»What is Human?«: Theological Encounters with Anthropology [1 ed.] 9783666531194, 9783525531198

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Eve-Marie Becker/Jan Dietrich/Bo Kristian Holm (eds.)

“What is Human?” Theological Encounters with Anthropology

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

With 4 Figures Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-666-53119-4

You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our Website: www.v-r.de © 2017, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting by Konrad Triltsch GmbH, Ochsenfurt. Printed on aging-resistant paper.

Contents

Preface

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Eve-Marie Becker/Jan Dietrich/Bo Kristian Holm What is Human? Theological Encounters with Anthropology: Introduction to the Volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1. Biblical Anthropology: Historical and Theoretical Quests Jan Dietrich Human Relationality and Sociality in Ancient Israel: Mapping the Social Anthropology of the Old Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Line Søgaard Christensen Homo Repetitivus and Anthropotechnics: Exercise Systems, Elite Practitioners, and Teaching Missions in the Hebrew Bible . . . . . . . . .

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Bernhard Lang New Light on the Levites: The Biblical Group that Invented Belief in Life after Death in Heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Ole Davidsen Blended Reciprocation: Matt 5:38–42 in Narrative Perspective

87

. . . . . .

Eve-Marie Becker The Anxiety (Sorge) of the Human Self: Paul’s Notion of μέριμνα

. . . . 121

Jacob P.B. Mortensen Anthropology or Ethnic Stereotyping in Paul? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

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Contents

René Falkenberg The Old and New Human Being: A Pauline Concept in Manichaean Texts 155

2. Anthropology in Christian History and Culture: Systematic and Ethical Perspectives Svend Andersen The Golden Rule: An Anthropological Universal? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Bjørn Rabjerg Evil Understood as the Absence of Freedom: Outlines of a Lutheran Anthropology and Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen Anthropology between Homo Sacer and Homo Oeconomicus: Luther’s Theological Anthropology of Human Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Troels Nørager ‘The God Within’ and Religious Self-Reliance: Emerson’s Radical Interpretation of Christian Anthropology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Maria Odgaard Møller What is Human in Human Beings? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 David Bugge Unlike Hitler, God is Not Human: On Karl Ove Knausgård’s Anthropology and Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Benedicte Hammer Præstholm Human in the Flesh: Gendered Anthropology between Theology and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Ulrik Becker Nissen What is a Human Body? Moving Towards a Responsive Body . . . . . . . 311

3. Current Contextual Anthropologies: Perspectives from Church and Society Peter Lodberg The Neo-Liberal Human Being in the Competitive State – A Sociotheological Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

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Contents

Johannes Nissen ‘Something for Something’ or ‘Something for Nothing’: Theological Reflections on Diaconia, Welfare Society, and Human Dignity . . . . . . 357 Ulla Schmidt/Kirstine Helboe Johansen Theological Anthropologies in a Neighbourhood Church

. . . . . . . . . 379

Jakob Egeris Thorsen Modern and Orthodox – the Transformation of Christianity in Atitlán and the Marginalization of Maya Traditionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 Editors, List of Contributors and Abstracts

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

Indices Ancient and Modern Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 Ancient Expressions and Termini Technici

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453

Ancient and Modern Persons and Authors

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455

Preface

The present volume is the result of an interdisciplinary project within the Department of Theology at Aarhus University. The project was related to the research programme: “Christianity and Theology in Culture and Society: Formation – Reformation – Transformation”, running from 2012–2016 at the Institute of Culture and Society, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University. The idea was to bring together scholars from all disciplines of Theology at Aarhus University in order to stimulate and coordinate disciplinary and interdisciplinary research cooperation. One substantial fruit of this endeavor can be found in the form of the present volume. The editors of this volume would like to make some initial acknowledgements: First of all, we would like to thank all contributors for engaging in this project, fruitfully contributing to collaborative and interdisciplinary work in the field of Theology. Second, we are thankful that the publishing house Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht offered us the opportunity to publish this volume: We would like to express our special thanks to Jörg Persch and Moritz Reissing (both of Göttingen) for their professional guidance during the publication process. Third, since all contributions went through a process of double blind external peer-reviewing, we would like to thank all peer-reviewers for their immediate and instructive cooperation. Fourth, the editorial process of this volume, especially the process of copyediting, was financed by Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond (AUFF), whom we would like to thank for its generous support. Finally, we express our thanks to stud. theol. Niels Peter Gubi and our colleague René Falkenberg (both of Aarhus), for their careful assistance during the editorial process. It is our hope and wish that this volume – beyond discussing and tentatively answering the question: What is Human? – stimulates further cooperative re-

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Preface

search within Theology and thus paves the way for other imitators: the diversity of disciplines and research discourses which theologians stand in does not only necessitate ‘basic research’ within the various fields of academic Theology, but also enables researchers within Theology to develop a colorful and meaningful picture of how theologians successfully can engage collaboratively and interdisciplinarily in similar quests and challenges. The editors Aarhus, 31 July 2016

Eve-Marie Becker/Jan Dietrich/Bo Kristian Holm

What is Human? Theological Encounters with Anthropology: Introduction to the Volume

I Anthropology is a long-serving, yet highly contemporary field of study with an abundance of approaches, perspectives, methods, hermeneutics, heuristics, and sub-subjects. Like every discipline of our modern sciences, anthropology emerged from the study of theology and philosophy, becoming both a discipline in its own right and forming sub-subjects within other disciplines (including theology and philosophy).1 Within the discipline of theology, anthropological perspectives were for a long time impacted by philosophical anthropology as well as by contemporary needs and theological quests. This fact is most clearly mirrored in how the German philosopher Max Scheler (1915–19) described the study of anthropology as the crucial field of philosophy: In a certain sense all of the central problems of philosophy can be said to lead us back to the questions of what man is and what the metaphysical position and status is which he occupies within the totality of being, world and God.2

Scheler’s words – written at the height of and revised shortly after the First World War – summarize and intensify a key issue of Western philosophy and theology. For millennia, speculations about the human were a continuous matter of admiration or of fear, as Sophocles (Antig 322) or Paul (Rom 7) show. Ancient historians like Herodotus and Thucydides gave shape to narratives in which they elaborated, more or less implicitly, their view of what is human and thus developed Western anthropology.3 The issue of anthropology was frequently brought up in explicitly question-like form, expressed in the simple phrase, “What is a human?” – from Plato’s τί δέ ποτ᾽ ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος (Tht 174b) and 1 For an overview of different aspects and paradigms of anthropology and its sub-subjetcs cf., e. g., Wulf, Anthropologie; Bohlken/Thies, Handbuch. 2 Scheler, Idea, 184. 3 Cf. Will, Herodot, 184ff. Not accidentally, Pannenberg, Mensch, 95ff. reflects about the human also in terms of “Der Mensch als Geschichte”.

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similar reflections in Psalm 8:5 LXX τί ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος?,4 up to Immanuel Kant’s ambition of designing human destiny (“Bestimmung des Menschen”) as the vanishing point of philosophy in sensu cosmopolitico. In his letter to the Göttingen theologian Carl Friedrich Stäudlin, written in 1793, Kant says: Mein schon seit geraumer Zeit gemachter Plan der mir obliegenden Bearbeitung des Feldes der reinen Philosophie ging auf die Auflösung der drei Fragen: (1) Was kann ich wissen? (Metaphysik) (2) Was soll ich thun? (Moral) (3) Was darf ich hoffen? (Religion): welcher zuletzt die vierte folgen sollte: Was ist der Mensch? (Anthropologie; über die ich schon seit mehr, als zwanzig Jahren jährlich ein Collegium gelesen habe).5

Scheler’s dictum, which brings us back to more recent times, not only mirrors how philosophy dealt over the course of time with metaphysics, moral, and religion in the light of anthropological quests – it can also be considered as paradigmatic for what philosophy and theology subsequently became and were constantly concerned with in twentieth-century academia and culture. Depending on how we describe and define the “human”, we create images of God and conceptualize ethics and projections of communitarian life. As Western philosophy initiated, the modern history of research in and beyond theology is widely determined by anthropological quests. Old and New Testament approaches to biblical anthropology, for instance, tended to place it in close relationship to German philosophical anthropology,6 associated especially with the names of Herder and Kant, and later those of Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen.7 In New Testament studies, Rudolf Bultmann most prominently made philosophical anthropology the basic heuristic approach to biblical anthropology. In his “Preliminary Remarks” on Paul, who plays the most central part in the “Theology of the New Testament”, Rudolf Bultmann pointed out how anthropology, Christology, and soteriology in Paul’s thinking always coincide.8 Such a claim refers to object-based language (“objektsprachlich”), and is thus theological in nature. This claim of concurrence directly impacted textual interpretation. In his exegesis of Romans 7, Bultmann (1932) consequently asked:

4 ‫ מה־אנוש‬Ps 8,5; Job 7,17; cf. ‫ מה־אדם‬Ps 144,3. 5 Kant, AA XI, 429. Quoted according to: Brandt, Bestimmung, 102f. 6 Next to philosophical anthropology, dialectical theology had a major impact on biblical anthropology, cf., e. g., the classic work by Hans Walter Wolff (Wolff, Anthropology). For a critical appraisal, cf. Janowski, Wolff. 7 This is still true for some works from the twenty-first century as well, cf., e. g., Gerhards, Conditio Humana. 8 Cf. Bultmann, Theology, 190f.

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wer ist das Ich, das hier redet? Ist es der Mensch unter dem Gesetz, oder ist es der Glaubende? 9

Even though Bultmann’s approach especially to Paul was criticized at an early stage – as indicated first by the famous debate with Ernst Käsemann10 and more recently in Pauline studies yet again underlined by a historical point of view widely established by the so-called “new perspective” on Paul and its impact on New Testament exegesis11 – Bultmann’s interest in theological anthropology can still be seen as an important attempt to unveil the anthropological relevance of Christian theology. Not accidentally, Bultmann’s concept finds its place in the Protestant tradition of reading Paul.12 However, we cannot simply limit ourselves to Bultmann’s model. Further steps in developing the field of anthropology in and beyond New Testament studies need to be taken.13 And despite the Lutheran bias in Pauline studies in the twentieth century, the Reformation marked a turn in the history of anthropology that must still be taken into consideration, as it still contains elements that cut across dominant and powerful perceptions in contemporary culture. A major new perspective on the human being was opened in the history of the Western idea of the human being by the Reformation’s radicalization of the central Christian ideas of the divinity of the human Jesus of Nazareth and the humanity of Christ.14 Both with regard to the Roman Church and with regard to the humanist critics, the understanding of the human being was deliberately put at the very center of this perspective, both by the Lutheran reformers and by their opponents ( Jacobus Latomus of Leuven on the sinful nature of the human being, and Erasmus of Rotterdam on human free will).15 The Reformation adds to our 9 Bultmann, Römer, 28. On the line of interpretation reaching from Bultmann to the new perspective (Ed P. Sanders), cf. Westerholm, Perspectives, 150ff. 10 Cf., especially: Käsemann, Anthropologie; on the debate between Bultmann and Käsemann: Lindemann, Anthropologie. 11 In the frame of the new perspective it is, for instance, widely rejected that the discourse on the law (nomos) has its conceptual roots in Pauline anthropology. On this, still see the instructive anthology from 1996: Dunn, Paul. Representatives of the so-called “radical new perspective” currently express the shift of anthropological interest by stating: “Paul’s primary anthropological categories are Jews and Gentiles”: Eisenbaum, Paul, 237. On this quest, see also: Horn, Juden. 12 From this point of view, critical discussions about the “Lutheran Paul” (e. g., Bachmann, Paulusperspektive) might themselves be valued critically. 13 Specifically, on Paul and anthropology, cf. in this volume the contributions by: Eve-Marie Becker and Jacob Mortensen. For a Pauline concept in Manichaean texts cf. in this volume the contribution by René Falkenberg. 14 Cf. Johann Anselm Steiger’s article on the role of the communication of attributes in Luther’s theology, which shows how late patristic Christology formed the whole of the reformer’s theology, including anthropology. Steiger, Communicatio. 15 Cf. Luther, Rationis Latominae confutatio; idem, De servo arbitrio.

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discussion perspectives on the human being that still seem relevant in answering the question “What is human?” According to Martin Luther, the human being was an animal rationale habens cor fingens (a rational being with an imagining heart).16 For this reason, the task of theology was to replace the false images with the right ones. Human rationality became an ambiguous phenomenon, praised on the one hand as something almost divine, but on the other condemned as the devil’s whore because rationality was always used to establish false pictures and worldviews, especially of relations with God and with fellow human beings. What a human being is differs according to perspective. According to the philosophical definition, the human being is a rational, sentient and corporeal being (animal rationale, sensitivum, corporeum).17 Theologically seen, the human being is, however, that being that is justified by faith (hominem iustificari fide).18 The essence of the human being lies not in the human itself, but in this: that it is justified by faith alone, not through works. This distinction opens up the possibility of a critical perspective upon ideologies that seek the perfection and essence of the human being in human achievements, and reduces human interaction to economic patterns.19 Reformation anthropology raises, furthermore, the question whether central arguments from the Reformation building upon the tradition of natural law can be reformulated in a post-metaphysical setting as a universal ethical norm.20

II As indicated by the subtitle of the present volume, theological encounters with anthropology always take place in critical contestation with the particular “Menschenbild” ([public] understanding of human nature) 21 expressed by current philosophy and its neighboring academic disciplines, stimulated as they are by trends and developments in contemporary culture and society. Today, Kant’s analytical idea of defining human destiny has been transformed into the phenomenological paradigm of the description of the human (“Beschreibung des Menschen”), found most prominently, for instance, in Hans Blumenberg.22 It 16 Martin Luther’s Lectures in Genesis: Luther, Enarrationes in Genesin, WA 42, 348.38. Luther’s view of the human being converges here to some extent with the use of the concept of “social imaginaries”, used e. g. by Charles Taylor. Cf. Taylor, Age, 171–176. 17 First thesis in Luther’s Disputatio de homine, 175.4. 18 Luther, Disputatio de homine, 176.34f. 19 Cf. in this volume especially the contributions by: Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen as well as Peter Lodberg. 20 Cf. in this volume the contribution by Svend Andersen. 21 See for this translation: Zichy, Menschenbild, 249. 22 Cf. Blumenberg, Beschreibung.

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thus seems that not only the field of anthropology but also its claims are under constant revision. Next to philosophical anthropology, other forms of anthropological approaches also emerge and impact upon theological anthropology: physical and biological anthropology (with their influence on archaeology, including “biblical” archaeology), as well as body discourses, feminist anthropology, and gender studies (taken up by all theological disciplines),23 cultural and social anthropology as well as historical psychology (taken up especially in the field of biblical exegesis),24 the history of mentalities and historical anthropology (taken up especially by exegetes and Church historians),25 narrative anthropology (taken up not only by exegetes, but also by systematic theologians),26 cognitive anthropology, and also evolutionary anthropology (taken up by scholars working on the axial age).27 In the twenty-first century, when “big data” and computeroperated life seem to be replacing human action and face-to-face interaction globally, the quest for “What is human?” has become even more pressing. It is against this background that contemporary theology and contemporary humanities are – possibly more than ever – being forced to reflect on their genuine contribution to the discourse on human self-understanding. As a scholarly discipline, theology sees itself partly in cooperation, partly in competition with the humanities. It is in any case an academic discipline in its own right, capable of formulating its own specific role, while modeling both a general contemporary understanding of studies in anthropology and an interpretive view of the human and of humanity. Academic theology especially takes the intellectual resources given by Christian religion and culture into account when revisiting and discussing contemporary quests and concepts of anthropology.28 Theology, so to speak, comes with a master narrative of its own in its approach to debating and defining the “human” and “humanity”. Again, the question raised in Ps 8:5 and related texts (e. g. Sir 18:8) acts as a magnifying glass for why and how biblical anthropology came into being in the first place: 23 Cf. in this volume the contributions by: Ulrik Becker Nissen and Benedicte Hammer Præstholm. For a biblical approach cf., e. g., Schroer/Staubli, Body Symbolism. 24 Cf. in this volume especially the contributions by: Jan Dietrich and Bernhard Lang. For cultural and social anthropology within Old and New Testament studies cf. furthermore, e. g., Rogerson, Anthropology, and Malina, New Testament. For historical psychology within biblical studies cf., e. g., Berger, Psychologie; Theißen, Theologie. 25 Cf., e. g., Janowski, Arguing, esp. 4–8, and Schribner, Popular Culture. 26 Cf. in this volume the contribution by David Bugge. 27 Cf. in this volume the contribution by Line Søgaard Christensen. For a general approach including ancient Israel cf. Bellah, Religion. 28 Cf. in this volume especially the contributions by: Bjørn Rabjerg, Troels Nørager, Maria Odgaard Møller, and David Bugge. Cf. already the critique of Pannenberg, Mensch, 95: “Die anthropologischen Wissenschaften mit ihren Bildern vom Menschen erreichen nie den konkreten Menschen”.

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“Die Frage nach dem Menschen bleibt … wie die Frage nach Gott vom Ansatz her eine offene Frage”.29 In many ways, the question “What is human?” might finally reflect no less than the daily sapiential attempt to find and to express existential self-assurance. Christian anthropology which grows from biblical varieties of thinking and writing about “Man” (including women) is deeply rooted in the Israelite and early Jewish view of the human, a vision that is placed temporally and historically in a personal relation coram Deo.30 Biblical anthropology is thus formed by a strong emphasis on the individual in interaction with cult and ethos.31 In earliest Christianity and even earlier,32 the aspect of individualization becomes even more important: it is now the figure of the individual apostle, missionary, author and “theologian” Paul,33 or a gospel writer like Matthew,34 who defines in a discursive fight how Christ-believing faith and ethics are to be interpreted and accomplished. The various processes by which Christianity has been gradually formed, reformed, and transformed during its history up to contemporary time, defining its particular societal duties (and especially the diakonia) in local as in global perspective,35 have to a large degree been coined by individual historical biographies and literary self-configurations. Already New Testament anthropology relies on the idea that the written text is composed by and addressed to humans.36 The human nature of Jesus Christ thereby functions programmatically as a critical point in discussion. Christian theology soon goes on to develop anthropology within various discursive frames, whether these are Christological, soteriological, ecclesiological, or ethical debates, within which anthropological language (e. g. metaphors) is used or (re-)shaped. Within these debates, various arguments are put forward, based on (shared philosophical) ideas of the human, or which directly serve the construction of anthropology in a philosophical sense. Consequently, a theological anthropology might be seen as a final – rather than an ultimate – outcome of how Christian narratives, rhetoric, arguments and

29 Frevel, Altes Testament, 7. 30 Cf. in this volume especially the contributions by: Jan Dietrich, Bernhard Lang, and Line Søgaard Christensen. 31 Typically is, e. g., the semantics of φρονεῖν: Becker, Begriff, 113ff. Cf. more generally on anthropology and ethics: Konradt/Schläpfer, Anthropologie. 32 For possibilities and limits of individualization in ancient Israel and the ancient Near East, cf. Dietrich, Individualität. 33 On Paul and anthropology, cf. in this volume the contributions by: Eve-Marie Becker and Jacob Mortensen. For a Pauline concept in Manichaean texts, cf. in this volume the contribution by René Falkenberg. 34 Cf. in this volume especially the contribution by Ole Davidsen. 35 Cf. in this volume especially the contributions by: Johannes Nissen, Ulla Schmidt/Kirstine Helboe Johansen, and Jakob Egeris Thorsen. 36 Cf. Wischmeyer, Neues Testament, 63ff.

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debates converge in order to establish a “concise teaching or doctrine about the human”. In other words, a Christian master narrative of the human. However, in modern and postmodern times, Christian thinking about the human is sustainably challenged in at least two directions. First, in accordance with modern biology, genetics, and evolution theory, the picture of how the human emerged has generated its own explanatory models, which can widely be seen in contradiction to Christian traditions (based on Gen 1–2). Secondly, in postmodern discourse, the body – which might function here as pars pro toto for the human – has been understood as an object of socio-economic interest and conflict; as a carrier of meaning it is constantly deciphered and deconstructed by socio-historical and sociological theory (cultural anthropology).37 The case of anthropology thus mirrors the plurality of what theology is de facto dealing with. In a religious historical sense, it leads us back to the Near Eastern origins of Christian culture; in a literary historical sense, it helps us to explain how narratives are shaped and metaphorical language is transformed and applied from ancient times onwards (literary anthropology); in a philosophical and ethical sense, the human is understood as an object of teaching and an agent of a mutual liability; and in a sociological sense, especially the physical expression of human existence – the body – is regarded as a constitutive factor of societal progress or decline. To study the plurality of research quests and methods which are related to the investigation and understanding of the human also means, finally, to reveal how theology as an academic field dealing with a critical self-reflection and evaluation of Christian religion and culture came into being long ago, and has developed ever since.

III The present volume is an interdisciplinary project within the Department of Theology at Aarhus University. It is the fruit of a three-year “research program” in which the discipline of theology was required to define its research profile in proximity to and distinction from other fields in the humanities. This research program was entitled “Christianity and Theology in Culture and Society: Formation – Reformation – Transformation”, and it drew together scholars at Aarhus University from all disciplines in theology in a cooperative effort to discuss the current challenges and strengths of the field within its academic and societal surroundings. Once again, the quest for (theological) anthropology has 37 Cf. in this volume especially the contributions by: Benedicte Praestholm and Ulrik Becker Nissen.

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revealed itself as the most fruitful “forum” or “meeting point” in elaborating the current state of theology in academia. The reader might himself/herself reflect whether he/she will discern a certain profile of an “Aarhus Theology” behind what the various authors in their contributions to the volume argue; indeed, by and beyond referring to K.E. Løgstrup.38 All of us certainly share the idea that theology plays a constitutive role when studying culture and society in their Danish, European, or global settings. And we certainly agree that current theology includes a range of research quests and traditions, methods, and debates which cover philological and historical as much as philosophical and ethical, sociological, and empirical tools. Contributions in this volume will thus not only (a) present the variety of studies related to the reading of the human (anthropology), or (b) provide insights into the rationale of Christian theology as such when dealing with anthropology; they will finally (c) also reflect on the specific tradition from which Christian anthropology originated, and the possible role that it alone might play in current academia and society. The contributions collected in this volume seek not only to reflect the state of the art in anthropological research from a theological point of view, but also to provide a theological interpretation of a question that seems more virulent than ever: “What is human?”

Bibliography Armgard, L.-O., Antropologi: problem i K.E. Lögstrups författerskap, Gleerups 1971. Bachmann, M. (ed.), Lutherische und neue Paulusperspektive: Beiträge zu einem Schlüsselproblem der gegenwärtigen exegetischen Diskussion (WUNT 182), Mohr Siebeck 2005. Becker, E.-M., Der Begriff der Demut bei Paulus, Mohr Siebeck 2015. Bellah, R.N., Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2011. Berger, K., Historische Psychologie des Neuen Testaments (SBS 146/147), Katholisches Bibelwerk 1995. Blumenberg, H., Beschreibung des Menschen: Aus dem Nachlaß, edited by M. Sommer, Suhrkamp 2006. Bohlken, E./C. Thies (eds.), Handbuch Anthropologie: Der Mensch zwischen Natur, Kultur und Technik, Metzler 2009. Brandt, R., Die Bestimmung des Menschen bei Kant, Felix Meiner 2007.

38 Cf. in this volume especially the contributions by: Svend Andersen, Maria Odgaard Møller, and Bjørn Rabjerg. One of the first doctoral theses on Løgstrup, signifcantly, is entitled Anthropology: Armgard, Antropologi. On Løgstrup-reception in German theological anthropology, cf., e.g., Pannenberg, Mensch, 58ff.

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Bultmann, R., Theology of the New Testament, translated by Kendrick Grobel, Vol. 1, SCM Press 1952. –, Römer 7 und die Anthropologie des Paulus (1932), in: R. Bultmann, Der Alte und der Neue Mensch in der Theologie des Paulus: Sonderausgabe, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1964, 28–40. Dietrich, J., Individualität im Alten Testament, Alten Ägypten und Alten Orient, in: A. Berlejung et al. (eds.), Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient (ORA 9), Mohr Siebeck 2012, 77–96. Dunn, J.D.G. (ed.), Paul and the Mosaic Law: The Third Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium on Earliest Christianity and Judaism (Durham, September, 1994) (WUNT 89), Mohr Siebeck 1996. Eisenbaum, P., Paul, Polemics, and the Problem of Essentialism, in: Biblical Interpretation 13 (2005) 224–238. Frevel, C., Altes Testament, in: C. Frevel/O. Wischmeyer, Menschsein (NEB 11 – Themen), Echter Verlag 2003, 7–60. Gerhards, M., Conditio Humana: Studien zum Gilgameschepos und zu Texten der biblischen Urgeschichte am Beispiel von Gen 2–3 und 11,1–9 (WMANT 137), Neukirchener Verlag 2013. Horn, F.W., Juden und Heiden: Aspekte der Verhältnisbestimmung in den paulinischen Briefen. Ein Gespräch mit Krister Stendhal, in: M. Bachmann (ed.), Lutherische und neue Paulusperspektive: Beiträge zu einem Schlüsselproblem der gegenwärtigen exegetischen Diskussion (WUNT 182), Mohr Siebeck 2005, 17–39. Janowski, B., Arguing with God: A Theological Anthropology of the Psalms, Westminster John Knox Press 2013. –, Hans Walter Wolff und die alttestamentliche Anthropologie, in: J.C. Gertz (ed.), Neu aufbrechen, den Menschen zu suchen und zu erkennen. Symposium anlässlich des 100. Geburtstages von Hans Walter Wolff (BTS 139), Neukirchener Verlag 2013, 77–112. Käsemann, E., Zur paulinischen Anthropologie, in: E. Käsemann, Paulinische Perspektiven, 2. bearbeitete und ergänzte Auflage, Mohr Siebeck 1972, 9–60. Konradt, M./E. Schläpfer (eds.), Anthropologie und Ethik im Frühjudentum und im Neuen Testament (WUNT 322), Mohr Siebeck 2014. Lindemann, A., Anthropologie und Kosmologie in der Theologie des Paulus. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Rudolf Bultmann und Ernst Käsemann, in: M. Bauspieß et al. (eds.), Theologie und Wirklichkeit: Diskussionen der Bultmann-Schule, Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft 2011, 149–183. Luther, M., Rationis Latominae confutatio in: M. Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Herman Böhlaus Nachfolger 1883ff, WA 8: 42–128. –, De servo arbitrio, in: M. Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Herman Böhlaus Nachfolger 1883ff, WA 18: 600–787. –, Disputatio de homine, in: M. Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Herman Böhlaus Nachfolger 1883ff, WA 39 I: 175–177. –, Enarratio in Genesin, in: M. Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Herman Böhlaus Nachfolger 1883ff, WA 42–44. Malina, B.J., The New Testament World: Insights from cultural anthropology, Third edition, Westminster John Knox Press 2001.

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Pannenberg, W., Was ist der Mensch? Die Anthropologie der Gegenwart im Lichte der Theologie, 3. Aufl., Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1968. Rogerson, J.W., Anthropology and the Old Testament, Basil Blackwell 1978. Scheler, M., On the Idea of Man (1915), translated by C. Nabe, Journal of British Society for Phenomenology 9 (1978) 184–198. Schribner, R.W., Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany, Bloomsbury Academics 1987. Schroer, S./T. Staubli, Body Symbolism in the Bible, The Liturgical Press 2001. Steiger, J.A., Communicatio idiomatum as the Axle and motor of Luther’s Christology, Lutheran Quarterly 14 (2000) 125–158. Taylor, C., A Secular Age, The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press 2007. Theißen, G., Psychologische Aspekte paulinischer Theologie (FRLANT 131), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1994. Westerholm, S., Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics, Eerdmans 2004. Will, W., Herodot und Thukydides: Die Geburt der Geschichte, Beck 2015. Wischmeyer, O., Neues Testament, in: C. Frevel/O. Wischmeyer, Menschsein (NEB 11 – Themen), Echter Verlag 2003, 61–117. Wolff, H.W., Anthropology of the Old Testament, SCM Press 1974. Wulf, C., Anthropologie. Geschichte, Kultur, Philosophie, Anaconda 2009. Zichy, M., Menschenbild: Begriffsgeschichtliche Anmerkungen, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 56 (2015) 7–30, 249.

1. Biblical Anthropology: Historical and Theoretical Quests

Jan Dietrich

Human Relationality and Sociality in Ancient Israel: Mapping the Social Anthropology of the Old Testament

1.

Introduction: Man in His Relatedness

Anthropological approaches to the Hebrew Bible can be divided into the social scientific and the theological; the first being an “etic”, scientist-oriented approach and the second being an “emic” approach that reconstructs the given culture’s own conceptions.1 In this article,2 I use both approaches in an overlapping manner, focussing on the different forms of social and bodily constructed relationships that are so important in the Old Testament and which could also be part of a “Theology of the Old Testament”.3 According to Old Testament’s scriptures, the capacity to form relationships is not a differentium specificum that distinguishes human beings from animals and from God, but a characteristic that connects homo mundanus4 to the world in such a basic way that it can be grasped everywhere in the texts either explicitly or implicitly. Relationality and sociality are not accidental, but essential, features of man: The human being, particularly in the Old Testament, has always been a creature in relations with other creatures and can only be understood based on this relatedness and its special forms. It is the human being’s relatedness to God, to the world, to oneself, to fellow human beings, and to animals and plants that is reflected in the stories and metaphors of the Old Testament.5 The human being of 1 Cf. Callender, Approaches. Concerning the difference between symbol-oriented and culturalanthropological interpretations, cf. Schüle, Anthropologie, 408–413. 2 This contribution builds upon my German article Sozialanthropologie des Alten Testaments. Grundfragen zur Relationalität und Sozialität des Menschen im alten Israel, ZAW 127 (2015) 224–243. I wish to thank Dorothea Beck (Hamburg) and Sarah Jennings (Aarhus) for their help with translations and corrections. 3 Rogerson, Theology, for example, integrates aspects of social anthropology and ethics into his “Theology of the Old Testament”. 4 Cf. Welsch, Homo. 5 Cf. Schroer/Zimmermann, Mensch/Menschsein, 368. For gender-studies cf. e. g. Fischer, Egalitär; Berlejung, Körperkonzepte; Erbele-Küster, Körper; Maier, Körper. For a discussion of homoeroticism cf. Nissinen, Homoeroticism; Ackerman, Heroes.

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the Old Testament is not simply a part of a collective personality – as scholars have long postulated – nor an individual in the modern sense of having to hone and demonstrate one’s own uniqueness; instead, he is a relational creature that should be understood from the perspective of its relatedness in its various historical and cultural forms. Consequently, the social anthropology of the Old Testament examines the Old Testament human being as a relational creature in its structures of relationships. In this paper, I aim to provide a foundation for this research interest. A person’s involvement in social contexts and roles – i. e. a person’s sociality – is a fundamental characteristic of Old Testament anthropology.6 It is for this reason that the creation texts of the Old Testament already reflect relatedness as a determination of the essence of man.7 Moreover, these texts reveal that humans are more than relational creatures that engage in relationships with other humans. Old Testament relationality goes deeper: Human existence is essentially characterised and determined by its relationship with both God and the world.8 In the first creation text (Gen 1:1–2:4a), man is created last and as an exceptional part of the world, but still “only” as a part of the world, together with the land animals on the sixth day. Being created in the image of God (Gen 1:26–28) and the position of god-like honour (Ps 8) are relational concepts and part of social anthropology in so far as they tell us something about man in his relationship to God and to the world. Even the first biblical statement on man is a statement on man in his typical relatedness, because it describes what God considers man to be.9 Additionally, man as an image and statue of God10 is given mandate to rule over the world. Accordingly, in H.W. Wolff ’s classical study, the chapter “God’s Image – The Steward of the World” appears as the first chapter of part three on “The World of Man: Sociological Anthropology”.11 The extent of man’s involvement in the world as homo mundanus is shown in Psalm 104: Here, man in the world of creation exists with and next to the animals solely coram deo, in and through his relationship with God. In the second creation text (Gen 2:4b–3:22), both the relationship between man and God and between man and animals precede interpersonal relationships. By naming the animals, man engages in relationships with them and recognises them as their fellow creatures and partners.12 In real life, most people of ancient 6 7 8 9 10

Cf., e. g., Janowski, Anthropologie, 544; Frevel/Wischmeyer, Menschsein, 49. Cf., e. g., Bauks, Forschungen, 113. Concerning different modes of justification of man before God, cf. Staubli, Konstellationen. Cf. Schellenberg, Mensch, 126–127. For sælæm and demût cf. the ancient Aramaic self-designation of king Hadad-Yis‘ i with slm ˙ and ˙dmwt’ (cf. Abou-Assaf/Bordreuil/Millard, Tell Fekherye, 23). 11 Wolff, Anthropology, 159–165. 12 Cf. de Pury, Gemeinschaft, 132.

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Israel also lived with their livestock under the same roof.13 The prevailing view is that of a community of fate shared by man and animal as well as a recognition of specific animal rights;14 as such, man not only hoped for peace with God and fellow human beings, but also with the animals (Isa 11:1–9).15 For this reason, the social anthropology of the Old Testament considers man’s relatedness as a fundamental and multidimensional relatedness. In contrast to the traditional social anthropology of the modern era, which deals primarily with forms of relationships between people, the social anthropology of the Hebrew Bible texts is not limited to interpersonal matters: Here, interpersonal relationships only represent one of the basic socio-anthropological forms of relatedness. According to the Old Testament, man’s relationality is so fundamental that it is rooted in the so-called body terms themselves. Many of the body terms in the Old Testament do not refer to monadic, self-contained and self-sufficient bodily phenomena of a corpus incurvatum in se ipso, but are inherently relational and seek relatedness: In many cases, “body terms” are concepts with relational connotations. I will discuss this in more detail in the following section.

2.

Body Terms are Concepts with Relational Connotations

It has become clear in Old Testament research that the so-called basic anthropological terms are not subject to forms of dichotomy or trichotomy found in ancient Greek philosophy.16 So how should we characterise such terms? There are many answers to this, but, in this section, I will discuss one essential aspect: many of the body terms in the Old Testament are concepts that carry socio-anthropological connotations, and relationality is also shown in corporeality: Man’s relationality is often expressed in his corporeality, and man’s corporeality is unthinkable without its inherent relationality.17 As Francesca Stavrakopoulou and Martti Nissinen remark, “Indeed, the human body was considered much more than a physical organism or biological entity. Depending on its social and theological contexts, it was also simultaneously a social body (that is, a body interpreted, legitimized, and positioned by the community), and a cosmic body (that is, a body interpreted in relation to the cosmic order, deities, and religious institutions)”.18 We misunderstand, e. g., the term næpæsˇ if we equate it in a 13 14 15 16 17 18

Cf. Stager, Archaeology, 12–15. Cf. Riede, Tier. Cf. Janowski, Tiere, 17–21. Cf., e. g., Wagner, Reduktion, 187. Cf. Krieg, Leiblichkeit, 9; Häusl, Leib, 138–142; Gruber/Michel, Körper, 309–310. Stavrakopoulou/Nissinen, Introduction, 454–455. For an explanation of the recent interest in body discourses, see Koch, Reasons. For many aspects of the so-called “synthetic body

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dualistic sense with “soul”, meaning an entity separate from the body; but the meaning of “vitality” in the sense of “vital energy” of a conatus essendi, which is preferred in current research, is also slightly off-target. In fact, the vital energy or vitality of næpæsˇ is not founded solely in itself. Vital energy develops through relationships and is only partly a vital energy entity in itself.19 næpæsˇ is a vitality seeking relatedness, drawing its vital energy from the very relationships in which it is involved. This is why næpæsˇ not only designates the person as “Needy Man”,20 who seeks to incorporate or assimilate something, but also as the individual seeking relationship. “This nephesh-ness of the human being means that we are entirely oriented to relationship, from the very beginning”.21 It is næpæsˇ which seeks physical unity with a beloved person in order to “stick” with them (Gen 34:2f).22 For the same reason, it is næpæsˇ with which one loves fellow humans and God (Gen 44:30–31; Deut 6:5; 1 Sam 18:1; Cant 1:7 et al.), hates (2 Sam 5:8; Isa 1:14) and longs to see God (Ps 42; 63:2; 84:3; cf. Isa 26:9).23 “The nefesh is that part of a human being that enables her to connect with the cultic sphere as the place of divine presence”.24 Næpæsˇ neither designates the vitality of a windowless monad nor constitutes a conatus essendi which seeks to preserve itself; instead, næpæsˇ is “the living aspect of man”25 in the sense that it is the vital human capacity to engage in relationships. And it is not only one’s own næpæsˇ that seeks relationship – human beings also (compassionately) relate to the næpæsˇ of others: “You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the næpæsˇ of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” is one commandment in the book of the covenant (Exod 23:9). A similar situation applies to the term rûah, which can stand for “wind” or ˙ “spirit”, but, depending on the context, can also stand for short-term attitudes (Gen 26:35; Num 5:14,30; Deut 2:30; Judg 8:3; 1 Kings 21:5; Job 15:13) and, like ’ap

19

20 21 22 23 24

25

notions” (“synthetische Körperauffassung”) in ancient Israel and beyond cf. recently Müller/ Wagner (eds.), Körperauffassung. However, in some priestly inspired texts, næpæsˇ seems to connotate an entity that can separate itself from the body. Cf. Michel, næpæsˇ, and concerning ancient Aramaic epigraphs, cf. KAI 214,17.21f and the KTMW-stela from Zincirli line 5 (cf. Pardee, Inscription, 52–53.62– 63). Cf. Wolff, Anthropology, 10–25. Schroer/Staubli, Body, 58. Cf. Wolff, Anthropology, 16 Cf. Wolff, Anthropology, 16–17, as well as Schüle, Notion, 486–487, and van Oorschot, Translation, 120.127.130. Schüle, Soul, 152. Cf. idem, Notion, 487 and Schmidt, Begriffe, 380–381: nephesh “ist ihrem Wesen nach ‘Wunsch, Begehren, Auf-etwas-aus-Sein’ […]. ‘ne˘phe˘sch’ ist der Mensch als einzelner, soweit er auf etwas aus ist. Das Wesen oder Ich des Menschen wird hier nicht als jenseits seiner Eigenschaften ruhend gesehen, sondern von daher bestimmt, wonach der Mensch ausgerichtet ist”. Cf., e. g., Wagner, Reduktion, 191.

