theology, observing that there is little discussion on the concept of the public sphere or public opinion, which is needed in order to strengthen the definition of public

Introduction

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theology. He discusses the contributions made to the topic by Jürgen Habermas and Schillebeeckx, since the critical insights that they offer have promoted the public engagement of philosophy and theology respectively. He highlights some of the key philosophical and theological findings of the two authors and applies these to the hermeneutical development of public theology, suggesting five aspects that make a contribution to the exploration of the nature of the public sphere and the implications of this for Christian theology. Critical theory, and particularly the emphasis on praxis, has made a deep impact on many academic disciplines and it should be actively yet critically adapted for theologizing in contemporary contexts, just as Schillebeeckx suggested. Like liberation theology and political theology, public theology is interested in the practical application of Christian theology beyond the interpretation of Christian Scripture, doctrines and traditions, something that affects both the situation and theology itself. Through this dual process, the development of a hermeneutic for public theology will lead to a new shared understanding of theology for the common good of all participants in the public sphere. Edmund Kee-Fook Chia (Australian Catholic University) observes that readers are afforded glimpses into Schillebeeckx’s theology if they explore the hermeneutics arising from Asian Theology, which has propelled the church outward in just the way that Kim proposes, focusing on dialogue with the cultures, religions and poor of Asia. Like Schillebeeckx’s thought, the Asian Theology espoused by Chia is never dogmatic and acknowledges the contextual and experimental nature of its theology. This is premised upon an awareness of the historicity and finitude of the human condition, which Schillebeeckx refers to as the ‘new hermeneutics’. His clarion call is that we must be constantly reinterpreting the faith if we wish to be faithful to God’s Word. Reinterpretation entails a mutually critical correlation and confrontation between the various sources of theology, one of which, for Schillebeeckx, is human experience. That accounts for why he believes that God’s plan of salvation takes place within the concrete realities of the history of the present world, leading to the axiom extra mundum nulla salus. Likewise, concreteness is also the end point of theology and manifests itself in what he calls the ‘doing of the faith’. In Asian Theology, this refers to the dialogue with the poor, which is effectively a command to be in touch with the poor. That is  why Asian theologians proclaim that there is ‘no salvation outside of God’s covenant with the poor’. Jesus is the story of God as lived out today in those who are forced into poverty. Siobhán Garrigan (Trinity College Dublin) suggests various ways that intersubjective hermeneutics might offer insight into theological treatments of politics in general and homelessness in particular. She remarks on how Christianity has conflicting teachings about the idea of ‘home’ and suggests that a viable Christian sense of home is to be found in liturgy, so long as liturgy is understood not just (according to the modern, subjectivist ideal) as forming our identities but, rather (according to intersubjective hermeneutics) as initiating our political disposition as being for the Other. Such an approach goes beyond the limits imposed by an intersubjective hermeneutics based on language, opening up the sacramental character of the whole of the created order.

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Re-reading Louis-Marie Chauvet through Schillebeeckx, she investigates what the notion of encounter can offer to the process of identity formation, moving it beyond belonging, emphasizing the bodily and the political, and developing solidarity among people with different identities. Kevin Considine (Calumet College of St Joseph) agrees about Schillebeeckx’s claim that God’s work of salvation can be found in the world and is ongoing, albeit in fragments. This conviction undergirds his famous claim that there is no salvation outside the world (extra mundum, nulla salus). The importance of context in his work, which was directed towards the experience of modernity and, to a lesser extent, postmodernity in the West, raises a challenge today. The experience of globalization has made younger generations even more conscious of the interconnectedness and disjunction of a world of so many different cultures, subcultures, and worldviews. Can Schillebeeckx’s insights into salvation be sustained in this changed environment? And do they speak to a multicultural and socially diverse context that is no longer principally defined by the hermeneutical norms for public discourse of the secular West? Considine proposes that Schillebeeckx’s soteriological insights can be sustained and perhaps extended within the emerging public sphere. He argues that the notion of han (a Korean term that refers to frustrated hope/black hole in the soul/abyss of pain), when in dialogue with Schillebeeckx’s understanding of mystical–political praxis, offers a vision of salvation that is intelligible in an enlarged, globalized public sphere. He discusses some of the methods of intercultural hermeneutics that facilitate the work of interpretation, presents a brief phenomenology of the Korean understanding of han, and examines Schillebeeckx’s understanding of mystical–political praxis. He concludes that Schillebeeckx holds spirituality and social action in tension for the purpose of elucidating God’s work of salvation in this world and that han offers a resource for envisioning the brokenness of the world in a way that can be made intelligible in today’s globalized public realm. The second part of the volume draws on what is perhaps the best-known part of Schillebeeckx’s work in the English-speaking world: his Christology. In wishing to examine how we speak of Jesus today, Graham Ward (University of Oxford) begins by exploring the complexities of learning the language of the Christian faith and the way in which the speaking of Jesus is not just something that circulates within the church. This ‘speaking’ has both synchronic and diachronic dimensions such that it is continually being learnt and relearnt. His chapter advocates for engaged systematic theologies that can examine how we learn to speak of Jesus Christ in specific ways at specific times and within specific locations, and critically appropriates that fact. These theologies will need to appreciate the complexity of ‘context’ and ‘embeddedness’, and be responsive to them. As they do this, they will develop new epistemologies. Attention, for example, to embodied cognition will require rejecting any functionalist approach to doctrine. The central axiom of such an engaged approach to systematic theology, as both a way of approaching theologies of the past and a way of composing them today, is the understanding that doctrine is lived. These questions about how to speak of Jesus today, and how to live out the beliefs that are spoken, are also addressed by Erik Borgman’s (Tilburg University) chapter, in which Schillebeeckx’s theological project is characterized as ‘being secular in order not

Introduction

5

to be secular’. Analysing his critique of Bishop John Robinson’s Honest to God in the mid-1960s, he shows how Schillebeeckx is not trying to make religious faith secularly acceptable, but attempting to understand the whole of reality theologically, secular modernity included. This, it is argued, is the background of Schillebeeckx’s turn to – in his own words – ‘Jesus of Nazareth, confessed as the Christ’ to develop a new future for theology. His books Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (1974) and Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord (1977) are widely read as attempts to test the feasibility of the Christian faith in the light of modern research on the historical Jesus. Although there are reasons for this, it proves to be Schillebeeckx’s ultimate intention to let Jesus himself speak again. His aim, Borgman argues, was not to bridge the gap between the Jesus of history and the people of today, but to let the living Jesus himself bridge that gap through the stories and acts in which his words and deeds still resonate. Borgman points out how, in this project, Schillebeeckx uses a Thomistic approach that he analysed and applied explicitly earlier in his career. Where other Catholic theologians started to follow the Protestant schema according to which the confession of Jesus as Christ is an interpretation of his history and person that has to be justified, Schillebeeckx tries to show how Jesus is still acting among us, leading us to the confession that he is the risen Christ, not about whom we should speak, but in whose name we are invited to speak about the radical renewal of history present in the proclaimed nearness of God’s reign. As a result, we are invited to do public theology in the midst of our secular culture, contesting its very secularity. In a chapter that, to some extent, picks up where Borgman leaves off, Aristotle Papanikolaou (Fordham University) argues against the recent Christian critique of political democratic liberalism, contending that it is theologically in contradiction with itself. One the one hand, most who have engaged in this critique are theologically grounded in the understanding of Christ as delineated by the Council of Chalcedon – that Christ is the one divine person of the Logos in whom are united two natures without confusion, mixture, division, or separation. Such an understanding of Christ is part of a distinctive Christian narrative in which the church is a politics and, still for others, implies a distinctive ontology of participation that precludes the idea of the secular as a space in which the church is marginalized, privatized, or eliminated. Ironically, however, this critique is guilty of political Nestorianism. After first defining what he means by political Nestorianism, Papanikolaou advocates for a politics more consistent with Chalcedon’s minimalist definition of the person of Christ. He concludes that a politics of Chalcedon is one of non-dualism that is not realized at the level of the rhetoric of demonization or mutual incompatibility, but in the practices in which one learns how to love even the stranger and the enemy. In his chapter, Martin G. Poulsom (Heythrop College, London) draws on a theme from Schillebeeckx’s work that also frames this part of the volume: ‘the Praxis of the Reign of God’. Poulsom posits that, in our current context, climate change is arguably the greatest challenge facing humanity and the planet. It invites theologians, just as much as anyone else, to consider what we might do in the situation in which we find ourselves. In responding, our action must be informed by theory that helps us to act differently as we seek a better future for our planet. The theologian also knows that we do not act alone, so an interrelated account of human and divine action needs to be fashioned which includes the connection between activity and rest. Drawing on

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Schillebeeckx’s creation-faith to begin to offer such an account, Poulsom first explores the interaction between critical negativity and critical positivity. Schillebeeckx’s dialectical account offers the possibility of developing a distinctive form of the interplay between the positive and negative aspects in his theology that can be called ‘critical optimism’. In this spirit, the theme of human and ecological solidarity is then considered, and Poulsom suggests that developing this theme ‘sequela Schillebeeckx’ can play a helpful role in the dialogue between church and society that is one of the aims of public theology. Considering some recent initiatives in the UK, he argues that Christians can show, by the way that they act in society, what kind of human and ecological solidarity they are choosing to live out, and thereby what kind of human beings they are choosing to be and to become. Living a simple and sustainable lifestyle, in solidarity with all creatures, is a way of following Jesus that can be a powerful witness to Christianity today, and can make an important contribution to public debates about climate change. In part three, the shift in Schillebeeckx’s theology – and in public theology more widely – to the priority of the future and of eschatology is considered. Christoph Hübenthal (Radboud University Nijmegen) begins this section by seeking to clarify the concept of public theology from this point of view, as has been done previously by other chapters in the collection from other perspectives. Public theology, he argues, can be understood as a kind of apologetic communication that combines two modes of bringing the Christian eschatological message to a wider public: discourse and witnessing. Discourse, on the one hand, is delineated as the reflective selfenlightenment of the secular. Witnessing, on the other hand, can be conceived of as authentic and transitive Christian faith praxis, where ‘transitive’ means that this praxis is not encapsulated within itself, but addressed to a non-Christian audience. However, he notes that the idea of apologetic communication has been contested by post-liberal theologians. According to them, the secular is a godless and nihilistic space, which should never be endorsed by Christian theology. Hence, a public theology as sketched hitherto appears to be either a heretical or an impossible endeavour. Over against this post-liberal position, however, Hübenthal shows that the secular can indeed be justified, by taking seriously the human nature of Christ. After all, it is Christ’s human nature that defines a space which is not claimed by God, but nevertheless is directed towards a free affirmation of God’s loving grace. Reflective self-enlightenment of the secular, as a result, means making this directedness comprehensible to a wider public. In that context, he shows that Schillebeeckx makes an important contribution to how this discursive mode of apologetic communication could be brought into practice. What Schillebeeckx describes as ‘honest justification of faith’ can indeed be seen as an attempt to apologetically defend the plausibility of the Christian eschatological message. Furthermore, he also helps to clarify the content of this message. Though his account of the eschaton can be criticized in some respects, he himself provides us with the means to rectify his position. Michael Kirwan (Heythrop College, London) concentrates on the way that Schillebeeckx elaborates the notion of ‘contrast experiences’ to express the theological significance of suffering and violated dignity. He claims, with Schillebeeckx, that

Introduction

7

such experiences can, paradoxically, mediate a deep encounter with God. His chapter brings this notion into alignment with other attempts to make sense of suffering as negation, by Walter Benjamin, Emmanuel Levinas, Jeal-Paul Sartre, and Thomas Mann. A dialogue between theology and literature remains implicit in Schillebeeckx’s work. While he shows some interest in cultural interaction, his intellectual concerns are largely philosophical. Nevertheless, his parable of the ‘good and honest soldier’, who heroically refuses a command to execute prisoners, invites us to a theo-aesthetic meditation upon ‘the humanum under threat’. Kirwan identifies two trajectories: the ‘quest for bourgeois man’ in Mann’s 1928 novel, The Magic Mountain, and the biblical motif of ecce homo, including the idea of the tragic as the art form which requires ‘the intolerable burden of God’s presence’. Specifically, Kirwan contends that Schillebeeckx’s theological reflection can complete Mann’s truncated vision of the humanum. More generally, his understanding of ‘the threatened humanum as imago Dei’, and of a Christomorphic approach whereby Christ is recognized as ‘concentrated humanity’, provides the foundation for a distinctive theological anthropology, and for a fruitful conversation with theological aesthetics. Frederiek Depoortere (KU Leuven) looks at the way in which, in 1968, in an article published almost simultaneously in both Dutch and English, Schillebeeckx raised the question of the public role of eschatology. He first of all seeks to understand this question as a question, asking how it emerged and in what context it was raised. He begins, therefore, by situating the question at hand against the backdrop of the turn to the world and the rehabilitation of eschatology which occurred in Catholic theology in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, before focusing on Chapter 3 of Gaudium et Spes as the immediate background of Schillebeeckx’s reflections in which the question of the public role of eschatology was posed. He then takes a closer look at these reflections themselves, focusing on two elements: first, the primacy of the future and the ‘new image of God’ that comes therewith, and second, what may be called, following Schillebeeckx himself, the dialectics of eschatology. In this way, it becomes possible to understand how Schillebeeckx interpreted the contribution of Christian eschatology to public life at the end of the 1960s. The final section of his chapter examines whether Schillebeeckx’s view on the public role eschatology can be brought to the public square today. Can his view speak meaningfully to a wider public? Or, is it rather, only understandable by a relatively small circle of people sufficiently familiar with Christianity? Depoortere answers these questions by assessing whether or not Schillebeeckx’s view on the public role eschatology plays fulfils the requirements for qualifying as public theology. One of the key themes in Schillebeeckx’s eschatology is that of hope, and Vincent Lloyd (Villanova University) observes that hope has also been a central theme of Black theological reflection. In contexts of severe oppression, the hope offered by Christianity would seem to be a powerful resource. When Christian hope is understood as having this-worldly effects, hoping enough or in the right way promises to help achieve racial justice. However, recent scholarship in Black Studies, grouped together as Afropessimism, has called attention to the extremely strong grip of anti-Black racism. Policy changes and even changes of heart seem to have little effect on the oppression

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faced by black people. How might this worry inflect Christian theological accounts of hope? With reference to Schillebeeckx’s work, Lloyd draws a parallel between theological lessons learnt from secularization and theological lessons learnt from antiBlack racism. Both can cleanse theological reflection of misconceptions that reflect worldly interests rather than divine truths. This cleansing process can be particularly helpful with regard to hope, and it offers an avenue for refining our understanding of Christian hope in a way that responds to the condition of marginalized communities, but also speaks more broadly to all Christian communities. The last part of the volume considers Schillebeeckx’s important ecclesiological work, for which he became well known in the 1980s. In his chapter, William Cavanaugh (De Paul University) takes a fresh look at the questions raised by Schillebeeckx’s early attempts to deal theologically with the phenomenon of secularization, questions that are crucial for every attempt to talk about theology and public life. He addresses the question of whether the secular is the realm of mundane and disenchanted reality, or rather a realm of deep enchantment and secular ‘religions’. He explores Schillebeeckx’s theme of the rejection of a theophanous nature through the more recent treatment of disenchantment in Charles Taylor’s work on secularization. Cavanaugh argues that the secular world is not in fact disenchanted or de-idolized, but that secular culture is still prone to the sacralization of the material world. He uses the work of Jean-Luc Marion to explore an interiorized account of idolatry that makes sense of the ways that people relate to the material world in a secular paradigm. Finally, he makes some brief suggestions, in the spirit of Schillebeeckx, on the importance of the sacraments as a therapy for idolatry. Emmanuel Katongole (Notre Dame University) then explores the connections between lament, ecclesiology, and politics in order to highlight the need and urgency for a political theology of lament for our time. Beginning with the witness of Pope Francis at Lampedusa, his chapter argues that lament is not just a sentiment, a mere cry of pain; it is a form of social engagement. Katongole identifies three constitutive dimensions – critical, ecclesiological, and ethical – of the practice of lament. Using the story of Archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa of Bukavu, he shows how these three dimensions played out in the concrete, historical context of Eastern Congo. The overall goal of his chapter is to confirm that the church’s mission and gift in the world is connected to her ability to enter into the practice of lament with hope, and that such hope is a concrete form of social engagement in solidarity with those who suffer. Elizabeth Phillips (University of Cambridge) returns the conversation, once again, to the meaning of ‘public’, remarking that Christian political theologies have always been marked by doctrines of ‘the two’: ways of framing the relationship of the authorities, institutions, and claims intrinsic to Christianity with regard to the authorities, institutions, and the claims of governments and societies. This chapter interrogates the most pervasive contemporary framework of ‘the two’, asking why Christians seem so casually to assume that ‘we’ know what ‘we’ mean when using the word ‘public’, particularly in relation to the church. What is this ‘public’ spoken of in ‘public theology’, ‘the church and the public square’, or ‘the church and public discourse’? Critical

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comparison and contrast of the theopolitical models of St Augustine’s De Civitate Dei and John Howard Yoder’s The Christian Witness to the State are used in order to argue for a ‘doctrine of the two’ which moves beyond the church/public binary. Phillips argues that both Augustine’s and Yoder’s models both involve complex, multi-dimensional mapping in space and across time of differing responses and orientations of humans towards God, and the implications of this observation for contemporary theopolitics are explored. The chapter by Annemarie Mayer (KU Leuven) explores a somewhat similar landscape, asking what a church that ventured out into the public square should look like. This is the guiding question under which he chapter contextualizes the endeavours of public theology in the context of Roman Catholic ecclesiology. It does so in three steps: First, it critically enquires after what the relation of ‘public theology’ and ‘public church’ might be for Catholicism. Is the idea of ‘public church’ an exclusively Protestant paradigm, totally foreign to Catholic thinking, since this has been the religious affiliation of the so-called ‘fathers of public theology’? In the Catholic world, has the public square, to use an image by Richard Neuhaus, always been ‘naked’? What did and does it look like? And what constitutes the public square as such? In order to answer these questions, the concept of ‘public sphere’ is investigated more closely in a second step from a socio-philosophical point of view, taking into account the positions of Jürgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, and Jeffrey Alexander. Under the heading ‘It shall not be so among you’ – or a church ‘missionary by her very nature,’ the third part of Mayer’s chapter critically assesses the concept of ‘alternative community’ in the context of ‘public’ and ‘counter-public’. Here the Roman Catholic magisterial teaching on mission is evaluated as one of the ways that the Catholic church ‘goes public’ these days. Between the need for renewal ad intra and critical advocacy ad extra this concluding part sketches what a church that is fit for the limelight of the public square should look like. The editors would like to thank Marijn de Jong and Daniel Minch Jr for their help with the organization of the conference and the editing of this volume. They have been involved with the project from the start, and have shown a great interest in the ongoing research in the field of Schillebeeckx studies. For the conference organization, we would also like to thank Christiane Alpers, Irene Roding and Rob Veerman for their support. Also, thanks to Mary Catherine O’Reilly for her editorial assistance. We are most grateful to Bloomsbury T&T Clark, especially to Anna Turton and Miriam  Cantwell, for their support and patience. Finally, we expect that the collaboration between KU Leuven, Radboud University Nijmegen, Heythrop College and the Edward Schillebeeckx Foundation will continue in the future. The results of that future collaboration will hopefully find its way again to the T&T Clark Studies in Edward Schillebeeckx. Stephan van Erp (KU Leuven) Martin G. Poulsom (Heythrop College) Lieven Boeve (KU Leuven)

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Part One

Theological Hermeneutics: ‘If Politics Isn’t Everything …’

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1

God Becoming Present in the World: Sacramental Foundations of a Theology of Public Life Stephan van Erp

The current events of our time raise new questions about the role of faith in the public realm, such as those about the relationship between religious and state law, or about religion and global governance. The complex interwovenness of global and local political situations resists all too simple theological models of compassion, dialogue or diversity, even though they might somehow touch upon the heart of the matter. Rather than for merely good intentions, in which theologians to my opinion all too often trade, current events ask for a particular hermeneutical treatment of local and cultural-historical developments in connection with nuanced and rigorous academic reflections on conflict and war, or migration and poverty. The question ‘What is theology’s task when confronted with the current political situation?’ could be easily misunderstood in the ethical constructivist sense of ‘What can or should we do as Christians?’ If academic theology however is not just simply considered as offering the answers to difficult political questions, but instead as the critical response to the public theology that is already employed in governance and by the different parties in political conflicts, the fundamental question should rather be: What motivates people to witness and speak of God in the public realm? Theologians, I propose, should especially be interested in the particular events that have motivated the publicly critical voice that speaks of the history of salvation in the world, and more specifically in the divine agent at work in these events. Edward Schillebeeckx took what he called ‘the present situation’ as the starting point for his theological analyses.1 With ‘situation’, he was not referring to the spirit of the times or simply to what one can hear and see in the news, but, as he put it in his valedictory lecture, he considered ‘situation’ as the context of the people to whom the gospel is proclaimed here and now, and more specifically ‘the way Christians live in sequela Jesu’, in other words: Christian orthopraxis.2 Schillebeeckx’ theology however 1

2

For an introduction into Schillebeeckx’s life and work, see: Stephan van Erp and Maarten van den Bos, A Happy Theologian. A Hundred Years of Edward Schillebeeckx (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2014). Edward Schillebeeckx, Essays. Ongoing Theological Quests, trans. Marcella Manley, CW vol. 11 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark), 51–68.

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was not so much a contextual or practical theology, but a theology of culture, which to him is always already marked by proclamation and praxis, by new interpretations of the gospel and new forms of public life faithful to the gospel. Schillebeeckx’s theological position is quite different from that of current public theologians, as I will show in this chapter. Public theologies are often intended as a response to a silenced theological heart in all things public or political, but one could wonder whether they unintentionally add to that practice of silencing. Walter Benjamin might have been right to point at theology’s hidden voice in the famous beginning of his Theses on the Concept of History, by telling the often-quoted story of an automaton chess machine, constructed such that it could play a winning game of chess. ‘A puppet in Turkish attire and with a hookah in its mouth sat before a chessboard placed on a large table. A system of mirrors created the illusion that this table was transparent from all sides. Actually, a little hunchback who was an expert chess player sat inside and guided the puppet’s hand by means of strings.’3 Benjamin then draws an analogy from this story, as he writes: ‘The puppet called “historical materialism” is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened – small and ugly – and has to keep out of sight.’4 Benjamin’s story might as well be a good description of theology’s situation in late or postmodernity, acting as the hidden dwarf behind cultural and political developments. There are however good apophatic and political reasons to keep it hidden. As theologians however, we might somehow want to uncover this concealed player, at least by trying to understand the workings of its hidden presence, in order to make a real theological critique more manifest. Public theologies are attempting to do just that, but I will argue that, although often voicing admirable political criticisms, they frequently fail in witnessing of the theological nature of their critique, thereby also keeping that little player hidden, contrary to their initial intention to make theology more public. This chapter is divided into three parts. First, I will explore the recent attempts to reconnect theology and secular culture under the heading of ‘public theology’ and show how these attempts have failed to maintain a theological position. Which strategies has public theology developed to speak theologically about public life? What have been the consequences of these strategies for the way public theologians viewed the secular? I will claim that public theologians had to construct a clear disjunction between the church and the public, in order to account for the bridge-building tasks they have given themselves. Second, I will describe how Catholic theology in the twentieth century, most notably Nouvelle theologie and Schillebeeckx in its wake, provides a different ontological framework that allows for a less disjunctive representation of the relationship between the church and the secular. This, however, poses the question whether nowadays such an ontology is a convincing account of reality that could provide a possible appeal of church and theology to the public. The sacramental ontology of twentieth-century Catholic theology will need to be complemented by reflections on the responsive act of faith this ontology calls for. Third and finally, 3 4

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (London: Pimlico, 1999), 45. Ibid.

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I will propose that public life – both in its secular and religious forms – could itself be regarded as a sacramental practice of response or witnessing. This sacramental view will offer new opportunities for understanding how the church becomes church in and through that practice, and how public life can be viewed as already participating in that becoming.

1  From accommodation to particularism: Three types of public theology Viewing the public sphere as a locus theologicus is quite a recent discovery of theology. It has redirected a field of studies on ongoing topics such as church and state, religion and democracy, religious universality and pluralism, and divine sovereignty and human autonomy.5 The concept of the ‘public’ in contemporary theology also serves to understand the implications of the church playing a new, more marginal role in Western society. Furthermore, a new focus on ‘the public’ legitimizes the study of faith and religion in a secularizing world. Is public life the last resort for theology in a secular environment, or does the secularity of public life confront theology with new challenges? If the latter is the case, what would theology’s task be when faced with these challenges? What aspect of public life makes it suitable for theological reflection? I propose that if theology would want to engage with public life in secular society, it should offer a view of God’s presence in the secular, especially in those realms in which human beings have a constructive role to play, such as culture, care, education, labour, and politics. In sharp contrast with that proposal is the observation that in the secular context in which public theologies emerge, divine presence has become decentred as a theological theme or regarded as an unknowable, and consequently unavailable object for academic research. Public theology thus has become the study of the publicness and visibility of meaning and worldviews, rather than of the public realm becoming locus Dei. In this chapter, I will counter this trend in public theology by proposing the application of the concept of the sacrament to public theology that will enable it to recognize how public life is shaped by and dedicated to God’s hidden presence. Whether the growing attention for the importance of the public sphere for theology is either the result of an all too apologetically orientated wishful thinking or theology’s ‘kenotic’ breaking down the barriers of its own field of studies, it is important to ask what aspect of public life makes it suitable for theological reflection in a secular environment and what theology’s approach could be to that particular aspect of the public. To answer that question, I will first distinguish three types of ‘public theology’.

a Accommodationism Charles Matthewes describes the universal character of the field of public theology in his book, A Theology of Public Life. To him, public life includes everything concerned 5

Hak Joon Lee, ‘Public Theology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Political Theology, eds. Elizabeth Phillips and Craig Hovey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 44–65.

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with the public good – everything from clearly political actions such as voting, campaigning for a candidate, or running for office, to less directly political, like social activities such as a sports club, or a neighbourhood commission, volunteering for food banks, and speaking in a civic forum, and to arguably non-political behaviours, such as simply talking to one’s family, friends, colleagues or strangers about public matters of common concern.6 The negative consequence of the universal meaning of the term ‘public’, according to Matthewes, is that certain variants have become selfdestructively accommodating to the society they have been developed in. He argues that they let the ‘larger’ secular world’s self-understanding set the terms, and then ask how religious faith contributes to the purposes of public life, understood within these terms. Matthewes voices the most commonly heard criticism of public theologies. Although he might unduly generalize the field, he does point at a risk that in some cases has indeed proved real. In the Dutch theological context, the accommodationist type of public theology certainly exists and in recent years it has become quite influential too, if not dominant. In a much debated theological pamphlet, theologian Ruard Ganzevoort – perhaps best described as the Dutch Don Cupitt – writes that we need a ‘public theology’, a theology that according to him is of service to the modern world, by translating the old unintelligible language of faith that has become obsolete long ago into what he calls ‘the meaning of modern culture’. In doing so, he argues that public theologians should give up their truth claims and offer wisdoms of life where needed. They should become ‘compassionate therapists of repressed but insatiable desires by giving a new language and meaning to these desires, thus making them manifest and instrumental for building a society of hope and peace’.7 ‘Public’ in this type of theology, means non-traditional, non-institutional, non-doctrinal, and non-propositional, and perhaps, one should add: non-critical. A public theology of this kind declares itself to be culturally and pastorally orientated, rather than analytically, and presumes it is more contemporary than any theology of retrieval will ever be – in whatever form: magisterial, or the ones aiming for ressourcement or recontextualization. It reaches out to the public by claiming that nonbelievers are very similar to the people belonging to religious traditions. But it comes at a price, which is either a reduction of religion and faith to any meaning-giving act, or a resentment towards religious traditions and their representatives.

b Apologetics There is no such resentment in what actually and explicitly has come to be known as ‘public theology’, the second type. In her book Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age, Elaine Graham claims that public theology is a critical response of religious communities to secular liberalism bracketing out religious reasoning from public discourse and requiring its translation into a shared universal 6 7

Charles Matthewes, A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1–2. Ruard Ganzevoort, Spelen met heilig vuur. Waarom de theologie haar claim op de waarheid moet opgeven (Utrecht: Ten Have, 2013), 19–20.

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rational language.8 According to her, certain versions of secularism have extended a specific element of the European Enlightenment tradition, which imagined religion to be properly outside the frame of the public sphere. The Enlightenment thinkers sought to construct a new political reality in which religion would be outside the frame of the public sphere. According to sociologists Craig Calhoun and David Martin, Kant’s effort to reconstruct religion ‘within the limits of reason alone’ was an intrusion of the practical and lived orientations of many religious people.9 It did respect a specific area for faith – the Eigensinn or sensus privatus of religion – but only by excluding that particular aspect from the realms of reason and thus from the public sphere. Elaine Graham claims that the present situation defies this segment of modernity and qualifies our time as ‘post-Enlightenment’ and ‘post-secular’. Currently, she argues, there is a ‘unique juxtaposition of both significant trends of Enlightenment secularism and continued religious decline (…) and signs of persistent and enduring demonstrations of public, global faith’.10 According to her, in this particular but global situation, the specific task of public theology is to negotiate ‘a path between the rock of religious revival and the hard place of secularism’, hence the title of her book. In the wake of a post-Enlightenment philosophy of engagement, Elaine Graham opts for a form of public theology as apologetics, advocating the public presence of theology which supports dialogue and persuasion. This way, she is an exponent of what has become the mainstream public theology, that has developed ever since Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture to Max Stackhouse’s impressive project God and Globalization into what is now a major field in contemporary theology and of which Sebastian Kim is also an important advocate.11 It forms a tradition of ideas that seeks to generate informed understandings of the theological and religious dimensions of public issues, sometimes with a focus on, in Kim’s case, intercultural and global developments. To Graham, public theology should be less concerned with defending the interests of specific faith communities, although she makes room for a specific role for local communities, for example, the laity and grass-roots practices of Christian discipleship that embraces active citizenship. Contrary to the first accommodationist type, this second type of public theology is clearly critical, but merely in a strategic and practical sense. Strategic, because it is committed to a shared realm of dialogue and communicative reason and to the collaborative task of building a cohesive civil society, with genuine mutual accountability of a diversity of communities. In doing so, it proposes the need for Christians to understand the insights of secular reason, in order to become supporters of justice and the common good, rather than engaging in a real theological critique of 8

9

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Elaine Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age (London: SCM Press, 2013). Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, eds.,, The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere. Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Cornel West, [Afterword by Craig Calhoun] (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2011), 118–34; Cf. David Martin, Religion and Power. No Logos Without Mythos (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, 65. Max Stackhouse, God and Globalization, Volume 4: Globalization and Grace (New York: Continuum, 2007); Sebastian Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere: Public Theology as a Catalyst for Open Debate (London: SCM Press, 2011).

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secular reason. Its criticism is political rather than theological, operating on the same level as the secularism it wants to criticize. It is practical or pastoral, because it presents itself as transformational rather than propositional, and seeks for a practical wisdom, which is concerned with contributions to a flourishing public square. This second type of public theology, with clear political and emancipatory overtones, could have an appeal to a wider public audience, because it engages with secular matters that they could easily relate to, even though it does so from a particular religious perspective that they do not (yet) have.

c Particularism A third type of ‘public theology’ is made up by a group of theologians (e.g. Stanley Hauerwas, John Milbank) who to a certain degree would not approve of the categorization, and should perhaps rather be called ‘anti-public theologians’. However, as a group of contemporary thinkers, they point at developments in the broader field of theology and the public in which material, contrary to the first two types of public theology, theological content provides a straightforward critique of secular liberalism and contemporary capitalism (Cf. Hughes, 2014: 80–90). In his later work, Jürgen Habermas insisted on a public sphere with an important and even necessary role for religious traditions in countering the ideology of neoliberalism, which led him to turn to religion as a potential source of alternative civic values. To Habermas, religion is therefore valuable as a moral source and could be regarded a resource for democratic politics. It offers, what he notably called a ‘semantic potential’, the potential for new meaning, not least to a political left that since 1968 may have exhausted other resources. Habermas’ account, however, of the public sphere and its participants pays almost no attention to the content of religion and he, not unlike Graham, presents it merely as a tool for a morally better orientated and more accommodating democracy. Material theology becomes an instrument of tolerance, a position between positions, and becomes stripped off its universal claims, by which it is identified as ‘theology’. Already in the 1980s, Alasdair MacIntyre countered this type of argument by suggesting to make more room for religious traditions themselves by claiming that the Enlightenment, instead of being a neutral, universal position, is itself a particular tradition and world view like any other, and embodies the interest of a particular group. This is an important given for the discussion about building bridges between religion and the secular, because all too often it is suggested that the secular itself is defined by a non-commitment to a particular tradition. But to engage with the secular is just as much bound by a particular engagement, albeit a less outspoken or articulate, and therefore less critical one. The very possibility of a critical engagement presumes some shared commitment to truth, even if that truth cannot be securely grasped and possessed.12 Therefore, against the presupposed neutrality of modern liberalism, MacIntyre speaks of tradition-based reasoning embedded in social and historical practices, but open to dialogue, interaction and development, which could 12

John Hughes, ‘After Temple? The Recent Renewal of Anglican Social Thought’, in Anglican Social Theology, ed. Malcolm Brown (London: Church House Publishing, 2014), 74–101, 80–1.

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be regarded a particularist model of modernity in which non-believers have just as much to account for their own specific position. In his collection of essays Faith in the Public Square, Rowan Williams voices the same concerns as MacIntyre, and summarizes his public theology as a ‘critique of programmatic secularism’.13 Williams, like MacIntyre, views the state as a community of communities rather than a monopolistic sovereign power, thereby supporting a pluralist and decentralized pattern of social life. Williams advocates a strong connection between religion and the secular, but only by displacing the public from its common location to a liturgical dwelling. He has given a description of the Christian churches as being public, in as far as Christian believers go out to listen and to be spoken to. In his view, public theology would not primarily be the normative self-manifestation of a particular community of faith in a world of diversity; instead it is founded upon the original, self-relativizing moment of silence, in which a community gathers to listen to the Word of God. Contrary to Elaine Graham’s plea for a commitment to a shared realm of communicative reason, Williams argues for a non-negotiable cohesion of commitments that is embodied by a listening community. According to him, the language of public theology is therefore marked by contemplation and interruption rather than by the communication with others. Even in those cases that interruption occurs within the communication with others, it is not the communicative act itself that constitutes theology as being public. Yet, that does not entail that the church has to contemplatively withdraw from the world, but it seeks to voice its primal moment of contemplation in the world for the world. This third type of ‘public theology’, illustrated by the work of MacIntyre and Williams, is primarily ecclesial and represents a conservative critique of modernity. Politically, it is just as critical as the second type, and often supports similar, socialist sympathies, as John Milbank ends his recent book Beyond Secular Order by saying that his political theology can be regarded a ‘left’ reading of Catholic social teaching.14 But more importantly, theologically, this third type of public theology has strong postliberal overtones: Christ interprets the world, rather than that God’s Word can be used for supporting political or hermeneutical positions. At first sight therefore, this third type of public theology could seem highly unsuitable for finding a connection between theology and the public in a secular context, but it might serve at least as a criticism of the claim that it is possible to build bridges between sociologically distinguished groups, so long as one abandons its particular traditional language. The three types of public theology (accommodationist, apologetic, particularist) all seem to fail in building bridges between church and world. The accommodationist type adapts the specific language and practices of a religious tradition to the spirit of the time, with the (sometimes even intentional) result of blurring the lines between believers and nonbelievers, and adapting the content of theology to that of the surrounding culture in which this theology has been developed. The apologetic type of public theology presents the moral content of a particular religious tradition as a

13 14

Rowan Williams, Faith in the Public Square (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2012). John Milbank, Beyond Secular Order. The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).

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helpful and critical tool for building a better society. Confirming or contradicting the differences between the religious and the secular merely serve the ultimate goal of its political agenda. The third, particularist or neo-orthodox type of public theology makes no effort whatsoever to overcome the gap between faith and the secular, but instead presents a robust critique of the liberal presuppositions that are at the heart of calling people outside religious traditions ‘religious’.

2  Church in the world: The sacramental ontology of Edward Schillebeeckx Ever since John A. T. Robinson’s Honest to God, published in 1963, late-twentiethcentury theologians made an effort to formulate a response to the ongoing secularization in Western culture and the ever widening gap between church and world. Despite all the attempts to reflect on the transformation of religion in a secularized culture, this has not prevented church and theology in the global North from becoming increasingly marginalized. Instead of formulating a response to the rapid sociocultural transformations, theologians could have pursued their own modern project, which started roughly at the same time. The rest of this chapter is dedicated to a branch of Catholic theology that embraced secular culture before the generation of Robinson liberalism, without resigning to non-religious or non-theological arguments to be able to do so. Instead, it offered a theological account of the world that was critical of modernity without becoming anti-modern, and it operated amidst an increasingly secularizing culture without losing its position as a particular tradition of faith. This branch of theology has come out of the work of the theologians of the Nouvelle théologie movement and became a dominant voice at the Second Vatican Council. It is perhaps best represented in the work of Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx, among others.15 In his last major work, Church. The Human Story of God, Schillebeeckx opens the first chapter with the sentence Extra mundum nulla salus, a play on Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.16 To him, this is a serious and very fundamental theological play on words, and one that – not surprisingly – has been criticized ever since and sometimes misunderstood. In a letter to the participants of a conference about his work in 2008, he wrote that most of the criticism of that sentence, concentrates too one-sidedly on the word mundum, as if he had wanted to make the suggestion that church and world are equal in having the possibility to accommodate salvation, or that the church has become redundant since modern theology discovered the salvific qualities of the secular. Instead, he writes that the critics seem to forget that the word salus is a

15

16

Gabriel Flynn and Paul Murray, eds., Ressourcement. A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Cf. Jürgen Mettepenningen, Nouvelle Théologie – New Theology. Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor of Vatican II (London: T&T Clark International, 2010). Edward Schillebeeckx, The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), xxv–xxvi [xvii–xviii].

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theological concept, one that signifies the God-given quality of salvation and it should therefore not be taken as a ‘humanist’ concept of human well-being. However, he argues, salus and mundum are necessarily intertwined, in as far as salvation needs to be and can be experienced in the world and is mediated by others, while at the same time, ‘the Living and Eternal God is both near and “always going out ahead” of these experiences and mediations’.17 Schillebeeckx suggested that the presence of God’s salvation is not limited to the church alone, but encompasses the whole of human history up to the present. This theological vision could offer opportunities for further explorations into ways of viewing public life as being sacramental. In the church, the concrete sacraments are considered signs and instruments of God’s presence in the world at significant moments in people’s lives. Theologically, they are viewed as distinctive forms and utterances that make the whole of human history visible as a sacrament of salvation, including public life.18 There are also important differences however between the sacraments in the church and public life, which asks for careful consideration, if only to avoid the suggestion that the church can be found everywhere. If sacraments are signs and instruments that call for further witnessing and practising faith, how then could the public be considered an instrument of salvation if in a secular context, neither witnessing nor any other recognizable utterance of faith can be heard? If the main characteristic of a sacrament is the God–human encounter, how can we discern that encounter in public life? For the church, it raises questions too: If such a God–human encounter could be perceived in the here and now of public life, as Schillebeeckx seems to be the consequence of Schillebeeckx’s thought, then what is the distinctive significance of the church’s mediating and embodying God’s salvific work in Jesus Christ? How can the church view public life as sacramental without disregarding the significance of Christ as the primordial sacrament, or the particular and distinctive function of the ecclesial sacraments? Since the Second Vatican Council, and especially in the wake of Gaudium et spes, the relationship of church and world has been central to Schillebeeckx’ theology. At first, his treatment of the subject was not cultural or political, nor was it meant to be primarily pastoral or strategic. The nature of his commentaries on Gaudium et spes was rather metaphysical and anthropological, that is deeply rooted in the doctrines of creation and sin. To him, ‘world’ is the place of grace and its shadows, and the church, a community that responds to the call for forgiveness, and as such, sign and instrument of the fulfilment of the history of salvation: sacramentum mundi. In his extensive commentary on Schema XIII, the preparatory document for Gaudium et spes, Schillebeeckx writes that at the core of the document lies the recognition that in the church, the mystery of Christ is revealed in a discernible form 17

18

Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp, eds., Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2010), xiv–xv. For the philosophical foundations of Schillebeeckx’s theological metaphysics, see: Stephan van Erp, ‘Implicit Faith. Philosophical Theology After Schillebeeckx’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, eds. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 209–23.

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in history.19 Yet, according to him, God is not present in the church alone, but it is God’s presence to the whole world that is made visible and witnessed by the church. As a concentrated presence of grace, the church seeks to manifest what is present in every human existence: the givenness of God’s grace. ‘World’, to Schillebeeckx therefore, is a theological concept that refers to a profane reality with its own structures and laws, precisely because it has been taken up by God in Christ. He writes: ‘Although [the world] has its own secular goals, given to human beings to make it their own, it is given in human hands to glorify God’s name.’ As such, he considers the world as God’s creation to be a desacralizing and demythologizing act, which has become present in Christ, in an absolute and gratuitous way. John Milbank argued that in this type of Catholic theology, creation as a whole is regarded as being autonomous, famously stating that whereas the French version supernaturalizes the natural, the German version naturalizes the supernatural.20 The thrust of the latter version is in the direction of a mediating theology, a universal humanism, a rapprochement with the Enlightenment and an autonomous secular order …, while the French version [tends] towards a recovery of a pre-modern sense of the Christianized person as the fully real person.

Milbank however, opting for the French variant, fails to see that the autonomy of the world in the so-called ‘German version’ – to which also Yves Congar and MarieDominique Chenu belong – is the consequence of God’s grace in Christ, made visible by the reconciled People of God in the church. Nonetheless, instead of denying the world its autonomy, as neo-orthodox theologies have done, modern Catholic theology considered the world within the conceptual framework of graced nature. Contrary to what Milbank suggested, Schillebeeckx’ view of the autonomous world has a firm Christological foundation. His biographer, Erik Borgman, has claimed that for Schillebeeckx, ‘Jesus’ message and acts can be regarded as redeeming the present, and the ongoing inspiration people experience from his life and message, signifies Christ’s continuing presence among us (Borgman, 2012). Accordingly, church and theology do not present Christ’s message to the world, but gather and seek to embody the present message of God’s promise that lives among people. This could serve as an invitation to non-churchgoers to become members of the church, not least because the church would be willing to listen to their joys and sorrows. This is not the same however, as claiming that whatever happens outside the church could just as well be regarded as church. Against Bishop John Robinson, Schillebeeckx himself wrote that there is a stubborn and mistaken suggestion in Honest to God that compassion with others is the source of Christ’s grace in the world, while he stresses that instead, it is God’s compassion with Christ, the Living One, through the Spirit in his Body, the church.21 19

20 21

Edward Schillebeeckx, World and Church, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 4 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 73–87 [96–114]. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory. Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwells, 1990), 207. Schillebeeckx, World and Church, 80 [105–6].

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So, church and world do not simply relate to each other as that which is familiar to Christianity and that which is foreign to Christianity, or as the difference between the religious and the secular, dichotomies that have been expressed by both liberal and orthodox theologians, but they are two complementary forms of one Christianity, which is both sacred and profane, because it is sanctified through Christ Jesus. Christian life therefore is lived in the world, and the church is its inspiration, its embodiment and its fulfilment. For contemporary theology, this integral – or rather, incarnational – relationship between Christ, church and world could prove to be vital. Life in the church and secular life are not considered opposites, but they are shaped by each other in Christ, who has made human history a sacrament of salvation. From a theological point of view, this means that in Christ, the world of believers and the wider public sphere is one and the same, the place of God’s history of salvation, which is made visible and completed in the church. The question which then arises is how this ‘sacramental ontology’, that has dominated twentieth-century Catholic theology, can be made fruitful for the current debate on the nature of public theology?22 Would it be helpful, as Schillebeeckx suggested, to understand the whole of secular life as emerging from God’s sacramental presence? Could modern citizenship then – the subject of contemporary public life – be regarded as a liturgy of some sorts, a responsive, sacramental expression of God’s presence in the world? Schillebeeckx himself has never drawn that conclusion, but he did make room for Christian living being considered in the wake of the sacraments. A similar move has been made by the International Theological Commission in its recent document on the sensus fidei (International Theological Commission, 2014), when it suggests that the Holy Spirit can become present in the faithful intuitions of the baptized people? But again, as in Schillebeeckx’s case, this concerns Christians, and not unbaptized people outside the church. The church needs the faithful to become a church, just as public life needs the church to make visible that Christ is present in the world. So the consequence of that presupposition is that it is theology’s task to understand the sovereignty of grace that is at work amidst all of this. Not by displacing Christ’s government to a separate realm, nor by diminishing the Christ-event to a particular narrative of virtues – either ethical or theological – but by providing the critical tools for becoming a church, dedicated to the common good of all people. To Schillebeeckx, the church’s social teaching – her own public theology – must be the proof of the extent to which she understands herself as the eschatological community of salvation in the world, and it is in this understanding that the world appears as a sign of the hidden God it lives from and towards. This sets a new agenda for a new and emerging field like public theology. It is closest to the particularist type of public theology, but with similar outcomes as the second, dialogue type. Its ultimate goal is not to mediate the gospel of the past to the public sphere, but to show how this public sphere itself could be viewed as the space for the nearness of God’s reign. In the wake of Schillebeeckx, theology’s task then is to show how public life is sacramental, how it is a sign and instrument of the presence of God. 22

Hans Boersma, Nouvelle Théologie & Sacramental Ontology. A Return to Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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As Vatican II stressed in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes: ‘The People of God believes that it is led by the Lord’s Spirit, Who fills the earth. Motivated by this faith, it labors to decipher authentic signs of God’s presence and purpose in the happenings, needs and desires in which this People has a part along with other human beings of our age’ (Gaudium et spes, 11). This should be the focus for a theology that both wants to be truly theological and truly public, that is, both discerning the signs of the times as signs of God’s presence and reaching out to the public of religious seekers of our present time.

3  The invisibility we live towards: Public life as sacrament How can the sacramental ontology that has dominated certain strands of twentiethcentury Catholic theology be made fruitful for current debates in public theology? Does it provide the foundations for understanding public life as emerging from God’s sacramental presence? Could public life itself be viewed as a sacramental expression of that presence? If so, how exactly could it be viewed as a sacramental act itself and not fall into the same trap as some contextual and social approaches do: confusing the visible with the invisible, or bracketing the invisible altogether? To discern the sacramental in public life, it is important to note that sacraments are not considered to be instances of a miraculous divine revelatory act, but effective signs of God’s ongoing presence to the world. Sacraments are calling on the community of believers to witness to God’s presence and to make visible and become the instrument of the promise of salvation. Would it be possible to understand the worldliness of that call in such a way that it becomes possible to conceive of a secular, public response to it? To answer this question, it could be useful to refer to the original meaning of ‘sacrament’, which involves swearing an oath. In his book The Sacrament of Language, Giorgio Agamben offers an ‘archaeology of the oath’, in which he presents the oath as a spoken sacrament of power. He refers to Cicero who wrote that the oath expresses a duty to consider not what one may have to fear in case of violation but wherein its obligation lies: ‘An oath is an assurance backed by religious sanctity; and a solemn promise given, as before God as one’s witness, is to be sacredly kept. For the question no longer concerns the wrath of the gods (for there is no such thing) but the obligations of justice and good faith’ (Agamben, 2010: 3). So, the oath assures the truthfulness of language by which it assures its own efficacy. And it is this truthfulness that determines the resemblance of the oath with faith, because faith has a similar performative aspect. To have faith in someone is the high regard for that person as a consequence of our having confidently given ourselves over to him, binding ourselves in a relationship of trust. Agamben notes that there is a certain inequality in placing one’s faith in somebody to secure his guarantee and support in return. According to him, it is authority which is exercised at the same time as protection for somebody who submits to it, in exchange for, and to the extent of his submission. As such, the oath has always been the performance of an important function in public law, that is, in the relationship between cities and people, which raises the question for the intrinsic relationship between faith and public life, and the distinction

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between the two: which aspects of public life are constituted and protected by the oath and hence, by faith. To maintain this precarious balance between trust and law, or faith and politics, the balance itself needs confirmation and performance, which indicates the connection between the oath and dedication, or devotion, and it is this devotional aspect that leads to calling the oath a sacrament: a testimony that is brought into action by speech. But this intrinsic relation of faith and public life, performed by the sacrament, became a political instrument of identity. Despite the prohibition in Mt. 5.34, the oath was approved of and codified by the church, which made the oath an essential part of its own juridical order and Christian practice, and as such became an institutionalizing tool. In the Mystic Fable, Michel De Certeau describes this development of how the sacrament according to him became tied to the altar, by referring to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which declared sacramental practice to be ‘the instrument of a campaign to free Christians from the grip of the first large popular heresies, autonomous communal movements, and growing secular powers’. This way, the Eucharist became a locus where the church could exercise its control over the sacred, according to De Certeau, as he writes: ‘This Eucharistic body was the “sacrament” of the institution, the visible instituting of what the institution was meant to become, its theoretical authorization and its pastoral tool’ (De Certeau, 1992: 85–90). This development signifies a radical relocation of the original sacrament. In her book Sacramental Poetics, Regina Schwarz describes this change from the sacrament as the power to create and maintain a healthy social body to the right of a hierarchical church to dispense the medicine of the Eucharist. The authority of the oath based on faith and trust, becomes an instrument of control, with the consequence of creating a sharp division between church and public life. The sacrament thus has become the visible sign of a visible institution that presents, according to Schwarz, its own glory as the embodiment of the glory it proclaims, instead of being the utterance or gesture of an invisible promise that maintains a bond of trust between the sacred and the secular.23 As such, it can become susceptible to manipulation and in some cases an instrument for serving absolute political rule. Modern political theology has developed a strong criticism of the confusion of divine and human sovereignty, and the displacement of the Corpus Mysticum. Schillebeeckx’ sacramental theology and its criticism of the ecclesial confinement of the sacrament to the seven sacraments alone could be viewed as such a criticism. To him, Christ and the church as the People of God are the primordial sacraments.24 Secular culture and Enlightenment liberalism have concluded that if this genealogy of the use of sacrament is correct, the next step to be made is a more modest political role for faith or the church, by allowing it to be a particular narrative of virtues but without a universal concept of divine sovereignty or divine law. This conclusion has had devastatingly detheologizing consequences for the emergence of the field of public theology. It might be true that the unmasking of the church’s power and identity 23

24

Regina M. Schwartz, Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism. When God Left the World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 18–26. Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, CW vol. 1 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014).

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politics is one of several reasons why people have abandoned the church, but with it, they might have also abandoned the opportunity to articulate their response to the promise of salvation in the church that performs its task by discerning God’s salvific presence in the world. A rediscovery of the sacramental ontology of Nouvelle théologie supplemented with a theology of the oath, could offer secular culture a theological view of God’s coming presence in public life: an ongoing relationship confirmed and maintained by a politics of trust, a sacramental performance that does not suggest it could make God’s presence itself visible.25 On the contrary, the awareness of the original, intrinsic connection between trust and devotion in the oath, could be a first step in realizing that the sacrament of public, secular life is a sign of the invisibility it lives from and towards. If theology searches for the understanding of faith in the public, this could prove to be a starting point for finding God in a secularized world.

Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio (2010), The Sacrament of Language (Cambridge: Polity Press). Boersma, Hans (2011), Nouvelle Théologie & Sacramental Ontology. A Return to Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Boeve, Lieve (2008), ‘Religion after Detraditionalization: Christian Faith in a Postsecular Europe’, in The New Visibility of Religion, ed. Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl (London: Continuum), 187–209. Boeve, Lieve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan Van Erp (2010), Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology (London: T&T Clark). Borgman, Erik (2012), ‘Edward Schillebeeckx’s Reflections on the Sacraments and the Future of Catholic Theology’, Concilium, 1: 13–24. Certeau, Michel de (1992), The Mystic Fable. Volume One: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press). Erp, Stephan van (2016), ‘World and Church. Foundations of the Political Theology of the Church’, Louvain Studies, 39 (2015–16): 100–18. Erp, Stephan van (2010), ‘Implicit Faith. Philosophical Theology After Schillebeeckx’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark), 209–23. Erp, Stephan van and Maarten Van den Bos (2014), A Happy Theologian. A Hundred Years of Edward Schillebeeckx (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers). Flynn, Gabriel and Paul Murray (2012), Ressourcement. A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ganzevoort, Ruard (2013), Spelen met heilig vuur. Waarom de theologie haar claim op de waarheid moet opgeven (Utrecht: Ten Have). Graham, Elaine (2013), Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a PostSecular Age (London: SCM Press). Habermas, Jürgen (2008), Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

25

Cf. Stephan van Erp, ‘World and Church. Foundations of the Political Theology of the Church’, Louvain Studies 39 (2015–16), 100–18.

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Habermas, Jürgen (2006), ‘Religion in the Public Sphere’, European Journal of Philosophy, 14: 1–25. Hornsby-Smith, Michael (2006), An Introduction to Catholic Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hughes, John (2014), ‘After Temple? The Recent Renewal of Anglican Social Thought’, in Anglican Social Theology, ed. Malcolm Brown (London: Church House Publishing), 74–101. International Theological Commission (2014), Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press). International Theological Commission (2012), Theology Today. Perspectives, Principles and Criteria (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press). Kim, Sebastian (2011), Theology in the Public Sphere: Public Theology as a Catalyst for Open Debate (London: SCM Press). Martin, David (2014), Religion and Power. No Logos Without Mythos (Farnham: Ashgate). Matthewes, Charles (2007), A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Mendieta, Eduardo and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, eds (2011), The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere. Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Cornel West, [Afterword by Craig Calhoun] (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Mettepenningen, Jürgen (2010), Nouvelle Théologie – New Theology. Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor of Vatican II (London: T&T Clark International). Milbank, John (2014), Beyond Secular Order. The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell). Milbank, John (1990), Theology and Social Theory. Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell Publisher). Niebuhr, Helmut Richard (1951), Christ and Culture (New York, NY: Harper Collins). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Collected Works, [11 Volumes] (London: Bloomsbury). Schwartz, Regina (2008), Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism. When God Left the World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Stackhouse, Max (2007), God and Globalization, Volume 4: Globalization and Grace (New York: Continuum). Ward, Graham (2009), The Politics of Discipleship. Becoming Postmaterial Citizens (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic). Williams, Rowan (2012), Faith in the Public Square (London: Bloomsbury Press).

2

Towards a Hermeneutic for Public Theology: Conversations with Habermas and Schillebeeckx Sebastian Kim

Recent development of public theology, the formation of the Global Network for Public Theology (GNPT), and active scholarly discussions through the platform of the International Journal of Public Theology (IJPT) demonstrate that there is significant interest in the public engagement of theology in contemporary society. Examining the literature on public theology,1 some of the key questions in doing public theology include the nature of public sphere and the methodology of public theology or its hermeneutic. In this chapter, I would like to discuss the meaning of ‘public’ in public theology since there is little discussion on the concept of public sphere or public opinion, which is needed in order to strengthen the definition of public theology. Since they have both been promoting the public engagement of philosophy and theology respectively, I would like first discuss the contributions of Jürgen Habermas and Edward Schillebeeckx to this topic and the critical insights they offer for our endeavour. The meeting point of the two scholars was the area of critical theory and it seems the Frankfurt School and the works of Habermas were influential for Schillebeeckx’s work on critical assessment of theology and orthopraxis.2 So I shall treat them in that order.

1  Habermas, critical theory and the public sphere The idea of the ‘public sphere’ was first articulated systematically by Jürgen Habermas in his classic The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Habermas regarded the ‘public sphere’ as an open forum which emerged in modern Western societies in the situation where the state and the market economy predominated in daily life. In his observation of eighteenth-century Europe, he saw the bourgeois public sphere as formulated between the sphere of public authority, which consists of the state and the 1 2

Sebastian Kim, ‘Editorial’, International Journal of Public Theology 8 (2014), 121–9. Robert J. Schreiter, ‘Edward Schillebeeckx: An Orientation to His Thought’, in The Schillebeeckx Reader (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984), 1–24, 23, 107. See also Philip Kennedy, Schillebeeckx (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1993), 48.

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court, and the private realm, which includes civil society (the realm of commodity exchange and social labour) and the conjugal family’s internal space.3 As a result, the public’s rational-critical debate on political issues was practised in the gatherings of the bourgeoisie and through various forms of journals that created and formed general public opinion.4 He argues that the public sphere was created by the recognition of three sets of rights: first, the right of radical-critical debate and political representation  – freedom of speech and opinion, the free press, freedom of assembly and so on; second, the right to personal freedom and the inviolability of the home; and third, the right of private ownership which required equality before the law.5 He further emphasized that the key issue for the establishment of public sphere is the principle of universal access: The public sphere of civil society stood or fell with the principle of universal access. A public sphere from which specific groups would be eo ipso excluded was less than merely incomplete; it was not a public sphere at all. Accordingly, the public that might be considered the subject of the bourgeois constitutional state viewed its sphere as a public one in this strict sense; in its deliberations it anticipated in principle that all human beings belong to it. The private person too, was simply a human being, that is, a moral person.6

He argued that the bourgeois public sphere was in decline and replaced by mass media in the context of the dominance of state and economy and political institutions and later conceptualized it as voluntary associations or civil society. In addition, these changes took place in the context of the empowerment of corporations and unions and the increasing intervention of welfare states into people’s private lives.7 Habermas’ initial theoretical framework was based on emerging male Western bourgeois liberal-democratic societies, and was therefore criticized for its limitation to this sector of society and its inability to recognize religions as part of the public sphere. The first of these weaknesses was addressed most strongly by feminist theorists, and many of his ideas need to be revised to meet the demands of the contemporary complex situation of plural societies.8 Perhaps Nancy Fraser provides the most convincing critique from the feminist perspective by employing critical theory. She points out that the problem of Habermas’ idealization of liberal public sphere is his failure to examine the ‘nonliberal, nonbourgeois, competing public sphere’.9 She then 3

4 5 6 7

8

9

Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: Polity, [1962] 1989), 30–1. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 72–3. Ibid., 83–5. Ibid., 85. For Habermas’ reconstruction of critical theory, see Alan How, Critical Theory (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2003), 115–42. For the concept of bourgeois society among the scholars of the Frankfurt School, see Peter M. R. Stirk, Critical Theory, Politics and Society: An Introduction (London and New York, NY: Pinter, 2000), 93–110. Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992). See also Nick Crossley and John Michael Roberts, eds, After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). Nancy Fraser, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’, Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 109–41, 115.

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discusses the problem of the assumptions in Habermas’ understanding of the public sphere: First, since Habermas considers societal equality is not a necessary condition for political democracy and open access, there is very little scope for the change in social status in his theory. Second, she challenges the concept of the public sphere in the singular form, since it is often dominated by a particular group, and suggests that there is a ‘multiplicity of publics’ or ‘subaltern counter publics’. Third, on the issue of the common good and private concerns, often there are competing interests and perspectives. And the desired goal of the common good is often not achieved for the interests of minority or marginalized opinion, so progress in this area should be constantly evaluated and critiqued. Fourth, there are few clear distinctions between state and civil society in modern democracy and so she suggests that the promotion of civil society would result in a ‘weak public’, which formulates public opinions but falls short of encompassing decision-making whereas a ‘strong public’ such as the parliament functions as a public sphere within the state and is directly involved in decision-making.10 The perceptions of Fraser are important for developing public theology since they help us to formulate key concepts of public theology by employing critical theory for theological formation. In addition, a number of key ideas have been discussed by various scholars. For example, there has always been tension between the ideal notion of equal participations in rational discussion in pursuit of truth and common good, and the actual reality; but at the same time the ideal has served to promote the equality and well-being of society as a whole.11 The key notion of Habermas’ political theory is the principle of ‘publicness’, which enables the rationalization of the activities of the state in its conduct of political and legal power. However, there is a lack of clarity in the meaning of the term Öffentlichkeit (public sphere as space or public as concept) in scholarly discussions on the topic.12 The difference between public and private should be negotiated and reformulated, in particular, as women become full participants in society.13 A further qualification is that the concept of the public sphere tends to be focused on Western contexts of liberal democracy and has limited application on non-Western societies, although there have been a number of attempts to address this.14

10

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Fraser, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere,’ 109–42. See also Nancy Fraser, ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World’, Theory, Culture & Society 24 (2007), 7–30. James G. Finlayson, Habermas: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 13–14. Andreas Koller, ‘The Public Sphere and Comparative Historical Research: An Introduction’, Social Science History 34 (2010), 261–90, 262–3. Janelle Reinelt, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere for a Global Age’, Performance Research 16 (2011), 16– 27, 17–18. See also Andrew Areto and Jean L. Cohen, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); Christina Fiig, ‘A Powerful, Opinion-forming Public? Rethinking the Habermasian Public Sphere in a Perspective of Feminist Theory and Citizenship’, Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory 12 (2011), 291–308, 304. See some examples of civil society in non-Western contexts, Jeong-Woo Koo, ‘The Origins of the Public Sphere and Civil Society: Private Academies and Petitions in Korea, 1506–1800’, Social Science History 31 (2007), 381–408; Kyung Chang, ‘Christianity and Civil Society in Colonial Korea: The Civil Society Movement of Cho Man-sik and the P’yŏngyang YMCA against Japanese Colonialism’, in Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian American, ed. Albert L. Park and David K. Yoo (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014), 119–39.

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A second major criticism of Habermas’s public sphere was its secular nature which excluded contributions from religious communities.15 It is this absence of which Schillebeeckx was particularly aware and that he addressed in his work.

2  Schillebeeckx, hermeneutics and critical theory Schillebeeckx was a very much a public figure engaging with the general public in the Netherlands through public television, newspapers and magazines, providing his insights to a broader audience. Therefore, broadly speaking, we can count him as a public theologian. Like Habermas, Schillebeeckx was attentive to critical theory and he employed this in his theology. According to Robert J. Schreiter, Schillebeeckx consistently affirmed God’s action in this world through our experience and history.16 In particular, his emphasis on the practical implications of theology is vital in understanding his theology. Schillebeeckx emphasized that theory and action should come together to enhance the transformation of society and that the two should mutually inform each other; as Schreiter puts it, the ‘struggle for justice is not a possible consequence of reading the gospel; it is a necessary consequence of it’.17 Philip Kennedy also points out the importance of praxis in Schillebeeckx’s writings, although he finds that Schillebeeckx was not very specific about the meaning of it.18 In his adaptation of the Critical Theory of second-generation Western Marxists, Schillebeeckx was critical and did not reject the importance of hermeneutics. For him, hermeneutics was to do with the meaning of faith in association with social and political questions, and this was influenced by Habermas’ earlier works. Schillebeeckx saw that a purely theoretical and philosophical hermeneutic was untenable because understanding can be severely frustrated by social and political structures and that hermeneutics must have an emancipative, practical and critical interest that fosters human freedom and understanding. However, in doing so, Schillebeeckx maintained a firm basis in biblical studies for his critical reflections on Christian practice.19 In order to link Christian understanding of faith with social and political exigencies, Schillebeeckx argued that knowledge is determined by the interests of the inner bond of praxis and theory, and that the former determines the latter. As did Marx, he believed that knowledge has its origins in praxis, but unlike Marx, he maintained continuity between tradition – including religious traditions – and contemporary ideas and between theory and praxis in his articulation of theology. Schillebeeckx was a reformer rather than a revolutionary and in his reformulation of theology, he saw theology as ‘the critical self-consciousness of Christian praxis in the world and the 15

16

17 18 19

Craig Calhoun, Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, eds, Habermas and Religion (Cambridge: Polity, 2013). See also Jürgen Habermas, ‘Religion in the Public Sphere’, European Journal of Philosophy 14 (2006), 1–25. Schreiter, ‘Edward Schillebeeckx: An Orientation’, 17. See also Robert Schreiter, ‘Edward Schillebeeckx’, Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. David Ford (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edn, 1997), 152–61, 153. Schreiter, ‘Edward Schillebeeckx: An Orientation’, 18–19. Kennedy, Schillebeeckx, 31–53, 33. Ibid., 50, 52.

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church’.20 Schillebeeckx saw that the hermeneutical undertaking makes the meaning that has been proclaimed in history clear, and in this process critical theory helps us to evaluate and examine problems in history. He challenged that if theology does not make use of a critical form of sociology, it is in danger of becoming an ideology.21 He further explained that critical theory enables an ‘extension of hermeneutical reflection’; therefore, hermeneutics in theology must be inspired by a practical and critical intention. This means that orthopraxis is an ‘essential element of the hermeneutical process’ and that ‘theologically actualising interpretation is not possible without a critical theory which acts as the self-consciousness of a critical praxis’.22 According to Schillebeeckx, Christian faith is already realized in Christ, but only realized in him as our promise and our future and that ‘future cannot be theoretically interpreted it must be done’.23 Only the critical attitude towards the present and the resulting imperative to change and improve it really open access to the coming truth. The basic hermeneutic problem of theology, then, is not so much the question of the relationship between the past (scripture and tradition) and present, but between theory and practice, and this relationship can no longer be solved ideologically, by a theory of Kantian pure reason from which consequences flow for the practical reason, but it will have to be shown how the theory appears in the praxis itself. Only a new praxis in the church can make the new interpretation credible, namely as a theoretical element in effective practice here and now by the churches themselves. Without the renewal of praxis in the church, there can be no historical basis for the reinterpretation.24 He saw that the relationship between theory and praxis as articulated by the Frankfurt School was of vital importance in the hermeneutical process of theology because he understood theology as ‘self-consciousness of a critical praxis’ in the living community of believers. The theologian simply interprets critically their selfconsciousness. Praxis, then, is an essential element of this actualizing and liberating interpretation. In this sense theology must be the critical theory (in a specifically theological manner) of the praxis of faith and the relationship with praxis forms an inseparable part of doing theology.25 The importance of Schillebeeckx for public theology could be summarized in four areas: first, his emphasis on theology as a critical self-consciousness of Christian practices and the importance of the integral nature of theory and practice; second, his emphasis on hermeneutics anchored on the Scripture, tradition and practical experience of common life; third, his firm challenge to the secular notion of the monopoly of public engagement by dominant bodies in the public sphere and his insistence on Christian contributions to the public discussion and decision-making in the whole spectrum of life in the wider society; and fourth, he saw change as best brought about by a reforming process rather than a radical replacement. This reforming process should involve the various parties bringing their own expertise into the debate 20

21 22 23 24 25

Edward Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith: Interpretation and Criticism, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 5 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 124, 135, [142, 154]. Schreiter, ed., The Schillebeeckx Reader, 109. Ibid., 111–12. Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith, 59, [66]. Schreiter, ed., The Schillebeeckx Reader, 115–16. Ibid., 118–19.

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and contributing to the formation of policy for the common good, and this in turn will transform the Christian community as well.

3  Hermeneutics for public theology Reflecting on the contributions of the Schillebeeckx and Habermas, I would like to draw some insights for a hermeneutic for public theology, especially relating to the idea of the public in theological exploration. I would suggest a hermeneutic for public theology includes five strands: (a) affirming the plurality of the public sphere and the place of religions in it; (b) challenging any monopoly of the public sphere by a particular public body; (c) affirming the openness of theology with a view to reforming the public sphere; (d) developing critical self-consciousness of Christian praxis in the concrete realities of life; and (e) utilizing and applying biblical wisdom to contemporary situations.

a Public theology as affirming the plurality of the public sphere and the place of religions in it The discussion on the nature and composition of the public sphere is an ongoing one as we have seen from the interactions between Habermas, Fraser and other scholars, but one thing seems to be clear: there are various public spheres (plural). So the rigid terminology of the public sphere (singular) is misleading. And in addition, within any public sphere, there are number of subsections of publics which sometimes cooperate and often compete for their place in the wider public sphere. It is also clear, as Habermas himself admits,26 Schillebeeckx insists and José Casanova and other sociologists also convincingly argue,27 that the role (both positive and negative) of religion in the public life must be acknowledged. What public theology contributes here is a conception of multiple public spheres, which are themselves plural, and various modes for theological engagement with each different public within any public sphere. David Tracy, perhaps the most quoted scholar in this field, proposes the three publics of academy, church and society, and suggests that there are three types of theology corresponding respectively to each public: fundamental theology, systematic theology and practical theology. In particular, he regards practical theology as the appropriate method for dealing with social, political and cultural issues in public life: ‘Practical theologies are related primarily to the public of society, more exactly to the concerns of some particular social, political, cultural or pastoral movement or problematic which is argued or assumed to possess major religious import.’28 In more recent writings, it 26

27

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Jürgen Habermas, ‘Reply to My Critics’, in Habermas and Religion, ed. Craig Calhoun, Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), 347–90. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1994); Hugh Heclo and Wilfred M. McClay, eds, ‘What is a Public Religion?’, Religion Returns to the Public Square (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003), 111–39. David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (London: SCM Press, 1981), 56–7.

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has been pointed out that there is not just one public to which public theology relates but several different publics, requiring different approaches to address each of them. These have been conceptualized in several ways. Max Stackhouse sees four publics: religious, political, academic and economic,29 whereas Dirkie Smit sees the political sphere, the economic sphere, civil society and public opinion as four distinctive discourses in public theology.30 For the application of theology in these spheres, Alison Elliot examines how public theology can draw strength from practice. In particular she looks at the characteristics of three different publics with which theology engages – an institutional public, a constructed public and a personal public – each drawing on distinctive theological assumptions about church and faith. In my previous publication, I have suggested six different entities which engage in the public sphere: state, market, the media, civil society, the academy and religious communities.31 These six categories are common to all modern societies but the relative power of each and the interrelations between them may vary from one society to another. Theology is situated both in the academy (mainly in universities and seminaries) and in religious communities (in the case of Christian theology, the church) for its theological resources and method. Public theology, while maintaining its connections with religious communities deliberately expands its sources, audience and applications in the public sphere in association with the other four players, depending on issues. It is not a new approach in doing so since various such theological discourses have been developed in more recent years. Political theology and liberation theologies (which deal primarily with economics) are two obvious examples, but also the number of scholars working on the other areas of civil society and media in relation to theology is growing in different global contexts. Social ethics is another such form of engagement and many public theologians are in Christian ethics departments. However, a major difficulty of these interactions has been that the audiences and sources of theological interaction have been one-sided in that, while theology utilizes the findings from other bodies and academic disciplines, other disciplines and bodies do not engage with the findings of theology. An expression of this is that the place of theology in contemporary secular universities is often in question. The protagonists of public theology try to overcome this problem by developing methodologies for dialogical public engagement with all the players concerned, and try to identify meeting points while keeping their own distinctive mode of inquiry in order to promote their unique contribution to other bodies in the public sphere. In my previous publication, I have argued that liberation and political theologies, in spite of their differences, share many common features in contrast to public theology. Public theology has a different emphasis from the other theologies.32 First, public theologians, as I have argued in the previous section, try to create common ground and methodologies for engaging in public issues with various conversation partners in the public sphere. This does not mean losing a Christian identity or distinctiveness, but 29 30

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Max Stackhouse, ‘Public Theology and Ethical Judgement’, Theology Today 54 (2006), 165–79. Nico Koopman, ‘Some Comments on Public Theology Today’, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 117 (2003), 3–19, 9. Sebastian Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere (London: SCM Press, 2011), 10–14. Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere, 20–5.

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rather, while keeping them, actively searching for a shared solution so that theological insights will not be excluded in public conversation. Second, the theological concerns and emphases are in pursuing the publicness of theology – the public meaning of theology and theology of public life.33 It works with the ‘Church–academy–society’ dynamics, seeking the implications of the kingdom of God in contemporary society as it exists, and promoting a theology of public engagement. Third, the attitude towards existing systems is not that they are necessarily evil or entirely wrong. Public theology takes a reforming position rather than a revolutionary one. But it challenges any kind of monopoly in public life and seeks for a more fair and open society by employing advocacy, critical dialogue and debate. In particular, public theology, along with religious communities, closely works with civil society for its articulation of theology as well as the implementation of its findings. Fourth, major issues for public theology are inequality, the privatization or marginalization of religions in public life, the dominance of the state, the market or the media in the public sphere. For the purpose of challenging the main bodies of the public sphere regarding these concerns, public theology is actively involved in policymaking both within and outside of local and central governments. Public theology takes role of the prophet within the existing system.

b Public theology as challenging any monopoly of the public sphere by a particular public body The major contribution of Habermas and Schillebeeckx to the articulation of public theology is their emphasis on the creation of a platform where different parties can interact with one another for the pursuit of a common goal. Although, as was pointed out, the concept of the common good can be manipulated or determined by a ‘strong public’, and a ‘weak public’ could easily be marginalized, there is a way to prevent this by actively engaging all the parties in the public debate so that they may be a healthy check on each other. Public theology promotes this accountability, not for the defence of religious communities or religious ideas, but for the sake of any ‘weak public’ being able to contribute. All publics are vital for creating and maintaining the public sphere where all the opinions are considered and acted upon appropriately. By articulation of theological thinking, participating in demonstrations or by advocacy on certain issues, public theology challenges any monopoly of a particular public body in the public sphere. On the question of monopoly, it is interesting to examine the then Archbishop Rowan Williams’ lecture on ‘Civil and Religious Law in England: A Religious Perspective’ delivered in February 2008.34 Although this idea of implementing various complementary legal systems has been discussed by scholars and implemented in various global contexts and in the UK, the suggestion by the most senior member of 33 34

Charles T. Mathews, A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For detailed discussions of the lecture, see Mike Higton, ‘Rowan Williams and Sharia: Defending the Secular’, International Journal of Public Theology 2 (2008), 400–17; Jonathan Chaplin, ‘Legal Monism and Religious Pluralism: Rowan Williams on Religion, Loyalty and Law’, International Journal of Public Theology 2 (2008), 418–41; and Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere, 173–94.

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the Church of England of incorporating Sharia law into the British legal system brought much controversy. However, what the critics and the supporters are in agreement on is that the Archbishop’s lecture touched on more than the matter of Sharia law. While the initial reaction from the general public and the most of tabloid media focused on that issue, the articles with in-depth analysis addressed the wider issue of the application of the law in multicultural and multireligious contexts. The heart of the issue here is in what way religious allegiance and secular ideology meet in the public life. The Archbishop’s notion of ‘interactive pluralism’ is important and challenges the state monopoly in public life, arguing that the state should be open to scrutiny of its conduct of law by various groups including religious communities. Religious communities could make a vital contribution to mutual accountability in a wide range of the issues in public life of contemporary Britain but Williams sees the danger of the marginalization and privatization of the Christian church and other religious communities by the secular state and broadcast media. Instead, he tries to provide an alternative space other than the media; that is a ‘public’ where religious voices are respected and not intimidated by secularists’ accusations of the incompatibility of religion and the state.35

c Public theology as affirming the openness of theology with a view to reforming the public sphere Schillebeeckx’s theological insights on the wider engagement of theology with secular society help us to articulate the meaning of ‘public’ in public theology. Theologically, ‘public’ is not just limited to the physical space of the public sphere, nor does the concept of public merely sit in between the state and domestic or civil society, but it is to do with openness of theology. The key concern for developing public theology is that the concept of public is not a matter of the difference between public and private – it is to do with the openness of theology. Being public means that theology is open to engage wider in public issues than in religious matters, and also open to be engaged in receiving critique from outside the church circles. Jürgen Moltmann, in his book God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology, asserts that theology must publicly maintain the universal concerns of God’s coming kingdom because ‘there is no Christian identity without public relevance, and no public relevance without theology’s Christian identity’, and ‘as the theology of God’s kingdom, theology has to be public theology’ in the mode of ‘public, critical and prophetic complaint to God – public, critical and prophetic hope in God’.36 Theology, he insists, should exhibit ‘general concern in the light of hope in Christ for the kingdom of God’ by becoming ‘political in the name of the poor and the marginalized in a given society’, by thinking ‘critically about the religious and moral values of the societies in which it exists’, and by presenting ‘its reflections as a reasoned position’. In addition to this, public theology ‘refuses to fall into the modern trap of pluralism, where it is supposed 35

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For the discussion on the contribution of religious communities to multicultural and secular politics, see Bhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2000). Jürgen Moltmann, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology (London: SCM Press, 1999), 5–23.

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to be reduced to its particular sphere and limited to its own religious society’. For Moltmann, public theology is critical, prophetic, reflective and reasoned engagement of theology in society for the sake of the poor and marginalized to bring the kingdom of God. In other words, theology is not confined in the church, since it is based on the kingdom of God, it should be critically engaged in the public sphere, but at the same time, theology must be open to critique from the wider society. One of the key characteristics of public theology is seeking to find a methodology suited to address various contemporary issues in order to directly engage with individuals of no faith commitment and various secular groups in a society. Traditional theologies tend to convey their insights to the wider society through individual Christians and Christian communities but public theology articulates a methodology suitable to both Christian communities and the wider society. Achieving this is an ongoing challenge, but there are various examples of how Christian theologians and communities have done so as I will mention in the following two sections: critical self-consciousness of Christian praxis and the employment of the wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible. When it comes to the mode of engagement, as I have pointed out, the bourgeois public sphere assumes or even relies on open access and critical debate among the general public. However, this is not the case in less democratic countries. Indeed, even in the liberal-democratic societies in the West, there is limited access for certain groups and ideas in the public sphere, particularly religious communities and ethnic minority groups. Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, in his discussion of four different models for political ethics, suggests that ‘public theology tries to develop political options not only from the position of opposition but also from within the position of political power’ and that the contemporary context of South Africa and Brazil need ‘churches moving from liberation theology to public theology’. He further claims that ‘public theology is liberation theology for a democratic society’.37 This may sound as if public theology supersedes liberation theology and I have a problem with this notion but perhaps this is not Bedford-Strohm’s intention. In my previous work, I have also suggested that a key characteristic of the difference between liberation theology and public theology is that one is revolutionary and other reforming respectively, although this difference is not a matter of kind but a matter of degree. I would argue that both the revolutionary approach of liberation theology and the reforming approach of public theology are required in the church’s engagement in the public domain. That is, in either ‘open’ (democratic) or ‘closed’ (un-democratic) public spheres, both approaches are needed. Even in an open and democratic public sphere such as Western society, liberation theology is applicable to various areas of public life and for a ‘closed’ public sphere, the reforming approach of public theology is vital for sustainable transformation of society. I would argue that both approaches are needed in order to make the Christian message credible in the public domain, and that the revolutionary approach of liberation theology and reforming approach of public theology are not mutually exclusive but both are relevant for building a just and fair society. 37

Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, ‘Poverty and Public Theology: Advocacy of the Church in Pluralistic Society’, International Journal of Public Theology 2 (2008), 144–62, 150–1.