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(Prov 14:17,29 et. al.), for persistent attitudes concerning the environment and God (Prov 14:29; 16:18; 18:14; Eccl 7:8; cf. Isa 26:9).26 The face (pa¯nîm) that one turns towards others (pa¯na¯h) 27 is also a body term that describes relationships and designates “real personal presence, relationship, and meeting (or refusal to meet)”,28 because Hebrew usage took “the term pa¯nîm as a point of departure in numerous collocations and idioms that refer to interpersonal relations as well as relations between human beings and God”.29 The shining face in particular expresses a superior person’s presence (a god, a king or another kind of leader) in front of others.30 Furthermore, both rahamîm as the plural of ræhæm (“womb”) ˙ ˙ and me‛îm (“intestines”) can express feelings belonging to the interpersonal 31 sphere (Gen 43:30; Cant 5:4). Even the term ba¯´sa¯r – of which one would hardly assume socio-anthropological connotations – can denote all kinds of family relationships: Man not only “sticks” with his næpæsˇ (Gen 34:2–3), but also with his ba¯´sa¯r, to the beloved other person (Gen 2:24).32 It is possible to provide more examples of body terms as concepts with relational connotations. For example, the heart is used for relationship concepts;33 the eyes, ears and mouth are, among other things, referred to in terms of communication and legal matters;34 and the arm, hand, foot and head can be used both in communication and legal-anthropological contexts and as symbols of power in the social field.35 However, instead of providing a full account of this usage for additional body terms, I will now discuss the importance of social identity for the social anthropology of the Old Testament.

26 Cf. Wolff, Anthropology, 36–37. 27 Unfortunately, pa¯na¯h is only briefly mentioned by Wolff, cf. Wolff, Anthropology, 74. For God’s face cf. recently Hartenstein, Angesicht. For an overview of Accadian panu¯, cf. recently Mayer, Tätigkeiten, 308–314; Steinert, Körperauffassungen, 81–84. 28 Simian-Yofre, pa¯nîm, 607. 29 Simian-Yofre, pa¯nîm, 606. 30 Concerining the Ancient Near Eastern concept of “shining horns” and its impact on Hebrew conceptions of the shining face, cf. Annus, Precursors. The concept of pa¯nîm needs further research in regard to its implications for social anthropology. Emmanuel Levinas builds his own “philosophy” on the “face”; in my opinion, basic social anthropological aspects of the face can already be found in the Old Testament sources. 31 Cf. Erbele-Küster, Gender, 136–139. Emotions can also entail bodily aspects important for social anthropology; cf. Gillmayr-Bucher, Emotion; Janssen/Kessler, Emotionen; Staubli/ Schroer, Menschenbilder, 157–198. For a more nuanced view cf. Wagner, Emotionen. 32 Cf. Wolff, Anthropology, 29. 33 Cf. Wolff, Anthropology, 40–58; Krüger, Herz, 114–117, and now Janowski, Herz. 34 Cf. Wolff, Anthropology, 74–79; Schroer/Staubli, Body, 103–149. 35 Cf. Schroer/Staubli, Body, 150–202; Wagner, Bedeutungsspektrum, 4–9; idem, Gestalt, 50–55. For the “headhunt”, especially in Neo-Assyrian times, cf. Bonatz, Headhunt; for Saul’s head in 1 Sam 31,9 cf. Hunziker-Rodewald, Kopf.

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Mutual Social Identity as a Basic Socio-Anthropological Phenomenon

The section above has demonstrated that the Old Testament neither knows of a self-sufficient individualism or solipsism nor considers solitude a worthwhile goal. Rather, the individual is born into a community and remains integrated in this community to such an extent that there is little space to develop individual freedom, and that solitude36 can only be seen as loneliness and isolation.37 In the framework of the “family-based society”38 of ancient Israel, the individual is always part of a family, kin, clan, tribe and, ultimately, the people of Israel – irrespective of the fact that the specific attribution of the respective Hebrew terms to these institutions is subject to debate39 and that the term “tribe” (sˇebæt) in particular is a vague construction in anthropological research and ˙ seems to be a social construct in the Old Testament.40 What matters is that the individual is primarily integrated in the family and the clan and that society is considered and constructed in terms of patrilineal lineage: “Hence, family-centeredness should be understood in a directly literal sense: the family is the center, not only of the social interaction of its members, but of the system of meaning out of which such cultures arose”.41 Despite various historical changes in social structures, this phenomenon persists throughout Israel’s history and survives all threats of Persian and Hellenistic times,42 making it part of ancient Israel’s socioanthropological longue durée. In contrast, sociologically relevant transfamilial social power structures and hierarchies – from the generally egalitarian social structures of early times to the hierarchical power and class structures during the period of kings, the community structures of Persian province society and the hierocratic structures of the Hellenistic period – all play an important, albeit shifting, role in terms of social anthropology. Because of this, the individual of ancient Israel, just like the Old Testament texts, is subject to historical processes of change, together with the institutions that produce and receive culture in the social sphere. As a consequence, a comprehensive social anthropology of the Old Testament ( just like social history) 43 should be structured diachronically and 36 Cf. Seidel, Einsamkeit. 37 See further below. 38 Cf. Kessler, Sozialgeschichte, 49–72; Maier/Lehmeier, Verwandtschaft; Grohmann, Diskontinuität, 39–41. For social and cultural anthropological theories pertaining to the Old Testament, cf. Rogerson, Anthropology; Rogerson, Expansion; Overholt, Anthropology; Wilson, Social. For a reader of classical texts cf. Lang, Approaches. 39 Cf. Rogerson, Anthropology, 86–101; Lemche, Early Israel, 245–290. 40 As well as the literature mentioned above, cf. Kessler/Omerzu, Stamm. 41 McVann, Family-Centeredness, 75–76. 42 Cf. Kessler, Sozialgeschichte, 142–143.175–177; for Ecclesiastes cf. Zimmer, Tod, 113–120. 43 Cf. next to Kessler, Sozialgeschichte, also Albertz, History; Gerstenberger, Theologies.

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should present its results based on the examination of different social groups and sources not only as results of literary history and redaction criticism44 but also of anthropology and the history of ideas45 and mentalities.46 For example, Bernd Janowski differentiates between three historical phases in the Old Testament’s understanding of the heart.47 In the first phase, the heart stands for the integration of the individual into the community (as can be found in Proverbs); in the second phase, we find the internalisation of the relationship with God (as can be found in Deuteronomy); and, in the third face, there emerges a new kind of self-consciousness in prayers and reflexion (as can be found in Psalms, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes, and Sirach).48 Individual behaviour is always important for the whole family. This applies in the economic sense, where family members have to fulfil their respective role in bayit;49 it applies in a legal sense, where the pater familias has authority over the household, can represent the family in legal matters and for whose misdemeanours the whole family can be held responsible; and it also applies in a socio-cultural sense, where individual honour or shame reflect on the respective social entity. Honour is a social value awarded to each person according to his/ her position in the community, provided that this person conducts him- or herself “habitually in line with the collective expectations that are ‘ethically’ linked to their social status”.50 In this context, mutual social identity means that each person depends on the recognition of others for his/her own identity building. Robert di Vito has described this phenomenon on four different levels: “the subject (1) is deeply embedded, or engaged, in its social identity, (2) is comparatively decentered and undefined with respect to personal boundaries, (3) is relatively transparent, socialized, and embodied (in other words, is altogether lacking in a sense of ‘inner depths’), and (4) is ‘authentic’ precisely in its heteronomy, in its obedience to another and dependence upon another”.51 In contrast to the concept of collective identity, mutual social identity denotes the development of “personal” identity through the eyes of others – how other

44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51

Cf. van Oorschot, Grundlegung. For the Hebrew Bible texts as sources for a history of ideas, cf. Hazony, Philosophy. Cf. Kessler, Anthropologie. Janowski, Herz, 6. For different historical phases regarding the understanding of næpæsˇ and rûah, cf. Schüle, Soul. ˙ currently working on whether there is, like in Greece (cf. Elkana, Emergence), a form of I am “Second-Order-Thinking” to be found in the Old Testament – a theoretical attitude that involves the ability to reflect and self-reflect, to criticise and transcend the given, and to anticipate new realms by thinking ‘outside the box’. Cf. Maier/Lehmeier, Familie. Honneth, Struggle, 123. For honour and shame, see further below. di Vito, Construction, 221.

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people see, appreciate and treat the individual.52 If the individual fails to meet given social behavioural expectations, it does not receive the necessary appreciation from its community, and, as such, it is punished with a form of “social death”.53 The psalms of lament in particular make it clear that severed relationships mean social death and that the aim of the prayer is to re-establish relationships with God and people. The meaning of social anthropology for the understanding of man in the Old Testament can be observed in the fact that body image and social structure, physical disease and social conflict, and descriptions of diseases and enemies overlap.54 Embedding the individual in a functional and successful structure of relationships constitutes the relational character of mutual social identity found in the Old Testament texts. It constitutes the socioanthropological basis for Old Testament forms of collective identity, which I will discuss in the following section.

4.

Collective Identity instead of Corporative Personality

If the concept of mutual social identity highlights the dependence of personal identity on the assessment of others, collective or social identity in turn denotes a form of identity which internalises its social role in the community or group and which builds a sense of community based on similarities, integrating the individual into the group or community and drawing lines between different communities/groups.55 In this respect, collective identity is neither an essentialist nor a static phenomenon, but, according to recent cultural science and sociopsychological research, can best be described as dynamic, multidimensional, discursive and socio-constructivist processes, thus a form of collective identity building.56 In recent Old Testament research, issues of identity building have been increasingly57 discussed in the context of “Israel under Persian rule”.58 Just

52 Assmann, Gedächtnis, 133–134, terms this identity “personal identity”. However, I rather speak of mutual social identity, since the term “person” is somewhat indistinct and ill-defined and since I would like to highlight the notion of reciprocal recognition. For recognition as a base-term of social anthropology, cf. Honneth, Struggle; for the Old Testament cf. Janowski, Anerkennung, 192–200. 53 Cf. Hasenfratz, Lebenden; idem, Tod. 54 Cf. Janowski, Arguing, 163–198. 55 For a classical approach, cf. Mead, Mind. For a recent overview, cf. Straub, Identität, esp. 290– 300. 56 Cf. de Fina, Discourse, 263–282; idem/Schiffrin/Bamberg, Introduction. Pertaining to the Old Testament cf. Jonker, Identities; Weingart, Stämmevolk, 1–53. 57 Concerning pre-exilic Israel, cf. Sparks, Ethnicity; Zehnder, Umgang; Weingart, Stämmevolk, 171–287. 58 Cf., e. g., Greifenhagen, Egypt; Berquist, Constructions; Moffat, Social Drama; Knoppers/

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like mutual social identity, collective identity is a fundamental phenomenon in Old Testament social anthropology (it is true that separate individual identity exists,59 but this is less significant than collective identity60). However, neither mutual social identity nor collective identity should be confused with “corporative personality” – a previously used concept that assumes the individual is only perceived as member of a group61 and that the group acts and is perceived as a subject.62 Collective identity develops based on various interconnected social identification processes that help the members of a group define an image of themselves as a collective, which serves to strengthen a sense of community and group identity.63 These identification processes can emerge in different ways. Firstly, they can be formed through cultural memory, i. e. in the form of superindividual experiences and memories shared by the members of a community, which are preserved through communication and are handed down to the next generation (mnemonic communality, cultural memory). Secondly, they can be formed by common attitudes and convictions shared by the members of a community (rational and emotional communality, social character). Thirdly, they can be formed, established and repaired by common ritual practices that strengthen group cohesion (ritual communality, societas ritualis). And, fourthly, they can be formed and strengthened through corporative legal thinking, which legally requires the community to support members in need and to be liable for misdemeanours (legal communality, collective liability). Since the latter two aspects may also be treated separately as ritual and legal anthropology respectively, I will now discuss cultural and social memory as well as the social character in the Old Testament in more detail.

59 60

61 62

63

Ristau, Community Identity; Lipschits/Knoppers/Oeming, Judah; Albertz/Wöhrle, Cooperation; Grohmann, Diskontinuität, 30–34; Weingart, Stämmevolk, 54–170. As well as collective self-images which are shared by the members of a community (collective identity), each individual constructs his own self-image with genuine individual aspects (individual identity), cf. Assmann, Gedächtnis, 131. Collective and individual identity denote identity structures that befit all members of a given society in all times, though the historical characteristics and manifestations can be quite distinct and variable. Concerning capabilities and limits of individuality in the ancient Near East and ancient Israel, cf. Dietrich, Individualität. Concerning capabilities and historical developments in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism, cf. Newsom, Models. As well as Johannes Pedersen, cf. Wheeler Robinson’s contributions. Pertaining to the German tradition, cf. de Fraine, Adam; Koch, Sühneanschauung, 92–93. “The whole group, including its past, present, and future members might function as a single individual […]” (Robinson, Conception, 25). For a critique cf. Porter, Aspects; Rogerson, Conception; Dietrich, Schuld, 8–11.21–22; Frevel, Person, 75–78. Pertaining to Robinson and followers, cf. the more differentiated view in di Vito, Construction; idem, Anthropology. Cf. Assmann, Gedächtnis, 132.

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Mnemonic Communality: Cultural and Social Memory in the Old Testament

In principle, the collective or cultural memory64 in the Old Testament is a narrative, oral-written memory.65 Although memory was largely carved in stone in ancient Egypt and the ancient Near East – which enabled collective identity building through extensive construction projects66 –, the orally preserved narrative memory that was later recorded in writing became a “portative fatherland” (Heine) 67 in the form of the Old Testament, which enabled collective identity via cultural memory also in the diaspora.68 However, collective memory in the Old Testament is not only a “cultural phenomenon” that creates a shared identity through shared origins and the realisation of superindividual biographies – such as the exodus from Egypt,69 the gola orientation70 or the Sabbath with its realisation of a fundamental past71 – but also a socio-anthropologically and socioethically relevant issue.72 For this reason, cultural memory also functions as social memory, because “remembrance” not only connects with the culturally remembered past, but also serves the purpose of expanding current social relationships and networks.73 Social memory in the sense of thinking of each other creates relationships and strengthens communal life.74 In the book of Deuteronomy in particular, Israel’s remembrance and memory culture supports social and charitable admonition.75 The paraenetic “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt” (Deut 5:15; 15:15; 16:12; 24:18,22) serves the collective biographical realisation and actualisation of the superindividual experience of servitude (not primarily of liberation) in order to promote an attitude of support for the vulnerable. This attitude is then meant to serve as a hermeneutical basis to legitimise and enforce the protective commandments concerning the personae miserae. 64 For an overview cf., e. g., Cancik/Mohr, Erinnerung/Gedächtnis; Kantsteiner, Historismus. 65 Pertaining to the oral-written dimensions of Old Testament texts cf. Carr, Writing; Pola, Vorrang. 66 Cf. Assmann, Stein (1988), 87–114; idem, Stein (32003). 67 Cf. Crüsemann, Vaterland. 68 Cf. Lux, Erinnerungskultur. 69 Cf. Assmann, Gedächtnis, 196–228. 70 Cf. Häusl, Andere. She uses the term “ethnic group” (“Ethnie”). Mary Douglas uses “enclave culture” for Judaism in the Persian period (Douglas, Wilderness), while Othmar Keel speaks of a tendency towards ghettoisation (“Tendenz zur Ghettoisierung”) (Keel, Jerusalem, 104). 71 Cf. Grund, Entstehung, 185. 72 Cf. Hardmeier, Erinnerung; Grund, Segen; Staubli/Schroer, Menschenbilder, 559–563. 73 Concerning the aspects of personal relationships connotated with Hebrew zkr, cf. Schottroff, Gedenken, 160ff. 74 Cf. Grund, Erinnerungsarbeit, 47. 75 Cf. Hardmeier, Erinnerung. For Deuteronomy cf. Braulik; Finsterbusch, Weisung.

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Social memory was not only relevant as a glue for social cohesion in view of socially vulnerable people; it was also designed to establish “social memoria”76 – a network of remembrance that existed beyond the death of the individual. This bound the dead to the living77 and thus allowed the individual to participate in a social network of thinking of each after death. In ancient Israel, the dead were mainly remembered in narratives, but they were also remembered in spatial representations in tombs and monuments as well as ritual action.78

6.

Rational and Emotional Communality: Social Character in the Old Testament

Community is not only based on social identity that emerges through common experiences and forms of cultural memory; it is also maintained through common attitudes and convictions shared by its members. In social and cultural studies, this phenomenon can be characterised by different terms with their respective connotations, such as mentalities,79 habitus,80 or social character.81 To a certain extent, these concepts and their respective models are similar and serve the purpose of assessing and adequately describing attitudes and convictions that are shared by a group or society.82 This is important because, particularly in the Old Testament, emphasis is placed not only on behaviour, but also on the attitudes that lie behind and give rise to specific behaviour. Rüdiger Bartelmus provides a convincing example of this in relation to the anthropology in Ecclesiastes.83 According to Bartelmus, Ecclesiastes does not present contradictory assessments of similar actions, but – similarly to Erich Fromm84 – two different attitudes behind the action: Faced with the certainty of death, man can either cling to “having” and “doing” – chasing after wind in the form of objects, work, and over-ambition, etc. – or he can accept his limits in a life-affirming way and rejoice in the things God has given to him in this world. With reference to the dichotomy “sinner versus just person” in the older wisdom texts, Hans Heinrich Schmid also emphasises the attitude on which the 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

For this term cf. Oexle. Cf. Kühn, Totengedenken. Cf. Kühn, Totengedenken. For the history of mentalities cf., e. g., Burke, Strenghts. This is a term by Pierre Bourdieu. For an overview, cf., e. g., Rehbein/Saalmann, Habitus. This is a concept by Erich Fromm. For an overview, cf. Funk, Concept. For approaches beyond orthodox psychoanalysis that might also be usable for ancient texts and other sources, cf. Dietrich, Traumata; idem, Erich Fromm. 83 Cf. Bartelmus, Haben. 84 Cf. Fromm, Have.

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action is based, whereas Jutta Hausmann underlines the connection between attitude and behaviour.85 In all likelihood, the different views on work in these texts are also based on the valuation of different attitudes. In Proverbs, human labour is viewed positively in the context of a responsible attitude towards work and the contrast between the diligent and the lazy (cf. Prov 10:4; 12:24; 13:4 et al.); but it is viewed negatively in the context of seeking revenue, productivity and wealth, where a responsible attitude towards work is absent (cf. Prov 10:22; 11:4,28; 15:16–17 et al.). Deut 19:4–6 (cf. Num. 35:20) also differentiates according to the emotional attitude behind the action, just as the Old Testament appreciation of humility and the criticism of greed target both attitude and behaviour. In the Old Testament texts, it is primarily the pursuit of honour and the avoidance of shame that are fundamental, socially relevant and universally shared character traits manifested in numerous texts from different historical periods. Although the Old Testament comprises historically different forms of honour,86 honour and shame are basic socio-anthropological concepts for the historical mentalities of ancient Israel – they are “core values”87 that must be achieved or avoided.88 Since the issues of sin and guilt play important roles, we may not explicitly differentiate between so-called cultures of shame or guilt,89 but, nevertheless, we can observe a culture that distinguishes itself through its priority to avoid “guilt-based shame”90 and thereby to establish and control the attitudes, standards and behavioural patterns of its members.91 For example, an honourable man is obliged to keep his word and to possess both the character and the power to implement what he has promised. Relationships are community-promoting relations of loyalty. Truthfulness and faithfulness constitute the characteristics of an honourable man in the various relations of loyalty, because, with these characteristics, ethos occurs in the form of solidarity.92 This is why terms like ’æmæt/’æmûna¯h and hæsæd together with ˙ misˇpa¯t and sædæq/seda¯qa¯h play a decisive role for the social anthropology of the ˙ ˙ ˙ 93 entire Old Testament.

85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Cf. Schmid, Wesen, 156–164; Hausmann, Studien, e. g. 38.97.103. Cf. Dietrich, Ehrgefühl. Plevnik, Honor/Shame, 106. For disgrace and shame, cf., e. g., Klopfenstein, Scham; Grund, Scham (with bibliography). For the Japanese culture, cf. Benedict, Chrysanthemum; for ancient Greece, cf. Dodds, Greeks; for the Mediterranean world, cf. Peristiany/Pitt-Rivers, Honour; concerning the New Testament, cf. Malina, World. Cf. the term “guilt-based shame” by Laniak, Shame, 8–9. Cf. Vogt/Zingerle, Einleitung, 23. Cf. Preuß, Theologie, 208, subsequent to Hempel, Ethos, 32–67. As well as the terms mentioned above, kûn; ta¯mîm; ja¯ˇsa¯r and ml’ could also be mentioned, cf. Urbanz, Treue.

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In principle, people who are “steadfast” can be relied on, which is why “steadfastness” (’æmûna¯h) is an important socio-anthropological concept. Be it a good custodian (Neh 13:13), messenger (Prov 25:13), friend (Prov 27:6), servant (1 Sam 22:14) or witness (Isa 8:2) – all these people are reliable (næ’æma¯n). A reliable person (’ysˇ ’æmæt Neh 7:2; cf. Exod 18:21) is characterised by a steadfast and community-oriented attitude, walking the path of “truthfulness” (dæræk’æmûna¯h Ps 119:30) and acting as a “man of loyalty” (’ysˇ ’æmûnîm Prov 20:6).94 For this reason, truth and lies are not concepts that pertain merely to knowledge, but are primarily in terms of community, where truth as truthfulness represents a community-promoting habitus and lie represents a communityadverse habitus.95 A similar example is the idea of reciprocal behaviour, which also promotes community. This is primarily expressed with the term hæsæd, which is a “rela˙ tional concept” and belongs to “the realm of interpersonal relations”.96 Just as the “action of Ma’at” is the basis for “connective justice” in ancient Egypt, the “action of hæsæd” is the basis for a society rooted in the principles of mutuality ˙ and solidarity and oriented towards law (misˇpa¯t) and justice (seda¯qa¯h) in ancient ˙ ˙ Israel.97 The reciprocal “action of hæsæd” presupposes that community-enabling ˙ action is reciprocated by respective community-promoting action by others (cf. Gen 21:23; Jos 2:12–14; 2 Sam 2:5–6; 10:2; 1 Kings 2:7).98 The close connection between the steadfastness of the habitual character (’æmûna¯h), truth that aims at reliable personal communication99 (’æmæt) and community-promoting behaviour based on mutuality and solidarity (hæsæd) 100 ˙ is expressed in the hendiadys hæsæd wæ’æmæt, which describes the goodwill of ˙ another person on which one must be able to rely; for example, when Isaac’s servant hopes that Laban will release Rebekah (Gen 24:49), when Jacob relies on being buried in his homeland (Gen 47:29), or when Rahab relies on the Israelites keeping their promise ( Jos 2:14).101 For this reason, it is important that the “continuous hæsæd”, meaning steadfast goodwill, is not abandoned but remains ˙ 94 These and other examples in Jepsen, ‫אמן‬. For friendship as a form of ’æmûna¯h, cf. Dietrich, Friendship. 95 Cf. Klopfenstein, Lüge, 353. 96 Zobel, ‫חסד‬, 49 and 51. Cf. also Michel, hæsæd wæ’æmæt, 77. For a different view, cf. Clark, Hesed, 267: “The use of the word in the˙ Hebrew Bible indicates that ‫ חסד‬is characteristic of God rather than human beings”. 97 For the meanings of misˇpa¯t and sædæq/seda¯qa¯h cf. Koch, Wesen. For “connective justice” in ˙ Old Testament ˙ Egypt cf. Assmann, Ma’at;˙for the cf. Janowski, Tat; Freuling, Grube. 98 Cf. Zobel, ‫חסד‬, 47–48. 99 In the Old Testament, truth aims at “verläßliche personale Kommunikation” (Koch, Wahrheit. II., 1247). 100 “‫ אמת‬and ‫ אמונה‬have both been found as essential components of ‫חסד‬.” (Clark, Hesed, 259). 101 Cf. Zobel, ‫חסד‬, 48. Acording to Michel, hæsæd wæ’æmæt, 80.82, the term hæsæd wæ’æmæt is a ˙ ˙ idem, ’Ämät, 46–52.56. type of “Versprechenserfüllung.” Cf. also

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written on the “tablet of the heart” (Prov 3:3). Thus, a person’s characteristics must not be hidden, secret or inward but open and visible, so that they can reassure relatives, contract partners or friends. A reliable reciprocal exchange of “gifts” of any kind – both material and immaterial – is only possible on this basis.102 This is why social anthropology also includes the positive assessment and support of a community-promoting “character”,103 which lives in the community ethos as a form of solidarity in attitude and behaviour. Consequently, the Old Testament texts on this topic include both descriptive and prescriptive aspects,104 but, when discussing character, they always refer to the character’s relationship with another person and the community: “Character in and of itself is necessarily character in relation”.105 Just like living and thinking in family-based relationships, this basic descriptive and prescriptive “social character doctrine” can be traced throughout the Old Testament from the classical Hebrew texts to the Hellenistic Greek texts, as can be observed in the “solidaric action” (ἐλεημοσύνας ποιεῖν and equivalents) in the book of Tobit, which returns to the concepts of ’æmæt/’æmûna¯h, hæsæd and sædæq/seda¯qa¯h.106 These concepts are also part of ˙ ˙ ˙ the socio-anthropological longue durée of ancient Israel.

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102 For the exchange of gifts, cf. Grund, Homo donans; Staubli/Schroer, Menschenbilder, 270– 273. 103 “Religion ist vor allem Sache des Charakters; deshalb wendet sich die Bibel hauptsächlich an ihn” (Adler, Mensch, 9). 104 Cf. Brown, Character, 4–16. 105 Brown, Character, 151. 106 Cf. Deselaers, Buch, 348–358; Schüngel-Straumann, Tobit, 48–49.

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terranean Regions: Comparative Approaches. Henning Graf Reventlow Memorial Volume, Ugarit Verlag 2011, 2–17. Assmann, J., Stein und Zeit. Das monumentale Gedächtnis der altägyptischen Kultur, in: idem/T. Hölscher (eds.), Kultur und Gedächtnis, Suhrkamp 1988, 87–114. –, Ma’at. Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Alten Ägypten, C.H. Beck 1990. –, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, C.H. Beck 1997. –, Stein und Zeit. Mensch und Gesellschaft im alten Ägypten, Wilhelm Fink 32003. Bartelmus, R., Haben oder Sein? Anmerkungen zur Anthropologie des Buches Kohelet, BN 53 (1990) 38–67. Bauks, M., Neuere Forschungen zum altorientalischen “Seele”begriff am Beispiel der Anthropogonien, in: J. van Oorschot/A. Wagner (eds.), Anthropologie(n) des Alten Testaments (VWGTh 42), Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2015, 91–116. Benedict, R., The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese culture, Houghton Mifflin 1946. Berlejung, A., Körperkonzepte und Geschlechterdifferenz in der physiognomischen Tradition des Alten Orients und des Alten Testaments, in: B. Janowski/K. Liess (eds.), Der Mensch im alten Israel. Neue Forschungen zur alttestamentlichen Anthropologie (HBS 59), Herder 2009, 299–337. Berquist, J.L., Constructions of Identity in Postcolonial Yehud, in: O. Lipschits/M. Oeming (eds.), Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, Eisenbrauns 2006, 53–66. Bonatz, D., Ashurbanipal’s Headhunt: an anthropological perspective, Iraq 66 (2004) 93– 101. Braulik, G., Das Deuteronomium und die Gedächtniskultur Israels, in: idem, Studien zum Buch Deuteronomium, Katholisches Bibelwerk 1997, 119–146. Brown, W.P., Character in Crisis: a fresh approach to the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, Eerdmans 1996. Burke, P., Strengths and Weaknesses of the History of Mentalities, in: idem, Varieties of Cultural History, Cornell University Press 1997, 162–182. Callender, D.E., Anthropological Approaches to the Bible. I. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, EBR 2 (2009) 107–110. Cancik, H./H. Mohr, Erinnerung/Gedächtnis, HrwG 2 (1990) 299–323. Carr, D., Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: origins of Scripture and literature, Oxford University Press 2005. Clark, G.R., The Word Hesed in the Hebrew Bible ( JSOTSup 157), Sheffield Academic Press 1993. Crüsemann, F., Das „portative Vaterland“. Struktur und Genese des alttestamentlichen Kanons, in: A. Assmann/J. Assmann (eds.), Kanon und Zensur (ALK 2), Wilhelm Fink 1987, 63–79. Deselaers, P., Das Buch Tobit. Studien zu seiner Entstehung, Komposition und Theologie (OBO 43), Universitätsverlag 1982. Dietrich, J., Über Ehre und Ehrgefühl im Alten Testament, in: B. Janowski/K. Liess (eds.), Der Mensch im alten Israel. Neue Forschungen zur alttestamentlichen Anthropologie (HBS 59), Herder 2009, 419–452.

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Koch, A., Reasons for the Boom of Body Discourses in the Humanities and the Social Sciences since the 1980s: a chapter in European history of religion, in: A. Berlejung/J. Dietrich/J.F. Quack (eds.), Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient (ORA 9), Mohr Siebeck 2012, 3–42. Koch, K., Die israelitische Sühneanschauung und ihre historischen Wandlungen, Masch. Habil. 1956. –, Wesen und Ursprung der „Gemeinschaftstreue“ im Israel der Königszeit, in: idem, Spuren des hebräischen Denkens, Neukirchener Verlag 1991, 107–127. –, Wahrheit. II. Altes Testament, 4RGG 8 (2005) 1246–1248. Krieg, M., Leiblichkeit im Alten Testament, in: idem/H. Weder, Leiblichkeit (ThSt 128), Theologischer Verlag 1983, 7–29. Krüger, T., Das „Herz“ in der alttestamentlichen Anthropologie, in: A. Wagner (ed.), Anthropologische Aufbrüche. Alttestamentliche und interdisziplinäre Zugänge zur historischen Anthropologie, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2009, 103–118. Kühn, D., Totengedenken im Alten Testament, in: A. Berlejung/B. Janowski (eds.), Tod und Jenseits im alten Israel und in seiner Umwelt. Theologische, religionsgeschichtliche, archäologische und ikonographische Aspekte (FAT 64), Mohr Siebeck 2009, 481–499. Lang, B., Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament (IRT 8), Fortress Press 1985. Laniak, T.S., Shame and Honor in the Book of Esther, Society of Biblical Literature 1998. Lemche, N.P., Early Israel: anthropological and historical studies on the Israelite society before the monarchy (VT.S 37), Brill 1985, 245–290. Lipschits, O./G.N. Knoppers/M. Oeming (eds), Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: negotiating identity in an international context, Eisenbrauns 2011. Lux, R., Erinnerungskultur und Zensur im alten Israel, BThZ 15 (1998) 190–205. Maier, C., Körper und Geschlecht im Alten Testament. Überlegungen zur Geschlechterdifferenz, in: A. Berlejung/J. Dietrich/J.F. Quack (eds.), Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient (ORA 9), Mohr Siebeck 2012, 183–207. – /K. Lehmeier, Familie, SWB (2009) 131–136. – /K. Lehmeier, Verwandtschaft, SWB (2009) 615–618. Malina, B.J., The New Testament World: Insights from cultural anthropology, Westminster John Knox Press 32001. Mayer, W.R., Die Tätigkeiten und Regungen, Haltungen und Zustände des Menschen im Spiegel der Sprache: zur akkadischen Idiomatik, Or.NS 79 (2010) 304–341. McVann, M., Family-Centeredness, in: J.J. Pilch/B. Malina (eds.), Handbook of Biblical Social Values, Hendrickson Publishers 21998, 75–79. Mead, G.H., Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Works of G.H. Mead 1), The University of Chicago Press 1967. Michel, A., Credo, kleines geschichtliches, wibilex.de, März 2011. Michel, D., ’Ämät. Untersuchung über „Wahrheit“ im Hebräischen, ABG 12 (1968) 30–57. –, næpæsˇ als Leichnam?, ZAH 7 (1994) 81–84. –, hæsæd wæ’æmæt, in: A. Wagner (ed.), Studien zur hebräischen Grammatik (OBO 156), ˙ Fribourg Universitätsverlag/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1997, 73–82. Moffat, D.P., Ezra’s Social Drama: identity formation, marriage and social conflict in Ezra 9 and 10 ( JSOTSup 579), Sheffield Academic Press 2013.

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Müller, K./A. Wagner (eds.), Synthetische Körperauffassung im Hebräischen und den Sprachen der Nachbarkulturen (AOAT 416), Ugarit-Verlag 2014. Newsom, C.A., Models of the Moral Self: Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism, JBL 131 (2012) 5–25. Nissinen, M., Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: a historical perspective, Fortress Press 1998. Oexle, O.G., Die Gegenwart der Lebenden und der Toten. Gedanken über Memoria, in: K. Schmid (ed.), Gedächtnis, das Gemeinschaft stiftet, Schnell u. Steiner 1985, 74–107. van Oorschot, J., Zur Grundlegung der alttestamentlichen Anthropologie – Orientierung und Zwischenruf, in: idem./M. Iff (eds.), Der Mensch als Thema theologischer Anthropologie. Beiträge in interdisziplinärer Perspektive (BThSt 111), Neukirchener Verlag 2010, 1–41. –, Lost in Translation, Regain by Exegesis. ‫ נפש‬in alttestamentlicher Verwendung und Funktion, in: idem/A. Wagner (eds.), Anthropologie(n) des Alten Testaments (VWGTh 42), Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2015, 117–131. Overholt, T.W., Cultural Anthropology and the Old Testament, Fortress Press 1996. Pardee, D., A New Aramaic Inscription from Zincirli, BASOR 356 (2009) 51–71. Peristiany, J.G./J. Pitt-Rivers (eds.), Honour and Shame. The Values of Mediterranean Society, University of Chicago Press 1966. Pola, T., „Wer nicht auswendig lernt, ist des Todes schuldig“ (mAv 1,13). Der bleibende Vorrang des mündlichen vor dem schriftlichen Wort – Indizien aus dem Alten Testament, ThB 45 (2014) 16–31. Porter, J.R., The Legal Aspects of the Concept of “Corporate Personality” in the Old Testament, VT 15 (1965) 361–380. Preuß, H.D., Theologie des Alten Testaments 2. Israels Weg mit JHWH, Kohlhammer 1992. de Pury, A., Gemeinschaft und Differenz. Aspekte der Mensch-Tier-Beziehung im alten Israel, in: B. Janowski/U. Neumann-Gorsolke/U. Gleßmer (eds.), Gefährten und Feinde des Menschen. Das Tier in der Lebenswelt des alten Israel, Neukirchener Verlag 1993, 112–149. Rehbein, B./G. Saalmann, Habitus, in: G. Fröhlich/B. Rehbein (eds.), Bourdieu-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, J.B. Metzler Verlag 2009, 110–118. Riede, P., Tier, wibilex.de, November 2010. Robinson, H.W., The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality, in: idem, Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel, T & T Clark 31992, 25–44. Rogerson, J.W., The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality: a re-examination, JThS.NS 21 (1970) 1–16. –, Anthropology and the Old Testament, Basil Blackwell 1978. –, A Theology of the Old Testament: Cultural memory, communication and being human, SPCK 2009. –, Expansion of the Anthropological, Sociological and Mythological Context of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, in: M. Sæbø (ed.), Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: the history of its interpretation 3: From Modernism to Post-Modernism 1: The Nineteenth Century: a century of modernism and historicism, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2013, 119–133. Schellenberg, A., Der Mensch, das Bild Gottes? Zum Gedanken einer Sonderstellung des Menschen im Alten Testament und in weiteren altorientalischen Quellen (AThANT 101), Theologischer Verlag 2011.