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d Public theology as developing critical self-consciousness of Christian praxis in the concrete realities of life As Schillebeeckx and the school of critical theory argue, the integral nature of theory and practice is vital for public theology so that the validity of theology is tested when it is applied into real life and contemporary public affairs. The question of the appropriate method for engaging in the public sphere is not an easy one, and the variety of forms taken by public theology suggest there are a number of legitimate ways of doing it. This is not only because the theologians seeking to apply theology to public life come from a variety of sub-disciplines, such as systematic theology, religious studies and social ethics. It is also because public theology is done in a variety of different social and political contexts which both constrain and shape its methods. For exploring the praxis of public theology, John de Gruchy calls for the development of a language that is accessible to people outside the Christian tradition and is convincing in its own right, but which also needs to address Christian congregations in a language whereby public debates are related to the traditions of faith.38 This is a hard task and there are various approaches to it, especially on the question of whether we should pursue the creation of a common mode of engagement or maintain the distinctiveness of each but devise a common meeting place for public engagement. What Schillebeeckx advocated was that this hermeneutic of critical selfconsciousness of Christian praxis should not stop within the academy or Christian faith, but it should be tested in actual participation of Christians in politics, economics and other realms of public life, and only then will the Christian faith be manifested. In terms of the hermeneutics of Christian praxis, public theology shares findings and experiences with liberation theology.39 There are many examples of liberation readings of the Scripture and these have been immensely influential on the rest of the world, especially in Asia and Africa where the issue of economic and political injustice has been a dominant concern for Christians. Korea also developed its own version of liberation theology called minjung theology. Ahn Byung-Moo, one of minjung theology’s leading exponents, drew this concept from the Gospel of Mark. In his study of Mark, he identified the crowd who were surrounding Jesus – ochlos – and pointed out that this term was first used by Mark. He insisted that in comparison to the term laos in Luke, which means the ‘people of God’, ochlos is the common people, who belong to the ‘marginalized and abandoned’ group and that it is not consolidated into a concept but defined in a relational way.40 He argues that the presence of Christ is not when the word is preached nor when the sacrament is conducted but when we participate with or in the suffering of minjung. Jesus is God becoming flesh and 38

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John de Gruchy, ‘Public Theology as Christian Witness: Exploring the Genre’, International Journal of Public Theology 1 (2007), 26–41. Anthony Thistelton, New Horizons of Hermeneutics (London: HarperCollins, 1992), 379. Thistleton points out that in terms of hermeneutics, liberation theology, black and feminist theology have their root in hermeneutics of socio-critical theory. Ahn Byung-Moo, ‘Jesus and the Minjung in the Gospel of Mark’, Minjung Theology: People as the Subject of History, ed. Kim Yong Bock (Singapore: Commission of Theological Concerns, Christian Conference of Asia, 1981), 150–1; Ahn Byung-Moo, The Story of Minjung Theology (Seoul: Korea Institute of Theology, 1990), 31–7.

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body, which means material being and reality in everyday life, not an ideology or philosophy.41 While minjung theologians developed the theoretical framework for the democratization movement, minjung artists, as a part of doing public theology, made a significant impact on the movement by providing a platform for expressing people’s han and aspirations. The artists were working alongside minjung theologians but were particularly effective among students and ordinary people who were campaigning against the military-backed government because of human rights abuse. In a sense, they were ‘doing theology in the public sphere’42 or, as Volker Küster puts it, they ‘devote their creativity as means of communication into the service of the common goal’.43 There are, of course, numerous examples of how Christian communities, along with wider secular society, have put their faith into practice for the pursuit of common good of the society such as the Make Poverty History campaign in the United Kingdom in 2005 and the anti-Iraq war campaign in the United States and in Europe.

e Public theology as utilizing and applying biblical wisdom to contemporary situations The emphasis of Schillebeeckx on the balance between theology as a hermeneutical enterprise and theology as critical reflection of Christian praxis is an important tension,44 a tension that is relevant to public theology. One of the key concerns for those who engage in public theology is around the methodology of interacting with various academic disciplines, different bodies in the public sphere and Christian communities. In this endeavour, as a Christian theology, public theology would need to draw its resources from the Scripture as well as from other religious and secular sources, and it seems to me that the concept of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible could be a vital methodological tool. David Neville challenges those who are engaged in public theology that whatever their position regarding the Scripture, Christians relate to the Bible as a ‘norm for faith and practice, both personal and public’45 and emphasizes the formation of a ‘biblical identity’ of Christian community and ‘public dimension of the biblical record’. As he regards Scripture as a normative source for traditional theology, so it should be to the development of public theology in its theory or method and praxis.46 He suggests public theology should pay serious attention to biblical insights, especially drawing lessons from to the works of Gerd Theissen for meaningful dialogue in the context of a pluralistic environment and of Paul Hanson on hermeneutics for a biblically informed political theology.47 In recent years, the use of scriptural wisdom has been promoted by David Ford and others and this seems to provide a possibility for how public theology should be conducted. David Ford, in his book Christian Wisdom, suggests that the concept of 41 42 43 44 45

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Ahn, The Story of Minjung Theology, 87–128. Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere, 3–26. Volker Küster, ‘Minjung theology and Minjung Art’, Mission Studies 11 (1994), 108–29, 115. Schreiter, ed., The Schillebeeckx Reader, 91. David J. Neville, ‘Christian Scripture and Public Theology: Ruminations on their Ambiguous Relationship’, International Journal of Public Theology 7 (2013), 5–23, 7. Neville, ‘Christian Scripture and Public Theology’, 9. Ibid., 13–20.

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wisdom used to be associated with ‘premodern, tradition and conservative caution’, but now it is becoming important in the areas of ethics, values, beauty, the shaping and flourishing of the whole person, the common good, and long term perspectives’ in the public life. He argues for a ‘theology as wisdom’, which is ‘theology of desire and discernment’ in its attempt to unite in a ‘God-centred discourse the love of wisdom and wise living’.48 Drawing on the findings of various scholars,49 we can identify some lessons for wisdom in public life. The wisdom tradition is the result of practical and pragmatic advice from sages, which is grounded in God and his presence in its foundation but is not limited to it in its scope and application. In other words, it covers both religious and wider societies on the matter of both sacred and secular issues and concerns. The theoretical mode and sources of inquiry are living conduct and experiences and the results of these enquiries are also open to scrutiny from the wider readership. The investigation is not closed when the findings are written, but rather they form the beginning of further investigation as the pursuit of wisdom is an ongoing process. It tends to seek common knowledge of shared experience and is also open to lessons from various sources; therefore, it can easily be understood by and implemented in the daily lives of a wider public regardless of differences of faith, community and nation. These characteristics of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible provide an important insight for our search for an appropriate methodology for theological engagement in the public sphere in contemporary society. The above discussions are focused on Wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible, but the understanding of wisdom and the wisdom tradition is not limited to a particular group of biblical texts; the whole of Scripture should be our resource to help us to identify the bridges we can build between scriptural wisdom and public theology. A number of theologians have been engaging in this endeavour and in my view, it is vital for the sustainable development of a public theology which is credible to both the Christian community and wider society. While David Ford emphasizes the vital importance of the Bible in seeking wisdom for Christians, he calls for both secular and religious communities to engage in ‘mutually critical engagement among all the participants aimed at transforming the public sphere for the better’.50 Ford further calls for appropriate ‘frameworks, patterns, settlements and institutions to have practical effect in public life’; for a ‘thorough engagement with the scriptural texts’; and for ‘the healthy intensity of passionately wise faith’ in order to mitigate the negative conduct of religious communities. He presents wisdom in public life as a combination of rich understanding, discernment and good judgment relating to people, ideas, situations, institutions and traditions; far-sighted decision-making

48

49

50

David Ford, Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1–13. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, vol. 2 (London: SCM, 1965), 418–34; Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (London: SCM, 1972), 74–81, 289–307; Leo G. Perdue, Wisdom Literature: A Theological History (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007); Leo D. Lefebure, ‘The Wisdom Tradition in Recent Christian Theology’, The Journal of Religion 76 (1996), 338–48; and Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, ‘The Return of Wisdom’, Theology Today 69 (2012), 156–65. Ford, Christian Wisdom, 301.

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41

among practical possibilities; and all this within a commitment to the long term, transgenerational flourishing of a society in relation to other societies and to the natural environment.51

In addition, although as a Christian he is grounded in a biblical understanding of wisdom, he is open to the wisdom from believers of other religious traditions as he firmly believes in the ‘providence and generosity of God’ and God’s concern for every aspect of life. So he suggests that, in practice, there should be a minimal framework, open to renegotiation and ‘insistent on the priority of the common good’.52 The key aspects of scriptural wisdom in developing public theology as discussed above53 help us to deal with the issue of the difficulty of the methodology of utilizing theological insights in the public sphere: that is, whether to create a common sphere (philosophy, platform, or space) or to bring a distinctively Christian contribution for engagement in the public discussion. The wisdom tradition is deeply imbedded in the sacred text of the Hebrew Bible and yet its concern and scope is not limited to the people of Israel nor to faith matters – it is more to do with practical guidance for the ethical, moral and social life of individual together with others in Israel and beyond. This gives us a clue that we can take a third option of biblical wisdom in public life. While our wisdom is drawn from Scripture, this wisdom can be shared by people of other faiths and by those of no faith and equally importantly, churches can utilize wisdom from other religious traditions and secular society in their engagement in the public life. Doing public theology from point of view of Christian tradition could then be articulated as identifying ‘shared wisdom’ from biblical wisdom (not just from the wisdom literature) and applying it into the public engagement of the church. In turn, public theologians are also prepared to join in with any initiatives based on wisdom from other traditions (both religious and secular).

Conclusion I have discussed some of the key philosophical and theological findings of Habermas and Schillebeeckx, applied these to the hermeneutical development of public theology, and have suggested five aspects for exploration. These are not meant to be comprehensive and exhaustive of public theology, but rather they discuss one aspect of it, which is the exploration of the nature of the public sphere and the implications of this for Christian theology. Critical theory, particularly the emphasis on praxis, has made a deep impact on many academic disciplines and it should be actively yet critically adapted for theologizing in contemporary contexts, as Schillebeeckx did. Like liberation theology and political theology, public theology is interested in the practical application of Christian theology beyond the interpretation of Christian 51

52 53

David Ford, ‘God and Our Public Life: A Scriptural Wisdom’, International Journal of Public Theology 1 (2007), 63–81, 63–4. Ford, ‘God and Our Public Life’, 65, 76. See also Heather Thomson, ‘Stars and Compasses: Hermeneutical Guides for Public Theology’, International Journal of Public Theology 2 (2008), 258–76.

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scripture, doctrines and traditions. As public theology is applied within a given system of public so Christian theology undergoes further reform. Through this dual process, I hope the development of a hermeneutic for public theology will lead to a new shared understanding of theology for the common good of all participants in the public sphere beyond the rigid and exclusive boundaries of being religious or being secular.

Bibliography Ahn, Byung-Moo (1990), The Story of Minjung Theology (Seoul: Korea Institute of Theology), 31–7. Ahn, Byung-Moo (1981), ‘Jesus and the Minjung in the Gospel of Mark’, in Minjung Theology: People as the Subject of History, ed. Kim Yong Bock (Singapore: Commission of Theological Concerns, Christian Conference of Asia), 150–1. Areto, Andrew and Jean L. Cohen (1992), Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Bedford-Strohm, Heinrich (2008), ‘Poverty and Public Theology: Advocacy of the Church in Pluralistic Society’, International Journal of Public Theology, 2: 144–62. Calhoun, Craig, ed. (1992), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Calhoun, Craig, Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, eds (2013), Habermas and Religion (Cambridge: Polity). Casanova, José (1994), Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press). Chang, Kyung (2014), ‘Christianity and Civil Society in Colonial Korea: The Civil Society Movement of Cho Man-sik and the P’yŏngyang YMCA against Japanese Colonialism’, in Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian American, ed. Albert L. Park and David K. Yoo (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press), 119–39. Chaplin, Jonathan (2008), ‘Legal Monism and Religious Pluralism: Rowan Williams on Religion, Loyalty and Law’, International Journal of Public Theology, 2: 418–41. Crossley, Nick and John Michael Roberts, eds (2004), After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere (Oxford: Blackwell). Fiig, Christina (2011), ‘A Powerful, Opinion-forming Public? Rethinking the Habermasian Public Sphere in a Perspective of Feminist Theory and Citizenship’, Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 12: 291–304. Finlayson, James G. (2005), Habermas: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ford, David (2007), ‘God and Our Public Life: A Scriptural Wisdom’, International Journal of Public Theology, 1: 63–81. Ford, David (2007), Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fraser, Nancy (2007), ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World’, Theory, Culture & Society, 24: 7–30. Fraser, Nancy (1992), ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 109–41. de Gruchy, John (2007), ‘Public Theology as Christian Witness: Exploring the Genre’, International Journal of Public Theology, 1: 26–41.

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Habermas, Jürgen (2013), ‘Reply to My Critics’, in Habermas and Religion, ed. Craig Calhoun, Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (Cambridge: Polity), 347–90. Habermas, Jürgen (2006), ‘Religion in the Public Sphere’, European Journal of Philosophy, 14: 1–25. Habermas, Jürgen ([1962] 1989), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: Polity). Heclo, Hugh and Wilfred M. McClay, eds (2003), ‘What is a Public Religion?’, in Religion Returns to the Public Square (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press), 111–39. Higton, Mike (2008), ‘Rowan Williams and Sharia: Defending the Secular’, International Journal of Public Theology, 2: 400–17. How, Alan (2003), Critical Theory (New York, NY: Palgrave). Kennedy, Philip (1993), Schillebeeckx (London: Geoffrey Chapman). Kim, Sebastian (2014), ‘Editorial’, International Journal of Public Theology, 8: 121–9. Kim, Sebastian (2011), Theology in the Public Sphere (London: SCM Press). Koller, Andreas (2010), ‘The Public Sphere and Comparative Historical Research: An Introduction’, Social Science History, 34: 261–90. Koo, Jeong-Woo (2007), ‘The Origins of the Public Sphere and Civil Society: Private Academies and Petitions in Korea, 1506–1800’, Social Science History, 31: 381–408. Koopman, Nico (2003), ‘Some Comments on Public Theology Today’, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 117: 3–19. Küster, Volker (1994), ‘Minjung theology and Minjung Art’, Mission Studies, 11: 108–29. Lefebure, Leo D. (1996), ‘The Wisdom Tradition in Recent Christian Theology’, The Journal of Religion, 76: 338–48. Mathews, Charles T. (2007), A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Moltmann, Jürgen (1999), God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology (London: SCM Press). Moltmann-Wendel, Elisabeth (2012), ‘The Return of Wisdom’, Theology Today, 69: 156–65. Neville, David J. (2013), ‘Christian Scripture and Public Theology: Ruminations on their Ambiguous Relationship’, International Journal of Public Theology, 7: 5–23. Parekh, Bhikhu (2000), Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (New York, NY: Palgrave). Perdue, Leo G. (2007), Wisdom Literature: A Theological History (London: Westminster John Knox Press). von Rad, Gerhard (1972), Wisdom in Israel (London: SCM). von Rad, Gerhard (1965), Old Testament Theology, vol. 2 (London: SCM). Reinelt, Janelle (2011), ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere for a Global Age’, Performance Research, 16: 16–27. Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), The Understanding of Faith: Interpretation and Criticism, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 5 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schreiter, RobertJ. (1997), ‘Edward Schillebeeckx’, in Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. David Ford (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edn), 152–61. Schreiter, Robert J. (1984), ‘Edward Schillebeeckx: An Orientation to His Thought’, in The Schillebeeckx Reader (Edinburgh: T&T Clark), 1–24.

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Stackhouse, Max (2006), ‘Public Theology and Ethical Judgement’, Theology Today, 54: 165–79. Stirk, Peter M. R. (2000), Critical Theory, Politics and Society: An Introduction (London and New York, NY: Pinter). Thistelton, Anthony (1992), New Horizons of Hermeneutics (London: HarperCollins). Thomson, Heather (2008), ‘Stars and Compasses: Hermeneutical Guides for Public Theology’, International Journal of Public Theology, 2: 258–76. Tracy, David (1981), The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (London: SCM Press).

3

Glimpses of Schillebeeckx in Asian Theological Hermeneutics Edmund Kee-Fook Chia

I still remember rather vividly that a little more than a dozen years ago I was in what was then called the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen defending my doctoral dissertation. I had invited Fr Edward Schillebeeckx to participate in the promotion but when he arrived at the conference centre, he apologized profusely for not being able to join the panel of promoters and examiners. He said he was not feeling well and would have to sit with the audience so that in case he needed to use the restroom his leaving the aula would not be a distraction to the event. Looking back, I think it was providential for that to have happened for Fr Schillebeeckx was sitting in the middle of the aula facing all the nine-member panel of examiners. As I was making my presentation and responding to the questions posed, I stole occasional glances through the corner of my eye and saw Fr Schillebeeckx nodding away every time I mentioned some aspect of his theology. I think that was why the examiners did not give me a hard time as they saw for themselves the imprimatur I was receiving by way of those nods coming from the head of the very person whose theology I was expounding upon. I suppose for this publication, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of his birth, I am presenting my piece confident that Fr Schillebeeckx will be nodding away in heaven as I share some thoughts on the glimpses we find of his theology in Asian theological hermeneutics. This hermeneutics, as we shall see later, has moved the church outwards in order to participate in the public life of the cultures and societies of Asia. It is very much, following after the title of Indian theologian Felix Wilfred’s book, an Asian Public Theology: ‘An Asian Public Theology is one in which the accent will be stronger on the “public” than on theology. The focus will be on the issues and questions that affect the people and societies of Asia and which need to be addressed urgently.’1 It is a theology which speaks not only for the Church of Asia but also, as the title of the five volumes which contain the documents of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) has it, ‘for all the peoples of Asia’ as well.2 It is in this 1

2

Felix Wilfred, Asian Public Theology: Critical Concerns in Challenging Times (New Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2010), 1. There are presently five volumes of the book For All the Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (Quezon City: Claretian, 1997 [2 vols.], 2002, 2007, 2014).

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spirit of seeing the church’s role as in the service of the public that I will be examining Asian theology. I will examine it against the backdrop of Schillebeeckx’s theology to discern where and how his theological methodology can serve as lens for appreciating the outward thrust of the Asian Church in its ministry in the public spaces where the peoples and cultures of the continent thread.

1  Only as starting point Let me begin then by referring to the proceedings of the last Schillebeeckx conference which was held in Leuven in the year 2008, just a year prior to Schillebeeckx’s departure from his earthly life. Schillebeeckx had sent a letter to the conference whereby he suggested that the participants regard his theology ‘only as a starting point’ for theological reflection for the twenty-first century.3 This is quintessential Schillebeeckx. He is never dogmatic, either about his own theology or about the theological enterprise in general. Theology and theological doctrines serve as guides and signposts or sacraments, not to be mistaken as ends unto themselves. Enshrining them on a pedestal does not serve the people they are meant to assist. Asians, such as myself, are reminded of the Confucian sage or of the Buddha pointing the way to Nirvana while admonishing those who centre in on the finger, thus missing out on the path to which it is pointing. This is what Schillebeeckx expects of us: look at what and where he is pointing to but do so without dogmatizing his words or his finger. They are but starting points for us to engage in further reflection and this must be done in the context of our own human and communal experience. Moreover, aside from insisting on the sacramental nature of his theology, Schillebeeckx also considers it as still tentative and open to correction. Despite the massive length of his Jesus books, Schillebeeckx still maintains that his theology and theses are but prolegomenon,4 awaiting further confirmation and interrogation. Likewise, Asian theologians also consider their theology as starting points for further reflection. The theological articulations remain tentative and are still in process as well. Asian theology is never in definitive form and should never be interpreted rigidly. The FABC speaks of Asian theology as possessing a newness and tentativeness: ‘Asian theology is a new enterprise marked by a certain experimental character, a certain ambiguity, uncertainty and tenuousness. It is not yet a finished product, given the dynamic nature of the theological enterprise envisioned. It is rather a pilgrimage.’5

3

4

5

Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Letter from Edward Schillebeeckx to the participants in the Symposium “Theology for the 21st Century: The Enduring Relevance of Edward Schillebeeckx for Contemporary Theology”, Leuven, 3–6 December 2008’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark, 2010), xiv. Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 6 (London: Bloomsbury T &T Clark, 2014), 17, 627 [35, 669]. Office of Theological Concerns of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, ‘Methodology: Asian Christian Theology (Doing Theology in Asia Today)’, in For All the Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, Document from 1997 to 2001 Vol 3, ed. Franz Joseph Eilers (Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian, 2002), 329–419, 331.

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In other words Asian theology acknowledges that it is in process and develops and grows as a function of historical period, geographical location, cultural differences, and also contemporary human and social experiences. This is another way of saying that theology is always contextual. American missiologist Stephen Bevans, in positing the various models of contextual theology, explains: As our cultural and historical context plays a part in the construction of the reality in which we live, so our context influences the understanding of God and the expression of our faith. The time is past when we can speak of one, right, unchanging theology, a theologia perennis. We can only speak about a theology that makes sense at a certain place and in a certain time.6

Some theologians go even so far as to assert that not only is theology contextual, it should and must be open to change. Just as the world and all within it continues to evolve, so does theology. There is nothing static about theology and all theological articulations are bound to change as the context changes. Taiwanese theologian Shoki Coe, often regarded as the ‘father’ of Asian contextual theology, has this to say: It is therefore clear that contextualization is a dynamic not a static process. It recognizes the continually changing nature of every human situation and of the possibility for change, thus opening the way for the future. The agenda of a Third World contextualizing theology will have priorities of its own. It may have to express its self-determination by uninhibitedly opting for a ‘theology of change’.7

Asian theology, therefore, is also as much prolegomenon. It is prefatory and introduces the subject and issues without asserting any definitive theses or final conclusions. It develops and grows with time and when circumstances change. Like the English translation of the subtitle of Schillebeeckx’s Jesus book, Asian theology remains an ‘experiment’, be it in epistemology, in Christology, in ecclesiology, in pneumatology, in prophetology, in eschatology and so on. It is a theology which is dynamic and constantly evolving and serves as starting points for engaging in the concerns of the peoples and cultures of Asia.

2  The new hermeneutics The experimental nature of Asian theology is premised on the theory that every theological interpretation raises new questions and that these new questions then constitute the datum for further reflection. The new reflection in turn produces yet another interpretation and the spiral goes on and on. Schillebeeckx refers to this as the ‘new hermeneutics’ and especially to the works of existential philosophers-theologians such as Martin Heidegger, Rudolf Bultmann and Hans-Georg Gadamer: The new hermeneutics has arisen from the quest for a method of proclaiming the evangelical message which will bring it home to twentieth-century man: a 6 7

Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), 4–5. Theological Education Fund, eds, Ministry in Context: The Third Mandate Programme of the Theological Education Fund, 1970–77 (Bromley, England: Theological Education Fund, 1972), 20–1.

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Grace, Governance and Globalization proclamation which will on the one hand remain faithful to the word of God and on the other hand will allow that word to ring out in a way which does not by-pass the reality of his life.8

Asian theologians refer to this as the pastoral cycle or pastoral spiral and regard it as the primary method for pastoral discernment, for doing theology, and also for being Church in Asia. The theological quest is an ongoing enterprise and theology can never claim to have the final word. As Schillebeeckx asserts, there is always another word, another legomenon, waiting to be spoken.9 Schillebeeckx’s foremost student and disciple, Robert Schreiter, describes his master as always stressing ‘the ultimate inability of any conceptual system to express completely the richness of human experiences’.10 Systems are in the service of humanity, not the other way around. When the experience of the latter undergoes change or transformation, so must the articulation of the former. Another Schillebeeckx scholar and Dominican confrere, Philip Kennedy, adds that Schillebeeckx came to a realization that ‘the ultimate meaning of human existence (universality) cannot be accounted for by a particular purely theoretical perspective’.11 Theory can at best inform reality but it cannot serve as basis or standard for the adjudication of the truth or falsity of the reality, especially if the theory arose from within another context or era. Asian theologians take this further to suggest that there is no one theory which can claim to be the only suitable one for the vast diversity of experiences of the people in the Asian continent. Asian theology, therefore, should never be presented or passed down through the generations as a narrow singular tradition. That is why it is more common to hear discussions about Asian theologies, expressed in the plural, rather than about Asian theology. The plurality is expressed not only as diversity across time and eras but also across space and context. The diachronic divergences across history and the synchronic variances across cultures are well acknowledged and always presupposed. Indian theologian and spiritual teacher Sebastian Painadath states it unequivocally: ‘We Asians, by nature, resonate with diversity and hence we resist religious absolutism and cultural uniformism. Diversity is beauty, not only in nature but also in culture. Diversity of cultures shows quality of life; plurality of religions means richness of divine grace.’12 This plurality of religions sees its expression within the Christian faith as plurality in Asian Christian Theologies.13 For Schillebeeckx the plural character of theology is founded upon an awareness of the historicity and finitude of the human condition. This led him to posit that any apprehension of the absolute mystery of God is at best an approximation. After all, Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Towards a Catholic Use of Hermeneutics’, God the Future of Man, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 3 (London: Bloomsbury T &T Clark, 2014), 1 [3].  9 Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 7 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 8 [25]. 10 Robert Schreiter, ed., The Schillebeeckx Reader (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1984), 2. 11 Philip Kennedy, Schillebeeckx (London: Chapman, 1993), 42. 12 Sebastian Painadath, Spiritual Co-Pilgrims: Towards a Christian Spirituality in Dialogue with Asian Religions (Quezon City: Claretian, 2014), 1. 13 Asian Christian Theologies is the title of an encyclopaedic-standard three-volume research guide to authors, movements, and sources. See John England, ed., Asian Christian Theologies: A Research Guide to Authors, Movements, Sources, 3 vols (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002–4).  8

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how can God, who is absolute, eternal and universal, and whose salvation is for all persons and for all times, be perceived and apprehended by a human being, a religion or a theological system which is relative, limited and particular, and subject to the contingencies of history and culture? For Schillebeeckx, it must be asserted that God is new each moment.14 As such Schillebeeckx warns that present-day theology, both conservative and progressive, will render the problem of faith more acute if it does not devote itself first of all to a serious search for a real hermeneutics of history which analyzes the ontological conditions making possible the retention of an authentic identity of faith within the reinterpretation of faith, a reinterpretation which in turn is necessary because of man’s situation in history.15

Like Schillebeeckx, Asian theology is aware that any apprehension of the absolute mystery is but one perspective of the absolute. When expressed in language and concepts, it is a perspective very much shaped by the history and culture where those concepts and languages developed. In short, the theologian’s conclusions are culturally and historically conditioned. The hermeneutical theology which Schillebeeckx introduced into the world of Catholic theology, therefore, is imperative and central to the task of theologizing. It has shaped much of Asian theology in the last half century.

3  Towards a Catholic use of hermeneutics Schillebeeckx insists that hermeneutics is necessary by pointing to the nature of God’s dialogue with the world. The ‘word from God’, Schillebeeckx proclaims, does not come to us ‘without alloy’, ‘coming down to us, as it were, vertically in a purely divine statement’. It is always in an interpreted form. As such, God’s Word, as revealed to us through the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, is ‘necessarily situated – it had a social setting, a living historical context’.16 Schillebeeckx discusses all this in his seminal essay entitled ‘Towards a Catholic Use of Hermeneutics’. He advocates that ‘we should not be afraid of serious attempts to reinterpret the faith’.17 The problem, however, is that ‘the contemporary scene with its understanding of its own existence is a “hermeneutical” situation, and it is only within this and from this situation (certainly not outside it or from above) that we can understand in faith what the biblical message itself gives us to understand’.18 Hence, the contemporary human experience of the interpreter, which Schillebeeckx regards as the second source of theology, represents ‘an intrinsic and constitutive element for understanding God’s revelatory speaking in the history of Israel and of

14

15 16 17 18

Edward Schillebeeckx, in conversation with Huub Oosterhuis and Piet Hoogeveen, God is New Each Moment, trans. David Smith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983). Schillebeeckx, ‘Catholic Use of Hermeneutics’, 53 [86]. Ibid., 2–3 [5]. Ibid., 29 [43]. Ibid., 3–4 [6–7].

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Jesus, which is confessed by Christians as being salvation from God for men and women, i.e. the first source’.19 What is required then is a mutually ‘critical correlation (and at times even a “critical confrontation”)’20 between the two sources of theology ‘in which we attune our belief and action within the world in which we live, here and now, to what is brought up for discussion in the biblical tradition’.21 For the Asian theologian the task of reinterpreting the faith involves taking note of what has come to be known as the ‘critical Asian principle’. This represents the contemporary context and experience of the interpreter, the second source of theology, and has served ‘as a frame of reference’ for doing theology in Asia.22 Three features will be noted for our purposes here. The critical Asian principle first takes note of the fact that the Christian faith was transmitted to most of Asia under the auspices of European colonialism. Vietnamese-American theologian Peter Phan discusses the irony: ‘Though born in (South-West) Asia, it returned to its birthplace as a foreign religion, or worse, the religion of its colonizers, and is still being widely regarded as such by many Asians.’23 Asian theology, therefore, is a postcolonial enterprise and utilizes many of the tools and methods of postcolonial theories, including how the biblical text and the Christian tradition are interpreted.24 Second, the critical Asian principle notes that most Christian communities in Asia are small in numbers as compared to the nation’s population and exists, as Indian Dalit theologian Deenabandhu Manchata describes it, ‘as fragmented minority communities often in hostile contexts’.25 In such situations, a minority complex could arise where Christians become extremely suspicious of or fearful of the actions or even the faith of their neighbours of the dominant communities. The complex also sometimes stifles their contribution to society. As Bishop Bunluen Mansap of Thailand opines: ‘But it must be recognized that in the field of social justice and human rights the Catholic Church has not done as much as it should have. Perhaps this is due to its “minority complex” or its fear of losing the freedom it still enjoys.’26 Thirdly, and as a response to the above two features, the critical Asian principle urges that theology in Asia must take seriously the fact that Asian Christianity is immersed in the rich and plural context of the many poor, the many cultures, and the many religions of the Asian continent. Theologians must also be proactive and not reactive. They must be in the service of the local communities and any Christian articulation of the faith 19

20

21 22

23

24

25

26

Edward Schillebeeckx, Interim Report on the Books Jesus & Christ, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 8 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 3 [3]. Catherine Hilkert, ‘Introduction to the New Edition “Interim Report”’, Interim Report on the Books Jesus & Christ, ed. Edward Schillebeeckx, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 8 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), xiii–xvii, xv. Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 43–4 [51]. Emerito P. Nacpil, ‘The Critical Asian Principle’, in What Asian Christians are Thinking: A Theological Source Book, ed. Douglas J. Elwood (Quezon City: New Day, 1976), 3–6, 5. Peter Phan, ‘Introduction: Asian Christianity/Christianities’, in Christianities in Asia, ed. Peter Phan (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 1–6, 2. R. S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Deenabandhu Manchata, ‘Interrogating Asian Ecclesiologies for Purposeful Theological Engagement for Asian Ecumenism’, in Asian Handbook for Theological Education and Ecumenism, ed. Hope Antone, Wati Longchar and Hyunju Bae. (Oxford: Regnum, 2013), 175–85, 175. Bunluen Mansap, ‘Christianity and Buddhism’, in Asian Synod: Texts and Commentaries, ed. Peter Phan (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), 121.

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should, therefore, be done in view of an explicit open and constructive engagement with the local communities and the peoples of Asia. In other words, Christianity can no longer exist in Asia as if the poor, the diverse cultures and the ancient religions are not an integral dimension of its contexts. This threefold engagement or dialogue sums up the task of the Asian Church in light of the critical Asian principle. Together they represent the crucial second source of the theological endeavour and must play a salient role in the construction of any Asian theology. This second source has also influenced the reflections of the church’s pastoral magisterium in Asia, accounting for why its product differs significantly from classical theology, including the theologies which have been passed down to them from the missionary era and also those which continue to be passed on to them from the Roman magisterium. The FABC has been at the forefront of employing this new hermeneutical methodology in its theological reflection. In its most recent plenary assembly, which was held in Xuan Loc (near Ho Chi Minh City) in December 2012, Cardinal Rosales of the Philippines recounted the federation’s origins and history in the assembly’s opening address. He referred especially to the epistemological shift within FABC since the first plenary assembly ‘where Asia’s bishops, reflecting on the situation, history and needs of the Asian people decidedly assigned to themselves the challenges of Evangelization among the people: the Triple Dialogue’ (p. 2).27 This new method for theological reflection was reinforced by the Xuan Loc plenary assembly’s final Message wherein the bishops reasserted the doctrine of the Triple Dialogue by pronouncing that it must be regarded as the ‘mode of life and mission’ for the Church in Asia. The bishops then fleshed out the Triple Dialogue as referring to Christians displaying a ‘humble sensitivity to the hidden presence of God in the struggles of the poor, in the riches of people’s cultures, in the varieties of religious traditions, and in the depths of every human heart’.28 This depiction explained what the bishops had put out earlier in the Instrumentum Laboris for this, which was their tenth plenary assembly, wherein they spoke of the Triple Dialogue as involving the ministries of (i) integral liberation and option for the poor, (ii) inculturation, and (iii) inter-religious dialogue respectively.29 The Triple Dialogue is thus Asian theology’s hermeneutical method and has been decisive in revolutionizing the directions of the church for the last four decades.

4  It began with an experience The Triple Dialogue is premised on the concrete realities of Asia being given hermeneutical significance. These realities are the day-to-day experience of Christians 27

28

29

Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales, ‘Message of the Extraordinary Delegate to FABC 10th Plenary Assembly’, last modified 10 December 2012, http://www.fabc.org/index_10th_plenary.html. ‘Renewed Evangelizers for New Evangelization in Asia: Message of X FABC Plenary Assembly’, last modified 16 December 2012, http://www.fabc.org/index_10th_plenary.html. ‘Instrumentum Laboris of FABC X Plenary Assembly, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Vietnam’, last modified 10 December 2012, http://cbcvietnam.org/Church-Documents/instrumentum-laborisof-fabc-x-plenary-assembly.html.

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in Asia. Their experience of Asia’s poor, Asia’s cultures, and Asia’s religions shapes the way they express their Christian faith. Their reflection on God and revelation or on life and salvation or on church and mission is to a great extent a function of how they have experienced these threefold Asian realities. In other words, the implicit theology of Asian Christians arises from their immediate real-life experience of the Triple Dialogue with Asian realities. This is consistent with Schillebeeckx’s theological method which places great emphasis on experience as a source of theology. In fact, he begins the second of his trilogy, Christ, with an entire chapter discussing experience. Schillebeeckx regards experience as the medium through which human beings explore and receive the message of God’s revelation and salvation: ‘God’s revelation follows the path of human experiences [… and] can only be perceived in and through human experiences.’30 It is against this backdrop that Schillebeeckx speaks of Christianity as beginning with an experience: ‘It began with an experience.’31 Experience is not only the source and foundation of Schillebeeckx’s theology, it is also its hope and goal. In his research on Jesus, Schillebeeckx began by digging into the experience of the early Christian movement. His aim was to discover what it was in the encounter that elicited the change, the hope and the trust which was to be found in the early disciples. This, he did, in view of enabling present-day Christians to similarly experience that same salvation which comes from God through this man of history, Jesus of Nazareth. It was this experience of life and hope which Schillebeeckx wished would be imparted to the present-day Christian: ‘Christianity is not a message which has to be believed, but an experience of faith which becomes a message, and as an explicit message seeks to offer a new possibility of life-experience to others who hear it from within their own experience of life.’32 Thus, when the Asian bishops designate the Triple Dialogue as the ‘mode of life and mission’ of the church in Asia, they are saying as much that it is in and through the genuine daily experience of Asian realities that the church discerns and receives the message of God’s revelation and love for the peoples of Asia. Furthermore, it is also in their day-to-day experience that Asian Christians live out their faith in the message of God’s salvation and this is expressed in the hope and trust which is evidenced in their lives as they go about engaging with the poor, the religions, and the cultures of Asia. At their very first plenary assembly, which was held in Taipei in 1974, the Asian bishops had already insisted that ‘the construction of a genuinely Asian theological reflection must be given a special priority’. They then added that ‘for the discernment of theological imperative and the formulation of theological insights and principles, living contact with concrete Asian realities is necessary’.33 The bishops also advised that for the Asian Church to move forward it was imperative that a truly local church be

30 31 32 33

Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 10 [11]. Schreiter, ed., The Schillebeeckx Reader, 129. Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 43 [51]. Gaudencio Rosales and C. G. Arevalo, eds, ‘Evangelization in Modern Day Asia: Statements and Recommendations of the First Plenary Assembly’, in For All the Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, Documents from 1970–1991, vol. 1 (Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian, 1997), 11–25, 17.

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established to replace the colonial church which continued to pervade much of Asia in the 1970s. They spelt this out in concrete terms: The local church is a church incarnate in a people, a church indigenous and inculturated. And this means concretely a church in continuous, humble and loving dialogue with the living traditions, the cultures, the religions – in brief, with all the life-realities of the people in whose midst it has sunk its roots deeply and whose history and life it gladly makes its own.34

5  Extra mundum nulla salus Closely related to Schillebeeckx’s emphasis on experience is his assertion that God’s will of salvation takes place within the concrete realities of the history of the present world. The axiom extra mundum nulla salus, which is a reformulation of the age-old doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus, is central to his theology and which he underscores in the letter to the participants of the 2008 Schillebeeckx conference in Leuven.35 He is emphatic that just as revelation is discerned through one’s human experience, salvation from God too is made possible only through the concrete realities of the human’s experience in this world. Likewise, just as God reveals and saves through worldly experiences, the Christian’s expression of faith is also made manifest through their concrete actions in this world. Schillebeeckx was almost alone in his generation in expounding unequivocally that God’s will of salvation takes place in the concrete realities of history. Schreiter confirms this: ‘Few theologians have insisted as seriously as has Schillebeeckx upon how concretely God acts in history.’36 In examining the concrete realities of history, Asian theologians make a distinction between one’s experience and one’s context. Both are inherently important for how one does theology but they are nevertheless different. Felix Wilfred explains: Asian theology has tried to widen the horizon of theological method by attributing central importance to experience and by recognizing spatiality or context as an important locus of theologizing. Experience and context are inter-linked concepts. … Of the two Kantian transcendental aesthetic, forming the a priori intuition of all sense experience – time and space – the former, namely time has acquired great importance in the theological field, especially with the advent of historical consciousness. … However, the other primordial dimension of human experience – the space – and its implications in the process of perception and genesis of knowledge has remained largely unexplored. Space has been a rediscovery of contextual theologies, and it has been a major source of theological creativity in Asia.37

34 35

36 37

Ibid., 14. Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 11, [12]. Schreiter, ed., The Schillebeeckx Reader, 17. Wilfred, Asian Public Theology, 280.

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Thus, for Asian theology, the context is of prime significance, much the same way history has been for Western theology. This context also refers to the space or mundus which Schillebeeckx never ceases to remind us is where God acts: ‘The expression extra mundum nulla salus has to do with the reality that the creative, saving presence of God is mediated in and through human beings.’38 If for Schillebeeckx the context where he was theologizing from, in 1960s and 1970s Europe, was becoming increasingly secular and post-Christian, in Asia the context continues to be permeated by the rich but diverse cultural and religious traditions of the continent. These Asian cultures and religions are not only very much alive and growing but are also potent forces of influences for a lot of the people’s thought and behavioural patterns. That is why Asian theologians are insistent that a continuous engagement and dialogue with the contexts of Asia is a theological necessity. These contexts have come to represent an important source for Asian theology. This is a significant shift in the method for doing theology as no longer are the poor, the cultures, and the religions of Asia looked upon as merely a backdrop against which theological reflection is done (for the purpose of enabling the Gospel to be more easily accepted), they are now looked upon as ‘resources of theology’. According to long-time FABC consultant Soosai Arokiasamy, Asian theology has now ‘integrated resources into traditional sources of theology in its method of theological reflection’.39 The Asian bishops explain what this means: As Asian Christians, we do theology together with Asian realities as resources, insofar as we discern in them God’s presence, action and the work of the Spirit. We use these resources in correlation with the Bible and the Tradition of the church. Use of these resources implies a tremendous change in theological methodology. The cultures of peoples, the history of their struggles, their religions, their religious scriptures, oral traditions, popular religiosity, economic and political realities and world events, historical personages, stories of oppressed people crying for justice, freedom, dignity, life, and solidarity become resources of theology, and assume methodological importance in our context. The totality of life is the raw material of theology; God is redemptively present in the totality of human life.40

In exploring the dialogue with the Asian context (i.e. the dialogue with Asian cultures), this integration implies that the interpreter takes seriously not only the variety of scriptures or stories or languages or customs or myths present, but also how these have shaped the minds and hearts of the people. Arokiasamy defines culture as ‘a constellation of collective symbolic values, worldviews that touch the totality of life, human relationships, way of life and people’s relation to nature, cosmos, etc’.41 In other words, the many folklores, proverbs, songs, poems, costumes, dances, art forms, 38 39

40

41

Schillebeeckx, ‘Letter from Edward Schillebeeckx’, xiv. Soosai Arokiasamy, ‘Doing Theology with Asian Resources in the Context of FABC’, in Harvesting from the Asian Soil: Towards an Asian Theology, ed. Vimal Tirimanna (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 2011), 1–20, 5. Office of Theological Concerns of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, ‘Methodology: Asian Christian Theology, Doing Theology in Asia Today’, 329–419, 355–6. Arokiasamy, ‘Doing Theology with Asian Resources in the Context of FABC’, 9.

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cuisines, healing rituals, ceremonial practices, yogic exercises, etc. of Asian culture can reveal more than just differences in the tradition of the people, they also reveal the intrinsic theologies and value systems which have guided the people for generations. For instance, Felix Wilfred speaks of folklore as enabling us ‘to see the aspect of human passion, rage, anger and release of energy, which all make up the world of concrete life-experience’.42 They highlight the immediacy, transparency and candour of the people’s experience. Filipina theologian Gemma Cruz writes that if we listen closely to the songs and jokes of the Filipina migrant domestic workers we will realize that they are but ‘weapons of the weak’ employed in the face of exploitation and to express innate theologies of resistance.43 Michael Amaladoss, one of the pioneers of Asian theology, points to Christians employing narrative method in theology (as pioneered by Kosuke Koyama, C. S. Song, and Anthony de Mello) as resonating more with the ‘Asian way of thinking [which is] holistic and integrated, experiencing reality as one and interdependent’. He predicts that ‘the Asian theology of the future will be a narrative theology, close to life in the world and contextual, not an abstract universal system. … This is a paradigm shift in methodology that has been taking place in Asian theology.’44 It also resonates well with Schillebeeckx’s thesis which states that the theological task should not only consist of theory but must engage stories as they function as the potent and critical force for praxis, which is the eventual goal of all theology.45

6  Church as sacrament of dialogue For Christianity in Asia the dialogue with the religions is of greater urgency given Asia’s privileged role of having been the birthplace of practically all the major religions of the world. In keeping with his thesis of extra mundum nulla salus, Schillebeeckx assumes that ‘the religions are the place where men and women become explicitly aware of God’s saving actions in history’.46 For him, it is in dialogue that the church ‘allows itself to be challenged by other religions and challenges them in return on the basis of its own message’.47 He, therefore, calls on the church to be a sacrament of dialogue in this religiously plural world.48 The church’s dialogue with Asian religions, however, has a history to contend with. That the Asian religions have been viewed historically with suspicion by the Christian community, especially as influenced by missionary theology, is an understatement.

42

43

44

45 46 47

48

Felix Wilfred, From the Dusty Soil: Contextual Reinterpretation of Christianity (Madras: University of Madras, 1995), 233–57, 237. Gemma Tulud Cruz, Toward a Theology of Migration: Social Justice and Religious Experience (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 131. Michael Amaladoss, ‘Asian Theological Trends’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 104–20, 105–6. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 631–3 [673–4]. Schillebeeckx, Church, 11 [12]. Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘The Religious and the Human Ecumene’, in The Language of Faith: Essays on Jesus, Theology, and the Church, ed. Robert Schreiter (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 249–64, 256–7. Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘The Church as a Sacrament of Dialogue’, God the Future of Man, 71–84 [117–40].

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Just two examples will suffice to give a sense of this uncomfortable relationship. The first and perhaps the most well known is the ancestor veneration and the Chinese rites’ controversy of the eighteenth century where Catholics were forbidden to participate in the rituals by no less than a Papal decree. It took two centuries for the official church to overturn the ban, but even then, according to Malaysian theologian Jonathan Tan, ‘Today, East Asian Catholics worldwide are allowed to participate in modified forms of ancestor veneration rites which comprise only the supposedly civil ritual elements and such other ritual elements which have been secularized over the passage of time.’49 Another unfortunate relationship, also among the Chinese, is the way in which the missionaries had (mis)translated the ‘dragon-serpent’ word of the Bible. The nineteenth-century translation opted for the Chinese character lung which refers to the ominous, beneficent mythic animal of historical China and which serves as a royal symbol of the emperor. Behind this choice, according to biblical scholar Archie Lee from Hong Kong, is the Christian theology which preaches that ‘the God introduced by the missionaries was a slayer of the dragon which is clearly stated as the anti-Christ in the Book of Revelation (12.3, 4, 7, 9, 13, 17, 17; 13.2, 4, 11; 16.13; 20.2)’.50 Both these incidents reveal clearly that Christians in Asia have been, in the words of Sri Lankan theologian Wesley Ariarajah, ‘indoctrinated into an adversarial attitude to other religious traditions by the theology of mission that accompanied the faith’.51 That was then, but, according to Ariarajah, ‘indications today are that many Asian Christians in the pew are in the mood to embrace the Asian approach to religious plurality and build a new relationship with people of other religious traditions’.52 Advances have certainly been made in the field of theology. Today, there are discussions about not only engaging the Scriptures of the Asian religions in one’s theology but also about embracing them as part of Christianity’s canon. Archie Lee says that ‘the debate on the canonicity of the Bible is a real issue in the Asian context. The deep respect for the Classics in China and India and the strong legacy attached to the ancient cultural heritage have presented a certain obstacle to Asians accepting readily the Bible in general and the Hebrew Bible in particular.’53 Theologians have also begun discussing Christian ideas and doctrines through the lens of other religions, such as the ChristoTao or Jesus as avartar or bodhisattva or the Trinity as Sac-cid-ananda.54 Others have been toying with the idea of using scriptures of other religions in Christian liturgical

49

50

51

52 53 54

Jonathan Tan, ‘Encounter between Confucianism and Christianity’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 428–43, 437. Archie Lee, ‘Scriptural Translations and Cross-Textual Hermeneutics’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 121–33, 129. Wesley Ariarajah, ‘Changing Paradigms of Asian Christian Attitude to Other Religions’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 347–67, 366. Ibid., 366. Lee, ‘Scriptural Translations and Cross-Textual Hermeneutics’, 124. Cf. Michael Amaladoss, The Asian Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2006); Heup-Young Kim, Christ and the Tao (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010).

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celebrations.55 Finally, there is also the discussion among Christians of embracing multiple religious belonging or identities.56 There is, of course, still a long way to go for Christianity’s dialogue with the Asian religions. The ideal is the establishment of harmonious relationships between all the religions. To be sure, a lot of fears and prejudices need to be addressed first. But one area where this dialogue is advancing at a steady pace is where the different religions are addressing issues of common concern together and working for justice and peace. Often called the dialogue of action, Christians have been joining forces with people of the various religions when the common good is at stake.

7  Doing of the faith This leads us to the third aspect of the Triple Dialogue, namely the dialogue with the poor of Asia. If for Schillebeeckx concreteness is the starting point for theological reflection, it is also its end point. Just as God’s action in history is revealed through concrete experiences, the Christian’s expression of faith is made manifest also through concrete actions. As such, Schillebeeckx insists that the hermeneutical task must entail the ‘doing of the faith’.57 Christians have to be concerned about the future which, Schillebeeckx asserts, ‘cannot be interpreted theoretically’. Instead, ‘it has to be brought about’.58 Orthopraxis, therefore, is the means or royal road to orthodoxy. This is another theme central of Schillebeeckx’s theology and it is at the same time one which has great resonance with Asian theology as well. In advocating the Triple Dialogue, the Asian bishops’ emphasis is not so much on the fruits as on the actual praxis of dialogue. The word dialogue is used loosely to represent all kinds of activities which foster contact, engagement and relationship. Thus, in advocating dialogue with the poor there is a command to be in touch with the poor. A church of the poor, ultimately, is what the evangelizing mission of the Asian Church is focused upon and it, incidentally, is what Pope Francis desires of the church in the present millennium.59 It is in this context that one can see in many writings on Asian theology the use of phrases such as ‘evangelical diakonia’, ‘solidarity in action’, ‘liberating dialogue’, ‘mission of love and service’, ‘faith through justice’ and ‘integral salvation’. From Dalit Theology to Minjung Theology to Adivasi Theology to the Theology of Struggle, they all speak of the need for the actual ‘doing’ of the faith. This is a ‘doing’ responsive to the many challenges which plague Asian societies. Issues often attended to include social, economic and political concerns such as globalization, urbanization, militarization,

55

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57 58 59

George Gispert-Sauch, ‘Christians in Asia read Sacred Books of the East’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 480–92, 487. Albetus Bagus Laksana, ‘Multiple Religious Belonging or Complex Identity? An Asian Way of Being Religious’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 493–509. Schillebeeckx, ‘Catholic Use of Hermeneutics’, 25–6 [38]. Schillebeeckx, ‘The Understanding of Faith’, 49–51 [58–9]. Christopher J. Hale, ‘Pope Francis’ New Cardinals Reflect a “Poor Church”’, TIME (2015), http:// time.com/3660745/pope-francis-new-cardinals-poor-church/.

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corruption, oppression, the ecology, migrants and refugees, the girl child, indigenous peoples, the poor, and so on. In short, where there is suffering and pain therein lies the heart of Asian theologizing. This experience where people are dehumanized and victimized has, according to Schillebeeckx, ‘a revelatory significance par excellence’ as it is a ‘negative contrast experience’.60 It evokes critical resistance expressed as a fundamental ‘no’, which ‘discloses an openness to another situation which has the right to our affirmative “yes”’.61 That is why the dialogue with the poor is seen as integral to Christian living and to being church in Asia. The final statement of the recent FABC assembly mentioned earlier had this as a recommendation: ‘That local churches, keeping in mind the Asian pastoral preference for living dialogue with the poor, promote a culture of evangelical poverty and foster among all pastoral agents, particularly among bishops, priests and religious, a deep concern for the poor so as to credibly witness to the Lord Jesus who himself had a preferential love for the poor.’62 Perhaps the one Asian theologian who has expounded on this theme the most substantially and radically is Sri Lankan Jesuit Aloysius Pieris. He has had quite a bit of personal interaction with Fr Schillebeeckx and so it is not surprising to see a lot of convergence between their theologies. If Schillebeeckx’s thesis is ‘no salvation outside the world’, Pieris ups the ante and proclaims that there is ‘no salvation outside of God’s covenant with the poor’.63 He speaks of the importance of the Liturgy of Life, which he defines as ‘our own day to day struggle to do God’s will, i.e. fulfil our specific mission with God’s Reign specially by participating in the paschal struggle of the poor. It is this Liturgy of Life that serves as the Source and Summit of both the personal interior life and the ecclesial sacramental life of Christians.’64 Pieris premises his doctrine on Mt. 25.36–40 and speaks of the poor as the representatives or vicars of Christ on earth. These are the forced poor, whose state of poverty ‘is to be eliminated as it constitutes an anti-Kingdom or pro-Mammon situation’. On the basis of their suffering and victimhood they are ‘called to partner God in confounding the powerful, their “imposed poverty” becomes the only qualification for being elected as God’s covenant partners’.65 On the other side of the equation are the Disciples of Christ, ‘the nonpoor [who] are called to be poor like Jesus’, and who ‘receive their mission in terms of God’s Reign only as co-signatories of God’s defense-pact with the victims of Mammon (the first category of the poor.) The evangelically poor receive their mission through solidarity with the socially poor.’66 This is what Asian Christians are called to. Theirs is a vocation to embrace voluntary poverty and to be on the side of the forced poor, whose mission it is to cooperate so as to facilitate the coming of God’s Reign as made partially manifest by their own salvation and liberation. 60 61 62

63

64 65 66

Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 23 [28]. Ibid., 4–6 [5–6]. ‘X Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences Plenary Assembly, FABC at Forty Years: Responding to the Challenges of Asia: A New Evangelization’, accessed 1 March 2016, http://www.fabc.org/ index_10th_plenary.html. Aloysius Pieris, God’s Reign for God’s Poor: A Return to the Jesus Formula (Kelaniya: Tulana Research Centre, 1999), 60. Pieris, God’s Reign for God’s Poor, 33. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 60.

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8  Parable of God, paradigm of humanity67 In summing up his covenant Christology, Aloysius Pieris makes it crystal clear by employing an equation: God plus the forced poor is equivalent to Jesus in a collision course with Mammon. In other words, Jesus, especially in his challenge of all that is anti-Kingdom, is the parable of God in partnership with the forced poor who are the vicars of Christ. Jesus is therefore the story of God as lived out today in those who are forced into poverty. That is basically the literal translation of the Dutch subtitle of Schillebeeckx’s Jesus book (het verhaal van een levende): ‘The Story of the Living One’. On the other side of the coin is the mission of the followers of Christ, those who embrace evangelical poverty. Theirs is to bring about justice and love on behalf of those who are forced into poverty. This is the grace and liberation which Jesus the Christ has to offer and which is lived out today by those who follow in his footsteps, the Christian disciples. That is why Schillebeeckx describes Jesus as not only the parable of God but also the paradigm of humanity. Again, this is the literal translation of the Dutch title of Schillebeeck’s Christ book (Gerechtigheid en liefde: Genade en bevrijding): ‘Justice and Love, Grace and Liberation’. The above exploration is the vision of the Church in Asia. Its theology is one which urges the Asian Christian to be engaged in the public sphere, in the lives and struggles of the peoples, irrespective of race, religion, class or nationality. It is in the dialogue with the poor, the cultures and the religions of Asia that the church establishes itself as truly part of the religio-cultural fabric of Asia. Such a church is welcome by the peoples of Asia and not feared or viewed with suspicion as was the colonial church. It is also a church which witnesses to ‘the human story of God’. This, of course, is the subtitle of Schillebeeckx’s last book of the trilogy of Jesus, Christ and Church.

Conclusion I began this article by recounting an experience I had with the man Fr Edward Schillebeeckx himself. That event took place towards the end of my doctoral studies in Nijmegen. Let me conclude now by relating yet another encounter I had with the man. This time it was an event which occurred during the earlier days of my stay in the Netherlands. I had made an appointment to meet with Fr Schillebeeckx through his former student and long-time care-giver, Dominican Sister Hadewych Snijdewind, who is an established theologian in her own right. She gave me a 10-minute slot and said Fr Edward would not be able to meet me for too long as he needs to rest. I came back another day and providentially, when I rang the doorbell of the Dominican house in Berg en Dal, it was Fr. Edward himself who received me. He quickly whisked me upstairs to his study, which adjoins his simple bedroom, and kept me there for two hours. We had the loveliest conversation and talked especially about Asia (where he had never visited) and he shared with me stories told to him by his elder brother who had been a Jesuit missionary in India for decades. He then confided: ‘If I were to begin all over again 67

Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 589–633 [626–74].

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I would visit Asia and concentrate on comparative religions. That should be the focus of theology today.’ It is in this spirit that I dedicate this article to Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx. I hope that the glimpses I have offered of his theology, which we find in Asian theological hermeneutics, have done justice not only to him but to Asian theology as well. I also hope that this work can represent the beginnings of the reincarnation of Schillebeeckx’s thought and influence in Asia for the benefit and salvation of all the peoples of Asia.

Bibliography Amaladoss, Michael (2014), ‘Asian Theological Trends’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 104–20. Amaladoss, Michael (2010), The Asian Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2006). Ariarajah, Wesley (2014), ‘Changing Paradigms of Asian Christian Attitude to Other Religions’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 347–67. Arokiasamy, Soosai (2011), ‘Doing Theology with Asian Resources in the Context of FABC’, in Harvesting from the Asian Soil: Towards an Asian Theology, ed. Vimal Tirimanna (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation), 1–20. Bevans, Stephen B. (2004), Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis). Cruz, Gemma Tulud (2014), Toward a Theology of Migration: Social Justice and Religious Experience (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan). England, John, ed. (2002–4), Asian Christian Theologies: A Research Guide to Authors, Movements, Sources, 3 vols (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis). Gispert-Sauch, George (2014), ‘Christians in Asia read Sacred Books of the East’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 480–92. Hale, Christopher J. (2015), ‘Pope Francis’ New Cardinals Reflect a “Poor Church”’, TIME, 8 January 2015. Hilkert, Catherine (2014), ‘Introduction to the New Edition “Interim Report”’, in Interim Report on the Books Jesus & Christ, ed. Edward Schillebeeckx, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 8 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark), xiii–xvii. Kennedy, Philip (1993), Schillebeeckx (London: Chapman). Kim, Heup-Young (2014), Christ and the Tao (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock). Laksana, Albetus Bagus (2014), ‘Multiple Religious Belonging or Complex Identity? An Asian Way of Being Religious’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 493–509. Lee, Archie (2014), ‘Scriptural Translations and Cross-Textual Hermeneutics’, The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 121–33. Manchata, Deenabandhu (2013), ‘Interrogating Asian Ecclesiologies for Purposeful Theological Engagement for Asian Ecumenism’, in Asian Handbook for Theological Education and Ecumenism, ed. Hope Antone, Wati Longchar and Hyunju Bae (Oxford: Regnum), 175–85. Mansap, Bunluen (2002), ‘Christianity and Buddhism’, in Asian Synod: Texts and Commentaries, ed. Peter Phan (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis). Nacpil, Emerito P. (1976), ‘The Critical Asian Principle’, in What Asian Christians are Thinking: A Theological Source Book, ed. Douglas J. Elwood (Quezon City: New Day), 3–6.

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Office of Theological Concerns of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (2002), ‘Methodology: Asian Christian Theology (Doing Theology in Asia Today)’, in For All the Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, Document from 1997 to 2001 Vol 3, ed. Franz Joseph Eilers (Quezon City: Claretian). Painadath, Sebastian (2014), Spiritual Co-Pilgrims: Towards a Christian Spirituality in Dialogue with Asian Religions (Quezon City: Claretian). Phan, Peter (2011), ‘Introduction: Asian Christianity/Christianities’, in Christianities in Asia, ed. Peter Phan (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell), 1–6. Pieris, Aloysius (1999), God’s Reign for God’s Poor: A Return to the Jesus Formula (Kelaniya: Tulana Research Centre). Rosales, Gaudencio and C. G. Arevalo, eds (1997), ‘Evangelization in Modern Day Asia: Statements and Recommendations of the First Plenary Assembly’, in For All the Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, Documents from 1970–91, vol. 1 (Quezon City: Claretian), 11–25. Rosales, Gaudencio, C. G. Arevalo, Franz-Josef Eilers and Tirimanna Vimal (1997 [2 vols], 2002, 2007, 2014), For All the Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (Quezon City: Claretian). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 6 (London: Bloomsbury T &T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014) God the Future of Man, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 3 (London: Bloomsbury T &T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 7 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Interim Report on the Books Jesus & Christ, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 8 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2010), ‘Letter from Edward Schillebeeckx to the participants in the Symposium “Theology for the 21st Century: The Enduring Relevance of Edward Schillebeeckx for Contemporary Theology”, Leuven, 3–6 December 2008’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark), xiv. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1995), ‘The Religious and the Human Ecumene’, in The Language of Faith: Essays on Jesus, Theology, and the Church, ed. Robert Schreiter (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis), 249–64. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1983), in conversation with Huub Oosterhuis and Piet Hoogeveen, God is New Each Moment, trans. David Smith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark). Schreiter, Robert, ed. (1984), The Schillebeeckx Reader (New York, NY: Crossroad). Sugirtharajah, R. S. (2002), Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Tan, Jonathan (2014), ‘Encounter between Confucianism and Christianity’, in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia, ed. Felix Wilfred (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 428–43. Theological Education Fund, eds (1972), Ministry in Context: The Third Mandate Programme of the Theological Education Fund, 1970–77 (Bromley, England: Theological Education Fund). Wilfred, Felix (2010), Asian Public Theology: Critical Concerns in Challenging Times (New Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge). Wilfred, Felix (1995), From the Dusty Soil: Contextual Reinterpretation of Christianity (Madras, India: University of Madras), 233–57.

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The Hermeneutics of Intersubjectivity: A Study of Theologies of Homelessness Siobhán Garrigan

This chapter’s contribution to this volume is going to look at liturgy – not the liturgy, but a broader sense of liturgy as the worship and prayer rituals of Christians. Being largely public by nature, and necessarily alive (i.e.: bodily and three-dimensional rather than page-bound and two-dimensional in its mode of theological manifestation), liturgy has a potentially insight-rendering position in discussions of our central focus, public life. Liturgy might even be conceived as a public theologian or a theologian in the public sphere, but that does not make it political theology, which is what it properly needs to be. Liturgy is, like all theology – and contrary to the popular notion that it is Godgiven or fixed – a construct and, as such, context-dependent (some might say culturedependent). Moreover, being Christian liturgy, it is always political: because it has Christ at its root, its centre and its telos, it is a work of Christ and the work of Christ was, and is, political. This is a definition of political that, while warranted by liberation theologies, has a broader ethic in its belly of the sort described by Chantal Mouffe: The political cannot be restricted to a certain type of institution, or envisioned as constituting a specific sphere or level of society. It must be conceived as a dimension that is inherent to every human society and that determines our very ontological condition.1

That said, a specific political matter animates this chapter’s attention to liturgy: homelessness. Giving homelessness the attention of theological research is prompted by various current political problems: the seemingly unbridgeable gap in Ireland between the price of a house and the minimum wage, and the ways this limits people’s lives; the decision by the government to all but cease building social housing while leaving the private rental sector relatively unregulated and rents extremely high; the reality of street homelessness and overflowing shelters in Dublin, as well as the even greater numbers of invisible homeless people sleeping in their cars, on friends’ couches, or in 1

Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (New York, NY: Verso, 2005), 3. The political is not reducible to statecraft, but for a postcolonial scholar, it cannot help but take account of the nation state, and its inheritor, globalizing capitalism.

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long-term Bed and Breakfasts throughout the country – and the extreme cost to the health and confidence of all the people affected; and, simultaneously, the paradoxical if not obscene proliferation of television programmes and commercial advertisements about people finding, building or filling homes. But perhaps most urgently, attending to homelessness theologically is prompted by the persistent reality of sectarianism on these islands, because something in our desire for home, and the trauma of losing it, is enmeshed in our persistent attachment to nationalism in general and sectarianism in particular. The rise in nationalisms across Europe in this same period that the British and Irish have come to a cold peace at a meta level2 and greatly increased homelessness within at a micro level, is in part a product of what Jan Willem Duyvendak calls ‘the framing of the nation itself as “home”’.3 And so this chapter will draw some tentative theological suggestions regarding homelessness, but first it will briefly outline the hermeneutical issues which condition how theology views this, or any, problem.

1  Method in theology The root problem with hermeneutics for theology is, to paraphrase Dorothee Sölle, that while mineralogy studies minerals, osteology studies bones, and other -ologies likewise have as their object a thing that is empirically observable, the object of study for theology cannot be direct observation of or expertise about God (because ‘God’ cannot be known in the same way); rather, it has to be ‘the experiences that have compelled human beings to talk about something like “God”’.4 For most of its history, the discipline of theology proceeded largely via the study of texts and the writing of further texts. God was imaged as Word, and God’s Book was holy. But with Modernity’s raising of the subject came a new form of attention to human experience that was both involved in the writing of texts and posited as the source material for theology, such that some theologies could eventually claim personal and/or communal experience rather than texts as their primary source. This has been a great gift to theology in terms of the voices it has permitted to be heard doing theology. (Because doing it the old way, very limited sets of subjectivities were represented either as authors or sources, and theology was much weaker for it.) But in hermeneutical terms, it also presents some problems. Notably, we do not yet have anything like the critical faculties for the interpretation of experience that we have for texts. In terms of theology, this has caused criticisms of the ‘more oppressed than thou’, the ‘trump card of pain’ and ‘being accountable to no one but oneself ’ types,5 as 2

3

4 5

‘The Northern Ireland peace process has transformed a violent conflict into a cold peace.’ See Jonathan Tonge, The New Northern Irish Politics? (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 1. Jan Willem Duyvendak, The Politics of Home: Belonging and Nostalgia in Western Europe and the United States (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 1. Dorothee Sölle, Thinking about God: An Introduction to Theology (London: SCM Press, 1990), 1. Which have been tackled by calls to ensure that experience, while valuable for situational contributions, needs to be treated as secondary to Scripture and tradition. See, for example: John Swinton and Harriet Mowat, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research (London: SCM Press, 2006). They write that, ‘Taking human experience seriously does not imply that experience is a source of revelation.’ Ibid., 5. Schillebeeckx might well have disagreed, by the way.

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well as of the white supremacist use of such criticisms which keeps in place a theological field constituted by limited sets of subjectivities. It has also elicited various liturgical developments which can be seen in very real controversies, such as the use of personalized versions of the Trinitarian formula at baptism, or couples coming up with their own idiosyncratic vows at marriage. Regarding a text, while hermeneutics are far from perfect, one can at least refer quickly and cogently to a range of literary critical techniques and debates to set the terms for a public discussion of that text; regarding ‘my experience’, there is little one can – or perhaps should – say by way of critical engagement, and yet critical engagement is vital to any analysis lest it tend towards destructiveness. Moreover, setting up the-subject-as-the-basic-unit-of-analysis as the sine qua non of the humanities and social sciences has led to a reliance on, and trust only of, hermeneutics that are historical or discursive (in the humanities) or (in the social sciences) based on asking people what they think – with the result that the survey and interview have become the gold standard for understanding anything. When it comes to many topics, such as political engagement in democratic processes, this is no doubt a useful tool. (Although polling reminds us that it is far from foolproof.) However, when it comes to any culture-dependent topics such as those in theology, it proves tricky, and tricksy.6 Take religious ritual, for example. What people say they are doing can be a far cry from what they actually are observably doing; and what they say they believe in relation to any ritual act can be at odds with their other expressed beliefs, all of which renders the task of asking a ritual agent what they were doing during a ritual potentially uninformative if not misinforming.7 Postmodern developments in the humanities and social sciences have, therefore, sought alternative hermeneutics. One such strand, developed in different ways by various philosophical movements in the twentieth century (although this chapter will draw most on the Frankfurt School lineage), posits that experience is essentially intersubjective; it also imagines corresponding hermeneutics for intersubjectivity that eschew attention to the subject as the basic unit of analysis.8 What then becomes of theology, so latterly in thrall to its hermeneutics of the subject and its experience? And in particular, given this volume’s focus, how does theology then conduct its interpretations in regard to public life and what are their limits and conditions of possibility? If we frame intersubjectivity, rather than the subject, as the basic unit of analysis, then when we study a subject, or subjects, they are recognized as second-order objects of study, intrinsically reliant upon (a primary unit of) a commonality of some sort. This can be understood as merely the difference between studying groups and studying individuals, but what it in fact helps us to see afresh is the difference between (primary) fundamental creative and unitive forces and the individuals that are (secondarily) 6

7

8

See, for example, James Peoples and Garrick Bailey, Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2011), 97: ‘Although it is the source of most cultural data, interviewing has severe limitations.’ And the act of trying to do so might reinforce the dubious assumption that rituals convey meanings. See, for example, Frits Staal, ‘The Meaninglessness of Ritual’, Numen 26 (1979), 2–22, 4: ‘To performing ritualists, rituals are to a large extent like dance, of which Isadora Duncan said: “If I could tell you what it meant there would be no point in dancing it.”’ For a summary, see for example: Howard Feather, Intersubjectivity and Contemporary Social Theory: The Everyday as Critique (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2000).

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shaped by them. Such an approach might be characterized as an ontological rather than a phenomenological account of intersubjectivity, and it is described by Jürgen Habermas as follows: The term ‘intersubjective’ no longer refers to the result of an observed convergence of the thoughts or representations of various persons, but to the prior commonality of a linguistic pre-understanding or horizon of the lifeworld – which, from the perspective of the participants themselves, is presupposed – within which the members of a communication community find themselves before they reach an understanding with one another about something in the world.9

With intersubjectivity, theology gains a particular aid, and a particular challenge. Its possibilities have been indicated in a number of books of political theology, but perhaps most explicitly with attention to hermeneutics in Edmund Arens’ Christopraxis.10 Therein he uses intersubjective hermeneutics to move beyond a pre-Modern ecclesial appeal to objectivism, which is retained by certain ecclesial authorities for the purpose of hierarchical imposition of dogma and results in the supposed norm of an active Magisterium dictating to the passive faithful. He also uses intersubjective analyses to counteract a Modernist preoccupation with the subject that, as noted above, can be used to reduce truth claims to the perspective of the individual. Criticizing both these inherited approaches in theology for having devalued praxis, Arens deploys intersubjective hermeneutics in an analysis of Christian faith and concludes that faith is itself an intersubjective process of praxis (characterized primarily through the work of ecclesial communities’ witnessing and confessing to the reality of Christ at work in the world). But here is the problem: Habermas (and most other proponents of intersubjective modes of analysis, including Arens11) turned to communicative praxis – language – to get at a, perhaps the, key mediator of experience, and in my earlier work I followed him.12 But after working on sectarianism in Ireland for some time now, I am dubious whether hermeneutics that concentrate on communicative practices will get us as far as we need to go when it comes to something like sectarianism (or its close cousin, racism). This concern is prompted by two reasons: firstly, people can come to all sorts of remarkable recognitions (through intersubjective analyses of language), but discursive agreements alone seem not to be strong enough to alter praxis at the level of heart and soul. Take the peace process in Northern Ireland: thanks to it, the guns and bombs have largely stopped, but mutual animosity and ignorance are thriving; while people now have the conditions of possibility to vote and be employed and housed with equal access to policing and other mechanisms of social enforcement and resources, the ‘two communities’ are moving further apart in terms of mutual understanding.13 Linguistic analyses can lead to ‘equal but separate’. Can there not be intersubjective sorts of  9

10 11

12 13

Jürgen Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication, ed. Maeve Cooke (Oxford: Polity Press, 1999), 355–6. (Italics original). Edmund Arens, Christopraxis: A Theology of Action (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1985). With some notable exceptions, such as Nick Crossley’s work on emotions. See, for example, Nick Crossley, Intersubjectivity: The Fabric of Social Becoming (London: Sage, 1996). Siobhán Garrigan, Beyond Ritual: Sacramental Theology after Habermas (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2004). Siobhán Garrigan, The Real Peace Process: Worship, Politics and the End of Sectarianism (London: Equinox, 2010).

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hermeneutics for theology that are not language-driven, that permit an account of difference that is not necessarily separatist? Second, linguistic analyses are usually always about power – because their concern is equality and emancipation of those who are overridden – and while that is an essential part of theology’s core interest, is it always only about power? Will analyses of power get us to the heart of the presently political (particularly when it comes to a topic like homelessness, as we will below)? Certainly if our concern is ultimately theological, the sorts of power long thought to be wielded by God are far from the only, or the most helpful, ways of understanding God, even as they have been persistent. As remarked by Daniel and Elgendy in their collection of essays that appeared in the year following the conference that sparked this current volume, Political theology rightly and unavoidably speaks to the questions represented in the tradition of examining authority. Yet, it need not be structured by, and thus patterned after, the questions and concerns relevant to them. How could we renegotiate power and authority if political theology … started with alternative organizing concepts and concerns?14

If we are to avoid a view of theology that allows politics to become everything, what, in addition to language, might need to be studied to help us get at the fabric of our sensibilities as well as of our dispositions? In response to this question, the past decade has seen the explorative emergence of several new interpretative frames in theology, including serious attention to performance, to mimesis, to emotional worlds, to the sublime and to environmental ethics. Each suggests new avenues of access to understanding, access which is in each case (to some extent) a result of a hermeneutic that is intersubjectively (rather than subject) oriented, even if they are not all using that term explicitly to describe their methods. I, myself, have been looking at liturgy, because of its availability to intersubjective hermeneutics: it is public; it is non-verbal as well as verbal; it is bodily; it is artistic; it is created over time (i.e. generations). I have experimented with intersubjective analyses of liturgy to try to gain insight into theological implication in and routes out of poverty, discrimination against people on the grounds of gender, race and class, and sectarianism. But recently I have been using it to look at homelessness, to which we now turn.

2  Theologies of homelessness When it comes to theology, many treatments of homelessness have at their heart an analysis of the displacement and alienation that, according to Peter Berger’s influential study, identifies ‘homelessness’ as the root condition of Modernity.15 This plays out, 14

15

Joshua Daniel and Rick Elgendy, ‘Introduction’, in Renegotiating Power, Theology and Politics, ed. Joshua Daniel and Rick Elgendy (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), 4. Peter L. Berger, Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (New York, NY: Random House, 1974). They argue that despite the apparent gains of mobility and secularization, Modern ‘man’s’ new-found rootlessness and religionlessness result in ‘a metaphysical loss of “home” … that is psychologically hard to bear.’ Ibid., 82.

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in various different ways, in attention to exile, migration, refugee resettlement, and ecological theologies that call attention to the ways we make ourselves ‘homeless’ vis-à-vis creation itself through our abuse of the earth.16 Most commonly, however, when homelessness is treated, it is with a focus on the street homelessness prevalent in northern European and American cities.17 It usually recounts the stories, or the interpretation of Bible stories, spoken by homeless people, and it remarks the theological insights of such storytelling.18 What can be missing, and crucially so, is a theological analysis of homelessness as the collateral damage of greedy late capitalism on the one hand, or of fascist tendencies in international politics on the other. So, what is intended as socially engaged, public theology, in both object and method, can end up in appearance as largely unpolitical, or apolitical. A new image of God or a poignant interpretation of a Bible story is wonderful, but renders a suspended animation if it lacks a critical analysis of the forces that underpinned its creation. Finding insight in the perspective of those who are terribly poor is of course a tenet of liberation theology; but doing so without analysis of the factors, the unmasked systems, the oppressions that cause the homelessness, is not liberation theology. However, while those broader, structural analyses might be available to economists, they are persistently difficult from a theological point of view. I would like to suggest that this is (at least in part) because theologies of homelessness are constrained by our discipline’s tendency to the hermeneutics of subjectivity; that is: by seeing individual experiencers of homelessness and individual interpreters of homelessness as the site for analysis and interpretation and, by valuing this as the location of insight and criticism, we are stuck looking at the subjective, instead of also at the intersubjective. There are of course exceptions. Kathryn Tanner offers multifaceted political and economic analyses of the problems she addresses, and she does so by proceeding in the writing of doctrines of the Godhead; for example, she sees something of the structuring of the Trinity in the alternatives proposed by the Occupy movement.19 Much, if not all, of her work centres on the Trinity, which, I would suggest, is no accident in terms of the question I am posing about hermeneutics. If the Trinity is understood in terms of an autonomous Modernist conception of subjectivites, then we tend to either an overemphasis on the equality and autonomy of the three persons (and tri-theism) or such a strident image of Monotheism that any politics issuing from it is authoritarian and Imperial. By contrast, if the basic unit is conceived not in terms of subjectivity, then we can perceive something both one and diverse, and a model par excellence of intersubjectivity. Because, as Tanner has demonstrated, if we begin our enquiries with our gaze fixed not on the person or persons and their interrelations but instead open to

16

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See, for example: Ernst M. Conradie, Christianity and Ecological Theology (Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2006). See, for example: David Nixon, Stories from the Street: A Theology of Homelessness (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2013). See, for example, Steven Bouma-Prediger and Bryan J. Walsh, Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008). Kathryn Tanner, ‘Why Support the Occupy Movement?’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 64 (2013), 2–35.

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the whole complex, we can keep the political telos of theology focused on participation and not on imitation20 and thus be capable of the structural analyses that are so needed. Returning to the topic of homelessness, then, I would like to suggest that a fruitful line of enquiry might be to look at home, rather than homelessness. If I ask you to describe homelessness, concrete subjective experiences come to mind and, because of the norm of subject-centred hermeneutics, the reported experiences of homeless people are required to be considered the privileged location of insight on the topic. (And these, as I mentioned above, only take us so far.) But if I ask you to describe home … It is a hugely varied concept, and yet a hugely evocative one. Home is a place of solace and nurturance for some, of abuse and anxiety for others; it is also a button, an icon, a web page. It can sell things and it can stand for counter-consumerism. It is an extremely complicated idea. While widely used, appealed to and yearned for, it is also largely unexamined and undefined. And when it comes to theology, Christianity is long conflicted on it. On the one hand, we are told: do not seek to be at home in this world; your only true home is in God. From there you came and to there you will return. Leave parents and siblings and houses and fields and follow Jesus. Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lie down. Go and do like him. On the other hand, we are told that having a home in this world matters. God made God’s own home here, in the tabernacles of the Hebrew Bible, and in the Incarnation, and God made a home for us in creation. Jesus uses certain homes as a base (like Peter’s Mother in law’s or Martha and Mary’s), and he sent his mother from the cross to make her home with his beloved friend. Finally, at the end of the Bible, we are told in the Book of Revelation that this earthly habitation for the Godhead will continue, ‘The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them’ (21.3). What then is home, to the Christian? What ought a Christian to claim, or allow themselves, in terms of a home in this world?

3 Liturgy Liturgical theology in recent years might be understood to have posited participation in the concrete, local life of the church as some sort of fundamental ‘home’ for the Christian. The rounds of baptism and Eucharist, seen no longer as discrete moments but as ongoing initiation into the life of God, and supplemented by liturgical practices that are not confined to the church building (such as graces before meals, blessings with water, and so on) become patterning points of integration and sustenance for the participant. Considering this in terms of the sacramental nature of Christian liturgy, and particularly its relation to the sacramental ordering of all creation, Louis-Marie Chauvet draws attention to the centrality of ‘place’ in the constitution of the Christian. He says, ‘What modernity has taught us is precisely the importance of taking into account, indeed taking as decisive, the place out of 20

Kathryn Tanner, Christ the Key (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 234.