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Schmid, H.H., Wesen und Geschichte der Weisheit (BZAW 101), Alfred Töpelmann 1966, 156–164. Schmidt, W.H., Anthropologische Begriffe im Alten Testament. Anmerkungen zum hebräischen Denken, EvTh 24 (1964) 374–388. Schottroff, W., „Gedenken“ im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament, WMANT 15, Neukirchener Verlag 21967. Schroer, S./T. Staubli, Body Symbolism in the Bible, The Liturgical Press 2001. Schroer, S./R. Zimmermann, Mensch/Menschsein, SWB (2009) 368–376. Schüle, A., Anthropologie des Alten Testaments, ThR 76 (2011) 399–414. –, The Notion of Life: ‫ נפשׁ‬and ‫ רוח‬in the Anthropological Discourse of the Primeval History, HeBAI 1 (2012) 483–501. –, “Soul” and “Spirit” in the Anthropological Discourse of the Hebrew Bible, in: M. Welker (ed.), The Depth of the Human Person: a multidisciplinary approach, Eerdmans 2014, 147–165. Schüngel-Straumann, H., Tobit (HThK.AT), Herder 2000. Seidel, H., Das Erlebnis der Einsamkeit im Alten Testament. Eine Untersuchung zum Menschenbild des Alten Testaments (ThA 29), Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 1969. Simian-Yofre, H., pa¯nîm, TDOT 11 (2001) 589–615. Sparks, K.L., Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: prolegomena to the study of ethnic sentiments and their expression in the Hebrew Bible, Eisenbrauns 1998. Stager, L.E., The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel, BASOR 260 (1985) 1–35. Staubli, T., Alttestamentliche Konstellationen der Rechtfertigung des Menschen vor Gott, in: C. Frevel (ed.), Biblische Anthropologie. Neue Einsichten aus dem Alten Testament (QD 237), Herder 2010, 88–133. – /S. Schroer, Menschenbilder der Bibel, Patmos Verlag 2014. Stavrakopoulou, F./M. Nissinen, Introduction: New Perspectives on Body and Religion, HeBAI 2 (2013) 453–457. Steinert, U., Synthetische Körperauffassungen in akkadischen Keilschrifttexten und mesopotamische Götterkonzepte, in: K. Müller/A. Wagner (eds.), Synthetische Körperauffassung im Hebräischen und den Sprachen der Nachbarkulturen (AOAT 416), Ugarit Verlag 2014, 73–106. Straub, J., Identität, in: F. Jaeger/B. Liebsch (eds.), Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften 1. Grundlagen und Schlüsselbegriffe, J.B. Metzler 2004, 277–303. Urbanz, W., Treue (AT), wibilex.de, August 2012. di Vito, R., Old Testament Anthropology and the Construction of Personal Identity, CBQ 61 (1999) 217–238. –, Anthropology. II. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, EBR 2 (2009) 117–126. Vogt, L./A. Zingerle, Einleitung: Zur Aktualität des Themas Ehre und zu seinem Stellenwert in der Theorie, in: idem (eds.), Ehre. Archaische Momente in der Moderne, Suhrkamp 1994. Wagner, A., Wider die Reduktion des Lebendigen. Über das Verhältnis der sog. anthropologischen Grundbegriffe und die Unmöglichkeit, mit ihnen die alttestamentliche Menschenvorstellung zu fassen, in: idem (ed.), Anthropologische Aufbrüche. Alttestamentliche und interdisziplinäre Zugänge zur historischen Anthropologie, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2009, 183–199.

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–, Emotionen in alttestamentlicher und verwandter Literatur. Grundüberlegungen am Beispiel des Zorns, in: R. Egger-Wenzel/J. Corley (eds.), Emotions from Ben Sira to Paul (Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Yearbook 2011), Walter de Gruyter 2012, 27– 68. –, Das synthetische Bedeutungsspektrum hebräischer Körperteilbezeichnungen, in: K. Müller/A. Wagner (eds.), Synthetische Körperauffassung im Hebräischen und den Sprachen der Nachbarkulturen (AOAT 416), Ugarit-Verlag 2014, 1–11. –, Die Gestalt Gottes und der Mensch im Alten Testament, in: B. Janowski/C. Schwöbel (eds.), Dimensionen der Leiblichkeit. Theologische Zugänge, Neukirchener Verlag 2015, 46–68. Weingart, K., Stämmevolk – Staatsvolk – Gottesvolk? Studien zur Verwendung des IsraelNamens im Alten Testament (FAT 2/68), Mohr Siebeck 2014. Welsch, W., Homo mundanus. Jenseits der anthropischen Denkform der Moderne, Velbrück Wissenschaft 2012. Wilson, R.R., Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion: a retrospective on the past fourty years of research, in: S.M. Olyan (ed.), Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion: essays in retrospect and prospect (SBL.RBS 71), Society of Biblical Literature 2012, 7–17. Wolff, H.W., Anthropology of the Old Testament, Fortress Press 1974. Zehnder, M., Umgang mit Fremden in Israel und Assyrien. Ein Beitrag zur Anthropologie des „Fremden“ im Licht antiker Quellen (BWANT 168), Kohlhammer 2005. Zimmer, T., Zwischen Tod und Lebensglück. Eine Untersuchung zur Anthropologie Kohelets (BZAW 286), Walter de Gruyter 1999. Zobel, H.-J., ‫חסד‬, TDOT 5 (1986) 44–64.

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Homo Repetitivus and Anthropotechnics: Exercise Systems, Elite Practitioners, and Teaching Missions in the Hebrew Bible

1.

Introduction

Many of the texts within the Hebrew Bible – especially the Deuteronomistic texts – seem to have been written as a sort of disciplinary teaching programme, instructing the people that they ought to live a life in ceaseless training. Why did the Hebrew scribes see it as necessary to write their programme down? The answer is given in the texts themselves: because the Israelites failed to remain within the specific Israelite way of living. This article deals with the Israelite as a homo repetitivus; one who should constantly take part in a self-shaping and repeated practice in order to transform his or her own human condition. This practice, as a general phenomenon, is called anthropotechnics (Anthropotechnik) by German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. The practicing being must practice the pursuit of the perfect performance. He is, as such, a homo artista – the performer of excellence. However, the possibility of relapse is a natural, human condition, and even though neither the Israelite nor any other human being is a perfect performer, each individual should strive to become a performer of excellence. In their daily practices, everyone has the ability to survive expected injury (such as foreign infiltration or memories fading from oblivion) because they know how to use their systems of protection and healing, i. e., different sorts of immune systems. Therefore, they can also be characterized as homines immunologici. According to many Deuteronomistic texts, the Israelites were to immunize against foreign elements, thereby renouncing in a national-ethnic way and thus strengthening their own special exercise system. One of the greatest threats described in the Deuteronomistic texts of the Hebrew Bible is oblivion. The worst thing that could happen to the Israelites was forgetting Yahweh and their relationship with him. Therefore, enlightened elite practitioners tried their best to lead the people on the right path to the only legitimate exercise system, namely, the Yahweh-alone-system. Who were these teachers and how did they manage to educate the Israelites of their anthro-

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potechnical programme of the homo repetitivus? These are some of the questions raised and to which answers will be offered in this article.

2.

Anthropotechnics – a Programme of Acrobatic Asceticism

Peter Sloterdijk (born 1947) is concerned with human culture and social exercise systems in his book Du mußt dein Leben ändern from 2009.1 The title is taken from Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875–1926) sonnet “Archaischer Torso Apollos” which contains the very same imperative in the final verse: “Du muβt dein Leben ändern”.2 Sloterdijk’s anthropological model focuses on what he calls exercise systems from around 500 B.C.E. to the present. In other words, he deals with the period from the Axial Age and onwards. Sloterdijk describes the human being as a practising, training being: one that necessarily creates itself through exercises and thereby transcends itself. Humans thus attempt to develop a string of mental and physical practices. Here practice is understood as activities such as sport, religious rituals, education, art, and labour. Sloterdijk uses the word anthropotechnics, i. e., a new anthropological approach that entails a system of selfshaping and repeated practice as a way to transform the human condition.3 In order to help his readers visualize such techniques, Sloterdijk discusses different examples, for instance, the rise of the Olympic Games and the modern sports mentality. Examples of practitioners range from sports fanatics to virtuosos. In fact, Sloterdijk is greatly concerned with the anthropotechnical acrobatics. He defines anthropotechnics as: die mentalen und physischen Übungsverfahren, mit denen die Menschen verschiedenster Kulturen versucht haben, ihren kosmischen und sozialen Immunstatus angesichts von vagen Lebensrisiken und akuten Todesgewißheiten zu optimieren.4

An important concept in Sloterdijk’s argumentation is immune systems. In his book he examines different kinds of immunological practices that enable humans to assert themselves against fate through the use of certain imaginary systems. Thus, anthropotechnics becomes the central motif of his analysis. With regard to “immunological practices”, Sloterdijk asserts that the human being is made up of a plurality of immune systems. On a macro-scale there are three major systems: the biological, the social, and the psychological – the latter could also be characterized as a “cultural” system.5 These metaphorical immune sys1 2 3 4 5

English translation: You must change your life, Polity Press 2012. Sloterdijk, Leben, 40. Sloterdijk, Leben, 23. Sloterdijk, Leben, 23. The term immune system is of course used as a metaphor in the second and third case

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tems immunize with ideas of practice.6 As the biological immune system helps the body by keeping sickness away, the social immune system (e. g., the law, solidarity, and military) helps society by dealing with challenges from outside the system, for instance, enemies or natural disasters, while the psychological immune system helps the mind by managing mental problems such as confusion through the use of certain imaginary systems.7 Anthropotechnics is a combination of these “sozio-immunologischen Praktiken” and “psycho-immunologischen Praktiken”. In sum, with his book Sloterdijk intends to provide us with, what he calls: “Materialien zur Biographie des homo immunologicus”.8 This hero of Sloterdijk’s book could also be called homo repetitivus – homo artista – the training human being.9 Sloterdijk’s anthropological model accentuates examples from both the ancient and the present time, for instance the ancient Greek sport competitions and present day fitness culture (e. g., the eating and exercise habits of the practitioner). He defines exercise as: jede Operation, durch welche die Qualifikation des Handlenden zur nächsten Ausführung der gleichen Operation erhalten oder verbessert wird, sei sie als Übung deklariert oder nicht.10

The sportsman needs to repeat his exercises constantly, and every exercise needs to be improved and made more advanced every time. With regard to discipline and practice, Sloterdijk refers to Michel Foucault’s (1926–1984) “the care of the self” (souci de soi) 11 – “der Foucaultschen philosophischen Übung” or “Selbstbeherrschung”.12 The term “the care of the self” resembles the Stoic life practice of cura sui, which involves an endless task requiring a lifelong commitment as well as constant attentiveness, exercise and taking good care of the body, cf. cura sui corporis.13 Sloterdijk also mentions the term cura sui with regard to the anthropological exercise system.14 In fact, Sloterdijk stresses that the practitioner wants to build more and more on top of his exercise system and try to get better each time, e. g., lift more kilos or run additional kilometres and at a greater speed. In other words, fitness is a practice of self-perfection. 6 7 8 9 10 11

Sloterdijk, Leben, 21–22. Sloterdijk, Leben, 22. Sloterdijk, Leben, 23. Sloterdijk, Leben, 24. Sloterdijk, Leben, 14. The idea of souci de soi is a major topic in the final two volumes of Michel Foucault’s three volume work, The History of Sexuality in which he claims that the care of self is foundational to ancient ethics (Foucault, History 2, 73.108.211; Foucault, History 3, 45–54), 12 Sloterdijk, Leben, 242. 13 Baars, Aging, 124. 14 Sloterdijk, Leben, 392.

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Sloterdijk’s discussion of self-perfection and exercise includes many other references, one of which is Franz Kafka’s short story “Ein Hungerkünstler” in which a public performer fasts for many days.15 This performance is, according to Sloterdijk: [Ein] allgemeinen asketologischen Modell. Was als Varietéphilosophie begann, kann nun zu einer Explikationsform der klassischen Askesen entfaltet werden. Verantwortlich hierfür ist die Wahl der Disziplin: des Hungers. Dieser ist keine artistische Disziplin wie jede andere, sondern die metaphysische Askese par excellence.16

Sloterdijk thus sees the hunger artist as a pre-eminent example of a practicing, training being. This behaviour is exclusive for humans. Sloterdijk argues that a fundamental difference between humans and animals lies in the ability of the former to develop both mental and physical ways of practice. For instance, a cat does not have the ability to develop an exercise system; on the contrary, it is completely satisfied with life as it is, and therefore does not want to change anything. Humans, on the other hand, have the ability to create these types of exercise systems. Every human being has the potential at least to live a life full of exercise; only few people, however, are truly living out their potential. Sloterdijk describes the human being as a “tightrope dancer” balancing on a wire stretched out between two poles: one pole being “animal” and the other being “Übermensch”, i. e., the classical superhero.17 On the wire, the human being balances because of the ability to realise a practising life and strive for a superhuman end goal. It is indeed important to stress the fact that none of the practitioners ever reach their goal. This is because the goal constantly changes as the practitioner seeks to improve the exercise, regardless of whether it is an everyday practitioner or one of the few who ends up becoming a true elite practitioner. The majority of the group, however, lives a practising life at a lower practicing level. By using the fitness terminology, one might say that while many join a gym only a small group ends up completing an Iron Man. Sloterdijk contends that human beings are always part of a so-called “vertical tension”.18 Human beings have a yearning for verticality. By the end of the 19th century, the practicing life was beginning to lose its traditional spiritual content. The process of “de-spiritualisation” belongs to the Modern age. The old ascetic world combined verticality with religion and “[ein] Anruf von oben”.19 Here the goal for the practicing and ascetic being was to obtain salvation and reach the 15 Sloterdijk, Leben, 107. 16 Sloterdijk, Leben, 114–115. 17 Sloterdijk, Leben, 106. The metaphor of the tightrope dancer is borrowed from Friedrich Nietzsche’s book “Also sprach Zarathrustra”, Alfred Kröner Verlag 1921, 12. 18 Sloterdijk, Leben, 139. 19 Sloterdijk, Leben, 139.

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transcendental realm and thereby God.20 In other words, human beings yearned for an afterlife. In relation to verticality, Sloterdijk includes the story of Jacob’s ladder from Gen 28.21 The angles on the ladder, who in this particular chapter is said to ascend towards heaven and descend towards earth, illustrates the vertical difference.22 Here Sloterdijk includes Benedict of Nursia who held that the only true verticality is found in self-humiliation which in turn results in ascension (humilitate ascendere).23 By the time of Modernity, however, verticality is, according to Sloterdijk, simply the desire to climb the highest mountain, basically for the sake of climbing itself. The vertical difference is no longer the difference between humans and God; instead, it is the difference between humans and humans – or the difference between humans and their ontological condition. Through exercise, the difference is enlarged as some will find themselves further up the ladder, thereby leaving the floor-gymnasts behind, and moving closer to a super-human status. In other words, verticality is combined with the dichotomy between excellence and mediocrity. Another important metaphor Sloterdijk includes is the “acrobat”.24 An acrobat is a person in a lifelong “boot camp”. Here he can practice in order to perfect his acrobatics. He always tries to improve and realize even greater potential. He wants to “change his life”, meaning that he wants to change his life in order to improve his life. But the true acrobat keeps creating new and possibly more advanced goals. These goals can be transferred to the general human being because in a way we are all acrobats. At least everybody has the potential to become an acrobat. Everybody can create different goals for themselves and constantly try to improve at the specific practice that they find fascinating. The downside of this system is that the practising beings never reach their goal. Therefore it is never possible to be completely satisfied and the result is never good enough. Besides the tightrope dancer and the acrobat, Sloterdijk also includes a third metaphor when he connects the practising being with a “mountain climber”,25 trying to reach the top of the mountain.26 The majority, or the mass, climb to the first plateau on the mountain – termed by Sloterdijk as the “base camp”. Here, people do not want to give up the life that they are living. They are satisfied with the exercise system they already have. They are living a “low-ascetic” life. Here we 20 21 22 23 24 25

Sloterdijk, Leben, 395. Sloterdijk, Leben, 199–202. Sloterdijk, Leben, 397. Sloterdijk, Leben, 397. Sloterdijk, Leben, 199. Sloterdijk borrows the metaphor from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ book “Climbing Mount Improbable” from 1996. 26 Sloterdijk, Leben, 187–189.

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see what distinguishes culture from nature: humans are capable of climbing the mountain whereas the animals remain at ground level. In addition to the mass we have the elite. A member of the elite has the will to change his life and wants selfperfection. Naturally, he wants more out of life than he already has. Therefore, he is ready to move on from his present existence. The elite practitioner wants, in other words, to reach the top of the mountain. Only a small number of people have the courage to leave the base camp and start climbing up the mountain. They will never reach the top – at least not in Modernity – as it is not possible to realise the goal completely because they constantly set new goals; alternatively, we could say that the mountain keeps growing higher as they climb from one plateau to another. However, they will reach a plateau further up the mountain where they will live in an “elite camp”. According to Sloterdijk, the members of the base camp have to be willing to climb up the mountain. They need to be ready to change their life: a change that takes place by the assistance of a teacher. By going through this process, they learn how to give up former values, change their lives, and get better everyday through practice. The most essential exercise system that Sloterdijk writes of is the life of the ascetic – a person who renounces social and material comforts, leading a life of extreme self-discipline or self-control, such as a monk or eremite. The word asceticism is derived from the Greek áske¯sis, meaning practice or exercise. Therefore, Sloterdijk finds it natural to connect the severe practice of self-discipline, that is, asceticism, with his anthropological model. Here asceticism is not necessarily a religious practice but also educational, alimentary, or sports-related, to name a few examples. According to Sloterdijk, humans always need to practice, or perhaps more accurately, they at least have the potential to develop these exercise systems and thereby lead an ascetic lifestyle – a life filled with practice. The true ascetic lives in a secluded microclimate or enclave.27 The classical ascetic develops an immune system that could be compared to a fortified city or building with walls and gates around it – a microclimate. Without the daily exercises, his microclimate would collapse. Practically speaking, exercise entails cleansing. In other words, the ascetic needs to clean both the mental space within and the physical space around him, thereby keeping foreign elements out. Daily, he needs to free his mind from mundane values and guard the spatial boundaries of his microclimate in order to control any kind of foreign infiltration.28 Most practitioners, however, will unavoidably have difficulty with the system. Therefore a teacher – or a coach – is normally present in a microclimate of the practicing life. The assistance of an elite practitioner is meant to help and guide the rest in their exercises, thereby reinforcing and stabilizing the recession as well as 27 Sloterdijk, Leben, 355–358. 28 Sloterdijk, Leben, 357.

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controlling any possible relapse, which is a natural, human condition. The teacher can use different rhetorical strategies to maintain the members within the ascetic life. He can, for instance, encourage or persuade his students to see the world as a hideous place full of apparent and only perishable beauty. This is the so-called disgust exercise (Verekelungsanalyse or Ekelübungen), i. e., a rhetorical exercise devoted to reinforcing the recession through disgust arousal.29 This type of analysis is efficient because: Was gegen Anwandlungen von Heimweh nach der verlorenen Normalität hilft, sind endorhetorische Übungen vom Typus der Verekelungsanalyse. Sie sind wirksam, weil sie die Versuchung, die zurückgelassene äuβere Welt hin und wieder schön zu finden, an der Wurzel bekämpfen.30

The disgust exercise helps stabilize and fight the tendency of the recession in order to make the practitioner stay in a life of practice instead of relapsing. Another rhetorical strategy is the disillusioning and disenchanting analysis (Ernüchterungs- und Entzauberunsanalyse) that sees the physical world as superficial, evanescent, and without any true values.31 This is supposed to improve the spiritual immune system of the practitioner.32 The mechanism of distance is closely connected to the disgust exercise. Sloterdijk’s theory is relevant in relation to the Hebrew Bible because, like the typical monastic ascetics, the Israelites were also supposed to live a practicing life, separated from the surrounding world, according to many Hebrew texts. Even though foreigners infiltrated their microclimate and damaged their identity as a special religious and ethnic nation several times, the Israelites managed, according to a dominant textual tradition, with the guidance of a teacher, such as, e. g., Moses, Joshua, or Ezra, to re-establish as a group separated from all other groups.

3.

Renouncers

The American sociologist of religion Robert Bellah (1927–2013) has worked extensively on the Axial Age phenomena, originally coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers in 1947. The idea of an Axial Age was further developed by Bellah, among other scholars, first in his article “Religious Evolution” from 1964 and latest in his book from 2011 Religion and Human Evolution. There are different ways to define the characteristics of the Axial Age and it may very well have 29 30 31 32

Sloterdijk, Leben, 364. Sloterdijk, Leben, 365–366. Sloterdijk, Leben, 366. Sloterdijk, Leben, 364.

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appeared in different ways in the four great axial civilizations (China, India, Greece, and Israel) in the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. Very briefly explained, as a minimal definition, the Axial Age can be characterized by two major developments, namely, analytical thinking and renouncing as seen with the occurrence of asceticism. Bellah emphasizes the occurrence of renouncers as one of the key axial phenomena in an article released as a contribution to a web discussion forum.33 Moreover, with his chapter on ancient India in his latest book, he also accentuates the great importance of renouncers in relation to the understanding of the Axial Age.34 The renouncer gives up his household and anything of social, political, economic, or ontological value. He leaves his family and renounces several worldly things such as his title, his social status, and his property together with luxurious food and clothing, thereby rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, sex, and fame. Instead, he decides to live a simple life in social isolation, or in groups of isolated individuals as seen in monasteries later on, from where he is able to see the established society from the outside. Bellah gives examples of renouncers from all of the four axial civilizations: the Hebrew prophets (also characterized as “denouncers”), the Buddhist monastics, the Daoists, in some sense the Confucians, as well as Greek philosophers such as Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato. Another evident example from ancient Greece is Diogenes of Sinope, the most famous of the Cynics.35 In order to clarify what is meant by a traditional renouncer mentality, a brief presentation is given here of the well-known and very traditional description of the socio-ontological way of renouncing, namely, the story of the Buddha. The prince Siddhartha Gautama (who later obtained the name the Buddha, i. e., “the enlightened one”) led a luxurious life in a palace with his family. However, after three successive trips to the city on which he met, in turn, an elderly man, a diseased person, and a corpse, he felt despair and was shocked to learn about old age, disease, and death.36 When he got back to the palace he withdrew from the women, saying: It is not that I despise the objects of sense, and I know full well that they make up what we call “the world”. But when I consider the impermanence of everything in this world, then I can find no delight in it. Yes, if this triad of old age, illness, and death did not exist, then all this loveliness would surely give me great pleasure. If only this beauty of women were imperishable, then my mind would certainly indulge in the passions, though, of course,

33 Bellah, Renouncers. 34 Bellah, Religion, 527–530.574. 35 Jesus followed a renunciation of possessions, family, and wealth. Comparison between the Cynics and Jesus have recently been expanded, see: Lang, Jesus, 135–149. 36 Conze, Buddhist, 39–40.

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they have their faults. But since even women attach no more value to their bodies after old age has drunk them up, to delight in them would clearly be a sign of delusion.37

The Buddha had realised that everything in this world was perishable and illusory; hence, he could only look at the women with disgust.38 After meeting a monk, the Buddha decided to leave his palace and family for a homeless, ascetic life in the pursuit of enlightenment. The Buddha decided to give up extreme asceticism and instead adhered to a more moderate kind of asceticism that met the needs of the body without crossing over into luxury and indulgence. In sum, he still became a renouncer, and one who, in fact, made use of the rhetorical strategies that Sloterdijk discusses, namely, disgust exercise as well as disillusioning and disenchanting analysis. The teachings of the Buddha and his contemporary, Vardhama¯na Maha¯vı¯ra, the founder of Jainism as well as the Upanisads (philosophical speculations in ˙ Sanskrit), generated a new way of thinking in India in the 6th century B.C.E. The mental revolution revolved around the idea of moksa, which is understood to be ˙ release from the endless cycle of life and rebirth (samsa¯ra).39 In order to reach the ˙ goal of liberation it is best to live as a renouncer – a samnya¯sin.40 In connection to ˙ the role of the renouncer, Bellah has also pointed to the concept of moksa as ˙ crucial in relation to the Axial Age debate.41 In sum, Bellah has associated the renouncer phenomenon with the Axial Age, but he has not linked the idea of renouncing with a national-ethnic or political phenomenon. Attention will now be turned to the case study of the national-ethnic way of renouncing in ancient Israel as described in many Deuteronomistic texts.42

4.

The Israelite National-Ethnic Renouncer Mentality

The Hebrew Bible describes several models for how the Israelite society should be organized. The British anthropologist Mary Douglas’ grid/group cultural theory may help in understanding these models better. Apart from African studies, 37 Conze, Buddhist, 40–41. 38 Conze, Buddhist, 44. 39 The notion of moksa is not present in old Vedic literature, the Samhita¯s, or the Bra¯hmanas ˙ the axial breakthrough ˙ ˙ These texts describe the Indian mentality before (sacrificial formulas). as primarily concerned with the enjoyment of the earthly world. 40 The designation is used for a Brahminical renouncer; a non-Brahminical renouncer is called “s´ramana” (Bellah, Religion, 528). ˙ 41 Bellah, Religion, 516. 42 For more on Sloterdijk and renouncing in the Hebrew Bible, see: Jensen, Pæsah, 6–8. Also, on recent work on religious evolution and the Hebrew Bible, see: Christensen, Cultural, 15–35; Petersen, Aksetid, 57–74; Lang, Agerbrugeren, 32–56; Jensen, Kognition, 33–48; Jensen, Robert Bellah, 11–31; Jensen, Udstigere, 75–97.

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Douglas has also conducted extensive research within the field of the Old Testament. Her book In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers (1993) deals with the social organization of the Book of Numbers. Here she described her grid/group theory, with which she produced a framework for understanding social organization.43 Any culture, Douglas argued, can be mapped on two dimensions. On one axis is “grid”, the extent to which behaviours and rules are defined and differentiated, for example by public rules deciding who can do what according to their age, race, gender, or qualifications. On the other axis is “group”, the extent to which people bond with each other as well as divide the world into insiders and outsiders. These two dimensions come together to provide a simple model: high grid and high group is hierarchy; low grid and low group is individualism; high group and low grid is the enclave (egalitarianism); low group and high grid is isolationism. These four worldviews can be found at every level of human organization. They are constantly in tension, merging and combining in new ways. It is relevant to include Douglas’ description of the two strong group categories, namely, hierarchy and enclave. The hierarchical culture is associated with a strong community, concerned with ranks and typically contamination of persons and places as it focuses on such binary oppositions as holy/unholy and clean/unclean. The leaders have great authority and act calm and dignified.44 This can be seen in many of the Priestly texts with focus on rules, regulations, and classifications. The enclave culture, on the other hand, is concerned with the difference between belonging and not belonging to the enclave as well as tensions between the inside and the outside.45 The community is very fragile and the fear of defecting members is always present. In order to prevent this from happening, the people are entrapped in a “self-repeating system” (as described above with Sloterdijk’s exercise systems).46 In addition, according to the self-understanding of the enclave, everybody is equally responsible and the “organizers” (who would not necessarily call themselves “leaders”) – are very charismatic and have practically no, or very little, authority.47 An example of the enclave mentality and national-ethnic renouncing in the Hebrew Bible can be found within the Deuteronomistic texts as well as the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, with figures such as Moses, Ezra, and Nehemiah who are organizers of a fragile community. The primary concern in this line of thought is the detachment from the outside world by leaving Egypt in Exodus and by building the city walls in Nehemiah. These organizers do their best to implement 43 44 45 46 47

Douglas, Wilderness, 42–83. Douglas, Wilderness, 66. Douglas, Wilderness, 76. Douglas, Wilderness, 60. Douglas, Wilderness, 56.

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fear of the surrounding foreign world, displaying great passion when the members of the enclave act otherwise. For instance, when Ezra heard of the situation with the mixed marriages, he tore his garment and robe, pulled some of the hair from his head and his beard, and sat down appalled (Ezra 9:3). And while praying and making confession, he wept and prostrated himself before the temple (Ezra 10:1). Also, Nehemiah acted in an almost hysterical way with regard to the mixed marriage situation (Neh 13:23–29). When he realized that none of the children in Jerusalem were able to speak the language of Judah, he cursed them and struck some of them, pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, saying: “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take of their daughters for your sons or for yourselves”, thereby stressing the fact that intermarriage was forbidden. According to the enclavist line of thought, proper membership is crucial, and therefore a strict line is drawn in order to eliminate foreign factors. The question is now how to maintain the enclave.48 This may be done by focusing on hostility towards the outside world, creating a self-repeating system, organizing periodic gatherings, and by having teachers to assist the members in remaining within the right exercise system. According to several Deuteronomistic texts, certain elite practitioners, such as prophets, priests, Levites, and kings, tried to educate the people in order to maintain a mono-Yahwistic mentality and avoid any sort of syncretistic religious practice. These teachers belonged to what Morton Smith labeled as the “Yahweh-alone movement”.49 The Hebrew texts specifically ascribe the teaching of the Law to the priests (cf., for instance, Jer 18:18; Hag 2:11; Ezek 7:27; Lev 10:11). The most elucidatory example, however, is found in Neh 8, where Ezra, the priest and scribe, teaches the entire nation by reading from the Law of Moses in public, assisted by the Levites who made it easier for the people to understand what was being read aloud by either translating or interpreting the words read. Although not a priest, Nehemiah, the governor, also teaches the people on several occasions; for instance, with regard to the Sabbath, he instructs the people to keep the gates of the city wall closed to prevent traders from entering from Friday to Saturday at sundown (Neh 13). That way, the Israelites would in fact have their very own provisional microclimate and thereby keep their enclave mentality strong. Other figures have the role of a guide or a teacher in the Hebrew Bible, such as kings (e. g., 2 Kings 23), Levites (e. g., Neh 8:7), and parents (e. g., Deut 6). Another relevant example is the prophets. They bring teachings from Yahweh to the people. Quite often, they admonish the people with social, religious, or political critique. A prominent example is “the temple speech” in Jer 7. Here Yahweh tells 48 On ethnic boundaries, see: Davies, Defending, 43–54; Siedlecki, Foreigners, 229–266. 49 Smith, Palestinian, 11–42.

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the prophet Jeremiah to stand at the gate of the temple and there proclaim his message. This was a place where the prophet would have a great audience as the people were going in and out of the gate. With his message, Jeremiah criticizes the people for social problems as well as religious offences; for instance, they had not dealt with each other justly and, moreover, they had baked cakes to offer the Queen of Heaven. In v. 30 there is even the so-called disgust exercise, as Sloterdijk would call it, as the foreign gods are described as despicable (sˇiqu¯sim). With his ˙ speech, Jeremiah reminds the people that they should remain within the enclave and follow their own specific religious rules while also behaving morally toward each other. In sum, they should remain within their own Israelite exercise system and focus exclusively on their mono-Yahwistic anthropotechnics. Many different figures have been described as teachers and advocates for the Yahweh-alone-movement. Bernhard Lang, borrowing the term from Morton Smith, has also argued that the ‘alone-ist’ idea not only included prophets – as originally claimed by Smith – but also priests, scribes, members of the military elite, and kings.50 In the following, the primary focus will be on the narratives of King Jehoshaphat and his teaching mission in the Book of Chronicles because these texts are eminent examples of anthropotechnics.51

5.

King Jehoshaphat and his Anthropotechnical System

According to the writers of the Hebrew Bible, some of the kings in Jerusalem did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh (e. g., Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah). These kings made an effort to abolish everything they considered idolatrous from their kingdom, thereby showing the people what kind of exercise system they should be following. King Jehoshaphat – also a good king (1 Kings 22:43) despite the fact that people still sacrificed and burnt incense on the high places and although he made alliances with the nation of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, on several occasions – is highly relevant in regard to the Israelite anthropotechnics. Jehoshaphat – or more accurately, the scribes who wrote the story of Jehoshaphat in the Books of Chronicles – realized that memory had a way of fading rapidly into oblivion unless the people were constantly taught, instructed, and told how to be dependent on the one god, Yahweh, and thereby maintain the right kind of religious lifestyle. Consequently, they emphasized that Jehoshaphat decided to send two officials, nine Levites, and two priests to teach the Law of Yahweh 50 Lang, Jahwe, 47–83; Lang, Hebrew, 9. 51 The author of the Book of Chronicles has allotted much space to King Jehoshaphat (2 Chron 17:1–21:1) as opposed to the account in the Book of Kings (1 Kgs 22:1–51). In other words, the Chronicler has made Jehoshaphat one of the major kings of his book.

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throughout the nation of Judah (2 Chron 17:7–9). This teaching commission was carried out in order to make the people realize that what they had been doing was wrong, thereby striving to stabilize and strengthen their faith. It is an unusual fact in the Hebrew Bible that the king is the one who takes initiative and responsibility for the education of the people.52 The figure of Jehoshaphat, however, saw that it was a necessary procedure in order to make the nation stable and strong. A similar initiative is described in Ezra 7:25, where the Persian king Artaxerxes authorizes Ezra to teach the Law of Yahweh to all those who do not know it. This is more of a juridical reform, however, rather than a specifically religious teaching mission, resembling the situation in 2 Chron 19:4–11 where Jehoshaphat is in charge of appointing judges in order to turn the people back to Yahweh. Although the narratives of Jehoshaphat do not necessarily reflect historical events, they are, nonetheless, very important because they reflect the authors’ mindset; they obviously knew of the anthropotechnical systems and the relevance of repeated practice as well as the role of teachers as elite practitioners. In sum, these texts can be placed within the Axial Age framework. In addition to his teaching mission, we are also told that the figure of Jehoshaphat personally taught the people through a prayer to Yahweh. Nevertheless, this text undoubtedly has a religious agenda, namely, to encourage people in distress to seek Yahweh through prayer. In 2 Chron 20 we are told that the nation of Judah was on the brik of war; the king was afraid and therefore turned his attention to Yahweh and prayed for help while also proclaiming a fast throughout the land. All of Judah gathered in the temple of Yahweh before the new court and then Jehoshaphat began to pray. His prayer (2 Chron 20:6–11) can be subdivided into three sections. Firstly, Jehoshaphat praised Yahweh for his attributes (v. 6) and for the great acts he has accomplished in history (v. 7–9). Secondly, he identified their problem; they found themselves in a war situation where their external problem was that three nations sought to drive the people of Judah out of their land (v. 10–11), and their internal problem was that they were powerless (v. 12). This predicament led Jehoshaphat to the third section of the prayer, namely, the imploring of Yahweh’s help: “Our God, will you not judge them […] our eyes are on you” (v. 12). It is important to emphasize that the prayer had a two-fold purpose. Besides urging Yahweh for intervention, the prayer was in fact also said aloud to teach the people about Yahweh’s divine attributes and mighty deeds in history in order to strengthen their faith in a time of crisis where they felt powerless and did not know what they were to do. In other words, the prayer had an illocutionary effect on the listeners. Jehoshaphat chose his words very carefully to convey a message to the whole assembly gathered at the temple. The message clearly stated that 52 Japhet, Chronicles, 749.