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which we speak: the place of our individual desires; the social, cultural, or historical place we inhabit.’21 Actions and smells and reminders and touch and inspirations and stories – over time and through repetition – these combine to permit human beings to develop complicated dispositions which create them as Christians. The place of this participation in the sacramental life of the church then becomes home in a crucial, central way to the Christian. As Chauvet remarks: The expression ‘spiritual house’ (oikos pneumatikos) used in 1 Peter reminds us of a theme frequently exploited by Paul. … The Holy of Holies is now empty, the ‘body of Christ’ which the Christians constitute (1 Cor. 12.27) is the new temple, made up of ‘living stones’, where God has chosen to make his home through the Spirit in the midst of humankind.22

The constitution of the Body of Christ via the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, and the concomitant understanding of these sacraments as ongoing initiation into the church can thus be, in a very real sense, ‘home’. Indeed, perhaps liturgy is our only real home in this world. However, liturgies also have the potential to become gatekeepers or even policing mechanisms for human institutions, too; and in Rosemary George’s description of ‘home’, as it is conceived in Western cultures, we are caused to worry that the openness Chauvet sees in the ‘place’ of the sacraments may be undermined by their role in ecclesial group formation. She says: ‘One distinguishing feature of places called home is that they are built on select inclusions. [… The] importance [of home] lies in the fact it is not equally available for all. Home is the desired place that is fought for and established as the exclusive domain of a few.’23 Were such an effect to be the case, it would undermine Chauvet’s project (and that of most liturgical theology) because his understanding of faith as sacramentally structured requires one to apprehend the sacramental character not just of the church’s Sunday rituals but of the whole of the created order. And so, to avoid the inclusions/ exclusions pitfall, it might help to re-read Chauvet through Edward Schillebeeckx: If the God who wants to enter into a bond of personal relationship with us is the creator of heaven and earth, … it implies that our being confronted with the world, existence in this world, is going to teach us … more than merely that God is the creator of all things. … Life itself in the world then belongs to the very content of God’s inner word to us. It interprets dimly at least something of that which God personally, by the attraction of his grace, is whispering in our hearts.24

The advantage of such a perspective (over a strictly Chauvetian one) – for reasons that will become more apparent in a moment – is its lack of focus upon the identity of the 21

22 23

24

Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Interpretation of Christian Existence (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 2. (Italics original). Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 257. Rosemary Marongoly George, The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth Century Fiction (San Diego, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 9. Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. I (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 5–6 [6–7].

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Christian. Recent liturgical studies have placed a considerable emphasis on identity and formation, often suggesting that liturgy is the crucible of such identity-creation and maintenance for the Christian.25 Studies have proposed to show how specific liturgical texts shape specific identities,26 how such formation proceeds via non-linear methods,27 can only be accomplished by repeated practice ‘over time’,28 and results in a Christian identity that is necessarily ‘ambivalent’ in character.29 All this attention to the formation of identity is in part a product of the influence of wider social sciences’ attention to human activities. As Nathan Mitchell notes, there is a general consensus therein that ritual’s purpose is ‘to shape personal and corporate identity’.30 This can lead to an over-focus in catechetical terms on what is happening to believers – crudely, they get the Spirit, they get the Word, they get the Bread, and through these things they get motivated to go out and love and work for justice; repeat. Schillebeeckx’s insistence that the key character of sacramental existence is an encounter – a far messier notion, in which identities are in absolute flux, if not irrelevant, and that liturgy is therefore only formative to the extent that any encounter is – needs to be retained. An intersubjective hermeneutic permits this. Analyse subjectively, and your theorizing almost necessarily arrives at identity. Encounter, by contrast, accents what Schillebeeckx, like Tanner, knew: that encounter is not to be pictured as two autonomous individuals having a conversational exchange over a cup of tea for an hour in a café. Encounter is with the Other across times, spaces and modes of consciousness never mind communication. And the Other is a complex, just as God is; encounter thus demands a permanent turn outwards, a disposition not of optionally meeting someone or not, but in oneself of being for the Other, or as Schillebeeckx had it, for Christ. And so as an illustration of how this hermeneutic might work, I am going to look not at the much-studied Eucharistic liturgy, or the importantly ecumenical baptism, but at a very common, very ordinary liturgy. In Ireland, as in some other places round the world, there is a tradition of placing a lit candle in the front window at dusk on Christmas Eve, because on this night, it is said, Christ roams the world looking for a place to make his home. Moreover, he will come in the guise of a stranger, and so will need a signal of welcome from you in order to approach. 25

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See, for example: E. Byron Anderson, Worship and Christian Identity: Practicing Ourselves (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003). ‘So just as individual identity is formed through the texts used, so too is the community as a whole. The use of a particular liturgical text, or even not at all, serves to distinguish different ecclesial groups.’ Juliette Day, Reading the Liturgy: An Exploration of Texts in Christian Worship (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 18–19. See, for example, the theology of formation via liturgy’s ‘juxtapositions’ in Gordon Lathrop, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998). Don E. Saliers, ‘Worship’, in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, ed. Bonnie J. Miller McLemore (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012), 289. ‘Ensuring that catechetical and mystagogical formation are part of the baptismal ordo subverts the focus on the event as a magical act and emphasizes the journey of Christian discipleship before, during and after the baptismal event.’ See Anita Monro, ‘The Myth of Tiddalik and the Importance of Ambiguity in Baptismal Identity in the Contemporary Christian Church’, in Worship and Culture: Foreign Country or Homeland?, ed. Gláucia Vasconcelos Wilkey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 332. Nathan D. Mitchell, Liturgy and the Social Sciences (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 25.

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I would like to suggest that this liturgy casts us as potential bearers of the Divine home. For a Christian, the concept of home may start in attention to place (as Chauvet had it) but it only develops through cultivation of our sensibilities as being (as Schillebeeckx had it) for Christ. Hence, the sacramental structuring of faith can help us understand ‘home’ in relation to our belief in Christ by illuminating the following: In Christian terms, home matters. It is an affirmation of our place in this world and of God’s desire to make God’s home right here, right now; but, it is home for Christ, for the Other. For the one yet to come. What I have in terms of material effects, then, I have only with a light in their window, in readiness to make open.

4  Three notes about this theology of home a  Beyond belonging One advantage of such a view is that it takes theology’s focus off belonging and puts it on its constituent parts: being and longing. As such it has the potential of speaking afresh to politics of home, based as they usually are on the identity/belonging matrix, in hopes of undermining dispositions of nationalism, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, sectarianism, consumerism and insular living. Belonging is an essentially subjectivist mode of understanding. Its dominant interpretive strategy is the analysis of the extent of an individual’s accommodation in a particular setting. By contrast, being and longing are necessarily intersubjective. They reorient our attention away from the site of the individual’s formation and agency and towards the contingent, cross-time, cross-communities synapses of an individual’s becoming. They are felt and imaginative preconditions of mutual understanding that inherently reach beyond the borders of any individual self and witness to a somehowknown (if yet out of reach) common entity. Recognizing their presence and power in our interactions, seeing them as prior to and grounding of our subject-obsessed notions of belonging, might, one hopes, permit a different sense of our ‘identity’ and a different sort of conversation. If you challenge my right to a home, or threaten my homeland, I will fight you; if we recognize our origins and destiny in a shared home, it is hard for me to fight you. This might sound like a universalizing stance; and perhaps it is, but absolutely not as a meta-narrative, only as what John Caputo calls ‘radical theology’, which has a different kind of universality, not rationalistic but hermeneutic, let us say the universality of hospitality, where the universal means being willing to talk to anyone so that there is nothing that cannot in principle be discussed. … Universality means not that we all speak in one voice (modern univocity) but that we all get a chance to speak.31 31

John D. Caputo, ‘Theopoetics as Radical Theology’, in Theopoetic Folds: Philosophizing Multifariousness, ed. Roland Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2013), 125–41; 126–7.

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Liturgy gets at this intersubjective awareness partly because it is a public collective activity across time and space (when we die, it will go on, as it did before we were born, with all sorts of accruing differences but also a persisting core). Liturgy happens in what Physics calls perceived time: where the present becomes part of the past by its status as future-reaching; our subject-centred attention to its historical dimensions (and their concern for the traditional and the orthodox) sometimes warps our ability to fully embody this. But liturgy also reflects an intersubjective hermeneutic because its domain is that of being and longing – and not just belonging. It goes a lot further than identity. A recent illustration might be found in the ‘anti-theology’ of James Heaney’s Beyond the Body. Heaney takes the one phrase ‘do this’ (as in ‘do this in memory of me’) and asks: do what? He explores this command as a trope, and how, down the centuries, it enables discipleship. And he suggests that ‘Do this,’ done so inevitably many ways down the years – through so many understandings of being and so very many expressions of longing, rather than any value being placed on the supposed status of belonging – resets our current attention to the ‘this’. By this resetting, we are led to understand that the ‘this’ which we are being asked to ‘do’ is never not political: ‘Doing these is in effect to accomplish what those words [1 Cor. 11.23–26] describe, but it still leaves open many possible issues about how that might occur and, consequently, what it might achieve.’32 And thus the beings and longings of endless generations, in all their manifold difference, are sustained by the same ‘this’, without ever requiring or creating a singular, defensible, definable body (or identity).

b  Being a (political) body Another advantage of looking at ‘home’ rather than homelessness, and of seeing home as being not our own space but as ourselves for the Other might be explored by turning briefly to Heidegger’s famous essay, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’. Heidegger argues that how we build dictates/conditions how we dwell; and how we dwell dictates/ conditions how we think. In short, how we build is how we dwell is how we think. Heidegger proceeds through the etymology of the words themselves, showing how to build is to dwell, with dwelling dependent on building, and he teases out the multiple ways in which we build, be they houses or institutions or, we might add, books or friendships. Of course, this insight into the nature of dwelling has been well used in theology before, for example in Graham Ward’s Cities of God or by Elaine Graham, for whom it helps us discern ‘how we want to position ourselves in terms of ethical cultural practice’.33 But what I want to draw on it for has nothing to do with the theological metaphor or ethics of the built environment. Rather, Heidegger’s concept of building offers an essentially intersubjective account of life, and his account of dwelling offers a plausible 32

33

James J. Heaney, Beyond the Body: An Anti-theology of the Eucharist (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014), 57. Graham Ward, Cities of God (New York: Routledge, 2000); Elaine Graham, ‘On Finding Ourselves: Theology, Place, and Human Flourishing’, in Theology and Human Flourishing: Essays in Honour of Timothy J. Gorringe, ed. Mike Higton, Jeremy Law and Christopher Rowland (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011), 265–79, 277.

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hermeneutic for accessing it. This is because, to interpret Being, we have to look at the building – but not as architects, engineers, surveyors, photographers or historians – rather, as dwellers. As dwellers, we are concerned with how it is to live there. You can’t dwell if your purpose is at odds with the building, you can’t thrive as a round peg if you’re in a square hole, the dependence between building and dwelling is too great. Also, you might dwell alone, but you’re in a building that has been built by many, many others, over time, so your dwelling place is not solitary. Thinking of the Christian life, we dwell differently when we gather regularly for things like baptism and Eucharist, or putting a candle in the window each Christmas Eve, and it permits us to conceive of home differently. This view of liturgy not as (subjectivist) identity-forming but as (intersubjective) home-ing might be brought out through an analogy between liturgy and Heidegger’s formula for conceiving of the fullness of the meaning of dwelling. Where the latter posits: Building, Dwelling, Thinking, liturgy posits: Assembling, Worshipping, Loving. The structure within which Christianity happens is an assembly; how we assemble dictates/conditions how we worship, and how we worship dictates/conditions how we love (our Ethics and our Eros) – not in the sense that one leads to the other, but in terms of how intersubjective participation works. By trying to discern ‘home’, through its intersubjective elements, the worship of the church thus becomes much more easily seen as what Bernd Wannenwetsch has called the political diakonia, whose ‘rationale lies solely in the praised lordship of Christ, who happens to rule not an original horde of individual believers but a body of fellowcitizens’.34 That body is, as Chauvet had it, is threefold: It was common for theological tradition to distinguish a threefold body of Christ: (1) his historical and glorious body; (2) his eucharistic body which was called ‘mystical body’ up to the end of the twelfth century because it is ‘his body in mystery’, that is to say, in sacrament; (3) his ecclesial body, growing throughout history.35

Moreover, the political engagement inherent in the Body of Christ stems from its constitution, not its telos; that is, from its Assembling, not its Ethics/Eros. This means that if the church wants to ‘tackle’ homelessness, its attention needs to be first and most clearly on how it assembles (who is welcome? What are the economic bases of the church? Its investments? Its position in a city or status in a society? Its contracts, written and unwritten, about how and of whom it is made up?) and not on its ‘outreach’.

c  Solidarity, of sorts Finally, one key question for this volume arises: What becomes of contextual theology if one’s hermeneutics with regard to one’s home arise not from the politics of belonging

34

35

Bernd Wannenwetsch, ‘Liturgy’, in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, ed. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 76–90, 89. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 139.

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but from those of being and longing? Or to put it more crudely, can there be political theology without identity politics? White. Irish. And British. Feminist. Lower Class (once, now Professional). Catholic. Ecumenical. Whatever. My ascribed subjectivities might well have empowered me to speak at all where once I might not have, but might they not also have blinkered me from Christ’s essential intersubjectivity and the politics it necessitates? Now, the premise that Christianity is culturally specific and not a universal meta-narrative is of course crucial to a non-totalitarian academy (and to politics not being everything). But in atoning for the sins of the long era in which such theologies were normative, and in noting the contextual nature of all theology and not just so-called contextual theologies, Modern theology, even of the emancipative sort, runs the risk of reinforcing old sectarianisms and creating new ones. My ‘home’, in my place, ends up feeling in need of defence. If people gathering for liturgy are assembling in ways true to the commands of Christ, their Assembling will house not a coalition of the like-born or even likeminded, but rather what Angela Davis, speaking of critical race theory, has called ‘unpredictable or unlikely’ coalitions. What brings people together effectively for activism for love and justice (whether that’s in ‘Church’ or anti-racism or getting a well dug) is not their identity (or concerns for its formation or preservation), but, rather, the actual political project itself – and in the modern world this requires solidarity among people of different identities. Just as Davis recommends that Black women involved in the struggle to end economic oppression see themselves as Black women only as a ‘provisional identity’, and that they consider their identity marker as ‘women of color’ as ‘a point of departure rather than a level of organizing’,36 so with Christians and their Worshipping. Solidarity among difference for the sake of the Realm of God is the basis of liturgy. Christians assembling for celebrations of the church’s liturgies (such as baptism or Eucharist) are too often assumed to be doing so out of a sense of safe station, of being among their own, when in fact their task in doing so is, still, to put a light in their window for the stranger to know they – in all their strangeness – will be received. And loved. And let love.

Conclusion An intersubjective hermeneutics applied to theologies of homelessness suggests, first of all, a focus on (the concept of) home rather than (the experience of) homelessness. It then also, applied to Christian liturgy, permits an understanding of ‘home’ that is different to, and can supplement, subjectivist theologies of homelessness. Thus, it is not merely that liturgy provides a home for Christians by giving them a secure shelter in the world, or by fashioning their individual identity over time, or by rehearsing their choices for their subsequent ethical practices. It is rather that liturgy offers a theology of home in which we are together made for the Other, in which our being 36

Angela Davis, ‘Reflections on Race, Class, and Gender in the USA’, in The Angela Davis Reader, ed. Joy James (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 320.

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and longings – and not our belonging (sense of identity) – find their taproot and telos; and in which the body that assembles, worships and loves does so in an essentially and inextricably political frame: for Christ, with Christ and (rendered homeless in worldly terms) as Christ.

Bibliography Anderson, E. Byron (2003), Worship and Christian Identity: Practicing Ourselves (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press). Arens, Edmund (1985), Christopraxis: A Theology of Action (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press). Berger, Peter L., Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner (1974), The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (New York, NY: Random House). Bouma-Prediger, Steven and Bryan J. Walsh (2008), Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans). Caputo, John D. (2013), ‘Theopoetics as Radical Theology’, in Theopoetic Folds: Philosophizing Multifariousness, ed. Roland Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press), 125–41. Chauvet, Louis-Marie (1997), Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press). Conradie, Ernst M. (2006), Christianity and Ecological Theology (Stellenbosch: SUN Press). Crossley, Nick (1996), Intersubjectivity: The Fabric of Social Becoming (London: Sage). Daniel, Joshua and Rick Elgendy (2015), ‘Introduction’, in Renegotiating Power, Theology and Politics, ed. Joshua Daniel and Rick Elgendy (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan), 1–14. Davis, Angela (1998), ‘Reflections on Race, Class, and Gender in the USA’, in The Angela Davis Reader, ed. Joy James (Oxford: Blackwell), 307–28. Day, Juliette (2014), Reading the Liturgy: An Exploration of Texts in Christian Worship (London: Bloomsbury). Duyvendak, Jan Willem (2011), The Politics of Home: Belonging and Nostalgia in Western Europe and the United States (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan). Feather, Howard (2000), Intersubjectivity and Contemporary Social Theory: The Everyday as Critique (Abingdon: Ashgate). Garrigan, Siobhán (2010), The Real Peace Process: Worship, Politics and the End of Sectarianism (London: Equinox). Garrigan, Siobhán (2004), Beyond Ritual: Sacramental Theology after Habermas (Abingdon: Ashgate). George, Rosemary Marongoly (1999), The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth Century Fiction (San Diego, CA: University of California Press). Graham, Elaine (2011), ‘On Finding Ourselves: Theology, Place, and Human Flourishing’, in Theology and Human Flourishing: Essays in Honour of Timothy J. Gorringe, ed. Mike Higton, Jeremy Law and Christopher Rowland (Eugene, OR: Cascade), 265–79. Habermas, Jürgen (1999), On the Pragmatics of Communication, ed. Maeve Cooke (Oxford: Polity Press). Heaney, James J. (2014), Beyond the Body: An Anti-theology of the Eucharist (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock).

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Lathrop, Gordon (1998), Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press). Mitchell, Nathan D. (1999), Liturgy and the Social Sciences (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press). Monro, Anita (2015), ‘The Myth of Tiddalik and the Importance of Ambiguity in Baptismal Identity in the Contemporary Christian Church’, in Worship and Culture: Foreign Country or Homeland?, ed. Gláucia Vasconcelos Wilkey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 320–4. Mouffe, Chantal (2005), The Return of the Political (New York, NY: Verso). Nixon, David (2013), Stories from the Street: A Theology of Homelessness (Abingdon: Ashgate). Peoples, James and Garrick Bailey (2011), Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning). Saliers, Don E. (2012), ‘Worship’, in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, ed. Bonnie J. Miller McLemore (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing), 289–98. Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. I (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Sölle, Dorothee (1990), Thinking about God: An Introduction to Theology (London: SCM Press). Staal, Frits (1979), ‘The Meaninglessness of Ritual’, Numen, 26: 2–22. Swinton, John and Harriet Mowat (2006), Practical Theology and Qualitative Research (London: SCM Press). Tanner, Kathryn (2013), ‘Why Support the Occupy Movement?’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 64: 2–35. Tanner, Kathryn (2010), Christ the Key (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tonge, Jonathan (2005), The New Northern Irish Politics? (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan). Wannenwetsch, Bernd (2007), ‘Liturgy’, in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, ed. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing), 76–90. Ward, Graham (2000), Cities of God (New York: Routledge).

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From Han to Mystical–Political Praxis: Intercultural Hermeneutics and Schillebeeckx’s Soteriology Kevin Considine

Among many in the younger generation of theologians, the problem of innocent suffering is at the core of doing theology. Although the problems of meaning and existence remain important, the problem of non-persons increasingly is at the centre of theological reflection – particularly in light of the experiences of global Christianity  – and many have found a timely and relevant resource in Edward Schillebeeckx’s soteriology.1 This is because he placed the excess of global suffering at the centre of his soteriology more so than most other European theologians of his generation. Schillebeeckx was convinced that despite the ‘barbarous excess of suffering’ saturated into humankind, men and women do indeed find true salvation from the Living God here and now. He claimed that God’s work of salvation is ongoing, albeit in fragments, and can be found in the world. This conviction undergirds Schillebeeckx’s famous claim that there is no salvation outside the world (extra mundum, nulla salus). Schillebeeckx also stated that he was not writing for posterity. His own work was directed towards the experience of modernity and, to a lesser extent, 1

There have been at least six dissertations written on this topic in the past few years. For example, see Kathleen McManus, Unbroken Communion: The Place and Meaning of Suffering in the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), who completed her doctoral dissertation in Toronto in 1999; Elizabeth Tillar, ‘Suffering for Others in the Thought of Edward Schillebeeckx’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Fordham 1999); Derek Simon, ‘Provisional Liberation, Fragments of Salvation: The Practical Critical Soteriology of Edward Schillebeeckx’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ottawa 2001); Aloysius Rego, Suffering and Salvation: The Salvific Meaning of Suffering in the Later Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), who completed his doctoral dissertation in Melbourne in 2001; Antonio Sison, ‘Political Holiness in Third Cinema: The Crystallization of Edward Schillebeeckx’s Eschatological Perspective in Kidhat Tahimik’s “Perfumed Nightmare,”’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Nijmegen 2004); Michael Teng, ‘Be Merciful: The Tragedy and Productive Power of the Suffering humanum in E. Schillebeeckx and the Analects of Confucius’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Alfonsiana 2009); and Kevin Considine, ‘Towards a Roman Catholic Soteriology for the Sinned-Against Creature: An Intercultural Dialogue between Edward Schillebeeckx and Korean-American Theologies of Han’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Loyola University Chicago, 2013).

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postmodernity in the West. However, the experience of globalization has made younger generations even more conscious of the interconnectedness and disjunction of a world of so many different cultures, subcultures and worldviews. So, can Schillebeeckx’s insights into salvation be sustained in this changed environment? And do they speak to a multicultural and socially diverse context that no longer is principally defined by the hermeneutical norms for public discourse of the secular West? I will respond to these questions in this short chapter and argue that Schillebeeckx’s soteriological insights can be sustained and perhaps extended within the emerging public sphere. The means by which to do this, however, have changed and need to be rethought and re-articulated to a degree of relative adequacy. To this end, I will argue that the notion of han (a Korean term that refers to frustrated hope/black hole in the soul/abyss of pain) when in dialogue with Schillebeeckx’s understanding of mystical–political praxis, offers a vision of salvation that is intelligible in an enlarged, globalized public sphere. What Schillebeeckx provides is a possibility for resolving han through mystical–political praxis, that is, the interconnected practices of spirituality and social action. My argument will proceed in three steps. First, I will discuss some of the methods of intercultural hermeneutics that form the condition for the possibility of interpretation in a globalized world. Second, I will present a brief phenomenology of the Korean understanding of han that suggests that han can be understood as a woundedness that also holds the potential for healing and political change. Third, I will examine Schillebeeckx’s understanding of mystical–political praxis and demonstrate that, in dialogue with han, Schillebeeckx’s concept can be sustained and even become more intelligible to an enlarged, global public forum. Schillebeeckx holds spirituality and social action in tension for the purpose of elucidating God’s work of salvation in this world and han offers a resource for envisioning the brokenness of the world in a way that can be made intelligible to the public realm. I will suggest that carefully connecting han to mystical–political praxis can extend the trajectory of Schillebeeckx’s soteriological discourse.

1  Intercultural hermeneutics In the emerging public forum, intercultural hermeneutics is becoming necessary for any public theology to reach some measure of relative adequacy and intelligibility.2 This is because approaching a cultural boundary in order to engage with someone

2

2 Theologian David Tracy has provided a clear definition of the term ‘relative adequacy’. Tracy writes: ‘For relative adequacy is just that: relative, not absolute, adequacy. If one demands certainty, one is assured of failure. We can never possess absolute certainty. But we can achieve a good – that is, relatively adequate – interpretation: relative to the power of disclosure and concealment of the text, relative to the skills and attentiveness of the interpreter, relative to the kind of conversation possible for the interpreter in a particular culture at a particular time.’ See David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1987) 22–3.

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else’s culture is precarious.3 Intercultural Hermeneutics is a relatively new field and one that has a very short history in its dialogue with and appropriation by the discipline of theology.4 Although I cannot give a comprehensive account of intercultural hermeneutics here, three of its fundamental tools are important for undertaking this task: a semiotic understanding of culture, the ‘relative incommensurability’ of cultures, and a four-position communication paradigm. The possibility for intercultural communication is rooted in one’s understanding of culture,5 yet culture is a notoriously difficult category to define with precision. For the purposes of this chapter, I opt for a semiotic understanding based upon the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz. In short, Geertz argues that the point of studying culture is not to obtain discrete and objective knowledge of the subject. He thinks that definitive, conceptual knowledge about human cultures is not attainable. This is because the more deeply one delves into the study of another’s culture the less sure knowledge one has about the Other’s culture. For Geertz, the primary purpose of the study of culture is to enable conversation. The object is therefore dialogue rather than knowledge.6 Geertz argues, ‘Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the Continent of Meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape.’7 For Geertz, a culture is a network of interconnected signs and symbols that, in a sense, can be ‘read’ and ‘interpreted’ as a text. Much of this occurs as a ‘participant-observer’.8 Unfortunately, the result of many intercultural encounters has been colonialism and violence. Thus, the second tool for an intercultural hermeneutic is what Robert Schreiter has termed the ‘relative incommensurability of cultures’.9 This foundation respects the One example of this is ‘orientalism’ as a hermeneutical problem. For the classic treatment of this problem, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978). Loosely defined, ‘orientalism’ refers to a European (and Euro-American) colonial mentality that imposed group identity upon the peoples of Central, East, and South Asia, among other locations. In short, Western Europeans created a false collective of peoples as the exotic Eastern ‘orient’ that was distinguished essentially from the normative, rational ‘occident’. Asian cultures were characterized as ‘exotic’, ‘mystical’, ‘sexualized’, and inferior to the Western Occident. Western Orientalist thinking is one example of the obstructions that make intercultural communication difficult, both in determinations of meaning and in power relationships.  4 For the sources and development of this emerging discipline, see Robert J. Schreiter, The New Catholicity: Theology Between the Global and Local (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 30–2.  5 There are roughly three different understandings of culture used in today’s religious and theological discourse: classicist, modern, and globalized. It is the latter for which I opt in my study here. For a discussion of these see Gerald Arbuckle, Culture, Inculturation, and Theologians: A Post-Modern Critique (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010); Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997); and Robert J. Schreiter, The New Catholicity. I follow Schreiter in naming the third understanding ‘globalized’ as opposed to ‘postmodern’.  6 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1973), 24–8. As Geertz writes earlier, describing the utility of a semiotic approach: ‘As interworked systems of construable signs … culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, and institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a context, something within which they can be intelligibly – that is, thickly – described.’ Ibid., 14.  7 Ibid., 20.  8 Kathleen M. DeWalt and Billie R. DeWalt, Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd edn, 2011).  9 Schreiter, The New Catholicity, 45. 3

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deep-seated differences as one approaches a cultural boundary, particularly within an asymmetry of power, even as it recognizes that communication between cultures is possible. ‘Relative incommensurability’ offers the possibility of authentic intercultural communication by highlighting difference while searching for common ground. It can be understood as prioritizing the greater dissimilarities among cultures while searching for the points of contact and lesser similarities through which communication is possible.10 In this way, cultural boundaries, although permeable and constantly in flux, can be respected in order to minimize not only distortion of communication but real and lasting damage inflicted upon a culture in a less-powerful position. A third tool is a communication paradigm that allows for four possible forms of interaction, depending upon the location of the interlocutors. The paradigm distinguishes a cultural insider from a cultural outsider, and asks whether one is a speaker or hearer of the message.11 In what follows here, this fourfold distinction  – insider or outsider, speaker or hearer – allows me to define my own location in interpreting han as an ‘outsider-hearer’ (the one who stands outside the culture and who is attempting to receive, interpret, translate the message) and the articulators of han as ‘insider-speakers’ (the ones who initiate, create, and send the message). If an interlocutor does not accurately situate himself or herself within this communication paradigm, a distortion of the message becomes highly probable. Alejandro Garcia-Rivera provides a helpful illustration of this problem through an analogy of an artist (insider-speaker) and art critic (outsider-hearer). On the one hand, the artist is focused upon creating the work and displaying it with very little, if any, changes or embellishments. On the other hand, the art critic is focused upon interpreting the work of art to a larger audience, even if it requires taking it apart, in order to facilitate clear communication of meaning to others. As Garcia-Rivera concludes: Although there is a natural enmity between artists and art critics, they both need each other. The art critic gains wisdom by interpreting the work of the artist and communicates it to others. The artist, on the other hand, depends upon the art critic to communicate the value of his or her work, so the work may continue uninterrupted. A fundamental problem takes place when art critics begin to speak of a work of art as if they were artists or artists begin to speak of their work as if they were art critics.12

Garcia-Rivera’s analogy suggests that an intercultural engagement with something like han is precarious because it can lead to distortion of communication, and a rupture in the relationship, among insider-speaker and outsider-hearer. He shows that one way to address this problem entails accounting for one’s location within the communication paradigm. In light of this challenge, an intercultural hermeneutic becomes necessary in order to engage and interpret han to some degree of relative adequacy. Robert Schreiter 10

11

12

Robert J. Schreiter, ‘Christian Witness in a “New Modernity”: Trajectories in Intercultural Theology’,Concilium 1 (2011), 27–36, 32–4. Alejandro Garcia-Rivera, St. Martin de Porres: The ‘Little Stories’ and the Semiotics of Culture (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1995), 34–5. Garcia-Rivera, St. Martin de Porres, 34.

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articulates the task clearly in the connection between a semiotic understanding of culture and the work of intercultural hermeneutics. He writes, semiotics focuses on signs (Greek: semeion) that carry messages along the pathways (codes) of culture. The purpose of the circulation of those messages within culture is to create identity, which involves building group solidarity and incorporating new information as it comes into the culture. The intercultural hermeneutics challenge would be stated thus semiotically: how does the same message get communicated via different codes, using a mixture of signs from two different cultures?13

This is the challenge in bringing together han, Schillebeeckx, and the emerging public sphere.

2  A tentative phenomenology of Han14 Any public theology worth its salt must take into account what Schillebeeckx has termed ‘the barbarous excess of human suffering’ and that of all of creation. Han provides one powerful articulation of suffering that can become an important, intercultural anthropology at the core of public theology today. Currently, there is no fully adequate definition or ‘thick description’ of han in the English language. Han is untranslatable and requires an in-depth study of Korean linguistics, history, politics, gender and class dynamics, religion, artwork, poetry and theology. What I can offer here is a mere introduction. Han is not identical with the English term ‘suffering’. Suffering is too thin to account for the full complexity of han. Han is a festering wound and paralysed energy in need of unravelling. The question is not whether it will unravel, but when and how it will unravel and what the consequences will be. Han points to the interconnected levels of woundedness in human beings, their communities, and all of creation. Han is neither an abstract concept nor a philosophical category in the Western, Kantian sense. Han is more akin to an anthropology that refers to the deep wounds carried by oppressed and violated individuals, groups and peoples. Chang-Hee Son provides a philosophical-linguistic analysis of han. Son traces its meaning to two Chinese characters upon which the full character of han is based. Son argues that the first character carries the meaning of ‘heart’ or ‘mind’, and the second carries the meaning ‘to remain still or calm’.15 Son describes the full character han as a tree with roots stretching very deeply into the earth. He writes: [han] is used to describe the heart of a person or people who has/have endured or is/are enduring an affliction but the pains, wounds, and scars are not always apparent and visible because they are the kind that occur deep within the essence, 13 14

15

Schreiter, The New Catholicity, 30. Much of this section is based upon my article ‘Han and Salvation for the Sinned-Against’, New Theology Review 26 (2013), 87–9. Chang-Hee Son, Haan of Minjung Theology and the Han of Han Philosophy: In the Paradigm of Process Philosophy and Metaphysics of Relatedness (New York, NY: University Press of America, 2000), 4.

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Han is a black hole in the soul, so to speak, and it also can be understood as an enormous, churning energy that can be channelled either to bring life or death. The positive channelling of han can lead to psychological, emotional, spiritual, and physical healing; the creation of a nurturing and constructive community; and the strength for positive resistance, protest, and action to confront and change unjust political and social systems. The negative channelling and continued festering of han can lead to mental illness, physical and spiritual sickness, suicide, and interpersonal violence. In the political realm, it can lead to a nihilistic attachment to a great political cause that brings little more than greater pain, suffering and oppression to the most vulnerable in society. Korean-American theologian Andrew Sung Park is the foremost interpreter of han in the English-speaking world. He provides a basic definition of han as a multifaceted ‘abyss of pain’ and a ‘wounded heart’ that is the residue of the violence that has been unleashed upon the innocent. Park describes han as a ‘black hole’ and a festering wound whose energy must be channelled and resolved either to give life or to bring death to one’s self and others.17 Park attempts to describe it through phrases such a ‘wounded heart’, ‘bitter resentment’ and ‘frustrated hope’, as well as narratives of exploited workers, sexual abuse victims and Holocaust survivors. Han is a deep woundedness that festers within the mind, body, and spirit of violated and exploited women and men. It has its major roots in the structural sins of racism, classism and sexism. Philosopher Jae-Hoon Lee and poet/activist Kim Chi-Ha offer further assistance in explaining han. Lee brings the psychology of Carl Jung and Melanie Klein into dialogue with Korean culture and arrives at three interconnected variations: won-han, jeong-han, and hu-han. These variations can lead to aggression, resignation and nihilism, respectively. They are all of a piece, yet one variation tends to manifest and dominate in the life of a victim.18 Kim, a Korean poet, provides some of the most definitive images and understandings of han.19 Kim thinks han is the destructive experiences of oppression that also carry constructive energy for social transformation. He writes, ‘Accumulated han is inherited and transmitted, boiling in the blood of the people,’ and it possesses ‘the emotional core of anti-regime action’.20 However, Kim emphasizes the intense negativity of han for, as theologian Wonhee Anne Joh points out, han is never innocent.21 Its deep negativity cannot be 16 17

18 19

20 21

Son, Haan of Minjung Theology and the Han of Han Philosophy, 14. Andrew Sung Park, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993), 15–20. Jae-Hoon Lee, The Exploration of the Inner Wounds – Han (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1994). As theologian Suh Nam-Dong has argued, Kim is ‘the person who has done the most to develop han as a theme in Christian theology’. See Committee on Theological Concerns of the Christian Conference of Asia, eds, Minjung Theology: People as the Subjects of History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, rev. edn, 1983), 63. Ibid., 64. Wonhee Anne Joh, Heart of the Cross: A Postcolonial Christology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 25–6.

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underestimated, and one of Kim’s sharpest descriptions of han is ‘a people-eating monster’.22 For Kim, han is a ‘ghostly creature’ that ‘appears as a concrete substance with enormous ugly and evil energy’.23 Theologian Chung Hyun-Kyung has pointed out that the han of women is the most severe and is mostly overlooked. The han of women is so pervasive that some have argued that han should be applied almost exclusively to the woundedness of women.24 Due to the interconnections of patriarchy, class oppression, and neo-Confucian gender roles, women are the most saturated with han within a han-filled world.25 Many women have embraced the general description of Han Wang-Sang: ‘Han is a sense of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of overwhelming odds against one’s feeling of total abandonment, a feeling of acute pain and sorrow in one’s guts and bowels.’26 This description shows how deeply women’s han runs and how insidious is its marginalization by the male power structure. Although women’s han traditionally has been addressed by Shamanism – Korea’s oldest religion – some theologians have attempted to rethink Christian theology and praxis in light of women’s han. For example, Grace Ji-Sun Kim constructs a Christology in which Jesus-Sophia is deeply involved in the resolution of the enduring han of women.27 In sum, han is one powerful example of a multilayered anthropology that adds depth and texture to a discourse of suffering. It reaches far beyond Korea and has been offered by the inner speakers in this way. If intercultural hermeneutics is the starting point, and han one adequate ‘thick description’ of innocent suffering, then Schillebeeckx’s concept of a mystical–political praxis might become an effective way for articulating God’s salvation for the ‘sinned-against’, those burdened by han. Schillebeeckx’s concept of a mystical–political praxis becomes an even more salient voice for the sinned-against in a public theology today that has to be intelligible in a multicultural world if it is to be relevant. His twinning of mysticism and politics provides a Western dialogue partner for the complexities of han.

3  Schillebeeckx’s mystical–political praxis Edward Schillebeeckx argued that, due to the barbarous excess of suffering in the world, the Christian confluence of the mystical love of God and the political love of neighbour should be considered a type of holiness. It is what Schillebeeckx called an

22

23 24

25

26 27

Committee on Theological Concerns of the Christian Conference of Asia, eds, Minjung Theology: People as the Subjects of History, 64. Ibid. Yani Yoo, ‘Han-Laden Women: Korean “Comfort Women” and Women in Judges 19–21’, Semeia 78 (1997), 37–46. Chung Hyun-Kyung, ‘Han-Pu-Ri: Doing Theology from Korean Women’s Perspective’, The Ecumenical Review 40 (1988), 27–36, 31. Joh, Heart of the Cross, xxi. Grace Ji-Sun Kim, The Grace of Sophia: A Korean North American Women’s Christology (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2002).

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option for the poor as an asceticism,28 that is, mystical–political praxis as discipleship to Jesus Christ and his God. The point is to participate in God’s saving work in history, and especially to help realize moments of fragmentary salvation for those who are the victims of sin – the sinned-against.29 Schillebeeckx thinks that both mysticism and politics are necessary for Christian discipleship and are mutually critical and mutually informing. They provide a check upon each other that prevents either one from becoming all-consuming and they also enhance each other’s potential for participation in God’s salvation. Schillebeeckx explains that in the mystical aspect of Christianity, the object in life is God whereas in the ethical or political aspect of Christianity, the object is full human flourishing, especially for the poor and those cast out.30 He argues, ‘Without prayer or mysticism politics soon becomes cruel and barbaric; without political love, prayer or mysticism soon becomes sentimental or uncommitted interiority.’31 In other words, mysticism and politics are mutually informing and mutually critical and as such can hold one in the tension between them. Schillebeeckx realizes the danger associated with such a connection and quickly points out that God’s salvation cannot be equated with any political party, movement or agenda, since this salvation is only fragmentary.32 It can only be completed in the eschaton. For the present, however, Schillebeeckx’s emphasis on the concrete exhorts Christians to participate in the ongoing work of God’s salvation through prayer and discernment for how to embody Christ in the world. In Schillebeeckx’s estimation, one should be careful of political distortion of the gospel but not to such an extent that one refrains from engaging the political arena altogether.33 With this in mind Schillebeeckx argues that ‘belief in God radicalizes efforts for a better world’ and that Christian love is only possible when faith flows into social analysis and action.34 Even though he also acknowledges that God’s saving action is never identical with any one movement, Schillebeeckx thinks that when politics is rooted in the mystical it can indeed be a possible location for grace to be mediated.35 This means that a Christian serves the world through exercising a critical force towards

28

29

30

31 32

33

34 35

Edward Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith: The Spiritual, Ethical and Political Dimensions, trans. John Bowden (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1987), 72–4. Raymond Fung, ‘Compassion for the Sinned-Against’, Theology Today 37 (1980), 162–9. The notion of ‘sinned-against’ is a correction to traditional understandings of sin that have focused almost exclusively on the guilt and forgiveness of the sinner in Christian salvation. This correction focuses upon the victims of others’ sins and how Christian salvation must also account for the healing, liberation, and wholeness of those being sinned-against. Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 88–90 [91–2]. Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith, 75. For an example of Schillebeeckx’s reservations about politics running away with faith, see Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, trans. John Bowden (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1981), 770–88. As Schillebeeckx points out, ‘Mysticism lies in the extension of prayer: it is a prayer in which an attempt is made to transcend the elements of faith which are also mediated by politics, ethics and conceptuality in order to put oneself directly into the immediate proximity of God.’ See Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith, 67. Schillebeeckx, Christ, The Experience of Jesus as Lord, 780–8. Ibid., 813.

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political powers and while being rooted in a deep spirituality. Schillebeeckx thinks that unless the church is in solidarity with those who suffer, the gospel becomes impossible to understand or to believe. This means that as the church strives to be in solidarity with the sufferer it realizes that human liberation also is part of human salvation, which entails the conquest of all human, personal and social forms of alienation. To this end, faith in Jesus the Christ empowers Christians to affirm that the two theoretical irreconcilables – unwarranted human suffering and a God who brings final salvation – will culminate in God having the final say.36

4  Han, Schillebeeckx and the emerging intercultural public sphere My suggestion here is that the Korean notion of han can be brought to bear upon Schillebeeckx’s soteriological claims to make them more intelligible in a globalized public forum. This is because han offers a resource for envisioning the brokenness of the world that can be intelligible to the public realm while also continuing the trajectory of Schillebeeckx’s thinking. There are at least two ways in which han makes Schillebeeckx’s understanding of moments of fragmentary salvation, and the mystical– political praxis that enables healing, more intelligible and of continuing relevance to the public sphere. First, han offers a ‘thick description’ of woundedness that is best communicated through narrative and experience. In his Christological trilogy, Schillebeeckx again and again emphasizes the importance of these two concepts. As he points out, Christianity began with an experience that the earliest Jewish and Gentile followers needed to communicate to others. Their experiences of salvation, through Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed as the Resurrected Christ, were so transformative, powerful and challenging that they could not do otherwise and, as demonstrated in the various canonical and non-canonical Gospels, they frequently articulated their experiences through narrative. Similarly, an intrinsic part of resolving han is for the sinned-against to articulate their experience and communicate it to others through narrative. Even so, as Park points out, some han is too deep and too destructive to be resolved in this life. There must be more to the equation; otherwise, the victims, the vanquished, and the perpetrators have no hope. Their lives and experiences become at best a warning to us and at worst a useless, forgotten flash upon the meaninglessness of an absurd world. Even as he privileges narrative and experience, Schillebeeckx finds room for Park’s concern by pointing to the eschatological proviso, thus providing a theological framework for encompassing the paradoxes and contradictions of suffering. Second, han can function as a ‘third space’37 in which various discourses of innocent suffering may engage with Schillebeeckx’s soteriology. The notion of ‘third

36

37

Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 6 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 584–6 [623–5]. This concept arises from the work of Fumitaka Matsuoka and also Homi Bhabha. See Fumitaka Matsuoka, ‘A Reflection on “Teaching Theology from an Intercultural Perspective”’, Theological Education 36 (1989), 35–42; See Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).

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space’ comes from postcolonial theory and indicates an overlap and mixture among cultures or identities in which something new arises. It is a space that belongs to no single culture or identity, although informed and shaped by many, and is constantly in flux and being negotiated. As Wonhee Anne Joh describes it, Third Space is unrepresentable because of its complexity and constantly shifting terrain [and] this is precisely why it ensures the conditions for enunciations to emerge. Such enunciations of symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity. Moreover, even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricised, and read anew. This split-space, this Third Space of enunciation, the in-between space, is the space that carries the ‘burden of culture’ by exploring hybridity.38

In this way, han can provide a kind of ‘third space’ in which diverse discourses of suffering encounter one another along with Schillebeeckx’s soteriological discourse. Han, of course, emerges from a specific context, historically and culturally particular to the Korean peninsula and diaspora. Nonetheless, the inner speakers of han have proposed it as an understanding that transcends its own context and that can shed light on the broad experiences of innocent suffering. Its roots in Korea’s history as what Ham Sok-Hon has named the ‘Queen of Suffering’, its understanding of woundedness as holistic (individual and community; mind, body and spirit), and its roots in the indigenous religion of Korean Shamanism, suggest an interdisciplinary nexus from which a ‘third space’ for soteriological discourse may arise. In an intercultural world in which ‘third spaces’ of hybridity are becoming more common, han can be the foundation for such a space to articulate woundedness and then participate in concrete action to eradicate all that causes han. Mysticism and politics may encounter diverse discourses of suffering and enunciate new visions and praxis for participating in God’s ongoing work of salvation guided by Schillebeeckx’s axiom, extra mundum nulla salus. In these two ways, but not limited to them, han offers a resource for envisioning the brokenness of the world that can be intelligible to the public realm while also continuing the trajectory of Schillebeeckx’s thinking. Han specifies the brokenness of the world and enables Schillebeeckx’s understanding of salvation – especially as a mystical–political praxis – to be more intelligible to the public. The resolution of han provides a correlation between deep woundedness and God’s salvation in the intercultural and globalizing world. To the public sphere, it clarifies and extends Schillebeeckx’s own understanding of salvation: Salvation cannot be identified exclusively with political liberation; exclusively with ‘being nice to one another’; exclusively with ecological efforts; exclusively with identifying oneself either with micro-ethics or macro-ethics or with mysticism, liturgy and prayer; exclusively with concerning oneself with education or geriatric techniques, and so on. All this is part of the concept of salvation or wholeness of mankind, and is therefore also essentially concerned with salvation from God, which may be experienced as grace.39

38 39

Joh, Heart of the Cross, 62. Schillebeeckx, Christ, The Experience of Jesus as Lord, 779.

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Bibliography Arbuckle, Gerald (2010), Culture, Inculturation, and Theologians: A Post-Modern Critique (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010). Bhabha, Homi (1994), The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). Committee on Theological Concerns of the Christian Conference of Asia (1983), Minjung Theology: People as the Subjects of History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, rev. edn). Considine, Kevin (2013), ‘Han and Salvation for the Sinned-Against’, New Theology Review, 26: 87–9. Considine, Kevin (2013), ‘Towards a Roman Catholic Soteriology for the Sinned-Against Creature: An Intercultural Dialogue between Edward Schillebeeckx and Korean-American Theologies of Han’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Loyola University Chicago). DeWalt, Kathleen M. and Billie R. DeWalt (2011), Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd edn). Fung, Raymond (1980), ‘Compassion for the Sinned-Against’, Theology Today, 37: 162–9. Garcia-Rivera, Alejandro (1995), St. Martin de Porres: The ‘Little Stories’ and the Semiotics of Culture (Maryknoll NY: Orbis). Geertz, Clifford (1973), The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, NY: Basic Books). Hyun-Kyung, Chung (1988), ‘Han-Pu-Ri: Doing Theology from Korean Women’s Perspective’, The Ecumenical Review, 40: 27–36. Joh, Wonhee Anne (2006), Heart of the Cross: A Postcolonial Christology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press). Kim, Grace Ji-Sun (2002), The Grace of Sophia: a Korean North American Women’s Christology (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press). Lee, Jae-Hoon (1994), The Exploration of the Inner Wounds – Han (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press). Matsuoka, Fumitaka (1989), ‘A Reflection on “Teaching Theology from an Intercultural Perspective”’, Theological Education, 36: 35–42. McManus, Kathleen (2003), Unbroken Communion: The Place and Meaning of Suffering in the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Park, Andrew Sung (1993), The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press). Rego, Aloysius (2006), Suffering and Salvation: The Salvific Meaning of Suffering in the Later Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx (Leuven: Peeters). Said, Edward (1978), Orientalism (New York: Pantheon). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 6 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1987), On Christian Faith: The Spiritual, Ethical and Political Dimensions, translated by John Bowden (New York, NY: Crossroad). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1981), Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, translated by John Bowden (New York, NY: Crossroad). Schreiter, Robert J. (2011), ‘Christian Witness in a “New Modernity”: Trajectories in Intercultural Theology’, Concilium, 1: 27–36. Schreiter, Robert J. (1997), The New Catholicity: Theology Between the Global and Local (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis). Simon, Derek (2001), ‘Provisional Liberation, Fragments of Salvation: The Practical Critical Soteriology of Edward Schillebeeckx’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ottawa).

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Sison, Antonio (2004), ‘Political Holiness in Third Cinema: The Crystallization of Edward Schillebeeckx’s Eschatological Perspective in Kidhat Tahimik’s “Perfumed Nightmare”’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Nijmegen). Son, Chang-Hee (2000), Haan of Minjung Theology and the Han of Han Philosophy: In the Paradigm of Process Philosophy and Metaphysics of Relatedness (New York, NY: University Press of America). Tanner, Kathryn (1997), Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress). Teng, Michael (2009), ‘Be Merciful: The Tragedy and Productive Power of the Suffering humanum in E. Schillebeeckx and the Analects of Confucius’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Alfonsiana). Tillar, Elizabeth (1999), ‘Suffering for Others in the Thought of Edward Schillebeeckx’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Fordham). Tracy, David (1987), Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row). Yoo, Yani (1997), ‘Han-Laden Women: Korean “Comfort Women” and Women in Judges 19–21’, Semeia, 78: 37–46.

Part Two

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6

Speaking of Jesus Today: Towards an Engaged Systematic Theology Graham Ward

I am not a scholar of Edward Schillebeechx’s work, but what I have read persuades me that how we speak of Jesus Christ today is as important a question for him as for us. In this chapter I want to explore that question. But there is a prior question: How did we learn the language of Jesus to start with? For the languages we learn shape our imaginative understanding of the world and our experience of it. They enable the seeing as which takes in the sensed and transfigures it1 – even beneath the level of conscious interpretation (as we will see).

1 Language There are several different and overlapping dimensions to learning and speaking language. There is our education and the contexts within which that education takes place. The primary context here is the church: its liturgies, its teachings, its scriptures, it sermons, its catechism, its architecture and material culture, and the conversations that go on, official and unofficial (who draws the lines here?), between members of the church. Talk of dialogue introduces a sociological dimension about the language communities to which we belong, their economic, their political, their ethical contexts, their geographies, their status and their unacknowledged biases. All discourse, its learning and practising, takes place in and as social interaction, and all social interaction is implicated in social relations. So there is a sociological dimension to learning and speaking the language of faith. These social relations in the churches are variegated. They involve, among other variables, class, gender, ethnicity, clerical or lay status, and age. There are, then, ‘social effects mediated by the utterances’ produced.2 Some of these ‘utterances’ are by gesture, clothing and material setting. Many of them are probably not negotiated cognitively, so the social effects of the learning and speaking are mediated unconsciously. As the American anthropologist, Asif Agha, 1

2

On ‘seeing as’ and its relation to believing see my book, Unbelievable: Why We Believe and Why We Don’t (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014). Asif Agha, Language and Social Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 14.

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points out, it is ‘therefore all the more important to see that utterances and discourses are themselves material objects made through human activity – made, in a physical sense, out of vibrating columns of air, ink on paper, pixels in electronic media – which exercise real effects upon our senses, mind, and modes of social organization, and to learn to understand and analyse these effects’.3 Involved in this discursive materiality, as in social relations, are material objects themselves – their use, their circulation and their production. It is from social effects that the organization of social life, ecclesial life, emerges along with the distinctiveness of cultures. The discourses found and fostered in one social organization like the church cross over and become transformed in other social organizations: the crucifix venerated in this place becomes the crystal studded piece of jewellery worn in that place. The church has no monopoly on the language it uses. In fact, as the church becomes more hegemonic and dominant culturally, its language infects more and more other discourses. Today we may be living in a post-Christendom world but there remains, to a greater or lesser degree than in the past, a speaking of Jesus Christ that goes on elsewhere and outside Christian communities. When I write ‘speaking of Jesus’ it must be understood that I am using that genitive subjectively and objectively – as a possessive (the primary speech is Jesus Christ’s own) and in relation to an indirect object (the speaking we do about Jesus Christ). Christ can be both the one who speaks and the one of whom things are spoken. Christ’s own sermo is heard, if heard at all, only in obedience to Him; only in listening. But that sermo can still be deployed and redeployed outside of those in obedience in ways that can be interruptive and can initiate critical reflection. The speaking about Jesus Christ is variegated. It may be affirmative. It may be negative. It may be difficult to judge. The possessive and indirect uses of the genitive need not be in opposition to each other. In the past this speaking took form in the first extensive and critical treatment of the Christian faith by a pagan (Celsus’s On True Doctrine c.177) and a cartoon of Christ as a crucified ass in the Alexamenos graffito (c.200). More recently that ‘speaking elsewhere’ took the form of Herbert Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi (1938), Francis Bacon’s Crucifixions (1942, 1962, 1965), Patrick White’s novel Riders in the Chariot (1961), Bettina Rheims’ and Serge Bramly’s photoshoot INRI (1998) or Bill Viola’s video installation Emergence (2002). None of these more modern presentations of the Christian faith are either negative or affirmative. And none of them present an orthodox faith. In Bill Viola’s Emergence, for example, Christ seems to rise from the tomb (in the form of a baptismal font overflowing with water) but it is a dead body that rises to be received by two grieving women who first kneel and then stand to support a form that evolves into a pieta. The dead body remains dead, so that what might have been a resurrection becomes a dramatic stillbirth. This is a powerful meditation on hope thwarted, and instigates a number of questions – some of them pastoral since there are any number of Christian women who have to undergo the experience of stillbirths. While the water motif attests to Viola’s attraction to the elemental and the mythic, it resonates deeply and imaginatively. Viola’s installation, like those other artistic 3

Agha, Language and Social Relations, 3.

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expressions I mentioned, plays within, imaginatively engages with and improvises on aspects of the Christian mythos. Though some such work can get reinserted explicitly into an ecclesial context – like Viola’s Martyrs: Earth, Air, Fire and Water (2014) created for St Paul’s in London. And then the transplanted work takes on Christian theological resonance not necessarily in accord with Viola’s own conception of the piece. (For who can control how anything is given or received, especially the Word of God?) Nevertheless, all these cultural impacts of the Christian discourse transform in turn the contexts, and the tang, the taste, register or inflection of the speaking of Christ within the sociological organization of the church. The language of the gospel is being employed elsewhere and for other means than conversion to the faith or the formation of those in the faith. Learning to speak of Christ, learning and practising the languages of the Christian faith, cannot then ever be a static enterprise because these languages are continually circulating and shifting: synchronically across global ‘fields of cultural production’4 and diachronically through time. There are semantic drifts as the meaning of words or phrases leans in this direction, bends in this translation and that citation, undergoes transformation that becomes intelligible in one context and unintelligible in another. Experience – personal (what happens to us), social (what happens to our communities), historical (what happens to our countries, our world) – changes how we learn and understand the languages we speak, even when we speak of Christ. No Christian theologian today in the West, for example, can write theology without sensing and recognizing the pressure of world Christianities that are sensitive to Western intellectual imperialism and the historical, Christian involvement in colonialism: the distinctive Pentecostal voices from South Korea and the Congo, for example. No Christian theologian today, anywhere in the world, can write theology without sensing and recognizing the pressure of other religious pieties, their evaluation and their public, mediatized profiles, practised by neighbours, friends, and even other members of their family both in regions where Christians are a minority and regions where they still maintain a strong cultural presence. So our personal, social and historical experiences change the way we speak of the Christian faith, how we communicate it, to whom, for what reason. If we examine the emergence and practice of systematic theologies from the second century to the sixteenth, as I have done recently,5 we can recognize how distinctive that speaking of Christ becomes across millennia and how ‘out of date’ that past speaking of Christ becomes for today. A speaking that is ‘out of date’ can be informative but not have the social resonance that makes it viral. The writings of past speech about Jesus Christ bear the imprint of complex and multidimensional contexts that I don’t share: I don’t live under the persecutions, paranoias and threats to my life that Athanasius lived under; I don’t live with the violences, injustices, lawlessness and calls for reformatio of Hugh of St Victor’s abbey in Paris; and I don’t live with the demons, angels, antichrists and apocalyptic scenarios of which Luther and Melanchthon spoke. Neither, do 4

5

The term and the critical analysis it facilitated belong to Pierre Bourdieu. For an introduction to his work, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Randal Johnson (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1993). Graham Ward, How the Light Gets In. Ethical Life Volume I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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I live with the elegant, bourgeois refinements and the brutal authoritarianism of Schleiermacher’s Prussia. And when we come closer to our own time, the imprint of context still remains: I don’t live with the enormous guilt of the Nazi holocaust out of which Moltmann’s theology emerged, or the neoscholastic Thomism that was such a burden to de Lubac or Chenu or Congar. I don’t live under the liberal, well-heeled intellectualism out of which the 1960s ‘death of God’ theologies issued. Each set of theological writings speak of Christ in a way that is dated now. Our theologies do date, just as the emphases within our theologies come and go out of fashion. Theologians may want to landmark their theologies with monumental systematic developments over several volumes. I’m no exception here. But their work will date. It may even be forgotten. It will certainly be received differently, and translate in ways unforeseen at present. The hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer has taught us all this. We use the names – Augustine, Aquinas, von Balthasar, Barth – but we are trading in holograms. We learn to speak of Jesus Christ in specific ways at specific times and within specific locations, that’s the point, and an engaged systematic theology recognizes and critically appropriates that fact. Such an approach to theology does not mean we cannot learn important theological observations from older theologies – about social relations as ecclesial relations through Schleiermacher, about the Jewish Christ suffering in solidarity with us through Moltmann, about the relationship between nature and grace through de Lubac and the immanent process of divinity in history through the ‘death of God’ school, for example. An engaged systematics does not undo our ongoing learning from the tradition. In fact, it acknowledges it and also certain theological continuities with the past. It augments, even as it translates and recites these continuities, so that the imaginative dynamic of the tradition moves towards new appropriations and integrations of present experience with the past as it points continually, eschatologically, towards the future. And that does not mean the Christian truth is relative, for there is no position from which one could view all cultural variations. The concrete locatedness of any standpoint within the nexus of Christian discourse vitiates ‘any form of radical relativism that presumes the perfect intersubstitutability of social “positions”’.6 What the practice of an engaged systematics does mean is that the catholicity of the gospel continuously expands as all Christian words are gathered, by the Spirit, into the Word of God. And it’s exceptionally valuable that we do so speak and change and develop our speaking – because faith is a living relationship. Speaking of Christ is part of that living relationship with Christ. As Edward Schillebeeckx, reminded the church: ‘The “universal significance” of Jesus’ message which is affirmed in particular situations therefore of course requires to be made a reality (“actualized”) in changed circumstances.’7 This is a logic that follows from a commitment to incarnationalism not simply as an event in history but the revelation of a divine principle – God for us – which cannot be separated from a Trinitarian understanding of God in Himself. The Word is continually given; it always has been given. The nature of love is to communicate. Our response and answer to that abiding 6

7

Agha, The Language of Social Relations, 5. He is referring here to all discourses and the knowledges they produce. It is I who relate this point specifically to Christian discourse. Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus in Our Western Culture: Mysticism, Ethics and Politics (London: SCM Press, 1986), 40.

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address by divine love is also continually given, and given afresh. Schillebeeckx again:  ‘The church community alive today bears witness to the living actuality here and now of Jesus’ gospel, which found its definitive account in the scriptures … but the church communities make the text a living word.’8 It is not just the church communities that make the text of Scripture a living word. As I have said, Jesus-talk, once culturally embedded and culturally pervasive, spills over into the streets. It is taken up elsewhere as we have seen: mouthed, mimicked, modified, cited and recited in contexts beyond institutional or sociological boundaries. This is part of its dissemination. It goes viral. Christianity will cease, secularization will reach its apogee, once the circulation of religious language (Jesus-talk in this instance) dries up. But, theologically for Christianity, that would mean the cessation of the activity of Spirit with respect to the divine communication of love. So it won’t happen. It cannot happen. And that means today secularism is just something some people, in some places, have told themselves and got others to believe is believable, even inescapable – a destiny. Elsewhere, I have explored the myth of secularism, observing how the ways in which its ideology is quickly exiting, if it hasn’t already exited, what Foucault called the ‘grids of intelligibility’.9 Today, we need to appreciate and hear the ways Jesustalk is circulating, and has, in fact, a life of its own, outside the ecclesia. Why is this important? Because, if we as the church are to learn how to speak the Christian faith today, to speak of Christ today, and learn how to compose our systematic examinations of the faith today, in our times, in our places, in our sociocultural conditions – speak in a way that bears witness to a living, Spirit-led, faith – then we have to learn about how Christ is spoken elsewhere. As I said, there may be critical interventions here that the church needs to acknowledge as valid. This is part of the learning and development processes involved in language transmission; part of that semantic shifting that is always occurring; part of the social circulation of discourse. Two aspects of an engaged systematics become prominent in this learning to speak of Christ today. The first concerns attention to context and the second how our present seeking comes to understand: what philosophically is a concern with ‘epistemology’. We will look briefly at each of these aspects.

2 Context In the past, ‘context’ was understood as that which framed the ‘text’ – the background. Context informed and situated the text within larger fields of enquiry and cultural endeavour. This tended to reify ‘text’; set it apart. The creation of context in this model might highlight the distinctiveness of the text, it might reveal continuities and it might gesture towards understanding the text as an expression of the wider context (on a cause and effect basis). What this model of context did not do was examine the dynamics of the relation between the two points of reference. With an engaged systematic theology 8 9

Schillebeeckx, Jesus in our Western Culture, 41. See Graham Ward, Unbelievable, particularly Chapter VIII, 174–86. The ‘grids of intelligibility’ is a phrase Michael Foucault employs in The History of Sexuality, Part One: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Allen Lane, 1979), 93.

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that aims at being non-reductive, we have to appreciate how context is being used or, more particularly, the non-reductive nature of context itself. A dialectical model of contextualization did attempt to do this. It would demonstrate how a text refigured the context and thereby altered it – even if the text established more firmly the status quo. Rather than in accordance with a logic of cause and effect, the dialectical model explored the reciprocal nature of the text–context relation. Marxist, feminist, postcolonial readings of texts might point both to the way the context impacted upon the text and also the way the text offered a critical reflection upon the context; a critical reflection that it was hoped would raise cultural conscious awareness to the extent that the context might be changed. And so, for example, in such a cultural transformation and social revolution, the validity of the suppressed or subaltern view is a means towards establishing a more just society. The work of the Frankfurt School understood critical theory to operate in this way. With the advent of structuralism and greater attention to the semiotic, ‘text’ took on a much wider meaning. Cultures were themselves viewed as texts; discursive, symbolic systems. In their different ways the anthropologists Claude-Levi Strauss and Clifford Geerzt, and the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, each ‘democratized’ textuality because they saw it everywhere. This blurred any lines between context and text: for where did one end and the other begin if all cultural expression was a discursive code of one kind or another: a gesture, a rite, a poem, a dance, a system of gift-exchange? Everything was part of a flow of signs that could not operate outside of being related to an extensive grid of other signs that made the signs intelligible. And nothing lay beyond the text or outside it – well, at least for Strauss and Geerzt. Ricoeur was always pushing towards something more original and which provided the impetus for there being either texts, contexts or signification at all. If texts became more difficult to distinguish from contexts and were indeed continually disseminating themselves through myriad semiotic channels, cited and recited in different forms, through different media, then this ‘textual turn’ engendered any number of complex analyses of the dynamic and unpredictable relations between texts and contexts. Context, after structuralism, post-structuralism, New Historicism10 and ActorNetwork theory11 is made more complex: any bounded text or piece of semiotic action emerges from and returns to other texts or textualities that surround and inform it. Texts too have been made more complex, because they cannot be neatly severed from each other and disappear into some flat, homogenous landscape called a ‘field’ or a ‘grid’. Some texts are more important than others. Some texts generate further texts more than others. The Bible, Shakespeare, the works of Freud, the paintings of Botticelli, the music of Bach – these have all generated and become embedded within other productions. Context spreads in wild and wonderful ways. Some publishers rejected J. K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter novel, and the impact on literacy levels across

10

11

For New Historicism see the ground-breaking collection of essays by Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980). For Actor-Network Theory see Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to ActorNetwork-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

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the world might have been stopped right there.12 But, thankfully, another publisher saw its potential! Furthermore, some contextual backgrounds are readable and others are not. Contextualism can only treat those that are readable or have become readable through becoming texts. But there is much that is unreadable – informing the cultural imaginary, informing the presupposed social emotions, constructing our habitus. There is the terrain of what has been called the ‘cognitive unconscious’.13 Contemporary historians have turned attention on trying to articulate those unreadable backgrounds. Gathering fragments from numerous sources they construct histories of silence, of listening, of smelling. They attempt to excavate glimpses of the subtextual and render it more available to us – giving us thicker accounts of texts and contexts. Since the 1990s, and in part responding to the espousal of an all-embracing textual approach to culture, a group of linguistic anthropologists based in Chicago have been examining the ‘social-interactional entextualization/contextualization’ processes.14 In the struggle to find a language to express, what no one has really examined before jargon (unfortunately) abounds. But basically, what they are examining are the social relations that give rise to texts – this is what they mean by ‘entextualizing’: not any single text but the metamorphoses that produce textual transmissions and replications. These social relations, when examined, give rise to a ‘metadiscourse’ – identifiable categories outside or beyond discourse that make it possible at all. The text itself ‘has the ability to freeze-frame past and future, eliminating the dynamic and contingent social properties from which it was assembled’.15 It is the ‘assembling’ they wish to focus their examinations on – the transposition, transductions and translations between gesture, talk and writing that betray shared cultures from which texts emerge. These examinations provide some remarkable observations: One cannot predict from the form of an utterance the aspects of its context that may be critical to its interpretation; nor can one expect the relevant aspects of context to be finite or bounded. … A communicative act has a relation to other acts, including the past, the future, the hypothetical, the conspicuously avoided, and so on, and these relations – intersecting frames, if you will – inform the participation structure of the moment.16

So, Charles Taylor, in his research into the cultural shift from the enchanted to the disenchanted world, is right to demand an investigation into the ‘context of understanding’. For beliefs are and have lived conditions for the possibility or impossibility of certain imaginative experiences of the world. ‘All beliefs are held within 12

13 14

15 16

The Harry Potter ‘literacy phenomenon’ is well documented. See Linda Doherty, ‘Harry Potter helps lift school literacy rates’, 19 September 2002, accessed 21 February 2016, http://www.smh.com.au/ articles/2002/09/19/1032054870385.html, for an account of its impact on school children in New South Wales, especially boys. John F. Kihlstrom, ‘The Cognitive Unconscious’, Science 237 (1987), 1445–52. Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, eds, Natural Histories of Discourse (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 8. Silverstein and Urban, eds, Natural Histories of Discourse, 13. Judith I. Irvine, ‘Shadow Conversations: The Indeterminacy of Participant Roles’, in Natural History of Discourse, ed. Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 131–59, 135.

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a context or framework of the taken-for-granted.’17 Analyses of the way systematic theology was engaged in the life-worlds of Cyril of Jerusalem or Hugh of St Victor or Philip Melanchthon attempt to discern the complexity of participation in the social relations that gave rise to the texts and their pedagogical deployment. Similarly, the practice of composing an engaged systematic theology works with, critically responds to and elucidates the participations (theological, social, cultural, historical, political) in which it is involved and in which it is inducting others (primarily its readers) to be involved. Thus, we are not simply talking ‘context’ here, unless we have a more nuanced understanding of what context means. We can always re-contextualize. We can colour in the background with historical details until we generate a three-dimensional image. But we are examining with an engaged systematics how the language was learnt and redeployed; how the form of doing and conceiving theology in this way and with these emphases was created; how we imagined that this was the way in which we should speak. And, then how we practised that speech in the numerous ways in which understanding is communicated in social relations and enriched. As the cultural anthropologist, Asif Agha, has detailed: ‘Cultural models are often normalized by social practices so as to constitute routine versions of (even normative models for) the social behaviours of which they are models.’18 This process of cultural formation will become central to this project as a whole because it involves the way discursive activities embed values. An engaged systematic theology is an embedded and embedding theology. This will be one of its operational keys for the cultivation of ethical life and not unrelated, obviously, to pedagogy and spiritual formation. As an embedded theology the criticisms of both syncretism and ideology have to be tackled head on. Embedded is embodied. Because of the nature of the dissemination of signs and the circulation of social energies that meld text to context in myriad and complex ways, syncretism will never be avoided. And the purism sought by those wishing to avoid such syncretism is both a false consciousness and an impossibility. Ideology too cannot be avoided because we see from somewhere; our knowledge is freighted with human interests (personal and collective). There is no ideology-free zone and the idea there is is again a false consciousness just as all ideology is false consciousness. Our ideas are lived and changed and lived again differently, continually. Cultures are produced and transformed and reproduced again differently, continually. The same can be said of the beliefs and hopes and desires and fears that inform all ideas and cultural productions.

3 Epistemology An engaged systematic theology sets out towards a new epistemology. It will never get there. It will never have the certainty of truth that it seeks. It will never realize the 17

18

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 13. Agha, Language and Social Relations, 5.

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desires and dreams that lie behind secular reasoning: transparency, total accountability, pure reason, etc. But the whole project is orientated towards and engages with a way of seeing and understanding the world differently, theologically; the world as God sees it. The pedagogy of the senses in Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures and the pedagogy of affect in Philip Melanchthon’s Loci communes 1521, combine to foster and develop that embodied rationality of faith seeking understanding – seeking, that is, to know (where knowledge involves intimate participation of knower in what is being known) the wisdom of divine operations and the disposition of the created world for such a wisdom. This was the heart of Hugh of St Victor’s project. It is a restauratio and a reformatio of our sensing and feeling, distorted seeing and understanding, which both challenges and invokes engaged systematic theology to offer a new epistemology. As one theologian working herself in this embodied theological manner has succinctly put it: theology’s ‘epistemological task [is] cleansing, reordering, and redirecting the apparatuses of one’s own thinking, desiring, and seeing’.19 It is plain, as Cyril, Hugh and Philip recognized, that the pursuit and orientation of such an embodied epistemology impacts on two directly connected and both fundamental human activities. First, it will change the way we speak, how we name, what we imagine, and our understanding of what we are doing when we speak, name and imagine. It opens new ways to imagine that are personal and collective; as collective, such changes to the imagination, our capacity to imagine, will have cultural and material effects. It will change the cultural imaginary.20 Second, it will change the way we act. It will issue into, foster and ferment ethical life. This is why the project as a whole takes on that title; it is the omega of an engaged systematic theology as it is the alpha, for this is life with Christ and hidden in God. Christ who is, simply (if we could see it clearly) life, ‘our life’, creative life, eternal life, the tree of life, by whom and through whom all things were created. As the Psalmist tells us: ‘Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the Lord’ (Ps. 107.43, my emphasis). All theological knowledge, the Psalmist’s observation of ‘these things’, issues from embodied cognition (even when it is divinely revealed), so just as there can be no actual distinction between first and second-order theology, practice and belief, so there can be no hard and fast distinction, from the human point of view, between revealed and natural theology. In fact, an engaged systematic theology questions what both ‘revelation’ and ‘natural’ are. As I have said, this attention to embodied cognition will require rejecting any functionalist approach to doctrine – functional both in terms of teaching the ‘five steps to salvation’ and functional also in confessionalism that is really an expression of the secular politics of identity (and the cheap, consumer,‘imagined’ and surveillanced communities they produce). The loyality card and the sect are two expressions of the same functionalism, the same politics of the ‘friend and the foe’ (Schmitt), the same 19

20

Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 20. I have been concerned about the way the Christian faith can transform the cultural imaginary since writing Cities of God (London: Routledge, 2000). I only realized that that was what I was trying to do as I worked on Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 159–72. There I developed the notion of changing the cultural imaginary, and explained how I used the term ‘imaginary’.

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operations of the desire to dominate by disciplining (Foucault, Taylor), and the same fears borne of social atomism of having nowhere to belong, and no one to belong to or with. An engaged systematic theology pitches itself against the policing of the confessionalized sect and what John Milbank has described as the ‘extrinsic obedient response to revealed propositions’.21 For embodied cognition there is no discernible divide between the extrinsic and the intrinsic at the level of experience (including the experience of grace).

Conclusion In sum, then, the central axiom of engaged systematics as both a way of approaching theologies and a way of composing them is the understanding that doctrine is lived. It is in and as lived, that speaking of Jesus today communicates effectively. That does not mean that doctrine cannot become propositional statements and declarations of belief. Doctrine as lived cannot reduce Christian teaching to the critical examination of propositions, of texts. Because, as we learn and modify the language of these Christian teachings within quite specific socio-economic, cultural and historical contexts, that language begins to shape the ways in which we feel about, understand in, imagine and act because of. And some of our acts, in fact the majority of acts as responses to, are not consciously available to us. It is only in and through this learning that there can be speaking – that speaking of Jesus today.

Bibliography Agha, Asif (2007), Language and Social Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bourdieu, Pierre (1993), The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Randal Johnson (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Coakley, Sarah (2013), God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Doherty, Linda (2002), ‘Harry Potter helps lift school literacy rates’, 19 September 2002, accessed 21 February 2016, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/19/1032054870385. html. Foucault, Michael (1979), The History of Sexuality, Part One: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Allen Lane). Greenblatt, Stephen (1980), Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Irvine, Judith I. (1996), ‘Shadow Conversations: The Indeterminacy of Participant Roles’, in Natural History of Discourse, ed. Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), 131–59. Kihlstrom, John F. (1987), ‘The Cognitive Unconscious’, Science, 237: 1445–52. 21

John Milbank, ‘A Closer Walk on the Wild Side’, in Varieties of Secularism in A Secular Age, ed. Michael Warner, Jonathan Vanantwerpen and Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 71.

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Latour, Bruno (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Milbank, John (2010), ‘A Closer Walk on the Wild Side’, in Varieties of Secularism in A Secular Age, ed. Michael Warner, Jonathan Vanantwerpen and Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 54–104. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1986) Jesus in our Western Culture: Mysticism, Ethics and Politics (London: SCM Press). Silverstein, Michael and Greg Urban, eds (1996), Natural Histories of Discourse (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Taylor, Charles (2007), A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). Ward, Graham (2016), How the Light Gets In. Ethical Life Volume I (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ward, Graham (2014), Unbelievable: Why We Believe and Why We Don’t (London: I.B.Tauris). Ward, Graham (2004), Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Ward, Graham (2000), Cities of God (London: Routledge).

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Still Revealing Himself: How Jesus’ Resurrection Enables Us to Be Public Theologians Erik Borgman

Many seem to read Charles Taylor’s Secular Age as a watershed in our thinking about secularization.1 Taylor’s concept of the ‘immanent frame’ in particular has become highly influential. In its popular summary it states that our secular culture provides people with a worldview in which there simply is no room for anything beyond the visible and the measurable. It cannot even be imagined, except in the esoteric forms of Romantic and post-Romantic art and in the kitsch forms existing in some niches of popular culture. Interest in a spiritual world, contact with deceased loved-ones, the soul as the deep core of our personalities, fascination with the occult – these phenomena do not signify a return or resurgence of religion, but indicate the growing inability of Western culture to understand what religion might even be about. This inability seems well on its way to blurring our vision of the true nature of religious traditions and even some of those who are considered to be specialists seem to consider these traditions as sets of ultimately random ideas about a reality which is principally beyond knowledge. This puts a strong pressure on even the very idea of theology, which classically builds on the conviction that what is received and expressed in religion also has the aspect of knowledge. In the classic understanding religion is not a self-referential system closed in on itself. Something is known and recognized in and through religious faith and that is what theology builds on.2 In a post-nominalist, post-Kantian understanding of the world and how it can be known, there is no room for theology except as a systematized expression of what are ultimately purely subjective convictions.3 However, it was never Taylor’s purpose to proclaim the belated but final victory of secularization. On the contrary, one could phrase the driving question of Taylor’s book as: how to be secular in order not to be secular, as Calvin College philosopher 1 2

3

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007). Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘What is Theology?’, Revelation and Theology, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 2 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 65–116 [96–181]. The Dutch original of the article was published in 1958. Cf. Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2008).

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James Smith has pointed out.4 Although I do not think Taylor’s answer to this question is in fact convincing, the question is highly pertinent. It is my thesis here that as theologians we should – and in fact, can – not adhere to the immanent frame and its ontological presuppositions. It is not the assignment of theologians in the public sphere to interpret religion secularly, but to understand secularity, and the public sphere with it, from a non-secular and thus ‘religious’ point of view. Only a clear-cut position on the nature of the world in which we participate and of the culture through which we relate to it will make theology publicly relevant. The driving question in Taylor’s Secular Age was already the driving question in the work of the mature Edward Schillebeeckx. Schillebeeckx has often fallen prey to the same misunderstanding as Taylor, but Schillebeeckx was never the champion of secularization many have considered him to be. He tried to develop a way of being secular that made it possible not to be secular, what he considered to be religious in a truly Christian manner. In all kinds of ways he tried to be in solidarity with his contemporaries, but to enable him to do this he ultimately refused the secular frame of thinking that for many became increasingly self-evident. This makes him, in my view, a figurehead for a contemporary public theology.

1  Responding to John Robinson In order to characterize the cultural atmosphere in which the mature Schillebeeckx worked, let me offer this quotation, trying to describe what it means to have faith: It is not the facile faith of generations before us, who thought that everything was arranged for the best in the best of worlds or that physical and psychological development necessarily worked out toward something they called progress. It is in a sense a much harder belief – the belief and the faith that the future will be all right because there will always be enough people to fight for a decent future. It is in … a switch from the, so to say, mechanical optimism of previous generations to what I might call the fighting optimism of the present generation.

These are not Schillebeeckx’s words. These words were pronounced in the late 1950s by the then UN secretary general, the Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld (1905– 61),5 who was not just a major world leader. When he died in 1961 he left a diary reporting what he called his ‘journey inwards’ titled Markings (Swedish: Vägmärken) that is considered a spiritual classic. In this work he expresses eloquently what many felt was new in the spiritual and religious situation after the Second World War. It had become undeniable that there was no pre-established and stable order, neither in the 4

5

Cf. James K. A. Smith, How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014). Dag Hammarskjöld, ‘Speech at the UN Correspondents Organisation in His Honour at the Beginning of His Second Term’, in Public Papers of the Secretaries General of the United Nations, Vol. 4 Dag Hammarskjöld 1958-1960, ed. Andrew W. Cordier and Wilder Foote (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1974), 62–4, Quote from 64. On Hammerskjöld, see Roger Lipsey, Hammarskjold: A Life (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2013).

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social sense nor in the metaphysical sense, and therefore no mechanical progress or unavoidable moral growth. It was up to human beings to order the world. History was not following any given scenario and especially all that went wrong and was inhumane in the world, could not in any way be justified as God’s mysterious will, seemingly cruel but ultimately and essentially benevolent. If it had a purpose and a meaning at all, it was an appeal to human responsibility to change it. ‘Man’ (as it still was customary to say in those days), human beings, took centre stage in the contemporary culture. This is what was commonly called ‘a farewell to metaphysics’, ‘secularisation’, and in a more dramatic key even ‘the death of God’. Catholic theology was belatedly confronted with all this, as an effect of what was in all kinds of ways truly an opening up of the Roman Catholic Church following the aggiornamento programme of Pope John XXIII. In the early 1960s Catholic theology tried to reinvent itself, now consciously participating in a world it had long turned its back on. Anglican bishop John Robinson’s 1963 bestseller Honest to God put what then was seen as the modern world and its massive challenges to the Christian way of life and its understanding on the agenda, not just of theologians, but also of educated lay people. In the mid-1960s in the Netherlands, Robinson was everywhere in religious debates and conversations. His interpretation of Rudolph Bultmann’s programme of demythologization was widely endorsed: Christianity, to have a future, should leave behind the metaphysical understanding of ‘a God out there’ in charge of the course of history and the personal lives of human beings. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of a religionless Christianity, and his exhortation in his Letters and Papers from Prison for Christians to live in the face of God as if there was no God, expressed for many in both the Protestant and the Catholic intelligentsia what they saw as their situation and their task, including the members of the clergy. Responding to Robinson in the year his book was published, Schillebeeckx explained in a forty-four-page-long article that he thought Honest to God was overstating its case.6 There may be major changes in culture leading to major challenges to the Christian faith, but in Schillebeeckx’s view theology had already come up with new conceptualizations, in particular of the relation between God and world. In fact, he himself had suggested already some major alternatives to the way of thinking that were considered to be ‘traditional’. After a wave of unfavourable criticism of Robinson’s plea to rethink and re-imagine Christianity from established theologians and church leaders, however, Schillebeeckx wrote a second article to defend him, this time fortytwo pages long.7 In particular he praised Robinson for his pastoral approach. Probably having in mind the strong criticism the Dutch bishops sometimes received for what they themselves saw as an open and pastoral approach to the contemporary situation in line with the documents of the Second Vatican Council, Schillebeeckx underlined how it was part of Robinson’s episcopal ministry to try to understand how contemporary 6

7

Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Evangelische zuiverheid en menselijke waarachtigheid’, Tijdschrift voor Theologie 3 (1963), 283–326. This chapter, and the second one on Robinson, were combined into one in the English translation of them in Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Life in God and Life in the World’, God and Man, trans. Edward Fitzgerald and Peter Tomlinson (London: Sheed and Ward, 1969), 85–209. Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Herinterpretatie van het geloof in het licht van de seculariteit: Honest to Robinson’, Tijdschrift voor Theologie 4 (1964), 109–50.

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people really lived their faith and how this challenged the traditional understanding of what it means to be Christian. Schillebeeckx recognized in Robinson’s book a pastoral concern that had also motivated him from the beginning. In his first book, De sacramentele heilseconomie, published in 1952, as technical and detailed as it was, Schillebeeckx stated his intention to show how true theological reflection can’t be unworldly ‘because this reflection arises out of living the faith and in turn serves the life of faith’. This statement also indicates why, according to Schillebeeckx, theology can never simply mirror what people in any given time think they need, and accommodate the Christian tradition to that. As he phrased it in these early days of his career, Catholic theology ‘builds the life value of dogma on its meaningful truth value, and not the other way around’. And in a formulation that is fundamental to him: ‘The objective being itself of the mysteries of faith is an irradiation: radiance and life value.’ In Schillebeeckxian Dutch, just this once: ‘Het objectieve zijn zelf der geloofsmysteries is een irradiatie: uitstraling en levenswaarde.’8 Theology should not accommodate to contemporary culture as it is, theology is participating in building a contemporary culture by witnessing to what is made public in this irradiation of the divine presence through the traditions of faith and theology. A lot of things changed through the years in Schillebeeckx’s theology, but this remained at the heart of his theological project.

2  Jesus as the bridge between the traditions and us Assessing the third session of the Second Vatican Council that took place in the autumn of 1964, Schillebeeckx wrote: It is no doubt true that not a single bishop brought up in the Council chamber the problem of our time as expressed, for instance, by Bishop Robinson of Woolwich, and materially shared by many Christians besides him. Nevertheless, the problem was felt to be reflected in some of the interventions, betraying the council fathers’ keenness to bridge the rift between the church and the world.9

For Schillebeeckx, secularization and Robinson’s description of its effects in the lives of believers were symbols of the disconnection between church and world, Christianity and contemporary culture. To understand Schillebeeckx’s approach, it should be clear that in his view it ultimately simply could not be that the irradiation of the mysteries of faith was not getting through to the lives of twentieth-century Christians in any way. This irradiation was in his view an aspect of ‘the objective being itself of the mysteries of faith’ and could not be taken away from them. If these mysteries were true, if they were of the truth that ultimately is God himself, they should somehow still be speaking to us. This basic conviction is very important for Schillebeeckx’s approach to the connection 8

9

Edward Schillebeeckx, De sacramentele heilseconomie: Theologische bezinning op S. Thomas’ sacramentenleer in het licht van de traditie en van de hedendaagse sacramentsproblematiek (Bilthoven: Nelissen 1952), v. Edward Schillebeeckx, Vatican II: The Real Achievement, trans. H. J. J. Vaughan (London: Sheed and Ward, 1967). See ‘The Third Session’, 1–26, 20.

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of church and world. In his view we should not make the tradition and the mysteries it presents speak to us again. We should see and hear how they in fact do speak to us, today and in our circumstances, even if it is not very obvious that they do. In De sacramentele heilseconomie Schillebeeckx argues how the Christian sacraments are not special in themselves. They are special because they are tools and channels through which the living Christ makes himself present to us. The question is not how we use the sacraments to get into contact with him, but how He has chosen the sacraments to be present with us. ‘We consider the sacraments’, Schillebeeckx writes in 1952, ‘as a cultic symbolizing activity by Christ in and through his Church community.’10 Sacraments are signs that signify that Christ is still with us, not because we make him present through the performance of specific cultic acts in a specific manner, as if his presence is effected by these acts – for instance by the priestly use of the formula Hoc est enim corpus meum in the eucharist. Sacraments are signs, Schillebeeckx says with Aquinas – sacramentum in genere est signum – and the sacraments signify because Christ acts and makes himself present as the ultimate one in our cultic acts. Thus these acts are sanctified by Christ’s acting presence, but they remain thoroughly human and profane at the same time. The sacramental presence of Christ is an extension of his human presence during his lifetime. Christ is the primordial sacrament of the encounter with God, making himself present in our celebration of the sacraments.11 This is not the place to go into the merits and shortcomings of this approach for a renewal of a theology of sacraments and sacramentality.12 Here I simply present it as background to Schillebeeckx’s choice in the late 1960s to focus his theological research on Jesus. It is my thesis that Jesus: An Experiment in Christology and Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord constitute Schillebeeckx’s attempt to respond to the breach Robinson had recognized between Christian tradition and contemporary culture. Surprisingly, it is not theology that has to bridge the breach between Jesus and us, in Schillebeeckx’s view. It is Jesus himself that has to show his radiating truth again  – theologians have to trace and point out in a convincing manner how Jesus shows his radiating truth to contemporary people in the secularized culture of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. At the very opening of Jesus and before the book really starts, Schillebeeckx explains in a kind of preamble ‘why this book was written’. It states in a rather loose and offhand way some of Schillebeeckx’s fascinations with Jesus. He writes: The Christian churches of today, and even outsiders … who still find an experience of salvation in … Jesus after the lapse of so much time (though not without the 10 11

12

Schillebeeckx, De sacramentele heilseconomie, vi. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, accessed 19 February 2016, http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ english/summa/index.html. See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, Q. 60, art. 1. This is the focus of Schillebeeckx’s brief and more popular sequel to De sacramentele heilseconomie: cf. Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, trans. Paul Barret, N. D. Smith, CW vol. I (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014). The Dutch original was published in 1959. See, for instance, André Haquin, ‘Vers une théologie fondamentale des sacrements: De E. Schillebeeckx à L.-M. Chauvet’, Anámnesis 4 (1994), 107–33; Susan A. Ross, ‘Church and Sacraments’, in The Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Mary Catherine Hilkert and R. J. Schreiter (New York, NY: Fordham University Press 2002) 133–48; and Lieven Boeve, ‘L’interruption sacramentelle des rites d’existence’, Questions Liturgiques: Studies in Liturgy 83 (2002), 30–51.

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mediating function of the churches throughout the centuries), are still a living witness among us to Jesus of Nazareth and what he initiated. Without the historical factor of the church and its mediating role we today (except for a few specialist historians) would know nothing of one Jesus of Nazareth. Apart from a number of privileged specialists in history, nobody, as things stand today, wants to bear testimony to the quite justifiably rebellious slave Spartacus, or to that grim critic of the religious culture of his time, John the Baptist. This striking difference, if not absolutely conclusive, is historically of exceptional importance. It is an arresting fact and it makes one think. What goes on here? Why this difference in aftereffect between one historical figure and another?13

These lines summarize Schillebeeckx’s answer to the breach between tradition and situation: wherever people ‘find an experience of salvation in this Jesus after the lapse of so much time’, in the church or outside of the church, Jesus is making himself present to us through the irradiation of his mysteries. Schillebeeckx is not merely saying here that interpretations of Jesus’ significance in strictly historical, political or humanitarian terms are adequate, or even necessary in a secularized culture – although he does think they have their role to play. Here he is ultimately claiming that even these interpretations, their own secular self-image notwithstanding, signify what Christians confess when they say that Jesus is risen as Christ and Lord and that this is what makes them important. Here we are confronted with what is ultimately a Thomistic undercurrent in Schillebeeckx’s approach to Christology. Schillebeeckx may have declared in the 1970s that for us moderns Aquinas’ static and unhistorical metaphysics can no longer be the foundation of our faith,14 but his theological approach remains deeply influenced by his medieval confrère. For Aquinas, Jesus Christ in his humanity was what he calls an ‘instrument’ of God’s salvific will. In his Summa Contra Gentiles Aquinas states: The human nature of Christ was assumed in order to accomplish instrumentally those actions that are proper to God alone, such as cleansing from sin, enlightening minds by grace, and leading into the perfection of eternal life. The human nature of Christ, then, is related to God as a proper and conjoined instrument, just as the hand is to the soul.15

I will not go into the subtleties of Aquinas’ understanding of the word ‘instrument’ and of what it implies if one says that Jesus is God’s instrument.16 In the present context it suffices to point out the implication that in and through the human acts of Jesus, God 13

14 15

16

Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 6 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014,) 2 [18]. The Dutch original was published in 1974. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 579–81 [617–20]. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, accessed 19 February 2016, http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ english/ContraGentiles.htm. See Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, IV, Caput 41: ‘humana natura in Christo assumpta est ut instrumentaliter operetur ea quae sunt operationes propriae solius Dei, sicut est mundare peccata, illuminare mentes per gratiam, et introducere in perfectionem vitae aeternae. Comparatur igitur humana natura Christi ad Deum sicut instrumentum proprium et coniunctum, ut manus ad animam’. Cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, ‘La Causalité salvifique de la résurrection de Christ selon saint Thomas’, Revue Thomiste 96 (1996), 179–208.

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acts towards us as human beings. And the other way around. In Aquinas’ own words in the Summa Theologiae: ‘All the actions and passions of Christ operate instrumentally in virtue of his divinity for the salvation of man.’17 With a happy analogy, this has been compared be one commentator to playing a musical instrument: ‘Christ’s humanity is the cause of divine grace in no less a way than a piano is the cause of the music that ushers from the hands of a virtuoso pianist.’18 This is the background for Schillebeeckx’s detailed analyses in Jesus. This may come as a surprising claim. Presenting Jesus’ humanity as an instrument of a divine player may seem to be in tension with Schillebeeckx’s strong reserve against any talk about Jesus that does not start with the recognition that He is first and foremost a fully human being.19 But the point of Schillebeeckx’s concentrated attention on the acts and passions of the historical and fully human Jesus, of his efforts to find out with all necessary meticulousness what Jesus really said and did and what really happened to him, is exactly to hear in it the music of our salvation as it is played for us in Jesus’ humanity – and thus to make it possible for us to hear it again. Schillebeeckx is not drawing a portrait of Jesus as a human being in history first, in order to complete it afterwards with an analysis of the language about the Christ of faith in the confession of the church.20 For Schillebeeckx this is not the way to solve what he calls in Jesus ‘the Christological problem’. On the contrary, it is a way of perpetuating this problem. It will always bump into the question of what could possibly be a justification for the attribution of divine qualities to a human person. Ultimately nothing can, in Schillebeeckx’s view, except the person of Jesus himself. The experiment in Schillebeeckx’s Christology lies in his attempt not to let believers or nonbelievers and their interpretations of Jesus bridge the gap that from their side is by definition unbridgeable, but to let Jesus in his humanity be again the instrument of God reaching out to us. In Jesus this is expressed repeatedly in the summarizing statement that in him what Schillebeeckx calls in Dutch heil-van-Godswege is announced. This expression, heil-van-Godswege, is notoriously difficult to translate. Heil means ‘salvation’, but also ‘healing’, ‘well-being’, ‘flourishing’ coming from God. Heil is, in brief, for Schillebeeckx the Dutch equivalent of all that ‘grace’ stands for in his Thomistic theology: the fulfilment of everything human nature is longing and striving for, but cannot reach by itself alone.

3  Jesus’ resurrection: Ongoing divine presence through his humanity For Aquinas, Jesus never stopped working through the instrument of his humanity after his death and resurrection. On the contrary, from the eternity that He now, after 17 18

19 20

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, Q. 48, art. 6. Paul Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press 2009), 153. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 560–5 [597–602]. This is the response to the so-called Second Quest for the historical Jesus in Walter Kasper, Jesus der Christus (Mainz: Matthias-Grunenwald-Verlag, 1974). Kasper is trying to construct a dialogue between the historical and the religious approach to Jesus Christ. Schillebeeckx is trying to show how theology is present in the historical approach and brings a meaningful frame to it.

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his resurrection and glorification, shares with his Father, He is still acting through his human acts and passions, especially in the sacraments, but also in the spiritual meaning these actions and passions communicate when they are contemplated. In the Summa Theologiae Aquinas quotes Paul’s phrase that ‘the word of the cross to them that are saved … is the power of God’ (1 Cor. 1.18) as a starting point for explaining that at least Jesus’ passions still work through to us ‘by faith and the sacraments of faith’.21 As we have seen, Schillebeeckx had made this the basis for his theology of the sacraments. In Jesus he extends this first to Jesus’ actions. This is clearly in the spirit of Aquinas himself, who in the Summa also discusses Jesus’ way of associating with other human beings, the way He submitted himself to temptations by the devil and how He withstood them, to the doctrine He preached and the miracles He performed, all in order to enable his readers to draw spiritual meaning from them.22 Second, Schillebeeckx extends Jesus’ presence through the instrument of his humanity to the stories about his acts and passions in the Gospels, and to the way these stories are present or resonate in modern Western culture, inspiring people to lead lives following Jesus’ example. For Schillebeeckx, the decisive question here is not whether people belong to the church or whether they consider themselves Christians or Catholics. In line with the documents of the Second Vatican Council, that had stated we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit ‘in a manner known only to God offers … the possibility of being associated with [His] paschal mystery’ to all human beings, Schillebeeckx is convinced that ‘grace works in an unseen way’ not only in Christians, but in all people of good will,23 always remaining divine grace. This is what is behind Schillebeeckx’s opening text in Jesus, stating how the many ‘who still find an experience of salvation in Jesus, after the lapse of so much time, are still a living witness among us to Jesus of Nazareth and what he released’ – the Dutch for ‘salvation’ here is heil, with all the connotations I presented earlier. In fact they are witnessing here to Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus is still capable of being present as Saviour because He himself is saved and still acts through his humanity. Schillebeeckx insisted on calling himself ‘a happy theologian’.24 However, one of the more tragic aspects of his theological career is that he has never received full credit for his attempt to regain the full meaning of the resurrection of Jesus. On the contrary, his view on the resurrection has been found wanting, both by some of his theological peers and by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.25 Much attention was focused on how he argued that an empty tomb in itself does not point to a resurrection in the Christian sense of the word, because the Christian faith in the resurrection is not 21 22 23

24

25

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, Q. 48, art. 6; cf. also Q. 49, art. 3. Ibid., III, Q. 40–4. Gaudium et Spes, 7 December 1965, accessed 28 February 2016, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. See 22. Cf. Edward Schillebeeckx, I am a Happy Theologian: Conversations with Francesco Strazzari (London: SCM, 1994). See, for the theological debate, Edward Schillebeeckx, Interim Report on the Books Jesus and Christ, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 8 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 63–81 [74–93]. The original Dutch version was published in 1978. See, for the debate with the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, The Schillebeeckx Case: Official Exchange of Letters and Documents, ed. Ted Mark Schoof, trans. Matthew K. O’Connell (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1984).

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belief in what Schillebeeckx calls ‘the re-animation of a body’.26 Both the empty grave and Jesus’ appearances signify the resurrection, in Schillebeeckx’s view, but are not in themselves the resurrection.27 Much less attention has been paid, however, to the lengthy argumentation in Jesus against those who argue that it is only the message of Jesus’ resurrection and the ongoing preaching of what He preached that is important.28 As Schillebeeckx makes clear, if Rudolph Bultmann had been right that Christ has risen ‘into the kerygma’, that is into the message of his resurrection, this message would be empty. Jesus himself is saved and restored in his true dignity by his Abba-God, and that is what is proclaimed. It is because Jesus’ humiliating and senseless death ultimately leads to his exaltation and glorification with God, that we can still see history as the time in which God’s kingdom of life and justice for all is indeed drawing close, as Jesus preached. Schillebeeckx values Bultmann’s stress on the importance of the proclamation that Christ is risen. But ultimately, his view is the exact opposite of that of Bultmann and those who follow in his footsteps, openly or in hidden ways, then or now. For Schillebeeckx, the message that Jesus is risen from the dead is not a surrogate for, but an aspect of the resurrection. The Risen One acts through this message and this is one of the ways in which He makes himself present. In Schillebeeckx’s view it is the Resurrected Christ who united his disciples again after his death, forgave their lack of solidarity with his suffering, restored their community in a renewed faith and sent them to proclaim the salvation that is to be found in Him Who died and rose again – a salvation they themselves were in the process of experiencing through the Spirit that urged them to preach the resurrection as what Schillebeeckx phrases as ‘an exultation and new creation, that is to say, God’s corrective victory over the negativity of death and [the human] history of suffering, that Jesus shared’.29 At the end of Jesus, Schillebeeckx clarifies how this approach to Jesus enables him to be close to his secularized contemporaries because as a theologian and a Christian believing in the resurrection, he fundamentally differs from them. It is possible in his view to affirm the fundamental desire of human beings for a meaningful existence in the face of the overwhelming power of evil and what time and time again can only be experienced as the victory of death and meaninglessness. According to the myth of the Enlightenment it is in the name of this desire that human beings turn away from religious traditions and their often violent repression. But it is possible to affirm this desire only because it is God who gives it and grants its ultimate fulfilment. As Schillebeeckx writes: In our modern situation the startling implication of Jesus’ praxis, his message and its historical failure in his death is that we have to rethink the contemporary 26

27

28 29

Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 306 [337]. Given the original Dutch word lijk, the translation ‘re-animation of a corpse’ in my view would have been more adequate. Schillebeeckx interest in the hypothetical Q collection as a Gospel without the explicit story of the resurrection, does not mean that he is only interested in Jesus’ message and that the resurrection is not important in his view. It shows, for him, that the faith in the resurrection is not bound to stories about an empty grave and miraculous appearances. Schilebeeckx, Jesus, 605–10 [644–50]. Ibid., 609 [649].

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notion of total emancipation through self-liberation. For us his death by execution, which did not shake his confidence in the human focus of God’s coming reign – he continued, in the face of immanent death, to proffer salvation from God – is the challenging message that historical failures do not have the last word, that even in utter fiascos we may continue trusting in God.30

This trust, Schillebeeckx stresses, is not a principle simply to hold on to through ‘whatever happens, put your trust in God; then – how? I don’t know, just look at the cross! – [humankind’s] liberation, eschatological fulfilled salvation will come’.31 ‘Just look at the cross’, the ultimate sign of contradiction itself! There is no guarantee for what it says and signifies outside of the sign, it is the sign, it is the suffering of Jesus Christ itself that speaks as an instrument of God ‘who silently reveals himself in Jesus’ historically defenseless failure on the cross’, again Schillebeeckx’s words.32 Thus it speaks of salvation because it witnesses to God’s presence, not the other way around. Thus every form of human liberation and emancipation from suffering and oppression, every act of solidarity and every attempt to help, becomes a sign that God’s encompassing salvation is near.

Conclusion Thomas Merton has written that the core problem at the heart of modern culture is revealed by the myth of Prometheus. The core problem in his view is not the desire for food, shelter and happiness in abundance. The problem is the idea that these things can only be gained by stealing fire from the gods, which leads to severe and eternal punishment.33 Modern culture seems unable to take serious the very suggestion that is at the heart of Christianity: that our salvation, healing, well-being and flourishing, in Schillebeeckx’s terms our heil, is not just our desire. It is God’s desire. As Schillebeeckx suggested, however, confronted with the catastrophes of Modernity we can only believe in our heil if it is a divine gift, not given once and for all and then apparently spoiled, but given time and again. According to the Christian tradition it is given time and again, through Jesus Christ, resurrected and glorified. Just as during his life on earth, He continues to make grace present and public. So, in conclusion, we have to refuse the immanent frame in order to see how we can truly be part of our secular world and live. As the Christian tradition suggests, we ultimately live by grace. To understand and to explain how it is that we can live in this world and find heil, is in my view the assignment of public theology. Doing theology in line with Schillebeeckx is making public how grace makes itself public, veiled by a secularized culture, veiled in the silent suffering of Jesus on the cross, but

30 31 32 33

Ibid., 600 [638]. Ibid. Ibid., 601 [639]. Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable (New York, NY: New Directions, 1966) 79–90: ‘Prometheus – A Meditation.’

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nevertheless real in its presence and its effects.34 ‘In the Christian understanding of the world, the destiny of all creation is bound up with the mystery of Christ, present from the beginning’, writes Pope Francis in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’.35 To clarify what that means, that is the task of theology. This will make it in a new and unexpected, maybe even unintended, way public – acting, as it says in the Creed: ‘for us and for our salvation’.

Bibliography Boeve, Lieven (2002), ‘L’interruption sacramentelle des rites d’existence’, Questions liturgiques: Studies in Liturgy, 83: 30–51. Borgman, Erik (2009), Overlopen naar de barbaren: Het publieke belang van religie en christendom (Zoetermeer: Klement). Gillespie, Michael Allen (2008), The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Gondreau, Paul (2009), The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press). Hammarskjöld, Dag (1974), ‘Speech at the UN Correspondents Organisation in His Honour at the Beginning of His Second Term’, in Public Papers of the Secretaries General of the United Nations, Vol. 4 Dag Hammarskjöld 1958-1960, ed. Andrew W. Cordier and Wilder Foote (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Haquin, André (1994), ‘Vers une théologie fondamentale des sacrements: De E. Schillebeeckx à L.-M. Chauvet’, Anámnesis, 4: 107–33. Kasper, Walter (1974), Jesus der Christus (Mainz: Matthias-Grunenwald-Verlag). Latour, Bruno and Peter Weibel, eds (2005), Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (Karlsruhe/Cambridge: Center for Arts and Media/The MIT Press). Lipsey, Roger (2013), Hammarskjold: A Life (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press). Merton, Thomas (1966), Raids on the Unspeakable (New York, NY: New Directions). Ross, Susan A. (2002), ‘Church and Sacraments’, in The Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Mary Catherine Hilkert and R. J. Schreiter (New York, NY: Fordham University Press), 133–48. Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, trans. Paul Barret, N. D. Smith, CW vol. I (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 6 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Interim Report on the Books Jesus and Christ, trans. John Bowden CW vol. 8 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), ‘What is Theology?’, in Revelation and Theology, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 2 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark), 65–116 [96–181]. 34

35

The expression ‘making public’ comes from Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds, Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (Karlsruhe/Cambridge: Center for Arts and Media/The MIT Press, 2005). For my view on public theology, cf. Erik Borgman, Overlopen naar de barbaren: Het publieke belang van religie en christendom (Zoetermeer: Klement, 2009). Francis, Laudato Si’: On the Care of Our Common Home, 24 May 2015, accessed 28 February 2016, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_ enciclica-laudato-si.html. See 99.

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Schillebeeckx, Edward (1994), I am a Happy Theologian: Conversations with Francesco Strazzari (London: SCM). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1969), ‘Life in God and Life in the World’, in God and Man, trans. Edward Fitzgerald and Peter Tomlinson (London: Sheed and Ward), 85–209. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1967), Vatican II: The Real Achievement, trans. H. J. J. Vaughan (London: Sheed and Ward). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1964), ‘Herinterpretatie van het geloof in het licht van de seculariteit: Honest to Robinson’, Tijdschrift voor Theologie, 4: 109–50. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1963), ‘Evangelische zuiverheid en menselijke waarachtigheid’, Tijdschrift voor Theologie, 3: 283–326. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1952), De sacramentele heilseconomie: Theologische bezinning op S. Thomas’ sacramentenleer in het licht van de traditie en van de hedendaagse sacramentsproblematiek (Bilthoven: Nelissen). Schoof, Ted Mark (1984), The Schillebeeckx Case: Official Exchange of Letters and Documents, ed. Ted Mark Schoof, trans. Matthew K. O’Connell (New York, NY: Paulist Press). Smith, James K. A. (2014), How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans). Taylor, Charles (2007), A Secular Age (Cambridge: Belknap Press). Torrell, Jean-Pierre (1996), ‘La Causalité salvifique de la résurrection de Christ selon saint Thomas,’ Revue Thomiste, 96: 179–208.

8

Overcoming Political Nestorianism: Towards a Chalcedonian Politics Aristotle Papanikolaou

I am indeed troubled by the recent Christian critique of political democratic liberalism.1 My problem with this critique is that it is theologically in contradiction with itself. On the one hand, most who have engaged in this critique are theologically grounded in the understanding of Christ as delineated by the Council of Chalcedon – that Christ is the one divine person of the Logos in whom is united two natures without confusion, mixture, division or separation. Such an understanding of Christ is part of a distinctive Christian narrative in which the church is a politics and, still for others, implies a distinctive ontology of participation that precludes the idea of the secular as a space in which the church is marginalized, privatized or eliminated. Ironically, however, this critique is guilty of political Nestorianism. In this essay, I will first define what I mean by political Nestorianism. I will then advocate for a politics more consistent with Chalcedon’s minimalist definition of the person of Christ, a politics of non-dualism that is not realized at the level of the rhetoric of demonization or mutual incompatibility, but in the practices in which one learns how to love, even the stranger and the enemy.

1  Political Nestorianism I call the Christian critique of political democratic liberalism ‘political Nestorianism’ because although it claims to be a form of political theology grounded in the insights and achievements of Chalcedonian Christology, it is in contradiction with the attempt by Chalcedon and subsequent Christological clarifications to avoid dualistic or binary forms of thought. This attempt to avoid dualistic thinking is evident in Athanasius’s debates against the so-called Arians, who, though they affirmed the necessity of a 1

Representative examples of theological critique of liberalism are Vigen Guroian, Incarnate Love: Essays in Orthodox Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); William T.  Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics and the Body of Christ (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990); and, of course, Stanley Hauerwas, Toward a Community of Character: A Constructive Christian Social Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991).

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union between the created and the divine, could not conceive how the created could bear the fullness of divinity, or how the realism of divine–human communion and the simplicity of the one God could be mutually affirmed. Athanasius and the Cappadocians could be interpreted as calling out the so-called Arians on their inconsistency and issuing an ultimatum: either stick with your version of divine simplicity and deny the realism of divine–human communion; or, think simplicity so as to imagine the realism of divine–human communion; hence, the doctrine of the Trinity, which affirms the necessity of permanent and factual distinctions in the being of God so as to think the realism of divine–human communion.2 In this non-dualistic understanding of God and of the God–world relation, it is, indeed, difficult to think God without thinking the very-difficult-to-translate Russian sophiological idea of God-manhood or the humanity of God. There is no question that Chalcedon’s minimalism is very much in line with this impulse of thinking the God–world relation non-dualistically. Although Nestorianism itself and as a general trajectory was concerned with preserving the fully humanity of Jesus Christ for the sake of soteriology, it is also clear that there was an Arian-like concern to protect a certain understanding of the simplicity of God. Nestorianism did not deny a union with the full divinity of God, but the union between the divine and the human was mediated by a third – a prosopon – whose status as divine or human was unclear. In the end, for Nestorianism, it was unthinkable for the divine to assume the created in all its finitude. Those two ontological planes, so to speak, simply cannot seep into each other.3 The critique of political democratic liberalism betrays Chalcedon and mimics Nestorian logic insofar as it reinforces the dualisms that Chalcedon attempts to overcome. This dualistic and binary mode of thought is most evident in the rhetoric of mutual exclusivity. As is well known to all here, the argument is that what ultimately emerged from the modern critique of religion is the formation of a secular space carved out and maintained by violence.4 The political liberal-democratic space that emerged from this critique of religion is based on anthropological presuppositions that are mutually exclusive with those of Christian understandings of grace or divine–human communion. The language of human rights becomes suspect insofar as it reinforces this hyper-individualistic anthropology and is used to justify values antithetical to Christian moral principles.5 Christians would be betraying their own theological tradition if they simply accommodated themselves to this politically liberal-democratic configuration, if they simply saw the church playing a functional role in relation to the public sphere. Christians must realize that that the church is a counter-politics to that

2

3

4

5

For a fuller account, see Aristotle Papanikolaou, ‘Reasonable Faith and a Trinitarian Logic’, in Restoring Faith in Reason, ed. Laurence Paul Hemming and Susan Frank Parsons (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 237–55, 245. On the logic of Nestorianism, see John McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004). William T. Cavanaugh, ‘“A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House”: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State’, Modern Theology 11 (1995), 397–420. Stanley Hauerwas, The Church and Abortion: In Search of New Ground for Response (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993), 44–66.

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of the state, no matter which state, insofar as all states exists in and through violence. Christian politics is one that manifests an ontology or narrative of peace. What is very clear in this critique of political democratic liberalism is an us-versusthem, church-versus-world, dualism. It is not anti-creation, and in this sense it is not Manichaean, but it is over and against a certain configuration of the created. What is not Christian is a self-contained, bordered configuration of the created that is overand-against the Christian configuration. The borders collide with each other, and the rhetorical battle is an all-out, winners take all, war. What is Christian becomes a selfidentification over and against this self-contained, bordered social imaginary of the secular, such that any compromise would be a capitulation. This politics of mutual exclusivity and self-identification vis-à-vis the proximate other is evident in American politics. There are Christians, strengthened by narrative and radically Orthodox understandings of Christianity, who cannot but see certain political issues as driven by a godless, politically liberal, humanistic agenda. Any capitulation on these issues would mean a defeat for Christianity and a surrender to the other side. There can be no way of visualizing the legalization of gay marriage since that would mean admitting that godless liberalism is right and Christianity is wrong; social justice has become a bad word since it seems linked to the godless, anti-Christian liberal agenda. Even the issue of gun control gets caught in this dualistic vision of the world as there are those Christians who think that the ‘right’ to bear arms must be maintained if only not to capitulate to the godless liberalism. What is ironic is that such Christians often invoke rights language, the very language of the so-called godless liberalism they are contesting. Some Christian theologians who have been critical of political liberalism would no doubt be appalled at a certain kind of Christian politics against gay marriage, social justice, gun control or a Christian politics that is pro-war; nevertheless they are not willing to question the same us-versus-them, church-versus-world logic that is evident in this form of Christian politics. Such inattention to the nuances of theology is the inevitable consequence of dualistic and binary forms of thought.6 The politics of mutual exclusivity and self-identification vis-à-vis the promixate other is also evident in the post-communist situation, especially the countries in which Orthodoxy is the majority. After the fall of communism, it was not very clear what would happen to religion in the traditional Orthodox countries. It did not take long, however, to quickly discern that the institutional Orthodox churches experienced a new independence, though it would take time to determine whether the historic role of Orthodox Christianity within these countries would be reintegrated as part of the national and cultural identity, or whether communist secularist-as-atheist ideology would have a long-lasting effect on the self-understanding of future generations as Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Georgian, etc. One thing is clear: the institutional Orthodox churches were determined to reconnect the link between national and religious identity through multiple, mostly non-coordinated, strategies. In Russia, this reconnection of religious and national identity seems to have been accomplished as a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the International Social Survey Program 6

For a similar critique of Hauerwas, see Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

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indicates that in 2008, 72 per cent of Russian adults identify as Orthodox Christian, up from 32 per cent in 1991, while only 7 per cent attend religious services once a month.7 While attempting to reassert the cultural and political dominance of Orthodox Christianity after the fall of communism, the Orthodox churches would also have to negotiate the emergence of liberal-democratic structures in the post-communist countries. The Orthodox churches have never engaged in any anti-democracy rhetoric, but in relation to certain litmus-test issues of democracy – teaching religion in public schools, the legal status of religious minorities – the Orthodox churches’ prodemocracy stance would come into conflict with their goal of reasserting the cultural and political dominance of Orthodox Christianity. And, indeed, there were events in the Orthodox world that appeared to have corroborated Samuel Huntington’s now infamous ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, such as the ‘Russian Law on the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Association’, and some actions of the Serbian Patriarchate in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. I could also mention here the controversy in Greece over identifying religion on the official identification cards, even if Greece is not a post-communist country, since one cannot really understand modern Greece without seeing it through a post-Ottoman lens.8 The conflict between rhetorically affirming democratic political structures and rhetorically attempting to refuse the national and religious identity is on full display in Russia. (For The New York Times, there exist no news alerts for any Orthodox church in the world, except for the Russian Orthodox Church. There is even a news alert for Patriarch Kirill.) The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has increasingly been a key player in Russian debates about teaching religion in public schools, the status of religious minorities, and the recent laws against so-called gay propaganda – all of them with results manifestly or, at least arguably, anti-liberal and anti-democratic.9 In my estimation, much more important but less well known is the ROC’s statement on human rights, which was officially released in 2008 under the title The Bases of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights, and otherwise known as the Human Rights Doctrine.10 In this document, the ROC affirms the notion of human rights, but links it to morality. Basically, the idea is that all are entitled to human rights but this doesn’t mean that there can be a plurality of moralities within Russian society. More precisely, the ROC claims that as an underdetermined concept, human rights should take on different forms in different cultural contexts. The theological spin for Russia is that though the human is created with an inherent dignity, it is only through morality that this dignity itself can and should be realized. The particular moral canopy as shaped by the Russian Orthodox Christian history may affirm the fact that each human has the right to life since each human is uniquely created by God, but it does not affirm the right to the freedom of expression of, say,

 7

 8

 9 10

Pew Research Center, ‘Russians Return to Religion, But Not to Church’, accessed 18 March 2015, http://www.pewforum.org/2014/02/10/russians-return-to-religion-but-not-to-church/. For a fuller account, see Aristotle Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political: Democracy and NonRadical Orthodoxy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). Irena Papkova, The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For an excellent analysis of this document, see Kristina Stoeckl, The Orthodox Church and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2014).

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sexual orientation. As the Human Rights Doctrine states, human rights cannot be extended to immoral actions that ‘cancel both the Gospel and natural morality. The church sees a great danger in the legislative and public support given to various vices, such as sexual lechery and perversions, the worship of profit and violence’ (3.3). In other documents related to human rights, the ROC further draws on Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in arguing that its own particular, theologically informed and Russian contextual understanding of human rights should not be divorced from morality.11 It bases this claim on recent debates in political philosophy that have moved more towards the position that religion should be allowed to have a role in democratic public life. In an ironic twist, the ROC basically leverages the emerging dominant so-called post-secularist position in Western political philosophical discourse that allows for a role of religion in public life as a way of justifying its interpretation of human rights discourse, which is manifestly at odds with Western construals of human rights. If religion is to play a role in public life, it should have the ‘right’ to give its own unique, non-Western interpretation of human rights. So, in terms of the laws against so-called gay propaganda in Russia, what comes off as unequivocally a violation of human rights in the Western context is for the Russian Orthodox Church simply an interpretation of human rights within a specific moral canopy that is primarily influenced by the Russia’s Orthodox Christian history. In terms of the Pussy Riot event, what strikes most in the West as a clear right of free expression is for the ROC, a form of blasphemy not guaranteed within human rights discourse, since it violates the moral canopy for which the ROC sees itself as guardian. Moreover, the ROC does not see its position as a rejection of human rights discourse, but as a post-secularist, contextual, legitimate, theologically informed interpretation of human rights discourse, which it actively promotes within the Russian context. The subtext of the Human Rights Doctrine is a rejection of any notion of human rights that relativizes morality and, by so doing, promotes what the ROC sees as an atheistic humanist agenda or, somewhat less ominously, reduces the ROC to one among many voices in a pluralistic public space. Although the ROC is not rejecting human rights discourse, it clearly positions its own interpretation against what it sees as a godless, extreme secularist, individualistic, hedonistic, humanist, anti-religious interpretation of the West. It is in the contemporary discourse of human rights that we witness the clash of the two Others in contemporary Orthodoxy. In the one sense, the discourse of human rights has occasioned the construction of the ‘new West’.12 This new West is the West of godless liberalism with its decadent and hedonistic individualism, and which has

11





12

Article 29 states:  (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.  (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. See United Nations, ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, accessed 17 February 2016, http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/. George Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, Orthodox Constructions of the West (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2013).

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its roots in the anti-religious secular philosophy of the Enlightenment. There is clearly an anti-Westernism that pervades the discourse of the ROC, and it cannot be attributed simply to the continuation of Cold War Rhetoric. Anti-Western discourse is pervasive throughout contemporary Orthodox theology in a way that was not evident in the Byzantine period. The ROC rhetoric against the godless, secularist, humanist, hedonistic understanding of human rights discourse in the West cannot be rendered intelligible as simply being coopted into the broader geopolitical struggle between Russia and Western Europe/the United States; the ROC’s anti-Westernism is part of a broader Orthodox self-identification against the Catholic-Protestant West. In the end, if the West is currently godless, individualistic, atheistic, and hedonistic, then that should be attributed to the inevitable theological mistakes of the Catholics and Protestants. Long before such a view of modern Western history was popularized within the academy by John Milbank, the Greek theologians John Romanides and Christos Yannaras were advancing such an understanding of the modern West as early as the 1970s. The ROC’s ambivalence towards human rights discourse reflects recent Christian theological attacks against modern liberal political discourse. Although specific theologians are not mentioned, at least to my knowledge, in Russian Orthodox theological literature, in the broader Russian discourse, Margaret Thatcher and Pat Buchanan are often invoked as support against a liberal ideology13 by two camps within Russia Orthodoxy identified as fundamentalists and traditionalists.14 What recent Christian political theology and the ROC share is a sensibility that there is something to the Christian experience that simply cannot be accommodated within modern liberal political discourse, that does not so easily elide with modern liberal political discourse but exists over and against such discourse. More strongly, they would assert that there are points of mutual incompatibility. While the Christian political theological critique against liberalism, together with the ROC, might draw a line from Chalcedon to their politics of mutual exclusivity and self-identification vis-à-vis the proximate other, I see more a theological deathof-metaphysics turn to Wittgenstein and early MacIntyre, in the language of mutual exclusivity and incompatibility; and I see other strands of postmodern thought, perhaps inspired by Foucault, in the attempt to out-mythologize political liberalism through a brutal rhetoric of demonization of the other. In the rhetoric of mutual exclusive language games and mythologies, I see more a Nestorian logic than a Chalcedonian one in relation to the political space.

2  The politics of non-dualism I will now attempt to describe what I term a politics of non-dualism that I would argue is more consistent with the logic of Chalcedon. To help me, I turn to Edward Schillebeeckx, about whose work and theology, I am definitely not an expert. There are two aspects of his thought that I discern are relevant to my argument. The first has to do 13 14

Stoeckl, The Orthodox Church and Human Rights, 45. Papkova, The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics.

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with the well-known position that theology must be correlated to the current situation. There are few who would disagree with the fact that theology must respond to the situation, and to some extent, I was attempting to give some sense of the situation within Christian political theology that results from a particular interpretation of the current contemporary situation, especially the relationship between theology and public life. My own paper is an attempt at a response to the current situation in Christian political theology in light of the broader situation of the relation of religion and politics in Western and Eastern Europe. Where theologians disagree with Schillebeeckx is his assessment on how the current situation should impact the interpretation of traditional dogmas, especially Christology. This leads me to the second aspect of Schillebeeckx’s thought that is relevant to this chapter. Schillebeeckx, together with a few other contemporary Roman Catholic theologians, such as Rahner, have often been accused, in spite of their best intentions, of endorsing Nestorianism in their attempt to affirm the full subjectivity of Jesus of Nazareth. This debate notwithstanding, what I find interesting is that whatever the judgement of his Christology, Schillebeeckx’s impulse throughout his work is nondualistic, and in this sense, he is very much a Chalcedonian at heart. This is especially evident in his understanding of the relation between the mystical and political, the interrelationship of which is very near and dear to my own Orthodox heart. Frederick Bauerschmidt accused Schillebeeckx of capitulating to the modern privatization of faith and failing to realize that there is a distinctive Christian politics. In essence, he was accusing Schillebeeckx of political Nestorianism, but I suspect that Bauerschmidt’s particular understanding of a distinctive Christian politics ironically betrays his own tendency towards political Nestorianism, especially where he envisions such a politics as over-and-against political liberalism. Vince Miller was right to call out Bauerschmidt on this misreading Schillebeeckx. Miller points out that Schillebeeckx was not an uncritical friend of political liberalism and rejected the notion of the political as an autonomous sphere.15 For Schillebeeckx, the mystical and political are in a dialectical relationship, meaning, as I understand it, that they designate distinct realities but which mutually implicate and impact each other. The mystical is not something private that one engages in separation from the political and the prophetic; indeed, the mystical is realized in the midst of the political and prophetic, especially when the mystical is understood in terms of love of God and love of neighbour. In Schillebeeckx’s own words, ‘In such mysticism, love for all men and women and an all-embracing love for fellow creatures as an expression of love of God can come fully into its own. Within this mysticism there is plenty of room for the struggle for justice and love, and for making the creation whole, for all that lives in this finite world.’16 What Schillebeeckx points to is a very Chalcedonian-like logic that does not see Christian existence with clear and defined borders as over and against the world with its emphasis on distinctive 15

16

For Bauerschmidt’s position and Miller’s critique of it, see Vincent J. Miller, ‘When Everything Becomes Political: Reading Schillebeeckx on Faith and Politics in the Contemporary United States’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 51–66. Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 170–1 [181].

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and unique politics and mutual incompatibility, but rather a Christian existence in and through the world in its attempt to realize the love of God in oneself and in the relation to others through the political as prophetic, dialogical and forgiving. What Schillebeeckx realized is that the implications of Chalcedon are that the mystical is the political, always and forever, and that the Christian political existence is simultaneously a learning of how to love. For this reason, I would disagree with Schillebeeckx’s characterization of the relation between the mystical and political as dialectical; the term dialectic still conveys too much of an over-againstness. The relationship, even as Schillebeeckx describes it, is more iconilectic, insofar as there are not clear borders between the two planes of existence, between what are two identifiable essences. There is a mutual penetration and mutual mirroring of all that exists that is captured more adequately with the language of icon than that of dialectic. I want to expand on this point first with the claim that though I think Schillebeeckx is, ironically perhaps, not a political Nestorian, he shares with them a lack of attention to the fact that the Christian tradition of thinking on the implications of the Incarnation is simultaneously a tradition on thinking of the practices that realize all that is claimed to be possible as a result of this Incarnation. If the Christian affirmation of the Incarnation points to what is possible for humans, that possibility involves what the seventh-century Byzantine theologian, Maximus the Confessor, would describe as a learning how to love, which is a learning how to engage in the practices that would move one deeper into the life of God, whom the Christians have named as love. The relevance of this point for the issue of religion and democracy is that, regardless of how we got to this present point in history, rather than seeing a Christian ontology of participation as diametrically opposed to modern liberalism, a practice-oriented perspective to participation would see the political space as one in which the Christian learns to love insofar as that space is where one encounters the stranger, and even the enemy who seeks to destroy all that one cherishes as true and beautiful.17 One does not need to go to the desert to achieve theosis; the political space is indeed the desert where one battles the very demons that get in the way of divine–human communion, such as the demons of fear, anger, hatred, which lead to projections and objectifications. The political space is indeed distinct from the ecclesial, especially as it is one that would allow the turn to belief in the non-existence of God; but, as seen through the perspective of practices of divine–human communion, or learning how to love, liberal-democratic structures do not appear as foreign to a so-called ontology of participation. Indeed, engaged in practices of divine–human communion, Christians would be actively shaping a political space structured around a minimal set of underdetermined normative principles that include freedom and equality, guaranteed through human rights language that is not linked to a specific religious morality, all the while being aware that the ecclesial is not the political, even if, as I would argue, the mystical is the political. I want to end by addressing briefly the question of what Christian theological discourse could offer to the discourse of political modernity. In After Virtue, Alisdair MacIntyre famously argued that what divided modern from pre-modern ethics is that 17

I more fully develop this point in The Mystical as Political.

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pre-modern ethics was based on a threefold structure ‘of untutored human-nature-asit-happens-to-be, human-nature-as-it could-be-if-it-realized-its-telos, and the precepts of rational ethics as the means for the transition from one to the other’.18 Modern ethics, he argues, eliminated the second element of this structure, which is ‘humannature-as-it-could-be-if-it-realized-its-telos’; he further argues that this teleological consideration of the human is impossible within the discourse of political liberalism. I am not sure I agree with this. Theorizing of the role of religion and public life occurs primarily at the level of moral translatability and not theological translatability.19 In other words, the turn to religion is always in terms of moral codes and not to the larger vision of what is possible for the human experience that religious discourse attempts to express. Seeing the role of religion in public life in terms of moral translatability simply extends the modern construction of religion in terms of moral codes and meanings. If MacIntyre has a point that it is impossible to consider ‘human-nature-as-it-couldbe-if-it-realized-its-telos’, this does not mean that it would be impossible to consider ‘human-nature-as-it-could-be’, or what Charles Taylor has referred to as ‘fullness’ from a pluralism of metaphysical and non-metaphysical positions.20 Perhaps we could consider something like an overlapping consensus on ‘human-nature-as-it-could-be’ or ‘fullness’ that results in a tentative, revisable, non-foundationalist, non-metaphysical conception of what the human should aspire to be. As an example, I would argue that the Christian trajectory of thinking on learning how to love, which is intertwined with speculative claims about the Incarnation and the Trinity, can very much contribute to thinking about the way in which humans might structure relations within the political and civil space that realize the principles of freedom and equality, and the virtues entailed for the realization of such relationships. Such a tradition of thinking on learning how to love is already evident in debates about freedom and equality in relation to education, basic health care, living wage, and legal indifference to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion; I have argued elsewhere that such a tradition of thinking on learning how to love can shed a unique light on the experience of trauma and killing in war not possible within just war ethics.21 I want to end by reflecting on another aspect of the situation that I have not yet addressed, and this has to do with the relation between religion and the secular. Christian theologians usually address this relationship in terms of the dominance of the secular at the expense of the religious, and those on the secular side of the equation see the relation in terms of the same diametrical opposition. In the midst of the unmasking of the secular in the broader academic world as itself an ideology entailing forms of governmentality, power and dominance that are counter to its pretentions of neutrality, there are those who would argue that latent behind the secular is still more Christianity, that the critique of the secular requires a more thorough critique of Christianity. So, 18 19 20 21

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 53. I owe this insight to conversations with Kristina Stoeckl. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). For this point, see Aristotle Papanikolaou, ‘The Ascetics of War: The Undoing and Redoing of Virtue’, in Orthodox Perspectives on War, ed. Perry T. Hamalis and Valerie Karras (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018, forthcoming). See also, Aristotle Papanikolaou and Perry T. Hamalis, ‘Toward a Godly Mode of Being: Virtue as Embodied Deification’, Studies in Christian Ethics 26 (2013), 271–80.

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while the secular is being interpreted as enacted, realized and legitimized over-andagainst Christian discourse and, more broadly religion, it is interpreted by some as still too Christian. This situation seems almost impossible for Christian theologians to respond to, as no matter where the Christian theologian turns, she is implicated in discourses of dominance. One strategy could be to simply out-rhetoricize and out-mythologize this not-really-secular-but-Christian discourse. I think, however, that this critique of Christianity, even the critique of the secular as still too Christian, should be taken very seriously by theologians, as Christians have indeed allowed their declaration of enemy-love to be solidified and reified into dualistic discourses that have resulted in structures of dominance and oppression of the other. Put otherwise, Christians have allowed their declaration to solidify into and ground ‘an identitarian discursive tradition’, which feeds off of the negation of the other.22 The formation of such identitarian discursive tradition is on full display in Russia, in which the remnants of the Russian Christian past are being used by the ROC and Putin to form an antiWestern ideology that entails a supersessionist logic. The question becomes whether, as Barber puts it, Christianity has the capacity to disembed and de-territorialize. He says it does through a non-heresiological mode of existence that is enabled by what he terms fabulation, ‘a mode of assembling that runs counter to history-telling’, and that is not deemed as necessary.23 While I’m not necessarily disputing this claim, insofar as fabulation still functions at the level of language, it is never-ending; it will always foreclose what it hopes to make possible, which is enemy-love. More than this, it takes a great deal of discernment to even realize that the kind of Christian self-criticism entailed in something like fabulation opens possibilities for realizing the enemy-love Christians declare. In other words, one cannot even arrive at the need for fabulation without engaging in the ascetical practice of critical self-examination and reflection. In the end, the kind of non-dualistic, diasporic existence that Barber points to is realizable in and through practices of learning how to love. This insight is what Chalecedonians like Maximus realized a long time ago. Although I’ve studied him for more than twenty years, I’m only now starting to think that it’s also an insight that Vladimir Lossky understood when he insisted that dogma only says what it needs to say to point to a mode of existence that is a living of the dogma, in other words, a non-dualistic mode of existence.24 And, it is an insight that Schillebeeckx realized, especially when he says that the church only has a future to the degree to which it lets go of all supernaturalism and dualism, and thus on the one hand does not reduce salvation to a purely spiritual kingdom or a simply heavenly future, and on the other hand does not become introverted and concentrate on itself as church, but turns outside and directs itself to others, to men and women in the world. And in that case it will not think exclusively of its own historical self-preservation as a spiritual power in the world.25 22

23 24

25

Daniel Collucciello Barber, On Diaspora: Christianity, Religion and Secularity (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 130. Ibid., 131. See Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism and Divine-Human Communion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). Schillebeeckx, Church, 232 [234].

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Bibliography Barber, Daniel Collucciello (2011), On Diaspora: Christianity, Religion and Secularity (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock). Cavanaugh, William T. (1998), Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics and the Body of Christ (Oxford: Blackwell). Cavanaugh, William T. (1995), ‘“A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House”: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State’, Modern Theology, 11: 397–420. Demacopoulos, George and Aristotle Papanikolaou (2013), Orthodox Constructions of the West (New York, NY: Fordham University Press). Guroian, Vigen (1987), Incarnate Love: Essays in Orthodox Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press). Hauerwas, Stanley (1993), The Church and Abortion: In Search of new Ground for Response (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press). Hauerwas, Stanley (1991), Toward a Community of Character: A Constructive Christian Social Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press). MacIntyre, Alasdair (1981), After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press). McGuckin, John (2004), Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press). Milbank, John (1990), Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell). Miller, Vincent J. (2010), ‘When Everything Becomes Political: Reading Schillebeeckx on Faith and Politics in the Contemporary United States’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark), 51–66. Papanikolaou, Aristotle (2018), ‘The Ascetics of War: The Undoing and Redoing of Virtue’, in Orthodox Perspectives on War, ed. Perry T. Hamalis and Valerie Karras (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming). Papanikolaou, Aristotle, and Perry T. Hamalis (2013), ‘Toward a Godly Mode of Being: Virtue as Embodied Deification’, Studies in Christian Ethics, 26: 271–80. Papanikolaou, Aristotle (2012), The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press). Papanikolaou, Aristotle (2006), Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism and Divine-Human Communion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press). Papanikolaou, Aristotle (2002), ‘Reasonable Faith and a Trinitarian Logic’, in Restoring Faith in Reason, ed. Laurence Paul Hemming and Susan Frank Parsons (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), 237–55. Papkova, Irena (2011), The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Stoeckl, Kristina (2014), The Orthodox Church and Human Rights (London: Routledge). Stout, Jeffrey (2004), Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Taylor, Charles (2007), A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

9

Concentrating on Creation: Following Christ in a Context of Climate Change Martin G. Poulsom

In the first edited volume to consider the phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change from the point of view of systematic theology, published in 2014,1 the chapter on creation was written by Celia Deane-Drummond, building on the theology of creation propounded by Thomas Aquinas. She argues that his philosophically rich account, ‘arguably the high water mark’2 in the development of the classical metaphysical view of creation ex nihilo, is still relevant today, and is particularly helpful in responding theologically to climate change. After offering quite a detailed summary of Aquinas’ treatment of creation in his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, she considers some of the contemporary objections to his approach, commenting that while his emphasis on the ontological distinction between the world and God ‘safeguards belief in God as the ground of all being, [it] does not develop the idea as to why God created the world in the first place’.3 The position that she then outlines, stressing the themes of love and wisdom as motives for creation, could well be described as one that she develops sequela Aquinas4 (and, interestingly, sequela Irenaeus too).5 All the same, it does seem fair to say that the possibility of interaction between the Creator and autonomous creatures in response to a critical challenge like climate change, remains somewhat implicit in her account, as she admits herself.6 The theme that she develops more explicitly is the need for a theological account of the interaction between human activity and Sabbath rest, as a 1

2

3 4

5

6

Michael S. Northcott and Peter M. Scott, ‘Introduction’, in Systematic Theology and Climate Change: Ecumenical Perspectives, ed. Michael S. Northcott and Peter M. Scott (London: Routledge, 2014), 1–14, 1. Celia Deane-Drummond, ‘Creation’, in Systematic Theology and Climate Change: Ecumenical Perspectives, ed. Michael S. Northcott and Peter M. Scott (London: Routledge, 2014), 69–89, 71. Deane-Drummond, ‘Creation’, 77. See Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 167, for a description of the origins of this typically Dominican expression. For an account of the way in which this theme operates in the work of Edward Schillebeeckx, see Martin G. Poulsom, The Dialectics of Creation: Creation and the Creator in Edward Schillebeeckx and David Burrell (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 144–9. See the way in which she denies the juxtaposition of Irenaean and Thomistic theologies, in opposition to Colin Gunton, see Deane-Drummond, ‘Creation’, 78. Deane-Drummond, ‘Creation’, 82.

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way of sanctifying ‘not just space, but also time’.7 Such a double interaction – of activity and rest, on the one hand, and of human and divine action in the world, on the other – seems to be what Wendell Berry is reflecting on in his Sabbath Poem, 1979 VII, which also speaks powerfully of the negative impact of human activity on the ecosphere and invites the reader to think and act differently: What if, in the high, restful sanctuary That keeps the memory of Paradise, We’re followed by the drone of history And greed’s poisonous fumes still burn our eyes? Disharmony recalls us to our work. From Heavenly work of light and wind and leaf We must turn back into the peopled dark Of our unravelling century, the grief Of waste, the agony of haste and noise. It is a hard return from Sabbath rest To lifework of the fields, yet we rejoice, Returning, less condemned in being blessed By vision of what human work can make: A harmony between forest and field, The world as it was given for love’s sake, The world by love and loving work revealed As given to our children and our Maker. In that healed harmony the world is used But not destroyed, the Giver and the taker Joined, the taker blessed, in the unabused Gift that nurtures and protects. Then workday And Sabbath live together in one place. Though mortal, incomplete, that harmony Is our one possibility of peace. When field and woods agree, they make a rhyme That stirs in distant memory the whole First Sabbath’s song that no largess of time Or hope or sorrow wholly can recall. But harmony of earth is Heaven-made, Heaven-making, is promise and prayer, A little song to keep us unafraid, An earthly music magnified in air.8 7

8

See Dean-Drummond, ‘Creation’, 80–1. See here where she develops her account in dialogue with Jürgen Moltmann in a quote from page 80. For Wendell Berry, 1979 VII, see Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997 (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998), 15.

Concentrating on Creation: Following Christ in a Context of Climate Change 127 I agree with Deane-Drummond that there is a need to develop a critical response to this critical situation in systematic theology.9 She is also right to aver that a more explicitly relational account is needed, if only to correct the dual misunderstanding that Aquinas’s ontological distinction separates God from the world, and that those who do their theology sequela Aquinas posit an apathetic God, who is far from being the God of love that Christians believe in.10 The thinking of Edward Schillebeeckx on creation-faith can make a significant contribution here, because his writings on creation, especially in his critical period,11 make an explicit connection between God and humanity, in many ways. Philosophically, this results in complementing the ontological distinction between the world and God with a corresponding ontological relation between them.12 Practically, it asks us what kind of a future we want to make for our world, given the challenges that we face – at least some of which are of our own making.13 This chapter, however, is not intended primarily as an exposition of Schillebeeckx’s critical creation-faith, but as an application of it sequela Schillebeeckx. This, he explains, is a way of following in the footsteps of another, ‘not through imitating what he has done but, like Jesus, by responding to one’s own new situations from out of an intense experience of God’.14 It represents a following after15 someone else that involves both continuity and change, in such a way that the two are dynamically interrelated, rather than being seen as an either-or choice, or as poles at opposite ends of a continuum. Such a following is able, at one and the same time, to be both faithful to the inspiration of the master and also to develop and even break with elements of the master’s thinking so as to relate it to new times and  9

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Martin G. Poulsom, ‘The Place of Humanity in Creation’, in Faiths in Creation: The Institute Series 8, ed. Catherine Cowley (London: Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics and Public Life, 2008), 25–35. See, for example, Moltmann’s argument that metaphysical theism is unable to respond adequately to the challenge of protest atheism because ‘Aristotle’s God cannot love … . The “unmoved Mover” is a “loveless Beloved”’. See Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1974), 222–3. Also see David Burrell’s summary of the position typically taken by Process Theologians on this matter, and his helpful thought experiment on love in response to it. See David Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 87–8. William R. Portier, ‘Interpretation and Method’, in Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Mary Catherine Hilkert and Robert J. Schreiter (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2nd edn, 2002), 19–36, 30–4. For Philip Kennedy’s assertion that Schillebeeckx has a relational ontology at the heart of his theology see Philip Kennedy, Deus Humanissimus: The Knowability of God in the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx (Fribourg, Switzerland: University Press, 1993), 19, 363–4. Cf. Edward Schillebeeckx, Interim Report on the Books Jesus and Christ, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 8 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark), 105 [120]. Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 7 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark), 630 [641]. Though it is a somewhat unusual formulation in English, this seems a better way of translating Schillebeeckx than simply using the term ‘following’, since it more clearly indicates the notion of sequela that he uses it to express. See, for example, the 2014 translation of Schillebeeckx’s point about salvation being linked with the here and now experiences ‘of Jesus and of those who “follow after him” in this world’, in Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 108 [124], compared to the Dutch text, ‘van Jezus en van hen, die hem in deze wereld “achterna gaan”’, in Edward Schillebeeckx, Tussentijds verhaal over twee Jesus boeken (Bloemendaal: Nelissen, 1978), 140. The 1980 translation, in which the more typical English expression, ‘those who follow him in this world’ on page 123, is used, makes the notion of sequela which Schillebeeckx is employing here slightly less clear and, as such, the change to the translation that has been made is a useful one.

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places, finding ways to respond to challenges that are even more pressing now than they were in his day. Two themes are addressed in what follows, which, faithful to Schillebeeckx’s style, are both relational in character. First, the interplay of critical negativity and critical positivity is considered, partly because it offers a theological way of expressing the dialectic of challenge and promise that Berry’s poem captures so well. Second, the interplay of human and ecological solidarity is explored. This interplay, which has also surfaced, in distinctive ways, in the social teaching of recent Popes,16 can help systematic theologians to speak about the interaction of divine and human activity in the world in a way that can make a significant contribution to the current debates about climate change and what – if anything – we can do about it.

1  Critical negativity and critical positivity Schillebeeckx’s creation-faith has a ‘critical and productive force’,17 which has both positive and negative aspects. On the one hand, as Philip Kennedy correctly points out, its force ‘lies in its criticism of overly pessimistic and optimistic conceptions of human history and society’,18 enabling people of faith to offer a critique of secular accounts that they deem to be unrealistic. On the other hand, ‘by allowing people fully to accept the worth of finitude’, creation-faith not only ‘frees them for their own tasks in the world’,19 it also indicates a direction for their action. The ‘critical force’ of authentic creation-faith ‘at the same time therefore represents salvation for man and the world and a judgment upon them’,20 as Schillebeeckx puts it himself. Of course, any account of what the best direction for human activity in the world is needs to be subject to rigorous examination – and not just using the tools of theology. But, at the very least, Schillebeeckx’s critical creation-faith shows that 16

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See, for example, Pope Francis who, in Lumen Fidei, speaks of the way that faith, ‘by revealing the love of God the Creator, enables us to respect nature all the more [… and] also helps us to devise models of development which are based not simply on utility and profit, but consider creation as a gift for which we are all indebted’. See Francis, Lumen Fidei (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2013), Section 55. This is the translation found in Edward Schillebeeckx, God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1983), [102], but the Dutch text here is identical (though, with a small addition in the third and latest source) in all three of what can accurately be called Schillebeeckx’s parallel texts on creation from his critical period. In the new editions of both Interim Report and of Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark), the key term is rendered as ‘power’, see Interim Report, 106 and see Church, 231, which, it is fair to say, is a reasonable translation of the Dutch term ‘kracht’, the term that is found in all three texts. See Schillebeeckx, Tussentijds verhaal, 138; Edward Schillebeeckx, Evangelie verhalen (Baarn: Nelissen, 1982), 102; and Edward Schillebeeckx, Mensen als verhaal van God (Nelissen: Baarn, 1989), 251. In the previous translations, the term was rendered differently each time: as ‘consequence’ in the 1980 translation of Interim Report [122] and as ‘power’ in the 1990 translation of Church (London: SCM Press; New York, NY: Crossroad, 1990), [233]. ‘Force’ is preferred here in English because it has a slightly more motivating ring to it, and because it has helpful connotations, found in expressions like being ‘a force for good in the world’. Kennedy, Schillebeeckx, 89. Ibid., 90. Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, 94; cf. Interim Report, 101 [115].

Concentrating on Creation: Following Christ in a Context of Climate Change 129 theology has a role to play in the dialogue – faith in God has got something to do with politics and public life. The expression ‘on the one hand … on the other hand’ used in the preceding paragraph, one that is frequently employed by Schillebeeckx,21 is both a form of argument that is faithful to him and also a way of voicing an important methodological principle for theology sequela Schillebeeckx. It helps to distinguish the mode of dialectic used in it from that which is found in Barthian theologies and, perhaps even more importantly, from that found in transcendental forms of correlational theology in the Roman Catholic tradition. David Tracy, who is certainly one of the foremost proponents of the latter, says that, in its dialectical form, correlational theology has a polar character. It makes progress by moving back and forth between the poles that it identifies in order to balance them against each other.22 A similar pattern can be discerned in the account of creation offered by David Burrell,23 who Tracy identifies as a fellow hermeneutical theologian following in the footsteps of Bernard Lonergan.24 What is theologically interesting about this pattern is that, in it, the relata are inversely proportional to each other. As the image of the balance makes clear, saying something ‘on the one hand’ immediately forces the correlational theologian to say something ‘on the other hand’ in order to maintain a balanced account. Schillebeeckx’s dialectic does not work like this.25 Rather than being inversely proportional, the relata of a Schillebeeckxian dialectic are directly proportional.26 The more one is stressed, the more the other is given importance, in a form of argument that can be called relational dialectic.27 This the way that Schillebeeckx speaks of mysticism and politics: because these two relata ‘are each at the heart of the other’,28 he denies the charge that the first two volumes 21

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See, for example, his definition of creation in Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 110 [126]; God Among Us, 104, and the reasons he gives – one negative and one positive – for the need to find an answer to what it is that true and good humanity consists in Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, 100–1; Church, 230 [232]. David Tracy, ‘The Uneasy Alliance Reconceived: Catholic Theological Method, Modernity and Postmodernity’, Theological Studies 50 (1989), 548–70, 550, 562. See, for example, the way in which he speaks about creation and salvation ‘as two poles’ in the Christian tradition see David Burrell, Faith and Freedom: An Interfaith Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 236, citing, with approval, John McDade, ‘Creation and Salvation: Green Faith and Christian Themes’, The Month, 23 (1990), 433–41, 436. It must be said that, elsewhere, he says he finds the image of balance somewhat static, preferring to speak of ‘a more dramatic, not to say dialectical, field of force’. See David Burrell and Elena Malits, Original Peace: Restoring God’s Creation (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997), 91. However, he immediately returns to polar language on page 92 of Original Peace, so it would seem that the polar element of the dialectic is still very much present, even in the alternative proposal. David Tracy, ‘Lindbeck’s New Program for Theology: A Reflection’, The Thomist 49 (1985), 460–72, 462–3, 468. For more on the comparison between Tracy and Schillebeeckx, see Martin G. Poulsom, ‘The Place of Praxis in the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx’, in Keeping Faith in Practice: Aspects of Catholic Pastoral Theology, ed. James Sweeney, Gemma Simmonds and David Lonsdale (London: SCM Press, 2010), 131–42. The term ‘Schillebeeckxian’ is used here to indicate both a form of dialectic and, more generally, a way of doing theology sequela Schillebeeckx. See Poulsom, Dialectics of Creation, 11 for an explanation of this neologism. See Poulsom, Dialectics of Creation, 96–8 for an account of this kind of dialectic. Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘The Role of History in What is Called the New Paradigm’, in Paradigm Change in Theology: A Symposium for the Future, trans. Margaret Kohl, ed. Hans Küng and David Tracy (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 307–19, 318.

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of his Christological trilogy emphasize the political liberation of men and women at the expense of their mystical liberation. These two ways of talking about human wholeness, he contends, ‘cannot be contrasted with each other. Restructuring and inner conversion form a dialectical process.’29 This relational dialectic is also present in the way that he interweaves the negative and positive aspects of his critical creation-faith. When he speaks of creation as ‘good news’,30 saying that God’s honour and glory lie in human happiness,31 it might at first seem that he is stressing the positive over against the negative. What he is proposing, rather, is a form of critical optimism, which, at the same time as describing the relational dialectic of critical negativity and critical positivity, enacts that very interplay. On the one hand, he criticizes forms of optimism that think that change for the better is inevitable, that ‘life and history per se mean progress’, because these approaches mistakenly think that creation provides an explanation of the world.32 On the other hand, he says that the assurance that good, rather than evil, ‘will triumph in us and in our world’ can only be given through the absolute presence of the Creator God,33 a presence that he speaks of as ‘pure positivity’.34 Critical optimism is a way of describing the relational dialectic of critical negativity and critical positivity in a similar way to that in which both praxis and ethics describe the relational dialectic of mysticism and politics.35 There is, of course, an ethical dimension to humanity’s place in the world, something that Schillebeeckx recognizes in his critique of optimistic views of the future based on human innovation and technology. He admits that technology can be good, if it ‘serves the authentic values of true, good and truly happy humanity’. However, he also points out that the technology that ‘is now causing pollution … serves a consumer society’.36 This use of technology does not lead to fullness of life for humanity, because consumerism does not particularly aim to do this. Any happiness produced by consumerism is achieved at the expense of others – the consumerist world is one of inequality and competition. Schillebeeckx’s response to these challenges draws on the idea of solidarity found in the Catholic Social Tradition. 29 30 31 32

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Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 93 [105]. Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 103 [116]; God Among Us, 91 and 95; and Church, 228 [230]. Schillebeeckx, Interim Report 101 [115–16] and 113 [130]; God Among Us, 94 and 100. Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, 97–8. Cf. Interim Report, 99 and 101–2 [113 and 116]; God Among Us, 91. Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, 98. Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, 99; ‘The Role of History’, 317. Cf. Interim Report, 105 [120], where the expression is translated as ‘pure positiveness’ in both editions, translating the Dutch expression ‘pure positiviteit’, See Schillebeeckx, Tussentijds verhaal, 136. This expression – and, indeed, the text surrounding is, is identical in the Dutch texts of Tussentijds verhaal and Evangelie verhalen, see Schillebeeckx, Evangelie verhalen, 99, showing that a variation has been introduced in the translation that is not present in the Dutch. Partly because of the use of the term in commentary on Schillebeeckx, and partly because it seems a better translation, ‘pure positivity’ is preferable here. Schillebeeckx describes the dialectic of mysticism and politics as praxis in Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘You Cannot Arbitrarily make Something of the Gospel!’, Concilium, trans. David Smith, 170 (1983), 15–19, 18; ‘The Role of History’, 317. He describes it as ethics in Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus in Our Western Culture: Mysticism, Ethics and Politics, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1987), 65, 70. For a more detailed account of praxis in Schillebeeckx, see Poulsom, Dialectics of Creation, 112–26. Schillebeeckx, Church, 237 [239].

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2  Human and ecological solidarity Human solidarity is a theme that dominates Schillebeeckx’s critical writings, so much so that the charge that he paid too much attention to the social and political liberation of humanity is understandable, even if misplaced. In the third volume of his Christological trilogy, he tells the story of how, from the 1950s to the 1970s, committing oneself to ‘the service or the virtue of co-humanity’ became a practical way of stressing that the reign of God is not a purely spiritual reality, and the expression ‘became a fashionable replacement in our everyday language for the familiar term love of neighbour’.37 Alongside this development, hand in hand with it, came the theoretical development of co-humanity as a theological theme, such that this ‘was the time of an emphasis on a “God of human beings”’.38 During this period, Schillebeeckx became a passionate proponent of the praxis of the reign of God, prophetically challenging both religion and society to act on behalf of the humanum, his preferred term for co-humanity.39 In his writings on creation, he unambiguously says, on the one hand, that ‘a religion which – in any way – really has the effect of dehumanizing people – in whatever way –, is either a false religion or a religion which understands itself incorrectly’.40 On the other hand, he points out that, in society, ‘we have learned from [our] irresponsible behaviour’ about ‘the limits of existing resources and energy consumption’ and have realized that ‘we are egoistically robbing coming generations of their possible future’.41 In the midst of this process of development, as Schillebeeckx recognizes himself, ‘one dimension was forgotten’. Though it is true to say that God is a God of human beings, the development of the praxis of co-humanity largely overlooked ‘the fact that with inorganic and organic creatures we share in the one creation’.42 Mary Catherine Hilkert and Janet O’Meara suggest that there is a ‘growing emphasis’43 on ecological matters in this last volume of Schillebeeckx’s trilogy, in which he ‘begins to address the cosmic dimensions of redemption and liberation’.44 Schillebeeckx himself, however, 37 38

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Ibid., 233 [235]. Ibid., 234 [236]. Interestingly, the words ‘an emphasis on’ are not found in the earlier translation and are not in the Dutch text either, which reads: ‘Het was de tijd van “een God van mensen”’. See Schillebeeckx, Mensen, 253. The new translation, however, in adding the phrase, is faithful to Schillebeeckx’s developing argument that an emphasis on one aspect of faith does not necessarily imply that others are being denied. Cf. the opening paragraph of Chapter Six of Interim Report for a similar argument, engaging with critics of Part Four of Christ. See Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 93 [105]. See Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Questions on Christian Salvation of and for Man’, in The Language of Faith, ed. Robert Schreiter (London: SCM Press, 1995), 109–26; cf. Christ, 725–37 [731–43]. Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 93 [105]. Ibid., 105–6 [120–211]; God Among Us, 99. The new translation also brings the English texts of these two sources closer together than was the case in the 1980 translation of Interim Report. Schillebeeckx, Church, 234 [236]. This candid confession on Schillebeeckx’s part helps us to see that, whilst the insertion about ‘an emphasis on’ a God concerned with humanity in the new translation of Church (p. 234) helps to keep his argument flowing as he would wish it: sometimes it is the case that, in talking a great deal about some aspects of faith, others are forgotten about. Mary Catherine Hilkert, ‘Introduction’, in Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Mary Catherine Hilkert and Robert J. Schreiter (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2nd edn, 2002), xix–xxx, xxi. Janet M. O’Meara, ‘Salvation: Living Communion with God’, in Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Mary Catherine Hilkert and Robert J. Schreiter (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2nd edn, 2002), 97–116, 100.

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protests that his inclusion of ecological themes ‘is not a fashionable adaptation to later trends, which is what some individuals have accused me of. I was already writing substantially the same thing in 1974 and even in 1960.’45 This raises the matter of continuity and change in Schillebeeckx’s theology, one that has generated a good deal of debate among academics.46 There is, unfortunately, no space to deal with it here, other than to say that the notion of sequela can furnish theologians who follow after Schillebeeckx with a way of crafting accounts of human and ecological solidarity that can help further the dialogue between church and society that is one of the themes of this conference.47 Taking up this challenge, it seems fair to observe, first of all, that Schillebeeckx’s treatment of ecological concern does not have quite the rhetorical drive of his account of human solidarity. The ‘critical and productive force’48 of his creation-faith, which he also calls ‘a prophetic impetus’ does indeed speak about both themes: ‘The believer’s concern for God’s honour is also a struggle for more justice in the world, a commitment to a new earth and an environment in which human beings can live fuller lives.’ When he challenges the church to interrelate the spiritual and social aspects of Christianity, he argues that ‘Christian salvation is not simply the salvation of souls but the healing, making whole, wholeness of the whole person, the individual and society in a natural world which is not abused’.49 The last phrase of this expression does, all the same, seem somewhat tame when compared with the passion of what goes before it. In seeking to move forward sequela Schillebeeckx, it is helpful to recall the complexity of Berry’s poem, in which positive and negative aspects, the relation between contemplation and action, and an ability to recognize that we are not the only ones who play a part in responding to the challenge, are all intertwined. Taking a praxical approach also helps, in which theory and practice exist in a dynamic and productive critical interrelation,50 resulting in expressions of ecological solidarity that can both express what is important in Christianity and make a contribution to debates in society. A good example of an engagement with ecological solidarity that 45 46

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Schillebeeckx, Church, 237, n. 4 [263, n.4]. See, for example, Philip Kennedy, ‘Continuity Underlying Discontinuity: Schillebeeckx’s Philosophical Background’, New Blackfriars 70 (1989), 264–77; Lieven Boeve, ‘Introduction: The Enduring Relevance and Significance of Edward Schillebeeckx? Introducing the State of the Question in Medias Res’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 1–22, 2–8, where he compares his own assessment with that of Erik Borgman, and pages 9–14, which focus on creationfaith in particular); and Erik Borgman, ‘Retrieving God’s Contemporary Presence: The Future of Edward Schillebeeckx’s Theology of Culture’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 235–51, 246–50. For an analysis of continuity and change in Schillebeeckx, which draws on his own account, found in Schillebeeckx, ‘The Role of History’, 309–10 and in Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 6 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 499–503 [539–44], 537–44 [576–82], see Poulsom, Dialectics of Creation, 101–6. Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, 102. Ibid., 100. For an account of how praxis can be understood as a relational dialectic, in which theory and practice interrelate, in Schillebeeckx’s theology, see Poulsom, Dialectics of Creation, 112–20. For the suggestion that this interaction leads to a form of theology that can be described as praxical, see Poulsom, ‘The Place of Praxis’, 138–40.

Concentrating on Creation: Following Christ in a Context of Climate Change 133 seeks to do this in a predominantly theoretical manner is the publication, in 2012, of the Ash Wednesday Declaration by Operation Noah. Entitled ‘Climate change and the purposes of God: a call to the Church’,51 it deliberately echoes the style of other significant Declarations of the past, including the 1934 Barmen Declaration.52 Explaining the rationale of the Ash Wednesday Declaration, Tim Gorringe argues that ‘climate change is a confessional issue’53 for the church, making a distinction between issues like these, which go to the heart of Christian faith, and adiaphora, about which ‘we can politely agree to disagree’.54 Although this confessional statement is explicitly addressed to the church, which might seem to make it less clearly an act of Public Theology, it is worth noting that ‘confessing itself is a basic way of defining the daily task in the life of all Christians’.55 This distinction between a textual confession and the act of confessing, made by Ernst Wolf, is explained by Eberhard Busch using the distinction between ‘guideposts on the pathway of the pilgrimage of the people of God’,56 on the one hand, and the path itself, on the other, which is made by walking in the direction indicated. Thus, confessional statements made by the church, can point the community in a particular direction, acting as ‘anticipatory signs’ of the desired destination,57 prompting its members to find answers to questions like those asked by Schillebeeckx: ‘“Where are we going?” … [and] … which way of being human do we choose’ to help us get there?58 One of the ways in which the Churches have been encouraged to ‘walk the talk’ since the publication of the Ash Wednesday Declaration is through the Bright Now Campaign, also run by Operation Noah.59 Taken together with the Declaration, this more active, practical response can form a praxical engagement with the challenge of climate change. Though not without theoretical content, the Campaign is chiefly aimed at encouraging action, in the form of fossil fuel disinvestment by the Churches, 51

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‘Climate change and the purposes of God: a call to the Church’, The Ash Wednesday Decla­ ration, accessed 3 May 2015, http://operationnoah.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Final-ON_ Declaration_web.pdf. Tim Gorringe, ‘Climate Change: A Confessional Issue for the Churches?’, Operation Noah Annual Lecture 2011, accessed 3 May 2015, http://operationnoah.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Tim_ Gorringe_lecture_0.pdf. See pages 1–2. Gorringe, ‘Climate Change: A Confessional Issue for the Churches?’, 10. Ibid., 1. A similar approach is taken in the Good Friday Declaration, ‘The World is Our Host: A Call to Urgent Action for Climate Justice (Good Friday 2015)’, produced by a worldwide group of Anglican bishops, facilitated by the Anglican Communion Environmental Network (ACEN), accessed 3 May 2015, http://acen.anglicancommunion.org/media/148818/The-World-is-our-HostFINAL-TEXT.pdf. Eberhard Busch, The Barmen Theses Then and Now: The 2004 Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary, trans. Darrell and Judith Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 8. Busch, The Barmen Theses Then and Now, 8. Ibid., 9. Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 105 [120]. This interaction between confession and confessing seems somewhat akin to that between confessing and witnessing in Edmund Arens’ Christopraxis. Although they are distinctive modes of the expression of faith for Arens, he notes that they have much in common, and that, in both cases, ‘their public character is constitutive’, See Edmund Arens, Christopraxis: A Theology of Action, trans. John E. Hoffmeyer (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), 89. His description of confessing as ‘the binding, public, communal act of putting faith in words’, is also useful in understanding confessional statements, and the community’s response to them, as a form of Public Theology. See Arens, Christopraxis, 98. See the material about the campaign on the Bright Now website. See Bright Now, ‘About the Campaign’, accessed 3 May 2015, http://brightnow.org.uk/about-the-campaign/.