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Yahweh was the god of heavens and the ruler of all the nations of the earth (v. 6). With this acknowledgement Jehoshaphat made use of the rhetorical technique called captatio benevolentiae in order to capture the goodwill of Yahweh. At the same time, however, he also tried to awaken the people who surely were depressed in this time of need. Jehoshaphat proceeded to recollect Yahweh’s promise to Abraham to give the land to Abraham and his descendants (v. 7). This vital part of the prayer was in all probability included because Jehoshaphat recognized a need to remind himself and the people of their relationship with Yahweh and thereby remember that Yahweh had been trustworthy and faithful throughout history. The prayer was thus not only a request for divine assistance but also a reminder for Judah of who Yahweh was. In sum, according to the text, Jehoshaphat took on the role of a teacher and taught the people in order to strengthen their faith, thereby turning them from discouraged petitioners into encouraged devotees (v. 18). One might say in Sloterdijk’s terms that he urged the “floor-gymnasts” to perfect their acrobatics by keeping calm, remaining within their enclave, and strengthening their exercise system. In other words, Jehoshaphat used the anthropotechnical system to survive the war situation. Therefore, he may be characterized as a homo immunologicus. His specific symbolic immune system helped him and the minds of all of the people to immunize with ideas of practice (cf. Sloterdijk). One of the most important aspects of the Israelite practice, according to the Deuteronomistic mindset, was staying faithful to Yahweh. The idea of this specific practice and its primary function of encouraging fidelity were thought to bring along the protection and security of Yahweh’s salvation army.53 In fact, the text does not even describe any kind of military activity by Israel; instead, it focuses on “liturgical performances”, such as praying and singing.54 In addition to the theological theme, the Chronicler’s war report also includes political and ideological aspects as it is dealing with the question of communal identity and the relations with foreign national-ethnic groups.55 Jehoshaphat’s prayer clearly states that Israel is the chosen descendant of Abraham (v. 8). Furthermore, when the people adhere to the contractual relationship with Yahweh, they will be saved from their enemies.56 In conclusion, Jehoshaphat’s anthropotechnical system in 2 Chron 20 incorporates the highly influential idea of renouncing, i. e., national-ethnic renouncing, which may be seen as one of the key aspects of the Axial Age. Although it may be an unusual fact in the Hebrew Bible that a king is responsible for educating his people by either lecturing personally or initiating a 53 54 55 56

Davies, Defending, 45. Siedlecki, Foreigners, 260. Siedlecki, Foreigners, 261. Davies, Defending, 52.

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teaching mission, it is known elsewhere, for instance, in ancient India. This crosscultural reference is included to accentuate that Israel was not a unique case in this regard. In contrast, the Indian emperor, As´oka Maurya, also known as As´oka the Great (304–232 BCE), acted in a very similar way during his reign (274–232 BCE).57 He became an adherent of Buddhism after his bloody conquest of Kalinga that resulted in countless loss of life and for which the emperor felt great remorse. Hereafter, he renounced war and vowed to rule by dhamma (dharma is the Sanskrit counterpart for this Pa¯li term); a term practically untranslatable into English, but which has been variously translated as morality, piety, or righteousness.58 His dhamma had a universal factor and in his fourteenth regnal year As´oka appointed the so-called dhamma-maha¯mattas (officials or overseers of the Dhamma teaching) to tour the empire as his emissaries and teachers.59 This is much like the Levites in 2 Chron 17:7–9. On occasion, As´oka himself went on visits throughout the country in order to spread his teaching and instruct the people in high morals. It was most likely on one of these tours that he came up with the idea of beginning the institution of the dhamma-maha¯mattas.60 They were of great importance as they were responsible for spreading and preaching the teaching and practice of Dhamma, as they explained it and made it comprehensible to the listeners.61 This persuasion and propagation was not only carried out within the kingdom or on the border of it, but also in the areas outside such as the Hellenic world.62 Moreover, these Indian teachers were permitted to teach in the homes of people of all social classes, from ascetic to householder and even royalty.63 Besides teaching at the homes of people, gatherings were also held at the sites of As´oka’s collection of 33 inscriptions on pillars, boulders, and cave walls – the so-called Edicts of As´oka. The majority of the population was at that time most likely unable to read the inscriptions – even though it was in Magadha, a form of Prakrit, with some local variations – since literacy was just beginning.64 Therefore, gatherings were to be held at the sites during which scribes would read aloud. This practice resembles the public reading of the Law of Moses in Neh 8, where normative written guidelines are read in a public place in order to teach the people. One difference, though, is that Ezra read from a scroll not a pillar.

57 Thapar, As´oka, 1. 58 According to Thapar, As´oka’s Dhamma is not a synonym for Buddhism as it was rather a policy of social responsibility than a religious demand (Thapar, As´oka, 3). 59 Thapar, As´oka, 62–63. 60 Thapar, As´oka, 202. 61 Thapar, As´oka, 148–149. 62 Thapar, As´oka , 165.197. 63 Thapar, As´oka, 197. 64 Eraly, Lotus, 406.

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Writings on stone are of course a central part in other texts in the Hebrew Bible, e. g., Ex 24; 31; Deut 27:2–3; Josh 8:32. Although the form of As´oka’s teaching mission was carried out in a manner that resembled that of King Jehoshaphat in some ways, the content was very different. Whereas the teaching of Jehoshaphat – and several other Deuteronomistic figures – was inherently enclavistic, that of As´oka, on the other hand, was focused on a universal model, attending to the welfare of other religions and sects, thereby honouring the faith of others and emphasizing sympathetic feelings toward the outside world.65 Moreover, As´oka’s Edicts also preached an afterlife as well as belittling and banning Vedic animal sacrifices. In other words, the content of the teaching in ancient India was indeed highly axial. This was not the case with regard to Israel; here, the content of the teaching focused on a particular exercise system, animal sacrifices, and a fruitful life in the empirical world.66

6.

Levites as Teachers and Elite Practitioners

Now from India back to Israel, and in continuation of the dhamma-maha¯mattas, attention is now directed to the Levites because they can be seen as very important officials of the Israelite anthropotechnical system. Normally, the Levites served as guardians (Num 3:6–9), gatekeepers (1 Chron 9:17–27), Tabernacle or temple servants (respectively Num 4:1–33; 1 Chron 9:28–32), and musicians at the temple (2 Chron 29:25); however, in the Second Temple period, they obtained the task of transmitting and teaching the Law of Yahweh.67 Here, they assisted the priests who originally had been ascribed to this profession. Their position is very well-illustrated in Neh 8:7, where they function as teachers who were either translating or interpreting the Law, and in 2 Chron 17:7–9, where they are described as “wandering professors”,68 sent on a mission to educate the people throughout the land in order to assist others in maintaining the right kind of religious practice. In addition, they are referred to as those “who taught all Israel and who were holy to Yahweh” (2 Chron 35:3). Moreover, in Deut 33:10, it is emphasized that the Levites are to teach Jacob rules of Yahweh, and Israel Law of Yahweh. Also, in Mal 2:6, it is written that true teaching came from the mouth of Levi. Summing up, one might call them teachers or even “elite practitioners” within the Yahweh-alone-exercise system. They themselves – maybe only a small 65 Thapar, As´oka, 198. 66 For more on Israel and religious actions that focused on fertility and blessings in this world, see: Jensen, Religionshistorie, 10. 67 Japhet, Chronicles, 749. 68 Japhet, Chronicles, 750.

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group of Levites – had gone through an education system in order to learn how to read, write, recite, translate, and interpret. After studying and memorizing a comprehensive and carefully selected curriculum, they were able to guide others in the Law of Yahweh.69 A very significant text with regard to Levites as teachers, or elite practitioners, of the Law is Psalm 78. The composers of the Hebrew Bible have ascribed this psalm to Asaph, the Levite – a psalm with a didactic purpose. Here, we see how Asaph teaches the people through a maskı¯l. Asaph was one of the Levites that King David assigned as worship leaders in the Tabernacle choir (1 Chron 6:16– 28). It is indeed relevant to include the possibility of Levites (or Psalmists) teaching the Israelites through singing and thereby encouraging them to remain within their anthropotechnical system. Maybe the psalm – and psalms in general – was not restricted to occasionally being sung in the temple; perhaps it was also an individual praxis for the people outside the temple as well. The worship and family piety could have involved a lectio continua (a set reading cycle) in the Persian Period after the Book of Psalms had been collected, or it could even have involved a lectio repetitiva (a repeated reading of one psalm). In any case, one may visualize that the people sang not only during pilgrimage but also when they were at home as a sort of individual or family repetitive exercise system. And each individual who followed such a routine would indeed be a homo repetitivus. In Psalm 78 the psalmist – recorded as Asaph, the Levite – instructs the people from the very beginning of the Psalm: “hear my to¯ra¯, my people” (v. 1, cf. Isa 51:4). Thereafter, he advises the people to teach their children: “we will tell the next generation the glorious deeds of Yahweh, his power, and the wonders he has done. He established a decree for Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children” (v. 4–6). The instruction is clear: a disciplinary education system is needed. The Levites instructed the people as a whole either by explaining or by singing – or perhaps a combination of the both. Another example of a very similar educational process is seen with the adults of the household who were in charge of passing the teaching of Yahweh and their exclusive relationship on to their children in order to assist the memory of the next generation so they would keep the commandments and not as easily forget Yahweh (v. 7). This sort of home schooling is explained in greater detail in Deut 6.70 Especially v. 20–25 are relevant in relation to passing on information to the next generation, and also in relation 69 For more on education systems in the Ancient Near East, see: Carr, Writing, 111–176. 70 Proverbs also focuses on education in a household setting. Here parents teach their sons about civic matters (e. g., Proverbs 1:8; 2:1ff.).

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with exercise systems in Israel. In Deut 6, the Israelites are told how they should keep the words of the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances in their hearts (le¯b) 71 and recite them for their sons. Moreover, they are to talk about them when they are at home and when they are away, and also when they lie down and when they rise (Deut 6:6–7). They are, furthermore, to bind them as a sign on their hand; fix them as an emblem (tôta¯po¯t, v. 8) on their forehead; and they are to ˙ ˙ write them on the doorposts (me˘zûzo¯t, v. 9) of their house and their gates (Deut 6:8–9). The tôta¯po¯t are usually considered to be forerunners of the tefillin – small ˙ ˙ amulets (or boxes) containing verses from the Scripture, one bound on the forehead and one on the arm, used for prayer by Jews. In The New Testament (Mt 23:5), they are called phylacteries which translates as “safeguard”, “means of protection”, or simply “amulet”. The tefillin and the me˘zûzo¯t are to serve as signs and generate a remembrance of the exodus event where Yahweh brought the Israelites out of Egypt. Deuteronomy 6, in other words, encourages the Israelites to teach their children (or sons) about Yahweh’s mighty salvific act in Egypt (v. 20–23). These didactic instructions or rituals have at least two functions in common. Firstly, they obviously help the Israelites to recall past events, and thereby they are precautions against the looming oblivion or disobedience.72 Secondly, the rituals also help to create and stabilize a certain group identity together with ethnic-national solidarity.

7.

Anthropotechnics in the Hebrew Bible

According to the texts discussed above, the Israelites maintained their group identity and their collective values by leading a practicing life within the Yahwehalonist exercise system. And the elite practitioners – although not superhuman as they too were prone to experience relapse from time to time (Ez 22:26; Hos 6:9; Mi 3:11) – guided them through their anthropotechnics. The scribes who wrote the Hebrew Bible emphasized the need for an external memory field that would instruct the people on how they ought to live their lives. In Deut 6, the Israelites are told to keep Yahweh’s words in their hearts constantly, recite them to their children, and talk about them when they are home and when they are away (v. 6). This paper asserts that they are told to be like the ascetics, i.e. practitioners (like the tightrope dancers, acrobats, and mountain climbers mentioned by Sloterdijk) 71 The Hebrew word le¯b (“heart”) not only has an emotional aspect but also an intellectual or cognitive aspect which is the case in this passage. 72 On rituals and (re)establishing of memory, see: Durkheim, Forms, 234–276. Also, on memory and the Hebrew Bible, see: Assmann, Civilization, 175–205; Assmann, Religion, 63–154; Denver, Exodus, 399–408; Hendel, Culture, 250–261; Cultural, 65–77; Exodus, 601–622; Jensen, Religion, 3–17.

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who seek to improve their exercise on a daily basis. The scribes pinpointed the fact that anthropotechnical acrobatics and repetitive, pedagogical teaching were essential in the process of preserving the Israelite memory, identity, and enclave. In other words, the scribes were aware that each individual had to be a homo repetitivus in order to successfully maintain the specific Israelite value system. What is more, by carrying out their specific Yahweh-alonist exercise system, they did a natural, human thing: practicing. Moreover, this was something that occurred in the Axial Age around the world – for instance, the Buddhists in India, and the Cynics as well as the sportsmen training for the Olympics in Greece – and that still has an impact on the human life today. The religious exercises, however, have been toned down, whereas the physical (sports), alimentary, and educational exercise systems have become more and more conspicuous these days.

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–, The History of Sexuality, vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, (trans. Robert Hurley), Vintage Books 1990. Hendel, R., The Exodus in Biblical Memory, JBL 120 No. 4 (2001) 601–620. –, Culture, Memory, and History: Reflections on Method in Biblical Studies, Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future: The New Pragmatism, ed. T.E. Levy, Equinox 2010 250–261. –, The Exodus as Cultural Memory: Egyptian Bondage and the Song of the Sea, in: T.E. Levy et al. (eds.), Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience, Springer 2015 65–88. Japhet, S., I & II Chronicles: A Commentary (Old Testament Library), Westminster John Knox Press 1993. Jensen, H.J.L., Religion, hukommelse og viden: Jan Assmann, med udblik til Durkheim, Rappaport og Augustin, Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 52 (2008) 3–17. –, Religionshistorie og aksetid: Om Robert Bellahs udkast til en evolutionær religionshistorie, Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 56 (2011) 5–22. –, Kognition, evolution og Bibel, Collegium Biblicms Årsskrift 16 (2012) 33–48. –, Pæsah, Halloween: Aksial og tribal religion, Collegium Biblicum Årsskrift 17 (2013) 1– 11. –, Robert Bellah, religion og menneskelig evolution, Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 60 (2013) 11–31. –, Udstigere og immunsystemer, asketer og akrobater: Om Peter Sloterdijks ”Du musst dein Leben ändern. Über Anthropotechnik”, Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 60 (2013) 75–97. Lang, B., Die Jahwe-Allein-Bewegung, in: B. Lang (ed.), Der Einzige Gott: Die Geburt des biblischen Monotheismus, Kösel Verlag 1981. –, Hebrew Life and Literature: Selected Essays of Bernhard Lang, Ashgate 2008. –, Jesus der Hund: Leben und Lehre eines jüdischen Kynikers, C. H. Beck Verlag 2010. –, Agerbrugeren, den intellektuelle og individet, Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 60 (2013) 32–56. Petersen, A.K., Aksetid, det aksiale, aksialisering, Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 60 (2013) 57–74. Siedlecki, A., Foreigners, Warfare and Judahite Identity, in: M.P. Graham & S.L. McKenzie (eds.), The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture, Sheffield Academic Press 1999 229–266. Sloterdijk, P., Du mußt dein Leben ändern, Suhrkamp Verlag 2009. Smith, M., Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament, SCM 1971. Thapar, R., As´oka and the Decline of the Mauryas (Oxford India Perennials), Oxford University Press 2012.

Bernhard Lang

New Light on the Levites: The Biblical Group that Invented Belief in Life after Death in Heaven

The theme of “heaven”, I must admit, is one of my obsessions. I started to research the subject in the early 1980s with the intention of writing a historical survey of Christian notions of how eternal life is spent in heaven, from the Bible to the present day. With the help of my co-author Colleen McDannell, I was able to publish a book ambitiously entitled Heaven: A History.1 The present paper is designed to both supplement and complete this book, since it answers a question that, despite my efforts, I was unable to answer back then: how the story of heaven actually began in biblical times. Now, three decades later, I think I know. The key to understanding the beginnings of heaven is the Levites.

1.

The Levites as a Special Case

Domestic religion, essential to the household but closed to all others, was the constituent principle of the ancient family. Although natural affection, the division of domestic labour and the authority of the pater familias were all meaningful and indispensable, it was above all the veneration of the dead ancestors that “caused the family to form a single body, both in this life and in the next. The ancient family was a religious rather than a natural association”.2 Kin, cult and the afterlife were felt to be intimately related. The members of the family formed a stable and insoluble functional unit, integrated and animated by a soul – the cult of the ancestors. Another significant element belonged to this unit: the ownership of land. Private ownership, as Fustel de Coulanges argued in La cité antique (1864), derives from, and is uniquely related to, ancestor worship. A man

1 Lang/McDannell, Heaven. This book is supplemented by Lang, Meeting, especially by the chapter “From stasis to movement, from loneliness to love: Heaven: A History (1988) in retrospect”, 15–31. 2 Fustel de Coulanges, City, 42.

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was always buried in the fields he had farmed, and, because his descendants were obliged to care for his tomb, the land had always to remain in the family. Fustel de Coulanges described the functional complex of “kin, cult, land, and afterlife” as the basic cultural pattern underlying ancient Indo-European societies, including those of the Greeks and Romans. In 1962, Jack Goody discovered a similar pattern in West Africa.3 And in 1973, Herbert Brichto demonstrated that the complete pattern is also present in the Hebrew Bible. It shaped ancient Israelite society and its afterlife beliefs: “Death does not constitute a dissolution, but rather a transition to another kind of existence, an afterlife in the shadowy realm of Sheol. The condition of the dead in this afterlife is, in a vague but significant way, connected with proper burial upon the ancestral land and with the continuation on that land of the [progeny of the deceased]”.4 Proper burial ensured that the deceased person could become a ghost, travel to the netherworld, become one of the family gods, and thus become one of the family guardians. To be a full member of wider Israelite society, a society that extended beyond the small family circle, one had to be a landowner. Yet, Israelite society included groups of people that did not own land and did not practise agriculture; as minorities, they were not fully integrated into the general social fabric. The prime example is the Levites, the most influential minority group within the wider society of ancient Israel. By not owning landed property, the Levites opted out of the cultural complex of “kin, cult, land, and afterlife in Sheol” and created their own cultural and religious pattern. However, this pattern remains unexamined, leaving a gap in the relevant secondary literature. The present paper seeks to fill this gap. In order to do this, I will begin by introducing the Levites. The Levites were a relatively small group of people. According to a sixth- or fifth-century list showing the families who returned to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile, the returnees included 360 members of three clans of Levites (Neh 7:43–45). If we assume that some of the Levites were not deported to Babylonia and remained in Judah, we could perhaps double this figure to 700 and use this number as an (albeit speculative) indicator of the size of the Levite population. For less speculative information, we can turn to the Bible: the Levites seem to have lived as pastoralists raising small livestock – sheep and goats; they cultivated a body of knowledge and acquired technical skills relevant for certain religious rituals; they sought and managed to gain employment and influence at the temple of Jerusalem, though never in the leading rank of priests; finally, they claimed descent from a common – for us historians, fictional – ancestor, Levi, 3 In traditional West African society, family honours are only given to those ancestors from whom one inherits property and status; see Goody, Death. 4 Brichto, Kin, 23.

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son of Jacob. Jacob was considered the ancestor of all Israelites: so, by establishing a connection to him through Levi, the Levites presented themselves as Israelites of impeccable pedigree. The story of the Levites has a beginning and an end. The beginning reaches far back. In fact, there may have been Levites before the earliest Israelite monarchy in the tenth and ninth centuries BCE. Most of the sources I discuss in this paper date from after 586 BCE (from after the demise of the monarchy); but although these sources do not directly report on social and historical reality, they nevertheless echo this reality. They provide glimpses of a remarkable minority of people with a shared, occasionally esoteric, spiritual tradition. While some Levites worked at the temple of Jerusalem, others most likely studied and edited Israel’s sacred scriptures, which they combined with their main occupation, teaching. However, by the first century BCE, the Levites seemed to lose their traditional profile,5 and during the final years of the Jerusalem temple (destroyed in 70 CE), to be a Levite simply meant being a minor clergyman – someone with inferior tasks and responsibilities – at the temple, or, more generally, someone who claimed descent from a levitical family, without reference to a particular professional profile. When Jesus refers to a Levite travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho (in the parable of the Good Samaritan), the Levite was most likely coming from the temple where he had just completed his turn of service for a week.6 But when a Levite, a native of Cyprus and member of the developing Christian community, sold a plot of land to raise money for the apostles in Jerusalem (Acts 4:36–37), we must undoubtedly think of someone no longer active in what used to be a typically levitical occupation. In what follows, I will explore the cultural pattern of the Levites. As we will see, this cultural pattern differs markedly from how the other Israelites felt about land, cult, kin, and afterlife.

2.

The Levites and the Land

When the ancient Israelites conquered the land of Canaan, they divided the land between all the Israelite tribes except the tribe of Levi: “They did not give a portion to the Levites in the land, except cities to live in, with their pasture lands for their livestock and for their property” ( Josh 14:4 NASB). The Levites were pastoralists, but they also cultivated and transmitted religious knowledge and ritual skills, which seems to be reflected in their name. In Hebrew, the Levite is 5 “The Levites, as a group performing multiple functions in society, seem to have disappeared in the first century BCE, leaving hardly any trace.” Labahn, Licht, 152–153 (my translation). 6 Luke 10:32. For the Levites’ service at the temple, see Josephus, Ant. 7.367.

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called ha-lewî.7 The word reflects a cognate word often used in Akkadian: the adjective le¯ʾû, also spelled le¯wû, “able, capable, competent, skilled, adroit, meritorious,”8 which, according to the examples in the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and other standard lexicons, was said of craftsmen, physicians, diviners and warriors.9 I would therefore like to put forward the following conjecture: originally, a Levite was simply a person with a particular kind of skill – a “specialist”; and in ancient Israel, the word Levite came to designate an individual with competence in matters pertaining to religious ritual and knowledge. So we could translate the term Levite as “religious specialist”.10 The etymology of the name “Levite” sheds new light on a story told in the book of Judges. The story is about a wealthy Israelite farmer who built for himself a shrine that he furnished with a number of ritual paraphernalia, including an image of the deity. One day, a young man appeared at his door. Upon being asked who he was, the young man answered, “I am a Levite” (le¯wî ʾa¯nokî, Judg 17:9). He was immediately employed as a priest and promised a good salary for his services. Later, the shrine was broken into by a group of robbers who took the ritual paraphernalia and also persuaded the young Levite to leave with them. They used the stolen goods to establish a shrine elsewhere, where the Levite continued to officiate, presumably for better payment. By saying “I am a Levite”, the young man simply and truthfully stated that he was an expert in ritual, a member of a landless professional group who sought to practice their trade. “I am a ritual specialist”. This social and professional profile could be compared to that of specialised craftsmen: rather than owing and cultivating land, they owned their special skills; they travelled and settled where their skills were most in demand, and they were always prepared to relocate to economically more attractive places. They were typically under the protection of an individual patron or sponsored by an urban – or perhaps village – community. Occasionally, the Old Testament grants us a glimpse of such folk. Thus in the book of Genesis, Cain is portrayed as someone who cannot cultivate the land, for “when you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.” (Gen 4:12) The story of Cain seems to imply that he is the ancestor of all 7 The letter “t”, inserted in the English form of the name “Levite”, reflects not the Hebrew, but the Greek ending given to the word by the Septuagint translators who rendered it as ὁ Λευίτης, with the Greek ending –της. 8 Parpola, Dictionary, 55. 9 Soden, Handwörterbuch, vol. 1, 547–548; Black/George/Postgate, Dictionary, 181; Oppenheim, Dictionary, vol. 9, 160–161. 10 This etymology should replace one that was favoured by earlier research. This research connected “Levi” with the personal name Lawi-ilu, found in the Mari texts, and translated as “pledged to the god”. However, the Mari name must be analysed differently; Streck translates it as “may the god show himself living” (lawi = lahwi). See Streck, Onomastikon, 245. ˘

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those who “play the lyre and pipe” and of the “forger[s] of all implements of bronze and iron” (Gen 4:21, 22). We may also invoke Hiram, a foreign bronze worker, whom King Solomon employed to assist in building the temple. Hiram is said to be “filled with wisdom and understanding and skill for doing any work in bronze” (1 Kgs 7:14), and, in addition to bronze, his special skills are described as pertaining to work with gold, silver, iron, stone, wood, and dyes (2 Chr 2:13–14). Hiram’s father was also a bronze worker, a foreigner from Tyre, whereas his mother belonged to the tribe of Naphtali (1 Kgs 7:13) – details that invite speculation about this itinerant metalworker who, during his travels, acquired a spouse in the land of Israel, in an area close to his native Tyre. Itinerant metal smiths are well known in African anthropology, and Paula McNutt uses this evidence to present a hypothetical portrait of the Kenites, a metal-working, tentdwelling people who are occasionally mentioned in the biblical text.11 The Rechabites, who are generally thought of as pastoralists, may have also been metal workers12 with a strong interest in cultic service.13 Like the ritual specialists, the smiths would keep the secrets of their trade to themselves, transmitting their complex knowledge and skills only to close kinsmen or specially chosen apprentices. Let us now return to the subject of the land. Presumably it was possible to become a Levite without having been born into a levitical family. In this case, it would be necessary to abandon agriculture. While there is no biblical story about somebody giving up the life of a farmer to become a Levite, there is one story that merits consideration in this context. It describes a young man who abandons farming to become a prophet – more accurately, a prophet with Levite-like attributes.14 This man is Elisha. The relevant biblical story portrays him as a vigorous young man. We meet him as he ploughs the fields with oxen, some of which seem to be his own, while the others belong to his parents. Then the prophet Elijah enters the scene: he throws his mantle over Elisha to indicate that the young man now belongs to him and will be his servant. Elisha “left the oxen and ran after Elijah and said, ‘Please let me kiss my father and my mother, then I will follow you’. And he said to him, ‘Go, but (remember) what I have I done to you’. So he 11 McNutt, Forging. See also Pfoh, Metalworkers. 12 Frick, “Rechab”, 630–32. 13 Of particular interest is van der Toorn’s opinion on the Rechabites: in Israel, they belong to the earliest worshippers of Yahweh; Yahweh was the god of their fathers whom they had worshipped in the land of Edom. The Rechabites, moreover, were known for their nomadic lifestyle and their interest in being made servants at the temple (see Jer 35:19), which makes them similar to the Levites. Toorn, Resistance, 229–59. 14 The Levite-like character of Elijah has not escaped the attention of previous researchers, see Toorn, Family 314–15. Further levitical links of prophets, specifically Hosea, are explored by Stephen L. Cook, Roots, 231–266.

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returned from following him, and took the pair of oxen and sacrificed them and boiled their flesh with the implements of the oxen, and gave it to the people and they ate. Then he arose and followed Elijah and ministered to him” (1 Kgs 19:19– 21 NASB, modified15). Here we see how a young man abandons farm and family to become a prophet. Becoming a prophet means breaking with one’s past. This breaking is dramatised in the double act of kissing and killing – kissing his parents, presumably for the last time, and killing his two oxen, no doubt the most valuable goods he owns. There is no return. The giving-away of the flesh to the people of the village or town implies that he leaves their community. The young man no longer belongs within the agricultural community; he belongs with the prophets and calls his new master his “father” (2 Kgs 5:12). The incompatibility of the prophetic vocation and agriculture surfaces in a passage of the book of Zechariah, where a man is portrayed as having renounced the prophetic vocation. He no longer dons the “hairy robe” worn by prophets, and declares, “I am not a prophet; I am a tiller of the ground, for a man bought me [as a slave] in my youth” (Zech 13:516). The former prophet, who does not own land, claims that he is a slave who works as a farmhand. It is clear that the Levites and Levite-like prophets kept their distance from agriculture. They renounced every connection with it. It was only after the end of the Old Testament period, in the first century BCE, that the Levites abandoned their old ways and became normal, land-owning people. An example is Joseph, “a Levite, a native of Cyprus” who “sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet” (Acts 4:36–37). But even in the case of Joseph, a traditional Levite element can be discerned: the land he owned and sold could not have been his ancestral land, because someone from a farming family would never sell his ancestral land. This is not to say that the Levites would have nothing to do with the land. They had “pasture lands for their livestock and for their property” ( Josh 14:4). This land was most likely not divided into individually owned sections, but was instead owned and used collectively, and, according to the pastoral ideal, expected to “flow with milk and honey”. Thus, land did form the basis of their economic life. Yet the land was excluded from levitical ideology. When asked about the land, they would say: we have no na˘hala¯, no “landed property,” because Yahweh ˙ is our na˘hala¯ (Num 18:20). ˙

15 The above translation follows John Gray, I & II Kings, 413. 16 For the translation of Zech 13:5b, see Barthélemy, Critique, 3:1003.

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3.

The Levites and the Cult of the Dead

Someone who leaves the agricultural mode of existence also leaves the religious notions and rituals connected with it. To document this, we can appeal to what I take to be a levitical psalm – Psalm 16 – whose significance for levitical religion has rarely been acknowledged by previous scholarship. Psalm 16’s range of ideas overlaps with those of other psalms – Psalms 49 and 73 – all marked as levitical in the biblical text itself (we will return to Psalms 49 and 73 in section 5 below). While the dating of individual passages in the book of Psalms is notoriously difficult and often based on mere guesswork, it does make sense to report at least one well-reasoned opinion: Psalms 16 and 49 appear in Qumran fragments of a pre-canonical collection of psalms which might be dated to the fifth century BCE. Psalm 49 also appears in a fragment that may reflect an even older, sixth-century collection.17 Unfortunately, Psalm 16 is not an easy text; only a new translation will demonstrate the relevance for the present paper.18 The following table places the published literal translation of the New American Standard Bible (NASB) next to my own, revised version. Psalm 16 (NASB) (1) A Mikhtam of David. Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in You. (2) I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good besides You”. (3) As for the saints who are in the earth, They are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight. (4) The sorrows of those who have bartered for another [god] will be multiplied; I shall not pour out their drink offerings of blood, Nor will I take their names upon my lips. (5) The LORD is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot. (6) The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me. […]

Psalm 16 (NASB, with my revisions) 19 (1) A mystery (?) of David “Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in You”. (2a) Say to Yahweh, “You are my Lord; my [highest] good. (2b) I shall not [place] above You (3a) the saints who are in the netherworld. (3b) Cursed [be] all who take delight in them, (4a) in the large number of [ancestor] idols! (4b) I shall not pour out their drink offerings of blood, nor will I take their names upon my lips. (5) Yahweh is my portion, my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot. (6) The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me. […]

17 Brütsch, Psalmen, 167.162. 18 See my earlier paper on Psalm 16: Lang, Leviten, 45–82 (53–61.81–82). 19 This is how I read and emend the text: (2a) ʾa¯marta¯ = say!, as suggested by Rashi. (2b) balʿa¯lêka¯ is the beginning of a new sentence. (3b) read waʾa˘rûrîm = and cursed. (4a) fragments: their troubles/idols multiply – another – they pay (a dowry). The translation offered is

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(Continued) Psalm 16 (NASB) (10) For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay. (11) You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.

Psalm 16 (NASB, with my revisions) (10) For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will You allow Your godly one to see the pit. (11) You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever”.

The translation of verses 1–4a offered by the New American Standard Bible reflects how the Hebrew text is traditionally understood, though it does not make much sense in the context of the psalm. However, once we realise that ʾeres (v. 3a) ˙ should be rendered “netherworld”, and that ʾassebet (v. 4a) is a term for “idol”,20 ˙˙ we begin to see what the passage is about – the rejection of the worship of ancestors. These, represented by idols, are believed to be in the netherworld. I take the words of the psalmist to be those that a young man had to recite when he was received into the community of the Levites. The words show that the novice had to adopt an entirely new worldview. He had to reposition himself with regard to kin, cult, land, and afterlife, which are inextricably interwoven. The passage implies that the novice came from a normal, landowning, farming family (and not from a family of Levites). The Levites, as described above, did not own land; they had no estate. By adopting the levitical identity, the novice had to renounce agriculture and the desire to own land. This is implied in the reference to God being the Levite’s “heritage” or “estate”, as one could translate na˘hala¯ (v. ˙ 6). The formulaic “Yahweh is their inheritance (na˘hala¯)”, often repeated in the ˙ biblical text,21 is known to exegetes as the “levitical charter”. At the most mundane level, the expression refers to the fact that the Levites could earn a living by performing ritual acts on behalf of others. However, as in Psalm 16, it may also refer to closeness to God as a spiritual good. Rather than inheriting an estate from his fathers, i. e. a plot of cultivated land, the Levite inherits, or is permanently given, a spiritual gift – God himself or, less dramatically expressed, closeness to God. The opposition implied here is “earthly estate vs. spiritual estate”. The Levite also had to renounce worship of the ancestors – the “saints” or “holy ones”; these were his own relatives whom death had transformed into denizens of the netherworld. The ancestors received libations that were poured conjectural. – For more information on the textual difficulties of Psalm 16, see Barthélemy, Critique, 4:59–71; Lang, Leviten, 81–82. 20 Clines, Dictionary, vol. 6, 527. 21 Relevant passages include Num 18:20; Deut 10:9; 18:2; Josh 13:33, Ezek 44:28.

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out at their tomb stela,22 and from Psalm 16 we learn that these were, or could be, libations of animal blood. In the history of religions, a distinction is made between two kinds of gift-giving to the dead: care for the dead (Totenversorgung) and worship of the ancestors (Ahnenkult); the first helps the dead to maintain some form of life in the other world, while the second solicits the blessing a powerful ancestor can bestow upon his descendants. It may well be that water libations would have counted as caring acts for the dead, while blood libations were dispensed as part of an act of worship carried out for special purposes: for example, when an ancestor was petitioned to answer a question or grant a special favour to his or her descendant. Both types of libation were forbidden for the Levite. Instead, he focused his worship on Yahweh, and it was to Yahweh’s household that he belonged. He may be compared to a slave who, once incorporated into his master’s household, loses all the obligations he would have otherwise to his relatives. By definition, a slave has no relatives.23 Once the levitical novice took refuge in Yahweh and recited the words of Psalm 16, he no longer recognised the obligation to feed his departed ancestors. Did all Levites have to renounce ancestor worship before assuming ritual responsibilities? I think that, even if the novice had been raised in a levitical family – i. e. a family that did not own land and did not practice any form of ancestor cult –, the renunciation of ancestor worship still would make sense, for it would prevent the novice from performing ancestor-related rituals for others. The Levite who served at the private shrine of one Micah was employed to handle Teraphim for his master ( Judg 17:5,14,18,20). While some modern Bible translations render Teraphim as “household gods” and some commentators identify these as ancestor figurines, it seems more likely that the Teraphim were ritual instruments for contacting the dead.24 For the Levite, contacting the dead in the time described by the book of Judges was presumably something quite normal, but later, when the rules for Levites were tightened, and there were no more freelance Levites, all contact with the dead became taboo. It is important not to misunderstand the levitical ban on the cult of the ancestors. The Levites imposed this ban on themselves, but not on others. In fact, they accepted and even recommended the ancestor cult to the non-Levites. There is evidence for this in the Decalogue, a text written by Levites to facilitate their teaching which the book of Deuteronomy defines as their main task (Deut 30:9– 13; 33:10).

22 The West Semitic word for tomb stela, skn, seems to convey, etymologically, the meaning “place of libation (for the dead)”. Wyatt, Texts, 255, n. 25. 23 Steiner, Enslavement, 21–25. 24 Lewis, Teraphim, 844–850, esp. 849–850; Lewis/Toorn, Terapim, 787–788.

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The Decalogue includes a passage that refers, in a very brief statement, to the entire complex of “kin, cult, land and afterlife”: Honour your father and your mother. Thus Yahweh your God commands you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the land which Yahweh your God gives you (Deut 5:16; my own translation).

Let us start with the land. According to the standard view of ancient civilisations as analysed by Fustel and Brichto, we would expect the land to be the gift the ancestors give to their descendants. The Levites disagree; for them, it is God who gives the land to the Israelite farmers, and this is what they emphasise in the Decalogue. If we now focus on kin, we can see that father and mother are mentioned explicitly in the parental commandment which, in current exegetical scholarship, is widely recognised as referring to the task of adult children to care for their parents when they are elderly and unable to work. Parents have to be given clothing and food, and, eventually, a decent burial. Although I was jointly responsible for establishing this interpretation of the parental commandment in the 1970s,25 I now question whether this interpretation is complete; this is not because I wish to argue that children in the biblical period were not supposed to support their elderly parents – indeed, there is every reason to think that filial piety involved this task, as it did in all ancient and pre-modern societies – but because the emphasis in the Decalogue seems to be different: we have to account for the fact that the injunction to honour on’s parents appears in the Decalogue’s first section, among the religious commandments, and not in the second section, among the non-religious commandments such as “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal”. As a religious commandment, it must refer to a ritual or cultic act that involved offering a libation or placing bread at the tomb. This would imply that children were obliged to honour their parents after the parents’ death. Brichto26 suggests that this is the original meaning of the parental commandment. On this reading, the father and mother have already passed away and are in Sheol. As such, the commandment to “Honour your father and mother” refers to “kin, cult and afterlife”. The placement of the parental commandment at the end of the series of religious rules makes sense: after the commandments to worship Yahweh alone, and after the threat of punishment for those who do not obey, the cultural logic of ancient Israel inevitably leads to the question: what about the dead? The dead are 25 Lang, Altersversorgung; Albertz, Hintergrund. 26 “The primary reference here is to the respect to be shown for parents after their death. It is after death that the ancestors, dependent in their afterlife upon their descendants, require protection from disloyalty or impiety. The intent may indeed have been specific, entailing funerary or memorial rites or else the disposition of the patrimonial estate”. Brichto, Kin, 31.

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also ʾe˘lo¯hîm, “gods” (1 Sam 28:13), so, is it prohibited to worship them? The Levites’ answer, though tantalizingly laconic, is clear enough: deceased parents may be venerated, but they do not count as gods. However, although they cannot compete with God, ancestors nevertheless exist and must not be deprived of their privileges. The fact that the Levites not only tolerated but also recommended the ancestor cult to others demonstrates that they considered themselves a special group whose own practices and beliefs were not meant for society at large. It was only at the very end of the Old Testament period that levitical ideas became known to, and were adopted by, non-Levites; as a matter of fact, levitical rejection of the ancestor cult was eventually widely adopted in early Judaism.27

4.

The Levites and Their Kin

Family solidarity was very important among the agricultural population of ancient Palestine. It formed the core of the cultural pattern Fustel and Brichto describe. Accordingly, when arguing for the levitical exception, it is necessary to supply evidence for the absence of strong bonds of kinship among the Levites. As we will see, this evidence is surprisingly explicit. This evidence surfaces in a story set during the exodus from Egypt and the subsequent events at Mount Sinai. Moses, when returning from the holy mountain to the camp of the Israelites, saw the Golden Calf, a newly-fashioned idol, and became angry because it violated the divine commandment not to make a divine image. Moses had the idol destroyed and the culprits punished. He instructed the Levites, “Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, Every man [of you] put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbour” (Exod 32:27). The Levites did as Moses instructed and, in total, they killed approximately three thousand people. This number must have included not only friends and neighbours, but also brothers. In a passage that alludes to the incident, the list of people not to be spared is even longer and includes fathers, mothers and sons (Deut 33:9). The Levites, accordingly, made no exceptions when killing the culprits. They were prepared to kill members of their own families. The message of the Golden Calf episode is easy to discern: when it comes to matters of religion, obedience to God’s commandments takes precedence over 27 For the persistence of ancestor-related rituals, see the book of Tobit’s recommendation (Tob 4:17) and MacDonald, Bread; Bloch-Smith, Burial Practices. For the eventual rejection of ancestor-related rituals, see the relevant passages in Sirach and Jubilees (Sir 30:18; Jub. 22:17).

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family concerns. Using sociological jargon, one could say that the “achieved position” is given more importance than the “ascribed position”. Sociologists use this terminology in their comparative analysis of traditional and modern social systems: in traditional societies someone’s position is largely ascribed or assigned, i. e. predetermined by descent, family, and tradition, irrespective of individual merit. You are born a member of the nobility or the peasant class, and this fact places you for life. Regardless of whether you like your position, there is no escape. Modern societies, by contrast, tend to disregard traditionally ascribed positions; instead, they emphasise individual merit and flexibility of status. Through individual initiative and merit you can define your identity and your place in society. The Levites have a similar rule: the quasi-natural “ascribed” social position within the family – as a father, brother, or child – that entails the respect and love shown to family members is neglected; the righteous person’s “achieved” religious identity alone is considered: an identity that is individually learned, achieved, maintained and subsequently recognised by the religious group. Thus, there is something very “modern” about the Levites. The question why the Levites were particularly suited to disregarding family relationships and awarding religion absolute priority can be answered as follows: as landless people they were not dependent upon the benevolence of ancestors who would bestow their blessing on the land to ensure a rich harvest. As a consequence of not practising ancestor worship, the Levites were presumably less attached to their kinsmen than members of the land-owning class. This attitude would correspond to the pattern Fustel and Brichto describe. The Levites may have thought of themselves as slaves within the household of God, and slaves, throughout antiquity, were meant to be isolated from their relatives.28 A slave is responsible to nobody but his master. No relative can make any claim on him. While it is admittedly speculative to compare the Levite to the slave, this line of thought is at least made possible by the levitical pattern of exception. Another possible piece of evidence for the tenuous nature of the Levites’ kinship ties is the story of the Levite and his concubine told in the book of Judges ( Judg 19–20). The story describes a Levite who married a young woman from Bethlehem, but the young woman, apparently dissatisfied with her husband, left him and returned to her father’s house. The Levite did not want to lose her, so he travelled all the way from the country of Ephraim, where he lived, to Bethlehem, and spoke to her kindly. He won her back. This episode may provide further insight into levitical sociology. Despite being a sojourner (ger), the Levite in this story is a man of means, for he travels to Bethlehem with several donkeys and a servant. The woman who initially leaves him but eventually returns is not called his wife; the term used, 28 Steiner, Enslavement.

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pillegesˇ, is generally rendered “concubine”. Far from being an insult, this word refers to a woman’s particular status or rank within a relationship with a man. According to the terminology used in the Old Testament, a man of high social rank may have, in addition to one or more primary wives, one or more secondary wives called “concubines”.29 The Levite, however, does not seem to have been a man of high rank. Accordingly, we venture to suggest a different explanation: the “concubine” was none other than his only wife; she is called a “concubine” to denote her particular legal status. Levites, it seems, did not have wives like the settled, land-owning men had. Wives bore sons who would eventually inherit plots of cultivated land. Concubines, by contrast, bore sons who, though legitimate offspring, could not inherit land. This is most likely true of all concubines – of those in harems of wealthy men and those married to Levites. The ties between a man and his pillegesˇ were apparently weaker than those between a man and his normal “wife”. So we may learn from this episode that Levites conducted a special type of marriage that the term pillegesˇ describes – one with a weaker marital bond; perhaps one without a formal contract. However, although the Levite’s concubine had an inferior status, this did not mean that she was considered a negligible good. Her husband loved her. When she was killed by evil men, her husband’s public complaint initiated war.

5.

The Levitical View of Life after Death – in Heaven

As we have seen, the Levites’ renunciation of the ancestor cult is a consequence of their landless life. Another, perhaps more striking, consequence of this landless life is their teaching about life after death. Unlike the other Israelites, who expected to spend life after death in Sheol, a vast underground realm inaccessible to the living but inhabited by their ancestors, the Levites entertained the presumably secret, esoteric notion of an afterlife with God in heaven. A heavenly afterlife would be the exclusive privilege of the landless Levites, granted to none of the landowners. This doctrine appears in the book of Psalms. The relevant passages can be found in Psalms 49 and 73, presumably dating from the fourth or third century BCE: “But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, For He will receive me.” Ps 49:15 NASB “With Your counsel You will guide me, And afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven? 29 Engelken, pillegesˇ, 549–51. For a recent cultural analysis of the word, see Niesiolowski-Spanò, 98–99.

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And with You, I do not desire the netherworld.” Ps 73:24–25 NASB, modified30

Both of these psalms have a clear levitical connection.31 Their statement of belief in life after death in heaven reappears in Psalm 16: “You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will You allow Your godly one to see the pit.” Ps 16:10

Yahweh, the Levite’s celestial lord, will save the Levite from the netherworld and take him up to heaven. It is worth noting that all the references to life after death in the psalms are incredibly brief. They allude to post-mortem fate but do not expand on what it entails – there is no description or poetic development of the theme. It is only Psalm 16 that provides a little more detail: “You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.” Ps 16:11

Verse 11 in Psalm 16 sketches a scene in the celestial temple: the speaker visualises himself standing before God who greets him.32 This tricolon merits close reading and may be deciphered as follows: while the central line – “in your presence is fullness of joy” – characterises what one feels in God’s presence, the first and last lines refer to a godly gesture. In ancient iconography, there are many scenes that depict a human being honoured by an enthroned divine figure. The human figure typically stands in silent adoration, while the deity holds up a cup or an object in the shape of the Egyptian ankh sign, signifying “life”, presenting it to the human visitor. Accordingly, the psalmist seems to portray God as showing and extending a celestial gift to the speaker, a gift most likely in the form of a lifegiving symbol that is poetically called “path of life” (= ankh?) and “pleasures”. Although it is tempting to imagine the psalmist describing an actual picture that depicted such a scene, this notion does not stand up to critical scrutiny. This is 30 I take ʾeres in Psalm 73:25 to designate the “netherworld”, rather than the “earth”. The ˙ meaning “netherworld” is well attested in poetic texts of the Bible (Koehler/Baumgartner, Lexicon, vol. 1, 91; Gesenius, Handwörterbuch, 102) and has close parallels in Akkadian and Ugaritic (Soden, Handwörterbuch, vol. 1, 245; Olmo Lete/Sanmartín, Dictionary, vol. 1, 107). 31 Psalm 49 is called “a psalm of the sons of Korah” (Ps 49:1). The Korahites, a guild of temple singers at the temple of Jerusalem, thought of their ancestor as a descendant of Levi (Exod 6:16–25). Psalm 73 has a similar superscription: “a psalm of Asaph”. King David, we are told, appointed “some of the Levites before the ark of Yahweh,” with Asaph being their master (1 Chr 16:4–5). And one Jehaziel, a prophet, is called “a Levite of the sons of Asaph” (2 Chr 20:14). 32 Hartenstein, Angesicht, 107–11.118–19.

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because the Levites promoted aniconism,33 as can be seen from the Decalogue, which I take to be a levitical teaching text. The psalmist was therefore portraying a mental image of a heavenly scene in which the soul of the deceased Levite was honoured. Psalm 16 is marked by a clear binary opposition between “ancestor worship and post-mortem existence in the netherworld” and “worship of Yahweh and post-mortem existence in God’s abode, heaven”. This binary opposition does not juxtapose two equally inviting prospects but privileges one prospect over the other, taking heaven to be the better place. Heaven is above and takes precedence on the scale of values. Heaven, moreover, is only for an elite minority, whereas Sheol for all the others, the masses. After this life, the Levite expects to be promoted to a heavenly abode, presumably to continue work in the service of his divine master. Levites would die a normal death, and have a normal burial, but their soul would not descend to the netherworld; instead, it would find its way upwards, to heaven. The logic involved in the opposition of the netherworld and heaven is easy to understand: Sheol, the Hebrew Hades, belongs to the anthropocentric complex of “kin, cult, land, and afterlife” discussed at the beginning of the present article. In this complex, each individual is involved in a web of multiple relationships – with parents, brothers and sisters, the land, and ancestors. Heaven, by contrast, belongs to a different, theocentric complex of ideas – “God, cult, and afterlife in heaven”, where the individual relates to God alone, to the exclusion of all human relationships or attachment to the land. Human relationships exist in levitical everyday life, but they are weaker than in other societal groups, and when they conflict with the theocentric complex they are completely denied. When such conflict arises, the Levite must say of each relative, be it father or mother, brother or son, “I do not see him” (Deut 33:9), I do not recognise any relationship. The Levite belongs to heaven where no human relationships exist. Even in the later biblical tradition, when individuals other than Levites may enter heaven after death, the existence of human relationships – such as the marriage bond – in heaven is explicitly denied.34 33 I have dealt with levitical aniconism in Lang, Leviten, 71–80, arguing that when the temple of Jerusalem was rebuilt around 500 BCE, the Levites wanted just an altar and not a temple house, while others wanted an altar plus a temple house, the latter complete with a divine image. Eventually, they two compromised, and a temple house was built, but no divine image made. 34 Jesus reportedly solved an afterlife puzzle with reference to the theocentric complex (Mark 12:18–27, with parallel passages in the other gospels). In Christianity, the opposition between the theocentric and the anthropocentric range of ideas lost its original spatial connection with Hades and heaven, and was transferred to heaven alone. This shift gave rise to endless speculations about how to think of life after death in heaven – as a meeting with friends and partners, or as everlasting worship of God, or perhaps as both; see Lang/McDannell, Heaven.

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The levitical psalmists’ references to life after death in heaven are as rare as they are laconic. However, one way to gain more insight into the way the Levites contemplated the end of life is to consider, in addition to the references from the Psalms: the stories of how Moses, Enoch and Elijah departed. We can establish the following levitical, or quasi-levitical, series: (i) normal death, followed by burial and the soul’s ascent to heaven (ii) death and burial mentioned, but left vague in order to indicate ascent to heaven or heavenly assumption (iii) heavenly assumption, without death Case (i) is represented by the passages from Psalms 16, 49, and 73, quoted above. In the past, biblical scholarship has tended to argue that there is no evidence for Israelite belief in a “soul” that survives death; but recent research has contradicted this assumption, pointing out that nepesˇ must mean “ghost” or “soul (of a dead person)” in Psalm 16:10.35 Psalm 16 provides a glimpse of esoteric ideas about an afterlife in heaven, meant exclusively for the Levites. Psalms 49 and 73, by contrast, echo a later phase in which this exclusivity was no longer maintained. What used to be an esoteric teaching is now taught to “all inhabitants of the earth, both low and high, rich and poor together” (Ps 49:1–2). In a didactic poem, the psalmist contrasts the wealthy landowner’s descent into Sheol to join his fathers with the poor man’s heavenly ascension (Ps 49). The Levites are now a model for the poor. We can describe “the poor”36 as an informal circle of the pious who rallied round the Levites, were initiated into their once esoteric theology, shared their spirituality and were promised the same celestial destination after death. Destined for heaven are now all the “poor in heart” (Ps 73:1) who, it seems, do not own land. This expression is echoed in the Sermon on the Mount where those of a pure heart are promised heaven; the relevant saying uses coded language that could only be understood by insiders: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matt 5:8). The most famous instance of case (i) is the heavenly assumption of Jesus. The basic levitical requirements of post-mortem heavenly assumption feature either prominently or implicitly in the early Jesus tradition: Jesus had little regard for his own family of origin (Mark 3:31–35); as a carpenter’s son he most likely did not own land; he was not interested in tombs and burial (Matt 8:21–22); he had a close relationship with God whom he called his “father” (Mark 14:36). The book 35 Loretz, Theoxenie, esp. 475. Loretz has rehabilitated the meaning of “soul” or “ghost”, often rejected by scholars, for nepesˇ. Loretz is followed by Suriano, Breaking Breaking Bread with the Dead; Steiner, Souls. 36 Exegetes have frequently speculated on the “poor” (who are often mentioned in the Psalms) as a movement or group. There is something to be said for this, though we lack precise information. See Lohfink, Anawim-Partei.

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of Acts comments on the post-mortem fate of Jesus with reference to the levitical Psalm 16 – “you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption” (Acts 2:25–28; 13:35). The description of Moses’ death in the book of Deuteronomy corresponds to case (ii). Moses is not said to have joined his fathers, as one would expect on the basis of other biblical accounts of death. At his departure, Moses showed no signs of old age; his “eye was not dim, nor his skin wrinkled” (Deut 34:7).37 It is also stated: “And he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor; but no man knows his burial place to this day” (Deut 34:6 NASB). How is this to be understood? Who buried Moses? “He” could be God. The phrase “no man knows (ya¯daʿ) his burial place” may actually be rendered “no one cares about his burial place”, an expression reminiscent of the Levites as not “knowing (ya¯daʿ)” their sons (Deut 33:9). The biblical account does not provide the complete story and thus invites doubt, suspicion, and speculation. The emphasis on the irrelevance of Moses’ tomb may indicate that no one is supposed to offer food and drink at this tomb. Moses, a man whose father was a Levite (Exod 2:1), should not receive offerings, because he is in heaven. The vague affirmation of death and burial, accompanied by the subtle casting of doubt, may camouflage his leviticalstyle heavenly assumption, considered an esoteric piece of knowledge. Let us now look at case (iii). The line “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him”, is a cryptic passage in the book of Genesis, inserted into the genealogical list of the descendants of Adam (Gen 5:24). This passage reads like an explanatory gloss on what is said earlier, in the same list, about Enoch: “Then Enoch walked with God three hundred years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he had sons and daughters” (Gen 5:22). But why should this verse require explanation? It requires explanation because, within the genealogical list, it constitutes an anomaly: Enoch, despite his walking with God, died at the age of 365, much earlier than either his father who reached the age of 962, or his son who lived for 969 years. The modern reader might decide to read “965” instead of “365”, because this would fit well between the other two figures. Yet, this was not how the ancient glossator solved the problem. The glossator decided that Enoch was a Levite whom God took to heaven, sparing him the frailties of old age. In the language of the Hebrew Bible, “to walk with God” may actually refer to the levitical profession. In the book of Malachi, God says of Levi: “He walked with Me in peace and uprightness” (Mal 2:6). It is impossible to know whether the glossator used the passage from Malachi as his source of information; he may have been a Levite himself, thus familiar with levitical language and theology, and happy to offer a plausible solution to the puzzling anomaly in Adam’s family tree.

37 For the translation of this passage, see Tigay, Wrinkled.

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The prophet Elijah never died; instead, he was “taken up by a whirlwind to heaven” (2 Kgs 2:1, 11). His servant Elisha, who had accompanied the prophet into the wilderness, witnessed the event – there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire which separated the two, and Elijah was borne heavenward in a whirlwind. It makes sense to consider the miracle of the prophet’s heavenly assumption a prophetic legend that could double as a levitical legend. As in the Psalms, the incident of heavenly assumption is rarely discussed; it seems to be an esoteric doctrine about which both Levites and prophets had no liberty to speak. In the Elijah legend, mention is made of “sons of the prophets,” i. e. novices, and these are acquainted with and refer to the doctrine of heavenly assumption (2 Kgs 2:3,5). However, when the subject arises in conversation, Elisha tells them to hold their tongues – “keep quiet” (NASB), “keep silent” (NRSV), or, as I would prefer, “silence!” or “hush!” Westerners today would no doubt accompany this word with a gesture such as touching the lips with the index finger. Elisha tells them not to violate the taboo. Interestingly, the place where Elijah was translated to heaven was near the place where Moses is said to have died. In the words of the Rev. James Strachan: Elijah is “drawn in the final crisis of his life to the mountain region in which Moses was summoned to die, away from the face of man”.38 The Elijah legend represents the strongest, mythical affirmation of the levitical belief. Levites never die!

6.

Conclusion

The Levites, a landless minority group in ancient Israel, were pastoralists. They were known for their ritual skills and the religious knowledge they cultivated. Levi, their eponymous ancestor, is a fictive person; his name means “(ritual) specialist”, and can be etymologically explained from the cognate Akkadian adjective le¯ʾû, also spelled le¯wû, “capable, competent, skilled”. We may think of the early Levites as itinerant, or at any rate as nomadic pastoralists, some of whom specialised in ritual knowledge, sought to live from it, and presumably recruited others to be trained in the profession. Within ancient Israelite society, the Levites formed a minority group with a culture that significantly differed from that of the majority. They did not own agricultural land but practised pastoralism on land that was, we assume, not divided into individually owned sections but collectively owned. The land was excluded from their ideology. They did not venerate their ancestors; instead, they worshipped Yahweh, their heavenly patron. Their kin group was not held together 38 Strachan, Elijah, 690.

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by ancestor worship; accordingly, their kinship bonds were significantly weaker than those of the majority population. Finally, they hoped for a privileged place in the afterlife. Rather than expecting life after death in Sheol, the Hebrew Hades or netherworld, they expected life after death with God in heaven. We may, as suggested by Herbert Brichto, describe the ideology of the landowning population in terms of “kin, cult, land, and afterlife in Sheol” and define the cult as ancestor worship and the land as arable land. In the case of the Levites, the modified parallel formula would be “God, cult, and afterlife in heaven”, a completely religious formula centred on the worship of Yahweh. The cult of the ancestors animated and integrated “kin, cult, land and afterlife in Sheol”, forging a harmonious unit of the social, economic, and religious life. By contrast, the worship of Yahweh so dominated the levitical unit of “God, cult, and afterlife in heaven” that more mundane concerns were excluded. The shift from ancestor cult and Sheol to worship of God and heaven, though originating in a small group characterised by particular economic circumstances and marked by an elite religious mentality, made an enormous impact on the history of religion. It gave rise to a standard doctrine of the religion of the Western world – belief in a blissful afterlife in heaven.

Bibliography Albertz, R., Hintergrund und Bedeutung des Elterngebots im Dekalog, ZAW 90 (1978) 347–374 Barthélemy, D., Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament (OBO 50.1–4), Editions Universitaires 1982–2005. Black, J./A. George/N. Postgate (eds.), A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian. Second Edition, Harrassowitz 2000. Bloch-Smith, E., Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead ( JSOTSup123), Sheffield Academic Press 1992. Brichto, H.C., Kin, Cult, Land, and Afterlife – a Biblical Complex, HUCA 44 (1973) 1–54. Brütsch, M., Israels Psalmen in Qumran (BWANT 193), Kohlhammer 2010. Clines, D.J.A. (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, 8 vols., Sheffield Academic Press 1993–2011. Cook, S.L., The Social Roots of Biblical Yahwism, Brill 2004. Engelken, K., pillegesˇ, in: Botterweck, G.J./H. Ringgren (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 11, Eerdmans 2000, 549–551. Frick, F.S., Rechab, in: Freedman, D.N. (ed.), ABD, Vol. 5, Doubleday 1992, 630–632. Fustel de Coulanges, N.-D., The Ancient City (trans. Willard Small), Dover 2006. Gesenius, W., (ed.), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament. Edited by Herbert Donner and Rudolf Meyer, Eighteenth Edition, Springer 2013. Gillingham, S.E., The Levitical Singers and the Editing of the Hebrew Psalter, in: E. Zenger (ed.), The Composition of the Book of Psalms (BETL 238), Peeters 2010, 91–123.

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Goody, J., Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa, Tavistock 1962. Gray, J., I & II Kings. Third Edition (OTL), Westminster 1977. Hartenstein, F., Das Angesicht JHWHs: Studien zu seinem höfischen und kultischen Bedeutungshintergrund (FAT 55), Mohr Siebeck 2008. Jonker, L., Revisiting the Psalm Headings: Second-Temple Levitical Propaganda?, in: D.J. Human and C.J.A. Vos, Psalms and Liturgy ( JSOTSup 410), Clark 2004, 102–122. Koehler, L./W. Baumgartner (eds.), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Study Edition, 2 vols, Brill 2001. Labahn, A., Licht und Heil: Levitischer Herrschaftsanspruch in der frühjüdischen Literatur aus der Zeit des Zweiten Tempels (BThSt 112), Neukirchener Verlag 2010. Lang, B., Altersversorgung, Begräbnispflicht und Elterngebot, ZDMGSup 3 (1977) 149– 156. –, Die Leviten. Von der Gegnerschaft einer alttestamentlichen Priesterzunft gegen Ahnenverehrung und Bilderkult, in: B. Lang (ed.), Buch der Kriege – Buch des Himmels, Peeters 2011, 45–81 (= idem, Die Leviten. Ihre Anthropologie und die Folgen für Ahnenkult und Bilderverehrung im alten Israel, in: A. Berlejung/J. Dietrich/J.F. Quack (eds.), Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient (ORA 9), Mohr Siebeck 2012, 287–319). –, Von der kriegerischen zur nativistischen Kultur: Das alte Israel im Lichte der Kulturanthropologie, in B. Lang, Buch der Kriege – Buch des Himmels, Peeters 2011, 25–43. –, Meeting in Heaven: Modernising the Christian Afterlife, 1600–2000, Peter Lang 2011. – /C. McDannell, Heaven: A History. Second Edition, Yale University Press 2001. Lewis, T.J., Teraphim, in:, K. van der Toorn et al. (eds), Dictionary of Deities and Demons of the Bible, Second Edition, Brill 1999, 842–850. – /K. van der Toorn, Terapim, in: Botterweck, G.J. et al. (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 15, Eerdmans 2006, 777–789. Lohfink, N., Von der “Anawim-Partei” zur “Kirche der Armen”: Die bibelwissenschaftliche Ahnentafel eines Hauptbegriffs der Theologie der Befreiung, Bib 67 (1986) 153–176. Loretz, O., Die postmortale (himmlische) Theoxenie der npsˇ “Seele, Totenseele” in ugaritisch-biblischer Sicht nach Psalm 16,10–11, UF 38 (2006) 445–497. MacDonald, N., Bread on the Grave of the Righteous (Tob 4:17), in: M. Bredin (ed.), Studies in the Book of Tobit, Clark 2006, 99–103. McNutt, P.M., The Forging of Israel: Iron Technology, Symbolism, and Tradition in Ancient Society ( JSOTSup 108), Almond Press 1990. Niesiolowski-Spanò, L., The Philistines as Intermediaries between the Aegean and the Near East, in: T.L. Thompson/P. Wajdenbaum (eds.), The Bible and Hellenism, Acumen 2014, 89–101. Olmo Lete, G. del/J. Sanmartín, A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition. Second Edition. 2 vols., Brill 2004. Oppenheim, A.L. et al. (eds.), The Assyrian Dictionary. 21 vols., Oriental Institute, 1956– 2010. Parker, S.B. (ed.), Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (SBL Writings from the Ancient World 9), Scholars Press 1997. Parpola, S., Assyrian–English–Assyrian Dictionary, Institute for Asian and African Studies 2007.

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Pfoh, E., Metalworkers in the Old Testament: An Anthropological View, in: D. Chalcraft et al. (eds.), Methods, Theories, Imagination: Social Scientific Approaches in Biblical Studies, Sheffield Phoenix Press 2014, 201–217. Soden, W. von, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Harrassowitz 1965–1981. Steiner, F., Enslavement and the Early Hebrew Lineage System, in: B. Lang (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament, Fortress Press 1985, 21–25. Steiner, R.C., Disembodied Souls: The Nefesh in Israel and Kindred Spirits in the Ancient Near East (ANEM 11), SBL Press 2015. Strachan, J., Elijah, in: J. Hastings (ed.), A Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 1, Clark, 1898–1904, 687–692. Streck, M.P., Das amurritische Onomastikon der altbabylonischen Zeit. Band 1: Die Amurriter (AOAT 271/1), Ugarit-Verlag 2000. Suriano, M.J., Breaking Bread with the Dead: Katumuwa’s Stele, Hosea 9:4, and the Early History of the Soul, JAOS 134 (2014) 385–405. Tigay, J.H., He Had not Become Wrinkled (Deuteronomy 34:7), in: Z. Zevit et al. (eds.), Solving Riddles and Untying Knots: Biblical, Epigraphic, and Semitic Studies in Honor of Jonas C. Greenfield, Eisenbrauns 1995, 345–350. Toorn, K., van der, Ritual Resistance and Self-Assertion: The Rechabites in Early Israelite Religion, in: K. van der Toorn/J. Platvoet (eds.), Pluralism and Identity, Brill 1995, 229– 259. –, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel, Brill 1996. Wyatt, N., Religious Texts from Ugarit, Sheffield Academic Press 1998.

Ole Davidsen

Blended Reciprocation: Matt 5:38–42 in Narrative Perspective Le monde ne peut être dit «humain» que dans la mesure où il signifie quelque chose.1

1.

Introduction

In Hesiod’s Works and Days, we find a gnomic sentence of particular interest: “Give is good, Grab is bad, a giver of death”.2 The structural semantics of this sentence can be paraphrased as follows: to give, to let go, is to be a giver of life; while to take, to take hold of, is to be a giver of death, a taker of life. Giving and taking are here related to the question of life and death in all its aspects as basic actions in humankind’s existence. Although this brief wisdom saying represents early Greek ideas and values of c. 700 BC, it would be wrong to isolate it as a cultural idiom specific to that particular time and place. Whatever the specific style of expression, the semantics of Hesiod’s sentence are of general function and may even refer to a universal level of meaning in humankind’s existence. Both as words and as actions, giving and taking concern sociocultural anthropology; that is, they both raise the socialanthropological question of how we humans establish and maintain our social world, as well as the cultural-anthropological question of how we humans make sense of ourselves and of the world around us. I approach this complex field of research from a specific position and with a specific focus. My theoretical basis is narratology (narrative semiotics), and my center of study is the New Testament. One way in which we recognize ourselves and make sense of the world around us is by telling stories. We have reason to believe that storytelling – telling about actions involving persons and values – is basic to humankind, and that it refers to general cognitive dispositions and to a narrative mind. Early scholars of narratology saw narrativity as a formal feature of the figurative discourses that we call stories. Narrative semiotics (and other literary theories), however, have revealed 1 Greimas, Sémantique, 5. 2 “Δὼς ἀγαθή´ Ἅρπαξ δὲ κακή´ θανάτοιο δότειρα”, Hesiod, Theogony, 116–117.

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the abstract forms of organization – the narrative structures – that govern the production and reception of stories. These point beyond mere textual features. Thus narrativity refers to a fundamental language and thought form, and the study of stories gives us privileged access to the understanding of narrative thinking as a basic function of the human mind. A limited number of standard narrative structures seem to guide and organize our ideas about, evaluations of, and emotional responses to various phenomena. Human thought, value, and feeling all imply emplotment – in other words, narrativization.3 Giving and taking are basic actions in stories. Both are fundamentally linked to the value-perspective of the narrative mind, and so to ethical and juridical questions of good and evil, right and wrong. We therefore have reason to assume that structures of exchange involving giving or taking form a fundamental anthropological level in social human life. Prior research has in fact shown that a focus on giving and taking is a rewarding point of entry to the study of New Testament religion, not least to the fundamentals of ethics and law. In this article, I shall analyze the Fifth Antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount, Matt 5:38–42, with a focus on the narrative character of the ethical instruction. Using narrative theory, I shall identify and describe certain general features of the text’s narrative conceptualization of social action. The Fifth Antithesis, which forms a paragraph of its own, is often thematically entitled “On Retaliation”.4 As the history of interpretation shows, however, defining a coherent theme here is not that simple. We assume, of course, that a compiler sensed some sort of coherence because he connected the material, but we can still distinguish disparate elements in it, and identifying retaliation as the unifying theme is questionable. The general instruction in v38–39a obviously differs from the concrete examples in v39b–42; and while the “you” in v39b–41 is the inferior party, in v42 it is the superior party: I v38 You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. v39a But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. IIa v39b But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; v40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; v41 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. IIb v42 Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.5 3 Cf. Hogan, Mind. 4 This is also the case in Hans Dieter Betz’s outstanding commentary: Betz, Sermon, 274. 5 As reference translation I use the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

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In formal terms, the argument is clear. Part I rhetorically presents thesis and antithesis, since the statement of v39a contradicts the statement of v38. Part II then gives examples of how to react properly in particular situations. The example in v42 (IIb), however, differs from that in v39b–41 (IIa). Before commencing a close analysis of the text, I shall briefly compare Matt 5:38–48 with Luke 6:27–36. This will highlight the Matthean specifics and will also introduce certain concepts that are useful in the first description of some basic features of the person and role-configuration that I detect in the implied conceptual world of these stories.

1.1

Matt 5:38–48 and Luke 6:27–36

Thematically, Luke 6:27–36 corresponds to Matt 5:38–48, with the addition of Matt 7:12 (the Golden Rule). We are dealing here with Q-material, but it is difficult to see whether Luke’s reproduction of this, wholly or partly, is closer to the source than the rendering we find in Matthew. We can, however, clearly point to some significant differences. If we exclude Luke 6:31 and Matt 7:12, the most striking difference is that while Luke fuses the material in one thematic unity (6:27–36), Matthew divides it into two thematic unities, one “on retaliation” (5:38–42) and one “on love of enemy” (5:43–48). The instructions on “retaliation” (or rather, non-retaliation) and on “love of enemy” may very well be closely connected, but it is easier to assume that Luke has brought material together than that Matthew has divided it. Furthermore, it is quite possible that Luke’s reception may often have inspired the history of interpretation. Not only is the interpretation of Matt 5:38–42 based on Matt 5:43–48, but that of Matt 5:38–48 is based on Luke 6:27–36 (with its inclusion of the Golden Rule). The rhetorical figure of antithesis in Matthew (5:38–39a) is absent in Luke, which is why it is often assumed to be Matthew’s addition. On the other hand, because of their specificity, the three examples in Matt 5:39b–41 appear to be a more authentic tradition than the two in Luke 6:29. Luke is generalizing, and thereby urges the sayings’ generic level of signification. The violent blow in 6:29a could be the act of any violent person, and the taking/theft in 6:29b and 6:30b of any robber/thief. Matthew is more specific: the blow in 5:39b hits the right cheek, and the clothing in 5:40 is taken through the agency of the court. As we shall see, both these specifications are important for understanding the scenarios of the examples as source stories: as scenarios that seem to specify and limit the maxim’s social context as target story. It is also more plausible that Luke has deleted the example of the extra mile (in 5:41) because it

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was too particular (it presumably refers to the Roman occupation of the country) than that Matthew has added it. Matthew’s reproduction of the examples, however, is not without difficulties. According to the Hebrew Bible, the sequence of events in Luke 6:29b—taking the cloak/outer garment (τό ἱμάτιον)/giving the coat/undergarment (ὁ χιτών)—is thus more intelligible than the reverse order in Matt 5:40. Finally, Matt 5:42 presents a problem of its own. It juxtaposes (a) giving (δίδωμι) money (a gift, almsgiving as an act of mercy) and (b) lending (δανίζω) it (lending as an act of mercy or private service rather than as an act of professional money-lending or transaction). Luke 6:30 (“Give to everyone who begs from you”) corresponds perfectly with Matt 5:42a. The question is whether Luke 6:35 (“lend, expecting nothing in return”) or Matt 5:42b (“do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you”) is the more authentic saying. Here it suffices to point to the fact that lending money always involves the risk of financial loss. The idea in both cases could be: do not turn your back on one who wishes to borrow from you for fear of financial loss, but be willing to take the risk. The intentional loan may become an unintended gift (or be modified, as when parents let their children off a debt), something that the giver might have recognized as right to begin with. That may explain why giving and lending are mentioned in the same breath. Lending is a particular version of giving with a specific stress on the obligation to repay/to return. To give to all who beg from you is to give and not to expect return; the parallel idea could therefore be to lend and not to expect return. Nor do we foresee the lender recovering his claim through the courts (cf. Matt 5:40), since we can discern a particular idea of group solidarity behind both maxims.

1.2.

Person and Role-Configuration

In order to facilitate a first, general view, in what follows I shall introduce a few analytical concepts and give a preliminary description of the persons and interactive roles involved in the sayings. As an entry example, I shall use the condensed story that manifests itself in the instruction: “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also”. 1.2.1 Protagonist/Antagonist and Actor/Partner The implied addressee of the saying (the “you”) is acting in an imagined story, a sequence of events involving two persons in two connected stages. In the first of these, the action, a person P2 strikes a person P1 (representing the addressee). In the second stage, the reaction, P1 offers P2 the other cheek. I name the striker P2

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and the person struck P1 because P1 is more significant than P2. According to the story’s narrative point of view and value, P1 is the story’s protagonist (its central character P+), while P2 is its antagonist (P-; the Greek ago¯niste¯s, a combatant, is implicit in both these terms and points to a polemical aspect). The narrator is in solidarity with P1, and the events in question are evaluated as either good or bad from the narrator’s viewpoint. Sometimes, however, the more neutral terms actor and partner may be more appropriate. The basic meaning of the concept “partner” is “the other half”, in this case of the confrontational interaction. The two persons are partners to one another in this social interconnection. The designation actor or partner is determined by the point of view of the in-group (the Jesus movement) and of the self of the individual member of that group: once we identify the actor as the protagonist and the partner as the antagonist, we have accepted the narrator’s viewpoint.6

1.2.2. Subject of Being and Subject of Doing Every person in a story is at times subject of being, at others subject of doing. The subject of being (or the patient) is the person undergoing an action (for example being struck), while the subject of doing (or the agent) is the person performing the action (for example striking someone). A story may be now about the protagonist, now about the antagonist, but it will typically focus on the protagonist, sometimes as subject of being and sometimes subject of doing. It is the protagonist’s story that we are told: the story is told from the value-perspective of the protagonist. In our example, the two stages of the sequence are connected in an action– reaction schema. In the action, the antagonist is the subject of doing when he strikes the protagonist as subject of being. In the reaction, the roles are reversed. Here the protagonist is the subject of doing as he offers his other cheek to the antagonist as subject of being. The implicit story, however, focuses on the protagonist, now as the subject of the antagonist’s action (being struck, distressed, 6 It is difficult to find a neutral designation for the other person, who appears as either opponent or ally (whether virtual, actualized, or realized). The concept “neighbor,” meaning either “fellow citizen” (cf. “foreigner”) or “friend” (cf. “enemy”), is no solution, but part of the problem. The concept “the other” is better. All Jews are fellow citizens to one another; but, embedded in the shared identity, we find oppositional roles like friend or enemy in different social contexts. This will always be the case where people disagree politically (that is, where they differ on how to protect and advance, formally or informally, particular ideas or goals affecting people’s daily lives), and it is hard to imagine a place without such disagreements. The difference between the other and myself replicates the difference between the out-group and my in-group.