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so that they – to use Schillebeeckx’s language – can show by the way they act what kind of humanity they choose in a context of climate change. Although, again, the Campaign is aimed at the church, the Foreword to the Bright Now Report points out that choosing the path of disinvestment ‘would show its faith in a low carbon future’, which would ‘help reframe the debate’60 not only in the church, but also in society, because of the role that the Churches have in Britain. The Report points out that a global disinvestment movement is growing, and there is evidence that Churches, not only in Britain but throughout the world, are taking part in this movement, alongside other organizations, in what can be termed an act of practical Public Theology.61 It is also important to note, at the same time, that this critically negative action needs to go hand in hand with a critically positive ‘imagination of alternatives. … Investment decisions need to be taken as part of a positive re-imagining of the world, and with regard to all those who might be affected, recognising that economic power can be used as a weapon, or it can be used for justice and peace.’62 Like the Ash Wednesday Declaration, the Bright Now Campaign faces church and society at the same time, seeking to engage and persuade both, by pointing to a more desirable future and indicating possible ways of getting there. As many of the contributors to this conference have noted, the clear divisions between church and society, private and public, and so on, are breaking down in the twenty-first century. It could also be argued that thinking of the boundaries between these spheres as watertight is no longer helpful because we now appreciate that understanding them that way was itself a construction of modernity.63 As a result, as Kathryn Tanner notes, the boundary conditions of distinctiveness change: The distinctiveness of a Christian way of life is not so much formed by the boundary as at it; Christian distinctiveness is something that emerges in the very cultural processes occurring at the boundary, processes that construct a distinctive identity for Christian social practices through the distinctive use of cultural materials shared with others.64

This makes possible a Public Theology that takes a dialectical approach to the interaction between church and society, in which critical affirmation of the views of others, 60

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Miles Litvinoff, ‘Bright Now: towards fossil free churches’, accessed 3 May 2015, http://brightnow. org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Bright-Now-Report.pdf. See page 2. See Litvinoff, pages 3, 6, 8 and 11 for information about the Churches involved in this global movement. Also see ‘The World is our Host’, page 8, for details of a worldwide group of Anglican Bishops who have called for the Anglican Church to support ‘environmental sustainability and justice by divesting from industries involved primarily in the extraction or distribution of fossil fuels’. See page 6. More information about the disinvestment of UK Churches can be found on the Blog of the Bright Now website. See, Bright Now, ‘Blog’, accessed 3 May 2015, http://brightnow.org. uk/blog/. Susan Durber, ‘Is it ethical for the Church to invest in fossil fuels? Reflections from Christian Theologians, scientists and environmentalists’, February 2015, accessed 3 May 2015, http:// brightnow.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Is-it-ethical-for-the-Church-to-invest-in-fossilfuels-reflections-from-Christian-theologans-scientists-and-environmentalists.pdf. See page 2. Cf. Sue Patterson’s ‘weak thesis’ of postmodernity. See Sue Patterson, Realist Christian Theology in a Postmodern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 7. Also see Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 53. Tanner, Theories of Culture, 115.

Concentrating on Creation: Following Christ in a Context of Climate Change 135 critically negative assessment of current ideas and practices, and critically positive imagination of alternatives all play their part in finding a way forward.65 Speaking about the Bright Now Campaign, Nicky Bull says that the ‘Church can demonstrate that it both listens to today’s prophets and that it is itself prepared to act prophetically if it aligns its investments with the mission of seeking the flourishing of all creation’.66 Reflecting and acting alongside others who have distinctive values and commitments, compared with our own, helps both human and ecological solidarity to mature. It recognizes that the church does not have all the answers, and that the grace of God sometimes comes to its help through those who are outside of it. This recognition is a way of developing another theme sequela Schillebeeckx, namely his insistence: extra mundum nulla salus.67 The reflections on climate change that have begun to appear in the secular press,68 alongside worldwide actions focussed on persuading governments and multinational companies to respond positively to the challenge, harnessing the political, economic and ethical will of a vast movement of men, women and children,69 can help church and society to find a way forward together. Climate change is a scientific, ethical, humanitarian, ecological and political challenge. For Christians, it is all of these – and it is more than that, too.70 Responding to the challenge in its entirety is a way of following after Jesus in our time and place.

3  Sequela Jesu How to live sequela Jesu is a matter about which Schillebeeckx has a good deal to say in his critical creation material. In Interim Report, he says that the situation in which Christians find themselves ‘summons us to the urgency of a collective asceticism on the basis of our status as creatures; we may simply be men [and women] in a milieu which is simply the world’.71 This call to live a simpler lifestyle, one that is also made 65

66 67

68

69

70

71

For an account of how this dialectical interplay functions in Schillebeeckx’s encounter with atheistic secular humanism, see Poulsom, Dialectics of Creation, 131–43. Nicky Bull, ‘Is it ethical for the Church to invest in fossil fuels?’, 1. Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Letter from Edward Schillebeeckx to the Participants in the Symposium “Theology for the 21st Century: The Enduring Relevance of Edward Schillebeeckx for Contemporary Theology” (Leuven – 3–6 December 2008)’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark, 2012), xiv–xv. See, for example, the series of articles in The Guardian newspaper, which began with Alan Rusbridger, ‘Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre’, The Guardian, 6 March 2015, accessed 3 May 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/ mar/06/climate-change-guardian-threat-to-earth-alan-rusbridger. A good example of this was the People’s Climate March on 21 September 2014, in which an estimated 2646 events took place in 162 countries as world leaders gathered for the UN Climate Summit in New York. For details and coverage of the event, see ‘Wrap-Up’, accessed 3 May 2015, http://peoplesclimate.org/wrap-up/. Cf. Schillebeeckx’s statement that ‘Christian salvation also comprises ecological, social and political aspects, though it is not exhausted by these. Christian salvation is more than that, but it is that, too’. See Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, 100. Also see Gorringe, 12–13. Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, [121]; God Among Us, 99. Here, the 1980 translation of Interim Report has been kept in preference to the 2014 translation found in Interim Report, 106, because the older translation uses the expression ‘simply’, where the new one prefers ‘just’. As a result, the argument moves more easily to a consideration of what simply living means, which suits the purposes of this article.

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by the Ash Wednesday Declaration,72 lies at the heart of the livesimply project that has been running in the Catholic Church in England and Wales for a few years now.73 It is, admittedly, not easy to articulate just what this simple lifestyle consists in, especially in a world where standards of living are so vastly different. Part of the difficulty lies in how to speak of the world, of creation, of the environment, of nature. In the Epilogue to the third volume of his Christological trilogy, Schillebeeckx recognizes the danger of offering a purely anthropocentric account of these realities when he calls for ‘self-restraint and a more sober life-style in order to protect creation’.74 He explicitly recognizes the danger of objectifying nature, but, at the same time, struggles somewhat to avoid doing so himself.75 Nevertheless, in this material, he offers two proposals that could act as anticipatory signs of the direction to move forward. The first, critically negative, aspect, draws on what many writers consider to be one of Schillebeeckx’s greatest contributions to theology – his idea of negative contrast experience.76 He notes, seemingly almost in passing, that it is ‘modern ecological experiences of contrast’ that have helped men and women to understand that ethics is not only applicable in the area of human solidarity, but needs to play a role in ecological solidarity, too.77 Given the importance of the theme of contrast experience in his account of the ethics of human relationships and of the praxis of the reign of God, developing an ecological account sequela Schillebeeckx could make a significant contribution to current debates. Intertwined with this critically negative theme, in relational dialectic with it, is another, in which Schillebeeckx points out that the simple and sober lifestyle he is calling for ‘is not as pessimistic as it seems’. He describes it as having ‘a liberating dimension’, being ‘attractive’ and ‘well-proportioned’, having ‘something of a festal element’ about it. He speaks of the movement for ‘a more contemplative and ludic relationship to the world of animals and nature’78 in a way that suggests that this movement already exists, even if only in seedling form. Ludic – a word that is now all but obsolete in the English language – means ‘showing spontaneous and undirected playfulness’.79 Perhaps the undirected element of this definition is less helpful than the others, but certainly in the game of Ludo that I played as a child, the playfulness had a clear goal, even if the play itself, trying to reach it, was made up of a challenging blend of skill and chance. 72 73

74

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77 78 79

Alan Rusbridger, ‘Climate change and the purposes of God’, 3. See the material on the Catholic Social Tradition found on the livesimply website, ‘Catholic Social Teaching: Faith in a Better World’, accessed 3 May 2015, http://www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk/. Schillebeeckx, Church, 236 [238]. Also see Deane-Drummond and Donal Dorr on whether the Catholic Church’s position on environmental issues is too anthropocentric in Celia DeaneDrummond, ‘Joining in the Dance: Catholic Social Teaching and Ecology’, New Blackfriars 93 (2012), 193–212; and Donal Dorr, ‘Themes and Theologies in Catholic Social Teaching over Fifty Years’, New Blackfriars 93 (2012), 137–54. Schillebeeckx, Church, 236–7 [238–9]. See, for example, Kennedy, Schillebeeckx, 127–9; Kathleen Anne McManus, Unbroken Communion: The Place and Meaning of Suffering in the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 26–7. Schillebeeckx, Church, 237 [239]. Ibid., 238 [240]. Oxford Dictionaries website, ‘Ludic’, accessed 3 May 2015, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ definition/english/ludic.

Concentrating on Creation: Following Christ in a Context of Climate Change 137 In this spirit, it is possible to see, in Schillebeeckx’s critical optimism, the beginnings of an account of how human beings who are fully alive can be the glory of God,80 by striving to live simply, sustainably and in solidarity.81 Developing this account sequela Schillebeeckx could make an important contribution to current debates about climate change, in which political and ecclesial aims could enter into mutually beneficial dialogue for the good of all creation. This would be a ‘following after’ Christ that would be both old and new,82 developing the likeness of God in men and women who commit themselves to be simply men and women, in a world that is simply the world. Schillebeeckx presents that likeness as ‘a constructive – almost divine –, caring creativity … raising up everything, aiming at justice, peace and the integrity of creation’.83 This ‘conciliar process’84 is surely one way of responding to the critical situation of climate change, so as to echo the first Sabbath’s song that can no longer quite be captured in its entire glory, but can still be, in Berry’s words, both promise and prayer: ‘A little song to keep us unafraid, An earthly music magnified in air.’85

Bibliography Arens, Edmund (1995), Christopraxis: A Theology of Action, trans. John E. Hoffmeyer (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press). Berry, Wendell (1998), A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997 (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint). Boeve, Lieven (2012),‘Introduction: The Enduring Relevance and Significance of Edward Schillebeeckx? Introducing the State of the Question in Medias Res’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark), 1–22. Borgman, Erik (2012), ‘Retrieving God’s Contemporary Presence: The Future of Edward Schillebeeckx’s Theology of Culture’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark), 235–51. Burrell, David (2004), Faith and Freedom: An Interfaith Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell). Burrell, David and Elena Malits (1997), Original Peace: Restoring God’s Creation (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press). Burrell, David (1979), Aquinas: God and Action (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Busch, Eberhard (2010), The Barmen Theses Then and Now: The 2004 Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary, trans. Darrell and Judith Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans). Deane-Drummond, Celia (2014), ‘Creation’, in Systematic Theology and Climate Change: Ecumenical Perspectives, ed. Michael S. Northcott and Peter M. Scott (London: Routledge), 69–89. 80

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82 83 84 85

Cf. Schillebeeckx’s allusions to this famous theme from Irenaeus in Schillebeeckx see Interim Report, 101 [115–16]; God Among Us, 94. Cf. the motto of livesimply, see Catholic Social Teaching, ‘About Us’, accessed 3 May 2015, http:// www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk/resources/about/#about. Cf. Mt. 13.52. Schillebeeckx, Church, 235 [237]. Ibid., 236 [238]. For Wendell Berry, 1979 VII, see Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir, 15.

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Deane-Drummond, Celia (2012), ‘Joining in the Dance: Catholic Social Teaching and Ecology’, New Blackfriars, 93: 193–212. Dorr, Donal (2012), ‘Themes and Theologies in Catholic Social Teaching over Fifty Years’, New Blackfriars, 93: 137–54. Hilkert, Mary Catherine (2002), ‘Introduction’, in Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Mary Catherine Hilkert and Robert J. Schreiter (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2nd edn), xix–xxx. Kennedy, Philip (1993), Deus Humanissimus: The Knowability of God in the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx (Fribourg, Switzerland: University Press). Kennedy, Philip (1989), ‘Continuity Underlying Discontinuity: Schillebeeckx’s Philosophical Background’, New Blackfriars, 70: 264–77. Kerr, Fergus (2002), After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell). McDade, John (1990), ‘Creation and Salvation: Green Faith and Christian Themes’, The Month, 23: 433–41. McManus, Kathleen Anne (2003), Unbroken Communion: The Place and Meaning of Suffering in the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Moltmann, Jürgen (1974), The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (London: SCM Press). Northcott, Michael S. and Peter M. Scott (2014), ‘Introduction’, in Systematic Theology and Climate Change: Ecumenical Perspectives, ed. Michael S. Northcott and Peter M. Scott (London: Routledge), 1–14. O’Meara, Janet M. (2002), ‘Salvation: Living Communion with God’, in Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Mary Catherine Hilkert and Robert J. Schreiter (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2nd edn), 97–116. Patterson, Sue (1999), Realist Christian Theology in a Postmodern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Portier, William R. (2002), ‘Interpretation and Method’, in Praxis of the Reign of God: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Mary Catherine Hilkert and Robert J. Schreiter (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2nd edn), 19–36. Poulsom, Martin G. (2014), The Dialectics of Creation: Creation and the Creator in Edward Schillebeeckx and David Burrell (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Poulsom, Martin G. (2010), ‘The Place of Praxis in the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx’, in Keeping Faith in Practice: Aspects of Catholic Pastoral Theology, ed. James Sweeney, Gemma Simmonds and David Lonsdale (London: SCM Press), 131–42. Poulsom, Martin G. (2008), ‘The Place of Humanity in Creation’, in Faiths in Creation: The Institute Series 8, ed. Catherine Cowley (London: Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics and Public Life), 25–35. Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Interim Report on the Books Jesus and Christ, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 8 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 7 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 6 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark).

Concentrating on Creation: Following Christ in a Context of Climate Change 139 Schillebeeckx, Edward (2012), ‘Letter from Edward Schillebeeckx to the Participants in the Symposium “Theology for the 21st Century: The Enduring Relevance of Edward Schillebeeckx for Contemporary Theology” (Leuven – 3–6 December 2008)’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London: T&T Clark, 2012), xiv–xv. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1995), ‘Questions on Christian Salvation of and for Man’, in The Language of Faith, ed. Robert Schreiter (London: SCM Press), 109–26. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1989), Mensen als verhaal van God (Nelissen: Baarn, 1989). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1989), ‘The Role of History in What is Called the New Paradigm’, in Paradigm Change in Theology: A Symposium for the Future, trans. Margaret Kohl, ed. Hans Küng and David Tracy (Edinburgh: T&T Clark), 307–19. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1987), Jesus in Our Western Culture: Mysticism, Ethics and Politics, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1983), God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1983), ‘You Cannot Arbitrarily make Something of the Gospel!’, trans. David Smith, Concilium, 170: 15–19. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1982), Evangelie verhalen (Baarn: Nelissen). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1978), Tussentijds verhaal over twee Jesus boeken (Bloemendaal: Nelissen). Tanner, Kathryn (1997), Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press). Tracy, David (1989), ‘The Uneasy Alliance Reconceived: Catholic Theological Method, Modernity and Postmodernity’, Theological Studies, 50: 548–70. Tracy, David (1985), ‘Lindbeck’s New Program for Theology: A Reflection’, The Thomist, 49: 460–72.

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Part Three

Eschatology: ‘God, the Future of Man’

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Are the Last Things Exclusively Positive?: Schillebeeckx’s Eschatology and Public Theology Christoph Hübenthal

In his epoch-making book Being and Time, Martin Heiddegger delineates the temporal structure of the human existence. He depicts a being that is essentially futural, a being that lets itself be thrown back upon its ‘factical there’ which on its part is determined by the being’s having-been, and so the being can hand down to itself its inherited possibility and be in the moment for its time.1 – Though it would be a challenging enterprise to delve into the mysteries of Heidegger’s early thinking, in what follows I will neither provide an exegesis of his fundamental ontology nor even of the human being’s temporal structure. Rather, the famous passage from section 74 of Being and Time exhibits a motion figure which strikingly mirrors the line of thought I’d like to develop in this chapter. The figure begins with a movement towards the future which, in our case, resembles a turn to eschatology. Thereafter it moves back to a presence that is determined by an inherited possibility, in our case this heritage is the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx. And finally the movement ends up with a determined utilization of this heritage in order to meet present challenges, which in our case corresponds with the modelling of a public theology. Though the line of argument will not exactly follow the structure of this motion figure, the internal relation between the topics still can be conceived of this way. Concretely, I first will examine two possible ways to communicate the Christian eschatological message. Taken by itself, however, each of these ways exhibits shortcomings. For this reason, I will argue that both modes should be understood as supplementary approaches. The second section raises the question as to whether this communication can be practised within a secular context and by means of a secular 1

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Stambaugh (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, rev. edn, 2010), 366. The full passage reads: ‘Only a being that is essentially futural in its being so that it can let itself be thrown back upon its factical there, free for its death and shattering itself on it, that is, only a being that, as futural, is equiprimordially having-been, can hand down to itself its inherited possibility, take over its own thrownness and be in the Moment for “its time.” Only authentic temporality that is at the same time finite makes something like fate, that is, authentic historicity, possible.’

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language. Based on Christological considerations, these questions will get a cautiously positive answer. In the third section I’ll turn to Edward Schillebeeckx. He, as will be argued, provides us with a sophisticated model of how eschatological matters must be communicated within a secular context. The fourth section, then, is dedicated to the question of how these findings bear on the conceptualization of a public theology. It will be argued that public theology primarily presents itself as multifaceted and multi-layered form of ethics. The last section returns to Schillebeeckx and to a more substantive account of eschatology. Though Schillebeeckx furnished a demanding way of communicating eschatological topics, his own eschatological considerations still need some corrections. In fairness, however, it must be said that he himself provides us with the required arguments.

1  Witnessing and discourse Among the theologians who recently put eschatology anew on the agenda, Stanley Hauerwas is surely one of the most prominent figures. For him ‘every loci [sic] of the Christian faith has an eschatological dimension, making impossible any isolated account of eschatology’.2 If Hauerwas is right, every theological topic bears at least an implicit relation to eschatology. This applies to public theology, too. So if we take for granted that public theology is a serious theological enterprise and not, as some assert, a self-destructing activity which lets the world set the terms,3 we can be reasonably content that public theologians were doing a bad job if they did not now and then consider eschatological matters. At first glance, Hauerwas himself seems to endorse this view, for he asserts ‘that the eschatological character of the Christian faith will challenge the politics of the worlds [sic]’4. Eschatology, we may infer from that, has a public significance, and public theologians, then, are prompted to find out how this significance can be brought to the public. In a chapter written with Charles Pinches, Hauerwas investigates more closely what such communication could look like. For him, the relevance of the Christian faith is made known to the world by bearing witness to this faith and bringing it into practice. Yet, bearing witness, he further argues, is sharply to be distinguished from apologetics, for witnessing aims not at providing arguments but at attracting others by living a credible life. Whereas the argument’s persuasive power has to originate from the argument itself, in case of witnessing, the trustworthiness of the message depends on the witness’ authenticity. Therefore, Hauerwas holds: ‘In academic argument we typically protest when this occurs: the argument should stand on its own legs. Not so with witness; if the witness fails to instantiate that to which she witnesses, her listeners rightfully reject what she says.’5 In a certain sense, Hauerwas is surely right. Indeed, the strength of witnessing lies not so much in giving a cogent account of the faith’s 2

3 4 5

Stanley Hauerwas, Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), xii. Charles Mathewes, A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1. Hauerwas, Approaching the End, 83. Ibid., 50.

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rationality but in living an exemplary life which can be experienced as an unaltered embodiment of the gospel. However, for those who are interested in public theology, Hauerwas’ approach suffers from a striking vagueness. He speaks in emphatic terms about the witnesses and the eschatological content they bear witness to, but the addressees of witnessing remain remarkably invisible. There seems to be no public. For Hauerwas, witnessing appears to be a solitary activity which does not at all pursue a perlocutionary effect. In fact, he advocates, as one might call it, an intransitive witnessing, that is, a witnessing without addressees, a self-sufficient play without audience. Admittedly, there are a few lines in the chapter that actually mention the addressees. Yet, here the audience is not considered for its own sake but merely for dramaturgic reasons. Hauerwas, as it seems, lets the hearers violently reject the eschatological narrative so that the witness now can effectively be staged as a martyr.6 In the remainder of the chapter, Hauerwas extensively unfolds the implications of martyrdom and, moreover, relates it to a rather staurocentric view of redemption so that the martyr finally participates in Christ’s salvific suffering. However, it remains constantly unclear for whom and for what purpose this woebegone passion play is put on stage. If thus the intransitive conception of witnessing is unconvincing, the question rises as to whether Hauerwas rightly distinguishes witnessing so sharply from apologetics. Can apologetics not also be conceived of as a meaningful – albeit not exclusive – form of bringing the eschatological narrative to the public? To answer this question, we first have to inquire whether theology can at all avoid being engaged in what Hauerwas so emphatically denounces as a sober form of apologetics. Drawing on a close analysis of Karl Barth’s reservations towards apologetics, Graham Ward once came to the conclusion that, contrary to Barth’s own intentions, the theological discourse cannot safeguard its boundaries and protect itself against the mixing with, for instance, scientific, philosophical or political language. Therefore, Ward concludes, ‘Christian theology is … implicated in cultural negotiations, and to that extent is always already engaged in an ongoing apologetics.’7 Fortunately, Ward does not only take notice of the unavoidability of a discursive form of apologetics but gives this finding a rather positive turn. ‘What theology then aspires to facilitate … is an interpretation by Christ of culture’s own dreaming … so that the culture itself might begin to understand its own aspirations and limitations, the hope for which it longs and the depths of fallenness into which it continually commits itself.’8 So understood, apologetics appears to be a sort of Christian communication about the grandeur and the misery of humankind, about the human being’s most terrible desolations and deepest aspirations. This communication is necessarily addressed to a wider public, because it explicitly seeks to improve the public’s self-understanding with respect to its need for redemption and its eschatological hopes. From the perspective of public theology, a public discourse on these matters seems thus to be more promising than Hauerwas’ intransitive mode of witnessing. 6 7

8

Ibid., 59. Graham Ward, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 53. Ibid., 58–9.

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On closer inspection, however, this notion of apologetics also exhibits conceptual shortcomings which have to be resolved before public theology can enter into an open discourse on the peoples’ salvific needs and their final destiny. To begin with, Christian orthopraxy and orthodoxy do not constitute a monolithic block which can readily serve as starting point for discursive apologetics. In effect, the content of the fides quae and the formation of an accompanying praxis result from countless controversies concerning the demarcation line between heresy and orthodoxy.9 Hence, the search for Christian identity and its appropriate articulation is an ongoing conflict-charged process. Though these controversies pertain, in the first place, to the faith community’s internal life, they still are inevitably affected by the environmental culture. Already on a descriptive level, the wider public is thus involved when it comes to delineate the form and the content of Christian faith.10 This applies to Christian eschatology, too. If, furthermore, a reason-giving apologetics addresses the public because it seeks to uncover the peoples’ deepest salvific needs and their ultimate destiny, the public must necessarily participate in the faith community’s efforts to articulate its eschatological narrative. Accordingly, the inclusion of the public is not only a descriptive feature but also a normative requirement of apologetic communication. Apologetics, in other words, is no one-way communication but always exhibits a dialogical character. In contrast to Ward’s position which seems to presuppose that the faith community already possesses a definite articulation of the culture’s own hopes and limitations, each such articulation is, in fact, the fallible outcome of a persistent dialogue between theology and the addressees of the eschatological message. To emphasize this dialogical character of the apologetic endeavour, we should therefore not speak of apologetics without qualification, but rather of apologetic communication.

2  Apologetic communication within a modern context If this provisional account of apologetic communication is, at least, plausible, it follows that the language of such communication must be accessible to each addressee of the eschatological narrative. What therefore is required is a common ground where the faithful and the nonbelievers can meet. This claim for general accessibility, however, often put forward by public theologians,11 has as often been criticized by influential post-liberal thinkers. In their view, endorsing a neutral sphere where things can be considered in a non-theological fashion implies the demarcation of a realm which is entirely independent of God, and this, so they further hold, leads unavoidably to

 9 10

11

See Daniela Müller, Ketzer und Kirche: Beobachtungen aus zwei Jahrtausenden (Münster: LIT, 2014). See Elaine Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age (London: SCM Press, 2013), 124–30. See for instance R. F. Thieman, Constructing a Public Theology: The Church in a Pluralistic Culture (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 167–9; Max L. Stackhouse, Globalization and Grace (God and Globalization: Theological Ethics and the Spheres of Life; vol. 4) (London: Continuum, 2007), 112; Sebastian H. Kim, Theology in the Public Square: Public Theology as a Catalyst for Open Debate (London: SCM Press, 2011), 22; and Graham, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, 134–9.

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nihilism.12 If this were true, apologetic communication, as sketched hitherto, would indeed be a fairly nihilistic undertaking, for it would draw on presuppositions that, almost by definition, don’t allow for an appropriate articulation of the Christian eschatological message, but rather for its nihilistic counterpart. So the question arises as to whether the Christian eschatological narrative – or, at least, central aspects of it – can be brought up within a modern, liberal and secular context. Is the secular indeed a place where the Christian vision on the destiny of humanity can adequately be communicated? For post-liberal theologians the answer is quite clear. In their opinion, the secular in its entirety must be understood as the consequence of an abysmal theological coursesetting in the Middle Ages. Particularly, it was Duns Scotus who paved the way for the emergence of modernity by putting into effect a metaphysical shift from an analogous to a univocal ontology.13 Thus placing God and the creatures under the same ontological canopy, the being of humans and human affairs could be conceived of independently of God’s being, and so the secular was gradually about to be born. In general, this story is not mistaken, yet it wrongly suspects the secular of merely being confined to itself and not remaining open to a transcendent reality. Why this is a rather distorted picture becomes clear when we realize that Scotus utilized his univocal ontological account inter alia in the context of his Christology.14 Remarkably, there he succeeded in giving a consistent account of the two natures in Christ just because he conceptualized the divine and the human nature univocally. In doing so, he avoided the Monophysite trap into which an analogous ontology almost necessarily must fall, for on this view, the human nature participates already in the divine nature so that a clear distinction between God and man is hardly to be made.15 Likewise, however, Scotus also didn’t fall prey to the Nestorian heresy, since he defined the divine (but also the human) person in purely negative terms, namely as absolute independence or ‘ultimate loneliness’ (ultima solitudo).16 In this way, divine characters could be attributed to Christ as well as human characters, the communicatio idiomatum was thus possible, and Christ’s unity was comprehensively secured. By so safeguarding Christ’s full humanity, Scotus furthermore was able to show that human nature reaches its ultimate destiny in Christ by unforcedly affirming God’s charitable grace. So it is the free exercise of the human will which designates the final and utmost performance 12

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15

16

See John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward, ‘Suspending the Material: The Turn of Radical Orthodoxy’, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, ed. John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward (London: Routledge, 1999), 1–20, 3. For a critical reconstruction of this ‘Scotus Story’ see Daniel. P. Horan, Postmodernity and Univocity: A Critical Account of Radical Orthodoxy and John Duns Scotus (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014). For the following see Christoph Hübenthal, Moderne orthodoxie: verdediging van een denkvorm voor de publieke theologie (Nijmegen: Radboud University, 2015). See Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 57–68. See Johannes Duns Scotus, Ordinatio. III d. 1, q. 1, n. 17, Opera Omnia: Editio Minor, ed. Giovanni Lauriola (Alberobello: Edrice Alberobello, 1998–2003), III/2, 12. – Against this background, Milbank’s assertion that Scotus represented a ‘quasi-Nestorianism in Christology’ is absolutely unintelligible. See John Milbank, ‘The Grandeur of Reason and the Perversity of Rationalism: Radical Orthodoxy’s First Decade’, in The Radical Orthodoxy Reader, ed. John Milbank and Simon Oliver (New York, NY: Routledge, 2009), 367–404, 379.

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of human nature. This, however entails by no means a narcissistic self-assertion, but rather brings to fulfilment God’s own creative will, namely the creature’s free affirmation of His abundant gift of love as it was unsurpassedly achieved in Christ’s human will.17 Against this background, the rise and the meaning of the secular can be evaluated rather differently from the post-liberal view. For now we can ask as to whether the progress of modernity and the advance of secularism might not reasonably be considered as the conceptual and real-historical unfolding of exactly that idea of freedom that Scotus attributed to the human nature by describing its ultimate realization in Christ.18 The secular, then, can still be conceived of as a realm detached from God, but now its very ground of being lies not in the human hubris, but in God’s creative will to have a free partner next to Himself whom He wanted to present with His loving Self and whom He hoped to respond just the way that Christ did. On this view, the secular constitutes the historical instantiation of a divinely liberated freedom which manifests itself in this world by ordering its own affairs and by applying its own reason. But the aim of such autonomous ordering is not to achieve a final separation from God. On the contrary, in fact it seeks to arrange all human affairs so that within them, secular humanity’s eschatological directedness towards God can become visible. Of course, this does not happen by itself. What therefore has to be initiated is a reflective process, a self-enlightenment, so to speak, through which the true destiny of human nature becomes obvious. By a thorough reflection on its very ground of being – which is nothing but the exercise of human freedom – the secular has thus to discover what it is finally directed towards. Against the first impression, however, such self-enlightenment is not to be confused whatsoever with natural theology, for it does not aim at demonstrating the existence of God or the factual reachability of the ultimate destiny. Primarily, it only seeks to justify the hypothetical statement that if the human nature has in fact a final destiny, this destiny lies in the free acceptance of God’s gratuitous love. If this interpretation of modernity and secularism is not entirely mistaken, the secular public realm can indeed be conceived of as a sphere where central facets of the eschatological message – albeit not the entire narrative – can be communicated in a language accessible to all. Apologetic communication, then, coincides with the reflective self-enlightenment of what lies at the very bottom of the secular. Since, as has been indicated, this concept of freedom can eventually be traced back to a consistent Christological understanding of the human nature, it is, to say the least, theologically questionable when Milbank, for instance, asserts: 17

18

See Duns Scotus, Reportationes Paris, III, d. 7., q. 4, n. 5, Opera Omnia, II/2, 1003: ‘Dico igitur sic: primo Deus diligit se; secundo diligit se aliis, et iste est amor castus; tertio vult se diligi ab alio, qui potest eum summe diligere, loquendo de amore alicuius extrinseci; et quarto previdit unionem illius naturae, quae debet eum summe diligere, etsi nullus cecidisset.’ – Therefore, I say it in this way: God first loves Himself; second, He loves Himself in others, and this is the perfect [Trinitarian] love; third, He wills to be loved by another who can love Him supremely, which is to say, the love of an external [human] being; and fourth He foresaw the union [in Christ] with that nature that has to love Him supremely, as if no one was [sinfully] fallen. The advance of modernity as unfolding of the nominalist concept of freedom has been described by Hermann Krings, System und Freiheit: Gesammelte Aufsätze (München: Alber, 1980), 40–68.

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Instead of such a falsely ‘neutral’ approach … which accepts without question the terms and the terminology of this world, we need a mode of apologetics prepared to question the world’s assumptions down to their very roots and to expose how they lie within a paganism, heterodoxy or else an atheism with no ground in reason and a tendency to deny the ontological reality of reason altogether.19

For Milbank, one result of the fatal Scotist course-setting is the alleged concurrence of divine and human freedom whereby ‘created freedom’ was ‘granted an autonomous space outside divine causation’.20 In Milbank’s view, it is obviously an erroneous notion of human freedom which has to be unmasked by apologetics as he understands it. However, one can wonder whether this is the right way of seeing it. For if human freedom had indeed to be placed exclusively within the realm of divine causation because it otherwise would not participate in God’s being and thus exhibits a false autonomy, this would apply to Christ’s human freedom, too. But then it is hard to make plausible how Christ’s human nature and Christ’s human will have to be conceived of.21 If human freedom, in other words, were necessarily to be located within the divine sphere, the true human nature of Christ threatened to vanish in thin air. Perhaps it would go too far to contend that the post-liberal conception of apologetics is entirely based on a Monophysite and monotheletic Christology. Yet, it is hard to see, why it is not.22 From all this we may cautiously draw the conclusion, that apologetic communication rather should be understood as an impulse to launch the reflective self-enlightenment of the secular and its underlying concept of human freedom. The provisional purpose of such self-enlightenment, then, is to discursively verify the claim that the human being is indeed directed towards an ultimate loving relation with God. But the purpose is not to demonstrate that God, in fact, exists or that such a relation is possible. Selfenlightenment, as has been said, will only result in a hypothetical statement. In the fourth section, however, it will be argued that a substantive apologetic communication which seeks to make plausible the full eschatological message, has to employ additional communicative means. But before we come to that, we first have to see how the selfenlightenment of the secular might actually be brought into practice.

3  Schillebeeckx’ ‘honest justification of faith’ A promising proposal of how this assignment might be carried out can be found in the third part of Edward Schillebeeckx’ Christological trilogy. Though he himself does not 19

20

21

22

John Milbank, ‘An Apologia for Apologetics’, in Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition, ed. Andrew Davison (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), xiii–xxiii, xx. John Milbank, Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2013), 42. As is well known, the third council of Constantinople (681) condemned monotheletism and defined instead that there are two wills in Christ. See Heinrich Denzinger and Adolf Schönmetzer, eds, Enchiridion symbolorum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum (Freiburg: Herder, 36th edn, 1976), 553–9. A Monophysite tendency can indeed be observed in Milbank when he, for instance, speaks of the ‘Incarnation where God and the world became one through a specific point and event of identification.’ See Milbank, ‘An Apologia for Apologetics’, xxi.

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designate it as apologetics or apologetic communication, Schillebeeckx still develops an ambitious apologetic account which he calls ‘an honest justification of faith’. To provide such a justification, according to him, three conditions must be met: It must be possible to assign a human experience, or experiences, which (1) all men and women unavoidably share with one another and (2) at the same time is an experience which (a) does not necessarily call for a religious interpretation while (b) it is nevertheless experienced by all men and women as a fundamental experience, namely one which affects human existence most deeply, and (3) which is helped in the understanding of this fundamental character, which so deeply affects human existence, by the word God.23

After having introduced these conditions, Schillebeeckx seems not immediately to unfold the announced justification of faith but instead discusses God’s almightiness. A closer look, however, can reveal the intrinsic relation between the justificatory project and the reflections on God’s almightiness. In Schillebeeckx’ view, God voluntarily limited His absolute power to create space for human freedom. God determined Himself so to be confined, because He loves His creatures and therefore wills and respects their liberty. This non-godly, protected human space of one’s own is necessary if God is to make this other his covenant partner. True partnership presupposes a contribution, freedom and initiative from both sides; otherwise there is no partnership. By giving creative space to human beings, God makes himself vulnerable.24

Apparently, we encounter here the same motif as in the previous section: God makes room for an independent human freedom so that humans can autonomously enter into a loving relationship with Him. Now, it is exactly this – through God’s voluntary withdrawal, liberated – human freedom that also accounts for the experience that Schillebeeckx seeks to invoke for his justification of faith. For in particular situations, he argues, human freedom experiences itself as ethically challenged. Drawing on Levinas, he defines the ‘face of the other person as an ethical challenge to my free subjectivity’.25 So it is the ethical experience that meets the aforementioned conditions of anthropological universality, existential fundamentality, and religious as well as non-religious interpretability. With the help of a few speaking examples, Schillebeeckx, then, further illustrates how demanding the ethical experience sometimes can be. In extreme cases, complying with moral obligations might even have lethal consequences for the actor. Though not everyone will often find him- or herself in such extreme situations, still ethical experience affects human freedom most deeply. After all, it is the experience of the ‘other person in need which challenges me, summons me and lays a claim on my freedom’.26 Seen in this light, it should be clear why the justification of faith has to take just that experience as 23

24 25 26

Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, trans. J. Bowden, CW vol. 10 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 82 [84]. Schillebeeckx, Church, 88 [90]. Ibid., 90 [93]. Ibid., 90 [92].

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its point of departure. But there is more to it. For now, we begin to see why the freedom lying at the bottom of the secular and an ethically challenged freedom are one and the same. At its core, each autonomous ordering of human affairs is an ethical task par excellence. So the reflective elucidation of the ethical experience appears to be just that self-enlightenment of the secular which has to be stimulated and fostered by apologetic communication. Fortunately, Schillebeeckx provides us with such a self-enlightening reflection when he lays bare the aporia into which the exercise of an ethically challenged freedom eventually leads. On the one hand, the ethical demand is completely evident, because we undoubtedly experience ourselves as morally obligated. But on the other hand, there is absolutely ‘no guarantee that evil – violence and injustice, torture and death – will not have the last word’.27 The full extent of the aporia, however, becomes first visible when we relate it to an insight that Schillebeeckx has formulated elsewhere. In his book on Christ, he reminds us of ‘the reality of the human history of suffering, which even remains firm in an allegedly successful process of emancipation and is not just an ingredient of the “pre-history” of mankind before emancipation’28. The ethical challenge, so we may conclude from that, emerges not only in the face of a concrete other; if we take the challenge seriously, it is the suffering of the entire human race – including the victims who are long since dead and forgotten – which lays an insurmountable claim on our freedom. Hence, we never can meet the challenge comprehensively, yet it still remains an absolutely evident and unavoidable experience. As soon as we have realized the full extent of the aporia, we necessarily have to take a stance towards it. And here, according to Schillebeeckx, two options are possible. ‘On the one hand one can talk of an “heroic act”, as Sartre and Camus would do in this case: a gratuitous heroic action for the sake of the humanum. On the other hand, the reply could take a religious direction, though equally on the basis of human values.’29 The alternative is, thus, either to engage in heroic acts but likewise to accept the complete absurdity of all ethical behaviour, or to pin one’s hope on God who can bring to an end what humans, in spite of their unconditional moral obligation, definitely cannot do. Even a ‘postulatory hope’, that is a hope which believes in the human capability to promote the ‘humanum’ and to bring about a better world, has to reckon with the tragic history of human suffering which still cannot be made undone.30 So the existential decision to be taken is a decision between the eventual absurdity of our most intimate exercise of freedom and the openness for an eschatological hope. At this point, however, it must be clear that heroically enduring the absurdity – though this is indeed a possible option31 – doesn’t do full justice to the ethically challenged freedom, for this freedom cannot be satisfied until the entire history of suffering is ultimately 27 28

29 30 31

Ibid., 93 [95]. Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World, trans. John Bowden, CW vol. 7 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 767 [769]. Schillebeeckx, Church, 93 [95]. See ibid., 93–4 [96–7]. Camus, as is well known, once stated that ‘one must imagine Sisyphus happy’, but with Schillebeeckx one could rightly respond that there ‘cannot be really talk of salvation as long as there is still suffering, oppression and unhappiness alongside the personal happiness that we experience, in our immediate vicinity or further afield’. See Schillebeeckx, Christ, 710–11 [719].

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redeemed. If, furthermore, such redemption proves to be a divine offering because the humans will definitely not bring it about, the final destiny of humanity lies indeed in a voluntary attunement with God’s eschatological will. Yet, once more we have to emphasize that this does not entail that an eschatological will exists or that ultimate redemption necessarily will happen.32 It only shows what human freedom is finally directed towards. To summarize, it can be stated that Schillebeeckx’ reflections on the ethical experience could indeed be seen as a self-enlightenment of that freedom that lies at the bottom of the secular. Though Schillebeeckx speaks from a decisively theological point of view, his considerations still terminate in the merely hypothetical state­ment that human freedom reaches its ultimate destiny when it accepts a gratuitous divine gift.

4  Framing a public theology How do all these findings bear on the framing of a public theology? From what we have discussed hitherto, it should be clear that public theology first has to make a substantial contribution to the self-enlightenment of the secular public. After all, only on condition that human freedom becomes aware of its final directedness towards God can the full range of the Christian eschatological message meaningfully be communicated. Notably, this self-enlightenment is to be achieved by initiating and maintaining a public discourse on the ultimate destiny of humanity. From Schillebeeckx we can moreover learn that such a discourse is necessarily related to ethical issues. Human freedom, as we have seen, is affected most deeply by the ethical challenge of responding to the needs of others, of ordering the structural and institutional shape of human affairs, and of facing the history of human suffering. So the quest for the ultimate destiny of humanity is, so to speak, the most intimate concern of any ethical discourse. The task of public theology, then, is to trace back ethical debates to the question of how we wish to exercise our freedom appropriately  – not only in relation to the ethical problem at stake, but first and foremost in the final sense. Of course, this does not entail losing sight of the original ethical problems, rather it seeks to show that each ethical issue bears a fundamental layer and an ultimate quest. Once this fundamental quest comes into sight, public theology can begin to openly defend the hypothetical statement that the ultimate destiny of humanity lies in the acceptance of a divine loving offer.33 Of course, the arguments to be employed for such defence need not exactly reflect Schillebeeckx’ honest justification of faith, but presumably the factual line of reasoning will not be very different from it. The overall 32

33

Elsewhere Schillebeeckx refers to Horkheimer who ‘doubts whether a human ethic which has detached itself from its religious basis can in the last resort have any meaningful effect’. See Schillebeeckx, Christ, 806–7 [811]. Horkheimer thus clearly saw that ethics is necessarily directed towards a divine gift; nevertheless he did not believe in it. This defense can be understood in terms of a discursive validation of truth claims as being conceptualized by Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), 307.

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purpose of this discourse, then, is to confront the interlocutors with the aforementioned aporia (or something like that) so that they will realize both that they have to take an existential decision and what the options are. Admittedly, this is a very rough outline of what concretely has to happen. In fact, the shape of every such discourse depends on a multitude of particular circumstances, especially on the arguments being put forward by the discussion partners. So it cannot be planned beforehand. This also implies that the discourse is not about winning a rhetoric competition, but about seriously seeking the truth by exchanging good arguments. Nevertheless, the aim of the public theological endeavour is to convince the interlocutors both that each particular ethical problem can virtually be extended to an unconditional ethical challenge and that their capabilities to meet this challenge are basically limited. Once the interlocutors have recognized this aporia, they should also be prepared to affirm the hypothetical truth that any possible resolution of the aporia presupposes a gratuitous divine gift. On the basis of this theoretical insight they should finally see the existential need to take a stance towards it. Wherever theologians contribute to the self-enlightenment of the secular by discursively defending a truth claim of this kind, they practise public theology. But this alone, of course, is not a sufficient way of doing it. Apologetically communicating the Christian eschatological message likewise requires making credible that God undoubtedly exists, that He revealed Himself in Jesus Christ as to the unconditional love for every human being, and that He irrevocably announced His Kingdom and universal redemption. These creedal statements, however, cannot be verified by means of a public discourse, because they rest on the free existential decision, which – as such – is inaccessible to others. Hence, the only way of publicly communicating such beliefs is a concomitant praxis which, so to speak, exhibits these convictions symbolically.34 This, unsurprisingly, brings us back to (transitive!) witnessing. Witnessing, then, can be understood as making visible that a quasi-assertoric version of the hypothetical statement is possible only through an act of faith. It thus confesses that the ultimate destiny of humanity is reachable, because God exists and wills universal redemption. Moreover, since this act of faith is related to a concrete historical occurrence, namely the Christ-event, the believed content cannot be restricted to a quasi-assertoric version of the hypothetical statement but has to be extended to all implications of this event. Christian faith praxis bears thus witness to the full range of the fides quae. Likewise, witnessing has to show that a praxis based on this faith is a liveable and authentic praxis. And this, then, leads to the final and most important characteristic of witnessing: due to its authenticity it has to be appealing so that others are invited to freely join the Christian faith community. In short, apologetic communication can now be delineated as to comprise two complementary modes of bringing the Christian eschatological narrative to the public: discourse in the sense of a reflective self-enlightenment of the secular, and witnessing in the sense of an authentic faith praxis. At this point, some will perhaps ask whether this isn’t a too narrow and likewise too idealistic conception of public 34

In Habermas’ language, this is about the verification of sincerity claims. ‘That a speaker means what he says can be made credible only in the consistency of what he does and not through providing grounds.’ See Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, 303.

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theology. Can public theology in fact be confined to these two modes of apologetic communication? The answer is: yes and no. On the one hand, public theology can hardly be more than a public invitation to Christianity, and this is what discourse and witnessing primarily are about. On the other hand, however, we also have to acknowledge that the communication conditions of our late modern times are not of a kind that makes apologetic communication easily achievable. Though we need not agree with those who contend that the modern liberal state is basically hostile to religion,35 initiating a high-level public discourse on issues of ultimate concern nevertheless turns out to be difficult enterprise; and hoping that an authentic faith praxis will readily have an appellative effect on huge masses, is surely a rather naïve expectation. Our current culture is, to say the least, little susceptible to apologetic discourse and witnessing. Though an exhaustive explanation of this contumacy would fill books, we still can assume that it is a sort of widespread anthropological reductionism which makes that the great majority of our fellow citizens lives in an astonishing existential flatness. Once people have internalized the view that they are nothing but … genes, brains, customers, consumers, voters, users or a site in the social media …, they are incapable of adequately reflecting on the true grandeur and misery of their existence. Once they have learnt to think of themselves only in terms of mediocrity and averageness, they are impotent to develop an idea of ultimate concern. The struggle against anthropological reductionism is thus another assignment of public theology. On closer inspection, however, this appears to be just a subsidiary task, since it only seeks to prepare the conditions under which apologetic communication is possible. Nevertheless, it is an important and urgent task. Its primary purpose, the alleviation of an anthropological reductionist thinking, is to be achieved by a social ethics which pursues social justice. After all, every human being is entitled to live under conditions within which both a personal and a public reflection on all dimensions of one’s existence is, at least, possible.36 Therefore, any material and ideological, any structural and institutional impediment has gradually to be abolished. Seen in this light, the struggle against anthropological reductionism can indeed be qualified as a fight for social justice.37 Thus it appears that public theology in its entirety first and foremost is to be understood as an ethical enterprise. In its discursive mode it extends and deepens ethical debates, in its testimonial mode it presents itself as the ethics of a faith praxis, and in its subsidiary mode it strives for social justice. For the sake of theoretical clarity it is surely important to distinguish these different modes, but the concrete practice of public theology will nevertheless be a multifaceted and multi-layered ethical whole attempting to exhibit the inviting face of the Christian eschatological message. 35

36 37

For the compatibility of religion and the modern liberal state see Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). See Alan Gewirth, Self-Fulfillment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 182–99. See Christoph Hübenthal, ‘Quest for Quality of Life: A Perspective from Public Theology’,in A Quest for Quality of Life: Spiritual Discernment and Choice in Contexts of Societal Renewal, ed. Elisabeth Hense et al. (Leiden: Brill [forthcoming]).

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5  Are the last things exclusively positive? Up to now, eschatology has been mentioned several times, but little has been said about what Christians actually hope for and what thus their eschatological message is. Of course, this gap cannot be filled here comprehensively, but a few remarks should be made anyway. Let us therefore once more turn to Schillebeeckx. In his book on the Church, he rightly stresses that a vision of eschatological fullness can be communicated only in a symbolic way. In that sense, he introduces ‘four great metaphors’ symbolically expressing the ultimate destiny of humanity.38 The first is the kingdom of God which epitomizes a community of equals who have definitely overcome the history of violence and suffering; second, the resurrection of body which warrants the eternal continuation of the full human personality; third, the new heaven and the new earth which points at the restoration of whole creation; and finally the parousia of Jesus Christ which emphasizes the central role of Christ in the redemptive work of God. In the context of our considerations it is this eschatological message whose reception has to be prepared by an ethical engagement for appropriate communication conditions and social justice and whose appropriation has to be stimulated by apologetic communication as discourse and witnessing. The centre of public theology, in other words, is formed by the Christian hope that the whole human race one day will be united in a universal community within which all dimensions of the human person will unconditionally be recognized; within which the history of human suffering will definitely be redeemed; within which a peaceful relation with undamaged creation will be maintained; and within which Christ will be the one who ultimately warrants the unity of this loving community. Indeed, it is this vision of the destiny of humanity that has openly to be communicated by public theology. And public theology, as we have seen, is highly indebted to Schillebeeckx who provides it with both a cogent rationale to demonstrate that humanity is directed towards the acceptance of a divine gift and a rich metaphorical language to symbolically unfold what this gift consists of. But, unfortunately, there is also a little inconsistency in Schillebeeckx’ account of the eschaton. At the end of this chapter, this inconsistency should be resolved in order to get a fuller understanding of what the eschatological narrative in fact is about and what thus public theology apologetically has to communicate. For Schillebeeckx, as we have already seen, it is important that God confined his absolute power to create room for human freedom. For only a free human being can give an unforced response to God’s loving offer and thereby confirm a loving relationship between the human and God. In Schillebeeckx’ own words: ‘God’s absolute saving presence as such is only an offer and a gift. … No one will ever be saved against his or her will. As experienced reality, salvation is always accepted or appropriated salvation.’39 Countless other quotes could be cited to show the centrality of human freedom in Schillebeeckx’ theology. When it comes to eschatology, he therefore 38 39

For the following see Schillebeeckx, Church, 132–3 [134–5]. Schillebeeckx, Church, 11 [11].

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consequently rejects the doctrine of the apokatastasis or recapitulation, because this would do no justice to human freedom. Representatives of this doctrine, he says, ‘suggest too cheap a view of mercy and forgiveness; moreover, they trivialize the drama of the real course of events in the conflict between oppressed and oppressors’40. Despite this clear statement, however, he still seems to endorse the essential intention of this doctrine when he holds: ‘The “eschaton” or the ultimate is exclusively positive. There is no negative eschaton. Good, not evil has the last word.’41 With this emphasis on the positive, Schillebeeckx seeks to avoid the idea of an eternal hell: Ultimately no one is excluded from the kingdom of God; ... there is only the ‘kingdom of God’, a kingdom of liberated and free people, who do not have next door to them a kingdom of those who have been definitely cast out. The evil do not have eternal life; their death is in fact the end of everything: they have excluded themselves from God and the community of the good.42

Obviously, these considerations propose to cleanse the Christian hope from all negativity; and one can wholeheartedly share this intuition. However, we still can ask whether Schillebeeckx’ solution does not countervail just that concept of human freedom that he emphatically endorses in so many other parts of his work. If, at a given moment, God took the instantaneous will of bad people as to be definite and let them die a ‘second death’, He would deprive them of the opportunity to freely revise their evil minds. And this, then, raises the question as to whether humans can make a definite decision at all. Can they irrevocably secede from God’s love? Hansjürgen Verweyen who recently quarrelled with the same theological problems denies this.43 For him only God’s love is definite, but no human decision out of free will. The concept of hell must therefore be viewed as the provisional anthropo­ logical possibility to refuse God and to suffer from this refusal. God, however, does not condemn the objector but keeps patiently waiting and courting – in the worst case eternally. God stands on the threshold and knocks at the door, but if we do not freely open it, he does not come in. Out of respect for our freedom God refuses to force the door of our heart and our free will. But God continues to be present in redemption and forgiveness: God does not go away, and continues to knock.44

This quote does not, as one might think, come from Hansjürgen Verweyen even though he could have said the same thing in almost the same words. Surprisingly, the quotation stems from Schillebeeckx himself albeit not from context of his eschatology. Yet, we should take it as an eschatological statement. For if we do so, our apologetic communication in both its variants – discourse and witnessing – becomes more coherent. We, then, lay a claim on the freedom of our interlocutors 40 41 42 43

44

Ibid., 134 [136]. Ibid., 137 [139]. Ibid., 135 [137]. See Hans Jürgen Verweyen, Ist Gott die Liebe? Spurensuche in Bibel und Tradition (Regensburg: Pustet, 2014), 189–91. Schillebeeckx, Church, 88 [91].

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by speaking and bearing witness about a God who has already decided to endlessly recognize this freedom.

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Scotus, Johannes Duns (1998–2003), Ordinatio, Opera Omnia: Editio Minor, ed. Giovanni Lauriola (Alberobello: Edrice Alberobello). Stackhouse, Max L. (2007), Globalization and Grace (God and Globalization: Theological Ethics and the Spheres of Life, vol. 4) (London: Continuum). Stout, Jeffrey (2004), Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Thieman, R. F. (1991), Constructing a Public Theology: The Church in a Pluralistic Culture (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press). Verweyen, Hans Jürgen (2014), Ist Gott die Liebe? Spurensuche in Bibel und Tradition (Regensburg: Pustet), 189–91. Ward, Graham (2005), Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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‘Putting the Facts to Shame’: Eschatology and the Discourse of Martyrdom Michael Kirwan

1 The Angelus of History In his 1987 book of lectures Jesus in Our Western Culture, Edward Schillebeeckx expounds the theological significance of ‘contrast experiences’ of suffering and violated dignity.1 Such experiences, and the emotion which they arouse in us, can mediate a deep encounter with God. They point to a negative experience of transcendence: God’s absence from our relationships of possession and power exposes the gulf of contradiction between God’s Kingdom and our social existence. Schillebeeckx refers to Jan Ruysbroeck’s ‘Dark Light’, a panoramic expansion of awareness and redefinition of human capacities, which occurs at the furthest reaches of consciousness in extreme boundary situations.2 By experiencing this contradiction, and by setting oneself in opposition to it through solidarity with the violated, the believer experiences the presence of the liberating God of Jesus. God is thus revealed as ‘the heart and soul of any truly human liberation’.3 Drawing on the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, Schillebeeckx argues for ethics as a ‘hinge and link between the mystical and the political dimensions of Christian faith’.4 Such a connection is not unproblematic for Christian belief, however; he goes on to juxtapose the asymmetrical ethical relationship described by Levinas with the aporia identified by Kant: we have absolutely no guarantee that, in spite of our heroic efforts towards the humanum, evil will not have the last word. A specific ethical example is offered for our consideration, of a soldier under a dictatorship, who is ordered to kill a hostage, on penalty of his own death. The soldier knows that the hostage will be killed in any case; in other words, any refusal to comply on his part 1

2

3 4

Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus in Our Western Culture: Mysticism, Ethics and Politics (London: SCM Press, 1987). Elizabeth K. Tillar, ‘Dark Light: Wrestling with the Angel at the End of History’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 142–60. Schillebeeckx, Jesus in Our Western Culture, 73. Ibid., 47.

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would be strictly worthless. What is the significance of such refusal, therefore? What is at stake? The integrity of the martyr’s action is dialectically opposed to the cruel facts of the situation, such that victims ‘put empirical factuality “to shame”’.5 A humanistic-agonistic interpretation is possible, in the tradition of Sartre or Camus, as well as a Christian religious one. Schillebeeckx explores the interrelation of these two possibilities, opening up key crucial themes of political theology: freedom and autonomy, communicative rationality, political agency and sacrifice. Here, and in other writings on martyrdom, he invites us to see the martyr as a figure of eschatological hope. Schillebeeckx shares this hope with political theologians more generally. Its classic expression in twentieth-century political theology is surely Walter Benjamin’s reflection upon the Paul Klee painting Angelus Novus. In his essay ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ Benjamin reads this figure as the ‘Angel of History’, who is being swept away from the viewer into the future, to which his back is turned. He stares, appalled at the wreckage of catastrophe that is piling up in front of him. He wants to stop, to make whole what has been smashed, but a storm blowing from Paradise has caught his wings, and propels him helplessly onward. The storm is called Progress.6 It is good to think for a moment about the way we, as viewers, are paradoxically implicated in this painting, and in Benjamin’s narration of it. What, precisely, is the Angel looking at? The victims of history, certainly, but above all Benjamin himself, who tragically took his own life to escape arrest by the Nazis, so that his death becomes one more in the chain of catastrophes which appals the helpless Angel. But the Angel is also staring at us. Are we also victims, therefore? Or is his judgemental gaze, directed at us, the perpetrators? In any case, as long as we are looking at this Angel, we can see neither the future behind his back, nor can we see the victims. The painting, and Benjamin’s narrative inspired by it, are discomforting. I take the challenge of political theology to be, in part, the task of changing our location: of standing in the position of the Angel and confronting the chaotic cruelties of history. We need to see what the Angel sees: ‘the humanum under threat’, which for Schillebeeckx is both an anthropological and a Christological reality. We then have the task of imagining the messianic possibility of interruption: of stopping, of making whole what has been smashed. Having begun with Benjamin’s parable, I wish to develop two other lines of theoaesthetic meditation upon ‘the humanum under threat’. The first of these is to read Schillebeeckx’s parable of the soldier, mentioned above, alongside the portrayal of Hans Castorp, the bourgeois hero of Thomas Mann’s 1928 novel, The Magic Mountain. The second line is the biblical motif of ecce homo, centred on the idea of the tragic as the art form which requires ‘the intolerable burden of God’s presence’. (George Steiner) Tragedy, both ancient and modern rendition of ecce homo, compels us to confront the mysterious unreason of human catastrophe. Tragedy’s compatibility with Christianity (Eagleton, contra Steiner) allows us to regard the crucifixion of Jesus as genuinely tragic, and elaborate a powerful hermeneutic for responding to the threatened humanum. 5 6

Ibid., 59. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (London: Random House, 1999 [1955]), 249.

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I am aware that this kind of reading of Schillebeeckx is unusual. The extraordinary breadth of his philosophical and intellectual correlation does not, for the most part, include literature or literary texts as a field of engagement. My warrant for venturing into such territory comes from Schillebeeckx’s own sketch of the theology of culture in the post-war period, specifically in the three articles which appeared in 1945 exploring ‘The Christian Situation’, in which he proposes ‘Foundations for a Theology of Culture’ and ‘Supernatural Exclusivism’ as a response to the confrontation between Christianity and a godless humanistic culture which is such a striking feature of the post-war situation.7 The challenge of Nietzsche, and the existentialist concern for freedom, are key; Camus and Sartre are identified in the parable of the soldier as offering an alternative to the religious account of sacrificial martyrdom for the sake of the humanum. My query here is whether Thomas Mann’s extraordinary quest for the humanum (rephrased by Georg Lukács as Mann’s ‘search for the bourgeois man’) offers a parallel or similar foil to that of Schillebeeckx. In a similar way, the discussion of tragedy as a theological form, summarized all too briefly with reference to Steiner, Eagleton and Ward, can help us to expand and enrich Schillebeeckx’s account of a theology which ‘puts the facts to shame’.

2  Parables of ‘the good and honest soldier’ As a political theologian, Schillebeeckx is to be bracketed with Johann Baptist Metz and Jürgen Moltmann. One notable difference is that each of the Germans draws on strikingly similar wartime experiences as the catalyst for their respective political theologies. Metz and Moltmann each experienced the death of young comrades, during military service towards the end of the Second World War; in addition, each writes of the traumatizing effect of being exposed to the reality of the death camps. Metz refers to these events, charged with theological significance, as ‘interruptions’. He highlights two specifically: firstly, the discovery of the bodies of his young comrades (all conscripted, like himself, at the age of sixteen) who had been killed by an Allied attack which Metz himself had escaped, having been sent on an errand; second, the revelation of what had taken place in the camps, which shattered forever the idyllic innocence of his sheltered ‘premodern’ Bavarian childhood. The impact of his childhood experiences he graphically renders as ‘one long, silent scream’. Moltmann, too, tells of his own narrow escape, during a fire raid in Hamburg which took the life of the young comrade standing next to him. During his internment after the war, he and other prisoners were compelled to watch film footage from the death camps – a devastating experience of God’s presence in the dark night of the soul: ‘If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou are there.’… ‘He was present even behind the barbed wire – no, most of all behind the barbed wire’: How often I walked round and round in circles at night in front of the barbed wire fence. My first thoughts were always about the free world outside, from which 7

Philip Kennedy, Edward Schillebeeckx (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994), 59–60.

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I was cut off; but I always ended up thinking about a centre to the circle in the middle of the camp – a little hill, with a hut on it which served as a chapel. It seemed to me like a circle surrounding the mystery of God, which was drawing me towards it. This experience of not sinking into the abyss but of being held up from afar was the beginning of a clear hope, without which it is impossible to live at all. At the same time, even this hope cut two ways; on the one hand it provided the strength to get up again after every inward or outward defeat; on the other hand it made the soul rub itself raw on the barbed wire, making it impossible to settle down in captivity or come to terms with it.8

Edward Schillebeeckx has no such traumatic wartime memories to draw on. Instead, in Jesus in our Western Culture he presents an all too comprehensible scenario: a soldier, under a dictatorial regime, is required to execute a hostage.9 From a utilitarian perspective, the case is clear: the soldier will die if he refuses the order, and since the captive will be executed in any case, then compliance would appear to be ethically justifiable. Obeying this cruel order will actually save a life – the obedient soldier’s. No name is given to this soldier, faced with this terrifying dilemma. So let us call him Hans, from Hamburg. And let us imagine that the horrific scenario takes place during the First World War (the centenary of the birth of Edward Schillebeeckx, of course, coincides with the outbreak of the Great War). I wish to take the liberty of framing what follows – a reflection upon the eschatological meaning of suffering, sacrifice and martyrdom – in the light of an important literary work, with specific reference to the years prior to the 1914–18 conflict. The work in question is Thomas Mann’s novel, The Magic Mountain.10 Originally published in 1928, it is a Bildungsroman, the story of the formation or initiation of a young, naïve hero. Mann associates this novel with the Quester legends in search of the Grail, symbol of knowledge, wisdom, consecration, the elixir of life. The transformation of a young and fastidious bourgeois named Hans Castorp is described by Mann as an alchemical enhancement, or ‘heightening’ (Steigerung), which transubstantiates this rather ordinary, unexciting individual into someone capable of adventures. I note here an analogy with Schillebeeckx’s description of Jesus as ‘concentrated humanity’. My proposal is that Mann’s mythological quest is unconvincing and incomplete, and that Schillebeeckx’s parable of the soldier, whom we can understand ‘christomorphically’, takes up where Mann falls short (the theologian completes the literary imagination, rather than the other way round, as Mann would argue). The Magic Mountain tells how Hans Castorp pays a visit to the House Berghof, a sanatorium in the Swiss mountains. He thinks he is there for three weeks, but when he is diagnosed as needing prolonged treatment, he ends up staying for seven years. Mann shows, through the experiences of his hero, that the quest for authentic wisdom has to pass through a profound engagement with sickness and with death, what Schillebeeckx calls ‘negative contrast experiences’. Hans Castorp ultimately ‘strikes a pact’ with the unknown world, and with its dark forces. He comes to see that we  8  9 10

Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences of God (London: SCM Press, 1980), 8. Schillebeeckx, Jesus in our Western Culture, 58–64. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (London: Vintage Classics, 1999 [1927]).

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must neither rationalistically deny these dark powers, nor must we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed or fascinated by them. It is this wisdom which Hans Castorp takes with him at the end of the novel, seven hundred pages later, when he returns to the thunder-peal of the ‘flat-land’, and we bid him farewell, stumbling desperately across a battlefield, fire falling from the heavens. In this novel of ideas and education, two of Castorp’s fellow patients are significant: Herr Naphta and Herr Settembrini, ‘both talkers, the one luxurious and spiteful, the other for ever blowing on his penny pipe of reason’.11 Settembrini is an articulate rationalist and freemason; Naphta, fanatically misanthropic, is a convert from Judaism, a Jesuit who has been invalided out of ministry. Each stresses, as mutually exclusive, two sides of the human condition. The two men argue bitterly about the merits of reason and enlightenment, until finally Naphta, the Jesuit, is provoked into challenging the other to a duel. The pacifist Settembrini thinks the whole business is ridiculous, but he goes along with the preparations. When they face each other with pistols at dawn, Settembrini fires his shot high into the air, and braces himself ready for his opponent’s turn. Naphta angrily demands that Settembrini fire again, properly. When Settembrini refuses, Naphta shrieks ‘Coward!’ – and shoots himself in the head. The interaction of these two protagonists, and their attempts to ‘win over’ the impressionable Hans Castorp, are reminiscent of a morality play. We feel Hans is right to refuse a ‘choice’ between Naphta and Settembrini; each offers only a guazzabuglio of God and the devil, a ‘confused noise of battle’ – the Italian term translates as mishmash or jumble. Mann announces, through Castorp, that both the denial of the mysterious dark, and an intoxication with it, can only lead to disaster. And yet, from a Christian perspective, this is inadequate. Rejection of the shrunken gods of rationalism and of religious fanaticism can only be a first step, to be followed by a recognition of the one self-offering – Christ’s – that brings it about that, in the disapproving words of Nietzsche, ‘No-one is sacrificed’ (to which Mann might respond that it is precisely the sacrifice of Christ that ‘Christian’ Europe chose to ignore, preferring instead to tear itself to pieces). Naphta’s suicide, under chilling but farcical circumstances, is of course a totally unnecessary ‘sacrifice’. The disobedience of the dissident soldier in Schillebeeckx’s ‘parable’, likewise issues in what is a ‘needless death’. What might be the difference between the two?

3  The threatened humanum We will return to the Berghof in the conclusion to this chapter. Let us first consider Schillebeeckx’s parable, and the significance of the soldier’s refusal. As indicated above, Schillebeeckx offers two possibilities for discerning what is at stake: a humanisticagonistic interpretation (in the tradition of Sartre or Camus), and a religious one. The interrelation of these two possibilities is explored in a ‘limit situation’ – the hostage command – which Schillebeeckx calls ‘ethical martyrdom’. As it stands, the soldier’s refusal to obey is ‘ineffective and absurd’. The humanist or existentialist response 11

Mann, The Magic Mountain, 495.

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to such a dilemma can be understood as ‘a gratuitous heroic action for the sake of the humanum’. Schillebeeckx acknowledges the nobility and authenticity of such a position in its own right, but judges it to be inferior to the religious stance on a number of grounds. The first objection is a methodological one: the religious viewpoint rests on a realist epistemology, which can acknowledge the limited truth of the opposing view, while the alternative – an anti-realist stance – requires the systematic and uncompromising destruction of the opponent’s perspective.12 Second, such action may indeed be an authentic response to the call of and to the humanum; but it is inadequately grounded, because of the fundamental ambiguity which marks every human encounter. The ‘other’ is as much threat as ethical appeal; there is always the possibility that our interaction may be marked by cruelty and violence, rather than by compassion, which makes the ‘vocation to/from the humanum’ an extremely precarious and risky endeavour. Interestingly, Schillebeeckx judges the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to fall short in the same way. Levinas considers the existence, the ‘face of the other’, to be the transcendent source of an inevitable ethical imperative; Schillebeeckx questions whether such a claim escapes from the human ambiguity mentioned here. On a human plane, this ambivalence confronts us with the Kantian dilemma. We can never be certain that ‘evil will not have the last word on our existence as ethically responsible beings’. This is the aporia that caused Kant to postulate God’s existence, and a balancing of accounts in eternity, so as to make the ethical life psychologically possible, and so avoid moral despair. Related to this is a third aporia, which concerns the hope that can be offered to the fallen victims of history. Even as the humanist places his or her faith in the ultimate triumph of the good (such as the Marxist confidence in the final overcoming of social alienation), it is precisely the fallen victim who is excluded from any possibility of liberation or redemption. They have died so that a future generation may ‘perhaps’ fare differently. Such a remote possibility is not enough: as Martin G. Poulsom puts it, ‘The absurdity and angst generated by this response are toxic to hope and humanization.’13 The Christian response, while not removing the absurdity, recognizes a deeper level of reality, and of human experience, which is personal: God’s saving presence in unwanted and absurd situations, such that absurdity is not the last word: Believers entrust the absurdity to God who is the source of pure positivity and the transcendent foundation of all ethics, the mystical ground of all ethical commitment, as a result of which there is still hope for the victim himself, who outside of the religious perspective is written off for good.14

In short, Schillebeeckx wishes to affirm and uphold the authenticity of the soldier’s ‘ethical martyrdom’, in both secular and faith modes, grounded in each case by the belief 12

13

14

Edward Schillebeeckx, in conversation with Huub Oosterhuis and Piet Hoogeveen, God is New Each Moment, trans. David Smith (New York, NY: The Seabury Press, 1983), 106–7; Edward Schillebeeckx, For the Sake of the Gospel, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1989), 98–102. Martin G. Poulsom, The Dialectics of Creation: Creation and the Creator in Edward Schillebeeckx and David Burrell (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 142. Schillebeeckx, Jesus in Our Western Culture, 62.

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that justice is superior to injustice; but he wishes also to affirm the greater adequacy of the faith perspective. Both the atheist and the believer express a utopian consciousness: ‘faith in humanity despite everything’. Nevertheless, the Christian position carries greater weight than the atheistic secular humanist one. For the believer, the possibility of salvation is affirmed as God’s absolute saving presence in what he has called to life, demanding a ‘salvation-based praxis on behalf of the humanum’. The concept defies easy definition, but as Mary Catherine Hilkert has indicated, it comprises a Christological and an anthropological pole, which need to be kept together, in relational dialectic, as Poulsom would have it.15 The dichotomy between ‘human experience’ and ‘theological tradition’ is false. And there is only one starting point for a suitably integral account of the ‘humanum under threat’, namely the concrete experience of suffering. If we are looking for an anthropological constant, we will find it in negative experiences of oppression and persecution. Only these permit a unified account on which to build a global ethic, for example; witness, by contrast, the failure of most descriptions of human well-being and flourishing to transcend culturally specific (and therefore distorting) conditions. There is, simply, too much ‘non-sense’ in human history to allow for a straightforwardly positive rational account of the humanum. Only negative contrast experiences, and human resistance to them, are authentically universal. Underlying the ethical martyrdom of both believer and humanist, therefore, is a fundamental reliance on reality as trustworthy and meaningful; a robust affirmation of the non-identity of what is and what ought to be. The movement towards the latter, recognized only in the via negativa of suffering and resistance, is ‘the call of and to the humanum’. The location of suffering and humiliation becomes the privileged place where the fundamental symbol of God – the living human being – is given form.16

4  Expanding the theology of martyrdom To recap the last section, and to take this analysis of martyrdom a little deeper: I have mentioned three aporias which Schillebeeckx identifies by means of his parable of the soldier, and its argument for the superiority of a religious to a secular humanist grounding. The first specified the methodological implications of a realist, as opposed to an anti-realist approach. The second two merit further treatment. As indicated above, the issue of the fundamental trustworthiness of the human is in the balance. For all that the experience of suffering provides an anthropological constant, the human capacity to respond with violence and cruelty, as well as with compassion, emphasizes the risk of the ethical venture; it leaves as an open question whether evil and injustice might not ultimately triumph. Finally, the heroic affirmation of the ultimacy of the good, on humanist or existentialist grounds, might be fruitful for future generations,

15 16

Poulsom, Dialectics of Creation, 143. Mary Catherine Hilkert, ‘The Threatened humanum as Imago Dei: Anthropology and Christian Ethics’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederic Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 127–41, 131.

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but carries no hope for the fallen victims of the present and of history, who lie forever outside the scope of any emancipation or healing. These two aporias are related, insofar as they treat Immanuel Kant’s question: ‘What may we hope for?’ Each carries a familiar ring. The first evokes Kant’s elaboration of postulates – freedom, God, immortality – precisely to underwrite ethical action in the face of the actual or potential triumph of evil and suffering, thus enabling the agent to avoid moral despair. The second aporia is addressed one hundred and fifty years after Kant by the early proponents of Critical Theory, specifically in the correspondence between Walter Benjamin and Max Horkheimer, about the possibility of emancipation for the dead victims; the subject of Benjamin’s Angelus Novus. Horkheimer insists on the irrecoverability or ‘closedness’ of history, such that ‘past injustice has happened and is over and done with. Those who were slain were really slain.’ It is illegitimate to hope for a Last Judgement which will restore them, however ‘monstrous’ the thought that their prayers were all to no avail. Benjamin argues the contrary case: ‘theology’ or empathetic memory allows for the possibility of the redemption of the past, an opening up of what was closed and done with. In his description of the Angelus Novus, the Angel of History wishes to stop, to ‘make whole’ the chaotic wreckage of what has been smashed, even as his open wings are caught up in the storm of Progress which propels him irresistibly into the future. Schillebeeckx clearly wishes to preserve the important interplay of anthropological and religious worldviews regarding hope and the grounds for hope; affirming the superiority of the second, but without collapsing or overwhelming the first. It is worth noting that the secular humanist position as described by Schillebeeckx makes the ‘vocation from and to the humanum’ an extremely high-risk adventure, circumscribed as it is by the fact of an ambiguous humanity which is equally capable of cruelty and compassion. In other words, the humanity which is being approached here has the dual characteristics of the primitive sacred, Otto’s numinous mystery, which is simultaneously tremendum et fascinans. Like a primitive deity, humanity is to be approached carefully because of its capacity for destruction, as well as sustenance and life. In short, the crucial difference between the humanist and Christian positions on ethical martyrdom, as rendered by Schillebeeckx, may rest not upon the areligiousness of the first and the religiousness of the second, but upon the unconscious entrapment of the first in the dynamics of archaic religiosity (with the characteristics of terror and awe bestowed on a capricious humanity, rather than on an unknown and ambivalent deity). By contrast, Christian faith, hope and love insist on an attitude of fundamental trust in the unambiguous goodness of reality. The ‘ethical martyrdom’ of the humanist may be impressive and noble, but it remains a frightening wager in the face of unknowable and terrifying odds. Thus far, we have seen why Schillebeeckx regards the parable of the soldier as theologically fruitful: even if the action is understood on purely ethical grounds, it points to an eschatological future. A creation-faith – the fundamental trustworthiness of reality – is illuminated by a perception of Jesus as both ‘paradigm of humanity’ and ‘concentrated creation’. For Schillebeeckx, the death of Jesus is a radical experience of negative contrast, in which the unconditional love of the Father meets a definitive

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resistance and rejection in the cross. By entrusting the absurdity of his death to God, the failure of Jesus’ mission is enveloped in his own excess of hope. The resurrection is therefore a confirmation of Jesus’ creation-faith. This trust is continued in his followers, through the contours of metaphors such as ‘resurrection of the body’, ‘kingdom of God’, ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ and the parousia of Jesus Christ. These insights can be read alongside the significant shift in the theology of martyrdom to which Schillebeeckx has contributed. In a special number of the journal Concilium, Schillebeeckx writes (in the foreword with Johann Baptist Metz) about the need for an updating of the theology of martyrdom, so as to better reflect the contemporary reality and experiences of oppression and persecution.17 The co-editors speak of a ‘historical and cultural shift’: from the ‘heroic’ to the ‘anonymous’ martyr, and from individual to a kind of collective martyrdom, resulting in a contemporary form of political sanctity: ‘Nowhere are doctrine and life, the history of ideas and biography so interwoven as in the question of martyrdom today’ (vii), a fact which requires the kind of expansion of the ‘classical’ understanding of martyrdom, which Karl Rahner calls for in his contribution to the volume. Briefly, Rahner argues for the urgency of expanding the Christian understanding of ‘martyrdom’ in the light of contemporary experience. The traditional doctrine defined the martyr as someone who was killed out of hatred for the Christian faith, which they had normally testified to publicly (confessio). Such a person was non-violent, so that active soldiers, for example, were ruled out as candidates for martyrdom. The clarity and univocity of such testimony allowed Rahner in a 1961 essay to describe martyrdom as a ‘supra-sacrament’.18 The death of the martyr was viewed by Rahner as the supremely transparent and articulate example of Christian death, where ‘sign and signified are fully at one’. In the 1983 essay, however, Rahner offers a much more complex description, in which he asserts that those who die not for their religious convictions as such, but for the consequences of, for example, a concern for justice, might be considered martyrs in the full sense. In the twentieth century, many such victims are anonymous, and are denied an opportunity to confess their faith explicitly and publicly. Rahner also asks whether involvement in armed conflict should continue to be a barrier to regarding someone as a martyr. Rahner’s instinct in backing off from the earlier plea for certainty and transparency is surely correct. As Eagleton asserts, ‘The kingdom of the angels is one in which everything is instantly, oppressively meaningful,’19 whereas the tragic refers us once again to a brokenness that cannot simply be cancelled out by easy appeal to the resurrection. Karl Rahner’s plea for an expanded, if more complex, understanding of martyrdom, remains as urgent as ever. That such an understanding might include a consideration of orthopraxis as well as doctrinal fidelity argues in favour of Schillebeeckx’s ‘christomorphic’ rather than ‘christological’ starting point. Specifically, the notion of an ‘anonymous martyr’, who might nevertheless be acknowledged as a 17

18 19

Edward Schillebeeckx and Johann Baptist Metz, eds, ‘Martyrdom Today’, Concilium 163 (1983); see also Karl Rahner, ‘Dimensions of Martyrdom: A Plea for the Broadening of a Classical Concept’, Concilium 163 (1983), 9–12. Karl Rahner, On the Theology of Death (Freiburg: Herder, 1961). Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 259.

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martyr in the fullest and strictest sense, chimes with Rahner’s controverted notion of the ‘anonymous Christian’. The proposal for ‘anonymous martyrdom’ may, analogously, face the same challenge: how to expand the Christian imagination, without sacrificing doctrinal adequacy or conceptual clarity? Rahner’s plea for theological generosity in the 1983 essay is eschatological. It seeks to keep open the future to which martyrdom points, whether the martyr fully or explicitly believes in this or not. Schillebeeckx seeks to do the same, while rejecting the notion of any ‘eschatological proviso’ which is purely formal, and devoid of explicit Christian content. To repeat, the anthropological and Christian poles must be kept together.

5  Ecce homo To return, briefly, to The Magic Mountain. Thomas Mann presents Hans Castorp as a kind of ‘everyman’ of pre-First World War bourgeois society, and also the hero of a quest. The goal, the wisdom of the Grail, is discerned in an extraordinary chapter towards the end of the novel, entitled ‘Snow’. While lost and exhausted on the mountains, Hans undergoes hallucinations: firstly, an extraordinary benign vision of paradisal harmony, a luxuriant park peopled by beautiful young human creatures, Mediterranean ‘children of sun and sea’. The pastoral vision is immediately followed by a much more disturbing one: Hans dreams of a sanctuary with bronze doors, in which ‘two grey old women, witchlike’, are dismembering and devouring a child, shouting obscenities at him in his own Hamburg dialect. Later, back in the ‘civilised’ warmth of the Berghof, Hans reflects that the two visions will always belong together – reason and recklessness; ‘man’s state, his courteous and enlightened social state; behind which, in the temple, the horrible blood sacrifice was contemplated’. It is this insight which causes him to reject Naphta and Settembrini, and their respective prejudices: the one, fanatical and fascinated with human darkness, the other rationalistically in denial of it. In the final chapter, war has broken out: Hans returns, ungently, to the flat-land, ‘a man who, despite many warnings, had neglected to read the papers’. We bid him and his comrades farewell, as they hurl themselves towards the enemy; this ‘genial sinner’ is dispatched with a kind of prayer: ‘Farewell, honest Hans Castorp, farewell, Life’s delicate child!’ Farewell – and if thou livest or diest! Thy prospects are poor. The desperate dance, in which thy fortunes are caught up, will last yet many a sinful year; we should not care to set a high stake on your life by the time it ends. We even confess that it is without great concern that we leave the question open. Adventures of the flesh and in the spirit, while enhancing thy simplicity, granted thee to know in the spirit what in the flesh thou scarcely couldst have done. Moments there were, when out of death, and the rebellion of the flesh, there came to thee, as thou tookst stock of thyself, a dream of love. Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount?20 20

Mann, The Magic Mountain, 716.