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forced, urged), now as the subject of doing, himself performing the acting (offering, surrendering, giving, lending). 1.2.3. Inferior and Superior Another relevant opposition needs to be introduced. The three examples in part IIa (v39b–41) are characterized by the antagonist’s use of power and of the enforcement of the law, which defines the antagonist as superior and the protagonist as inferior with regard to established social command and authority. As we shall see, the antagonist may act officially and legally; what is contested by the protagonist’s reaction is the legitimacy of the established social order. Status roles are therefore determined and may be reversed according to perspective. P2, the striker, is the protagonist of his own story, and understands himself as superior to the antagonist he is slapping; he represents the value system of the established society. P1, the person struck, is likewise the protagonist of his own story, and by his reaction – he believes in his self-esteem – he demonstrates his superiority (or at least equality); he represents the value system of an alternative subculture. Because of the narrator’s perspective, our text presents P1 as the real protagonist. In the three examples in v39b–41, P2 has the physical power and legal right, but not the moral right. P1 has the moral right on his side, but neither the physical power nor the legal right. And yet he is able to respond to defend his honor and self-esteem.7 The last example, v42 in IIb, differs from previous ones in that the addressee (P1) is the superior and the other (P2) the inferior with regard to economic and social power. The use of “antagonist” and “protagonist” to describe the encounter between an importunate person and a virtual giver/lender may seem too rigid, but formally the addressee is still the protagonist as the agent of the implicit story. 1.2.4 Evil and Good Finally, the text distinguishes between “evil” and “good”, because the antagonist P2 in IIa is seen as a representative of evil and is best understood as a human person, an evildoer, acting malevolently (cf. κακοποιέω) toward the protagonist P1 as subject of being. As subject of doing, on the other hand, the protagonist is 7 Although beyond the scope of this article, I wish to point to two sociological theories which seem highly relevant for understanding this particular strategy. On the one hand, “it is all a question of honor” (and shame), why Bruce J. Malina’s interpretation of the challenge–response pattern comes to mind; cf. Malina, New Testament, 27–57. On the other hand, the idea of self-stigmatization may also be significant; cf. Mödritzer, Stigma; further Theißen, Religion, 143–144; Theißen, Erleben, 424.

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encouraged/admonished to act benevolently (cf. ἀγαθοποιέω) toward the antagonist. In v42 it might be better to distinguish between actor and partner, since the pleading person is hardly seen as an enemy in any strict sense. And yet to give and to lend is to treat the partner as a friend. Despite the text’s clear formal argument, it is, as mentioned, not easy to establish a coherent account of its meaning. This is probably due to the text’s history of tradition (the collection of heterogeneous material from different contexts) and compilation (reformulation and recontextualization of the material). The principal challenge, however, is in my view the text’s brief narrative exposition, which tends to mask the fact that the ethical instructions are based on a conception by a narrative mind of the meaningful act as social exchange.

2.

An Elementary Model for Social Exchange

Matt 5:38–42 represents a normative ethics, since the text is giving instruction in how to behave. Using narrative theory, I shall identify and describe the general features of the text’s view of ethical action. Examinations have shown that the way in which the narrative mind conceives of such social ethical actions displays some general traits which can be summarized in the following model.8 We can distinguish between two forms of basic action. On the one hand, there is social interaction taking the form of an exchange of material objects. Giving and taking are fundamental acts referring to an idea of socially required reciprocity. Social interdependency (reciprocity, mutual dependence) implies an obligation to give, receive, and repay (as emphasized by Marcel Mauss). But we also encounter an obligation to take, which becomes clear when we recognize that the exchange of giving and taking is equivalent to the exchange of services (favors) and injuries (damage): giving corresponds to serving as taking corresponds to injuring. Furthermore, we need to recognize that the passive forms of action/ response – non-giving and non-taking as well as non-serving and non-injuring – are as significant as the active forms. In the context of friendship, the social bond calls for the exchange of gifts and services. With an enemy, on the other hand, the exchange is of acts of theft and of injury. Hence I offer the following definition of friend and enemy. A friend is someone from whom one has received, is receiving, or can expect to receive a gift/ service, which one is both obliged to and ready to reciprocate. Similarly, an enemy is someone from whom one has received, is receiving, or can expect to receive a taking/injury, which one is obliged to and ready to reciprocate. Thus the 8 Davidsen, Geben, 121–150.

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exchanges constitute friendship and enmity, and failure to reciprocate is a weakened form both of service and of injury. The moral of this prototypical social economy of exchange is quite simple: morals prescribe giving and serving, and prohibit taking and injuring. And yet morals also prescribe the reciprocation of an illegitimate taking/injury (offense, evil-doing) with a legitimate taking/injury (revenge/punishment).9 I summarize some of this conception of exchange or reciprocity in an elementary model consisting of two syntagmatic schemas: Schema A. Giving: Positive reciprocity. (1) P1 renders P2 a gift/service. (2) This opening good deed implies that P2 now owes P1 a gift/service. P2 is under obligation to grant P1 a gift/service. P1 can claim and expect to receive a gift/ service from P2. (3) When P2 grants P1 a gift/service, the account is in principle in balance. (4) If P2 does not grant P1 a gift/service, we have a weak form of taking/ injury, which could provoke Schema B, whereby P1 inflicts a taking/injury upon P2. Schema B. Taking: Negative reciprocity. (1) P1 inflicts a taking/injury upon P2. (2) This opening evil action implies that P2 owes P1 a taking/injury. P2 has the right to inflict a taking/injury upon P1. P1 is under obligation to and can expect to receive a taking/injury from P2. (3) When P2 inflicts a taking/injury upon P1, the account is in principle in just balance. (4) If P2 does not inflict a taking/injury upon P1, we have a weak form of gift/service, which could provoke Schema A: P1 grants P2 a gift/service. Such general or generic schemas can assume several different concrete and more complex forms, in stories as in real life. But they give us a basis for understanding the elementary form and function of exchange according to the narrative mind and its folk theory of justice. And not least, they give us a clear picture of the moral order that Jesus’ sermon presupposes and which he sets himself against.

9 The World Health Organization’s definition of violence gives the quintessential idea of what taking and injuring are referring to: “Violence is the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation” (www.who.int/topics/violence/en/). I would like to add dispossession in the form of taking, with or without the use or threat of violence (as in, respectively, robbery and theft).

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Narrative Analysis of Matt 5:38–39a: Lex Talionis and the Reaction to Evil

I am assuming that the ethical instructions in the sayings are based on a conception by a narrative mind of the meaningful act as social exchange. My analysis will therefore focus on narrative action, a concept with two faces. Stories recount persons’ doing and letting (non-doing), which is why narrative theory is a theory of meaningful action. On the one hand, the story’s actions are meaningful because a narrative mind is representing and interpreting them in an imagined story-world with persons and values; on the other hand, we perceive and interpret our social action-world through narrative conceptual schemas. Thus the semionarrative approach may contribute to a general theory of action which includes cognitive/psychological and sociological dimensions. Here, however, the focus will be on narratively represented action rather than historical social praxis.

3.1.

Lex Talionis: The Law of Retaliation (5:38)

The opening of this passage elucidates the speech’s polemical structure. The first saying (enunciate; v38) refers to an enunciation in the form of a rule stated by a messenger speaking on behalf of the accountable legislative power. We are not told who said “an eye for an eye”, but we know that it is ancient tradition, ratified by the scriptures (Exod 21:22–25; Lev 24:19–20; Deut 19:18–21). God himself seems to have established the legal principle and usage called Lex or Ius talionis, the law of retaliation, which says that “anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return: fracture for fracture (…); the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered” (Lev 24:19–20). Further, the harming person “shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exod 21:23–25). The management of this rigid law has no place for mercy: “show no pity” (Deut 19:21). Thus we can identify Moses as the messenger of God, the authority who guarantees the proclamation’s validity and truth. On behalf of God, Moses stated a rule; this however is now negated and substituted by another, stated by Jesus, also on God’s behalf. As a new authority, Matthew’s Jesus contradicts the tradition, although in order “not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17). So let us have a closer look at this principle of retaliation. Since Matthew uses the saying as a condensed maxim with generic sense, it seems unnecessary to deal more closely with the legal theory and praxis of the Lex talionis. In his case, the literal meaning of the saying is quite clear. Instead, we need to focus on the concrete, figurative expression of the principle of retaliation. We shall therefore understand the saying as a sentence that implies a figurative

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story with a generic level of signification. We thus realize that “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” refers to a sequence of events in which a person P2 has injured another person P1, so that P1 has the right (and duty) to inflict the same injury on P2. 3.1.1. Measure for Measure We detect two aspects in the elliptical saying “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. First, an injury must be matched by an injury; second, the returned injury should be of exactly the same kind. This double aspect represents an ideal of justice and fairness which appears in the Hebrew Bible as a sort of legal procedure. Such a legal system implies the existence of a legislative, judicial, and executive (sanctioning) power. However, it is difficult to imagine how a (weakly institutionalized) legal system would be able to implement such a penal system, which rather represents a folk theory of justice (with some social customary praxis for private revenge between individuals and their associates, whether these are family, kin, or allies). Legal systems deal with cases of bodily harm by using compensation in various forms. Literally, in fact, only “a life for a life” (in the form of the death penalty) seems to be much in use (although even here we meet the possibility of compensation in the form of a ransom). The concept of retaliation, however, is still intact, and the notion of equal for equal and measure for measure in the fixing of the punishment is still at work, even when modified by the idea of balance through compensation. Thus as a principle of retaliation, Lex talionis focuses on negative reciprocity (cf. the above model for social exchange). The revenge or punishment is to be “evil for evil” (equal for equal) and of the same degree of severity (measure for measure). In praxis, people settle cases by agreeing a compensation. I have no room for a more extensive examination of this principle, but will briefly analyze and comment below on one example that will give me the opportunity to demonstrate essential aspects of method as well as matter. 3.1.2. A Model Example: Exod 21:26–27 According to Exod 21:26–27, the law says: “When a slave-owner strikes the eye of a male or female slave, destroying it, the owner shall let the slave go, a free person, to compensate for the eye. If the owner knocks out a tooth of a male or female slave, the slave shall be let go, a free person, to compensate for the tooth”. Taken literally, the Lex talionis orders the slave to take revenge on the slaveowner by destroying one of his eyes. To avert this, the injuring party must give the injured party an amount of money or something else as acceptable compensation. It is for the (more or less institutionalized) court to fix the content of the

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compensation, but it is at least as important to declare the parties’ mutual account definitively closed as soon as compensation is paid, so that a long vendetta may be averted.10 The judicial system thus represents (to some degree) a more civil or more human way of resolving conflicts than the private vengeance according to which might makes right; but the talionis principle is still in evidence. The law of retaliation demands the infliction of an equivalent injury upon the person (P2) who caused the original damage. We would typically say that payment for the damage is a compensation for the caused injury. The victim (P1) is compensated for his/her loss. However, a different interpretation is also possible: to see the compensation as equivalent to damage inflicted upon the person (P2) who injured the original victim (P1). In this interpretation, the person causing the damage is compensated as well. Instead of losing an eye, the slave-owner in our model example gets off with losing a slave. We can methodologically analyze our model case using the schema for negative reciprocity (cf. above the model for social exchange). When the owner (P1) injures his slave (P2), damaging an eye or a tooth, the slave (P2) has the right to inflict an identical injury (damaging an eye or a tooth) upon the owner (P1). The owner (P1) is under obligation to and can expect to receive a taking/injury from the slave (P2). When the slave (P2) inflicts a taking/injury upon the owner (P1), the account is in principle in just balance and the parties are even. However, a pragmatic modification appears. The slave is not allowed to inflict an identical injury upon the owner.11 Rather than bodily harm, the owner suffers pecuniary loss: he loses his slave. I explain the underlying logic of this displacement from bodily harm to monetary loss as follows. The slave (P2) refrains from inflicting an injury upon the owner (P1). This abstention corresponds with a weak version of rendering a gift/service (not injuring), which evokes the positive reciprocity schema. The owner (P1) is under obligation to render the slave (P2) a gift/service. The slave can claim and expect to receive a gift/service from the owner. When the owner (P1) grants the slave (P2) a gift/service (monetary

10 In the case of difference in power and status, the fixing of the retaliation is of special importance. As a social inferior, the victim requires help from the court to ensure that he or she has received their rights, a penalty for the damage is imposed and that compensation is fair and effectual. 11 A propos the relationship between might and right in the social game, one might wonder what would happen if a slave were to strike and destroy his or her owner’s eye. Aristotle was well aware of the asymmetry between the idea of equal reciprocation and the established system of justice, with its social hierarchy of inferiors and superiors. In Nicomachean Ethics (1132b 28– 31), he mentions that “if an officer strikes a man, it is wrong for the man to strike him back; and if a man strikes an officer, it is not enough for the officer to strike him, but he ought to be punished as well”; see Betz, Sermon, 287.

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compensation or freedom), the account is in principle in just balance. The parties are even: they no longer have any claim on each other, but are both set free. This modification does not revoke the principle of retaliation. The offender still has to suffer some harm, and the rule that loss must be repaid with loss is still in evidence. Rather than being injured, however, the offender is forced to give the victim something. The compensation to be paid by the offender is for the bodily harm he himself should have suffered (he is paying himself off, as it were). Therefore, one may consider whether the (forced or free) abstention from bodily harm in favor of compensation implies a sort of mercy or pity (as when a death penalty, for example, is reduced to exile). The non-taking of the offender’s eye or tooth is a weak version of giving, to be repaid by a further gift or service: in this case, the owner freeing the slave (a loss of property). In any case, a sort of reconciliation seems to be established by the offender’s exemplary injury or expiation.

3.2.

Reaction to Evil (5:39a)

It is beyond doubt that 5:39a contradicts 5:38. The question concerns the meaning of the prohibition μὴ ἀντιστῆναι. What it is that one should refrain from doing toward τῷ πονηρῷ, i. e. the person who acts evilly (πονηρός; cf. κακοποιέω) toward you? 12 The challenge is the verb ἀνθίστημι, which means to stand up to, to resist another. The use of this verb points to a military confrontation in which a combatant stands ready to defy an enemy. Even if the use of military language may not be quite accidental (the Jesus movement could perceive its relation to the social establishment as a displaced replication of the relation between Israel and the Roman Empire), we need not take the martial tone too literally: confrontations are often expressed metaphorically in combat vocabulary. The idea could simply be: although the other has treated you as an enemy, do not react as an opponent (ἀντιστάτης) or enemy of the other, but as a friend. 3.2.1. Negative and Positive Reciprocation In his examination, Hans Dieter Betz concludes that μὴ ἀντιστῆναι can only mean “Do not retaliate”, since the Lex talionis as a judicial and moral principle concerns retaliation: how to react to a caused harm so that justice is done.13 By 12 The context shows that concrete persons are in mind; persons, however, who represent the malice of the world, if not simply the evil one, i. e. the Devil (Matt 13:19). 13 Betz, Sermon, 280.

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“retaliation” he understands “to return evil with evil”.14 Hence, the moral rule orders one to abstain from returning evil with evil: to abstain from acting actively to take or injure when one is oneself the victim of taking and/or injuring. The question is, however, whether one should avoid acting actively in any way, even in the form of giving/serving. In 5:39b–41, all three examples comprise a clear call for active acting with precisely the form of giving/serving. Thus in the inner context of 5:38–41, the meaning cannot be that one should stay passive and simply give in (rather than stand up) to the offender. In response to evil, nonretaliation is a possibility, and since retaliation means returning an injury for an injury (or a taking with a taking), non-violence, refraining from physical violence intended to cause bodily harm (or usurpation), is also a possibility; but neither non-resistance nor non-reciprocation are possibilities. We have no prohibition on reciprocation. In order to explain the blended nature of the sayings in 5:39b–41, we need to clarify the underlying semantic logic. A saying like “Return evil for evil” affirms a qualified (“evil for evil”) action (“return”). When we counter this saying with the negated version, “Do not return evil for evil”, we may either focus on the action in an unqualified sense, “Do not return at all”, or in a qualified sense, “Do not return evil for evil”. In the last instance, we might expect an affirmation of the semantic opposition to “evil”, as in the saying “Do not return evil for evil, but return evil with good”. An illustration of the system of signification in which “to give/to serve” and “to take/to injure” mutually define each other may help to clarify the case: DOING Giving/Serving GOOD No Taking/Injuring

Taking/Injuring ACT

EVIL No Giving/Serving

NON-DOING We can identify four basic acts in this semantic universe: Positive active acting (giving/serving) Positive passive acting (not taking/not injuring) Negative active acting (taking/injuring) Negative passive acting (not giving/not serving)

From the context, we understand that our protagonist is the victim of an antagonist’s negative active acting in the form either of taking or injuring: the question is how to respond to that act. The Lex talionis asserts that one should return a negative active action with a negative active action. Jesus negates this 14 Betz, Sermon, 281.

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assertion: “Do not retaliate”, i. e. abstain from taking and/or injuring, which corresponds to a positive passive acting. Here we have a semantic leap from the negative to the positive half, from evil to good, and in a closed circuit (or a semantic world of limited values), the negation will tend toward the implied assertion: “Return evil with good”. Despite some primitive judicial institutionalization, retaliation is seen as synonymous with (private) revenge or vengeance. A negative active act (as action) is returned by a negative active act (as reaction), corresponding to Lex talionis. However, this is not the only sort of possible return, which is why it is better to speak more generally of positive and negative forms of reciprocity, i. e. the behavior with which people tend to respond to each other. I shall thus focus on reciprocation in the sense of “a return in kind or of like value”, and on reciprocate in the sense of “to do (something) for or to someone who has done something similar for or to you” (Merriam-Webster). This approach, distinguishing between positive and negative reciprocation, is justified by the New Testament’s use of language. In Rom 12:17 we find the saying “Do not repay anyone evil for evil” using the verb ἀποδίδωμι, which literally means “to give back” and here means “to retaliate” (to take revenge). Elsewhere, however, for example in Matt 6:4 and 6:6, it means “to reward”. Likewise, in Rom 12:19 “to revenge” (ἐκδικέω) and “to repay” (ἀνταποδίδωμι) are used as synonyms for negative reciprocation, while in Luke 14:14 ἀνταποδίδωμι means “to reward”, to return/repay a gift/service, and thus points to positive reciprocation (giving in return). This clarification helps us to see that the three sayings are of a blended nature, because they represent a crossover between two regular modes of reciprocation.

3.2.2. The Three Realms/Orders of Being Yet another short detour may prove to be a short cut to a more comprehensive understanding. I shall therefore take a quick look at the Sixth Antithesis in Matt 5:43–44: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies…”. We have seen that giving corresponds to serving, as taking corresponds to injuring. Now, in the perspective of action, “to hate” and “to love” are “to take/ injure” and “to give/serve”, and according to the ordinary standards, one hates/ injures one’s enemies and loves/serves one’s friends. This is exactly what the thesis states: “You shall love your neighbor [friend/ally] and hate your enemy”. On the contrary, the antithesis states: “Love your enemies”. Here I am not asking what enemies Jesus (or Matthew) might have had in mind, but rather regard this last saying as an alternative general ethical rule. As a result, we can detect a

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semantic structure based on the combination of the two dichotomies friend/ enemy and love/hate, pointing to three kingdoms or realms (orders of being): The Realm of Mercy Love your enemies

The Realm of Justice Love your friends Hate your enemies

The Realm of Evil Hate your friends

The Realm of Justice represents the ordinary rule which every society follows, in order to prevent social chaos or the Realm of Evil, in which the one takes from the other and all violently hate their neighbor in a war of all against all. Jesus proclaims another sort of social anomaly, a positive form of lawlessness, when he demands the sort of exchange which takes place in the Realm of Mercy. The Realm of Justice subsumes two regular (even, equal) modes of reciprocation: to love your friend is to return “good with good” (positive active acting with positive active acting), and to hate your enemy is to return “evil with evil” (negative active acting with negative active acting).15 Outside this regular domain, we find two irregular (uneven, unequal) modes of reciprocation. In the Realm of Evil, people will hate their friends (neighbors, family, in-group members, and allies/supporters of any kind) and return “good with evil”. In the Realm of Evil we find a suspension of good-for-good justice for the sake of one’s own gain (reflexive protection/progression). In the Realm of Mercy (or Love), people will love their enemies (foreigners, strangers, out-group members, and adversaries/opponents of any kind) and return “evil with good”. In the Realm of Mercy, we find a suspension of evil-for-evil justice for the sake of the other’s gain (transitive protection or progression): The Realm of Mercy Return good for evil

The Realm of Justice Return Return good for good evil for evil

The Realm of Evil Return evil for good

15 As said, a non-taking is a weak version of giving, as a non-giving is a weak version of taking. A similar structure holds for serving/injuring. In opposition to a doing we have a non-doing (cf. the schema above). In his book Reading the Sermon on the Mount, Charles H. Talbert mentions an example (Talbert, Reading, 90), b. Yoma 23a, which illustrates the signification of such a non-doing as interactive social action, in this case retaliation motivated by hostility and thirst for revenge: “What is revenge and what is bearing a grudge? If one [P1] says to his fellow [P2]: Lend me your sickle, and he replies No, and tomorrow the second comes to the first and says: Lend me your axe! And he replies: I will not lend it to you, just as you would not lend me your sickle, that is revenge.” In this example, we have a combination of giving and serving, even if the lending is a particular kind of gift/service (P1 could have said, “Could you do me a favor and lend me your sickle?”). We can only guess why P2 refuses the request (for the most, stories are silent on the motivation for opening actions), but his non-giving/non-serving is a clear case of a negative passive acting. The example further demonstrates that the refutation of a request for lending/serving among neighbors is a weak version of evil/enmity. Finally, it is particularly illustrative because most of humankind’s moral failures are passive sins of omission: not to give, or not to serve, as the situation demands.

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This makes perfect sense when it comes to Matt 5:43–49 and Luke 6:27–36. It may even catch the general sense of the admonition in Rom 12:14–21. We have reason to believe that the tradition which Matthew passes on more or less verbatim in 5:38–48 was influenced by thoughts similar to those expressed in Rom 12:14.17– 21 (v17, “do not repay anyone evil for evil”, v19 “never avenge yourselves”, v21, “do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”). Here there is an opposition between good (ἀγαθός) and evil (κακός), and the martial verb “to overcome” is used (νικάω; “to conquer” our own anger and thirst for revenge or/ and the opponent’s attitude/conduct by taking him to task). We may thus restate the meaning of 5:38–39a as follows: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Repay evil for evil.’ But I tell you, do not repay anyone evil for evil, but return evil with good”. The basic meaning of “love of enemies” could simply be “overcome hostility with friendship”, “overcome evil with good”. An act of evil should be met with an act of good that is neither passivity (abstaining from action, inaction) nor expected activity (action as negative reciprocity, taking or injuring). Things get a bit more complicated when we look at Matt 5:39b–41. There we do have an active reaction to the enemy’s action, since the protagonist is encouraged to return evil with good. As we shall see, however, this reciprocation is of a particular, humorous nature; it is also part of an offensive (rather than defensive) and aggressive (rather than peaceful) social strategy.

4.

Narrative Analysis of Matt 5:39b–41: Three Examples of Proactive Resistance

Matt 5:39b–41 presents three examples of how to react to a doer’s evil action. We have interaction (action → reaction) involving two persons, a subject P1 as the protagonist and an anti-subject P2 as the antagonist (since the narrator’s point of view is in accordance with one of these persons, P1). The initiating action is viewed as an offense against the protagonist, and the question is how he should react to the antagonist (the offender, adversary, opponent, and enemy). In order to clarify the underlying game between the characters, however, I shall distinguish between the offended actor (P1) and the offending partner (P2). The partner inflicts an injury upon the actor: he slaps the actor’s face, takes his cloak, and forces him to perform some service. From the actor’s point of view, the partner’s action is an evil action, that is, an action that either represses or destroys the actor’s life and life possibilities. The actor becomes a victim of repression or degression in the form of taking or injuring. On the other hand, the partner may understand his action differently. As stated earlier, morals prescribe giving and serving; morals prohibit taking and

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injuring. However, morals also prescribe the reciprocation of an illegitimate taking/injury (offense) by a legitimate taking/injury (revenge/punishment). The partner may see the actor as an offender/enemy/opponent and his own act as a legitimate return, as revenge or punishment for a previous doing or non-doing on the part of the actor. In that case, we have a polemical relation not only between individuals, but between two opposed perspectives concerning right and wrong. Taking and injuring are bad or evil in a general moral perspective, since they repress or destroy a person’s life and life possibilities. They are, however, ethically justified as legitimate actions in return for illegitimate actions. In general, it is considered morally right and just to punish an evildoer. The exhortation to “pray for those who persecute you” (5:44; cf. Rom 12:14) points to a context in which the actors addressed are at risk of being injured verbally and/or physically (regarding life, health, property, and honor—either as private revenge by an individual or a mob or as public punishment by court of law). We may think of members of the early Jesus movement or of members of Matthew’s community (if not of social classes regarding themselves as victims of a repressive and degressive society under heavy Roman influence). In any case, the partner regards the actor as an inferior person worthy of contempt and hatred, almost an outlaw whom no one would defend in case of injustice. The actor’s self-esteem may be quite the opposite. Deprived of his right to live with social and personal integrity and dignity, the actor develops a particular strategy for defense. He is powerless to overcome his enemy in a physical fight— whether because he lacks the means or is uncertain of the outcome or because of ethical restraints ruling out the use of violence/retaliation. Whatever the motive (and even if a virtue is made of necessity), non-violence is prescribed. This is the point in Walter Wink’s article, “Neither Passivity nor Violence”, and in what follows I shall discuss Wink’s interpretation of the three examples.16 In order to understand the examples’ hypothetical interactions, we will need to investigate the meaning of the partner’s action and the actor’s reaction.

4.1.

Turn the Other Cheek (Matt 5:39b)

The first example concerns a special kind of injury: “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also”. Walter Wink founds his interpretation of the antagonist’s action on the “backhand argument”. In the default situation, the partner is using his right hand; in a face-to-face situation, the only way to strike the actor’s right cheek would therefore be with the back of the hand. Such a blow has its own meaning as gesture. The intention with a backhand slap is not to 16 Wink, Passivity, 102–125.

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injure the body as with a blow of a fist, but to hurt the person’s self, to insult and to humiliate, to put the actor in the right place. People with socially recognized power (masters, husbands, parents, men, and Roman and Jewish authorities) might use the backhand strike to reprove their inferiors in a hierarchical system of social class, ethnic identity, status, gender, and age. The inferior’s normal response to a blow of this kind would be submission, because retaliation would be suicidal, invoking veritable reprisals. This socially degrading enactment of inequality had its limited sphere of application. Striking an equal, a peer, was not acceptable conduct and would be subject to a serious fine.17 Following Wink’s theory, I conclude that the partner is the superior and the actor the inferior person, according to the reigning social hierarchy of status. By his reaction, however, the actor bravely contradicts this social value system. Wink founds his interpretation of the protagonist’s reaction on the “neither passivity nor violence” argument. The actor’s turning of the other cheek is itself a gesture laden with meaning. It is an offering, but a complex (waspish) gift of a kind: ostensibly the invitation to further humiliation, yet also a positive response that creates difficulties for the partner, who now physically cannot backhand the actor’s left cheek with his right hand. A slap with an open hand or a punch with a fist would change this meaning, because it would make the actor an equal and would open up the possibility of a brawl, in contravention of the social contract. However, the point of the slap with the back of the hand is to reinforce the hierarchical system and its institutionalized inequality. To respond by turning the other cheek is to take a risk, since the actor cannot be sure how the striker will react – whether this conduct will confuse and paralyze or will provoke irritation, anger, or even rage. Unable to control his fury, the striker might even explode with an aggressive beating. In any case, the actor has irrevocably made his point: his gesture denies that the first blow achieved its intended effect, and he denies the striker the power to humiliate him. There is no surrender here in acceptance of the defined status of inferiority. The message stated, says Wink, is this: “I am a human being just like you. Your status (gender, race, age, wealth) does not alter that fact. You cannot demean me”.18 If this interpretation is valid, it shows how the actor’s self-esteem is based on underlying natural grounds (being a human being, a subject of being, without social designations or insignia), rather than on unstable cultural grounds (such as social and cultural designations or insignia). It would be anachronistic to use the expression “human right”, and yet here we have some idea of the inviolability, not to say sacredness, of indefeasible rights. In any case, says Wink, the striker “has been rendered impotent to instill shame in a subordinate. He has been 17 Wink, Passivity, 105. 18 Wink, Passivity, 105.

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stripped of his power to dehumanize the other”.19 Thus the actor does not shelter in passivity, but acts, reacts, responds, and reciprocates openly. This active, offensive reaction, however, is non-violent, so we are dealing here with neither passivity nor violence.

4.2.

Distraint of Belongings (Matt 5:40)

The next example has to do with the exchange of objects: “If anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic [shirt, undergarment], let him have your cloak [outer garment] as well”. The Hebrew scriptures testify to the custom of taking a debtor’s cloak as pledge (Exod 22:25–27; Deut 24:10–13.17), and Matthew seems to have reproduced this saying in the wrong order. As in Luke, the handover of the undergarment is the response to the taking of the outer garment. If we bracket the legal setting, the saying goes “If anyone takes your cloak, give him your tunic as well”. The response to a taking is a giving (cf. Luke 6:29). The legal setting, however, is important. A creditor is haling his debtor to court to wring out repayment by legal means with a warrant. The creditor may now legally seize the debtor’s goods and dispose of his property or effects. In this way, the creditor can force a poor debtor, who has nothing more than the clothes he wears, to deliver up his outer garment. There is a proverbial moral sense behind this idea of taking a garment as pledge in the Hebrew scriptures: an instruction that focuses on constraint. There is a limit to how far a creditor may deprive a debtor of his belongings. Jesus’ saying seems to imply that even if seizing a person’s outer garment is legal (according to the society’s actual sense of justice), it is morally illegitimate. It is an illegitimate taking, and as such characterizes all kinds of plundering, exploitation, or impoverishment. One way to defend one’s integrity in such a situation might be to respond using the means of the powerless, i. e. by some symbolic counteraction, in this case by offering up one’s undergarment as well.20 Besides showing that they have been stripped to the skin (“You cannot pluck a bald chicken”), the naked debtor is resemanticizing the situation. The tables are turned. As mentioned by Wink, nakedness was taboo in Judaism; but rather than falling on the naked person, the disgrace falls on the person viewing or causing the nakedness.21 The creditor is the powerful party, humiliating the debtor, who is supposed to be ashamed of himself, just as the public sees him as disgraceful and deserving of social con19 Wink, Pasivity, 106. 20 By “symbolic action”, I simply mean a real, tangible action imitating another real action but with no other rational purpose than to convey an attitude and a message. 21 Wink, Passivity, 107; cf. Gen 9:20–27.

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demnation. By his outdoing cooperativeness and compliance, however, the debtor changes the role-configuration of the scene. Now it is the creditor who is humiliated and shamed. The debtor has neutralized the attempt to humiliate him and, further, placed the creditor in a shameful position, expressing protest against the system that generates such a debt. Jesus teaches, says Wink, “how to take on the entire system in a way to unmask its essential cruelty and to burlesque its pretentions to justice, law, and order”.22 Thus by this symbolic action the social system stands self-condemned.

4.3.

Forced Labor (Matt 5:41)

The third example, “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile”, implies some rule of service under compulsion or forced labor. Roman soldiers could order people to make their means and labor available for service, for example to help carry equipment or to relieve them of some other work (cf. Mark 15:21), but a king or his delegates could also claim the same right (cf. Mark 11:3). Restrictions were in force on the use of this privilege, but it could be misused (and soldiers punished for misuse). In any case, the rule of compulsory service was regarded as oppressive and humiliating and as a clear sign of oppressive governance, whether Roman or Jewish. Unlike the leaders of some other Jewish movements, however, Jesus did not counsel violent revolt, most likely because he viewed armed insurrection against the Roman imperial might and its Jewish collaborators as disastrous and vain. People had to mobilize other kinds of forces. To do more than one is obliged to do is to give more than one owes. That amounts to a symbolic action by which, as Wink says, “the oppressed can recover the initiative and assert their human dignity in a situation that cannot for the time being be changed”.23 Like Wink, one may wonder how to understand this response. Is it a provocation, an insult, or a trial of strength; if not a kindness expressing servile compliance? What is the actor up to, and how does the partner interpret his action? We do not know, and have ourselves to do some interpretation. Wink suggests: … the soldier is thrown off balance by being deprived of the predictability of his victim’s response. He has never dealt with such a problem before. Now he has been forced into making a decision for which nothing in his previous experience has prepared him. If he has enjoyed feeling superior to the vanquished, he will not enjoy it today.24

22 Wink, Passivity, 108. 23 Wink, Passivity, 111. 24 Wink, Passivity, 111.

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This understanding implies that some struggle is at work, and that the actor is in some way victorious. How this victory is to be understood more precisely is, however, still open for discussion. On the imagined level, the humor in this scene must have been delightful and enlivening to those who were oppressed and thought themselves deprived of any opportunity to resist. Stories about the little one triumphing over the big one, the wise fooling the less wise, are very numerous. In real life, however, things can turn out differently. It is an open question how authority would react to the actor’s response, so the action Jesus counsels would be risky. On the other hand, the actor might put his trust in the social rules governing violent action, so the partner might be ashamed or scrupled to reciprocate a good deed with an evil one. If so, the actor has effectively cornered his enemy in a powerless position.

4.4.

Strategic Reciprocation: The Power of the Powerless

From Wink’s social-history point of view, Jesus wishes not only to liberate people from their servile mentality and actions, but to assert that they can display courage and dignity and fight back despite their powerlessness. “Jesus’ sense of immediacy has social implications”, says Wink.25 “The reign of God is already breaking into the world, and it comes, not as an imposition from on high, but as the leaven slowly raising the dough (Matt 13:33|| Luke 13:20–21).” Jesus does not propose armed revolution, but in advocating this strategic reciprocation as a sort of civil disobedience, he does lay a foundation for social revolution. That strategy was neither utopian nor apocalyptic, according to Wink, but “realistic in the extreme”.26 I find it difficult to follow Wink to the extreme, but the idea that non-violent symbolic actions charged with ethical values might change people’s minds on how to act seems well taken. It is not impossible that Jesus and his followers were convinced that such behavior could bring about a new worldly reign, with or without some supernatural help from an intervening God (cf. Matt 20:25–28). They may have believed they were setting in motion an embryonic process (comparable to a natural process of growth) that was bound to reach its intrinsic goal, its fulfillment being only a matter of time. It is however hard to deny the utopian quality of this strategy if the results are tested against historical reality. This kind of resistance, taken to the extreme, tends to drive people toward fanatical eschatological and apocalyptic thinking. I do not deny the potential of such a strategy to function as a possible lever to obtain social improvement; I only 25 Wink, Passivity, 111. 26 Wink Passivity, 112.

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wish to preserve a more realistic point of view. The utopian worldview endures in various Christian churches, all of which have to deal with the question of how to implement their values in the context of social reality. Sometimes communities decide that the ideal can become reality on a larger scale and begin zealously to act in order to bring about the fulfillment of their utopian aspirations, but we have not yet seen the reign of God being realized in any full sense.

5.

Blended Reciprocity

Wink’s interpretation seems plausible, but we face here a complex case of exchange or reciprocity that is easier to grasp intuitively than to analyze theoretically. I shall now present some observations and considerations that might bring us a step further toward understanding these cases of blended reciprocity.

5.1.

Confrontation between Two Ideologies

The saying “Do not stand up against an evildoer” reveals that the actor regards the partner’s initiating action as an illegitimate and evil action. This cannot simply be because of the use or the threat of physical violence, although the use or threat of physical force is involved in all three examples. Even if the slap is intended to injure the self rather than the body, it is a physical act. To go to court is to enlist the force of the law to inflict distress on a recalcitrant debtor; to deny a request for help from a figure in authority (“Lend me your donkey!”) would surely be disciplined (“Give me your donkey or I will take it by force!).27 In all cases, in the partner’s view the use of force is legitimate. The partner holds some position of authority, generally acknowledged by society, and in the social structure holds a position as superior to the actor, who is an inferior. The actor, however, challenges the legitimacy of the partner’s status and conduct. Therefore, we have to keep an account of two opposed sets of value-perspectives stemming from two conflicting parties, the larger society and a subgroup—in this case, the Jewish–Roman public ranged against Jesus with his disciples and supporters. Socially accepted norms dictate that the execution of authority on any level may involve the use of physical force to punish and correct inferiors. However, when people judge enforcement of the law and the right to inflict corporal punishment to be evil, they view the actual social structures as unjust. They may 27 Talbert refers to Epictetus (Diss. 4.1.79), who says, “If a soldier commandeers your donkey, let it go. Do not resist or grumble. If you do, you will get a beating and lose your little donkey just the same”. Talbert, Reading, 90.

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be legal, but the actor judges them to be morally illegitimate. We have a confrontation not just between two individuals, but between two ideologies. The one ideology represents the established society’s actual self-knowledge. The partner’s perception of his social role, his socially acknowledged status and his identity, with their implied self-esteem and self-respect, reflects, we assume, this ideology. The other ideology represents the self-knowledge of a social subgroup in conflict with the larger society. Again, the social ideology is, or should be, mirrored in the actor’s perception of his attributed role, with what that implies of self-esteem and dignity. The larger society may regard the actor as inferior, but he holds himself to be equal, if not superior. In a religious setting, the two ideologies might be conceptualized by the subgroup as a difference between humankind’s self-constituted and God’s revelatory normative perspective (while, on the contrary, the larger society would regard the alternative ideology of the subgroup as diabolical or heretical). Whether we focus on the Jesus movement (before Jesus’ death) or on the Christ movement (after his death), we seem, sociologically speaking, to be dealing with a utopian movement in conflict with the larger society. Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s description of the utopians’ imaginary society may give us a very good idea of such a movement.28 She writes: In the imagined utopia, people work and live together closely and cooperatively, in a social order that is self-created and self-chosen rather than externally imposed, yet one that also operates according to a higher order of natural and spiritual laws. Utopia is held together by commitment rather than coercion, for in utopia what people want to do is the same as what they have to do; the interests of the individuals are congruent with the interests of the group; and personal growth and freedom entail responsibility for others. Underlying the vision of utopia is the assumption that harmony, cooperation, and mutuality of interests are natural to human existence, rather than conflict, competition, and exploitation, which arise only in imperfect societies. By providing material and psychological safety and security, the utopian social order eliminates the need for divisive competition or self-serving actions which elevate some people to the disadvantage of others; it ensures instead the flowering of mutual responsibility and trust, to the advantage of all. … At a number of times in history, groups of people have

28 Kanter studied residential, intentional communities whose members held a shared social, political, religious, or spiritual vision, sharing resources and following an alternative lifestyle. She focused on such communities in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but her sociological theory of utopian communes is of general relevance. The Qumran settlement at the Dead Sea and the Therapeutae in Alexandria (mentioned by Philo in De vita contemplativa) seem to have been such communities. The two summaries characterizing the Jerusalem community, Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–35, also point in this direction. The Jesus movement and the early Christ movement may not be residential in the strict sense, but their members do share a religious utopian vision with a social idea of sharing resources and an ethical idea of an alternative lifestyle.

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decided that the ideal can become reality, and they have banded together in communities to bring about the fulfillment of their own utopian aspirations.29

Such an ideology, I wish to add, functions as a value-based set of motives for action. If a group of people become convinced that an ideal can become reality, they may act to bring about the fulfillment of their utopian aspirations. I identify the historical Jesus and his followers as such a group. They act in order to bring about the fulfillment of their utopian aspirations: the Kingdom of God. They believe the ideal can become reality, if people convert and act according to the utopian values. The ethics of the Sermon on the Mount teaches how to act both toward brothers and sisters of the in-group and toward outsiders in the larger hostile society, which may persecute (pursue and harass) the community because of its aspiration and attempts to create an alternative social reality. Jesus’ teaching in words and deeds represents the “higher order of natural and spiritual laws”. It is higher than the old order, the Mosaic law and the kind of society it generates. That is only nomos, an artificial human construction compared to physis, natural law of a kind inscribed in and to be inferred from God’s ordering of the cosmos: rules representing life’s own law according to creation (cf. Matt 5:45). Although the love command (“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”; “the royal law according to the scripture”, Jam 2:8) is known from the law (the Torah) as nomos, it is itself a rule based on physis. The whole law (of nomos) is summed up in a single commandment (of physis; Gal 5:14), a more natural, cosmic, and spiritual law (like the exemplary Golden Rule, Matt 7:12). Thus an explanation of the social dynamics of the scene in the three examples should include a sense of this confrontation between an aspiring utopian and a well-established social ideology.30

5.2.

Action and Reaction between Presuppositions and Implications

In the sayings, we have two rounds or interactive steps: the antagonist’s action, and the protagonist’s reaction. The protagonist is in accord, the antagonist in discord, with the storyteller’s normative point of view. Action and reaction represent a sequence of two moves connected by narrative logic in the story. This 29 Kanter, Commitment, 1–2. 30 I use the Greek words nomos (law, custom) and physis (nature) from the Sophist tradition to define what the utopians would regard as either humanly ordered cultural convention or divinely ordered natural rule. I find this distinction to be very helpful for understanding the tension between the Mosaic law and the teaching of Jesus (the “Jesuanic Law” or the “Royal Law” as James terms it). It is not simply a question of Jewish contra Christian law, since we are facing an intra-Jewish discussion of the foundation of the basic rules for life as nomos (referring to a theology of Revelation) or physis (referring to a theology of Creation).

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story, however seems as manifest story to be only part of a larger story, of which some elements are presupposed and others virtually implied. In both cases, the question is how to understand the partner’s behavior. Why did the partner take action against the actor in the first place, and how does the actor expect the partner to react to his action? Obviously, a latent story borders the manifest story and requires to be taken into consideration in our interpretation: A: Preceding round P1: Action A P2: Reaction A

C: Succeeding round P1: Action C P2: Reaction C

P2: Action B P1: Reaction B B: Present round

All three examples share this structure, but I will explicate it by means of the first example: the slap and the offered cheek. The manifest story of this saying concerns B, the present round, with an Action B, where the partner P2 slaps the actor P1, and a Reaction B, where the actor P1 offers P2 the other cheek. Unless it is a case of random and meaningless offense, P2’s Action B is a Reaction A to a previous Action A by P1 in a preceding round. From the partner’s perspective, P2 could simply be punishing the insolence of P1. The story does not reveal what the conflict is about; but, as Reaction A, P2’s action is expected to give closure, ending the controversy (silencing the defiant P1). If the partner or his ally were to retell the incident, the actor would be the antagonist, the partner the protagonist. According to the story, P1’s offering the other cheek is a Reaction B to P2’s Action B; we have, in other words, an active action–reaction causation schema. However, things get tricky here, because P1 should either remain passive (make no reply, remain silent as if defeated) or respond by returning injury with injury (hit back; retort, answer back in a fight for domination or justice). However, P1’s Reaction B qualifies as an opening Action C in a succeeding new round. Offering the other cheek is a kind of gift and service at the same time.

5.3.

Challenging Reciprocation

P1’s Reaction B to P2’s Action B (which was intended to close) is a blend of different significations. It is an ambiguous, Janus-faced act. On the one hand, it is a prohibited response, since any response other than submissive obedience on the part of the castigated (supposedly silenced) P1 is an outrageous audacity, repeating or confirming the initially offensive Action A as resistance. The actor is not allowed to resist or to counterattack with negative reciprocation, be it verbal or corporal. Such a resistance would deny the partner his status of authority

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according to established social contract and challenge him to an open struggle for domination (the saying in 5:39a may precisely be a warning not to respond with negative reciprocity, in order to avoid an open struggle involving mutual retaliation and reprisals). The actor’s offer, on the other hand, is a prosocial behavior, demonstratively living up to the ethical request for gift and service. To complicate matters further, this reciprocation of evil with good in disproportionate servility is itself a confusing semantic conundrum with challenging qualities. What does it mean, to the actor, to the partner? 5.3.1. The Cunning Actor The first thing to notice is that to offer the other cheek is to expose oneself to a second blow, and that to expose oneself is the diametrical opposite of shielding oneself. The partner cannot hit the actor’s right cheek in the first place if he wards off the blow by shielding himself with his arms. The actor is liable to punishment and must accept the penalty. Any resistance would imply further rebellion against authority. The actor is meant to expose himself to the slapping as a welldeserved retribution. Offering the other cheek could be the actor’s way of complying with the partner’s unspoken demand for an opportunity to strike again. Alternatively, the actor acts as if the partner actually desires such an opportunity and will be tempted to take advantage of it to strike again. Here we encounter the first difficulty. If the slap is intended to humiliate rather than to punish, then one slap in the face would suffice. Offering the other cheek is a provocative and perhaps self-fulfilling act, since the invitation to strike again might be too tempting to resist. However, a response in the form of active rather than passive action might itself be seen as replication of the offense triggering the original slap, and therefore as calling for a repeat slap. This interpretation seems adequate on first examination, and yet there is a catch to it. As explained by Wink, the partner is physically unable to slap the actor’s left cheek with the back of his right hand, and other sorts of blow would change the scene. In this perspective, we might regard the offering of the left cheek as a kind of baiting of a trap. If the actor can inveigle the partner into striking him, he will have tempted him to go too far. On the other hand, if the partner respects the rules for backhand slapping, the offering of the left cheek is a mockery. The partner is offered a chance to slap (the actor does not try to ward off a second blow, but exposes himself invitingly) which, on close inspection, is no opportunity at all. The physical impracticality (“You cannot slap me!”) becomes a sign of a higher justice’s ethical constraint (“You may not slap me even if you can!”). The subtle point is that the ambiguity of this gesture makes it impossible for the partner to accuse the challenging actor of disdain or insolence. Can one blame a person for giving or serving? The negative aspects of the action – that the

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partner unfortunately is physically unable to give a backhand slap – could simply be unintended side-effects. The seemingly innocent actor may be putting the best face on it; it is difficult to accuse him of malevolence, since he is obviously doing the partner a service. A cunning play is going on in this reversible semantic figure, comparable to the duck–rabbit illusion: at times the actor appears to be compliant, at others resistant, and it is impossible to establish what the case is objectively.

5.3.2. The Cornered Partner What does the actor expect to achieve by this means? How does he expect this story to develop, for himself as well as for his partner? There is no causative relation between the actor’s action and the partner’s reaction, although the partner cannot avoid responding to the challenge, since even a passive reaction carries meaning. The question is what the actor and his audience in solidarity with him would expect this strategy to achieve. Hans Dieter Betz’s answer to this question is based on his understanding of the Golden Rule in Matt 7:12: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you”. He finds that the Golden Rule teaches a preventive ethics “built on the very old and universally accepted rule of behavior named by the formula Do ut des (‘I give so that you may give [in return]’)”.31 Betz’s questionable understanding of the Golden Rule as the principle behind the rule of positive reciprocation might open a discussion in its own right, but here I shall focus on his hint that the prohibition on negative reciprocation (retaliation) seems to imply some idea of positive reciprocation. However, Betz has only non-taking and noninjuring, i. e. the weak version of giving and serving, in mind. To desist from retaliation, he says, “is a positive gesture of generosity that carries with it the expectation that the adversary will respond in kind”.32 The idea is that if I abstain from taking from/injuring my adversary, then he will stop taking from/injuring me. Betz’s understanding takes for granted that we have a confrontation between individual neighbors “who should be friends and who may have been friends at one time”,33 that is, between equals or near-equals. The offering of the other cheek to the striker he recognizes as “a provocative invitation to receive a second strike”.34 Rather than weakness, it is a sign of moral strength. By his gesture, the actor exposes the offender’s act as morally repulsive and improper. By his re31 32 33 34

Betz, Sermon, 284. Betz, Sermon, 284. Betz, Sermon, 283. Betz, Sermon, 290.

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nunciation of violence, he further “challenges the striker to react with comparable generosity”.35 If the striker ignores this gesture and strikes again, he will reveal himself as “an uncivilized brute”. Betz’s interpretation, I find, focuses too much on passivity in the accentuation of the non-doing (non-taking and non-injuring). The three examples imperatively request a more active, offensive response in the form of giving and serving. Literally, the actor and the partner signify not (personal or social) friendship but an inferior party (representing a liberation movement) in conflict with a superior party (representing the established society). Therefore, the provocation may be more severe than Betz would like to acknowledge, and the partner’s reaction to the actor’s test accordingly less predictable. The idea that the rule of positive reciprocation is involved in this complex story is important, however. Isolated the succeeding Round with P1’s opening Action C and P2’s closing Reaction C is an opening act of giving/serving, which the recipient is obliged to reciprocate with a counter act of giving/serving according to the common contractual social order. So far the challenge corners the partner. There is, however, no causal implication between action and reaction: the partner can react in various different ways. Following the exhortation to this kind of radical ethical behavior may in real life come close to committing social, even physical suicide, calling for severe punishment. After a brief commentary on Matt 5:42, I shall therefore discuss the seriousness of these drastic maxims.

6.

Narrative Analysis of Matt 5:42: The Demand for Unrestricted Generosity

The last saying, “give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you”, comprises two distinct but connected imperatives: give to all who ask for alms, and lend to anyone asking for a loan. Since the second imperative is clearly about lending and borrowing (δανίζω) money, we assume that the first also concerns money. Someone is asking the actor for a gift or loan of money (although gift and loan could concern other things). Almsgiving (ἐλεημοσύνη, cf. Matt 6:2–4), if that is what is being hinted at, points to a general kind of reciprocation in which giver and receiver are foreign to one another, in the sense that they do not form part of a stable friendly relationship involving mutual exchange of gifts and services. There is neither past nor future history of exchange between the donor and the recipient. Almsgiving is giving for free (cf. δωρεά, free gift, δωρεάν, gratis, freely, δωρέομαι, to give 35 Betz, Sermon, 290.

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freely). Bilateral giving is not repayment for a preceding gift or service from the recipient, nor is the gift given with expectation of a succeeding repayment by the recipient.36 Nevertheless, some idea of repayment may still be involved. It could be the idea of a future divine repayment “at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:14; cf. Matt 6:4), or of a divinely ordained distribution of righteousness, as when a gift/ service is thought to be repaid from an unexpected quarter. One might be motivated to give in blind faith in the belief that helping a fellow person in need will somehow secure help for oneself if needed in the future. The recipient in question could be a family member, a villager, a stranger to the village, that is, a person of the same cultural group but not resident (a Jew), or a foreigner, a person of another cultural group (a non-Jew). The answer to the question “Who is my neighbor?” depends upon the definition (particularly narrow or universally broad) of the district of jurisdiction for which some superhuman power is thought to stand surety for higher justice. Cf. Prov 19:17 (LXX), “Whoever is kind (ἐλεέω) to the poor lends (δανείζω) to the LORD, and will be repaid (ἀνταποδίδωμι) in full (κατὰ τὸ δόμα, i. e. equally to his own gift)”. We have “blind faith” because the situation is incalculable. The donor will never know the “sociomagical” trajectory of the gift or service. In this perspective the recipient need not be a stranger or foreigner (whether Jewish or non-Jewish) to the donor. The actor may give money to a villager he is familiar with, a person he knows will be unable to repay. He owes and is willing to give because of group solidarity: those who have should support those who have not. One day he might himself be the beneficiary of this rule. Matt 5:38–42 deals with various different examples of reciprocation. Taken literally, the Lex talionis in v38 requests negative reciprocity, repaying an act of taking/injury with an act of taking/injury. In v39a we may have the idea that a taking/injury should be met with passivity (non-taking/non-injuring), but this clearly opposes v39b–41, which advocates reciprocating taking/injury with giving/rendering a service. Finally, v42 demands that one give/serve, and I suggest the following explication: “Give to everyone who begs from you [even if your other never will be able to repay you (ἀνταποδίδωμι; give back, return, repay; cf. Luke 14:14), i. e. to reciprocate you] and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you [even if you expect your partner unable to repay you (ἀνταποδίδωμι or ἀποδίδωμι; cf. Matt 18:25)]”. In all its disarray, the unity of Matt 5:38– 32 seems based on the fact that its various forms of reciprocation all refer to the same basic structural semantics of negative and positive reciprocity. 36 Luke 12:33, “Sell your possessions, and give alms”, may represent the radical ethics of the early Jesus movement (cf. Matt 6:19–21, further 6:24–34) as well as the early Christ movement (cf. Acts 2:42–47 and 4:32–35).

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Concluding Observations and Remarks

In his book The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language, Mark Turner suggests that “narrative imagining – story – is the fundamental instrument of thought”, and that “the mind is essentially literary”.37 We use narrative imagination to predict, to plan, and to explain; thus our narrative mind points to a general cognitive competence. From the point of view of narrative exegesis (the analytical study of Biblical texts based on semiotic narrative theory), Turner’s cognitive–literary approach is useful because it so clearly combines language and mind. Narrativity is a linguistic and literary quality of certain texts or discourses as claimed by narrative semiotics; but narrative language, as an expressive instrument of thought, reveals important aspects of how we as cognitive subjects perceive meaning and make sense.38 In this final section, I shall therefore combine Turner’s insight with the use of narrative exegesis to understand the narrative character of the ethical instructions in Matt 5:38–42. Turner’s parable theory is of primary importance for narrative exegesis. By parable, he means the combination of story and projection: “The essence of parable is its intricate combining of two of our basic forms of knowledge—story and projection”, he says, and this combination “produces one of our keenest mental processes for constructing meaning”.39 Projection refers to the cognitive phenomenon in which we project one story onto another. What exegetes usually understand by “parable” (as oral or written discourse) is however only one kind of cultural product of our mental parabolic activity. Turner himself uses “parable” with two meanings. The word refers to the result of a mental process, as well as to the mental process itself as a special kind of cognitive activity, that is, at times to a parable (a parable story), at times to a parabolic or narrative way of thinking. Turner’s parable theory concerns not only how we construct stories, but also how we understand them. The interpretative aspect he explains by his observation that proverbs frequently “present a condensed, implicit story to be interpreted through projection”.40 This insight may be important for our notion of narrative interpretation in general; it seems however to be of particular importance for the analysis of Matt 5:38–42, because the sentences of this passage present just such a condensed story. A proverb such as “When the cat’s away, the mice will play” does not tell us anything about the situation or the target story to which it refers. Using our 37 38 39 40

Turner, Mind, 4–5. Cf. Herman, Narrative Theory. Turner, Mind, 5. Turner, Mind, 5–6.

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narrative competence, however, we project the overt source story (the proverb) onto a covert target story (the situation in question in the context of use, for example turbulence in the classroom when the teacher is away doing an errand). If we encounter this proverb outside any context, however (for example in a book of proverbs, or in a fortune cookie), we can, says Turner, “project it onto an abstract story that might cover a great range of specific target stories and muse over the possible targets to which it might apply” (6; for example, the relation between the teacher and his pupils, between parents and their children, between the cuckold and his wife etc.). The source story thus seems to be “pregnant with general meaning”,41 to have an abstract and general level of signification, and Turner suggests the “abstract story” implies “the existence of a common third” (called generic space) which “has an actual conceptual existence of its own”.42 A generic reading will interpret the proverb “When the cat’s away, the mice will play” as a story of mice who behave well when the cat is at home, but wildly when it is out. The generic information of this story is an abstract story: “One agent or group of agents constrains another agent or group of agents, and when the governing agent is inattentive, the otherwise constrained agent or agents behave more freely”.43 Turner’s focus on the proverb and the generic story is evidently of great value for narrative exegesis. Facing a series of pronouncements with the status of maxims, we can methodologically focus on two kinds of questions. We can analyze the maxim as source story and ask for the inherent abstract story, and/or we can ask for the implicit target story in a given communicative situation, a specific verbal context. I shall focus on Matt 5:39b–41, whose three examples of proactive resistance, as mentioned by Charles Talbert, “are very specific (how often is one backhanded on the right cheek, sued for one’s underwear, or forced by a soldier to carry his gear?)”. They are, furthermore, extreme, and Talbert regards them as part of an open-ended series establishing “a pattern that can be extended to other instances. The meaning of the text, therefore, cannot be restricted to what it says literally. In each of the. . . cases, the action commanded runs counter to our natural tendency, reversing it”. Talbert concludes: “this type of language functions to form moral character. . . a person who does not retaliate”.44 Thus Talbert regards the sayings as a series of source stories referring to the same generic story: when someone by injuring you or taking your property from you treats you as enemy, do not retaliate, i. e. do not repay evil for evil. This is the kind of interpretation 41 42 43 44

Turner, Mind, 7. Turner, Mind, 86ff. Turner, Mind, 87. Talbert, Reading, 90–91.

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that tends to identify an abstract and general ethical rule for passive behavior (non-reciprocation), perhaps not that different from a compiler’s similar result in 5:39a. Another question concerns the target story. On one level of signification, the three examples may refer to three different specific contexts. On another level, they may refer to a more general common context. The projected target stories may come within the sphere of morality between neighbors in the village or of politics between classes (or superior and inferior in any relation) in a stratified society.45 In our interpretative labors, we may muse over the possible targets to which the maxims might apply, but it makes a difference what we find the most convincing. Matt 5:42 could point to a face-to-face ethos of the village or of the community, and could possibly function as a sign for understanding the entire passage, perhaps already by Matthew himself as well as later interpreters. Matt 5:38–39a could even support the idea that it is all about submissive non-retaliation. The specificity of the three core examples, however, points according to Walter Wink in another direction, and our narrative analysis generally confirms Wink’s understanding. One could object to the use of the proverb as an analogy to the maxim, since they differ on certain points. While the former points to an expected rule or regularity in social behavior (if A happens, then B will happen), the latter states an unexpected rule or regularity for social behavior (if A happens, then B’ ought to happen). The first is descriptive and predictable; the second is normative and unpredictable. These differences, however, do not contest the validity of the parable theory for analyzing the maxims. Wink mentions that the maxims are, of course, “not rules to be followed literally but examples to spark an infinite variety of creative responses in new and changed circumstances”.46 Thus he reckons with some generic story of confrontational strategies encouraging “subversive assertiveness among the poor”. There is, however, more to it, than this, and the additional factor has to do with a further difference between proverb and maxim. A proverb does not tell us about the situation or target story to which it refers. The specificity of the three core maxims, on the other hand, indicates the situation or target story to which they refer. Jesus’ words seem to address a powerless audience whose members regularly experienced, whether directly or at one remove, violence and exploitation exercised by the forces of authority. The three core maxims are only significant

45 Cf. the debate between Richard A. Horsley and Walter Wink: see Horsley, Response, 126–132 and Wink, Counterresponse, 133–136. 46 Wink, Passivity, 115.

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examples of an infinite variety of exploitative actions experienced by the powerless. The examples, says Wink, “break the cycle of humiliation with humor and even ridicule, exposing the injustice of the system. They recover for the poor a modicum of initiative that can force the oppressor to see them in a new light”.47 This seems a fair interpretation of the rationale behind this social counterstrategy. It is still a question, however, how seriously one should take the examples as a call for individual social action. Most people, in the time of Jesus as well as in Matthew’s time, might simply have enjoyed the implicitly humorous narratives and felt encouraged by the imaginative victory over the oppressors, without ever transitioning to action. Much of the instruction of the Sermon on the Mount may have had this kind of edifying function in respect to self-esteem and the hope of a better life. It is joyful to experience oneself prevailing, even if only in the mind.48 Making the transition to action demands the courage to break with ordinary social rules in order to pursue the utopian ideals, a courage which is allotted only to the very few.49 Social life in the world of history is one thing; social life in the world of story is quite different. I have not tried to reconstruct the social reality of a group of people in the time of Jesus or Matthew. My focus has been on narrative action, on how the ethical instructions in Matt 5:38–42 are based on our narrative mind’s conception of the meaningful act as social exchange. I have a special interest in the three core examples, which demonstrate how we may find a generic story in different specific target stories. The generic story I focus on, however, is of a very abstract nature. It refers to a generic schema for exchange, sometimes as giving/ serving or positive reciprocity, sometimes as taking/injuring or negative reciprocity. This generic schema helps us to see that the social strategy proposed by Jesus in seemingly paradoxical or even absurd maxims in fact has its own reasonableness, even shrewdness, when he blends the two forms of otherwise wellknown conventional reciprocity. Jesus advocates a certain social strategy for those who find themselves facing superior opponents. This consists neither in passive submission nor in exchange of takings and injuries, but in proactive 47 Wink, Passivity, 115. 48 The humorous feature gives the three core maxims a joke-like quality. The encouraging response to the superior partner’s offense is unexpected and functions for the intended audience as a punch line, evoking laughter. In the communicative situation where the teller and listeners share a common identity and set of values, no one will object to the plausibility of the involved story. More importantly, perhaps, no one who understands the communicative situation would begin to wonder what happened hereafter. The punch line always has the final word (as Jesus has it in the controversy stories). 49 That is why we admire the non-violent but assertive idealized subject, who willingly risks his life and often ends up as holy martyr; cf. for example the Gospel of Mark’s presentation of Jesus compared with that of the cowardly behavior of his disciples.

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assertiveness in the form of blended reciprocation. This unconventional behavior is founded on solid anthropological experience. Taking and injuring are bad and are a force for death, since they hamper or destroy life and life possibilities, while giving and serving are good and are a force for life, because they promote and protect life and life possibilities.

Bibliography Betz, H.D., The Sermon on the Mount. A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49) (Hermeneia), Fortress Press 1995. Davidsen, O., Geben und Nehmen: Narrativer Austausch im Neuen Testament, in: Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie, Vol. 2012 Nr. 27, Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft 2013, 121–150. Greimas, A.J., Sémantique structurale: Recherce de méthode, Librairie Larousse 1966. Herman, D. (ed.), Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, CSLI Publications 2003. Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia, edited and translated by G.W. Most, Harvard University Press 2006. Hogan, P.C., The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion, Cambridge University Press 2003. Horsley, R.A., Response to Walter Wink, ‘Neither Passivity nor Violence: Jesus’ Third Way’, in: W.M. Swartley (ed.), The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament, Westminster/John Knox Press 1992, 126–132. Kanter, R.M., Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective, Harvard University Press 1972. Malina, B.J., The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, Third Edition, Revised and Expanded, Westminster John Knox Press 2001. Mödritzer, H., Stigma und Charisma im Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt: Zur Soziologie des Urchristentums, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1994. Talbert, C.H., Reading the Sermon on the Mount: Character Formation and Decision Making in Matthew 5–7, Baker Academic 2004. Theißen, G., Die Religion der ersten Christen. Eine Theorie des Urchristentums, 2. durchgesehene Auflage, Chr. Kaiser 2001. –, Erleben und Verhalten der ersten Christen, Chr. Kaiser 2007. Turner, M., The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language, Oxford University Press 1996. Wink, W., Neither Passivity nor Violence: Jesus’ Third Way (Matt. 5:38–42 par.), in: W.M. Swartley (ed.), The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament, Westminster/John Knox Press 1992, 102–125. –, Counterresponse to Richard Horsley, in: W.M. Swartley (ed.), The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament, Westminster/John Knox Press 1992, 133–136.

Eve-Marie Becker

The Anxiety (Sorge) of the Human Self: Paul’s Notion of μέριμνα

1.

Paul’s Ultima Verba on Anxiety in Philippians

In ancient and modern discourse, the phenomenon of “anxiety” and “care” is much debated.1 In the Greek-speaking world, μέριμνα primarily reflects human ‘anxiety’ and ‘worry’, and, as such, the Septuagint writings as well as early Christian literature tend to adopt a relatively uninformed or critical view of human anxiety and care: Matt 6:25–34, the passage “often entitled ‘On Anxiety’”,2 contains the strong Jesuanic imperative “do not be anxious” (μὴ μεριμνᾶτε: Matt 6:25) 3. In combination with Jesus’ admonition of Martha – “… you are anxious and troubled about many things (μεριμνᾷς καὶ θορυβάζῃ περὶ πολλά)” (Luke 10:41; cf. also: Luke 21:34) 4 –, μέριμνα is generally seen as an expression by which (the Matthean and Lukan) Jesus devalues and criticizes the attitude of “anxiety”, and especially in Pauline studies exegetes have devoted little scholarly attention to investigating this phenomenon.5 The Latin expression cura, in contrast, is considerably more ambivalent in its meaning. It can mean anxiety and worry as much as ‘care’, and it is therefore largely equivalent to the German expression “Sorge”, which is a central term in

1 Cf. in general also: Dodds, Pagan; Betz, Sermon, 461–465. – For ”anxiety” as rhetorical strategy in Augustine, cf. Fuhrer, Zeitalter. 2 Betz, Sermon, 460. 3 Μεριμν-: Exod 5:9; Esth 1:1; Ps 54:23; Ps 37:19LXX; Prov 17:12; Sir 30:24; 31:1f.; 42:9; Dan 11:26. The Hebrew lexicon is: ‫יהב‬, ‫דאג‬, ‫כעס‬, ‫ֶעֶצב‬, ‫רגז‬, ‫שׁצה‬, cf.: T. Muraoka, Index, 78. – On only related Greek expressions for taking care or being anxious: Ps 12:3LXX; 39:18LXX; 126:2LXX; Sir 30:26; 34:1. Cf. also: Or Sib 2:316; 2:326; 3:89; 5:440. References among the writings of the Apostolic Fathers are limited: Herm 19:3 (Vis III:11); 23:4 (Vis IV:2); 25:3 – cf. Kraft, Clavis, 287. Cf. only few instances in Patristic literature: Lampe, 843. – Translations of NT texts in general follow NRSV. 4 Instead – Jesus continues – “one thing is needful, Mary has chosen the good portion…” (v. 42). 5 Cf. Zeller, Brief (on 1 Cor 7); Bultmann, Theologie, 242 (on 1 Cor 7); Thrall, Epistle (on 2 Cor). See also Betz, Sermon, 460–465.

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Heidegger’s existential philosophy. From Hyginus’ myth (fabulae 220) 6 about the origin and nature of human anxiety (cura) to Heidegger’s philosophy,7 it is thus possible to see how anxiety and care are two sides of the same coin; since they refer to human temporality, they are simply basic human reactions to the experience of time and mortality, in which the attitudes of fear and concern cooperate. In this article, I will show how such a broadening of the semantic field of μέριμνα and cura inspires our reading of Paul and provides fundamental insights into Paul’s understanding of selfhood. Near the end of his letter to the Philippians (4:6), Paul analyzes human existence by admonishing his readers: “Have no anxiety about anything…” (μηδὲν μεριμνᾶτε…). At first, it may appear as though Paul simply rejects various kinds of daily-life “anxiety” that could occupy or even worry the Philippian community; we might imagine that Paul is recalling Jesuanic language here (Luke 10:41 – s. above). And indeed, most New Testament scholars take this path. Some argue that, in his admonition in Phil 4, Paul practices “pastoral care”.8 Other scholars see a direct connection to Jesus traditions here9 – depending on the

6 “When Cura {‘Worry’} was crossing a certain river, she saw muddy clay, picked it up, pondered for a moment, and then molded a human. While she was thinking about just what she had created, Jupiter arrived on the scene. Cura asked him to give breath to the human, and Jupiter readily agreed to do it. But then, when Cura was about to name this creature after herself, Jupiter stopped her and said that it should be named after him. Now, while Cura and Jupiter were debating over the name, Earth rose up as well and said that it should be named after her, seeing how she was the one who had furnished her own body. They took up Saturn as the judge of their case, and it appears that he judged fairly in their case: ‘Jupiter, because you gave it breath, you shall reclaim the breath after death; Earth, because you offered up your body, you shall reclaim the body. Because Cura first molded it, she shall possess it so long as it lives. But because there is some disagreement about the name, it shall be called ‘human’ {homo} because it was clearly created from earth {humus}”, translation according to Scott Smith/Trzaskoma, Fabulae, 166f. To Hyginus’ collection of fabulae, published by Hyginus Mythographus (2nd century CE): Schmidt, Hyginus. – The myth is also quoted in Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 197f. 7 Cf. Heidegger’s description of “Selbstauslegung des Daseins als ‘Sorge’” (Sein, 197f.). In § 41 of “Being and Time” (1927), Heidegger explains how being in the world in its existential dimension is characterized by “fear”, “anxiety” and “care”: “… Weil das In-der-Welt-sein wesenhaft Sorge ist, deshalb konnte… das Sein bei dem Zuhandenen als Besorgen, das Sein mit dem innerweltlich begegnenden Mitdasein Anderer als Fürsorge gefaßt werden“ (193). – S. also Heidegger’s earlier reflections on “Bekümmerung” in GA 60: “Einleitung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, § 10: Die Bekümmerung des faktischen Daseins”, 52–54. In the frame of his lecture on „Einleitung in die Phänomenologie der Religion” (1920/21), Heidegger also presents his reading of Pauline letters, in particular: Gal, 1 Thess, 2 Thess (§§ 14–16; 23–29). Foucault’s idea of the Socratic concept of ἐπιμέλεια (e. g. M. Foucault, Ethik) can be viewed less as existentialism and more as a polemic against Heidegger’s existentialism. – I would like to thank my colleague Dr. theol. Lars Albinus (Aarhus) for enriching my paper with further remarks and ideas, especially about Foucault and Heidegger. 8 Müller, Brief, 198. 9 Cf. Reumann, Philippians, 635f.; Schrage, Brief, 177f.

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overall interpretation of Philippians.10 In fact, in Matt 6 (= Q; Luke 12:22ff.), Jesus teaches more comprehensively about “anxiety” and “care”; he says: “… do not be anxious about your life… (v. 25: μὴ μεριμνᾶτε τῇ ψυχῇ ὑμῶν)…; do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself… (v. 34: μὴ οὖν μεριμνήσητε ει᾿ς τὴν αὔριον, ἡ γὰρ αὔριον μεριμνήσει ἑαυτῆς)… But seek first his (= God’s) kingdom… (v. 33)”. In the Sermon on the Mount (Q-Text: 12:22, 25f., 29; cf. also: 12:11), Jesus’ final commandment is: “… seek first (ζητεῖτε) his kingdom and his righteousness…” (v. 33). So, in Phil 4, does Paul adhere to Jesus tradition – a tradition that even echoes the Stoic critique of “anxiety”? Indeed, Epictetus also devalues “anxiety”. For him, “anxiety” is ἀγωνία (Diss 2:13); it arises when a man looks for something that is outside of his control: “When I see a man in anxiety” – Epictetus states –, “I say to myself, What can it be that this fellow wants? For if he did not want something that was outside of his control, how could he still remain in anxiety?” (2:13:1).11 Paul surpasses such a general critique of “anxiety” reminiscent of sapiential teaching, which tends to focus on stereotyped concerns and principles, and instead he proposes an individual approach to “anxiety” and “care” that reveals the existential dimensions of μέριμνα. This becomes clear if we study Philippians in its entirety. First, in chapter 2, Paul presents his co-worker Timothy as the perfect example of anxiety to the Philippians: “I have no one like him” – Paul says –, “who will be genuinely anxious for your welfare” (v. 20: τὰ περὶ ὑμῶν μεριμνήσει); they all “look after their own interests (τὰ ἑαυτῶν ζητοῦσιν), not those of Jesus Christ” (v. 21). In the Greek tradition, μέριμνα is an expression for the type of anxiety that tends to completely occupy a person.12 Timothy is fully occupied with “anxiety” for the Philippians. Paul does not criticize μεριμνάω; instead, he proposes it as a crucial attitude in the ministry of Christ. Second, Paul’s reflection on “anxiety” in Phil 4 exceeds any sapiential teaching about overcoming the concerns of daily life, because Paul interprets anxiety as biographical and existential experience. In this last letter(s), Paul is a prisoner in Caesarea or Rome; he is facing his impending trial and expecting his imminent death (Phil 1). The admonition not to be anxious should be viewed in the context of various personal remarks about Paul’s internal state of mind as well as his eschatological hopes: Paul wishes to participate in Christ’s resurrection or to be transformed into the “Gestalt” (μορφή) of Christ. Ernst Lohmeyer has even suggested a martyrological reading of Phil 4 and, as such, reads v. 6 in relation to Matt 10:19.13 Irrespective of whether we 10 Lohmeyer’s martyrology interpretation in Lohmeyer, Brief, 169, has Matt 10:19 in the background here. 11 Translation according to: Oldfather, Epictetus, 291. For Epictetus and ἐπιμέλεια, s. above. 12 Cf. Moulton/Milligan, Vocabulary, 397f. 13 Cf. Lohmeyer, Brief, 169f.