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Through his visions and his encounters in the mountains, the ‘simple’ bourgeois and fastidious Hans has been transmuted, as it were by alchemical ‘heightening’, into a hero, a bearer of precious life-wisdom. He has been rendered capable of sacrifice: of dying and killing, alongside so many thousand others: to the extent that Mann shockingly professes to be indifferent as to his hero’s fate. The dream of love and the nightmarish vision of cannibalism are two sides of a Nietszchean coin. Georg Lukács comments on the ambiguity of the mountain sanatorium, which for all its suffering is really a ‘holiday’ from real life; paradoxically, its intellectual and spiritual insights are bought at the price of immersion into instinctivism. Mann is aware of how far his bourgeois hero falls short: for all the alchemy, as Hans stumbles across the battlefield engaging the enemy, he remains ‘a good honest soldier’, who ‘joined with the rest of the baccantes who had yielded up their will to the fascist hypothesis’, to the ‘wild dance’ which almost became the death dance of civilization.21 Place him in the position of the soldier of Schillebeeckx’s parable, give him an order to execute the hostage, and it is simply impossible to imagine what Castorp would do. He has ‘made a pact’ with the dark. His acceptance of the sublimest love and the direst cruelty as equally valid dimensions of life leaves no eschatological space for non-identity, a place where he can ‘put the facts to shame’. My point here is that Schillebeeckx’s theological reflection can complete Mann’s truncated vision of the humanum. The interspace between anthropology and Christology needs, perhaps, to be further delineated. In her essay on ‘the threatened humanum as imago Dei’, Mary Catherine Hilkert makes a suggestive distinction: ‘While Christology is not the starting point for the theological anthropology or ethics proposed by Edward Schillebeeckx, his vision of human life and our relationship with the cosmos is distinctly Christomorphic.’22 I take this to mean that even those examples of martyrdom which are authentically oriented towards and on behalf of the humanum, but not underwritten by religious hope, must somehow be ‘christomorphic’. It is possible to identify a number of instances of such a ‘christomorphic’ representation, which can be brought into alignment with Schillebeeckx’s eschatological parable – articulations of the ‘ecce homo’. Two of these are scriptural: the Akedah narrative of Gen. 22 and the figure of the Suffering Servant. The third concerns the contemporary discussion of tragedy as a theo-aesthetic category: an ancient rendition of the ecce homo, which in its modern form is the meeting place of religious and radical-political commitment, the ‘mystical political’. First, the narrative of the Akedah in Gen. 22, in all its anguished significance for three Abrahamic faith traditions, as well as its centrality in the Western philosophical tradition (witness the contrasting responses of Kant and Kierkegaard), is precisely Schillebeeckx’s parable of the soldier, in its full theological perplexity; here is the righteous man, ordered to kill the innocent victim. Precisely by his readiness to do so, and precisely in the readiness of the victim to be offered (according to some Jewish tradition), God’s future is opened up; the terrible command and its resolution in Gen.  22 are the vehicle of God’s promises to Abraham. Similarly, the mysterious 21

22

Georg Lukács, ‘In Search of Bourgeois Man’, in Essays on Thomas Mann, ed. George Lukács (London: Merlin Press, 1964), 13–46, 40. Hilkert, ‘The Threatened humanum as Imago Dei’, 141.

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poetry of Deutero-Isaiah’s servant songs speaks of a momentous displacement for the onlookers; appalled at the servant’s debasement, and shocked at the realization that he is, after all, the agent of God’s purposes. Like the eunuch pleading with Philip for guidance, we ask: ‘About whom is the prophet saying this? About himself, or about someone else?’ There are many resonances within contemporary political and liberation theologies. Jon Sobrino and other Latin American liberationists speak of the ‘crucified peoples’, awaiting deposition from the cross; Giorgio Agamben delineates the ‘bare life’ of the figure of the Homo Sacer; René Girard discerns the face of Christ in the figure of the sacralized victim, the ‘scapegoat’ who is ‘made sin’.23 These representations of suffering – ecce homo – may be elucidated to some degree by a theo-aesthetic hermeneutic once again: the idea of the tragic, understood as a mystical and political category and not merely a literary genre. Terry Eagleton responds to George Steiner’s argument that Judaism and Christianity are incompatible with tragedy (as is Marxism, for similar reasons).24 Each of these worldviews envisages an eschatological and definitive overcoming of suffering, and are therefore comedic in form. Eagleton rejects the triumphalist and supersessionist caricature of the resurrection which supports Steiner’s argument, asserting in turn that ‘Jesus’s crucifixion is genuinely tragic’. This discussion goes well beyond matters of literary genre. It concerns the way in which literature configures and codifies life. Graham Ward adjudicates in favour of Eagleton’s threefold relation between a Christian world view, socialism and tragedy, but Ward seeks to push Eagleton’s implicit theology further, in a way that turns out to be compatible with Edward Schillebeeckx’s project.25 All three writers acknowledge that we have no rational guarantees that our martyrdom is not really masochism. Eagleton even refers us back to the frozen wastes of The Magic Mountain, and the curious figure of Naphta, once again: ‘He is that most perverse of figures, a Catholic Marxist, an oxymoronic type whom history throws up from time to time.’26 In all these cases, the ecce homo is a motif of perplexity and profound confusion in the face of the inscrutable sacred: a victim, in a state of total abandonment, on the point of mysterious transfiguration. These are not shapeless or chaotic narratives of victimhood, such as the Angelus Novus contemplates helplessly, but ‘christomorphic’ or ‘Christic’ pre- or configurations. They witness, precisely in the sheer perplexity of their terror, to their fulfilment (as creation-faith in ‘concentrated’ or heightened form) in the person and the destiny of Christ.

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J. J. Limon, ‘Suffering, Death, Cross, and Martyrdom’, in Mysterium Liberationis: Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology, ed. Ignacio Ellacuria and Jon Sobrino (New York, NY: Orbis, 1993 [Spanish Orig, 1990]), 702–15; Georg Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); and René Girard, The Scapegoat (London: Athlone Press, 1986). Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence; George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (London: Faber and Faber, 1990). Graham Ward, ‘Steiner and Eagleton: the Practice of Hope and the Idea of the Tragic’, Literature and Theology 19 (2005), 100–11. Eagleton, Sweet Violence, 272; Ward notes the intellectual and existential dilemma depicted here as Eagleton’s own.

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Ecce homo: Eagleton elsewhere draws a parallel with the figure of Oedipus and the ambiguity of the ‘cathartic’ response which, according to the classical theory of the tragic, is elicited from us by the sight of the tragic hero. We are divided: at the same time as we are drawn towards the tragic hero in pitying recognition of our solidarity with him, we are also repelled in terror by his disfigured otherness. According to the Christian-humanistic vision articulated by Schillebeeckx and Eagleton, such a divided ecstasy must be refused. ‘Catharsis’ offers a complex, composite response to the irreducible ambivalence of the primitive sacred; it leaves that ambivalence intact and unquestioned. An eschatological ethical responsibility, on the other hand, whether inspired humanistically or by faith, calls us to choose either to remain fearfully paralysed before the unutterable cruelty of what is or to allow ourselves to be moved by outraged compassion towards what ought to be.

Bibliography Agamben, Georg (1998), Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Benjamin, Walter (1999 [1955]), Illuminations (London: Random House). Eagleton, Terry (2003), Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Oxford: Blackwell). Girard, René (1986), The Scapegoat (London: Athlone Press). Hilkert, Mary Catherine (2010), ‘The Threatened humanum as Imago Dei: Anthropology and Christian Ethics’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London and New York: T&T Clark),127–41. Kennedy, Philip (1994), Edward Schillebeeckx (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press). Limon, J. J. (1993 [Spanish Orig, 1990]), ‘Suffering, Death, Cross, and Martyrdom’, in Mysterium Liberationis: Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology, ed. Ignacio Ellacuria and Jon Sobrino (New York, NY: Orbis), 702–15. Lukács, Georg (1964), ‘In Search of Bourgeois Man’, in Essays on Thomas Mann, ed. Georg Lukács (London: Merlin Press), 13–46. Mann, Thomas (1999 [1927]), The Magic Mountain (London: Vintage Classics). Moltmann, Jürgen (1980), Experiences of God (London: SCM Press). Poulsom, Martin G. (2014), The Dialectics of Creation: Creation and the Creator in Edward Schillebeeckx and David Burrell (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Rahner, Karl (1983), ‘Dimensions of Martyrdom: A Plea for the Broadening of a Classical Concept’, Concilium, 163: 9–12. Rahner, Karl (1961), On the Theology of Death (Freiburg: Herder). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1989), For the Sake of the Gospel, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1987), Jesus in our Western Culture: Mysticism, Ethics and Politics (London: SCM Press). Schillebeeckx, Edward (1983), in conversation with Huub Oosterhuis and Piet Hoogeveen, God is New Each Moment, trans. David Smith (New York, NY: The Seabury Press). Schillebeeckx, Edward and Johann Baptist Metz, eds (1983), ‘Martyrdom Today’, Concilium, 163.

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Steiner, George (1990), The Death of Tragedy (London: Faber and Faber). Tillar, Elizabeth K. (2010), ‘Dark Light: Wrestling with the Angel at the End of History’, in Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology, ed. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere and Stephan van Erp (London and New York: T&T Clark), 142–60. Ward, Graham (2005), ‘Steiner and Eagleton: The Practice of Hope and the Idea of the Tragic’, Literature and Theology, 19: 100–11.

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Schillebeeckx’s View on Eschatology as Public Theology Today Frederiek Depoortere

Eschatology is that part of Christian doctrine and dogmatic theology which is concerned with the ultimate fulfilment of creation and history in God. As such, it deals with ‘the final destiny of the individual person and the divinely effected restructuring of humanity and the entire cosmos at the end of time’.1 What, if anything, can the Christian vision of ultimate fulfilment in God contribute to public life in contemporary Western societies characterized, as they are, by processes such as secularization and pluralization? Does public life somehow ‘need’ eschatology? The question concerning the public role eschatology plays was also raised by Edward Schillebeeckx. He did this explicitly in 1968, in an article published almost simultaneously in Dutch, in the Tijdschrift voor theologie, and in English as the final chapter of God the Future of Man.2 Schillebeeckx formulated the question that concerns us here in the following way: ‘What is … the real contribution that Christian faith in eschatological fulfillment can make to the terrestrial planning of society for the advantage of man as an individual person and as a community?’3 For my part, I wish first of all to understand this question as a question. How did it emerge? In which context was it raised? I will therefore begin by situating the question at hand against the backdrop of the turn to the world and the rehabilitation of eschatology which occurred in Catholic theology in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, before focusing on Chapter 3 of Gaudium et spes as the immediate background of Schillebeeckx’s reflections in which our question was posed. Subsequently, I will take a closer look into these reflections themselves by focusing on two elements: (1) the primacy of the future and the new view of God that comes therewith, and (2) what we can call, following Schillebeeckx himself, the dialectics of eschatology. In this way, it will become possible to understand Schillebeeckx’s view

1

2

3

Josef Finkenzeller, ‘Eschatology’, in Handbook of Catholic Theology, ed. Wolfgang Beinert and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1995), 210–16, 210. Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Het nieuwe Godsbeeld, secularisatie en politiek’, Tijdschrift voor theologie 8 (1968), 44–66; English version: ‘The New Image of God, Secularization and Man’s Future on Earth’, included as Chapter VI of God the Future of Man, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 3 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 101–25 [169–203]. Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 114 [190].

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on the contribution of Christian eschatology to public life. Throughout my reading of Schillebeeckx, I will focus on two texts that were written in the years 1967–8. I am aware that this will, inevitably, result in my contribution being somehow limited in scope (as Schillebeeckx’s ideas on this matter most likely continued to develop after 1968), but in this way I intend to bring to the fore his initial answer to the question that concerns us here, the question of what Christian eschatology can contribute to public life. In the final section of my contribution, I will examine whether Schillebeeckx’s view on the public role that eschatology can play can be brought to the public square, given the situation in which we find ourselves today. Can his view speak meaningfully to a wider public today? Or, is it, in contrast, only understandable by a relatively small circle of people sufficiently familiar with Christianity? I will seek to answer these questions by assessing whether or not Schillebeeckx’s view on the public role that eschatology plays fulfils the requirements for qualifying as public theology.

1  Setting the scene: Turning to the world and rehabilitating eschatology The question of how Christian eschatological faith can contribute to a better society did not emerge ex nihilo. It followed from the unprecedented turn to ‘the world’ which took place in the Catholic church and in Catholic theology in the sixties of the previous century. Of special significance in this regard was, of course, Gaudium et spes, the famous ‘Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World’, which was promulgated on 15 December 1965, the last day of the Second Vatican Council. In this document, the Catholic church confirmed ‘the world’ as an independent domain in which Christians have to fulfil a worldly task, the task of bringing about a better world.4 As well as opening the Catholic church to the world, the Second Vatican Council also rehabilitated eschatology. Pre-Vatican II Catholic eschatology was, as reported by Peter Phan in his contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Eschatology,5 isolated from and without any real impact upon other parts of dogmatic theology, such as Christology or ecclesiology. It focused on the fate of the individual in life after death and offered a literal understanding of biblical imagery concerning the future. All of this changed under the auspices of the Second Vatican Council. Eschatology was embraced and taken into the very heart of dogmatics, became linked to other parts of Christian doctrine (in particular ecclesiology, Christology and pneumatology), and even became ‘the thread linking all the Christian doctrines together’.6 As such, it was no longer concerned with offering a literal description of what would happen to the individual in the afterlife (as though eschatology were only about conferring insider information on life after death), but began to focus on the collective destiny of humankind in this world. Indeed, as noted by Phan, the most significant transformation 4

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For an introduction to Gaudium et spes, see Norman Tanner, The Church and the World: Gaudium et spes, Inter Mirifica (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2005). Peter C. Phan, ‘Roman Catholic Theology’, in The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology, ed. Jerry L. Walls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 215–32. Phan, ‘Roman Catholic Theology’, 217–18.

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regarding eschatology wrought by the Second Vatican Council (especially in the already-mentioned document Gaudium et spes) was the emphasis on eschatology as being intrinsically connected with ‘a deep commitment to the transformation of the world and human history’.7 In this regard, Phan refers us in particular to Gaudium et spes no. 39, in which the link between eschatology and bringing about a better world is explicitly affirmed in the following way: The expectation of a new earth should not weaken, but rather stimulate, the resolve to cultivate this earth where the body of the new human family is increasing and can even now constitute a foreshadowing of the new age. Although earthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ’s kingdom, nevertheless its capacity to contribute to a better ordering of human society makes it highly relevant to the kingdom of God.8

Here, we see emerging the issue raised by Schillebeeckx in the aforementioned article from Tijdschrift voor theologie, the question of what the contribution of the Christian faith in eschatological fulfilment to the terrestrial planning of a better world is. Or, in the terms used by Gaudium et spes: what can the Christian ‘expectation of a new earth’ and belief in ‘the growth of Christ’s kingdom’ contribute to our ‘resolve to cultivate this earth’ and to ‘earthly progress’ in the here and now? It was against the backdrop of Gaudium et spes that Schillebeeckx developed his own reflections on the relationship between bringing about a better world and eschatological fulfilment. This was first done extensively in 1967, on the occasion of a commentary on Gaudium et spes to which Schillebeeckx contributed, together with other famous theologians, such as Marie-Dominique Chenu, Albert Dondeyne, Dominique Dubarle and Karl Rahner.9 In his contribution, Schillebeeckx explicitly focused upon, as he put it, ‘the relationship between man’s expectations for the future on earth and the christian [sic] expectation’,10 a topic that, in his view, is present throughout the four chapters of the first part of the constitution. In this first part, we first get a theological anthropology (in Chapters 1 and 2) and subsequently what Schillebeeckx designated as ‘a theology of terrestrial values’11 (in Chapter 3), and finally a perspective on the relationship between church and world (in Chapter 4). The fragment from no. 39, quoted above, appears towards the end of Chapter 3, the chapter on the theology of terrestrial values. Let us, therefore, continue by taking a closer look at this chapter. Chapter 3 of Gaudium et spes begins by stating that human beings have always already attempted to improve their living conditions. The council fathers note, Ibid., 219. Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1092–3.  9 Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Christelijk geloof en aardse toekomstverwachtingen’, in De kerk in de wereld van deze tijd. Schema dertien: Tekst en commentaar [Vaticanum 2, 2], ed. Jean-Yves Calvez (Hilversum and Antwerpen: Paul Brand, 1967), 78–109; English version: ‘Christian Faith and Man’s Expectation for the Future on Earth’, The Mission of the Church, trans. N. D. Smith (New York, NY: Seabury Press, 1973), 51–89. 10 Schillebeeckx, The Mission of the Church, 53. 11 Ibid.  7  8

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however, that the degree in which science and technology have developed in the recent past has enormously increased humankind’s ability to make life in this world better. Science and technology have resulted in an almost complete mastery over nature. An important outcome of this is that humankind can now provide itself with many things that, out of necessity, used to be expected from God.12 The council fathers continue by noting that this new situation raises many questions about the meaning and destiny of these new abilities of humankind, and they wish to contribute to attempts made to answering them. In formulating this aim, they strike a remarkably humble tone. Although they present the church as the ‘guardian of the deposit of God’s word’ and claim the authority to draw ‘religious and moral principles from it’, they admit that the church ‘does not always have a ready answer to particular questions’. Nevertheless, they wish ‘to combine the light of revelation with universal experience so that illumination can be forthcoming on the direction which humanity has recently begun to take’.13 The next step taken by the council fathers in Chapter 3 of Gaudium et spes is to offer a positive evaluation of the human efforts to bring about a better world. These efforts are linked to God’s plan and are interpreted as the task given to humankind by God. ‘Created in God’s image’, the council fathers write, ‘humankind was commissioned to subdue the earth and all it contains, to rule the world in justice and holiness, and, recognising God as the creator of all things, to refer itself and the totality of things to God so that, with everything subject to God, the divine name would be admired through all the earth.’14 Thus, by improving our living conditions and working for a better world, we take part in and further the Creator’s work and, in this way, even our labour and the daily care for our families contribute to the realization of God’s plan with his creation.15 The council fathers reject, therefore, any opposition between human effort and God’s power, as though God could only be powerful when humankind is powerless and as if humankind, with its rational and technological planning in the service of bringing about a better world, were a rival to God. According to the council fathers, in contrast, the successes of humankind, in mastering nature and making the world a better place, are ‘a sign of God’s greatness and a result of God’s marvellous design’. As such, working for a better world is even said to be an obligation for Christians.16 This also implies the recognition of the autonomy of the world, a topic which is elaborated in Gaudium et spes no. 36. In it, the council fathers make a distinction between a legitimate interpretation of the autonomy of the world and the one they reject as being illegitimate. The legitimate version of the autonomy of the world consists of the recognition that ‘created things and societies also, have their own laws and values which are to be gradually discovered, utilised and ordered by us’. This understanding of the autonomy of the world, the council fathers add, is in harmony with the belief in God as Creator. God has given the world its autonomy and the

12

13 14 15 16

Gaudium et spes, 33 Section 1, 7 December 1965, accessed 24 February 2016, http://www.vatican. va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_ en.html. Ibid., 33 Section 2. Ibid., 34 Section 1. Ibid., 34 Section 2. Ibid., 34 Section 3.

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so-called ‘secular realities’ have their origin in God in exactly the same ways as ‘the realities of faith’ do. The autonomy of the world becomes illegitimate, however, when it ‘is taken to mean that created things are not dependent on God and that we can use them without reference to their creator’.17 Although they offer a positive evaluation of humankind’s efforts to make the world a better place, as well as recognizing these efforts as part of God’s plan with creation, the council fathers also emphasize the limits and dangers of these efforts. They sound a first critical warning in no. 35, in which they write that technological progress and the accumulation of wealth are, as such, not enough to bring about true ‘human betterment’, they only provide ‘the raw material’ for it. Or, put differently, they should be put to use to bring about greater justice and the flourishing of both individuals and societies. In no. 37, the council fathers deepen their reservation concerning what humankind can achieve. They write that ‘human progress … brings great temptations with it’ by explicitly referring to the testimony of Scripture and saying that this testimony is ‘confirmed by the testimony of centuries’, when people only think of their own interests without taking those of others into account for instance. The council fathers even add that ‘[the] increased power [of humankind] is now threatening to destroy the human race itself ’. This leads the council fathers to the realities of sin and evil and the necessity of redemption by Christ: ‘All human activity, which is daily jeopardised through pride and distorted self-love, needs to be purified and completed by the cross and resurrection of Christ.’ In no. 38, they follow up on this by offering a description of the ministry of Christ and his continued activity through the Spirit. Finally, section no. 39, which has already been quoted, begins with a profession of not knowing (‘We do not know the hour of the earth’s and humankind’s consummation’) and continues by firmly expressing the church’s eschatological faith: The form of this world which has been deformed by sin is passing away, but we are taught that God is preparing a new habitation and a new earth in which justice resides, and whose happiness will fulfil and surpass all the longings for peace which arise in human hearts. Then death will have been defeated, the daughters and sons of God will be raised up in Christ, and what was sown in weakness and corruption will put on incorruptibility; love and the work of love will abide, and the whole of creation which God created for our sake will be freed from its bondage to decay.18

It is only after this profession of eschatological faith that Gaudium et spes deals with the relationship between, on the one hand, our ‘resolve to cultivate this earth’ and ‘earthly progress’ and, on the other hand, ‘the expectation of a new earth’ and ‘the growth of Christ’s kingdom’. The development of the earth and the arrival of the Kingdom are intimately connected, but, they are also to be clearly distinguished. They are connected because the new earth has to grow here and now (so, the new will not be a complete rupture with the already-present and already-realized). Earthly development contributes to the growth of the Kingdom and acts as a prefiguration of what is to come. This is a consequence of the belief in God as Creator as it was explained in no. 34 of the 17 18

Ibid., 36. Ibid., 39 Section 1.

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constitution. Yet, at the same time, the development of the earth and the growth of the Kingdom have to be distinguished. This, in turn, is a consequence of the fallenness of creation and the need for redemption that was emphasized in no. 37.19 This dynamic of ‘already’ and ‘not-yet’ is repeated once more at the end of Chapter 3 of Gaudium et spes; the Kingdom is already mysteriously present in ‘the values of human dignity, of fellowship and of freedom, those valuable fruits of nature and of our own energy which we shall have produced here on earth’, but this occurs in a hidden and unfulfilled way.20 Now that we have an idea of the content of Chapter 3 of Gaudium et spes, we can turn to the eschatological reflections developed by Schillebeeckx in the two texts that have already been mentioned; that is the 1967 commentary on Gaudium et spes and the final chapter of God the Future of Man, which was written in 1968.

2  Schillebeeckx’s eschatological reflections in 1967–8 In both 1967 and 1968 Schillebeeckx subscribes to the view of Gaudium et spes that science and technology provide human beings with a new and unseen mastery over nature and with the possibility of producing for themselves many things that were previously expected from God. This has resulted, Schillebeeckx emphasizes, in a completely ‘new view of man and the world’.21 In the 1967 work, the new view of the world, wrought by science and technology, is formulated in terms of a shift from nature ‘as God’s creation’ to nature ‘as the rough building material from which man creates his human world’.22 This shift in the understanding of nature goes together with a new understanding of the role humankind plays in the world and in history. ‘Man now experiences himself ’, Schillebeeckx writes, ‘as a being who makes history.’23 Moreover, this twofold shift in the understanding of nature and humankind implies a third, very important shift; namely, the one from a culture that is basically orientated to the past, to one that is fundamentally orientated towards the future: the best is yet to come and humankind is to bring it about.24 This starting point is repeated in the 1968 article: science and technology have resulted in humankind looking resolutely forwards and claiming ‘primacy for the future’.25 The church and theology, Schillebeeckx defends, have to come to terms with this new reality.26 This is argued by Schillebeeckx on the basis of what he considers to be a fundamental principle of Gaudium et spes, the principle that every statement about God is at the same time also a statement about humankind, and vice versa. This ‘vice versa’ is important because it implies that contemporary experiences of humankind teach us something about who God is and wishes to be for us. It is, therefore, the

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Ibid., 39 Section 2. Ibid., 39 Section 3. Schillebeeckx, The Mission of the Church, 80. Ibid., 81. Ibid., 81. Cf. Ibid. Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 103 [172]. Schillebeeckx, The Mission of the Church, 81; see also God the Future of Man, 104 [173].

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task of the church and of theology to illuminate the new realities brought about by science and technology with the help of revelation in order to show how these new realities are related to, and even comprise part of the history of salvation.27 In 1967, Schillebeeckx writes that doing so requires that the dimension of the future receive a prominent place in theology and even that theology become eschatology.28 In 1968, Schillebeeckx focuses on the impact of the primacy of the future on our understanding of God. He defends that, in a culture which is radically future-orientated, it is no longer meaningful to situate God at the beginning and to understand God’s transcendence mainly in terms of eternity qua ‘an unchangeable and petrified or eternalized “past”’.29 Instead, in the new culture brought about by science and technology, God reveals Godself ‘as the “One who is to come”’, ‘the “wholly New,” the One who is our future, who creates the future of mankind anew’. God, Schillebeeckx adds, ‘shows himself as the God who gives us in Jesus Christ the possibility of making the future – that is, of making everything new and transcending our sinful past and that of all men’.30 It is important to add, however, that in Schillebeeckx’s view, ‘this “new,” eschatological concept of God’ is not modernism, but is instead the rediscovery of what already constituted the core of the biblical message, that God is ‘the God of the promise’ who ‘gives us the task of setting out towards the promised land, a land that we ourselves, trusting in the promise, must reclaim and cultivate, as Israel did in the past’.31 This also implies an answer to the question of how Christian faith and its eschatological hope can be verified; this cannot be done theoretically or directly, but only indirectly, by showing that Christian hope is able to make a difference in this world, by transforming this world and starting to make things new in the here and now.32 Apart from elaborating on the starting point of Chapter 3 of Gaudium et spes, Schillebeeckx also adopts its dialectics between human efforts to bring about a better world and the eschatological fulfilment to which God pledged Godself in Christ (remarkably, the English translation uses here the term ‘tension’ as the equivalent of the Dutch term dialectiek). Basically, Gaudium et spes makes two claims on the relationship between human activity and eschatological fulfilment. We can formulate them with the help of two quotations taken from the beginning of Schillebeeckx’s ‘examination of the conciliar view of man and the world’33 in the 1967 text: 1. Christian hope for the eschaton … stimulates christian [sic] commitment to the building up of a better world on earth.34 2. It is precisely because the christian [sic] hopes for a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ that he can never reconcile himself to an ‘established order’ in the world, since this would be, by definition, a forsaking of this eschatological hope.35 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Schillebeeckx, The Mission of the Church, 54–5. Ibid., 82. Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 109 [180]. Ibid., 109 [181]. Ibid., 110 [182]. Ibid., 109–10 [182–3]. Schillebeeckx, The Mission of the Church, 70. Ibid., 72. Ibid., 71.

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These two statements, which always need to be taken together, imply that two extremes need to be avoided; first, dismissing or simply ignoring activities undertaken for a better world and, second, identifying any earthly, human-made reality with the full realization of the kingdom of God on earth. Everything that human beings achieve on this earth always needs to be questioned. This is the so-called ‘eschatological proviso’ – although Schillebeeckx would only adopt this formula, coined by his colleague Johann Baptist Metz, in his 1968 book Theology of the World, a few years later. In 1967, Schillebeeckx argues for the eschatological proviso (but without using the expression) on the basis of the experience of death, which shows the limits of any human attempt to realize ‘the ultimate world that is fully worthy of man’,36 and also on the basis of the new view of God. We ‘cannot describe the precise shape of this future meaningfully … and [w]e can never confuse or identify the result of man’s historical striving on earth with the promised “new world”’, precisely because in the end it is God who is our future and God transcends us.37 That new world cannot come about through human effort, but will be ‘a pure gift of God’,38 to be given ‘beyond the frontiers of death’.39 In this way, it has become clear that God’s promise of ultimate fulfilment relativizes our efforts to bring about a better world (in the end, the Kingdom will not be of our making), but at the same time it also stimulates these efforts and radically values them: our efforts will ultimately not be in vain and their fruits will be taken up into the Kingdom. After having familiarized ourselves with the general thrust of the eschatological reflections developed by Schillebeeckx in the years 1967–8, we can now return to the question that was raised at the outset of my contribution, the question of what Christian eschatology can contribute to public life or, to put it in Schillebeeckx’s own terms, the question of what faith in eschatological fulfilment can contribute to the bringing about of a better world.

3  Schillebeeckx’s answer to the question about the distinctive contribution of Christian eschatology to the creation of a better society When dealing with the distinctive contribution of Christian eschatology to a better society, Schillebeeckx first of all underscores that it ‘cannot and should not be regarded as a new form of “substitution” with regard to the secular ordering of the world, as though religion were to supplement or cut across the distinctively human projects for the future as a disturbing factor coming from outside’.40 Schillebeeckx seems to be making a rather strong point here; the world insofar as it is world does not need God. We should acknowledge the autonomy of the secular sphere and should not call upon God to intervene and solve our this-worldly problems. This means that there can be 36 37 38 39 40

Ibid., 84. Ibid., 86. Ibid., 85. Ibid., 84. Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 115–16 [190–1].

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no functionalization of God. No God-of-the-gaps, no deus ex machina. For, this kind of God, Schillebeeckx defends, is dead. This does not mean, however, that Christian eschatology ‘has no message of its own to bring to the secular sphere’. On the contrary in fact. According to Schillebeeckx, Christian faith in eschatological fulfilment does have a ‘function’ (!) in the secular sphere, namely that of what he designates as ‘critical negativity’ and which he describes as ‘a positive power which continues to exert constant pressure in order to bring about a better world, without humanity itself being sacrificed in the process’.41 At first sight, this description of ‘critical negativity’ as ‘a positive power’ may seem rather enigmatic. To clarify this, it might serve helpful to take a closer look at the four targets of the ‘critical function’ of Christian eschatology distinguished by Schillebeeckx. The first of these is any ‘left-wing’ attempt to bring about ‘what is worthy of man’ in a final and definitive way, in the here and now, through revolutionary effort. The second target is the ‘right-wing’ absolutization of the established order as willed by God and, therefore, as something that should not change. Both the leftist revolutionary effort and the rightist defence of the status quo do not respect the eschatological proviso, in so far as they mistake a human-made reality for the full realization of the ‘humanly desirable’ (Ricœur), something that, Christian eschatology claims, can never be brought about by human effort alone but which will have to be given by God. Thirdly, Christian eschatology also implies the rejection of criticism for criticism’s sake and without any attempt to bring about a better world. Such empty criticism is ‘sterile’ and does not help to improve humankind’s situation. Fourth, and finally, Christian eschatology also dismisses any reduction of the engagement to bring about a better world to scientific and technological planning. Science and technology are important, Schillebeeckx admits as much, and cannot be ignored when striving for world progress. Yet, a better future for humankind is certainly not a matter of science and technology alone. Any attempt to bring about ‘a perfect future’ through science and technology alone will reduce human beings to the status of things, the status of objects to be manipulated.42 It is the third target that helps us to understand why Schillebeeckx considers the critical function of Christian eschatology to be a positive power. This is because this critical function is not about empty and sterile criticism for criticism’s sake, but is grounded in the Christ-event in which ‘the God of the promise has bound himself to the realization of [the humanly desirable, “what is completely worthy of man”]’.43 The unique message of Christianity to the secular world is, therefore, and in Schillebeeckx’s terms, that true humanity is possible; what may seem impossible from a purely human perspective, that is the realization of a truly human future, is made possible by God in Christ.44 Moreover, it is because God has committed Godself to the full realization of true humanity, something that cannot be realized through human effort alone, that human beings are bound to relativize and criticize every status quo; no human-made order of things can reach the highest level of humanity, only God can give that to us. In this way, faith in eschatological fulfilment stimulates us never to rest on our 41 42 43 44

Ibid., 116 [191]. Ibid., 116–17 [192–3]. Ibid., 116 [191]. Ibid., 117 [193].

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laurels with the level of humanity that has already been achieved or always to strive for greater humanity. It is here that we arrive at Schillebeeckx’s answer to the question of what Christian eschatological faith can contribute to a better society. According to Schillebeeckx that contribution is a result of the fact that Christian eschatological faith ‘can exert a strong pressure towards overcoming [the ultimate problems of man’s existence] and towards raising this activity up to the highest human level – a level which cannot be defined, the maximum level which transcends all human expectations’.45 Thus, the critical function of Christian eschatology is based on a positive hope and it also has a positive result; namely, that it contributes to the bringing about of a better world, a world that is more in line with the kingdom of God, precisely by stimulating us to continuous selftranscendence.46 Yet, it has to be added that this contribution of Christian eschatology to the realization of a better world remains ‘critically negative’. It proceeds through criticizing the current order as not (yet) the (full) realization of the Kingdom, as falling short of true humanity, and takes its lead from the insight that no human-made reality can ever do that. Yet, it does not say what that true humanity will look like nor does it offer a plan of action by which to bring it about. As such, the Kingdom remains a negative ideal: elements of true humanity that have already been realized offer us clues about how the Kingdom will look but, as such, the final shape of the Kingdom remains unknown and cannot even be imagined by us on this side of the eschaton. We only know that in many respects, if not most, it will not be like the present order and, therefore, it is able to function as a critical force vis-à-vis the established order. All of this suggests that the distinctive contribution of Christian eschatology to secular society does not consist in offering a stimulus for activity for a better world. Of course, commitment to bringing about a better world is important and it would go against the grain of Schillebeeckx’s entire theology to deny or minimize this importance.47 But, what Schillebeeckx seems to be suggesting here is that, although their eschatological hope should stimulate Christians to become active in bringing about a better world, it is not in that commitment that their distinctive contribution for a better world might be found. That specific contribution consists, instead, in the criticism of every state of affairs that claims to be the full and definitive realization of the humanly desirable and that, therefore, prematurely closes off humankind’s search for true humanity. Moreover, this criticism only works in so far as it is grounded in God’s promise that all will, indeed, be fulfilled. Without that link with God’s promise, radical criticism of the current situation cannot but result in ‘a total openness’, without

45

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47

Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 118 [194]. See also at the bottom of the same page: ‘Faith in the eschaton exercises a critical function even with regard to all positive historical realization – urging us to transcend what has already been achieved and attain the maximum salvation for all men.’ See Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 120 [196–7]: ‘Christian faith in the ultimate eschatological fulfilment … will … keep [the] better future open to a constant transcendence of itself.’ See Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 119–20 [196] where Schillebeeckx underscores the importance of ‘commitment to the building up of the world by a concern for man which is radical for the sake of eschatological faith and implemented by all available scientific and technological means’. See also Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 120 [198]: ‘Obviously Christians must commit themselves to all concrete plans for the building up of the human community, stimulated by a continual search for the maximum of human value that can be realized here and now.’

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any orientation or perspective, ‘in which all values, and the possibility of their ultimate fulfilment, are brought into question’.48 Thus, what I understand Schillebeeckx to mean is that criticism without the perspective of ultimate fulfilment, guaranteed by God’s pledge, becomes hollow and sterile, and is no longer able to contribute to the progress of humankind precisely because it is not able to function as a positive power and may even undermine the commitment to bringing about a better world, throwing us into an abyss of paralysing hopelessness and fatalism. Without Christian faith in eschatological fulfilment, failure and death have the last word and the humanly impossible turns out to be ultimately impossible. Secular society, I interpret Schillebeeckx as concluding, is thus in need of ‘the dynamism of Christian hope straining towards an absolute future’ in order to avoid either the reduction of the humanly desirable to how it is conceived by a particular ideology (be it of a left-wing, right-wing or of a scientific-technological type) or the situation in which the possibility of the humanly desirable, as such, is put into question through a criticism which is merely negative and destructive in type. To avoid both of these extremes, secular activity is in need of Christian eschatological faith. Instead, left to itself, secular commitment does not possess the resources necessary for this undertaking.49

4  The public role of eschatology as public theology The discussion in the previous section has shown that Schillebeeckx has answered the question of whether Christian eschatology has a public role in the affirmative. In my final section, I now wish to evaluate his view of the public role played by Christian eschatology from the perspective of public theology. By public theology I mean, following the definition offered by E. Harold Breitenberg, Jr., ‘theologically informed public discourse about public issues, addressed to the church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or other religious body, as well as the larger public or publics, argued in ways that can be evaluated and judged by publicly available warrants and criteria’.50 According to Breitenberg, the aim of public theology is to provide guidance, ‘guidance to society’s various sectors, institutions, and interactions’, and guidance to individuals, both inside and outside their own religious tradition.51 In order to qualify as public theology, and to 48 49

50

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Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 120 [197]. Here, I’ve offered my interpretation of the following section: ‘How it would be possible for [the] constant critical function of eschatological faith to be taken over by a principle within man himself which leaves his redemption in grace out of account, one which might arise from a social and cultural secularization in which the supplementary functions of religion are discontinued, I simply cannot see. For, without the dynamism of Christian hope straining towards an absolute future we are left with an ideological design of man which limits what is “humanly desirable” in advance. The inevitable result is skepticism with regard to the potentialities of our human condition or acquiescence in a total openness in which all values, and the possibility of their ultimate fulfillment, are brought into question – a view in which justice can never be done, either now or in the future, to the individual person as such or to the human community as a whole.’ See Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 120 [197]. E. Harold Breitenberg, Jr., ‘To Tell the Truth: Will the Real Public Theology Please Stand Up?’, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 23 (2003), 55–96, 66. Ibid., 67.

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be able to achieve the aim of offering guidance to institutions and individuals, a certain theological discourse needs to meet three conditions. First, that discourse needs ‘to be intelligible and convincing to adherents within its own religious tradition while at the same time being comprehensible and possibly persuasive to those outside it’. Second, that discourse needs to deal with ‘issues that bear upon a religious community, but also pertain to the larger society, including those who identify themselves with other faith traditions or with none’. And, finally, any theological discourse attempting to be public theology and to offer guidance to society and individuals in it should rely ‘on sources of insight, language, methods of argument, and warrants that are in theory open to all’.52 Thus, in sum: public theology is public in a double sense, related to two meanings of the word ‘public’. On the one hand, ‘public’ means ‘relating to or involving people in general, rather than being limited to a particular group of people’. Public theology is public in this sense because it deals with issues that are relevant and important for people in general and not only for a particular interest group. On the other hand, ‘public’ also means ‘available to everybody’. That public theology is public in this sense means two things: first, that its addressees and those who benefit from it are not (only) the adherents of its own faith tradition but that it reaches out to ‘all ordinary people’53 and, second, that everybody should be able to understand and assess what it says. On the basis of this characterization of public theology, we can now formulate three questions the positing of which will help to assess whether Schillebeeckx’s view on the public role of eschatology as presented in the previous section may qualify as public theology: (1) Does Schillebeeckx address an issue/issues that are relevant for all people and not solely for Christians? (2) Does he address not merely adherents of his own faith tradition, but does he also address the public at large? And, finally, (3) is what he says understandable and accessible to everybody? The first question can be immediately answered in the affirmative. Schillebeeckx’s starting point is, as we have seen, the impact the phenomena of scientific and technological progress have on society and the questions about their meaning and destiny. This is an issue that is relevant to Christians and non-Christians alike. Schillebeeckx is also concerned with the issue of human activity in the creation of a better world, which is also something that is relevant for both Christians and nonChristians. Finally, the question of how we might avoid hopelessness and fatalism in the face of the failures of our secular activity is also something that confronts both Christians and non-Christians alike. We may, therefore, conclude that Schillebeeckx’s view on the public role played by eschatology addresses issues that are relevant for all people and, therefore, meets the first criterion for being labelled as public theology. In order to answer the second question, we need to take a closer look at the implied audience in Schillebeeckx’s texts throughout which he develops his view on the public role of eschatology. When we do so, it is clear that these texts presuppose a Christian audience, or at least an audience that is to a large extent familiar with the Christian narrative, and for whom the plausibility and validity of that narrative is not really an

52 53

Ibid., 65–6. See Cambridge Dictionaries Online, ‘Public’, accessed 1 March 2016, http://dictionary.cambridge. org/dictionary/british/public, where “the public” is defined as “all ordinary people.”

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issue, but is rather taken for granted. We can think of two complementary reasons that account for this being the case. First of all, we could explain this state of affairs by saying that Schillebeeckx was, in fact, writing a theological piece that was addressed to fellow theologians and church people. In it, he is taking up the challenge posed to the church and to theology by the growing secularization of the world. So, while he may be talking about issues that are relevant for Christians and non-Christians alike (as shown above), he is in fact dealing with these as problems for the church and for theology. In line with Gaudium et spes, he seeks to recognize and value the autonomy of ‘the world’ while also attempting to demonstrate that this autonomy does not imply the end of Christian faith. He does this by relativizing the autonomy of the world (the world is both creation and is in need of redemption). This suggests that he may not be addressing a general audience (for whom the issue of secularization would not be experienced in this way), but his fellow Christians and especially those among them who feel threatened and insecure about the future of the church and their faith as a result of the increasing secularization of the world. He wishes to reassure them by showing that the autonomy of the world is not absolute, it is only relative, and that secular activity in the world and God’s plan are not in opposition but that the former is in fact part of the latter. A complementary explanation for why Schillebeeckx presupposed that his audience was to a large extent familiar with Christianity is the context in which he formulated his ideas. Schillebeeckx himself interprets that context as one that is to a very large degree uniformly secular. Yet, despite the self-understanding of his age, shared by Schillebeeckx, as having become secular, this was not yet really the case. At the time at which Schillebeeckx was developing his views on the public role of eschatology, Christianity was still very much present in the common culture in Flanders and the Netherlands, and most people were sufficiently familiar with it and could understand an argument, such as the one developed by Schillebeeckx, which spoke from within the Christian tradition. Put differently, at the time that Schillebeeckx was formulating his view on the public role of eschatology, the context was such that he did not have to consider distinguishing between the adherents of his own religious tradition and those outside of it. A majority of the general public was more or less within it and they could be addressed as insiders. If something has changed in the almost fifty years since Schillebeeckx put his view on the public role of eschatology down on paper, it is of course that the context just outlined above is no longer true. Today, we can no longer presuppose that the general public possesses even a basic familiarity with the Christian narrative and that it takes its meaningfulness and relevance for granted. This cannot but have an enormous impact on how public theologians have to proceed. When doing public theology today and thus seeking to offer guidance to society that is informed by our faith tradition, we have to take the fact that our audience will not share many of our presuppositions into account. That is why a theological reflection, even when it deals with an issue of public interest, is, as such, not enough to have a successful public theology (i.e.: public theology that succeeds in its goal of offering guidance to institutions and individuals). If we do not take this into account, we run the risk of simply talking across our target audience and, thus, not fulfilling the requirement that what we say

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should be understandable and accessible to all. This is, I think, what would happen if we would bring Schillebeeckx’s view on the public role of eschatology, as presented in the previous section, into the public square today without further ado. Moreover, there is another important shift in our context since the moment Schillebeeckx formulated his view on the public role of eschatology some fifty years ago, apart from the continued erosion of the overlap between Christianity and culture. That second shift consists in the growing plurality or heterogeneity of culture. We can even state that ‘radical plurality’ is the most fundamental characteristic of our present, so-called ‘postmodern’, condition: Radical plurality is a basic characteristic of our times. Indeed, the basic premise that the same information can be considered from a variety of completely different perspectives with equal justification is fundamental to postmodernity. Every perspective is understood to have value in itself even if mutual incompatibility as well as occasional conflict are evident. Universal and uniform perspectives no longer hold sway; the master narratives have given up the ghost. … Given the fact that plurality as such persists as a presupposition of every kind of thought and deed, one is left with the inevitable conclusion that no one still has the right to claim to be in possession of ‘the’ truth. Postmodern critical consciousness resists in principle every claim to hegemony. Every form of universalistic pretention is critically unmasked as an absolutisation of one particular standpoint.54

Any awareness of radical plurality and the concomitant experience of conflict and irreconcilability, however, are completely missing from Schillebeeckx’s texts in which he develops his view on the public role played by eschatology. Reading these texts through the lens of contemporary cultural heterogeneity, it becomes clear that both his understanding of the contemporary situation and the answer that he gives to the problem that he derives from that understanding are too monolithic to be plausible in a condition of radical plurality. As we have previously mentioned, Schillebeeckx seems to presuppose a culture that is, to a very large degree uniform not only in being secular but also in being future-orientated and desiring the betterment of society; a culture, moreover, that is optimistic about the possibilities of science and technology. Moreover, he also formulates a single problem to which the Christian message can then serve as the unique answer; namely, the problem that activities for the creation of a better world in a society that has no perspective on ultimate fulfilment will result in hopelessness and despair (behind which is the presupposition that critical negativity without positive hope simply cannot work because it is paralysing and cannot function as a positive power bringing about real change for the better). In a situation of radical plurality neither the problem (merely secular activity which seeks to create a better world inevitably leads to hopelessness and despair) nor the solution to the problem formulated by Schillebeeckx (the Christian eschatological message) are still self-evident. With regard to the problem, the following questions can be raised: Can we simply take it for granted that all human beings share the desire 54

Lieven Boeve, Interrupting Tradition: An Essay on Christian Faith in a Postmodern Context (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 54–5.

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for a better world? And for those who do, is it really the case that a purely secular commitment results in despair and hopelessness? And is critical negativity, without the perspective of ultimate fulfilment, automatically paralysing? Schillebeeckx also shows no awareness of the possibility that the problem he seeks to solve by means of the Christian eschatological message may in fact already be the result of his Christian commitment. Maybe the problem is only a problem for those who believe in the solution? And with regard to the solution, the objection can be made that it is only a plausible solution for those who share its fundamental presupposition; namely, that there is a God who pledged Godself in Christ to the realization of true humanity. Without this fundamental presupposition, Schillebeeckx’s solution crumbles in the blink of an eye. Indeed, the entire dialectics of eschatology requires a faith in God and collapses without it. From an atheistic perspective, at least, it can be defended that Schillebeeckx’s solution is actually a false solution, one that covers up the problem rather than solving it. The atheistic alternative would then be to accept heroically that there are no ultimate guarantees that humankind’s this-worldly commitment will indeed result in a better future, but that this does not mean that we should stop trying and from this perspective atheist secular activity for a better world may even appear to be more sincere because it is done without any ultimate guarantee. The atheist might reproach Schillebeeckx that his believer can only act for a better world after he or she has been given the assurance that that activity is not in vain, as if commitment for a better world is not intrinsically important. All these comments show that, given the radical plurality that characterizes our situation, it is no longer possible to present the Christian eschatological message as the unique solution to a single problem, one which we can assume will be recognized and accepted by most people in society. In conclusion, we can say that Schillebeeckx’s view on the public role of eschatology does not qualify as public theology under today’s conditions of eroded familiarity with the Christian narrative and radical plurality. Does this mean that public theology is no longer possible today? No, it does not. But it does mean that if we seek to offer theologically informed guidance to society and to the individuals in it, we have to proceed quite differently than we might have in the past. To clarify the shift I have in mind here, I want to make use of two images. On the one hand, we could conceive of public theologians as sales representatives of the corporation called the church. Public theologians, as sales representatives, are on the road to sell their product, the Christian message, which they believe is important and valuable for all to have, and which is why they want to sell it to as many people as possible. This requires that as many people as possible have to become convinced of the fact that they indeed need the product that the public theologian has on offer and that their life is lacking and incomplete without it. To achieve this aim, it may even be necessary to create a need that only their own product might meet (not unlike contemporary marketers who attempt to produce new needs through advertising). I am aware that this may sound disrespectful, but in a certain sense, at least in the texts in which he develops his view on the public role of eschatology that we have discussed in this contribution, Schillebeeckx behaves not unlike a sales representative who attempts to convince his audience, those committed to a better world, that they need his product, the Christian eschatological message, and that they cannot find true fulfilment without it.

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Given today’s conditions of eroded familiarity with the Christian narrative and radical plurality, I would like to propose an alternative image of the public theologian, that of the servant. When I suggest that we might conceive public theologians as being servants, I have in mind in particular a bas-relief created by the recently deceased German sculptor Toni Zenz (1915–2014).55 The bas-relief depicts two figures. The figure on the right bends down and touches the feet of the figure at the left. When searching on the web for more information on what is depicted here, I came across the following interpretation: Toni Zenz’s sculptures ask for a great deal of time before they divulge their message. … The sculptor sticks to what is simple, direct, essential. The washing of the feet is an encounter. At the left, the ‘disciple’, at the right, the ‘master’ bowing to the disciple as if the latter is more important than Himself. Probably no human being bows as deep. For that, you need to stand on the tips of your toes. A human being is most great when bowed, for love is without measure. The master shows the disciple His love to the limit (see John 13:1). He caresses the feet (!), listens with ‘big ears’ and raises very carefully His eyelids a little bit. He follows in the footsteps of the disciple. He listens to the latter’s course: ‘From where do you come? Where are you getting at? Quo vadis?’ But the master also lets sound: ‘Now you go where you want, but there comes a time when they will equip you and carry you to where you don’t want to go. …’ During an interview, Zenz said that he always sculpts two figures. For a human being does not ‘live’ alone. No figure is thus self-enclosed. One is never human on one’s own. Each human being is granted a dialogue of trust. Together, turned to each other. The master bows to whom the disciple deeply is. The disciple is reluctant and trusting, reserved and receiving, the master affectionate. Two persons: Ich und du. God works very personally. In this way, one becomes human, thanks to the other, the Other.56

Although Zenz’s piece of art does not depict the situation of public theology today as such (it shows Christ washing the feet of one of his disciples, which is something altogether different), the attitude of Christ as present in the image and as interpreted in the fragment just quoted above can serve as a valuable clue about the goal and shape of

55

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Information on Toni Zenz and images of his work are rare on the Internet and are mainly limited to a few Flemish web sites. An image of the work I have in mind here is available here accessed 1 March 2016, http://thomas.theo.kuleuven.be/cms2/uploads/image/pictureright/_large/image038. png. I was not able to trace the title of this piece of art with certainty, however. According to one source, it is titled ‘The Washing of the Feet’ in Dutch it is translated as De voetwassing. See Pedagogisch Bureau, ‘De Voetwassing’, accessed 1 March 2016, http://ond.vsko.be/portal/ page?_pageid=416,1&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&p_portal_id=5&p_folder_id=77692&p_ url=http%3A%2F%2Fond.vsko.be%2Fpls%2Fportal%2Fportal_vsko.wmgt5200.printtext%3Fp_ text%3D344993, but according to another source, Zenz’s work that bears this title is a different one, see Kerknet actua, ‘The Foot Washing’, accessed 1 March 2016, http://www.kerknet.be/actua/ nieuws_detail.php?nieuwsID=121618, which of course does not exclude that two different pieces of art by Zenz may bear the same title. My translation of the text available at Pedagogisch Bureau, ‘De Voetwassing’, accessed 1 March 2016, http://ond.vsko.be/portal/page?_pageid=416,1&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&p_portal_ id=5&p_folder_id=77692&p_url=http%3A%2F%2Fond.vsko.be%2Fpls%2Fportal%2Fportal_vsko. wmgt5200.printtext%3Fp_text%3D344993.

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public theology in our so-called ‘postmodern’ condition. The disciple is more important than the master. He is put at the centre, the master turns to him, even bends down to him. Although a superior bending down to a subordinate can easily be condescending, there is here no hint of this kind of patronizing attitude, neither in the sculpture nor in the interpretation. The master acts out of sincere interest for the disciple’s well-being and he even acts out of love for him. If we read this as a clue for public theology today, we can derive from it that public theologians should give priority to those whom they seek to guide. Public theology is not in the first place about what the public theologians want to communicate, it is not primarily about the message they wish to put across. First of all, they should go out into society and meet those whom they seek to guide where they happen by chance to be situated. The basis of public theology is encounter, dialogue. The first step is to listen and to invite others to tell their stories, such as the master in Zenz’s sculpture asking the disciple, ‘From where do you come? Where are you getting at? Quo vadis?’ Public theology should start from a sincere interest in what happens in society, in the joys and sorrows, desires and worries of the individuals that live therein. Not to put them to use in a strategy to get their products sold, but out of love. Public theology requires the open attitude that is depicted in Zenz’s work: it requires ‘big ears’ and the intent listening that is visible in the barely raised eyelids of the master. It also requires affection and nearness, as expressed in the tender caressing of the disciple’s feet by the master, and the willingness to tread in the other’s footsteps. Evidently, this does not mean that public theology is only about listening and immersing oneself in society. After all, the aim of public theology is, and remains, to guide society and its individuals, but this will only be possible through an immersion during which the public theologian will be touched and affected by others and through which the Christian message will not simply be communicated but in fact will be retold and reshaped to suit a very particular situation and will only then be shared in a humble way, as an offer of wisdom, presented without hegemonic pretension or universalistic claims. In this perspective, public theology can be understood as part of an ongoing process of inculturation, incarnation, kenosis, in which God enters into each new situation to transform it from within and through which he becomes new in each moment, as the title of a book presenting a series of interviews with Edward Schillebeeckx once put it. I am convinced that there is a future for such a humble public theology, even in a situation of radical plurality in which familiarity with the Christian narrative continues to erode away. In this situation it may not make much sense, nor may it be possible, to talk much about eschatology in public, but it remains possible and urgently needed to practise eschatology by transforming individuals and society from within and in this way contributing to the growth of Christ’s kingdom in many small and unseen ways.

Bibliography Boeve, Lieven (2003), Interrupting Tradition: An Essay on Christian Faith in a Postmodern Context (Leuven: Peeters). Breitenberg, Jr., E. Harold (2003), ‘To Tell the Truth: Will the Real Public Theology Please Stand up?’, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, 23: 55–96.

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Finkenzeller, Josef (1995), ‘Eschatology’, in Handbook of Catholic Theology, ed. Wolfgang Beinert and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza (New York, NY: Crossroad), 210–16. Phan, Peter C. (2008), ‘Roman Catholic Theology’, in The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology, ed. Jerry L. Walls (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 215–32. Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), ‘The New Image of God, Secularization and Man’s Future on Earth’, in God the Future of Man, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 3 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark), 101–25 [169–203]. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1973), ‘Christian Faith and Man’s Expectation for the Future on Earth’, in The Mission of the Church, trans. N. D. Smith (New York, NY: Seabury Press), 51–89. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1968), ‘Het nieuwe Godsbeeld, secularisatie en politiek’, Tijdschrift voor theologie, 8: 44–66. Schillebeeckx, Edward (1967), ‘Christelijk geloof en aardse toekomstverwachtingen’, in De kerk in de wereld van deze tijd. Schema dertien: Tekst en commentaar [Vaticanum 2, 2], ed. Jean-Yves Calvez (Hilversum and Antwerpen: Paul Brand), 78–109. Tanner, Norman (2005), The Church and the World: Gaudium et spes, Inter Mirifica (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist). Tanner, Norman, ed. (1990), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press).

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Afro-Pessimism and Christian Hope Vincent Lloyd

In a world of violence and suffering, it is hard enough to have faith. It is hard enough to believe, without evidence provided by the world, that there is a God who is good, who assures peace. Yet Christians are called not only to have faith but also to have hope. In other words, Christians are to be committed to a vision of the future in which goodness prevails, a time when violence and suffering end. This vision produces an uncannily bright disposition, a disposition discordant with the violence and suffering that surrounds. Christians are called to do more than endure or persevere in a world of wretchedness. They are called to thrive, to have a radiance guaranteed by the eternal happiness they know is to come – to have a radiance that itself participates in that happiness. Hope is the definitive experience of the Christian: more definitive, we might even say, than prayer or creed or sacrament (in a sense, it is all three). It is Christianity in practice, lived, embodied. Adversity allows for Christian hope to be made visible. In comfortable circumstances, Christian hope and worldly hope are difficult to distinguish. But in the face of adversity, sustained adversity, worldly hope retreats. After all, worldly hope is really optimism, a disposition enabled and sustained by worldly circumstances.1 Optimism is a precarious individual disposition; Christian hope is a virtue entailing affect that circulates, that swirls amidst the Body of Christ. Comfortable circumstances bring with them the performance of optimism: this is part of the spirit of late capitalism, a Christian simulacrum. There will be more, or better, or cleaner, or smarter. In these comfortable circumstances, we will inevitably be disappointed, but we will inevitably find a new site to imagine more, better, cleaner, smarter: what Lauren Berlant has called ‘cruel optimism’.2 In deep adversity, away from the comforts of the consumer class, the hollowness of such optimistic performance becomes unsustainable. If there is any hope left, it is theological. To put it strongly, Christian hope is normative for theology, and we can see Christian hope most clearly among the wretched of the earth: the martyrs and the colonized, the saints and the paupers. Blackness names one category of wretchedness, 1

2

On the distinction between hope and optimism, see Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York, NY: Norton, 1991). Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

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and it names wretchedness as such. In what follows, I will explore the possibilities and perils of Blackness as a site for theological reflection on hope. By tracking the dialectics of Black theological development, there are vital lessons to be learnt about Christian hope – and so lessons to be learnt for Christian theology as such. Secular theorists have also grappled with hope in the most dire circumstances, but I conclude that it is in the thought of Edward Schillebeeckx that Black theology can find especially productive resources for reflecting on hope in the face of deep racism.

1  Black theology Hope has been a remarkably consistent feature of Black Christianity, and hope has often been a topic of Black theological reflection. However, recent work on Black theology has focused particularly on the apparent hopelessness of the Black condition, leaving an open question of what role hope may play as Black theology continues to develop. Before examining these recent developments, it is useful to review the historical trajectory of Black theology. There have been three generations of Black theologians, by which I mean theologians who have explicitly taken Blackness as a key concept in their theological reflection. It is important to remember that Blackness, as a category, and Black theology, as a project, emerged at the same time, in the late 1960s, in the United States. The shift from ‘Negro’ to ‘Black’ at this time was a political shift, an effort to reject a name that a group had been given by their oppressors and to name itself, with pride. In this atmosphere Black theology meant doing theology that, at least in principle, rejected white idioms and named God in Blacks’ own language, as it were. This is the project of Black theology, but this was only part of the project of the first generation of Black theologians. For them, as for the secular proponents of Black power, Blackness was more than an identity in need of affirmation. Blackness was a privileged mode of existence. To understand this claim, and to understand how it is theologically plausible, the claim can be reframed: Christ identifies with the ‘least of these’, so theology should start with reflection on the experiences of the ‘least of these’. Or, more strongly, the religious insights of the ‘least of these’ are authoritative for theology because they represent those through whom we can hear God speaking the most clearly today. In Mt. 25, Christ labels ‘the least of these’ the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the ill and the prisoner. The first generation of Black theologians argued that ‘the least of these’ today are Blacks (often with an expansive sense of the African diaspora). The word ‘Black’, then, took on two senses at once: it named a specific group of individuals experiencing oppression and it named the oppressed as such.3 Black theology is not just theology in a Black idiom but a uniquely insightful mode of theology. If Christians want to learn about how to speak rightly about Christ, the church, liturgy, hell, or hope, they should listen to Black theologians – or so this first generation claimed. This is what James Cone meant when he wrote that Blackness 3

See Vincent Lloyd, ‘Paradox and Tradition in Black Theology’, Black Theology: An International Journal 9 (2011), 265–86.

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refers both to an ‘ontological symbol’ and to a ‘visible reality’.4 Black theology attends to the Christian faith of those with dark skin but it also speaks to Christian faith as such since, when Blackness is understood as an ‘ontological symbol’, it is obvious that God is Black. What insights does this first generation of Black theologians offer regarding hope? To learn about the theological meaning of hope, we are to turn to the experiences of Blacks – to slavery, segregation, colonialism and racial violence. In such dire circumstances, Blacks produced stories and songs that expressed faith and hope.5 This was not just belief in an other-worldly God and a commitment to endure worldly travails – that would be faith without hope. The stories and songs of Blacks expressed a belief in better things to come both in the next world and in this world as well as a belief that these worldly and other-worldly futures are connected but not identical. Representative of this heritage is the North Star, featured frequently in Black stories and songs. It represents both the heavens, a world beyond the miseries of the present, and the Northern states and Canada, viewed as a place of safety for those in the Southern states. There is hope in the future, and this future is both other-worldly and this-worldly. Faith in God and other-worldly hope fuel this-worldly hope. Indeed, the heavens quite literally offer a practical route to a better future in this world: by ‘reading’ the heavens rightly, by locating the North Star and following it, racial violence can be escaped. Similarly, the famous slave spiritual ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ includes the line ‘Steal away to Jesus,’ commonly understood to refer to escape from slavery in addition to its more obvious, religious meaning. The spiritual ‘Canaan’ likewise includes the equivocal lines ‘Run to Jesus – shun the danger’ and ‘I am bound for the land of Canaan.’ While the hope expressed in slave stories and songs can certainly be inspirational, what seems most useful for theological reflection is the clarity such expressions can bring regarding the relationship between this-worldly hope and other-worldly hope. It is tempting to understand the other-worldly hope expressed as exoteric and the thisworldly hope expressed as esoteric, protected from broader view because of the looming threat of racial violence. In other words, it is tempting to dismiss the religious language of Black stories and songs as simply expressing secular concerns – and expressing secular hope. But this quick dismissal reflects a misunderstanding about hope, a reduction of hope itself to either a plan for the future or an orientation towards an improbable but fantasized future. Neither view captures hope as a disposition or virtue, hope as a typical way of responding to dire circumstances, without despair. Such a virtue necessarily finds expression in concrete, worldly terms: desires for this and that, obtainable through these channels. But such a virtue is not exhausted by such expressions – just as Blackness may be a concrete, worldly manifestation of the ‘least of these’ even though the experiences of Blacks do not offer an exhaustive account of who God is. In the songs and stories of slaves, the irreducible equivocation between the this-worldly and the other-worldly is a pointed marker of hope’s irreducibility to specific desires or fantasies. 4 5

James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1970), 7. See, for example, James H. Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation (New York, NY: Seabury Press, 1972); Arthur C. Jones, Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993).

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Indeed, this is another marker of the paradox at the heart of Christianity: the divine and the human together yet distinct, the supernatural inhering in the natural. It is tempting to forget this essential paradox when discussing hope, a concept that seems at first so unequivocal, but Black theology reminds us that hope, to be Christian, must contain paradox within it. Yet this is only the first moment in the development of Black theology, and tracking the dialectical development of Black theology will offer further insights into our understanding of hope. The initial development of Black theology was precarious for two reasons. First, the world is in motion. Once one group in particular is identified with the ‘least of these’, what happens when circumstances change and that group no longer counts, empirically, as ‘least’? What happens when slavery ends, when colonialism ends, when de jure segregation ends? Or, what happens when new forms of oppression take aim at a similar, but not exactly the same, community as had previously suffered deep oppression? Once a theological endeavour takes hold and becomes institutionalized in the academy, and the church, it reproduces itself rather than responding to dynamic conditions on the ground. In other words, a theology built on any particular ‘least of these’ has a tendency to lag behind the actual experiences of worldly suffering and so has a tendency to say things about God that are systematically amiss. The second problem faced by initial endeavours in Black theology was that choosing any particular name for the ‘least of these’ elides the internal differences and complications within the group to which that name refers. A growing scholarly literature on multiple marginalization and intersectionality points to the way that, for example, treating the experiences of Black women simply under the heading of Black experience significantly misrepresents Black women’s experiences and could even amplify the violence of white patriarchy. In short, naming Blacks as the ‘least of these’ is a blunt instrument that can itself do violence; more nuance is necessary to describe the world and its ills as they really are. These concerns with the initial thrust of Black theology spawned a second wave of Black theologians who saw the project of Black theology as one among many forms of contextual theology, all important and all interlinked. While this might be called a second generation of Black theology, even the most recognizable figure from the first generation, James Cone, began to re-describe Black theology as simply explicating the Christian faith of the Black community. Among the consequences of this shift was a change in emphasis from politics to culture, from struggle against oppression to embrace of African American history and values. Through the late 1970s and 1980s, and beyond, theologians explicated the Christianity of Black women, immigrants, queers, and multiracial individuals, among others. Each of these groups was also marginalized, and also resilient. Myriad differences – a rainbow of differences – no longer had to be subsumed under monolithic labels like Blackness. Indeed, everyone qualifies, in some way, as part of a group that has been among the ‘least of these’, and these aspects of ourselves we can now learn to embrace. Each community speaks of hope in its own way, based on its own history, its own struggles, its own insights – literally or figuratively, in its own language. Black theologians are some among the many voices that can enrich our conversation about hope, or so this second wave of Black theologians suggested.

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2 Afro-pessimism Over the past decade, several currents in Black studies have been consolidated under the name ‘Afro-pessimism’.6 These currents have been both theological and secular; they have also challenged the division between the theological and the secular. They have been consolidated by Black studies scholars, and their consolidation has given new justification to the existence of Black studies departments: Afro-pessimism names a complex, global problem that can be addressed with many disciplinary methodologies but, most essentially, it is a problem that has to do with Blackness. In other words, Black studies does not have to justify its existence by modelling itself on other ethnic studies programs, on Latino or Asian-American or Native American studies. Afro-pessimism is now inflecting the work of Black theologians, pushing the conversation in Black theology beyond the contextual focus of the second wave. Afropessimism promises to renew the importance, authority and intellectual ferment of Black theology as it has for Black studies. What is Afro-pessimism? Bringing together elements of the thought of Franz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers and Achille Mbembe, among others, Afro-pessimism makes four basic claims. First, Blackness is not like other differences. It is not like other racial or ethnic differences nor is it like the differences of gender, sexuality or disability. Second, Blackness does not assimilate and fade away. Integration, at least as conventionally understood, is impossible. Third, Blackness is an ontological condition. It names the condition faced by a person for whom the very possibility of being is foreclosed. Fourth and finally, Blackness is woven deeply into the fabric of Western metaphysics. In other words, the oppression of Blacks may be an empirical condition, but it is also much deeper, and so addressing that oppression requires much more than reducing present suffering. Altogether, Afro-pessimism is so labelled because it points to the depth and gravity of Black oppression, and it suggests that the many efforts at ameliorating that oppression over the years, and decades, have been in vain. The claims of Afro-pessimism are supported by appeals to empirical evidence, by accounts of the history of Western thought, and, in some cases, by theological engagement. Empirically, Afro-pessimists point to data showing how, for example, the end of de jure segregation did not improve the conditions of Blacks in the United States (or how the end of colonialism did not improve the conditions of Blacks in Africa). They point to continuities between the treatment of Blacks during slavery, during segregation, and today, in what has been dubbed the era of mass incarceration. The cultural currency of such arguments has increased dramatically in recent years as police brutality and racial violence have again caught the attention of the American public: Trayvon Martin, Ferguson, stop-and-frisk. Yet the hard numbers have been there for any to see for years. There is a one in three chance that a Black boy will go to jail, the percentage of Black children in segregated schools has stayed around seventyfive for the last fifty years, and the average wealth of Black households stands at around 6

Frank Wilderson coined the term and offers a powerful, synthetic account of the issues involved in the introduction to his Red, White, and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).

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$6,000 compared to around $110,000 for white households. There are similarly stark empirical differences when comparing Blacks to other minority ethnic groups within the United States that show significantly greater signs of upward mobility, and when comparing Africa to other ‘developing’ regions. The severity and apparent permanence of these many disparities motivates Afro-pessimists to posit deep roots for Black oppression. Those deep roots of anti-Blackness are located, by many Afro-pessimists, in the history of Western thought. From a secular perspective, Enlightenment thinkers including David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel all held deeply negative views of Blacks.7 Even when these views are ostensibly distinct from philosophical writings, Afro-pessimists argue that racism still infects the philosophical ideas that have come to dominate the West. Ideas that ostensibly proclaimed liberty also ensured servitude for Blacks. In the theological register, Afro-pessimists argue that Christian anti-Judaism continued in a new guise with anti-Black racism.8 Explicitly or implicitly supersessionist theology, even when it has little to say about Blacks, functions to authorize racial violence. To combat anti-Blackness, Afro-pessimists seek to reconfigure the philosophical or theological tradition in a way that affirms all humanity, not just white, European ‘man’.9 Until that task is complete, until the very structures of thought that shape our world are revamped, the dire empirical conditions that face Blacks will persist, no matter how much effort goes into racial reconciliation and ‘reform’. Black theologians indebted to Afro-pessimist thought are unsatisfied with the felicitous diversity embraced by their second-wave predecessors. Put starkly, framing theology in terms of the rhetoric, really the ideology, of diversity seems troublingly untheological. Not only is it untheological, it apparently buys into neoliberalism’s characteristic style of identity management: identities are choices, desired, never fixed or mandatory, always fluid, always subordinate to the individual free agent. Cultural specificities add richness to life – tasty food and music, curious customs and gregarious neighbours – but they never bring with them normativity. Further, and even more theologically troubling, the ideology of multiculturalism goes hand in hand with the ideology of secularism: religion (‘religious identity’) is managed by the same mechanisms as race (‘racial identity’), both allowed as entertainment, forbidden as anything more.10 Second-wave Black theologians took their task to be explicating the Christianity of a community, but is this not, ultimately, a form of diversity divertissement? And is not theology, after all, supposed to be about God, not about humans? The third wave of Black theology is not simply a return to the first wave. While both agree on the privileged, authoritative place of Black experience in the theological See, for example, Emmanuel Eze, ed., Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1997). J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).  9 Sylvia Wynter, ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument’, CR: The New Centennial Review 3 (2003), 257–337. 10 See Vincent Lloyd, ‘Introduction: Managing Race, Managing Religion’, in Race and Secularism in America, ed. Jonathon Kahn and Vincent Lloyd (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2016), 1–22.  7

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enterprise, for the first wave this role is contingent while for the second wave this role is necessary. Anti-Blackness, as a continuation of supersessionism, is the paradigmatic heresy, not just one more manifestation of marginalization. Put another way, if the first wave of Black theology was political and the second wave was cultural, the third wave is metaphysical, though the metaphysics at stake have clear and powerful political implications. The turn to culture, from the perspective of the third wave, is premature, for Black cultural production, like Black sociality, is always born out of pathology and, in its substance, offers no hope for redemption. At most, Black culture offers reminders that white, or colorblind, hegemonic culture is incomplete and unsatisfying.11 What can Afro-pessimism and third wave Black theology teach us about hope? Unlike the first and second waves of Black theology, the third wave has remained relatively silent on hope. Whether or not the claims of Afro-pessimism are ultimately correct – thinking through the complications of race in a context like Europe, or thinking through the persistent nexus of Islamophobia and race, does urge caution – it is a sufficiently plausible theory to pose a dramatic problem for how we understand hope, perhaps accounting for the silence of recent Black theological writing on the topic. The depth of the challenge posed by Afro-pessimism suggests that this is an especially productive site for theological reflection. The Afro-pessimist bottom line is that hope for improvements in the lives of Blacks has been misplaced. Does this mean that the only hope possible is other-worldly, that the earlier Black theological insights about the paradoxical connection between this-worldly and other-worldly hope were misguided? Before turning to further theological reflection on this question, it will be helpful to review how deep pessimism has resulted in novel accounts of hope in recent secular scholarship.

3  Deep racism and secular hope Afro-pessimist scholarship itself rarely turns towards practical questions and rarely asks: what are we to do, or how are we to hope?12 Afro-pessimist scholarship is largely descriptive work, taking political events (lynchings and police shootings, for example) as symptomatic of a deeper, racialized metaphysics. There is, however, a broader scholarly conversation about deep pessimism caused by difference that may be instructive. Scholars of Native American studies, immigration and queer studies have also explored how these categories of difference are deeply embedded in Western culture, but in some cases they have grappled more explicitly with questions of hope. Jonathan Lear has identified a virtue he labels ‘radical hope’ in Native American communities facing the elimination of their ways of life.13 Focusing on Plenty Coups, 11

12

13

On this issue, see especially Fred Moten, ‘Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh)’, South Atlantic Quarterly 112 (2013), 737–80. For an exception, concluding that Afro-pessimism must reject hope and embrace nihilism, see Calvin L. Warren, ‘Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope’, CR: The New Centennial Review 15 (2015), 215–48. Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

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the last chief of the Crow, Lear studies a context where the social practices that constituted the Crow world were no longer possible. For example, with lands stolen by the US government and traditional means of resolving conflicts disrupted by firearms, the practice of bravery in battle – which involved face painting by a wife, care for horses, and recounting the victory post-battle, and as such woven into Crow life in many ways – was no longer possible. To be a Crow meant to do the social practices of the Crow, but when those social practices are foreclosed, Lear echoes Plenty Coups in concluding that ‘nothing happened’. Crow continued to live, but with their culture gone it was only the barest form of biological existence. The good life, its meaning culturally determined, could no longer be pursued; practical reasoning went haywire when there were no longer goods to be pursued. However, all was not lost. As Lear tells it, Plenty Coup had a dream (significant because it indicates a break with practical reason) which the chief interpreted to mean that the Crow must acknowledge their traditional way of life was coming to an end, but they also must be committed to the notion that the Crow will survive and new social practices and new goods will come about, even if it is impossible to know what they are or how they will come about now. This radical hope rejected as futile practical reasoning, self-destruction and fantasy. Soberly assessing the world as it is, radical hope persists in acting as if a wholly new world is possible – and so exercises the virtues of adaptability and perceptiveness. Yet radical hope only works, Lear argues, because of the Crow’s premise that God exists and is good. Might radical hope offer a way for Black theology to respond to the problem of Afro-pessimism? There are clear similarities between the cultural devastation faced by the Native American community Lear studies and the cultural devastation wrought on Blacks through, among other things, the slave trade and the prison system. Unlike the Crow, Black cultural devastation was not a one-off event but, according to the Afropessimist critique, is an ongoing process inherent in Euro-American culture itself, continually grinding away at the social practices of Blacks. Or, put another way, the continual pressures on Black individuals and communities tend not simply to take away social practices but to corrupt them, changing them at times from incubators of virtue to incubators of vice (one thinks of the corporate appropriation of Black music or the performance of Black respectability necessary for success in the white business world). Lear’s account of radical hope depends on a robust culture that once, in the not-too-distant past, existed to fuel hope for the future (this past is the source of the chickadee, the symbol of hope in Plenty Coups’ dream, along with the Crow view of God and the crucial practice of dream interpretation). The Afro-pessimist charges that Western anti-Blackness is so deep-seated that there was never a robust culture from which such a radical hope could flow; even if there was, the centuries of fruitless hope and embattled community would surely lead to the collapse of the virtue. Another approach to deep racism found in recent secular scholarship is to reject hope altogether. Such approaches propose two different sorts of alternatives: an embrace of grief or an embrace of the present. Anne Cheng’s The Melancholy of Race exemplifies the former approach.14 She agrees that racialization has an enormous, persistent 14

Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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impact – in the context of her study, on African Americans and Asian Americans. She agrees that race shapes the ideological foundations of the West. On her view, the usual response to racism, articulating grievances and pressing for them to be addressed, does not adequately address the depths of the problem; indeed, it masks those depths. By formulating a list of grievances and putting one’s hopes in the possibility that they will be rectified, the racialized subject imagines that she will achieve equality and dignity. Then, she will be just like everyone else: the world will be post-racial. Cheng argues that grievances obscure grief, the deeper process that afflicts the psyche of racialized subjects who know they will never be ‘normal’ – and grief distorts the psyche of white subjects as well since white identity is constituted in relation to the racialized other. In the face of deep pessimism, the proper response, on this view, is to look beyond the specific grievances (and hopes) of a racial minority and instead explore the varied ways that the wound of racism sabotages the affective economy of that minority. Acknowledging and interrogating rather than rejecting grief – racial melancholia – is the only way to see the world rightly and so is the prerequisite for any properly directed social or political action. Cheng’s response to deep racial pessimism is decidedly secular and decidedly individualist. Her critique of grievance, which could be read as a critique of hope directed at specific objects, is in a sense of critique of idolatry, but her response to idolatry is to reject transcendence altogether in favour of the folds and wrinkles of immanence – of our affective economies. But what if we consider grievances not as ends in themselves but as instrumentally used in collective (anti-racist) struggle? Might the process of collective struggle, and not any particular goal, provide a means of healing psyches damaged by racism? Tracking and probing this damage seems less important than commending the forms of collective practice and community organizing that could cultivate the virtues which serve as a buffer against disabling grief. Indeed, this is a point made forcefully by the first and second generations of Black theologians: Black communities are essentially communities of struggle and, as such, shape character in a way that holds off despair. Like Cheng, Lee Edelman rejects hope and acknowledges the radical exclusions faced by minority communities.15 Edelman is particularly concerned with queer men, and for him queer identity is fundamentally opposed to any future orientation  – and so to any hope. The normative, heterosexual world is concerned with the future because it is concerned with reproduction: individuals with reproducing themselves through their children and societies with reproducing themselves from generation to generation. The figure of the child is sanctified, according to Edelman, because she or he represents this reproduction of the way things are. Yet queers, as incapable of reproduction, are excluded from this heteronormative way of seeing the world. Indeed, queers disrupt the smooth reproduction of the ways of the world – and, Edelman contends, they ought to embrace this role. They ought to embrace pleasure in the moment rather than pleasure deferred to the next generation; they will not suffer now so that a child can have a better life. In short, queers are a minority structurally 15

Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).

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excluded from Western metaphysics, and the proper response for the minority is to happily embrace hopelessness along with all temporality other than the now. Edelman helpfully demonstrates the way that interest in the future is closely tied to self-interest and to the powers that be in the present. He also helpfully demonstrates the way that minority groups whose exclusion is fundamental to regnant ideology can potentially short-circuit that ideology by refusing to participate in normative futuredirected practices. Indeed, there is at times a messianic tone to Edelman’s project, finding the fullness of time in the present moment. Yet the heart of Edelman’s project is an extension of Cheng’s, an extension from the critique of idolatry to the critique of ideology. Where Cheng took issue with specific hopes, Edelman presents himself as taking issue with hope as such – but in fact he is taking issue with hope motivated by present social structures and institutions. In other words, Edelman is warning against an embrace of hope that is really not about the wholly new, hope that advances the interests of the old with the rhetoric of the wholly new. For Edelman, as for Cheng, the only alternative is making ourselves into gods: an even deeper form of idolatry (an even subtler ruse of ideology). Black theologians grappling with Afro-pessimism can learn much from these secular efforts and their sharp critical perspectives, but Black theologians also bring to the problem of racism a view of hope directed towards a God who is irreducible to worldly terms or desires.

4  God, the future of Blacks The quick and easy response of Black theologians to Afro-pessimism is to simply present Christ as the solution. In the Afro-pessimist framework, Black being is an oxymoron: Blackness has no being, it is defined by its exclusion from being. Christ raises the dead, turning non-being into being, flesh defined by death into flesh defined by life. Participation in Christ means participation in His resurrection: denying the world’s denial of being. Such a stance does not take the form of overcoming Blackness, of becoming white. That Blackness is defined by death does not mean that whiteness is defined by life. To the contrary, whiteness hubristically claims life, being, on its own – whiteness claims ontology without theology and that is idolatry. Blackness is not outside of being but paradoxically inside and outside at once, being that is not counted as being, that thus disturbs the regime that would define being. J. Kameron Carter, working along these lines, labels Blackness ‘paraontological’.16 Concealing the being of the slave, or the prisoner, or the native, takes much ideological work, for the principle of Black non-being must overcome the stubbornness of lived reality. Blackness points to the precariousness of ontology, reminds that the present order of being is not natural, not universal. Blackness essentially destabilizes the order of things, so the resurrection of Black being is not the assimilation of Blackness into the order of things, into whiteness, but rather is triumph of the theological over the ontological. What does this mean concretely? The resurrection 16

J. Kameron Carter, ‘Paratheological Blackness’, South Atlantic Quarterly 112 (2013), 589–611, though my formulation here differs somewhat from his.

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of Black being means Black agency: Black writing, Black art, Black rhetoric, Black creativity that is unexpected, unauthorized, and, from the perspective of the white world, often unintelligible. The slave writes, the prisoner paints, or the native imagines. The objects of these verbs, these acts, need not be God – indeed cannot be God, for that would be idolatry. Independent of their object, these verbs represent participation in God because they represent the resurrection of non-being into being, Blackness triumphant, Christ triumphant. This account of Black theology responsive to Afro-pessimism is appealing but ultimately deeply flawed. It suffers from individualism, a profoundly secular ailment – the ailment that defines the secular. The creativity and strength of the Black man (for such creative agency is gendered) will save the world from itself. In this theology there is no space for community, for love, or, crucially, for hope. There are no virtues of Blackness developed in community, just the act of individual rebellion against the powers that be. And there is no vision of a future world transformed, just a set of disconnected Black men doing art in their attics, as it were. The Black theologian inclined to such a view may respond that ‘church’ would consist of the informal networks created among these, what Fred Moten calls the ‘undercommons’.17 But such networks seem a far cry from communities of virtue that could nurture, sustain and properly order the Black rebellious spirit. Indeed, such a theological perspective suffers from an extreme Christocentrism, the theological vice corresponding to the secular vice of individualism. Christ cleaved from God and Spirit defines all value; indeed, what matters on this account is not even a Christ who loves or suffers but exclusively a Christ who is risen. What is needed is a Black theology responsive to Afro-pessimism but also concerned with the social world, with love, and with justice. The theological reflections of Edward Schillebeeckx offer a useful if unexpected resource to accomplish this task. Of Schillebeeckx’s extensive, learned corpus, I will focus exclusively on one essay, ‘The New Image of God, Secularization and Man’s Future on Earth,’ the final chapter of God the Future of Man.18 This is a particularly important essay, consolidating much of Schillebeeckx’s thought and clearly developing the themes that are central to much of his writing over the decades before and after. In this essay, Schillebeeckx makes three key points. First, he offers a new way to think about secularization. Christians, instead of lamenting declining church membership rolls, should see secularization as part of a reorientation away from the past and towards the future. Science and technology hold new possibilities while changing social arrangements create new ways of living. Life no longer consists of repeating the past or interpreting the past for lessons on the present. Instead of looking backwards we now look forwards. To determine what ought to be done now we look less to what has always been done than to what might eventually be done. We act on our hopes instead of on our memories. Schillebeeckx’s second point is that God is, as his book’s title suggests, our future. Where the Christian tradition has embraced the slogan that God is the first and 17

18

Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions, 2013). Edward Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 3 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014).

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the last, the emphasis has too often been on the first, in the beginning, according to Schillebeeckx. Shifting this emphasis, Schillebeeckx encourages us to think of God as the ‘wholly New’, that which is to come, and he encourages us to think of Christ as demonstrating that we ourselves can participate in God by creating anew, leaving behind the sin of our past. For Schillebeeckx, God is the future not of any individual but of humanity collectively: our future. Given this second point, Schillebeeckx is able to view modernization and secularization cheerfully. Instead of mourning a decline in religiosity, Schillebeeckx sees secularization bringing with it a better religiosity, one based on a more correct understanding of God. Secularization strips away old idols that tied Christianity to this world, that made God an object of this world, determined by history. The shift in human orientation towards the future that happens with secularization is a shift in orientation towards God. The problem with an orientation towards the future is that humans find themselves unmoored from norms of the past – so it would seem as though anything goes. It is clear how to look backwards for normativity, to judge based on what has been done before, but it is not clear what it would mean to look forwards for normativity. If God is the future of humankind, must this be a God without standards or morality? Schillebeeckx’s third point in ‘The New Image of God’ is meant to address this worry: ‘The Christian inspiration in socio-economic and political life is therefore directed, by its “critical negativity,” against every image of man whose lines are strictly drawn or which presents itself as a positive and total definition and against the illusory expectation that science and technology are capable of solving the ultimate problems of man’s existence.’19 In short, Schillebeeckx embraces negative theology, or theology as the critique of idolatry (and ideology). The future must remain unnameable. If it is named, as so often happens when humans are oriented towards the future, this must be criticized by theology, for so naming ascribes a worldly identity to the divine. Christian hope is distinguished from secular optimism because the former refuses to be sated with any object or concept. Secularization’s reorientation of humans towards the future can be a proper orientation towards God or it can be another form of idolatry, like the orientation to the past. Schillebeeckx’s third point, about negative theology, is necessary to render judgement on whether this future orientation is properly theological. Such judgement is rendered in a community that keeps alive the vision of God as wholly new: in church. Might we think of Black experience as involving a form of secularization? Might the experiences of slavery, segregation, imprisonment and genocide offer the possibility of shifting Black orientation from the past to the future? Where the social transformations accompanying modernity severed the normative force of the past for whites, the normative force of the past was severed much more directly for Blacks: through violent displacement, incarceration and death. Mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, were taken away – are being taken away. One response is a nostalgic turn backwards to an impossible past: fantasy images of Africa, newly created rituals to remember ‘the ancestors’ and, at the intellectual level, a fixation on the experience

19

Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 117–18 [193–4].

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of slavery as overdetermining Black experience.20 Another response is to hope. Here hope means an orientation towards the future, necessitated by the inaccessibility of the past. When God is understood as wholly New, as God is for Schillebeeckx, experience can be said to orient Blacks towards God. Moreover, Schillebeeckx offers ‘critical negativity’, nurtured in loving community, as a tool to determine when this orientation goes wrong. On this view, Black theology is essentially negative theology on the conceptual level; on the level of practice, it embraces the theological virtues. Moreover, the sudden, severe breaks with the past experienced by Blacks suggest that, for Schillebeeckx, Black theology ought to be paradigmatic for all theology: it offers a much more intense version of the gradual reorientation from backwards-looking to forwards-looking that Schillebeeckx identifies and commends in European modernity. This Schillebeeckxian reading of Black theology is responsive to the worries of Afro-pessimism because it takes as its starting point that the denial of Black being is deeply entwined with the metaphysics of the West. This is the mechanism, in the realm of ideas, resulting in the violence, in the realm of practice, that severs Blacks from the past. A missing father can be found; an impossible father is irretrievable – resulting in melancholy, or in an orientation towards the future.21 The foreclosure of Black being is not just about police stops and incarceration rates, where humans are treated as nonhuman. Those practices are authorized by a metaphysics: that is the Afro-pessimist insight. According to such metaphysics, Blacks have no history; they are excluded from the unfolding of being through world history. Black community, and particularly Black religious community, church, gathers individuals who cannot be oriented towards the past and negotiates an orientation towards the future – towards God. That community is founded on the memory and real presence of Christ: the possibility for Black being to be resurrected. Christ offers the foundational norm for that community, a model of how death can become life and a model of how false hopes (in objects, in law, in self) are to be quashed. Together, as community, as Body of Christ, the Black church negotiates proper orientation towards the future – and so properly worships God. Unlike the first generation of Black theology, this Schillebeeckxian inflection of Black theology accounts for the depths of anti-Blackness in the West. Unlike the second generation of Black theology, this Schillebeeckxian approach does not take culture or community as an end point. They do not provide the norms for Black theology, Christ does. But culture and community, for those forcibly detached from their past, provide a way to maintain proper orientation towards the future – to hope rightly. Like the secular theories of deep racism discussed above, the approach outlined here acknowledges how problematic hope is for those enduring intractable wretchedness, but unlike the secular theories theological hope can now be cleaved from idolatrous hope. Is this Schillebeeckxian inflection of Black theology at all political or is the hope it commends simply a religious ethical practice? The critique 20 21

Stephen Best, ‘On Failing to Make the Past Present’, Modern Language Quarterly 73 (2012), 453–74. See Vincent Lloyd, ‘From the Theopaternal to the Theopolitical: On Barack Obama’, in Common Good(s): Economy, Ecology, and Political Theology, ed. Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Catherine Keller and Elias Ortega-Aponte (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2015) and Vincent Lloyd, ‘Of Fathers and Sons, Prophets and Messiahs’, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 16 (2014), 209–26.

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of idolatry and ideology is always political, and such critique is, first and foremost, the task commended by this account. This critique goes hand in hand with hope. It is a critique of those who would turn police into gods, prisons into hell and settlers into saviours. The virtue of hope is political because it entails such critique, but it also fuels the activity of communities oriented towards the future, committed to building new practices and institutions together. It is not for theology to specify in advance what those practices and institutions will be – that would be idolatry. The task, rather, is to clear the intellectual space necessary for this essential, life-giving work to be sustained.

Bibliography Berlant, Lauren (2011), Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Best, Stephen (2012), ‘On Failing to Make the Past Present’, Modern Language Quarterly, 73: 453–74. Carter, J. Kameron (2013), ‘Paratheological Blackness’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 112: 589–611. Carter, J. Kameron (2008), Race: A Theological Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Cheng, Anne Anlin (2001), The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Cone, James H. (1972), The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation (New York, NY: Seabury Press). Cone, James H. (1970), A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott). Edelman, Lee (2004), No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Eze, Emmanuel, ed. (1997), Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell). Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten (2013), The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions). Jones, Arthur C. (1993), Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis). Lasch, Christopher (1991), The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York, NY: Norton). Lear, Jonathan (2006), Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Lloyd, Vincent (2016), ‘Introduction: Managing Race, Managing Religion’, in Race and Secularism in America, ed. Jonathon Kahn and Vincent Lloyd (New York, NY: Columbia University Press), 1–22. Lloyd, Vincent (2015), ‘From the Theopaternal to the Theopolitical: On Barack Obama’, in Common Good(s): Economy, Ecology, and Political Theology, ed. Melanie JohnsonDeBaufre, Catherine Keller and Elias Ortega-Aponte (New York, NY: Fordham University Press), 326–43. Lloyd, Vincent (2014), ‘Of Fathers and Sons, Prophets and Messiahs’, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 16: 209–26. Lloyd, Vincent (2011), ‘Paradox and Tradition in Black Theology’, Black Theology: An International Journal, 9: 265–86. Moten, Fred (2013), ‘Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh)’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 112: 737–80.

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Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), God the Future of Man, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 3 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Warren, Calvin L. (2015), ‘Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope’, CR: The New Centennial Review, 15: 215–48. Wilderson, Frank (2010), Red, White, and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Wynter, Sylvia (2003), ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument’, CR: The New Centennial Review, 3: 257–337.

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Ecclesiology: ‘The Church with a Human Face’

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Enchantment, Idolatry and Sacrament: Looking for Grace in the Secular William T. Cavanaugh

Catholic responses to the phenomenon of secularization in the era surrounding Vatican II tended to be marked by two convictions: that secularization was the terminus of an unavoidable historical process leading to the modern world, and that the secular world needed to be embraced as a locus of God’s grace. As Edward Schillebeeckx wrote in 1966, secularization is the movement from a theophanous world to a hominized world; nature now bears ‘the traces, not of God, but of man’.1 Nature, formerly seen as filled with mysterious forces and numinous to the glory of God, was, in a secularized world, now seen as raw material for the self-making of humanity. The forward march of science and technology had desacralized the material world. This need not lead to atheism, however. Secularization can be seen positively as ‘an inner consequence of yahwism and of Christianity and therefore also an inner aspect of the historical evolution of Christianity itself ’.2 To believe in a Creator God who is transcendent and wholly other from material creation is a ‘fundamental affirmation of the secularity of reality’3 – the world is not God. As Schillebeeckx writes, ‘The true theological interpretation of and the directly raised response to the phenomenon of secularization is therefore not disbelief or the secularization of religion itself, but first and foremost a refusal to regard God as a factor within this world, the corner-stone of our universe, and a refusal to experience nature directly as numinous.’4 Secularization for Schillebeeckx is therefore consonant with a disciplined refusal of idolatry, though he does not use the term here; secularization sweeps the world clean of idols that would make God a mere ‘factor within this world’. At the same time, however, that the world is exteriorly desacralized, God’s grace is at work in it interiorly in the process of humanization. Schillebeeckx reverses the relationship of exterior and interior found in a theophanous nature: rather than bump into God in the external

1

2 3 4

Edward Schillebeeckx, World and Church, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 4 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 61 [79]. The original essay from which this chapter of the book was taken was published in 1966. Ibid., 66 [86]. Ibid., 65–7 [86–7]. Ibid., 63 [82]; italics in the original.

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world, grace begins with an inward word of God in each human heart, which gradually comes to visible manifestation in history through special revelation. Nature reveals God, but ‘The course of nature’, Schillebeeckx writes, ‘tells us more because of God speaking within us than ever it could of itself.’5 Even pagans encountered God within first, then struggled to make that encounter visible: ‘Heathen religion itself was striving to give outward shape to its inner expectations.’6 The full visibility of grace awaited its incarnation in Israel, Christ, the church and the sacraments. Schillebeeckx was fighting a battle on two fronts. He was simultaneously trying to correct what he called the ‘too severely objective’ neoscholastic view of the sacraments7 and trying to see the positive in the process of secularization. The answer to both was to locate God first not in nature but in humanity, not in the external world but in the interiority of the human heart. In his writings on secularization, Schillebeeckx identifies his main interlocutors as Marxist and existentialist humanists. He describes them as ‘more profound, more integral, more serious’ than Renaissance humanists. They are ‘more matter of fact, sober and real’.8 Together with science and technology, Marxist and existentialist humanisms represent an inexorable movement of history in which responsibility and freedom is put into human hands. The movement is described at the same time as rejecting all that is other-worldly, transcendent, enchanted and unreal. Schillebeeckx marks this aspect of secularization as a regrettable turning away from religion and from the church. Rather than simply railing against the modern world, however, Schillebeeckx represents the spirit of Vatican II in its embrace of the world outside the church. Schillebeeckx and the other pioneering figures behind Vatican II rightly abandoned the defensive posture of the pre-Vatican II church, and sought to see God’s grace at work in the world beyond the borders of the visible church. Even Marxist atheism could be appreciated as a therapy that helps sweep the world clean of idols. In response, Schillebeeckx fashioned a Christian humanism that sought to realize God’s presence in the world through the work of human hands. In place of a theophanous nature, Schillebeeckx articulated a sacramental view of the world in which grace was not so much an objective reality but an interior encounter between the human subject and the living God. In a sacramental worldview, the material world was still an occasion for that encounter, however: ‘The sacraments, the word, all human conduct which proceeds from grace, the entire world of man – all these are, in their various ways, visible realities in this world of which the Lord avails himself, using his rich fund of inspiration in the most diverse means, to orientate man existentially towards God in Jesus Christ.’9 The discourse around secularization has changed significantly since Schillebeeckx’s time. Existentialism now seems hopelessly dated, and Marxism today tends to flourish in the hands of decidedly post-secular figures like Slavoj Žižek. The secularization thesis that in the 1960s saw secularization as universally inevitable has been under fire in the face of the so-called ‘resurgence’ of religion. More significantly, however, the very categories of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ that once seemed so clearly to mark two separate 5

6 7 8 9

Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, trans. Paul Barret, N. D. Smith, CW vol. I (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 6 [8]. Ibid. Ibid., 2 [3]. Schillebeeckx, World and Church, 2 [2]. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, 126 [216].

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kinds of human endeavour have now been radically called into question. Scholarship over the last several decades has shown that the religious/secular divide is a flexible and historically contingent construct, one that the notion of ‘secular religions’ explodes.10 I want to use this chapter to take a fresh look at the questions raised by Schillebeeckx’s early attempts to deal theologically with the phenomenon of secularization, questions that are crucial for every attempt to talk about theology and public life. Do we in fact live in a secular age, or are we in some sense still profoundly ‘religious’ or at least post-secular? Is the secular the realm of sober fact, mundane reality, disenchantment, pure immanence, desacralization, deidolization and so on? Or is the secular in fact a realm of deep enchantment and secular religions? Do the sacraments hold the key for a Christian view of the real relationship between God and the material world? I will explore Schillebeeckx’s theme of the rejection of a theophanous nature through the more recent treatment of disenchantment in Charles Taylor’s work on secularization. I will argue that the secular world is not in fact disenchanted or deidolized, but secular culture is still prone to the sacralization of the material world. I will use the work of Jean-Luc Marion to explore an interiorized account of idolatry that makes sense of the way people relate to the material world in a secular world. Finally, I will make some brief suggestions, in the spirit of Fr. Schillebeeckx, on the importance of the sacraments as a therapy for idolatry.

1 Enchantment Schillebeeckx’s account of secularization has certain strong affinities with Charles Taylor’s account of the disenchantment of the modern world. In both, the pre-modern world is one in which the exterior world is experienced as filled with mysterious forces: spirits, demons, saints, ghosts and magical forces that effect a change in reality independent of the mind. In both Schillebeeckx and Taylor, the process of disenchantment is not an anti-Christian movement in its origins, but originates from Christian attempts to clear the natural world of rivals to the transcendent God. For both, in other words, disenchantment originates in the critique of idolatry. Both think, as Taylor puts it, that ‘this “disenchanting” move is implicit in the tradition of Judaism, and later Christianity’.11 But Taylor indicates that both traditions are at least ambivalent, hovering between the overcoming of bad magic by good magic on the one hand, and the elimination of all magic on the other.12 For ‘disenchantment’, Taylor endorses Max Weber’s term Entzauberung – the diminishment of Zauber or magic – which captures a novel movement in late medieval Christianity. Whereas medieval piety was based in driving out bad magic with good magic in the practice of the sacraments and sacramentals like relics, the movement towards what Taylor 10

11 12

Chapter 2 of my book The Myth of Religious Violence (New York: Oxford, 2009) is a summary of such scholarship. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 74. ‘God’s power conquers the pagan enchanted world. And this can proceed either through a good, God-willed enchantment; or else by annihilating all enchantment, and in the end emptying the world of it.’ This ambivalence is illustrated in the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, according to Taylor; ibid.

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generically calls ‘Reform’ wanted to empty the world of magic altogether, so that the power of the transcendent God would be all in all. The mediation of God’s power by physical objects and priestly human agents would be deemphasized or swept away so that there would be no distraction from, or rivalry to, God.13 ‘Reform’ is the late medieval and early modern movement, begun before the Reformation, to resolve the tension between the higher monastic and clerical callings and the less demanding and mundane life of the laity. Reform would attempt to institute disciplines that converted the merely external ritual ways of accessing the holy into a true interiorization of the Christian life. Reform began in lay movements in the late medieval period and eventually worked its way up to the civil governing authorities in the early modern period, who came to see their task as not merely ruling over the masses, but of changing them into better citizens and better Christians.14 For Taylor the disenchantment of the exterior world was the product of the interiorization of Christianity in the movement to Reform. The attempt to bring Christianity into every aspect of mundane human life through the disciplined individual had the effect, in the long run, of concentrating human flourishing on the achievement of worldly goods. As an unintended consequence, increased focus on Christian life in this world became a kind of worldliness, an ‘exclusive humanism’ that can manage without transcendence.15 Interiorization is the key to disenchantment for Taylor. He contrasts the modern world with the enchanted medieval world, the world of spirits, demons, moral forces which our predecessors acknowledged. The process of disenchantment is the disappearance of this world, and the substitution of what we live today: a world in which the only locus of thoughts, feelings, spiritual élan is what we call minds; the only minds in the cosmos are those of humans …; and minds are bounded, so that these thoughts, feelings, etc., are situated ‘within’ them.16

In an enchanted world, meaning resides ‘out there’ in spirits and in things, like relics and other holy objects. In a disenchanted world, things continue to induce meaning within us, but in an enchanted world, things affect not only us but also other things in the world; saints have ‘magical’ powers to stop lightning, for example.17 ‘Charged things can impose meanings’ in an enchanted world, and because this meaning resides in the external world, ‘we think of this meaning as including us, or perhaps penetrating us’.18 Meaning in an enchanted world is therefore neither wholly within nor wholly without the person; in such a world, selves are ‘porous’. People describe themselves as ‘taken over’ by evil or ‘in the grip’ of melancholy. A modern person, by way of contrast, can regard melancholy as a function of body chemistry, and can therefore take some distance from it. Modern selves, Taylor says, are ‘buffered’ selves; the boundary between interior and exterior is much more distinct.19 This boundary marks not only 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Ibid., 70–5. Ibid., 101–3. Ibid., 90–145. Ibid., 29–30. Ibid., 31–5. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 34–8.

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the separation of the person from spirits but also from other persons; the rise of civility and manners that distance people from each other and from bodily functions has a part in Taylor’s story of disenchantment.20 Taylor does not indulge in nostalgia or any attempt to turn back the clock. According to Taylor, ‘the process of disenchantment is irreversible’.21 What he means by disenchantment, however, is not necessarily the loss of religious belief, but the interiorization of belief, such that any belief is subjective and optional. It is not just that people believe different things than they used to, but that the conditions of belief have changed. It was once nearly impossible not to believe in God. Now belief in God is just one option among many. Optionality is the main effect of disenchantment. And optionality does not seem to be optional for us in Taylor’s description. ‘What I am trying to describe here is not a theory. Rather my target is our contemporary lived understanding; that is, the way we naïvely take things to be. We might say: the construal we just live in, without ever being aware of it as a construal, or – for most of us – without ever even formulating it.’22 According to Taylor, ‘The main feature of this new context is that it puts an end to the naïve acknowledgement of the transcendent, or of goals or claims which go beyond human flourishing. … Naïveté is now unavailable to anyone, believer or unbeliever alike.’23 Except, of course, as Taylor himself implies, the naïveté of optionality, which is not only available but mandatory for everyone. There is a kind of secular exceptionalism in Taylor’s account; the disenchantment of the West marks ‘us’ as different from the rest of the world and the rest of human history.24 What this indicates is that there is nothing inevitable about disenchantment; it is not the end result of human evolution, but a contingent state of affairs that could have been otherwise. Now that we are living it, however, ‘once we are well installed in the modern social imaginary, it seems the only possible one, the only one which makes sense’.25 Taylor describes the modern disenchanted social imaginary in terms of the ‘immanent frame’: ‘This frame constitutes a “natural” order, to be contrasted to a “supernatural” one, an “immanent” world, over against a possible “transcendent” one.’26 According to Taylor, the immanent frame can, but does not necessarily, ‘slough off ’ the transcendent. We seem to have no choice whether or not to inhabit this frame, but we can choose whether or not to inhabit it as open to transcendence: ‘The immanent frame is common to all of us in the modern West. … Some of us want to live it as open to something beyond; some live it as closed.’27 Of the latter, Taylor remarks, ‘A race of humans has arisen which has managed to experience its world entirely as immanent. In some respects, we may judge this achievement as a victory for darkness, but it is a remarkable achievement nonetheless.’28

20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Ibid., 136–7. Charles Taylor, ‘Disenchantment-Reenchantment’, in The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now, ed. George Levine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 57–73, 57. Taylor, A Secular Age, 30. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 1. Ibid., 168. Ibid., 542. Ibid., 543–4. Ibid., 376.

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It is not so easy, however, to maintain this sharp divide between transcendence and immanence. Taylor himself struggles mightily to do so. He defines belief in transcendence in ‘our’ culture as having a triple dimension: belief in some good beyond human flourishing, a God and an afterlife. Taylor admits that there are other possibilities ‘somewhere between this triple transcendence perspective, and the total denial of religion’, and that such options abound in Western society. Nevertheless, Taylor claims that framing the matter in terms of transcendence and immanence is justified because the debate in our society ‘is shaped by the two extremes, transcendent religion, on one hand, and its frontal denial, on the other’.29 It may be the case that the academic and public debate has traditionally centred on theism versus atheism. But it is not clear to me why that should prevent us from exploring other ways of construing the language of immanent and transcendent, and their relationship to enchantment and disenchantment. It seems perfectly possible, for example, that in a consumer society people could be enchanted by material objects that they recognize as belonging entirely to the immanent plane. It seems equally possible that a kind of transcendence can be recognized in certain kinds of purely mundane flourishing, as in Marxist eschatology, for example. Taylor, of course, is well aware that there are many attempts in a disenchanted society to reach out to a kind of mystery in the immanent. Taylor feels the same discontent with the ‘flatness’ of a disenchanted world that Weber felt, and acknowledges that there are plenty of routes to reclaiming what Taylor calls ‘fullness’ that do not entail a return to traditional religion. He focuses on the Romantic movement here, and shows how people attempt to fill the lack created by disenchantment ‘within immanence’, through art and music especially.30 Nature too can become a locus for the seeking of fullness on the purely immanent plane. Taylor acknowledges that even a strict scientific materialism can foster a sense of awe; he cites physicist Douglas Hofstadter as reporting that he finds ‘in reductionism the ultimate religion’.31 Taylor acknowledges that one can cast the net widely and include all sorts of ultimate concerns under the rubric ‘religion’, and argue that therefore religion is as present as it ever was.32 But he ends up sticking with a substantivist definition of religion, insisting that something has clearly declined in modernity, and ‘we need some word if we are to try to understand the significance of this decline, and “religion” is certainly the handiest one’.33 Likewise, he refuses to allow that positions like Hofstadter’s are in fact a re-enchantment of the 29 30 31 32 33

Ibid., 20. Ibid., 310. Quoted in Taylor, ‘Disenchantment-Reenchantment’, 66. Taylor, A Secular Age, 427. Ibid., 430. Taylor decides on the ‘prudent (or perhaps cowardly)’ move of defining ‘“religion” in terms of the distinction transcendent/immanent’ because that distinction fits the experience of religion in the West, which invented the idea that the immanent order of nature could be explained on its own terms without any necessary relationship to any transcendent Creator; ibid., 15. Taylor ignores the genealogies of the religious/secular distinction put forward by Talal Asad, Timothy Fitzgerald, Brent Nongbri and a host of other scholars over the last few decades. See, inter alia, Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Timothy Fitzgerald, Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012).

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world. ‘The aspiration to reenchant … points to a different process, which may indeed reproduce features analogous to the enchanted world, but does not in any simple sense restore it.’34 Taylor doubts that a fully adequate account of transcendence or ‘upper’ language can be given in purely immanent or ‘lower’ terms.35 Put another way, Taylor thinks that what characterizes a world that is irreversibly disenchanted is the decline in the ‘transformation perspective’, that which ‘takes them beyond or outside of whatever is normally understood as human flourishing’.36 Disenchantment is what makes it possible to live a life completely bounded by the immanent frame, what is ‘normally understood as human flourishing’. Taylor does not believe that transcendent immanence is anything more than an oxymoron. But it is possible within Taylor’s own Christian framework to contest the sharp dichotomy of transcendence and immanence upon which he relies. One way to do so is by way of idolatry-critique: there are those who are clearly enchanted by purely immanent things; instead of serving God, they serve Mammon. In his irenic approach, Taylor steers well clear of any mention of idolatry, but idolatry-critique haunts his contention that purely immanent accounts of awe and mystery are simply inadequate to their object. He mentions the way that the dense communal-ritual life of Breton parishes has given way to post-war consumer culture, commenting ‘It is almost as though the “conversion” was a response to a stronger form of magic, as earlier conversions had been.’37 Here the word ‘almost’ protects Taylor’s thesis of the irreversibility of disenchantment and the exceptional character of modernity from unravelling. But the ‘almost’ also seems to represent the unthought of his own work, an unthought that nearly emerges into the light of day near the end of his massive book A Secular Age, when he drops his descriptive tone and contends, ‘Modes of fullness recognized by exclusive humanisms, and others that remain within the immanent frame, are therefore responding to transcendent reality, but misrecognizing it.’38 This same contention is at the heart of at least some biblical critiques of idolatry.39 Note that this quote – and the one at the beginning of this final chapter where Taylor promises to ‘look briefly at some of those who broke out of the immanent frame’ – violates his own dictum, cited above, that we all now inhabit the immanent frame, willy-nilly, though some live it as open and some as closed. Perhaps the immanent frame is not as singular and irreversible as he would have it. Taylor recognizes at one point in A Secular Age, ‘How problematic are the distinctions, not only between internal and external transcendence, but even transcendence/immanence itself.’40 But he continues on in the same paragraph to write, ‘I want to retain the notion of transcendence, along the lines of my original distinction 34 35 36 37 38 39

40

Taylor, ‘Disenchantment-Reenchantment’, 57. Ibid., 71–3. Taylor, A Secular Age, 430. Ibid., 490. Ibid., 768. See for example Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17. Paul is ‘deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols’ (17.16). The presence of idols indicates to Paul that the Athenians are searching for God, and they might perhaps ‘grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us’ (Acts 17.27). See The New Oxford Annotated Bible, ed. Michael D. Coogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Taylor, A Secular Age, 632.

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between exclusive and inclusive humanisms, for the purposes of my principal thesis.’41 Taylor recognizes that the transcendent/immanent distinction is not absolute, but he claims that some such terminology is indispensable, because some distinction between the everyday world and the higher world is part of ‘every civilization’, and because without the distinction ‘we couldn’t understand our dominant social imaginary, and hence the world it helps constitute’.42 But Taylor’s response here seems to confuse the way things are in ‘every civilization’ with a very particular construal of transcendence and immanence born in the modern West. There is no question that many people in the modern West have learnt to describe their experiences in terms of binaries like transcendence/immanence, religious/ secular, enchanted/disenchanted, eternal/mundane and so on. But in his concept of the ‘social imaginary’, Taylor does not seem able to distinguish adequately between people’s experiences and the way they have learnt to describe their experiences. He writes about ‘the way the universe is spontaneously imagined, and therefore experienced’.43 He does not seem to consider the possibility that people’s imagination – the way they have learnt to give an account of their experience – could be at variance with their actual experience. The people waiting to burst into the electronics store at midnight on Thanksgiving and run frenzied for the discount televisions might describe themselves as materialists pursuing purely mundane goods, but they could just as easily be described as enchanted, under the thrall of the ‘stronger form of magic’ that is consumerism, in Taylor’s own words. George Ritzer’s work on enchantment in consumer society gets at something that Taylor misses here.44 The distinction between buffered and porous selves – though perhaps useful in other ways – seems unhelpful here. Taylor recognizes that secular life continues to employ rituals, but he is convinced that disenchantment is a decisive, unique and irreversible change, and so he claims that such rituals have a fundamentally different effect on human subjects. Of course, we go on having rituals – we salute the flag, we sing the national anthem, we solemnly rededicate ourselves to the cause – but the efficacy here is inner; we are, in the best case, ‘transformed’ psychologically; we come out feeling more dedicated. … The ‘symbol’ now invokes in the sense that it awakens the thought of the meaning in us. We are no longer dealing with a real presence. We can now speak of an act as ‘only symbolic’.45

Taylor is right that we do indeed speak this way. We have learnt to describe patriotic rituals as only symbolic, our willingness to kill and die for the nation as secular, the nation’s pursuits in war as purely mundane and therefore not fanatical. The question is 41 42 43 44

45

Ibid. Charles Taylor, ‘Challenging Issues About the Secular Age’, Modern Theology 26 (2010), 411–12. Taylor, A Secular Age, 325. George Ritzer, Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Continuity and Change in the Cathedrals of Consumption (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 3rd edn, 2009). Ritzer shows how, pace Weber, rationalization and enchantment go hand in hand in a consumer society, the former helping to propagate the latter, while also perpetuating cycles of disenchantment and enchantment in the endless search for novelty. Charles Taylor, ‘Western Secularity’, in Rethinking Secularism, ed. Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), 51.

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not only whether or not these descriptions do justice to the phenomena or experiences being described, but also and more crucially what kind of political work these descriptions are doing. It may be, for example, that our descriptions of patriotic ritual as only symbolic, only immanent, only secular, help to keep our actions on behalf of the nation free from the charge of idolatry. Nationalism is not a religion, we have learnt to say, and so persons whose religion is Christianity may kill for the nation and be a follower of the Prince of Peace at the same time, with no apparent conflict between the two. For a secularist, the description of patriotic ritual as ‘only symbolic’ might work in another way. It might, for example, help to establish a sharp divide between our violence, which is in pursuit of rational and mundane goods for human flourishing, and their (e.g. Muslim) violence, which is fanatical, in pursuit of transcendent and illusory goals. There is perhaps a gap between belief and behaviour even in a so-called ‘reflective’ society that has shed its ‘naïveté’. Taylor seems to recognize such a gap in the ‘misrecognizing’ of exclusive humanisms cited above. If optionality has become our naïveté, as Taylor himself indicates, then our descriptions of our own beliefs and behaviours will unavoidably be structured by a larger political context that escapes our notice. As Hent de Vries puts it, ‘If there were ever such a thing as optionality, then it could never leave behind a certain level of implicitness, an unthought and lack of choice, of sorts. Its eventual expression could never satisfy our need for discursive articulation and conceptual explicitness.’46 Whether or not something is called ‘enchanted’ or ‘disenchanted’ is, at least in part, a political question. Rather than try to sort out, once and for all, which kinds or conditions of belief and behaviour are ‘enchanted’ and which are not, a more adequate approach, it seems to me, is to ask, under any given circumstance, what kind of political work is the label ‘enchanted’ or ‘disenchanted’ (or ‘religious’ or ‘secular’) doing? Taylor is of course right to insist that something important has changed from medieval to modern. Most people no longer believe that their world is inhabited by demons and fairies and other supernatural beings. To describe this change as the Entzauberung der Welt, however, misses the ways that the holy may have migrated to other locations. Western modernity is perhaps not as entirely exceptional – and the course of history not as entirely irreversible – as Taylor would have us believe.

2 Idolatry It is the case that secularity is marked by an interiorization of the holy and a disappearance of gods and fairies and demons from the external world. Taylor’s language of disenchantment, however – just like Schillebeeckx’s depiction of exclusive humanists as ‘matter of fact, sober and real’ – seems to miss the extent to which a ‘stronger form of magic’ still works on secular people, and the power that the misrecognition of that fact wields in a secular society. What Taylor’s account needs, I suggest, is a close analysis of that misrecognition, and I think the basic biblical theme of idolatry can help. Idolatry, however, need not be the bowing down to an object that 46

Hent de Vries, ‘The Deep Conditions of Secularity’, Modern Theology 26 (2010), 382–423, 392.

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one believes is a god. What is needed is a concept of idolatry that is attentive to the process of interiorization that Taylor has rightly identified as a mark of the secular age. The biblical critique of idolatry remains useful for the way that it complicates any story that implies a twilight of the idols. For idolatry-critique is not only about establishing boundaries between worship of false gods and worship of the true God. A prior stage of any critique of idolatry is the blurring of the boundaries between those who worship and those who do not. Belief in one transcendent Creator God destroys the boundaries between the secular and the religious; all of life – including what we would separate off into categories like economy and politics and sex and art – is an opportunity for the quest for God, as well as an opportunity for idolatry. At the heart of the Bible’s constant vigilance against idolatry is the recognition that humans are spontaneously worshipping creatures; the Golden Calf is evidence that humans cannot last long without something before which to bow down. And the object of devotion need not be a god in any explicit sense; the Bible condemns as idolatrous the putting of trust in armies, money, sex, and much more. Their gods are their bellies, as Paul tells the Phil. (3.19). I want to explore the possibility that the rupture between the enchanted and disenchanted worlds is not as complete as Taylor makes it sound. It is possible that secularization has not swept the world clear of gods, and the lines between the secular and the religious are not so bright. Indeed, it may be that the very notion that there is a neutral secular space prevents us from identifying the idolatry that in fact functions in our world. And yet it would be too simple to declare that nothing has really changed, the world is as full of idols as it always was, science is a religion, capitalism is a religion and so on. Clearly something has changed. People’s gaze is captivated by smartphones, but they do not treat them as if they were living or pray to them for deliverance. The world we have been taught to call ‘secular’ is in some ways more characterized by detachment and irony than by fervour. I want to suggest, however, that such detachment is not necessarily the opposite of idolatry, but a more subtle and interiorized idolatry is in play. I will suggest that there is a way of taking on Taylor’s analysis of the ‘disenchanted’ relationship between the self and material objects in a secular society and showing how idolatry has become interiorized, a function of the drama taking place on the interior stage of the ‘buffered’ self. Such an interiorized view of idolatry is found in Jean-Luc Marion’s analysis of the idol and the icon. Like the Bible, Marion makes clear that idols are not a particular class of objects. ‘The icon and the idol determine two manners of being for beings, not two classes of beings.’47 The world is not neatly divided into sacred and profane objects, in other words; the same thing can pass from idol to icon and vice versa. What determines its status is the gaze.48 As in Taylor’s modernity, meaning is not in 47

48

Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1991), 8. Marc Fumaroli argues that this is precisely Christianity’s innovation. Whereas Judaism (and later Islam) tried to prohibit the fabrication of images, Christians saw images as only the occasion for sin, not the cause. Fumaroli draws on Tertullian for this claim. Images could be used for good or for ill; Christianity ‘subjectivizes the notion of the idol’; Marc Fumaroli, ‘The Christian Critique of Idolatry’, in Idol Anxiety, ed. Josh Ellenbogen and Aaron Tugendhaft (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 32–40, 36.

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any simple way located in the object itself, but in the subject. For Marion, however, the possibility of human enchantment with material objects is not diminished by the primacy of the subject over the object. Indeed, idolatry for Marion is precisely a condition in which the subject finds itself mirrored in the object, and the gaze of the subject becomes all in all. Idolatry is the interiorization of the experience of the divine. According to Marion, ‘It is characterized solely by the subjection of the divine to the human conditions for experience of the divine, concerning which nothing proves that it is not authentic.’49 The human becomes the measure of the divine, which is certainly a type of misrecognition, but Marion does not deny that an experience of the divine lies behind the idolatrous gaze. ‘In the cases of life and death, of peace and war, of love and drunkenness, of spirit and beauty, we indisputably experience the irrepressible and panic capital of the divine, and we decipher or divine therein faces that we model in order that we might fix so many gods in them.’50 The problem is that, in cutting the divine to a human measure, the human ends up divinizing the self. The intention of the gaze is not to see itself; idolatry is not simple narcissism. It is rather the case, according to Marion, that the gaze attempts to transcend itself, aim for the divine, by searching for the divine among visible material objects. Before the idol, the gaze does not see what is visible, since the gaze finds nothing to stop it. But the more ardently the gaze seeks, the more it will tend to be dazzled by an object upon which the gaze will rest. The idolatrous gaze becomes captivated by the object and fails to see the Creator God transparent in the object. ‘In this stop, the gaze ceases to overshoot and transpierce itself, hence it ceases to transpierce visible things, in order to pause in the splendor of one of them.’51 The idol, again, need not be in any explicit sense a god: ‘The idol offers to, or rather imposes on, the gaze, its first visible – whatever it may be, thing, man, woman, idea, or god. But consequently, if in the idol the gaze sees its first visible, it discovers in it, more than just any spectacle, its own limit and proper place.’52 As radar strikes an object and reports back to the transmitter its own position in relation to the object, so the gaze comes to find itself in the idol. ‘The idol thus acts as a mirror, not as a portrait: a mirror that reflects the gaze’s image, or more exactly, the image of its aim and of the scope of that aim.’53 The idol does not reveal itself as a mirror, however; the idol fills the gaze, saturates it, and dazzles it, so that the mirror function is obscured. The gaze is not able to engage in idolatry-critique, because, Marion explains, it no longer has the means to do so; its aim stops at the idol, and is enveloped by it.54 Marion’s phenomenological account of idolatry is of course critical, but it is remarkably free of the kind of biblical polemics we find in Isa. 44, where the idolater who uses half a block of wood to cook his dinner and the other half to fashion a god

49

50 51 52 53 54

Jean-Luc Marion, The Idol and Distance: Five Studies, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2001), 6. Ibid. Marion, God Without Being, 11. Ibid., 12. Ibid. Ibid., 13.

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is mocked for his stupidity. Marion repeatedly emphasizes that there is no deception or illusion in the idol; the idol simply shows what occupies the field of the visible.55 The idolater is not duped, but simply ravished.56 Idolatry is not a metaphysical error, a mistaken belief in fairies and demons and other things that do not really exist in the external world. There is no sense in Marion that idolatry comes from a pre-scientific naïveté about the way the world works. Nor does idolatry, Marion writes, even originate in an ethical choice. Idolatry rather ‘reveals a sort of essential fatigue’. It is difficult to maintain an aim that seeks to transpierce the visible without rest or end; idolatry offers not an illegitimate spectacle but a place to rest.57 ‘Starting with the idol, the aim no longer progresses, but, no longer aiming, returns upon itself, reflects itself, and by this reflex, abandons as unbearable to live … the invisible.’58 I think what Marion’s analysis suggests is that what Taylor calls the ‘immanent frame’ to which our contemporary imaginations seem confined is not simply a sober disenchantment but lends itself in fact to a type of enchantment, a type of idolatry that results in a bedazzlement with the world of objects. There are some obvious affinities with Augustine, for whom the only proper place of rest is in God. God is seen in the beauty of creation, but only to the one who sees things aright, as dependent on God for their continued being.59 The beauty of creation is therefore both an avenue to the contemplation of God and a constant temptation to become fixated on the lower things in the scale of being and neglect the source of their being. What Marion adds is the essentially self-referential and mirrored nature of the idolatrous gaze, ‘the gaze gazing at itself gazing, at the risk of seeing no more than its own face, without perceiving in it the gaze that gazes’.60 The self is not absorbed in the object; the reverse is the case. At some point desire takes leave of the object and turns back upon itself, in an enchanted circle that is hard to break open. Marion’s analysis is useful in that it suggests that idols can be mirrors of the self, and not simply spectacles. Where he fails to capture the contemporary situation, I think, is in his emphasis on rest. While it is certainly true that the idolatrous gaze fails to transpierce the object to detect the presence of the Creator God, the consumer self does not so much rest in the object but continually moves from one object to the next. Marion himself hints at this in one passage of God Without Being in which he seems to lament ‘the ease with which we desert idolatry’,61 passing through museums and temples lacking the expectation of fulfilment. Marion comments cryptically, ‘Often we do not have, or no longer have, the means for such a splendid idolatry,’62 as if idolatry were a superior achievement to the mere flitting from one object to another. Once again we see a certain sort of Augustinian sympathy in Marion’s account of idolatry. 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62

Ibid., 9, 26. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 26. Carol Harrison, ‘Taking Creation for the Creator: Use and Enjoyment in Augustine’s Theological Aesthetics’, in Idolatry: False Worship in the Bible, Early Judaism, and Christianity, ed. Stephen C. Barton (London: T& T Clark, 2007), 180–1. Marion, God Without Being, 26. Ibid., 15. Ibid.

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An analysis of the transitory nature of contemporary desire will nevertheless, I think, show a kind of idolatry at work. We need to examine capitalism, both because Weber considered it, not science, as the primary agent of disenchantment in the modern world, and because – at least since Marx – it has been attacked as the main source of modern enchantment. ‘Commodity fetishism’ is of course a key concept in Marx’s critique. Far from the disenchantment of the material world – the stripping away of the power that once resided in things – capitalism endows the world of commodities with mysterious forces that must be obeyed. Desire determines value, an abstraction that is reified into an object that appears to be an intrinsic, natural quality of the commodity itself over which people have no control. Relationships among things substitute for relationships among people, and insofar as things have relationships, they are ‘fetishes endowed with a will and a soul of their own’.63 This is idolatry, in the specific sense of attributing divine powers to a human creation, which Marx, following Feuerbach, thinks characterizes all religion. Marx writes, In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.64

In a late-capitalist consumer society, however, even commodity fetishism seems outdated, and it is here that Marion’s phenomenology of the self-referential nature of the idolatrous gaze seems particularly pertinent, though it needs supplementing with an account of the transitory nature of contemporary desire. In a consumer society, desire does not fixate on objects, but moves from object to object. Consumer desire is not exactly the same as the age-old sin of greed. Detachment, not attachment, characterizes a consumer economy; consumers must continually be dissatisfied with their possessions so that the wheels of production continue to move. It is not buying, however, but shopping that captures the heart of consumerism. Dissatisfaction and satisfaction cease to be opposites, because pleasure is not in the object but in desire itself.65 The trajectory of advertising illustrates this movement towards the desire of desire. As a first step, in early twentieth-century advertising, text explaining the desirable features and characteristics of a particular product tended to predominate. As a second step, by mid-century, through the influence of the Leo Burnet agency and others, advertising made fewer arguments in favour of products and tried instead to associate products with non-material aspirations: sex, status, freedom, and so on. As a third step, more recent advertising often takes leave of the product almost entirely. As Naomi Klein and others have pointed out, what matters is not the product but the brand.66 Corporations through outsourcing have tried to shed their bodies to concentrate on the mysticism 63 64 65

66

Karl Marx, Capital, trans. Ben Fowkes, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 1003. Ibid., 165. For more on the dynamic of detachment in consumer society, see chapter two of my book, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007). Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York, NY: Picador, 2002).

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surrounding the brand. Online merchandising has exacerbated the trend. As Klein says, ‘Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations.’ Brands, not products, are what matters, precisely because brands say something not about the product but about the person who associates him or herself with the brand. As Bernd Wannenwetsch writes, ‘Actual products are reduced to mere footnotes in a drama which features desire as a one-man show.’67 Desire has no telos; desire has been liberated from dependence on objects because humans have been defined as creatures who ceaselessly desire, it matters not for what. To desire is to be alive; to cease desiring, for desire to come to rest, is to be among the living dead. The fear that Viagra addresses is that we will cease to desire. This desire for desire, as Wannenwetsch writes, ‘lays bare the fact that for all capitalism’s obsession with objects of accumulation, the secret idol of its economy of desire has always been man himself ’.68

3 Sacrament Can the Christian tradition offer resources to imagine a non-idolatrous practice of enchantment, a practice that is open to the grace of God active within the material? The eclipse of a sacramental worldview plays an important role in Taylor’s genealogy of disenchantment. The recovery of a proper sacramental practice might hold the key to a non-idolatrous recognition of the divine in the material. Here I can only hint at what that might mean, but what it clearly cannot mean is an attempted return to the ‘white magic’ that our medieval forebears used to keep ‘black magic’ at bay. The use of sacraments and sacramentals – indeed the whole principle of sacramentality, the contact with the divine in the material – can render Christians more, not less, prone to idolatry, for the sacraments, like the idol, can appear to place God at our disposal. As Louis-Marie Chauvet writes: The abyss separating an icon from an idol is very deep, but very narrow, so narrow that one can easily step from one side to the other if one is not careful. So it is with the sacraments, the most dangerous of the ecclesial mediations of the faith, but nevertheless the greatest among them because it is here the reception of God’s gracious gift takes place. So it is, but still more radically, with the Eucharistic presence of Christ, the most threatened with idolatrous perversion among the faith’s mediations, however the most exemplary icon of the otherness and precedence of Christ, Lord of the Church.69

Here Chauvet is explicitly borrowing the language of idol and icon from Marion. Whereas the idol serves as a mirror to the self, the icon opens up a window to God. 67

68 69

Bernd Wannenwetsch, ‘The Desire of Desire: Commandment and Idolatry in Late Capitalist Societies’, in Idolatry: False Worship in the Bible, Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. Stephen C. Barton (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 320. Ibid., 322. Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, trans. Patrick Madigan SJ and Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 403.

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The  icon is not a visible representation of the invisible, but rather opens onto the invisible, allowing the gaze not to grasp but to be grasped by God.70 The icon thus maintains a crucial distance between the subject and God that idolatry tries to overcome. Though the visible icon opens a window to God, God is not manipulable or locatable in the material world. Intimacy comes on God’s terms and God’s time; the subject does not contemplate God or even distance, but the subject is contemplated by God.71 As a result, for Marion the practice of icons involves kenosis; the narcissism of idolatry is not reinforced but is lost in the subject’s being grasped by the other. The subject is not consumer but consumed. The Eucharist is crucial to Marion’s analysis of the icon because it both gives the presence of Christ and yet preserves the necessary distance between God and creation. Christ gives himself in a kenotic emptying of himself into the form of bread and wine. At the same time, the presence of God is hidden in the elements; the Eucharist is always marked by a distance, an absence which is entailed in the very concept of sacrament: God is always both revealed and hidden by the material form.72 Chauvet elaborates on the Eucharist as icon and as resistance to idolatry. In the Eucharist the body of Christ is presented as outside of us in the material world, antecedent to our reception of him, and existing after the celebration. This material exteriority, anteriority and permanence all lend themselves to the danger of idolatry. But at the same time, the presence of Christ is always a presence-in-absence. The Incarnation means that God is not nowhere in particular; the invisible God is inscribed in a particular body.73 But the Eucharistic presence is a presence inscribed but never circumscribed in Chauvet’s words.74 Bread is not just a thing; its essence is revealed in its being broken, given away, shared and consumed. The ecclesial body of Christ is constituted by this breaking open of the sacramental body, such that the communion of those who belong to the body is enacted by their giving themselves away. Undoubtedly, secularization has ushered in a very different way of relating to the material world. To describe that process as ‘disenchantment’, however, obscures the way that people continue to be bedazzled by mere created things. A proper therapy for idolatry can only be found in a kenotic practice of the simultaneous absence and presence of God for which the sacraments serve as what Schillebeeckx called the ‘burning focal points’ of God’s grace.75

Bibliography Asad, Talal (1993), Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Cavanaugh, William (2009), The Myth of Religious Violence (New York: Oxford). 70 71 72 73 74 75

Marion, God Without Being, 8–9. Ibid., 111. Ibid., 161–82. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, 402–5. Ibid., 406. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, 126 [216].

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Cavanaugh, William (2007), Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans). Chauvet, Louis-Marie (1995), Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, trans. Patrick Madigan SJ and Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press). Fitzgerald, Timothy (2007), Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fumaroli, Marc (2011), ‘The Christian Critique of Idolatry’, in Idol Anxiety, ed. Josh Ellenbogen and Aaron Tugendhaft (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), 32–40. Harrison, Carol (2007), ‘Taking Creation for the Creator: Use and Enjoyment in Augustine’s Theological Aesthetics’, in Idolatry: False Worship in the Bible, Early Judaism, and Christianity, ed. Stephen C. Barton (London: T&T Clark), 179–97. Klein, Naomi (2002), No Logo (New York, NY: Picador). Marion, Jean-Luc (2001), The Idol and Distance: Five Studies, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (New York, NY: Fordham University Press). Marion, Jean-Luc (1991), God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago). Marx, Karl (1997), Capital, trans. Ben Fowkes, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage Books). The New Oxford Annotated Bible (2001), ed. Michael D. Coogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Nongbri, Brent (2012), Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Ritzer, George (2009), Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Continuity and Change in the Cathedrals of Consumption (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 3rd edn). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), World and Church, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 4 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Schillebeeckx, Edward (2014), Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, trans. Paul Barret and N. D. Smith, CW vol. I (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark). Taylor, Charles (2011), ‘Disenchantment-Reenchantment’, in The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now, ed. George Levine (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 57–73. Taylor, Charles (2011), ‘Western Secularity’, in Rethinking Secularism, ed. Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (New York, NY: Oxford University Press), 31–53. Taylor, Charles (2010), ‘Challenging Issues About the Secular Age’, Modern Theology, 26: 404–16. Taylor, Charles (2007), A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). de Vries, Hent (2010), ‘The Deep Conditions of Secularity’, Modern Theology, 26: 382–423. Wannenwetsch, Bernd (2007), ‘The Desire of Desire: Commandment and Idolatry in Late Capitalist Societies’, in Idolatry: False Worship in the Bible, Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. Stephen C. Barton (London: T&T Clark), 315–30.

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‘Things Which Can Only Be Seen by Eyes That Have Cried’: Towards a Political Theology of Lament Emmanuel Katongole

On 8 July 2013, on his first official trip outside Rome, Pope Francis celebrated mass on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa to commemorate thousands of migrants who had died crossing the sea from North Africa. In his homily, Francis spoke about the ‘globalization of indifference’ and a ‘culture of well-being’ that has taken from us ‘the ability to weep’. The pope not only asked for forgiveness for the ‘anesthesia of heart’ and cruelty which ‘makes us indifferent to the cries of others’, he prayed for the ‘grace to weep over our indifference [and] over the cruelty in the world’.1 I begin by drawing attention to Pope Francis’s visit and words at Lampedusa so as to make the case that political theology, particularly in our time, needs to be grounded in the practice of lament. Lament is not only a decisive form of societal and ecclesial critique, it shapes the church’s concrete engagement in solidarity with those on the underside of society’s economic and power structures. Pope Francis’s visit and words at Lampedusa provide an exemplary illumination of the role and power of lament in shaping political theology in our time. In this chapter, I will explore the connections between lament, ecclesiology and politics by first identifying three constitutive dimensions – critical, ecclesiological and ethical – of a political theology of lament, and then, second, I will show how these various dimensions played out in the concrete, historical context of Eastern Congo through the life and leadership of Archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa of Bukavu. The overall effect of my argument will be to confirm that the church’s mission and gift in the world is connected to her ability to enter into the experience of lament with hope, and that such hope is a concrete form of social engagement in solidarity with those who suffer. It is this political engagement that the life and work of Munzihirwa is a witness to.

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See Vatican Radio, ‘Pope on Lampedusa: “The Globalization of Indifference”’, accessed 19 June 2014, http://en.radiovaticana.va/storico/2013/07/08/pope_on_lampedusa:_‘the_globalization_of_ indifference’/en1-708541.

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1  A political theology of lament An attempt to explore lament within a conversation of politics and ecclesiology meets two immediate challenges. The first is the problem of language. In English, ‘lament’ is used in a number of ways to express ‘sorrow, regret, or unhappiness about something’.2 The second problem, which is connected to the first, is that in its popular usage, lament tends to be confined to the personal and private sphere, where it is an expression of individual sorrow or a stage in the grieving process of one who suffers.3 My use of lament, while recognizing these ordinary usages, seeks to engage a more technical usage as I am interested in exploring lament not simply as a private sentiment, but as a practice, or set of practices. Accordingly, I am interested in the public dimension – lament as something ‘out loud’ – something that is heard and/or seen publicly. Even more importantly, though my use of lament may take into account other (psychological, sociological, and anthropological) associations, my primary interest is theological. Accordingly, I propose the following working definition of lament: a public expression of sorrow/anguish/suffering that is either directed to or related to a community’s experience of and relationship with God.4 Three constitutive elements belong to this theological practice of lament.

a Lament as critique: A society that has forgotten the experience of weeping Beyond the challenges of language and the privatization of sorrow and grief, an attempt to recover the political dimension of lament in our time must first contend with the fact that, in the words of Francis, ‘We are a society that has forgotten the experience of weeping.’ There are a number of reasons why this might be the case. In the homily at Lampedusa, Francis noted the ‘globalization of indifference’ that arises out the individualism and culture of well-being in modern society. It is ‘the culture of well-being’, Francis noted, ‘that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions of futility, of the transient, that brings indifference to others, that brings even the globalization of indifference. In this world of globalization we have fallen into a globalization of indifference.’5

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Merriam-Webster Dictionary, ‘Lament’, accessed 19 June 2015, http://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/lament. See, for example, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987). Even within a theological framework, linguistic problems persist. The English language uses the same term ‘lament’ to refer to both the passionate expression of sorrow or grief (associated with mourning, wailing, etc.) and to a literary genre (a lament) that may take the form of songs, poetry, or other culturally specific expressions, for example the O.T. psalms. On the problem of language, see Rebekah Eklund, ‘Lord, Teach Us How to Grieve: Jesus’ Laments and Christian Hope’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duke University, 2012); Eva Harasta and Brian Brock, Evoking Lament: A Theological Discussion (London: T & T Clark, 2009). See Vatican Radio, ‘Pope on Lampedusa: “The Globalization of Indifference”’.

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Writing more than thirty-five years before Francis, the Canadian theologian John Douglas Hall came to a similar assessment of modern society’s inability to deal with pain and suffering. By attending to his work, we may get a better sense as to why a recovery of lament is so difficult, yet even more necessary, given the ‘culture of wellbeing’. In Lighten Our Darkness,6 Hall describes the inability to deal with suffering (what Edward Schillebeeckx called ‘the negative contrast experience’) as the defining problem of modern Western society. ‘The pathos of our condition is not that we have failed. … The pathos of it is that we cannot bring ourselves as a people to contemplate our failure.’7 Hall traces this inability to face failure to the modern (Enlightenment) positive outlook grounded in the belief of man’s inherent goodness and limitless freedom. He notes: ‘We belong to a society that was assured it could hope. Hope would not disappoint us, for we were participants in a process and the end of the process was good. We belong to a people that were taught to think positively.’8 This positive outlook is characterized on the one hand by the belief that technology can solve all our problems – ‘it is really very difficult for many people in our society to reflect on problems that are not related to technique’9 – and on the other by the incessant drive towards progress, which drives modern economics. The negative effect of this quest for endless progress is the colonization, pillaging, enslavement and ‘death of other men and other societies’.10 ‘The whole world’, Hall writes, ‘suffers today because its most powerful societies desperately retain expectations that can no longer stand the test of experience.’11 Hall’s anatomy of the ‘officially optimistic society’ provides the type of theoretical framework that is assumed by Francis’s lament at Lampedusa. Moreover, what Hall’s analysis helps us to see is that the refugees and immigrants that are thrown up at Lampedusa are not an incidental problem of modern society; they are an integral dimension to the logic that drives the global economy. It is this underbelly of the culture of well-being that modern society is unwilling to contemplate, let alone embrace. What both Francis and Hall share is the conviction that the church can be a gift to society, not only in terms of providing a critique of the culture of well-being, but also by showing a way in and through the darkness. What makes both Hall’s and Francis’s critiques even more poignant is that both are essentially theological critiques that are primarily directed at the church.12 In fact the heart of Hall’s critique in Lighten Our Darkness is that Christianity, which is supposed to help society face the negative experiences and darkness of its limitations, has itself become an integral part of the deafening blanket of ‘overt despair’ that masks itself as optimism about the endless benefits of progress. ‘The truth of the matter’, Hall writes,

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Douglas John Hall, Lighten Our Darkness: Toward an Indigenous Theology of the Cross (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1976). Hall, Lighten Our Darkness, 16. Ibid., 60. Ibid., 64. Ibid., 40. Ibid., 23. In this case, Hall’s analysis and critique of modern society as the officially optimistic society is substantially different from the critiques of existential philosophers like Camus and Heidegger.

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‘is that an integral part of the problem, perhaps the most problematic part, is  – Christianity itself! As it has displayed itself in the life of the New World, Christianity is the greatest barrier to its becoming a redemptive force in such a society, a light for our darkness.’13 To the extent that Christianity has totally and inextricably identified with the positive outlook of modern society, it has become ‘the official religion of the officially optimistic society’.14 This, in Hall’s assessment, is what makes our condition ‘all the more problematic, dangerous, and infinitely sad’.15 It is the total identification of the church with the ‘culture of well-being’ that underlies Francis’s lament at Lampedusa. The fact that his words were spoken in the homily at a mass he celebrated as a ‘liturgy of repentance’ and at which he prayed ‘forgive us Lord’ confirms that he meant to specifically address a Christian audience. Accordingly, the we in Francis’s lament, ‘we have lost the sense of fraternal responsibility … we have forgotten the experience of weeping; the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep’, is not a generic we, but an ecclesial we. It is this ecclesial self-critique that must be the starting point of political theology in our time. The critique is at once a lament and an invitation into an experience of the cross as the only saving way in and through the darkness of the culture of well-being. As such, it constantly points to and confirms the church as a community of lament. To explore this ecclesiological dimension, we need to attend to the significance of Francis’s prayer for the ‘grace to weep’.

b  The grace to weep: The church as a community of lament That the pope should pray for ‘the grace to weep’ cannot but strike us, living as we do in a culture of well-being, as simply odd. Why would he pray in this manner? What is the ‘grace’ – the gift – in weeping that he prays for? And how would such weeping help to address the plight of millions of economic migrants and their families? Francis’s prayer does not make much sense unless one sees it as an invitation to enter the deep mystery of God’s salvation and hope for the world, which is realized through the cross of Jesus. A similar theology of the cross lies at the heart of Hall’s Lighten Our Darkness, which Hall traces in the work of Luther, Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer and Barth and offers as an antidote to the optimism of modern society. Life in this world, Hall notes (following Luther), ‘is and remains participation in evil, sin, death, and temptation. It is and remains exposure to nothingness. A salvation which promises deliverance from all that is simply a lie.’16 It is for this reason that Hall suggests that ‘the task of Christian theology in our time and place must be to help men enter into that darkness. Not to offer them refuge from it … rather, to provide a way into the darkness.’17 There are a number of conclusions that emerge from Hall’s theology of the cross that help to explain the ‘grace to weep’ that Francis prays for. First, the theology of the 13 14 15 16 17

Hall, Lighten Our Darkness, 74. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 122. Ibid., 16.

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cross recognizes that it is in and through the darkness that salvation is experienced. Salvation is not ‘good news of deliverance from the experience of negation’, but rather the ‘permission and command to enter into that experience with hope’.18 God, Hall writes, meets us … and redeems us where we are: in the valley of the shadow of death. It is the repudiation of a theology of glory … because it insists that authentic happiness can only be found as we confront and enter into that which under the conditions of existence negates and dispels happiness.19

Second, the theology of the cross is not simply another trope in humanity’s selfassured march towards progress, but an invitation to embrace humanity’s sinful and fallen nature so as to receive within that darkness the gift of God’s grace. That is why an image of man is at the heart of the theologia crucis – not man the master of his destiny (of the optimistic society and concomitant theologia gloriae), but man as sinner and receiver of God’s grace. Francis reflects on this anthropology when he notes that recognizing oneself as a sinner is not a figure of speech or a literary genre, but the most accurate definition of oneself: ‘I am a sinner. … I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.’20 Third, the ‘grace to weep’ is an invitation into divine pathos.21 Hall does not fully explore this conclusion in Lighten Our Darkness (he does in later works22), but it is a crucial dimension of the theology of the cross that is consistent with and helps to shed light on Francis’s prayer. Jürgen Moltmann captures it best when he notes that the cross of Christ is not is not an exceptional event, but the climax of God’s pathos that characterizes God’s relationship with creation through history: ‘When the crucified Jesus is called “the image of the invisible God,” the meaning is that THIS is God, and God is like THIS.’ 23 Given this conclusion, Moltmann’s theology is a plea for Christians to enter into the suffering that God has already entered into, and not remain passive or complacent as outside, ‘objective’ (i.e. apathetic) observers of the human condition. If God does not remain above the plane of history dispassionately observing the suffering of the Son on the cross, but is radically ‘in Christ’, involved in and affected by that suffering … then we too (as followers of God) must enter into the suffering of our world. In this respect, the

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Ibid., 123. Ibid., 149. Quoted in an interview by Antonio Spadaro, S. J., ‘A Big Heart Open to God’, America, 30 September 2013, accessed 1 March 2016, http://americamagazine.org/pope-interview. This is the theme at the heart of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s theology. God, according to Heschel is not a unmoved mover. God is moved and affected by what happens in the world, and responds accordingly. The prophets share and re-present this divine pathos. Prophetic sympathy is sharing in the emotions of God. ‘The prophet’, Heschel notes, ‘is guided not by what he feels, but by what God feels.’ See Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets, Vol. II (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1962), 94. See, for example, Douglas John Hall, God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the theology of the Cross (Augsburg: Fortress Press, 1986), 177. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1974), 205; see also Hall, God and Human Suffering, 177.

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cross becomes not only the critique of ALL utopian dreams, but the ground for resurrection, and thus for all hope. 24

Against this background, one can appreciate Francis’s prayer for the grace to weep as an invitation, not unlike Moltmann’s, into divine pathos, and for a full appreciation of the church as the sacrament of God’s saving passion for the world.25 For to the extent that the church is gathered/constituted in and at the cross,26 she stands within the ‘sluggish between’ – that already-and-not-yet of God’s saving work for humanity.27 It is lament, therefore, that calls the church back to this location ‘within the cross’ and to her essential ecclesiological mission as a community of lament – and in so doing both reveals and shapes the church’s hope in the world. Compassion is the unique form of social engagement that this hope takes.

c  Lament as ‘suffering with’: The power of compassion The theology of the cross, Hall rightly notes in Lighten Our Darkness, is not abstract theology. It is a social ethic and a form of social engagement that emerges and develops through solidarity with those who suffer. The point of departure for this social ethic may be the only one that is finally legitimate, even in terms that secular men such as Marx can recognize: namely, a real solidarity with those who suffer. Only as the Christian community permits itself to undergo a continuous crucifixion to the world can it be in the world as the friend of those who are crucified. Apart from that, it always ends in a theology and an ethic of glory. For it imagines that is has something to bring, something to give, something that will enable it to master the situation. Real solidarity with those who suffer recognizes that their condition is our own: we are all beggars together. The possibility of community, 24

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Richard Wall, Top Customer Reviews, ‘Entering into the Passion of this World’, 17 October 2000, http://www.amazon.com/The-Crucified-God-Foundation-Criticism/dp/0800628225/. This is missing in Hall’s work. Consistent with his debt to Kierkegaard, he works with a low church ecclesiology (possibly reflective of his Protestant United Church of Canada background) that in places opposes the love of God with the historical experience of the church: ‘The new understanding of man that is striving to manifest itself today is no product of the church or of Christian proclamation. It comes to be only in the mystery of love of God.’ See Hall, Lighten Our Darkness, 201, emphasis added. In his later work (see, e.g. Douglas John Hall, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World (Minneapolis MN: Fortress Press, 2003), Hall adopts a less individualistic, more ecclesially attentive theologia crucis. ‘So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.’ (Heb. 13.12–13) See The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011). Moltmann develops this ecclesiological dimension in the third (final) trilogy of his early work, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (Minneapolis MN: SCM Press, 1977). Derek Michaud notes: ‘The Spirit, whose mission derives from the event of the cross and resurrection, moves reality toward the resolution of the dialectic, filling the godforsaken world with God’s presence and preparing for the coming kingdom in which the whole world will be transformed in correspondence to the resurrection of Jesus. Thus the church lives between the past history of Jesus and the universal future in which that history will reach its fulfillment. See Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology.’ See Derek Michaud, ed., incorporating material by Hyung Kon Kim (1999), ‘Jürgen Moltmann’, Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology, accessed 19 June 2015, http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/moltmann.htm.

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which is the aim of Christian social ethics, is given at that point of recognition, and nowhere else. True community exists only at the foot of the cross.28

This is an important observation, even though Hall himself does not follow it up with concrete displays of what such solidarity with those who suffer historically looks like. From this point of view, Hall’s theology remains standardly, but disappointingly academic. That is why Francis’s visit to the island of Lampedusa, the primary European entry point for migrants and asylum seekers – mainly from Africa – is in itself more than symbolic. He travelled to Lampedusa to be in solidarity with those who had journeyed in search of refuge and with the thousands that had perished at sea while attempting to cross to Europe. The fact that Francis chose Lampedusa for his visit outside Rome is not surprising given his vision of the church as a body where solidarity with the poor is not an occasional form of outreach that the church extends only now and again, but an essential dimension of the life and the mission of the church. The church, he has noted, is a ‘poor church, and for the poor’.29 Thus, noting that what the church needs the most today is ‘nearness and proximity’, he encourages priests and church ministers to ‘descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness’.30 Lament, or ‘the grace to weep’, constantly presses the church into this proximity and solidarity with the crucified peoples of the world, which takes the form of various engagements with, for, and on behalf of the poor. Accordingly, the loss of lament not only draws the church outside of her essential nature (and turns her into a caricature, just another social agency), it dissipates the church’s passion for social engagement on behalf of the poor. Writing about the aversion to prayers and psalms of lament by many congregations, Walter Brueggemann offers a fitting assessment of the costly loss of lament for the church: A community of faith which negates laments soon concludes that the hard issues of justice are improper questions to pose at the throne, because the throne seems to be only a place of praise. I believe it thus follows that if justice questions are improper questions at the throne … they soon appear to be improper questions in 28 29

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Hall, Lighten Our Darkness, 152. See Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 24 November 2013, accessed 28 February 2016, https://w2.vatican.va/ content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_ evangelii-gaudium.html. See also his ‘Address to Journalists.’ See Francis, ‘Pope Francis’ Address to Journalists’, 18 March 2013, accessed 28 February 2016, http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/popefrancis-address-to-journalists. The term, ‘the church of the poor’, referring to the identity and mission of the church, was first used in modern times by Pope John XXIII. However, it is a term which has been central to the church’s self-understanding, mission, and pastoral priorities from her earliest history. See Stan Ilo, ‘The Church of the Poor: Towards an Ecclesiology of Vulnerable Mission’, Ecclesiology 10 (2014), 229–50. In many ways Ilo articulates an ecclesiological vision that closely resembles the kind of ecclesiology I am trying to develop. For instance, he notes, ‘The church bears the marks and carries in her womb the brokenness of our wounded humanity and has a summons to discover in the pains and sufferings of those on the margins, the voice of God who calls us again and again in mystery.’ 232–3. Quoted in Antonio Spadaro, S. J., ‘A Big Heart Open to God’. See also, Carol Glatz, ‘Pope Francis: Priests Should be “Shepherds Living with the Smell of Sheep”’, The Catholic Telegraph, 28 March 2013, accessed 28 February 2016, http://www.thecatholictelegraph.com/pope-francis-priestsshould-be-shepherds-living-with-the-smell-of-the-sheep/13439.

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public places, in schools, in hospitals, with the government, and eventually even in the courts. Justice questions disappear into civility and docility.31

Against this background, the ethical and full political import of Francis’s lament at Lampedusa is brought into sharp clarity. In noting that ‘we are a society that has forgotten the experience of weeping, of suffering with’, Francis is lamenting the loss of the church’s imagination and social vitality. Moreover, in connecting (in one sentence) the experience of weeping with ‘suffering with’, Francis establishes the inner connection between lament and compassion – a connection that confirms the social dynamism and the immense political possibilities of lament. We should not think of compassion as merely a private and interior emotion. As Elizabeth Johnson notes, compassion is ‘an empowering power, and a blazing fierceness … that has an efficacy for transformation.’ Compassion, she writes, is vitality, an empowering vigor that reaches out and awakens freedom and strength in oneself and others. It is an energy that brings forth, stirs up, and fosters life, enabling autonomy and friendship. It is movement of spirit that builds, mends, struggles with and against, celebrates and laments. It transforms people, and bonds them with one another and to the world. Such dynamism is not the antithesis of love, but is the shape of love against the forces of nonbeing and death. … Neither power-over nor powerlessness, it is akin to power with.32

Neither power-over nor powerlessness, but ‘power with’, that is what the grace to weep unleashes. Understood in this way, the grace to weep is not an invitation into sentimentality. It is decisive call to action. I do, however, realize that as compelling as this account of lament in its three constitutive elements is, it calls for a display of what such ‘blazing fierceness’ actually looks like. Only through such displays can the case for a political theology of lament claim any validity. The story of Archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa of Bukavu provides such evidence.

2  Archbishop Munzihirwa: Things that only eyes that have cried can see a  The compassion of Munzihirwa Christophe Munzihirwa was installed Archbishop of Bukavu in June 1994, at a very difficult time in the region’s history. The Rwandan genocide was still unfolding in 31

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Walter Brueggemann, ‘The Costly Loss of Lament’, Journal of the Study of the Old Testament 36 (1986), 57–71, 64. A similar observation is made by Glenn Pemberton: The reason that many psalms and prayers of lament find no place in our churches, Pemberton writes, ‘is because we have chosen to live protected lives in insulated communities, whether our community is a middle- to upper middle class neighborhood or a church with a fortress mentality. Our lack of solidarity with those in need is what causes us to wonder why these prayers are in the Bible and question who would ever need them.’ See Glenn Pemberton, Hurting with God: Learning to Lament with the Psalms (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2012), 131. Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1992), 270, as cited by Kathleen D. Billman and Daniel L. Migliore, Rachel’s Cry: A Prayer of Lament and Rebirth of Hope (Cleveland, OH: United Church Press, 1999), 72.

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Congo’s eastern neighbour, and millions of refugees were crossing from Rwanda into Bukavu town, located on the Zaire side of Rwanda’s western border. The arrival of millions of refugees in Bukavu and the neighbouring villages created an immediate humanitarian crisis. The city was crowded; the countryside was overpopulated; trees were cut down for firewood and for space to pitch makeshift tents; the population was hungry; and there was fear of an outbreak of cholera and/or other diseases. At the same time, armed gangs – both undisciplined, underpaid and demoralized Zairean soldiers as well as Rwandan Interahamwe youth militias (many of whom had committed genocide in Rwanda) – roamed the streets, terrorizing the population, extorting money from the refugees, and pillaging the towns and homes of the local population. Within this situation, Munzihirwa’s leadership took on various forms. He met with military commanders and issued statements to soldiers calling on them to be disciplined and avoid pillaging, and reminded them of their duty to protect people’s lives and property. He encouraged the local population to welcome the refugees. He himself did as much. Many mornings, he would go across the bridge and help children, the sick and the infirm cross over the bridge. When the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda was over, he appealed to the international community to put pressure on the Rwandan government to welcome the refugees back, while at the same time protesting the forced repatriation of refugees. As Rwandan troops prepared to attack Zaire in the fall of 1996 and civil and military leaders fled the region, Munzihirwa remained the sole leader and shield between the Rwandan forces and the vulnerable population of Bukavu. On Sunday 27 October 1996, he issued a final plea from the pulpit to the people, encouraging them to ‘stand firm in charity’, not to flee from their homes, and to avoid rumours and radio propaganda meant to incite panic. The following morning he drove to a neighbouring parish and rescued two Rwandan nuns whose lives were threatened. In the afternoon, he held a meeting with remaining civic and business leaders of the town trying to figure out ways of saving the city. As he left the meeting to return to his residence at the Jesuit Alifajiri school, he was stopped at a checkpoint and shot dead by a Rwandan military commander. Munzihirwa’s martyrdom was not totally unexpected by his colleagues (who constantly worried about his exposure) or by him. In an Easter message that year he had written: ‘Despite anguish and suffering, the Christian who is persecuted for the cause of justice finds spiritual peace in total and profound assent to God, in accord with a vocation that can lead even to death.’33

b  The way of Christ In order to understand the source and centre of Munzihirwa’s agency, which not only assumed multiple forms of social engagement, but also shaped Munzihirwa’s simple lifestyle and courage in the face of danger, one must locate it within his vision of Christian life as an invitation to enter ‘into the way of Christ’, which as Munzihirwa 33

See John Allen, The Global War on Christians (New York, NY: Image, 2013), 49.

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understood it, is an invitation into lament. In a 1995 Advent message to the refugees, he wrote: We hope that in entering the way of Christ, in a month we will be able to wish each other a ‘Merry Christmas,’ the joy of the Son of God, who is born in the gash of human history and who knows that he will die on the Cross to save the world. It is this profound joy of true hope – that which hopes against all hope – that I already wish for you and that, in solidarity, we will construct together while waiting for the day of your return to your homeland.34

While Munzihirwa addressed this particular Advent message to the refugees, he understood the invitation to ‘enter the way of Christ’ as the call to every Christian whose fate is tied up with the Son of God who ‘is born in the gash of human history’. Moreover, while ‘entering the way of Christ’ is at its core a spiritual message of conversion, Munzihirwa saw it as revolutionary social message35 that carried immediate practical implications. Among other things, the Son of God who is born in gash of human history is the one who establishes our shared humanity with our suffering brothers and sisters, and thus presses Christians into compassion not only with other Christians but with Christ himself. In the same Advent letter, Munzihirwa encouraged the refugees: ‘Since we welcomed you, your fate has become in some ways ours. It is the same Christ who suffers in all of us.’ The way of the Son of God who is born in the gash of human history also cultivates a deep sense of freedom that was reflected in Munzihirwa’s simple lifestyle. He dressed simply, did his own laundry, lived at the Jesuit Alifajiri school instead of the episcopal house, and for the most part walked on foot. Asked about the significance of Munzihirwa’s simple lifestyle, a priest of Bukavu spoke of Munzihirwa’s identification with the suffering and death of Christ.36 Munzihirwa himself constantly returned to the theme of death in his homilies and writings. Death, he often noted, is a necessary way to enter full life. ‘Jesus is the living way, leading every person through death to resurrection. … If we are faithful to him, we cross life and death with hope. Henceforth, instead of living to die, we die to live. Our existence then passes from life to Life.’37 If this conviction shaped Munzihirwa’s simple lifestyle, it was also the source of his courage. 34

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Christopher Munzihirwa, ‘Advent Pastoral Letter of Nov 18, 1995’, in Monseigneur Munzihirwa Christophe, Romero du Congo? Les Concepts de Martyre, de Béatification et de Canonisation Révistés a la lumière de l’histoire Religieuse Contemporarine, ed. Mukabalera Cigwira Joseph (Beculera, 2012), 384. The translation is my own. Quoting Charles Péguy, the French poet and essayist, he noted: ‘“social revolution … will be moral or will not be revolution … we cannot transform the social system without reforming ourselves first, provoking in ourselves a renovation of spiritual and moral life, digging to the personal, spiritual and moral foundations of human life, and renewing spiritual and moral ideas presiding over the constitution and over social life as such, and by awakening within that group a new spring.” Our true battlefield, it is first the soul, the spirit of man.’ See Sébastien Muyengo Mulombe, Christophe Munzihirwa: La Sentinelle des Grands Lacs (Kinshasa: Afriquespoir, 2011), 17–18, translation mine. Personal Interview, Bukavu 17 July 2013. Deogratias Mirindi Ya Nicironge and Christopher Munzihirwa Mwee Ngabo, S. J., Prophete et Maertyr en Notre Temps (Bukavo: Centre Interdiocesain de Pastorale, Catehese et Liturgie, 2003), 52 (translation mine).

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Entering the way of Christ was also an invitation to ‘construct together’ in solidarity ‘true hope’, as he wrote in the Advent letter. For Munzihirwa, ‘true hope’ was both concrete and local. In the context of the Kivu conflict, it meant advocating for all efforts to end the war and fighting. ‘We must remember’, he reminded his Christians, ‘that war is always something despicable. Those who love this region work to build structures of justice, forgiveness, and peace.’38 For this reason, in the midst of the war, Munzihirwa constantly warned the population against rumours (warmongering) and encouraged them to go about their daily lives, cultivate their fields,39 open the markets and shops, replant trees to protect the soil cover,40 and resist the temptation to flee from their homes. These everyday practices were for Munzihirwa not only an effort to resist war, they were the path for the ‘construction of true and durable peace’. Above all, he called on the priests to remain in their parishes, standing firm in charity and in solidarity with their parishioners, reminding them that ‘our greatest weapon is charity toward all men and the prayers to Christ through Our Lady of the Rosary’.41

Conclusion: The odd gift of lament One of Munzihirwa’s favourite sayings was, ‘There are things which can be seen only by eyes that have cried.’42 What the story of Munzihirwa illumines is that he clearly saw the church as a sacrament of the way of Christ in the world. But since the way of Christ is at the same time ‘the joy of the Son of God … who knows that he will die on the Cross to save the world’, the unique gift and calling of the church is to invite Christians into the strange gift of hope in the gash of human history. Living into that calling is what releases the church’s freedom and nurtures her courage in solidarity and compassion. In Munzihirwa’s life as a Christian, but especially in his ministry as a priest and as the ‘Muhudumu’ of Bukavu43 the hope took various forms of engagement with and on behalf of the refugees and the embattled local population of Bukavu. But what the story of Munzihirwa also shows is that if his ministry was an ‘empowering vigor’ and a

38 39

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Mirindi Ya Nacironge, 83. In an address to the students and faculty at the University of Bukavu, less than two weeks before his assassination, he encouraged them about the need for medical research in preventative, nutritional, and curative medicine, but also reminded them that healthy eating is the first medicine. Christopher Munzihirwa, ‘L’Université de Bukavu et la paix’, Bukavu, 19 October 1996, in Mukabarera, Monseigneur Munzihirwa Christophe, Romero Du Congo?, 201–2, 394–6. ‘We need the agronomic research that help us not only to improve vegetable and animal species, but which permit ecological equilibrium through the reforestation of our hills which were stripped in ignorance of the unpleasant consequences of deforestation or in the greedy unconsciousness of people who only cared about getting rich.’ See Munzihirwa, ‘L’Université de Bukavu et la paix’,. See Christopher Munzihirwa, ‘Restez Fermes dan la charité’ 27 October 1996 in Mukabarera Monseigneur Munzihirwa Christophe, Romero Du Congo?, 397. Allen, Global War on Christians, 49. When he was appointed bishop of Kasongo in 1990, Munzihirwa started using the title of Muhudumu (an old Swahili word that means ‘watchman’ and which was mostly used for shepherds that stayed out at night watching over the sheep) to refer to himself as bishop, a practice he continued when he came to Bukavu. Munzihirwa saw this as a more theologically fitting (Jn 10.1–18) and culturally relevant title to describe his pastoral ministry than the title of bishop or archbishop.

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‘blazing fierceness’ on behalf the people, it was also a real experience of ‘suffering with’ that led to his own death. Accordingly, what is illumined in the life and ministry of Munzihirwa is the way of Christ – the way of lament – as both a gift and a burden, that the church is called to bear. It was to this strange gift of lament that Munzihirwa’s names already pointed, long before he would live it out. Munzihirwa’s father, Albert Ngabo had a number of wives before he married Elizabeth Mwa Lubongo, Munzihirwa’s mother. All his previous wives had children who died in childbirth. Munzihirwa’s mother bore five children, all of whom survived. Ngabo named the last born Munzihirwa in gratitude for the gift of the five children (in the Mashi language Mushâna means ‘Providence’).44 At his baptism, Munzihirwa was given the name of Christophe, after St Christopher. According to legend, Christopher carried a child across the river, only to discover on reaching the shore that the unusually heavy child was none other than Christ himself.45 That Munzihirwa (the gift) would also become the bearer of an unusually heavy gift and burden is more than revealing of the church’s public role. On the afternoon of his assassination, as he got out of the car, he clasped his pectoral cross as he walked to the military checkpoint. This last journey was emblematic of the rest of his life and ministry in Bukavu, and provides the most compelling evidence of the grace to weep that Francis prayed for at Lampedusa.

Bibliography Allen, John (2013), The Global War on Christians (New York, NY: Image). Billman, Kathleen D. and Daniel L. Migliore (1999), Rachel’s Cry: A Prayer of Lament and Rebirth of Hope (Cleveland, OH: United Church Press). Brueggemann, Walter (1986), ‘The Costly Loss of Lament’ Journal of the Study of the Old Testament, 36: 57–71. Eklund, Rebekah (2012), ‘Lord, Teach Us How to Grieve: Jesus’ Laments and Christian Hope’ (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duke University). Hall, Douglas John (2003), The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press). Hall, Douglas John (1986), God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the theology of the Cross (Augsburg: Fortress Press). Hall, Douglas John (1976), Lighten Our Darkness: Toward an Indigenous Theology of the Cross (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press).

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‘Mushâna nie nzihirwa n’e Nnâma wa! Nkola ngwerhe bana barhanu na ntaye muli-bô ofire wani!’ In English: ‘I have a chance from Providence. I now have five children and none of them has died!’ See Deogratias Mirindi Ya Nicironge, Christopher Munzihirwa Mwee Ngabo, Prophete et Maertyr en notre temps, 4–5. According to the legend, when he reached the other side, Christopher said to the child who had become so heavy during the crossing: ‘You have put me in the greatest danger. I do not think the whole world could have been as heavy on my shoulders as you were.’ The child replied: ‘You had on your shoulders not only the whole world but Him who made it. I am Christ your king, whom you are serving by this work.’ See Catholic Online, St Christopher, accessed 19 June 2015, http://www. catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=36#wiki.

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Harasta, Eva and Brian Brock (2009), Evoking Lament: A Theological Discussion (London: T&T Clark). Heschel, Abraham J. (1962), The Prophets, Vol. II (New York, NY: Harper and Row). Ilo, Stan (2014), ‘The Church of the Poor: Towards an Ecclesiology of Vulnerable Mission’, Ecclesiology, 10: 229–50. Johnson, Elizabeth (1992), She Who Is (New York, NY: Crossroad). Moltmann, Jürgen (1977), The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (Minneapolis, MN: SCM Press). Moltmann, Jürgen (1974), The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (New York, NY: Harper & Row). Mulombe, Sébastien Muyengo (2011), Christophe Munzihirwa: La Sentinelle des Grands Lacs (Kinshasa: Afriquespoir). Munzihirwa, Christopher (2012 [1995]), ‘Advent Pastoral Letter of Nov 18, 1995’, in Mukabalera Cigwira Joseph, Monseigneur Munzihirwa Christophe, Romero du Congo? Les Concepts de Martyre, de Béatification et de Canonisation Révistés a la lumière de l’histoire Religieuse Contemporarine (Beculera, 2012). Munzihirwa, Christopher (2012 [1996]), ‘L’Université de Bukavu et la paix’, Bukavu, 19 October 1996, Mukabarera, Monseigneur Munzihirwa Christophe, Romero Du Congo? Munzihirwa, Christopher (2012 [1996]), ‘Restez Fermes dan la charité’ 27 October 1996, Mukabarera, Monseigneur Munzihirwa Christophe, Romero du Congo?, 397. Nicironge, Deogratias Mirindi Ya and Christopher Munzihirwa Mwee Ngabo, S. J. (2003), Prophete et Maertyr en Notre Temps (Bukavo: Centre Interdiocesain de Pastorale, Catehese et Liturgie). Pemberton, Glenn (2012), Hurting with God: Learning to Lament with the Psalms (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press). Wolterstorff, Nicholas (1987), Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).

16

The Church and the Elusive ‘Public’ Elizabeth Phillips

In his introduction to political theology, Michael Kirwan begins his historical overview under the heading ‘The doctrine of the Two’, a phrase he draws from a letter of Pope Gelasius to Emperor Anastasius: ‘Two there are, august Emperor, by which this world is ruled: the consecrated authority of priests and the royal power.’1 Along with Kirwan, we can observe that at least as early as Augustine, Christian political theology has revolved around doctrines, or at least questions, of ‘the two’. Augustine’s two cities, medieval theories of two swords, the crises of two authorities surrounding investiture and conciliarism, Luther’s two kingdoms, and modern debates of church and state. In one sense these are different iterations of the same question: the relationship of the authorities, institutions and claims intrinsic to Christianity to the authorities, institutions and claims of governments and societies. However, in another sense, each instance is dealing with a different set of two entities: the two cities, swords, authorities, kingdoms, etc. have not been synonymous with or collapsible into one another. They have variously addressed two citizenships, two sovereignties, two spheres of life, and two institutions. In contemporary political theology, one of the most pervasive iterations of ‘the two’ seems to be ‘church’ and ‘public’. Ordinands are taught how to do ‘public theology’. Denominations have separate offices and committees for church issues and public issues. We participate in endless debates about the role of the church in the public square. Christians in academia, ministry and politics constantly refer to the church and the public as if we all know what we are talking about. But one need only to scratch the surface to see that the ‘public’ is an elusive entity or realm, defying clear definition, especially in binary relation to ‘church’. As William Cavanaugh has incisively argued in his work on so-called ‘religious’ violence, when scholars say ‘we all know what we mean’ when we use a word like ‘religion’, there is very good reason to believe that something is wrong.2 And I believe something is wrong with our continuing assumption that we all know what we mean when we say ‘public’.

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Michael Kirwan, Political Theology: A New Introduction (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2008), 55–71. William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 16.

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I have argued,3 along with others (most notably, Daniel Bell4 and James Smith5), that one of the clear distinctions between the schools of political theology which first emerged in the mid-twentieth century (including European Political Theology, various forms of Liberation, Black, and Feminist Theologies, and Anglo-American Public Theologies) and the next generation of political theology which emerged in the late twentieth century (including Post-liberalism, Radical Orthodoxy, and some forms of so-called ‘contextual’ theologies) has been a shift away from binary views of ‘church’ and ‘public’ in which the task is either translation from the particularism of the church into the universalism of the public, or correlation between what was received through revelation in the church and what has arisen through secular reasoning in public. For many, the death knell was sounded for translationist and correlationist approaches with Hauerwas’s ‘Let the church be the church,’6 and Milbank’s ‘Once, there was no secular’.7 Hauerwas insisted that the task of Christian social ethics was not to translate Christian convictions and practices into public applications, rather more fully to embody those convictions and practices as the church. Thus his wellknown dictum, ‘The church does not have a social ethic; the church is a social ethic.’8 Milbank insisted that the notion of the ‘secular’ as a separate realm of human life upon which claims of transcendence have no bearing was a fictitious construct of the modern era. Following either line of reasoning, the legitimacy of framing political theology either in terms of translating particularly Christian convictions and practices into secular, public applications or of correlating Christian insights with secular, public wisdom became indefensible. The church as properly public and the secular public as theological and even sectarian have become bywords of large segments of contemporary Christian theology. Yet our use of the word ‘public’ seems undiminished. This is not surprising, of course, among those who have not identified with Post-liberalism or Radical Orthodoxy; as is evident in the title of this collection and the content of many of its contributions, ‘Public Theology’ is alive and well. However, it is not only within the ranks of Public Theologians that the term ‘public’ continues to hold sway. Others who may not identify with the ‘Public Theology’ approach find continuing relevance in the term, such as in Charles Mathewes’s A Theology of Public Life,9 Gavin D’Costa’s Theology in the Public Square10 and Jennifer McBride’s The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness.11 Even theologians more explicitly sympathetic Elizabeth Phillips, Political Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 50–1. Daniel M. Bell, ‘State and Civil Society’, The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, ed. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (London: Blackwell, 2004), 423–38.  5 James K. A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 41–2.  6 This phrase and concept echoes throughout Hauerwas’s corpus.  7 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edn, 2006), 9.  8 Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 99.  9 Charles Mathewes, A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 10 Gavin D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). 11 Jennifer McBride, The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012).  3  4

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to Post-liberalism and Radical Orthodoxy continue to use these phrases, as seen in Rowan Williams’s Faith in the Public Square.12 Many scholars have sought to clarify what ‘secular’ does and does not mean, and whether or how we should use such a word. Some argue that no such thing as ‘secularism’ ever really happened (it was a thesis which has been disproven), and that the ‘secular sphere’ is a pure fiction. Others believe there is an important, continued use for a certain form of the word, carefully distinguished from other uses. Rowan Williams has in many places distinguished ‘procedural secularism’ from ‘programmatic secularism’: the procedural variety can open up possibilities for multiple religious groups as it is a lack of enforcement or preference for one particular faith tradition, but the programmatic variety seeks to free common life from religion and to banish faith to the realm of private belief.13 A different but related distinction has been made by Eric Gregory, who defends ‘secularity’ over-against ‘secularism’, where secularism is the advocacy of a sphere which is free from religion, transcendence, metaphysics, and matters of personal value and morality; while secularity is ‘a shared time afforded all humanity by the common grace of God’ which ‘opens the door for a separation of the political and the ecclesial without separating morality from politics or condemning the religious to private subjectivity’.14 While there have been many discussions of the concept of the ‘public square’, analyses of the word ‘public’ itself – analogous to those of ‘secular’ in Williams, Gregory, and many others – are surprisingly absent. Let me be clear: I have no objection per se to the word ‘public’. It will very obviously continue to be useful in many contexts. My problem is that I cannot imagine a definition of ‘public’ in relation to the common life of peoples, societies and states, in which the churches are something other than ‘public’. It is specifically how our unexamined use of ‘public’ allows us to continue to frame it in binary relation to ‘church’ which concerns me, not the word ‘public’ itself. If, then, the church/public binary is not the best way of framing the question of ‘the two’ in contemporary contexts, what is? I will argue for a ‘doctrine of the two’ which attends to both the early origins of Christian political thought and to more recent shifts in political theology by using as its key interlocutors Saint Augustine and John Howard Yoder. Even if such a thing were historically possible, these two men, on their own terms, and in my opinion due to each of their own worst instincts, would themselves have had no interest in speaking to one another. We can be relatively certain that Augustine would have no patience with Yoder’s Anabaptist tradition (and that the later Augustine would likely even support the violent suppression of such a movement). And we know without question that Yoder had no patience for Augustine. Yoder resented Augustine both as architect of the just war tradition and as a key influence for Reinhold Niebuhr. He blamed Augustine for enshrining in orthodoxy the Constantinian shift from 12 13

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Rowan Williams, Faith in the Public Square (London: Bloomsbury, 2012). See Rowan Williams, ‘Rome Lecture: “Secularism, Faith and Freedom”’, accessed 31 March 2015, http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1175/rome-lecture-secularismfaith-and-freedom. Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love: An Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 78.

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the visibility to the invisibility of the true church,15 and he erroneously accused him of equating the Roman church with the kingdom of God: ‘It is not at all surprising that Augustine, for whom the Constantinian church was a matter of course, should have held that the Roman church was the millennium. Thus the next step in the union of church and world was the conscious abandon of eschatology.’16 Even setting anachronism aside, there is little reason to hope either of these men could have had any desire to see connections between their theologies. However, I am not the first theologian to put Augustine and Yoder in conversation with one another. In a Duke University doctorate, Charles Collier pursues the possibility of a non-violent Augustinianism.17 The most explicit example I know of which has been widely published is Gerald Schlabach’s essay ‘The Christian Witness in the Earthly City: John Howard Yoder as Augustinian Interlocutor’.18 In this piece, which has been published in multiple volumes on Yoder’s work, Schlabach briefly listed six ways in which Augustine’s City of God and Yoder’s The Christian Witness to the State corresponded with one another:19 (1) their frame of reference was eschatological; (2) they both described two societies which are presently intermixed yet distinguishable by their differing ends and loves; (3) both maintained that ‘the purpose of history and the good of the social order are never knowable on their own terms’;20 (4) both ‘made thorough-going critiques of imperial presumption’;21 (5) both described government as limited in its capacity to effect peace and justice, and both expected Christians to keep calling their governments to do better; and finally, (6) both described the Christian’s motivation for seeking the peace of the Earthly City in terms of how the Earthly City could aid the mission of the church, which is the true purpose of history. Schlabach drew these parallels in order to argue ‘that an Augustinian can be a pacifist and a pacifist an Augustinian’, an argument with which I wholeheartedly agree, but which is not my purpose to pursue here. Instead, I want to expand upon Schlabach’s noted commonalities between Augustine’s two cities and Yoder’s two orders, to propose a constructive way of imagining ‘the two’ which is not troubled by the binary of the church and the elusive ‘public’. In stark contrast to Augustine’s magisterial De Civitate Dei, Yoder’s The Christian Witness to the State can hardly even be called a book. It was originally a pamphlet which Yoder produced for the Institute of Mennonite Studies in the late 1950s. It 15

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John Howard Yoder, ‘The Otherness of the Church’, The Royal Priesthood Essays Ecclesiastical and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 57–8. John Howard Yoder, ‘Peace Without Eschatology?’, The Royal Priesthood Essays Ecclesiastical and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 1994), 154. Charles Collier, ‘A Non-violent Augustinianism? History and Politics in the Theologies of St. Augustine and John Howard Yoder’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duke University, 2008). Gerald Schlabach, ‘The Christian Witness in the Earthly City: John Howard Yoder as Augustinian Interlocutor’, A Mind Patient and Untamed: Assessing John Howard Yoder’s Contributions to Theology, Ethics, and Peacemaking, ed. Ben C. Ollenburger and Gayle Gerber Koontz (Telford, PA: Cascadia, 2004), 221–44; Peter Dula and Chris K. Huebner, eds, The New Yoder (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2011), 18–41. Schlabach, ‘The Christian Witness in the Earthly City’, 231–3. Ibid., 232. Ibid.

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is brief, it contains hand-drawn illustrations which now seem almost comical, and it is rife with dated conventions, especially gender-exclusive language about ‘the statesman’. Although Yoder’s use of gender in language improved dramatically during his career, no treatment of Yoder today can ignore the recent revelations of the undeniable extent to which he abused and manipulated women throughout most of his adult life.22 However, for all its and his shortcomings, Yoder’s The Christian Witness to the State proposed a compelling answer to ‘the question of the two’. Yoder was both a devout Anabaptist from a long Mennonite tradition and a dedicated ecumenist. The central argument of Christian Witness arose from Yoder’s life-long dual quest: to convince his fellow Mennonites to be less sectarian, and to convince his fellow ecumenists that Anabaptism had truly catholic relevance. Thus, he made his proposal over-against the traditional Anabaptist view that governments exist ‘outside the perfection of Christ’, and that Christians, in order to live in the perfection of Christ, must remain separate from these institutions which operate with a different ethical horizon. He likewise argued over and against the view of non-pacifist Christians that pacifist Christianity, guided by the love ethic of Jesus’s teachings, must necessarily be irrelevant to and therefore silent in all matters of the realm of society and government, a realm guided by the ethic of justice which often requires acts and institutions of coercion and violence. The pamphlet was both a pastoral exhortation to his own community and an apology to those criticizing his community’s tradition. This is not without analogy to Augustine’s twin purposes in the face of the declining Roman Empire: to convince his own community that they had not conceived of their relationship to temporal powers correctly (having too closely wed the success of the gospel and the coming of the kingdom with the power of the Roman Empire), and to convince those outside his own community of the relevance of his faith (as an apology to pagan Romans who were blaming Christianity for Rome’s failure). Augustine argued that no human empire is ultimate: the empire cannot establish true peace or true justice; it is God’s work of salvation which is the meaning of history, not the workings of emperors. Yoder argued that the meaning of history is borne in the church, not in statecraft, because ‘the church points forward as the social manifestation of the ultimately triumphant redemptive work of God’.23 According to Yoder, there are two orders, both of which are ruled over by Christ, which are distinguished from one other by their responses to Christ’s rule. The order 22

23

The full extent of Yoder’s consistent pattern of abuse came into public view especially with the following article: Mark Oppenheimer, ‘A Theologian’s Influence, and Stained Past, Live On’, The New York Times, 12 October 2013, accessed 28 February 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/ us/john-howard-yoders-dark-past-and-influence-lives-on-for-mennonites.html?_r=0. Since then, an extensive process has been pursued by Mennonites in America, especially at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary where Yoder taught before spending the remainder of his career at Notre Dame University, which has involved listening to Yoder’s victims and coming to terms with how his destructive behaviour was allowed to continue. See Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, ‘Reunion, Listening, Confessing’, accessed 31 March 2015, https://www.ambs.edu/newsevents/reunion-listening-confessing.cfm. See also the special issue of Mennonite Quarterly Review 89 (2015) dedicated to the topic of Yoder’s sexual abuse. John Howard Yoder, The Christian Witness to the State (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2002), 10.

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of providence is where Christ reigns over the response of disobedience through the powers. The order of redemption is where Christ reigns through the obedience of his disciples. Yoder also describes these as two realms, one in which faith in Christ is presupposed, and one in which faith is not a presupposition. The analogies with Augustine are clear: the two cities are distinguished from one another by their differing loves and orientations, the heavenly city pointing towards the love and worship of God, and the Earthly City pointing towards love and fulfilment of self instead of worship of God. Most important for our purposes here: both formulations of ‘the two’ conceive of the two realities in question as complex spatio-temporal realities. Most conceptions of ‘the two’ remove the temporal element, and give varying answers to the question of how current social space should be divided into distinct spheres, whether these are spheres of the institutions of church and government, or spheres of spiritual and secular authority, or spheres of private associations and public engagement. But Augustine, as William Cavanaugh has noted, ‘does not map the two cities out in space, but rather projects them across time’, and in this sense the two cities have more to do with the already and the not yet than with sacred and secular or private and public.24 So too with Yoder’s two orders, one in which Christ’s Lordship is already, though imperfectly, recognized and embodied in time and space, and the other in which Christ’s Lordship is just as real but is not yet recognized. In both Augustine and Yoder, one of ‘the two’ is identified with but not absolutely equated with the church. Although Augustine occasionally refers to the City of God as the church, the entirety of his descriptions makes it clear that the city’s citizens are all those who worship God, in heaven and on earth, throughout all history and into eternity. The church is that part of the City of God which currently sojourns on earth. So too, Yoder identifies the church with the order of redemption in which faith in Christ is presupposed. Yet, by clarifying that this realm is not the church as such, and that the order of providence where faith in Christ is not a presupposition is not the state as such, he similarly broadens and complexifies his notion of ‘the two’. For both theologians, this city or order which is identified with the church is also a reality which is bigger than any specific instantiation in the churches. And while both Augustine and Yoder are very concrete and specific about what characterizes the citizens of this city, in both cases it is impossible in the current age of coexisting aeons to point to any individual and say this person is in or out; both theologians acknowledge that human responses to God are more complicated than that. What then is the role of the church in relation to the second of ‘the two’: the Earthly City in Augustine and the order of providence in Yoder? The key theme for Augustine is sojourning: the church is that part of the City of God which exists as a pilgrim people alongside the Earthly City during the present age. While on pilgrimage here and now, the church makes use of all the same goods as the Earthly City, but with a different orientation and aim. The church employs the conventions, institutions, laws, and practices of the present time and place – all the goods with which the Earthly City 24

William T. Cavanaugh, ‘From One City to Two’, Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 59.

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can only manage to establish some faint shadows of justice and peace – alongside her own distinctive institutions and practices, all for the love and worship of God, as participants in the eternal justice and peace which only God can establish and which can only exist in that city which is devoted to God. The key theme for Yoder is witness. The church knows the ultimate reality for which all things are created to which all things are called, and so she bears witness to that reality through her own life within the order of redemption, and by calling the people and institutions of the order of providence ever closer to their created purposes. This is the meaning of evangelism. The agape ethic of Jesus is at the heart of the church’s witness, as she seeks to embody that ethic in her life within the order of redemption and as she seeks to help the order of providence as it currently exists to come closer to that ethical horizon. Thus, in both Augustine and Yoder we find a ‘doctrine of the two’ in which there is no thoroughgoing dualism of sacred versus secular, public versus private, church versus world, or church versus state. It is a ‘doctrine of the two’ in which there is no flat map of space which is carved into two spheres of influence or authority. Instead there is a complex, multidimensional mapping in space and across time of differing responses and orientations of humans towards God. And while the heavenly city and the order of redemption cannot be limited to or equated with the church, these ‘doctrines of the two’ still have much to say about how the church is meant to live in the world. I see at least five important similarities between Augustine’s and Yoder’s understandings of the church in these two texts. First, the church is a distinct people, a people with a different love, a different ethic and a different hope. And in that sense the church is very definitely set apart in both Augustine and Yoder. And yet, for both, the church is not separate. The decision both theologians made to describe a realm with which the church could be identified but which was not limited to or synonymous with church is crucial. Not only are the heavenly city and the order of redemption communal realities which are not restricted to the church, both of the differing responses and loves which they instantiate will exist within each individual as well. And it is crucial to both Augustine’s and Yoder’s models that the two cities or orders are intermingled during this present age. These distinctions between ‘the two’, unlike many others which have been proposed by theologians in the centuries which divide Augustine and Yoder, are not made in order to establish a nonporous boundary between the church and some temporal/secular realm, either for the purpose of naming the ‘true’ church or for the purpose of carving out differing spheres of authority. Instead, the distinction between ‘the two’ serves to say that there are ways of living in the world which are ordered by the love of God and embrace of Christ’s Lordship, and there are ways of living in the world which are ordered by other loves and resistance to Christ’s Lordship. Second, this distinctiveness which is not utter separation means that the church is socially and politically active, contributing to earthly justice and peace, while never confusing the justice and peace of which human governments are sometimes capable with the eternal and true justice and peace in which God created and to which God calls all creation. In Yoder’s terms, the ethic of love will always be obscured, as if in a cloud, for those who do not recognize and dedicate themselves to the Lordship of

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Jesus Christ. The church should call them ever closer to that reality, but the church also knows that all creation will not submit to it until the eschaton. In Augustine’s terms, the City of God makes the most it can of the same goods used by the Earthly City while they sojourn together, but in the eschaton the City of God will enter into true and ultimate peace while the Earthly City will pass away. Third, both have been unfairly accused by their critics of various forms of social fatalism. Augustine is said to be so pessimistic about the Earthly City as to render social transformation a hopeless impossibility. Yoder is said to be so sectarian and idealistic about the church as to render social transformation irrelevant. In reality, both theologians were calling their audiences to reflect on the social optimism and triumphalism of their recent past, and to move forward with a more modest view of what can be achieved in the present age and how these achievements are not the centre or meaning of history. Augustine wanted the church to remember that the Roman Empire was not the centre of history and its failure was not a failure of God’s redemptive purposes, which are the meaning of history. Yoder wanted the church to remember that the social optimism of the liberal Christianity of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had come unravelled, and that to advance a particular political platform was not to establish the kingdom on earth. This feature is well summarized in the following passage from Yoder, which is redolent with ‘Augustinian’ political modesty: The Christian speaks not of how to describe, and then to seek to create the ideal society, but of how the state can best fulfil its responsibilities in a fallen society. The Christian witness will therefore always express itself in terms of specific criticisms, addressed to given injustices in a particular time and place, and specific suggestions for improvements to remedy the identified abuse. This does not mean that if the criticisms were heard and the suggestions put into practice, the Christian would be satisfied; rather, a new and more demanding set of criticisms and suggestions would then follow. There is no level of attainment to which a state could rise, beyond which the Christian critique would have nothing more to ask; such an ideal level would be none other than the kingdom of God.25

Fourth, there is the possibility of a further similarity which is not an explicit feature of either of these texts. I believe that if we take together the strengths of the proposals of the two cities and the two orders, they give us the very crucial ability to articulate how and why the church must be open to what God is doing, and what Christians can learn from those who are outside the church. Seeing God’s work in all the world, being open to God’s action outside the church, and working together with people of other faiths or no faith clearly are not strong emphases in either of these texts. Yet the insistence in Augustine that both cities do the same things on earth with the same goods, but do them with differing aims and purposes, creates an open space for moving in these directions. And the insistence in Yoder upon the Lordship of Christ over all creation and all of life, and his recognition of the other realm as one of God’s providence, point 25

Yoder, The Christian Witness to the State, 32.

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even more firmly towards receptiveness to God’s presence in the world outside the church as well as cooperative witness in the world with those of other faiths. Finally, from all of these similarities another emerges, and one which raises the question of whether what we have been talking about all along was indeed a doctrine of the two, or if these are actually doctrines of the three. There is a third reality at play in the two cities and the two orders, a complex spatio-temporal reality best named by Augustine: the saeculum. It is the present time and space in which the two cities coexist in Augustine, which Yoder describes as a time and space in which some already order their lives in response to the Lordship of Jesus while others do not yet recognize his Lordship. It is the saeculum which has informed the best attempts to offer constructive uses of ‘secularity’ over-against ‘secularism’; and it is the saeculum which puts the lie to the idea of a ‘public square’. There is no space which we can call ‘public’ of which the church is not already a part, in which the church must struggle to find a voice or a role. Nor is there a ‘public square’ which is the one spatial reality carved into separate spheres, one of which belongs to the church. Instead there are all those parts of creation which recognize, submit to, and point towards what is ultimate and true, and those parts of creation which do not see, choose not to submit to, or point away from what is ultimate and true; there are these two and there is the saeculum, the time and space during and in which these two coexist. During the saeculum, the role of the church is not translation into or correlation with the supposed ‘public’; it is the bold yet modest witness of a pilgrim community intent upon peace and justice but without illusion that they can perfectly effect either.

Bibliography Bell, Daniel M. (2004), ‘State and Civil Society’, in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, ed. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (London: Blackwell), 423–38. Cavanaugh, William T. (2011), Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and The Political Meaning of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 46–68. Cavanaugh, William T. (2009), The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Collier, Charles (2008), ‘A Non-violent Augustinianism? History and Politics in the Theologies of St. Augustine and John Howard Yoder’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duke University). D’Costa, Gavin (2005), Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation (Oxford: Blackwell). Dula, Peter and Chris K. Huebner, eds (2011), The New Yoder (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press). Gregory, Eric (2008), Politics and the Order of Love: An Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Hauerwas, Stanley (1983), The Peaceable Kingdom (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press). Kirwan, Michael (2008), Political Theology: A New Introduction (London: Darton, Longman and Todd).

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Mathewes, Charles (2007), A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). McBride, Jennifer (2012), The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (New York, NY: Oxford University Press). Milbank, John (2006), Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edn). Phillips, Elizabeth (2012), Political Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T&T Clark). Schlabach, Gerald (2004), ‘The Christian Witness in the Earthly City: John Howard Yoder as Augustinian Interlocutor’, in A Mind Patient and Untamed: Assessing John Howard Yoder’s Contributions to Theology, Ethics, and Peacemaking, ed. Ben C. Ollenburger and Gayle Gerber Koontz (Telford, PA: Cascadia), 221–44. Smith, James K. A. (2004), Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic). Williams, Rowan (2012), Faith in the Public Square (London: Bloomsbury). Yoder, John Howard (2002), The Christian Witness to the State (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press). Yoder, John Howard (1994), ‘The Otherness of the Church’, in The Royal Priesthood Essays Ecclesiastical and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 53–64. Yoder, John Howard (1994), ‘Peace Without Eschatology?’, in The Royal Priesthood Essays Ecclesiastical and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 153–67.

17

The Church in the Limelight of the Public Square: An Alternative Community? Annemarie C. Mayer

After Mark Eliot Zuckerberg (2010) and Barack Obama (2012), Time magazine named Pope Francis the ‘person of the year’ 2013. Ever since his election this pope has been very much in the limelight of the mass media, and St Peter’s Square has turned into a very public square. Even to such an extent that on Good Friday 2013 the former president of the Evangelical church in Germany, Wolfgang Huber, criticized the media during a TV interview for focussing too much on the pope.1 On the other hand, Pope Benedict, when visiting Germany in 2011, publicly pleaded for a ‘de-secularization’ of the church and an increasing detachment from worldliness.2 Nevertheless, during the same visit, this pope gave a widely received speech on the foundations of law at the German Parliament in Berlin.3 In the following reflections I will neither compare the publicity of these two popes nor discuss whether, after all, it has been such a good idea to leave that upper room at all to which the apostles returned after the ascension of Jesus Christ. The first is not relevant for my topic, the latter might be slightly out of place more than 1,700 years after the Edict of Milan.

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Cf. Wolfgang Huber, ‘Interview’, accessed 30 March 2013, http://www.heute.de/Ex-EKD-ChefHuber-kritisiert-Papst-Fixierung-der-Medien-27233504.html. Cf. Benedict XVI, ‘Meeting with Catholics Engaged in the Life of the Church and Society, Freiburg im Breisgau, 25 September 2011’, accessed 15 July 2015, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ benedict_xvi/speeches/2011/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20110925_catholicsfreiburg_en.html: ‘In order to accomplish her mission, she will need again and again to set herself apart from her surroundings, to become in a certain sense “unworldly”. … In the concrete history of the Church, however, a contrary tendency is also manifested, namely that the Church becomes self-satisfied, settles down in this world, becomes self-sufficient and adapts herself to the standards of the world. Not infrequently, she gives greater weight to organization and institutionalization than to her vocation to openness towards God, her vocation to opening up the world towards the other. … History has shown that, when the Church becomes less worldly, her missionary witness shines more brightly. Once liberated from material and political burdens and privileges, the Church can reach out more effectively and in a truly Christian way to the whole world, she can be truly open to the world.’ Benedict XVI, ‘The Listening Heart. Reflections on the Foundations of Law, Berlin 22 September 2011’, accessed 15 July 2015, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2011/ september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20110922_reichstag-berlin_en.html.

The Church in the Limelight of the Public Square: An Alternative Community? 249 Rather, I will ask what a church that ventured out into the public square could, should or even has to look like. In other words, I will try to contextualize the endeavours of public theology in the context of Roman Catholic ecclesiology and missiology. I will do this in three steps: First, I will critically enquire what the relation of ‘public theology’ and ‘public church’ to Catholicism might be. Second, I will investigate the concept of ‘public sphere’ more closely from a socio-philosophical point of view. Under the heading ‘It shall not be so among you’ – or a church ‘missionary by her very nature’ I will critically assess the concept of ‘alternative community’ in the context of ‘public’ and ‘counter-public’ and try to sketch what, if one puts a selection of Roman Catholic Church official teaching on the church in the modern world to the test, a church that is fit for the limelight of the public square should or at least might look like.

1  Public church and public theology – an exclusively Protestant paradigm? Given the history of the term ‘public theology’ and the development of what it refers to, the question arises, whether or in what way this concept is pertinent to and reconcilable with a Catholic understanding of the church. Is the paradigm of a ‘public theology’ and consequently a ‘public church’ not mainly or even exclusively a Protestant concept? The ‘fathers of public theology’4 usually link the birth of this theological paradigm to Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) who in turn regarded Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) as America’s greatest theologian.5 The person of Niebuhr and his connection to the German Evangelical Synod of North America already suggest a link to the German Protestant context. Indeed, from 1947 onwards, the topic of the church and the public square was widely discussed in German Protestant circles.6 In fact, it also reaches back to the Life and Work Movement in the wake of the Edinburgh World Mission Conference of 1910. The matter itself goes even further back to the times of the Reformation when in the Peace of Augsburg (1555) the conflicting parties agreed on the principle of cuius regio, eius religio. Thus the concepts of ‘state church’ and ‘national church’ were born. They developed their impacts both within the socio-economic and political realms. In postReformation times, therefore, religion increasingly became a factor of national identity. However, also in the Catholic world religious institutions played and continue to play political roles. Also in the Catholic world church and politics are related. Also in the Catholic world the public square was never ‘naked’, to use an image by Richard Neuhaus.7 The role of prince-bishops and the territories of the Papal States provide 4

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Cf. Martin E. Marty, ‘Reinhold Niebuhr: Public Theology and the American Experience’, The Journal of Religion 54 (1974), 332–59, 334; Max L. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy: Christian Stewardship in Modern Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987). Cf. Marty, ‘Niebuhr’, 355. Cf. Helmut Thielicke, Kirche und Öffentlichkeit: Zur Grundlegung einer lutherischen Kulturethik (Tübingen: Furche-Verlag, 1947); Paul Tornquist, ‘Kirche und Öffentlichkeit’, Estudios Teológicos - Studien und Berichte 3 (1949), 123–8; and Wolfgang Huber, Kirche und Öffentlichkeit (Stuttgart: Klett Verlag, 1973). Cf. Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984).

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shining examples from the past. Some abuses in these realms even contributed to the Reformation. Today the institution of Catholic nuncios and the representation of the Holy See at the UN, and in turn the custom of foreign nations to be represented by ambassadors to the Holy See can serve as evidence that ever since the Edict of Milan the political aspect of the public square never ceased at the doorsteps of the Catholic church. If we abide thus with the factual for the time being, we ought to ask next: what constitutes the public square about which we are talking? In order to base my argument on theologically neutral grounds and to do justice to the ongoing shifts and developments in the public sphere, I will highlight the classical approach developed by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, and combine it with additional ideas, which the sociologists Niklas Luhmann and Jeffrey Alexander propose. Concluding this step, the question will be raised what implications this has on the status and tasks of the church.

2  What constitutes and characterizes the public square? Ever since in 1758 Jean-Jacques Rousseau8 classified religion as a private affair, a binary thinking has been prevalent. In 1780, Johann Salomo Semler coined the term ‘private religion’9 which became very influential. One of the advantages of Jürgen Habermas’ approach is that it avoids the pitfalls of such a ‘public–private’ dichotomy by introducing an intermediary level. In his pioneering study on the structural transformation of the public sphere (Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit)10 of 1962, Habermas distinguishes between the pre-modern feudal ‘representative’ society and the bourgeois ‘constitutional’ public sphere. In the latter, the interests of the liberal enlightenment bourgeoisie in private autonomy and in a right to public reasoning and universal access is combined with both an interest in the nonviolent determination of the public opinion and an interest in personal and social self-determination and self-government. Thus, the public sphere becomes a ‘domain of our social life in which public opinion can be formed’.11 In the seventies Habermas replaced his ideological-critical approach by a linguisticpragmatic concept of communicative action. In his ensuing works on this topic, he equates the public sphere with a network for communicating contents, transmitting knowledge and achieving mutual understanding.12 In principle, as a network of Jean-Jacques Rousseau introduces the public-private dichotomy when describing social-political realities. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politiques (1758)/Der Gesellschaftsvertrag oder Die Grundsätze des Rechtsstaats, trans. H. Denhardt (Leipzig: Reclam, without year), 174.  9 Johan Salomo Semler, Magazin für die Religion, 2 Theile (Halle: Hemmerde sche Buchhandlung, 1780) vol. 1, VII used the term ‘private religion’. For Semler religion is to be counted among one‘s private affairs because it pertains to the individual piety of the human being. 10 Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Neuwied et. al.: Luchterhand, 1962), published in English translation as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989). 11 Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 231. 12 Cf. Jürgen Habermas Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), 436.  8

The Church in the Limelight of the Public Square: An Alternative Community? 251 different commuting and communicating parts, the public sphere is open to all its potential participants. Between the political system and one’s private everyday life Habermas locates the sphere of civil society as an intermediary level. Its core task consists in ‘problemsolving discourses on questions of general interest in the context of instituted publics’.13 Through these public discourses, social movements, political parties, the churches and other associations can contribute to forming the public opinion. On this level, the innovative ‘productive power of communication’14 shows itself alongside a normative inclusive and integrating feature of the public sphere.15 In forming the public opinion and sphere, the mass media play a leading role, as Niklas Luhmann points out. He explains that by interrupting the interaction among those present a surplus of options for communication is produced ‘which the system can only still control internally through self-organization and the construction of its own reality’.16 The distinction between information and non-information is the guideline in the world of modern communication. The mass media are only interested in what creates attention. Their criteria of selection are the value of novelty and surprise and the amount of scandal which violating the norms can create. In the form of public opinion, mass media construct a reality with which society aligns itself. Their social function consists in the self-observation of society. Luhmann neither classifies public opinion as a medium for information nor as an expression of a reached consensus. Its function is to get and keep the communication going.17 Jeffrey Alexander focuses on the ‘civil sphere’.18 Civil society is both a reality within modern societies as well as a normative, culturally coined symbol of self-description and self-communication. The civil sphere constitutes a clearly defined sphere of solidarity, ‘in which a certain kind of universalizing community comes to be culturally defined and to some degree institutionally enforced’.19 Thus civil society negotiates and determines who belongs to it by way of a cultural construction of the desirable. Alexander keeps stressing the self-created communicative and normative aspects of the civil sphere. In 2001, in his famous speech upon receiving the peace award of the German book trade, Habermas spells out in more detail the position and the tasks of religion within the public sphere. They consist in voicing and translating – or in his own words: After all, the liberal state has so far imposed only upon the believers among its citizens the requirement that they split their identity into public and private versions.

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Habermas, Faktizität, 443 f.: ‘problemlösende Diskurse zu Fragen allgemeinen Interesses im Rahmen veranstalteter Öffentlichkeiten.’ Habermas, Strukturwandel, 36, See ‘Produktivkraft der Kommunikation.’ Cf. Jürgen Habermas, Die Einbeziehung des Anderen. Studien zur politischen Theorie (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996). Niklas Luhmann, Die Realität der Massenmedien (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 3rd edn, 2004), 10: ‘der nur noch systemintern durch Selbstorganisation und durch eigene Realitätskonstruktionen kontrolliert werden kann.’ Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997), 1107: ‘Es geht um eine operative Bedingung der Fortsetzung von Kommunikation unter hochkomplexen, rasch sich ändernden Bedingungen.’ Jeffrey C. Alexander, The Civil Sphere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Ibid., 31.

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That is, they must translate their religious convictions into a secular language before their arguments have the prospect of being accepted by a majority. … But the search for reasons that aspire to general acceptance need not lead to an unfair exclusion of religion from public life, and secular society, for its part, need not cut itself off from the important resources of spiritual explanations, if only the secular side were to retain a feeling for the articulative power of religious discourse. … Secular majorities must not reach a conclusion without first having given a hearing to the objections of opponents who believe their religious convictions to have been injured; they must also make an effort to learn something from them.20

In view of competing opinions and even competing orthodoxies in the public sphere a mutual openness is required that expresses itself on the side of the ‘believers’ in the willingness to translate and the ability to be bi- or multilingual and on the side of the ‘secular majority’ in the readiness to listen and learn. Yet as the classical approach this is far too idealistic and it is only part of the picture. Substantial criticism of Habermas’ position has been raised and needs to be taken into account. Nancy Fraser, who summarizes Habermas’ concept of the public sphere as ‘the space in which citizens deliberate about their common affairs, hence, an institutionalized arena of discursive interaction’,21 is very critical of his claim to free accessibility. She mentions obstacles like social status and gender and contends ‘not only were there always a plurality of competing publics but the relations between bourgeois publics and other publics were always conflictual. Virtually from the beginning, counter-publics contested the exclusionary norms of the bourgeois public, elaborating alternative styles of political behavior and alternative norms of public speech.’22 In my view, the actual situation might be more accurately described as the dispute between a plurality of competing publics rather than the one and only comprehensive, all-embracing public discourse à la Habermas that promotes an equal participation in the public sphere.23 In the realm of contemporary communication, the concept of ‘counter-publics’ comprises various forms, ranging from the counter-theming of positions to the use of alternative media, from certain forms of publicity such as critical or autonomous public sub-spheres to the media practice of network activism and communication guerrilla. Thus the public square emerges as a platform on which multiple publics (always in the plural!) communicate, compete, contradict each other, and this not only on one level, but in many refractions and diffractions on different layers and in endless combinations.

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Jürgen Habermas, ‘Faith and Knowledge, Acceptance Speech of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 2001’, accessed 15 July 2015, http://www.friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de/ sixcms/media.php/1290/2001%20Acceptance%20Speech%20Juergen%20Habermas.pdf, 4f. Nancy Fraser, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’, Social Text 25 (1990), 56–80, 57. Ibid. 60. Cf. Nancy Fraser, ‘Die Transnationalisierung der Öffentlichkeit: Legitimität und Effektivität der öffentlichen Meinung in einer postwestfälischen Welt’, in Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit, ed. Peter Niesen and B. Herborth (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2007), 224–53. A careful reading of Habermas, however, reveals that he also himself speaks of ‘publics’ in the plural, cf. for example Habermas, Faktizität, 443 f.

The Church in the Limelight of the Public Square: An Alternative Community? 253 What conclusions prompt themselves, if all this is applied to the church? First of all: faith communities can become actors in the public sphere, which turns into a space of expression and communication for them. On the other hand, they can be an alternative to the given or prevailing public. The question of presence or withdrawal, participation or refusal, criticism or support, integration or subversion thus arises. Should the church be located within the public sphere or opposite to it as a religious counter-public? Or even as the ‘alternative community of God’?24 In the last two or three decades, the church has been seen as a counter-public or counter-societal entity, especially on the part of radical orthodoxy and ecclesiastical communitarianism. In John Milbank for instance, the church appears from her metaphysical origin as the articulation of a ‘counter-history’, which simultaneously represents a ‘counter ethics’.25 Over against the allegedly state-centric view of Moltmann’s political theology, Arne Rasmusson conceives of the church as an alternative polis.26 Stanley Hauerwas holds that ‘the challenge is always for the church to be a “contrast model” for all polities that know not God’.27 Against a corrupt and too permissive society, he most powerfully advocates a church of virtuous ‘resident aliens’ (as he terms them) who lead a life in accordance with the politics of salvation, discipleship and witness retracted from the violent secular state. They are the church ‘after Christendom’ that is, after the end of the Constantinian Christianity.28 Yet not everyone is prepared to follow Hauerwas and Milbank in their strict dichotomy. The danger of such an approach consists in the logically inevitable consequences of the ‘alternative community’ understood as an extreme model of separating church and world: These consequences seem to be internal stagnation, growing privatization, selective charity, cognitive isolation, as well as progressive selfsegregation, self-ghettoization, self-immunization, and even self-exaltation.

3  ‘It shall not be so among you’ – or a church ‘missionary by her very nature’ If we ask about the tasks of the church in the public square, neither a system-critical counter-public nor a system-compliant adaptation seem ideal solutions. The one 24

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Using this expression ‘Kontrastgesllschaft Gottes’, Gerhard Lohfink, Wie hat Jesus Gemeinde gewollt? Zur gesellschaftlichen Dimension des christlichen Glaubens (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1982), 181 depicts the church following the patristic model of opposing a corrupt pagan society. However, already in the 1980s criticism was raised against such a strict opposition to the world, for example Peter Eicher, ‘Kirche als Kontrastgesellschaft?’, Orientierung 51 (1987), 230–2. Cf. John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990), 381. Cf. Arne Rasmusson, The Church as Polis: From Political Theology to Theological Politics as Exemplified by Jürgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas (Lund: University Press, 1994). Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University Press, 1981), 84. Cf. Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1991); Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001).

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obliterates the difference between the church and the kingdom of God, the other forgets the eschatological proviso that protects the church against any uncritical attitude and a hasty identification with social progress. Instead of these two extreme positions, a public-centred perspective suggests itself that ‘avoids the Scylla of a neointegralistic interference with the political autonomy and the Charybdis of a privatized weakening of one’s public claim’.29 To grasp this more clearly in ecclesial and ecclesiological terms in a Roman Catholic context I suggest to revisit in a first step some of the ecclesial teaching that deals with the relationship of church and world and to scrutinize what is offered there in order to correlate and match it with what the public square requires, since in the previous section we already grasped a glimpse of what the public sphere needs. If we start with Vatican II, already from its famous opening that appeals to ‘the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age’ it becomes clear: the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, is one of the well-known ‘usual suspects’. The same is true of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which states in no. 16: ‘Whatever good or truth is found amongst [non-believers] is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel (praeparatio Evangelii). She knows that it is given by Him who enlightens all human beings so that they may finally have life.’ This prompts a fresh look at the topic from the perspective of Ad Gentes, the Decree on the Mission Activities of the Church. It conceives of the church as ‘pilgrim church’ that is ‘missionary by her very nature’,30 as do the magisterial texts that followed this conciliar document, in particular Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), Redemptoris Missio (1990) and Evangelii Gaudium (2013). For the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, evangelization ‘means bringing the Good News into all the strata of humanity [thus hopefully converting] both the personal and collective consciences of people, the activities in which they engage, and the lives and concrete milieu which are theirs’.31 Paul VI recognizes that ‘between evangelization and human advancement – development and liberation – there are in fact profound links’.32 For, as he points out, ‘evangelization involves an explicit message, adapted to the different situations constantly being realized, … – a message especially energetic today about liberation’.33 In fact, the exhortation insists on a balance between evangelization and liberation. As far as I know, this is the first magisterial text that explicitly advocates liberation. It also

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Herman-Josef Große Kracht, Kirche in ziviler Gesellschaft: Studien zur Konfliktgeschichte von katholischer Kirche und demokratischer Öffentlichkeit (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997), 432, ‘die Skylla eines neointegralistischen Eingriffs in die Autonomie der Politik und die Charybdis einer privatisierenden Abschwächung des eigenen Öffentlichkeitsanspruchs erfolgreich zu umgehen.’ Ad Gentes, 7 December 1965, accessed 1 March 2016, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19651207_ad-gentes_en.html, no. 2. Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 8 December 1975, accessed 1 March 2016, http://w2.vatican.va/ content/paul-vi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_exh_19751208_evangelii-nuntiandi. html, no. 18. Ibid., no. 31. Ibid., no. 29.

The Church in the Limelight of the Public Square: An Alternative Community? 255 explicitly emphasizes the legitimate existence of a secular sphere and distinguishes it from exaggerated secularism.34 Redemptoris Missio, promulgated on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Ad Gentes (7  December 1990), reflects on the ‘world of communications, which is unifying humanity and turning it into what is known as a “global village”’.35 Yet, above all, it focuses on dialogue, especially inter-religious dialogue. For the first time it refers to this dialogue as ‘part of the Church’s evangelizing mission,’36 and identifies it as a ‘method and means of mutual knowledge and enrichment’. To relate proclamation and dialogue is not just a tactical move. John Paul II stresses: Dialogue ‘does not originate from tactical concerns or self-interest, but is an activity with its own guiding principles, requirements and dignity. It is demanded by deep respect for everything that has been brought about in human beings by the Spirit.’37 Evangelii Gaudium, published on 24 November 2013, expands the notion of dialogue: ‘In a culture which privileges dialogue as a form of encounter, it is time to devise a means for building consensus and agreement while seeking the goal of a just, responsive and inclusive society.’38 A just and inclusive society advocates a ‘preferential option for the poor’ which ad intra, within the church, ‘must mainly translate into a privileged and preferential religious care’.39 However also collegiality, subsidiarity and de-centralization are features that according to Pope Francis should characterize the church ad intra: Nor do I believe that the papal magisterium should be expected to offer a definitive or complete word on every question which affects the Church and the world. 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. In this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound ‘decentralization’.40

And he goes on: ‘I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times

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36 37 38

39 40

Cf. ibid., no. 55: ‘We are not speaking of secularization, which is the effort, in itself just and legitimate and in no way incompatible with faith or religion, to discover in creation, in each thing or each happening in the universe, the laws which regulate them with a certain autonomy, but with the inner conviction that the Creator has placed these laws there. The last Council has in this sense affirmed the legitimate autonomy of culture and particularly of the sciences. Here we are thinking of a true secularism: a concept of the world according to which the latter is self-explanatory, without any need for recourse to God, who thus becomes superfluous and an encumbrance. This sort of secularism, in order to recognize the power of man, therefore ends up by doing without God and even by denying Him.’ John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 7 December 1990, accessed 1 March 2015, http://w2.vatican. va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_07121990_redemptoris-missio. html, no. 37. Ibid., no. 55. Ibid., no. 56. Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 24 November 2013, accessed 1 March 2015, http://www.vatican.va/ holy_father/francesco/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_ evangelii-gaudium_en.html, no. 239. Ibid., no. 200, cf. also no. 48. Ibid., no. 16.

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and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.’41 A lot is already there, in texts like these, that would be in favour of providing for the Roman Catholic Church a genuine place in the public square and would allow for authentic witness coram Deo as well as coram publico – or to put it as Benedict did during his 2011 visit to Germany: It is not a question here of finding a new strategy to relaunch the Church. Rather, it is a question of setting aside mere strategy and seeking total transparency, not bracketing or ignoring anything from the truth of our present situation, but living the faith fully here and now in the utterly sober light of day, appropriating it completely, and stripping away from it anything that only seems to belong to faith, but in truth is mere convention or habit.42

If only this were heeded and put into action. For from an ecclesiological point of view, orthopraxis is even more important than orthodoxy. Also ecclesiologically it is absolutely accurate when in The Understanding of Faith Schillebeeckx points out that a purely theoretical verification of a particular interpretation of faith is … impossible because although the object of faith has indeed been realised, in Christ, it has only been realised as our promise and our future, and the future cannot be interpreted theoretically, it has to be brought about. Action (orthopraxis) must therefore be an inner element of the principle of verification.43

Credibility is created through authenticity and leads to a church with a human face, the face of each one of us, a church that – as would be my dream – also in the utterly sober daylight of the public square can be characterized by the following features that aim in two directions, towards a renewal ad intra and a critical advocacy ad extra: 1. A church in the daylight of the public square lives a complementarity of church in the public and public in the church. The public sphere is not only to be situated extra ecclesiam but lies intra ecclesiam. It is to be built there or expanded. Only the construction of a critical public in the church adds credibility and effectiveness to its social criticism.

41

42 43

Ibid., no. 27, and also ‘I prefer a Church which is 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 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 life.’ Ibid., no. 49. Cf. Benedict XVI, ‘Meeting with Catholics Engaged in the Life of the Church and Society’. Edward Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith: Interpretation and Criticism, trans. N. D. Smith, CW vol. 5 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 53 [59].

The Church in the Limelight of the Public Square: An Alternative Community? 257 2. A church in the daylight of the public square knows not only hierarchical representation and the active participation of clerical elites but for its selfunderstanding it is necessary to include the whole people of God in a participative, consultative, deliberative and even decisive way. 3. Such a church realizes what we have seen already with Habermas: that what may be understandable and plausible to the interior may be rather incomprehensible and more or less controversial for the exterior. The elementary acts of witnessing and confessing are to be more clearly distinguished. Confessing is the form of communication ad intra.44 Witnessing is the form of communication to the outside,45 which fundamentally aims at convincing.46 The church needs to undertake ‘a twofold dialogue about God’s truth: as witnessing in a dialogue with the world – and as confessing in the dialogue of the church’s communio with God; these two forms of dialogue need to be linked perichoretically to each other’.47 4. To such a church the ‘sacrament of dialogue’ opens up a way of coping with competing orthodoxies in the public square. Its ecclesial self-understanding seeks or creates places, fora and institutions of inter-church and inter-religious communication, counselling, and conflict resolution. 5. Such a church does not cut itself off from the mass media, with their allegedly anti-church orientation, but allows itself to be challenged, irritated and inspired, although it might perceive itself in the mirror of the public media as an ‘endangered public’, threatened, stigmatized, distorted. Such a church makes use of the media in a critical and communicative way to share the gospel. It will function as the protective power of a civic understanding, contribute to the strengthening and expanding of public communication, distinguish integrative and socializing agencies of civil society and ‘as a particular interpretation community bring topics from its own tradition into the public discourse’.48

44

45 46

47

48

It articulates the common belief of the faithful and therefore presupposes an initiation into the faith community and a personal consent. Cf. Edmund Arens, Christopraxis: Grundzüge theologischer Handlungstheorie (Freiburg i.Br./Basel/Wien: Herder, 1992), 138–47. Cf. Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, no. 23 which explains, ‘In fact the proclamation only reaches full development when it is listened to, accepted and assimilated, and when it arouses a genuine adherence in the one who has thus received it. An adherence to the truths which the Lord in His mercy has revealed; still more, an adherence to a program of life – a life henceforth transformed – which He proposes. In a word, adherence to the kingdom, that is to say, to the “new world,” to the new state of things, to the new manner of being, of living, of living in community, which the Gospel inaugurates.’ Cf. also Arens, Christopraxis, 108. Cf. ibid., 107. Cf. ibid., 131 f. and Edmund Arens, Bezeugen und Bekennen: Elementare Handlungen des Glaubens (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1989). Karl Bopp, ‘“Missionarisch Kirche sein” angesichts fremder Religionen und Kulturen. Praktischtheologische Überlegungen zum Missionsauftrag der Kirche heute’, Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift 120 (2011), 357–69, 363: ‘Evangelisierung kann in diesem Sinn als doppelter Dialog um die Wahrheit Gottes verstanden werden: als Bezeugen im Dialog mit der Welt – und als Bekennen im Dialog der kirchlichen Communio mit Gott; wobei diese beiden Dialogformen im Vollzug perichoretisch miteinander verknüpft werden müssen.’ Große Kracht, Kirche in ziviler Gesellschaft, 447: ‘als partikulare Interpretationsgemeinschaften relevante Themen aus ihrer eigenen Überlieferungstradition in den öffentlichen Diskurs einzubringen.’

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6. Such a church is open to counter-public performances like protests and campaigns. As a community of communities it provides space for alternative public movements, without institutionalizing itself as a counter-public or diffusing into multiple counter-publics. 7. A church in the limelight of the public square takes the task of contradicting very seriously. In opposition to local and global inequality and injustice it ‘speaks truth to power’. It engages in advocacy for weaker publics, for also publics can be exclusive. 8. Against a capitalist globalization and the fatal consequences for its victims such a church not only has a ‘preferential option for the poor’, the suffering, the marginalized, ‘the least of them’. It even shifts its concept of mission as a movement from the centre to the periphery to a ‘mission from the margins’. This concept – and here I quote the World Council of Churches’ latest mission affirmation Together towards Life – seeks to be an alternative missional movement against the perception that mission can only be done by the powerful to the powerless, by the rich to the poor, or by the privileged to the marginalized. Such approaches can contribute to oppression and marginalization. Mission from the margins recognizes that being in the centre means having access to systems that lead to one’s rights, freedom and individuality being affirmed and respected; living on the margins means exclusion from justice and dignity. Living on the margins, however, can provide its own lessons. People on the margins have agency, and can often see what, from the centre, is out of view. People on the margins, living in vulnerable positions, often know what exclusionary forces are threatening their survival and can best discern the urgency of their struggles; people in positions of privilege have much to learn from the daily struggles of people living in marginal conditions.49

The above list is not meant to be exhaustive. These and similar characterizations help to describe more clearly the characteristics and tasks of the church in the limelight of the public square. Instead of isolation and a ghetto mentality emerges – what Robert Schreiter has called – a ‘new Catholicity’.50 This new Catholicity emphasizes the universality and locality of the church. It focuses on the fullness of the faith in cross-border, transnational, intercultural and inter-religious communication. It represents a both internally and externally, communicative ecclesiology that is geared towards understanding. This corresponds to a church that is committed in a discursive and inclusive manner to working in and for the world. Thus, the church in the limelight of the public square moves on to inviting the public(s) into the church’s square. 49

50

World Council of Churches, Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes, 5 September 2012, accessed 28 February 2016, https://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/ documents/commissions/mission-and-evangelism/together-towards-life-mission-and-evangelismin-changing-landscapes, no. 38. Robert J. Schreiter, Die neue Katholizität: Globalisierung und die Theologie (Frankfurt a.M.: IKOVerlag, 1997); Robert J. Schreiter, ‘Globalisierung, Postmoderne und die neue Katholizität’, Ökumenische Rundschau 53 (2004), 139–359.

The Church in the Limelight of the Public Square: An Alternative Community? 259

Bibliography Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2006), The Civil Sphere (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Arens, Edmund (1992), Christopraxis: Grundzüge theologischer Handlungstheorie (Freiburg i.Br./Basel/Wien: Herder). Arens, Edmund (1989), Bezeugen und Bekennen: Elementare Handlungen des Glaubens (Düsseldorf: Patmos). Bopp, Karl (2011), ‘ “Missionarisch Kirche sein” angesichts fremder Religionen und Kulturen. Praktisch-theologische Überlegungen zum Missionsauftrag der Kirche heute’, Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift, 120: 357–69. Eicher, Peter (1987), ‘Kirche als Kontrastgesellschaft?’, Orientierung, 51: 230–2. Fraser, Nancy (2007), ‘Die Transnationalisierung der Öffentlichkeit: Legitimität und Effektivität der öffentlichen Meinung in einer postwestfälischen Welt’, in Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit, ed. Peter Niesen and B. Herborth (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp), 224–53. Fraser, Nancy (1990), ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’, Social Text, 25: 56–80. Große Kracht, Herman-Josef (1997), Kirche in ziviler Gesellschaft: Studien zur Konfliktgeschichte von katholischer Kirche und demokratischer Öffentlichkeit (Paderborn: Schöningh). Habermas, Jürgen (1996), Die Einbeziehung des Anderen. Studien zur politischen Theorie (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Habermas, Jürgen (1992), Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Habermas, Jürgen (1989 [1962]), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press). German original: Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Neuwied et. al.: Luchterhand). Hauerwas, Stanley (1981), A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University Press). Hauerwas, Stanley (1991), After Christendom? How the Church is to behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press). Hauerwas, Stanley (2001), With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press). Huber, Wolfgang (1973), Kirche und Öffentlichkeit (Stuttgart: Klett Verlag). Lohfink, Gerhard (2004), Die Realität der Massenmedien (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 3rd edn). Lohfink, Gerhard (1982), Wie hat Jesus Gemeinde gewollt? Zur gesellschaftlichen Dimension des christlichen Glaubens (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder). Luhmann, Niklas (1997), Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp). Marty, Martin E. (1974), ‘Reinhold Niebuhr: Public Theology and the American Experience’, The Journal of Religion, 54: 332–59. Milbank, John (1990), Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford/ Cambridge, MA: Blackwell). Neuhaus, Richard John (1984), The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans). Rasmusson, Arne (1994), The Church as Polis: From Political Theology to Theological Politics as Exemplified by Jürgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas (Lund: University Press).

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Index of Names Agamben, Giorgio  24 Agha, Asif  91, 98 Ahn, Byung-Moo  38 n.40 Alexander, Jeffrey  9 Allen, John  233 n.33 Amaladoss, Michael  55 Anastasius 239 Anderson, E. Byron  70 n.25 Aquinas, Thomas  94, 106 n.11, 107–9, 125, 127 Arbuckle, Gerald  79 n.5 Arens, Edmund  65, 133 n.58 Areto, Andrew  30 n.13 Ariarajah, Wesley  56 Arokiasamy, Soosai  54 Asad, Talal  214 n.33 Augustine of Hippo  ix, 9, 94, 220, 238, 240–6 Bach, Johann Sebastian  96 Bacon, Francis  92 Bailey, Garrick  64 n.6 Balthasar, Hans Urs von  viii, 94 Barber, Daniel Collucciello  123 Barth, Karl  129, 145, 228 Bauerschmidt, Frederick  120 Bedford-Strohm, Heinrich  37 Bell, Daniel  239 Benedict XVI  248 nn.2, 3 256 n.42 Benjamin, Walter  7, 160, 166 Berger, Brigitte  66 n.15 Berger, Peter  66, 66 n.15 Berlant, Lauren  191 Berry, Wendell  126, 128, 132, 137 Best, Stephen  203 n.20 Bevans, Stephen  47 Bhabha, Homi  85 n.37 Billman, Kathleen D.  232 n.32 Boersma, Hans  23 n.22 Boeve, Lieven  vii, 9, 21 n.18, 46 n.3, 106 n.12, 120 n.15, 132 n.46, 135 n.67, 186 n.54

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich  104, 228 Bopp, Karl  257 n.47 Borgman, Erik  v, 1, 4–5, 22, 102, 112 n.34, 132 n.46 Botticelli, Alessandro di Marianno  96 Bouma-Prediger, Steven  67 n.18 Bourdieu, Pierre  93 n.4 Bramly, Serge  92 Breitenberg, E. Harold Jr.  183 Brock, Brian  226 n.4 Brueggemann, Walter  231, 232 n.31 Buchanan, Pat  119 Bull, Nicky  135 Bultmann, Rudolf  47, 104, 110 Bunluen, Mansap Bishop  50 Burnet, Leo  221 Burrell, David  ix, 125 n.4, 127 n.10, 129, 129 n.23 Busch, Eberhard  133 Calhoun, Craig  17 Camus, Albert  227 n.12, 151 Caputo, John  71 Carter, Kameron J.  196 n.8, 200 Casanova, José  33 Castorp, Hans  160, 162–3, 168, 169 Cavanaugh, William  vii, 8, 114 n.1, 115 n.4, 209, 238, 243 Chang, Kyung  30 n.14, 81 Chaplin, Jonathan  35 n.34 Chauvet, Louis-Marie  4, 68, 69, 71, 73 Cheng, Anne Anlin  198–200 Chenu, Marie-Dominique  22, 94, 175 Chung, Hyun-Kyung  83 Cicero, Marcus Tullius  24 Coakley, Sarah  99 n.19 Cohen, Jean L.  30 n.13 Collier, Charles  241 Cone, James H.  192, 193 n.5, 194 Congar, Yves  22, 94 Conradie, Ernst M.  67 n.16 Considine, Kevin  4, 77, 77 n.1

262

Index of Names

Cross, Richard  147 n.15 Crossley, Nick  29 n.8, 65 n.11 Cruz, Gemma Tulud  55 Cupitt, Don  16 Cyril of Jerusalem  98, 99, 115 n.3 Daniel, Joshua  66 Davis, Angela  74 Day, Juliette  70 n.26 D’Costa, Gavin  239 Deane-Drummond, Celia  9, 127, 136 n.74 De Certeau, Michel  25 De Lubac, Henri  20, 94 Demacopoulos, George  118 n.12 Depoortere, Frederiek  ii, vi, 1, 21 n.18, 173 De Vries, Hent  217 DeWalt, Billie R.  79 n.8 DeWalt, Kathleen M.  79 n.9 Doherty, Linda  97 n.12 Dondeyne, Albert  175 Dorr, Donal  136 n.74 Dubarle, Dominique  175 Durber, Susan  134 n.62 Duyvendak, Jan Willem  63 Eagleton, Terry  160, 161, 167, 170, 171 Edelman, Lee  199, 200 Eicher, Peter  253 n.24 Eklund, Rebekah  226 n.4 Elgendy, Rick  66 Elliot, Alison  34 Erp, Stephan van  ii, iv, v, 1, 2, 9, 13, 21 n.18 Fanon, Franz  195 Feather, Howard  64 n.8 Fiig, Christina  30 n.13 Finkenzeller, Josef  173 n.1 Finlayson, James G  30 n.11 Fitzgerald, Timothy  214n.33 Flynn, Gabriel  20 n.15 Ford, David  39, 40 Foucault, Michael  95, 100, 119 Francis  8, 57, 122, 128 n.16, 225–32, 236, 248, 255 Fraser, Nancy  29, 30, 33, 252 Freud, Sigmund  96 Fumaroli, Marc  218 n.48 Fung, Raymond  84 n.29

Gadamer, Hans-Georg  47, 94 Ganzevoort, Ruard  16 Garcia-Rivera, Alejandro  80 Garrigan, Siobhán  vii, viii, 3, 62, 65 n.12 13 Geertz, Clifford  79 Gelasius 238 George, Rosemary Marongoly  69 Gewirth, Alan  154 n.36 Gillespie, Michael Allen  102 n.3 Girard, René  viii–ix, 170 Gispert-Sauch, George  57 n.55 Glatz, Carol  231 n.30 Gondreau, Paul  108 n.18 Gorringe, Tim  133, 135 n.70, 72 n.33 Graham, Elaine  16, 17, 19, 72, 146 n.10 Greenblatt, Stephen  96 n.10 Gregory, Eric  240 Große Kracht, Herman-Josef  254 n.29 Gruchy, John de  38 Guroian, Vigen  114 n.1 Habermas, Jürgen  vii, 3, 9, 18, 28–31, 33, 35, 41, 65, 152 n.33, 153 n.34, 250–2, 257 Hale, Christopher J.  57, 59 Hall, John Douglas  227–31 Ham, Sok-Hon  86 Hamalis, Perry T.  122 n.21 Hammarskjöld, Dag  103 n.5 Hanson, Paul  39 Haquin, André  106 n.12 Harasta, Eva  226 n.4 Harney, Stefano  201 n.17 Harrison, Carol  220 n.59 Hauerwas, Stanley  18, 114 n.1, 115 n.5, 116 n.6, 144–5, 239, 253 Heaney, James  72 Hegel, Friedrich  195 Heidegger, Martin  47, 72, 73, 143, 227 n.12 Heschel, Abraham Joshua  229 n.21 Higton, Mike  35 n.34 Hilkert, Mary-Catherine  50 n.20, 131, 165, 169 Hofstadter, Douglas  214 Hoogeveen, Piet  49 n.14, 164 n.12 Horan, Daniel. P.  147 n.13 Horkheimer, Max  152 n.32, 166 Hornsby-Smith, Michael  27

Index of Names How, Alan  29 n.7 Howells, Herbert  92 Hübenthal, Christoph  viii, 6, 143 Huber, Wolfgang  248, 249 n.6 Hugh, St. Victor  93, 98, 99 Hughes, John  18 Hume, David  196 Huntington, Samuel  117 Ilo, Stan  231 n.29 Irvine, Judith I.  97 n.16 Joh, Wonhee Anne  82, 86 John XXIII  104, 231 John Paul II  255 Johnson, Elizabeth  232 Jones, Arthur C.  193 n.5 Jung, Carl  82 Kahn, Jonathon  196 n.10 Kant, Emmanuel  17, 32, 53, 81, 102, 159, 164, 166, 169, 196 Kasper, Walter  108 n.20 Katongole, Emmanuel  vi, viii, 8, 225 Kee-Fook Chia, Edmund  v, 3, 45 Kellner, Hansfried  66 n.15 Kennedy, Philip  28 n.2, 31, 48, 127 n.12, 128, 132 n.46, 136 n.76, 161 n.7 Kerr, Fergus  125 n.4 Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye  228, 230 n.25, 169 Kihlstrom, John F.  97 n.13 Kim, Chi-Ha  82 Kim, Grace Ji-Sun  83 Kim, Heup-Young  56 n.54 Kim, Hyung Kon  230 n.27 Kim, Sebastian  v, viii, 2, 28, 34 n.31, 146 n.11 Kircher, Athanasius  93, 114, 115 Kirill, Patriarch  117 Kirwan, Michael  v, viii, 6, 7, 159, 238 Klee, Paul  160 Klein, Melanie  82 Klein, Naomi  221, 222 Koller, Andreas  30 Koo, Jeong-Woo  30 n.14 Koopman, Nico  34 n.30 Koyama, Kosuke  55

263

Krings, Hermann  148 n.18 Küster, Volker  39 Laksana, Albetus Bagus  57 n.56 Lasch, Christopher  191 n.1 Lathrop, Gordon  70 n.27 Latour, Bruno  96 n.11, 112 n.34 Lear, Jonathan  197 n.13 Lee, Archie  56 Lee, Hak Joon  15 n.5 Lee, Jae-Hoon  82 Lefebure, Leo D.  40 n.49 Levinas, Emmanuel  7, 150, 159, 164 Limon, J. J.  170 n.23 Lincoln, Abraham  249 Lipsey, Roger  103 n.5 Litvinoff, Miles  134 nn.60, 61 Lloyd, Vincent  iv, ix, 7, 8, 191, 196 n.10, 203 n.21 Lohfink, Gerhard  253 n.24 Lombard, Peter  125 Lossky, Vladimir  123 Luhmann, Niklas  9, 250, 251 Lukács, Georg  161, 169 Luther, Martin  93, 228, 238 MacIntyre, Alasdair  119, 121, 122 Malits, Elena  129 n.23 Manchata, Deenabandhu  50 Mann, Thomas  160–3, 168, 169 Mansap, Bunluen  50 Marion, Jean-Luc  8, 211, 218–20, 221, 222, 223 Martin, David  17 Martin, Trayvon  195 Marty, Martin E.  249 n.4 Mathewes, Charles  144 n.3, 239 Matsuoka, Fumitaka  85 n.36 Maximus Confessor  121, 123 Mayer, Annemarie  vi, ix, 9, 248 Mbembe, Achille  195 McBride, Jennifer  239 McGuckin, John  115 n.3 McManus, Kathleen Anne  ii, 77 n.1, 136 n.76 Melanchthon, Philip  93, 98 Mello, Anthony de  55 Merton, Thomas  111 Mettepenningen, Jürgen  20

264

Index of Names

Metz, Johann Baptist  161, 167, 180 Michaud, Derek  230 n.27 Migliore, Daniel L.  232 n.32 Milbank, John  18, 19, 22, 100, 114 n.1, 119, 147 nn.12, 16, 148–9, 239, 253 Miller, Vincent J.  120 Mitchell, Nathan  70 Moltmann-Wendel, Elisabeth  40 n.49 Monro, Anita  70 Moten, Fred  197 n.11, 201 Mouffe, Chantal  62 Mowat, Harriet  63 n.5 Müller, Daniela  146 n.9 Mulombe, Sébastien Muyengo  243 n.35 Munzihirwa, Christophe  8, 225, 232–6 Murray, Paul  20 n.15 Mwa Lubongo, Elizabeth  236 Nacpil, Emerito P.  50 n.22 Neuhaus, Richard John  9, 249 Neville, David J.  39 Ngabo, Albert  234n.37, 236 Nicironge, Deogratias Mirindi Ya  234 n.37, 236 n.44 Niebuhr, Helmut Richard  17 Niebuhr, Reinhold  240, 249 Nietzsche, Friedrich  161, 163 Nixon, David  67 n.17 Nongbri, Brent  214 n.33 Northcott, Michael S.  125 n.1 Obama, Barack  248 O’Meara, Janet  131 Oosterhuis, Huub  49 n.14, 164 n.12 Oppenheimer, Mark  242 n.22 Painadath, Sebastian  48 Papanikolaou, Aristotle  v, ix, 5, 114, 115 n.2, 117 n.8, 118 n.12, 122 n.21, 123 n.24 Papkova, Irena  117 n.9, 119 n.14 Parekh, Bhikhu  36 n.25 Park, Andrew Sung  82, 85 Patterson, Sue  134 n.63 Paul VI  254, 257 n.44 Péguy, Charles  234 n.35 Pemberton, Glenn  232 n.31 Peoples, James  64 n.6

Perdue, Leo G.  40 n.49 Phan, Peter C.  50, 174, 175 Phillips, Elizabeth  vi, ix, 8, 9, 15 n.5, 238, 239 n.3 Pickstock, Catherine  147 n.12 Pieris, Aloysius  58, 59 Pinches, Charles  144 Portier, William R.  127 n.11 Potter, Harry  96, 97 n.12 Poulsom, Martin G.  v, ix, 5, 9, 125, 127 n.9, 129 n.25, 130 n.35, 132 n.50, 135 n.65, 164 Putin, Vladimir  123 Rad, Gerhard von  40 n.49 Rahner, Karl  20, 120, 167, 168, 175 Rasmusson, Arne  253 Rego, Aloysius  77 n.1 Reinelt, Janelle  30 n.13 Rheims, Bettina  92 Ricoeur, Paul  96, 181 Ritzer, George  216 Robinson, John A. T.  5, 20, 22, 103–5, 106 Romanides, John  119 Rosales, Gaudencio B.  51, 52 n.33 Ross, Susan A.  106 n.12 Rousseau, Jean Jacques  250 Rowling, J. K.  96 Rusbridger, Alan  135 n.68, 136 n.72 Ruysbroeck, Jan van  159 Said, Edward  79 n.3 Saliers, Don E.  70 n.28 Sartre, Jean-Paul  7, 151, 160, 161, 163 Schillebeeckx, Edward  vii–ix, 1–9, 13, 14, 20–3, 25, 28, 31–3, 35, 38, 39, 41, 45–9, 51–5, 57–60, 65 n.5, 69, 70, 71, 77, 78, 81, 83, 84, 85–6, 94, 95, 103–11, 119–21, 123, 125 n.4, 127–33, 134, 135, 136, 137, 143, 144, 149–52, 155–6, 159–62, 163, 164, 165, 166–71, 173–5, 177, 178–87, 189, 192, 201–3, 209–11, 217, 223, 227, 256 Schlabach, Gerald  241 Schleiermacher, Friedrich  94 Schoof, Ted Mark  109 n.25 Schreiter, Robert J.  31, 48, 53, 79, 80, 81 n.13, 258

Index of Names Schwarz, Regina  25 Scott, Peter M.  239 n.4 Scotus, Johannes Duns  147, 148 Semler, Johann Salomo  250 Shakespeare, William  96 Simon, Derek  77 n.1 Sison, Antonio  77 n.1 Smit, Dirkie  34 Smith, James K. A.  103, 239 Snijdewind, Hadewych  59 Sölle, Dorothee  63 Son, Chang-Hee  81 Song, Choan-Seng  55 Spadaro, Antonio  229 n.20, 231 n.30 Spillers, Hortense  195 Staal, Frits  64 n.7 Stackhouse, Max  17, 34, 146 n.11, 249 n.4 Steiner, George  160, 161, 170 Stirk, Peter M. R.  29 n.7 Stoeckl, Kristina  117 n.10, 122 n.19 Stout, Jeffrey  116 n.6, 154 n.35 Strauss, Claude-Levi  96 Sugirtharajah, R. S.  50 n.24 Suh, Nam-Dong  82 n.19 Swinton, John  63 n.5 Tan, Jonathan  56 Tanner, Kathryn  67, 68 n.20, 70, 79 n.5, 134 Tanner, Norman  174 n.4, 175 n.8 Taylor, Charles  8, 17 n.9, 97, 100, 102, 103, 122, 211–18, 220, 222 Teng, Michael  77 n.1 Thatcher, Margaret  119 Theissen, Gerd  39

265

Thielicke, Helmut  249 n.6 Thieman, Ronald Frank  146 n.11 Thiselton, Anthony  44 Thomson, Heather  41 n.53 Tillar, Elizabeth K.  77 n.1, 159 n.2 Tonge, Jonathan  63 n.2 Tornquist, Paul  249 n.6 Torrell, Jean-Pierre  107 n.16 Tracy, David  33, 78 n.2, 129 Verweyen, Hansjürgen  156 Viola, Bill  92 Walsh, Bryan J.  67 n.18 Wannenwetsch, Bernd  73, 222 Ward, Graham  v, x, 4, 72, 91, 95 n.9, 145, 147 n.12, 170 Warren, Calvin L.  197 n.12 Weber, Max  211, 214, 216 n.44, 221 White, Patrick  92 Wilderson, Frank  195 n.6 Wilfred, Felix  45, 53, 55 Wilhelm, Georg  196 Williams, Rowan  19, 240, 35, 36 Wittgenstein, Ludwig  119 Wolf, Ernst  133 Wolterstorff, Nicholas  226 n.3 Wynter, Sylvia  195 Yannaras, Christos  119 Yoder, John Howard  9, 240–6 Yoo, Yani  83 n.24 Zenz, Toni  188–9 Žižek, Slavoj  210 Zuckerberg, Mark Eliot  248

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