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agree with Lohmeyer’s reading, Phil 4:6 remains an admonition in light of existential danger. Third, similar to Heidegger’s analysis, Paul also approaches human “anxiety” as an existential phenomenon, since he relates it to temporality (‘Zeitlichkeit’). When Paul admonishes his readers not to be anxious in Phil 4, he perceives temporality by expressing a specific eschatological expectation included in an announcement of time: χαίρετε ἐν κυρίῳ πάντοτε… ὁ κύριος ἐγγύς – “Rejoice in the Lord always… The Lord is at hand” (Phil 4:4). In Phil, Paul does not ignore human “anxiety” as such; in fact, he even recommends it. In revealing his own experience as a prisoner and pointing to Timothy’s example of an anxious ministry, he turns “anxiety” into an existential phenomenon of life experience and communal care. Only eschatological, Christ-centered hope can finally deactivate existential anxiety. In ancient discourse, it is this idea of biographical experience as much as eschatological hope that marks the difference between the sapiential, philosophical or moral and the Pauline approach to “anxiety”.14

2.

1 Cor 12 and 2 Cor 11: Anxiety in Community Politics and Ethics

Earlier in Paul’s letter-writing, “anxiety” and “care” appear as anthropological tools to guide ethics and community life. And already in these letters, Paul elaborates on his personal experiences and perception of “anxiety”.

2.1

Paul’s Anxiety as Apostle: 2 Cor 11:28

In 2 Cor 11, Paul confesses that his apostolic duties continuously worry him: “And, apart from other things” – he says –, “there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety (μέριμνα) for all the churches” (v. 28). Apostolic ministry is busy and exhausting, and it involves dealing with conflicts and missionary competition. In 2 Cor 10–13, the conflict with the Corinthian community is escalating. In Paul’s opinion, the apostolic ministry is full of personal “anxiety”. Nevertheless, commentators on 2 Cor – such as Margaret E. Thrall – tend to interpret the Pauline reference to “anxiety” as either insignificant or a negative expression.15 We might follow Thrall in valuing “anxiety” as something negative here – Paul is seemingly troubled about the Corinthians. However, the letter of Aristeas offers a different 14 “This eschatological dimension… has no real parallel in the thinking of Greco-Roman philosophers” either (Brenk, Most Beautiful, 108 in regard to 1 Cor 7). 15 “… μέριμνα is somewhat negative in its connotations… Since Paul is still cataloguing his apostolic trials, it is this sense that is appropriate, rather than a more general notion of pastoral care”, Thrall, Epistle, 749.

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interpretation (271). In this letter, it is stated: “… to the question…, ‘what preserves a kingdom?’ the answer is given, μέριμνα καὶ φρόντις…, ‘care and watchfulness to see that no injury is inflicted by those who are set in positions of authority over the people’”.16 A more positive connotation of Paul’s view on μέριμνα is plausible; namely, that Paul views μέριμνα as a part of his job description in a leading position. Interpreters like Thrall thus miss some crucial points. By expressing his personal “anxiety”, Paul interprets his apostleship in individual terms. He does so quite comprehensively – and here, Thrall is right in her overall analysis of 2 Cor 11. “Furthermore”, she concludes, “the following verse suggests anxiety. From Paul’s point of view, he has had, and at this point has still, ample cause for anxiety about the Corinthian congregation”.17 Unlike E. R. Dodds (s. above) or Gerd Theißen,18 I am less interested in “anxiety” as a religious tremendum or a psychological phenomenon. Instead, I suggest that, in order to describe his current situation as an apostle, Paul makes use of an anthropological pattern which he further develops toward selfhood and individuality. And this is true even though Paul might use his expression of “anxiety” as a rhetorical strategy: He certainly intends to legitimize his personal engagement in Corinthian affairs (cf. 2 Cor 10–13). Paul explores “anxiety” as a pattern of selfhood primarily as a personal rhetorical strategy to authorize his public ministry.

2.2

Anxiety in Community Life: 1 Cor 12:24f.

Although Paul applies the phenomenon of human “anxiety” and “care” to community life, he is particularly interested in the role of the individual community member. In 1 Cor 12, Paul describes the body of the ecclesia as being guided by “anxiety” and “care”. He states, “But God has so composed the body…, that there may be no discord of the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another (ὑπὲρ ἀλλήλων μεριμνῶσιν)” (v. 24f.). Paul writes about the concrete need to “take care” of one another because the Corinthians are “individual members” of the body of Christ (v. 27). In light of the desire for higher, spiritual and eschatological gifts (χαρίσματα, v. 31), being engaged in communal “care” appears as an individual activity of “anxiety”.19 16 17 18 19

Moulton/Milligan, Vocabulary, 397. Thrall, Epistle, 749. Cf., e. g. Theißen, Erleben, 164ff. The communal engagement in welfare and care is also significant for Paul’s status as apostle. The whole project of collecting money for the Jerusalem community (e. g. 2 Cor 8–9) can be seen as a concrete action of welfare and represents the most prestigious and determining project of Paul’s individual legitimacy as apostle (Gal 2:10). Biographically, Paul must have

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In this approach to “anxiety” and “care”, Paul even sees himself as a paradigm: “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do…” (Phil 4:9). Paul is an example of personal anxiety. But how does Paul deal with “anxiety” and “care” when it concerns the issues of daily life – especially those issues that do not concern him? Can Paul also act as a personal example in the field of anxiety and family life when he himself refrains from living in wedlock (1 Cor 9)? Does he adhere to ancient ascetic verdicts – expressed by Menander and others – according to which “having a wife and being the father of children… brings many anxious moments in life”? 20 To answer this question, I will examine 1 Cor 7, where Paul conceptualizes another type of individual “anxiety” and “care”. It is in the discourse about sexual ethics that μεριμνάω occupies its most prominent place – even as wordplay (v. 34a: μερίζομαι).21

3.

1 Cor 7:32ff.: Anxiety and Individual Decision-Making

In 1 Cor 7:32ff., Paul remarks: ‘Take your existential μέριμνα as a tool for deciding about your sexual behavior and your family life’. Here, Paul makes human “anxiety” into a criterion of individual ethics. In doing so, he contributes to a broader ancient discourse about “selfhood”. In her analysis of early Imperial Roman literature, Shadi Bartsch argues that the sense of the human Self is especially developed in its encounter with sexuality and ethics.22 In Paul’s view, of course, the “action space” for developing selfhood via sexuality and ethics is primarily not Roman society but the sphere of ecclesia. Individual ethics is thus framed by communal identity. Before I examine how Paul conceptualizes been extremely “anxious” to succeed in making the collection mission a communal endeavor of individual activity. The duty of communal care and welfare based on individual efforts is also relevant to Paul in a material sense: Paul as an individual person who in general intends to be αὐτάρκης (Phil 4:11) might well be in need of care and welfare. In Phil 4:10, he expresses his thankfulness for the care the Philippians previsouly showed him: “I greatly rejoiced in the Lord that you have now at least revived your concern (φρονεῖν) for me…” (v. 10; Reumann, Philippians, 646): Here we meet the Greek verbum φρονέω, which “echoes” throughout his letter-writing (ibid., 648); in Phil 4:10, it approaches the meaning of φροντίζω – “taking care” (curare) (cf. Bertram, Art. Φρήν κτλ., 229). Cf. on φρον-: Phil 1:7; 2:5; 3:15, 19; 4:10; 2:3: ταπεινοφροσύνη. The semantic field of “anxiety” and “care” is thus relatively comprehensive: It ranges from μεριμνάω to φρονέω. Heidegger is correct to imply that human “Sorge” or cura always carries the double meaning of being worried or anxious about time and temporality and practicing care. In Paul, both terms also overlap constantly; μεριμνάω and φρονέω are used equally in an ethical context when Paul discusses his project of conceptualizing communal behavior. Hereby, μεριμνάω and φρονέω appear as elementary tools of human “anxiety” and “care” that imply and demand individual engagement. 20 Cf. Wimbush, Behavior, 171. 21 Cf. Deming, Paul, 200. 22 Cf. Bartsch, Mirror.

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“anxiety” as a tool of individual sexual ethics, I will first outline Paul’s general concept of sexual ethics in its communal setting.

3.1

Paul and Sexual Ethics: 1 Thess 4 and Beyond

From his earliest letter-writing, Paul deals with sexual ethics. Like other topics of ethical discourse, questions about sexual ethics primarily result from discussions within the community, but they also emerge from communication with those “outside” (ἔξω) the community. Paul expresses his goals of general ethical teaching most clearly in 1 Thess 4, by stating: “we exhort you… to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we charged you; so that you may command the respect of outsiders, and be dependent on nobody” (v. 10–12pass.). Like various other fields of ethical teaching – such as law, the economy, food and dress codes – in sexual ethics, the formal tools of Pauline rhetoric are also diverse23. Hermut Löhr writes, “… Paul’s ethics seems to be on the border between ‘Gebotsethik’ (ethics based on commandments) and ‘Einsichtsethik’ (ethics based on insight or understanding)”;24 the variety of ethical arguments indeed corresponds to the diversity of topics discussed; Paul frequently exposes something like “dispositional ethics”. In all ethical discourse, Paul is ultimately concerned with the “sanctification” or “holiness” (ἁγιασμός) of the community as a communal entity. This concern is socio-politically significant: Paul intends to strengthen the social attractiveness of Christ-believing communities25 and to organize communal life around a perfect “political environment”, as it is discussed in political theory in and beyond Aristotle (pol 9:1280b). By caring for the community’s sanctification, issues of sexual behavior seem to be most popular and most urgent – for the group and the individual (s. above). Paul’s ethical admonitions are sometimes very concrete. This is most evident within the so-called catalogues of virtues and vices, for instance in 1 Cor 6:9: “… neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts… will inherit the kingdom of God”. Here, by addressing groups of people, Paul almost exclusively incriminates what he believes consitutues sexual immorality: πόρνοι, 23 “Repetition and extension”, “Generalizations: Agents, Objects and Actions, Norms and Virtues”, “Personification”, “Authority and Example”, “Climax and Progress”, Löhr, Exposition, 200–210. 24 Löhr, Exposition, 211. 25 Hartmut Leppin identifies that, as opposed to the Roman widows, Christian widows, for instance, were not forced to re-marry. The law of marriage was much more liberal among Christian women than among Romans: “Das Christentum wertete die Jungfrauenschaft oder das Witwentum höher als die Ehe, was manchen Frauen neue Freiräume erschloss”, FAZ nr. 298, 23. 12. 2014, 40 (Rhein-Main Zeitung).

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ἀρσενοκοῖται.26 However, as early as 1 Thess 4, Paul proclaims: “… this is the will of God, your sanctification (ἁγιασμός): that you abstain from unchastity (πορνεία); that each one of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust (ἐν πάθει ἐπιθυμίας) like heathen who do not know God… For God has not called us for uncleanless (ἀκαρθασία), but in holiness (ἁγιασμός)…” (1 Thess 4:3–8pass.). Paul’s approach to sexual ethics here is exhortative. It addresses the collective of community members. The discoursal frame is religious. Since Paul aims at the sanctification of communal sexual ethics, current exegesis tends to argue that, in his sexual ethics, Paul wishes to implement cultic purity. It seems as though Paul combines various traditions of ethical teaching, which are partly derived from Jewish instruction and partly analogous to Stoic ethics: When Paul wants the Thessalonians to “abstain” (ἀπέχεσθαι) in a general sense from “immorality” (πορνεία), he also uses a “technical term” – ἀπέχεσθαι – which “aimed at distinguishing Christian from pagan morality”.27 It is thus common for current scholarship on Pauline ethics to emphasize how, in his teaching about sexuality, Paul combines Hellenistic moral philosophy and Jewish parenesis.28 Will Deming has worked extensively on this topic, especially in regard to 1 Cor 7.29 Such a description of Pauline sexual ethics might be adequate. However, this description focuses on either the collective or communal or the religious aspects of Paul’s moral arguments. Thus, as much as scholars tend to neglect Paul’s concept of “anxiety” and “care”, they also tend to overlook the individual implications of Pauline ethics. In 1 Cor 7 in particular, Paul does not restrict himself to a collective moral exhortation; rather, he presupposes and enforces a human selfunderstanding according to which ethical discourse can be developed individually. He does so by taking himself as a paradigm and pointing to his own

26 For a discussion of whether ἀρσενοκοῖται in 1 Cor 6:9 means “homosexuality”, cf.: Petersen, “Homosexuals; Wright, Homosexuals; Boswell, Christianity, 344, considers “male prostitutes” here. 27 Malherbe, Letters, 225. Πορνεία itself is a broad polemical expression against various kinds of illegitimate sexuality, Horn, Heiden 297. As Abraham J. Malherbe identifies, Paul’s teaching against ἀκαρθασία κτλ. “was [also] part of basic Jewish instruction in moral behavior”, ibid., 226. At the same time, some elements of Paul’s language, for instance the expression “not in lustful passion”, “was derived from the Stoics. They defined pathos… as an irrational and unnatural movement of the soul, as an impulse in excess… It is a troubled movement of the soul, an intemperate longing, disobedient to reason, that may rightly be termed desire or lust” (229f.; with reference to, e. g., Cicero, Tusc Disp 3:7; 3:23f.; 4:11). However, there is a significant difference between the philosophical and the Pauline incrimination of pathos: “Instead of understanding lustful passion as opposition to reason, as the philosophers did, Paul asserts that its cause was ignorance of God. In this he was Jewish” (ibid., 230). 28 Cf. Betz, Art. Lasterkataloge/Tugendkataloge. 29 Cf. Deming, Paul.

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human “anxiety”: consequently, μέριμνα occurs as an anthropological viz. ethical criterion of individual decision-making.

3.2

Sexuality and Anxiety: Individual Decision-Making in 1 Cor 7

In 1 Cor 7:32, Paul states: “I want you to be free from anxieties (ἀμέριμνος)”. This seems to be close to Paul’s admonition in Phil 4 (s. above). Again, Paul is concerned with the analysis of human existence because, in 1 Cor 7, the context is also full of various temporal, that is eschatological, motifs. Paul says, “the appointed time has grown very short (ὁ καιρὸς συνεσταλμένος)”. However, in this frame of correctly perceiving time, Paul does not only admonish his community; rather, he makes his engagement with individual anxiety into the final criterion of sexual ethics. How does Paul achieve this? The general discourse about sexual ethics is raised by the Corinthians themselves, who write to Paul and ask him about various subjects (1 Cor 7:1; περὶ δέ) which all concern the legitimacy of sexual practice among Christ believers. One central question is whether those who are unmarried should marry. If the Corinthians simply take Paul as an individual paradigm here, they will remain single and live unmarried. And, indeed, Paul recommends his unmarried lifestyle to the Corinthians (v. 8). At the same time, Paul is well aware of the moral challenges of remaining unmarried. He argues that, if the Corinthians “cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion (πυροῦσθαι)” (v. 9). Paul is clearly aware of erotic affects,30 and he is realistic enough to consider these affects when responding to the Corinthian questions (cf. v. 36). Since he cannot refer to the Lord’s authority here (v. 10), everything Paul says about the status of being “unmarried” is based upon his individual view: “I have no command (ἐπιταγή) of the Lord, but I give my opinion (γνώνη) as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy” (v. 25). At this point, Paul actually reveals the principles of individual decision-making. In light of eschatological hope, Paul would like the Corinthians to adopt an adequate type of Christ-believing “anxiety”. For this reason, he does not intend to “lay any restraint (βρόχος) upon” the Corinthians (v. 35). He therefore identifies various options for handling “anxiety” by, of course, sympathizing with how “anxiety” appears among those who are unmarried.31 “The unmarried man is anxious (μεριμνᾷ) about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the 30 Current studies on ancient emotions have revealed the extent to which Paul was aware of emotionality, which he also made use of as a letter-writer. 31 For Paul’s promotion of celibacy, see Brenk, Most Beautiful, 108ff.

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married man is anxious (μεριμνᾷ) about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious (μεριμνᾷ) about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious (μεριμνᾷ) about worldly affairs, how to please her husband” (v. 32b–34). Paul concludes that getting married “is no sin” (v. 36), but refraining from marriage is a better choice (v. 38). Paul’s recommendation to remain single is remarkable, especially when seen in the light of Hellenistic-Roman politics and culture: Augustan marriage legislation was designed to increase the birthrate in the early Roman Empire,32 and Aristotelian politics is rooted in the theory that marriage is the prototype of communitarian life in the polis (pol 1:2).33 Most evidently, in 1 Cor 7, Paul elaborates on eschatological “anxiety” as an individual tool of decision-making.34 In Paul’s argument, μέριμνα is a basic pattern of anthropology and ethics. While Paul generally engages in communal affairs, such as the οι᾿κοδομή (“manner of building”) 35 of the Corinthian community, in 1 Cor 7, he is primarily concerned with each person’s existential “anxiety”; in this way, he reflects on the female and the male person equally. Reflections about “anxiety” and “care” help to develop the experience of the human Self. It is precisely in this that the Corinthians can ultimately follow Paul’s personal example. It is the individual paradigm of decision-making rather than Paul’s personal lifestyle or his case for celibacy (Dieter Zeller) 36 or practices of ”temporary abstinence”37 that the Corinthians should follow.

4.

Paul’s Explosure of the Human Self

In contrast to modern anthropology and ethics, Paul’s treatment of “anxiety” and “care” is not systematic. And although – as E. A. Judge claims – social “behaviour and training people in it was a major interest Paul shared with the popular 32 Lex Julia de Maritandis Ordinibus (18 BCE); Lex Papia Poppaea (9 CE) – cf. also: Suetonius, Aug 34. Cf. also: Kolb, Rom, 367 etc. 33 Cf. also Flashar, Aristoteles, 108ff. 34 Although the topic might specifically allow for reflections on “anxiety”, Dieter Zeller shows how, in antiquity in particular, the existential experience of “anxiety” applies to the field of marriage and family life, Zeller, Brief, 264: “… Dieses existentielle Besetztsein von den Ängsten um den Lebensunterhalt und die Angehörigen kennzeichnet aber nach volkstümlicher Anschauung gerade Ehe und Familie” – with reference to Sophocles, Antiphon, Menander, and Papyrus XIV:17 – Neuer Wettstein II:1:301ff. 35 Liddell/Scott/Jones, Lexicon, 1204. 36 Cf. Zeller, Brief, 278. 37 Gundry, Light, 37.

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philosophers”.38 Paul does not develop a consistent training program or a comprehensive anthropological or ethical concept. However, by reflecting on human “anxiety” and “care”, i. e. μέριμνα, Paul not only takes the conditio humana seriously, he also develops ethical discourse in the direction of individual decision-making. As a communal body, the ecclesia finally consists of the moral integrity of individuals. Since the community as such should imitate Paul, the apostle proposes existential “anxiety” and “care” as individual tools to face temporality and prove oneself in an ethical sense. By shaping the pattern of individual “anxiety” and “care”, Paul thus surpasses the purpose of communal ethics: he finally explores the human Self. In doing so, Paul even prepares for some modern thoughts of individual ethics. “Anxiety” and “care” appear to be individual habits of Pauline anthropology and ethics. In the end, they connect Paul with modern philosophy, or perhaps more accurately, they connect modern philosophy with Paul. For this reason, I will conclude by suggesting that we apply to Pauline exegesis what Harold Bloom once said about the field of literary theory: He favors “a Shakespearean reading of Freud… over a Freudian reading of Shakespeare”.39 The same could be said about Paul and modern philosophers. Since Paul anticipates central ideas of individual anthropology and ethics, I dare to say that I favor a Pauline reading of philosophy over a philosophical reading of Paul.

Bibliography Bartsch, S., The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire, University of Chicago Press 2006. Bertram, G., Art. Φρήν κτλ., in: ThWNT 9 (1973), 216–231. Betz, H.D., The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49) (Hermeneia), Fortress Press 1995. –, Art. Lasterkataloge/Tugendkataloge, in: RGG4 5 (2002), 89–91. Bloom, H., The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, Oxford University Press 21997. Boswell, J., Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay people in Western Europe from the beginning of the Christian era to the fourteenth century, University of Chicago Press 1980. Brenk, F.E., Most Beautiful and Divine: Graeco-Romans (Especially Plutarch), and Paul, on Love and Marriage, in: D.E. Aune/F.E. Brenk (eds.), Greco-Roman Culture and the New Testament: Studies Commemorating the Centennial of the Pontifical Biblical Institute (NovTSup 143), Brill 2012, 87–111. 38 Judge, Terms, 371. 39 Bloom, Anxiety, xxii. – I would like to thank Sarah Jennings (Aarhus) for copyediting this article.

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Bultmann, R., Art. Μεριμνάω κτλ., in: ThWNT 4 (1942), 593–598. –, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 9. Aufl., durchgesehen und ergänzt von O. Merk, Mohr Siebeck 1984. Deming, W., Paul on Marriage and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7, Eerdmans 22004. Dodds, E.R., Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine, Cambridge University Press 1965 (repr. 1991). Flashar, H., Aristoteles: Lehrer des Abendlandes, C. H. Beck 2013. Foucault, M., Die Ethik der Sorge um sich selbst als Praxis der Freiheit (transl. by H. Kocyba), in: Idem, Ästhetik der Existenz: Schriften zur Lebenskunst. Edited by D. Defert et al., Suhrkamp 2007, 253–279. Fuhrer, T., Das ‘Zeitalter der Angst’ als Konstrukt einer Rhetorik der Verunsicherung: Eine Analyse zweier Sequenzen aus Augustins Sermones ad populum, in: R. Früh et al. (eds.), Irritationen: Rhetorische und poetische Verfahren der Verunsicherung (Philologus Suppl. 2), Walter de Gruyter 2015, 61–85. Gundry, J.M., 1 Cor 7:5b in the Light of a Hellenistic-Jewish Tradition of Abstinence to “Devote Leisure”, in: Paulus – Werk und Wirkung. FS f. A. Lindemann zum 70. Geburtstag, hg. v. P.-G. Klumbies/D.S. du Toit, Mohr Siebeck 2013, 21–44. Heidegger, M., Einleitung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, in: Idem, Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens (GA 60), Erich Klostermann 1995, 3–156. –, Sein und Zeit, Max Niemeyer 171993. Horn, F.W., Nicht wie die Heiden! Sexualethische Tabuzonen und ihre Bewertungen durch Paulus, in: M. Konradt/E. Schläpfer (eds.), Anthropologie und Ethik im Frühjudentum und im Neuen Testament. Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen (WUNT 322), Mohr Siebeck 2014, 282–306. Johnson, L.T., Transformation of the Mind and Moral Discernment in Paul, in: Idem, Contested Issues in Christian Origins and the New Testament. Collected Essays (NovTSup 146), Brill 2013, 255–275. Judge, E.A., Ethical Terms in St Paul and the Inscriptions of Ephesus, in: Idem, The First Christians in the Roman World: Augustan and New Testament Essays (WUNT 229), edited by J.R. Harrison, Mohr Siebeck 2008, 368–377. Kolb, F., Rom. Die Geschichte der Stadt in der Antike, C. H. Beck 22002. Kraft, H., Clavis Patrum Apostolicorum, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1964 (reprint 1998). Lampe, G.W.H., A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Clarendon 1972 (repr.). Liddell, H.G./R. Scott/H. J. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, Clarendon 1996 (rev. suppl.). Löhr, H., The Exposition of Moral Rules and Principles in Pauline Letters: Preliminary Observations on Moral Language in Earliest Christianity, in: R. Zimmermann/J.G.v.d. Watt (eds.), Moral Language in the New Testament: The Interrelatedness of Language and Ethics in Early Christian Writings. Kontexte und Normen neutestamentlicher Ethik/Contexts and Norms of New Testament Ethics. Vol. 2 (WUNT 2.296), Mohr Siebeck 2010, 197–211. Lohmeyer, E., Der Brief an die Philipper (KEK 9), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1930/141974. Malherbe, A.J., The Letters to the Thessalonians. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AncB 32 B), Doubleday 2000.

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Moulton, J.H./G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament: Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources, Eerdmans 1976 (reprint). Müller, U.B., Der Brief des Paulus an die Philipper (ThHK 11/1), Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 22002. Muraoka, T., A Greek-Hebrew/Aramaic Two-Way Index to the Septuagint, Peeters 2010. Nicolet-Anderson, V., Constructing the Self: Thinking with Paul and Michel Foucault (WUNT 2.324), Mohr Siebeck 2012. Oldfather, W.A., Epictetus: Discourses Books 1–2 (LCL 131), Harvard University Press 1998 (repr.). Petersen, W.L., Can ΑΡΣΕΝΟΚΟΙΤΑΙ be translated by “Homosexuals” (I Cor 6.9; I Tim 1.10), VC 40 (1986) 187–191. Reumann, J., Philippians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AncB 33B), Yale University Press 2008. Schmidt, P.L., Art. Hyginus, in: DkP 2 (1979), 1263–1264. Schrage, W., Der erste Brief an die Korinther. 2. Teilband 1 Kor 6,12–11,16 (EKK 7/2), Neukirchener Verlag 1995. Scott Smith, R./S.M. Trzaskoma, Apollodorus’ Library and Hyginus’ Fabulae. Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, Hackett Publishing 2007. Theißen, G., Erleben und Verhalten der ersten Christen. Eine Psychologie des Urchristentums, Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2007. Thrall, M. E., The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Vol. 2 (ICC), T & T Clark International 2000/2004. Wimbush, V.L. (ed.), Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity. A Source Book, The Institute for Antiquity and Christianity 1990. Wright, D.F., Homosexuals or Prostitutes? The meaning of ΑΡΣΕΝΟΚΟΙΤΑΙ (1 Cor 6:9; 1 Tim 1:10), VC 38 (1984) 125–153. Zeller, D., Der erste Brief an die Korinther (KEK 5), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2010.

Jacob P.B. Mortensen

Anthropology or Ethnic Stereotyping in Paul?

1.

Introduction

In this article, I will question a traditional systematic-theological1 and exegetical2 take on Pauline anthropology. First, I will present an alternative theory to speaking of anthropology, and instead speak of ethnic stereotypes. Then, I will apply the theory of “stereotyping” according to cultural theorist Stuart Hall to Paul, in order to show that it is more likely that Paul reproduced and copied contemporary Jewish ethnic stereotypes of gentiles, rather than reflecting a philosophical, systematic, or universal anthropology.

2.

Ethnic Stereotypes

In “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’” (2003), cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1932–2014) describes the process of social or cultural stereotyping.3 That something is stereotyped means that it works through a set of representational practices. As the outcome of these practices, the stereotyped object or person becomes reduced to a few essentials, as if it was fixed in nature or ontologically by a few, simplified characteristics. Hall explains that the process of stereotyping (or “othering”) corresponds to the way a cartoonist portrays, illustrates, and caricatures a certain type with a few, simple, essentializing strokes of the pen. The portrayed type becomes reduced to the signifiers of typical differences – for example, impiety, sexual immorality, fraudulence, unrestrainedness, or the like. The stereotyped description then becomes a popular type that reduces the portrayed to a few simplified, reductive, and essentialized features easy to identify, copy, and pass on. 1 E. g. Pannenberg, Theologie; Moltmann, Mensch. 2 E. g. Dunn, Theology; van Kooten, Anthropology; Schnelle, Anthropologie. 3 The following presentation is based on Hall’s explanation in Hall, Spectacle, 223–283

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Hall claims that we always make sense of things in terms of wider categories – we understand the particular in terms of its type. We assign a person to the membership of a certain group according to class, gender, age, nationality, race, linguistic group, sexual preference, religion, political affiliation, and so on. A type is any simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognized characterization in which a few traits are foregrounded. At the same time, change or development is kept to a minimum. The type, however, is different from the stereotype. Stereotypes get hold of the few, simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognized characteristics of an object or a person, and then reduce everything about the object or person to those traits, exaggerate and simplify them without change or development. We know of such an example from Edward Said’s (1935–2003) analysis of how Europe constructed a stereotypical image of “the Orient”.4 Said explains that far from simply reflecting what the countries of the Near East were actually like, “Orientalism” was the discourse by which European culture was able to manage, and even produce, the Orient politically, morally, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period. Thus, stereotyping reduces, essentializes, naturalizes, and fixes differences; there is no “depth” to a stereotyped presentation, merely “surface”. Stereotyping deploys a strategy of splitting. Stereotyping divides what is normal and acceptable – from a specific (cultural, ethnic, religious, moral, medical, etc.) point of view – from the abnormal and unacceptable. Additionally, it excludes or expels everything that does not fit into the “normal”. Thus, stereotypes work closely with social types. But social types are the ones who live by the rules of the cultural codes, whereas stereotypes are excluded. Stereotypes become “the other” in the process of “othering”. What matters in the stereotyping process is that boundaries must be clearly delineated. Therefore, stereotypes are characteristically fixed, clear-cut, and unalterable. In this way, stereotyping works through closure and exclusion (or identity and othering), because it symbolically fixes boundaries and excludes everything that does not belong. Consequently, stereotyping is part of the maintenance of the social and symbolic orders: It sets up a symbolic frontier between the normal and the deviant, the normal and the pathological, the acceptable and the unacceptable, what belongs and what does not or is “other”, between insiders and outsiders, us and them. In this way, stereotyping facilitates the symbolic bonding together of those of us who are right into one imagined community, thereby exiling all those, the others and outsiders, who are different and wrong. This is, roughly, what Stuart Hall presents as the essentials of stereotyping.

4 Said, Orientalism.

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Stereotyping in Antiquity

Stereotyping is a modern theory developed by a contemporary cultural theorist, but very similar discourses were expressed in Antiquity. The content of these ancient, similar discourses corresponds closely to ways in which Bruce Malina has described the ancient Mediterranean culture.5 Malina explains that in the ancient Mediterranean culture, people thought more sociologically (communal) than psychologically.6 In general, they were more concerned with group stereotypes than individual features, because the ancient Mediterranean culture was a collectivist culture. Instead of thinking about a person as an individual, they thought about a person as “an undifferentiated ethnic ego mass”.7 According to Malina, people in the ancient Mediterranean culture neither thought nor acted introspectively, and they understood and assessed each other in terms of groupdetermined stereotypes.8 They classified each other according to family or kin group, race and place of origin, gender and class. This way of thinking may be described as stereotypic, because it was thought that if you knew these sorts of details about a person, you knew the person. If you knew their traits, you had all the information you needed in order to know a person’s character and the sort of behavior you could reasonably expect from him. These general descriptions – articulated in Malina’s contemporary perspective – find ancient textual support several places. For instance, there are several descriptions of a stereotyped slave personality, commonly held and espoused by the elite in Antiquity. These descriptions explain that slaves were, by definition, lazy, negligent, willful, cowardly, and criminal.9 There is a similar stereotyped slave persona found in caricatures of slaves in Greek comedy.10 In Aristotle’s Politics, we also find descriptions supporting the idea of a stereotyped ethnic identity: Let us now speak of what ought to be the citizens’ natural character. Now this one might almost discern by looking at the famous cities of Greece and by observing how the whole inhabited world is divided up among the nations. The nations inhabiting the cold places and those of Europe are full of spirit but somewhat deficient in intelligence and skill, so that they continue comparatively free, but lacking in political organization and capacity 5 Cf. Malina, World, 35–96; Pilch/Malina, Values. Cf. furthermore the work of Jerome Neyrey (Neyrey, World; Neyrey, Paul). 6 Cf. Malina, Insights, 58–80; Esler, Conflict, 54. 7 Malina, World, 41. 8 I am aware that Malina has received some criticism of his readings (cf. e. g. Lawrence, Ethnography, 22ff.; Meggitt, Review, 215–219). However, New Testament scholars generally agree concerning the overall outline of Malina’s work, even though details and specifics are still contested. 9 Cf. Valerius Maximus 6.8; Bradley, Slaves, 27–29.35 10 E. g. Menander Epitr. 202–11; 316–359. For the use of slavery as a metaphor in Paul’s mission and early Christianity cf. Martin, Slavery.

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to rule their neighbors. The peoples of Asia on the other hand are intelligent and skillful in temperament, but lack spirit, so that they are in continuous subjection and slavery. But the Greek race participates in both characters, just as it occupies the middle position geographically, for it is both spirited and intelligent; hence it continues to be free and to have very good political institutions, and to be capable of ruling all mankind if it attains constitutional unity. The same diversity also exists among the Greek races compared with one another: some have a one-sided nature, others are happily blended in regard to both these capacities.11

From other ancient authors we learn that Tiberians have “a passion for war”,12 Scythians “delight in murdering people and are little better than wild beasts”,13 “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons”,14 in “the seamanship of its people… the Phoenicians in general have been superior to all peoples of all times”,15 “this is a trait common to all the Arabian kings” that they do “not care much about public affairs and particularly military affairs”.16 Thus, the logic behind such perceptions was that if you knew a group, a people, or a race, you knew the individual as a representative of the group, because “you are the way you look”. The stereotypic way of thinking is very elaborate and abundantly evident in ancient physiognomic (and medical) literature. The physiognomic (and medical) literature worked with the premise that character was determined by form.17 Thus, you could tell a person’s character from the way he looked. Consequently, after having outlined the principles of physiognomics, the ancient author, Polemo (90–144 AD), claims, “as often as you judge any race or people of the world on the basis of these indices, you will judge them correctly”.18 The medical specialist, Galen (129–216 AD), makes some amazing deductions in the On Prognosis, where he diagnoses a woman – from the way she looks – as being in love with a dancer. He also diagnoses a slave – from the way he looks – as being worried about being found to have lost some of his master’s money.19 The same applies to Polemo’s spotting the women who are about to elope, and the man who is only pretending to have lost his goods in a shipwreck.20 These physiognomic deductions, which might seem far-fetched, judgmental, and idiosyncratic to 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Aristotle Politics 1327b1–2 (Loeb). Josephus Vita §352 (Loeb). Josephus Contra Ap. §269 (Loeb). Titus 1:12. Strabo Geography 16.2.23 (Loeb). Strabo Geography 16.4.24 (Loeb). On physiognomy in Antiquity cf. Barton, Power, 95–132; Evans, Physiognomics, 1–101; Rohrbacher, Physiognomics, 92–116. 18 Polemo, Physiognomici, 31–296. 19 Galen On Prognosis pp. 100. 102. 20 Polemo, Physiognomici, 1.268.

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moderns, were considered true and scientific in Antiquity. These deductions were considered a systematization of the physique as a collection of signs of the “inner” character. Both medicine and physiognomics established lists of signs or symptoms, from which they inferred the state of the mind or the body. Both often relied on common causes, either the humors or the blood, and they sometimes sought out the same phenomena in cases of madness, epilepsy, apoplexy, and deafness.21 Polemo also offers a striking description applying to a lot of people: A thick, flattened end of the nose indicates brutality.22 If this was true, a lot of people should – because of the shape of their nose – be carefully watched by the police. Nevertheless, the perception of these authors was that you would be able to judge people correctly, if you judged their race, posture, or appearance according to certain indices. Polemo presents different types that work through their “othering” or oppositional, strategic definitions; the typical woman is defined by deviation from the male norm.23 The “beast”, the “alien”, or the “ethnic other” is not directly defined in opposition to someone else, but may be anyone not belonging to a certain and well-defined geographical area – i. e. the ones “outside”. In his section “On the Shape of Southern Peoples”, Polemo explains that the Southern peoples are black, have curly hair, narrow ankles, metallic-colored eyes, black hair, and thin flesh. This generalized description is thought to match all Southern peoples, and there is no room for individual features or deviations. Hence, there is no depth to the description, merely surface. The features that correspond to this description are as follows: The Southern peoples are kind, ready of wit and memory, they take pleasure in learning, but they are always thinking up lies, they are greedy, and inclined to theft.24 These are harsh features to ascribe to all peoples from the south, based on their looks. Nevertheless, according to the erudite and highly educated Polemo, they were considered true and valid. As a minor curio, it may be interesting to observe what Polemo thought of “the Northern Peoples”, since that description was supposed to apply to Danes, Germans, and other Scandinavians. In his section “On the Shape of Northern Peoples” Polemo writes that the Northern peoples are tall, white-complexioned, with red hair, and gray-blue eyes. They are rough to the touch, they have thick legs, dense and plump bodies, soft flesh, and huge stomachs. Their corresponding character is as follows: They are quick to anger, quick in debate, they are rash, honest, and find it hard to learn.25 As a red-haired, blue-eyed, white21 Polemo, Physiognomici: madness: 1.110, 1.25–112; (epilepsy?) 1.164, 1.19–21; Celsus On Medicine 3.18; Caelius Aurelianus On Acute Diseases 1.4ff.; 42ff.; 3.107. 22 Polemo, Physiognomici, 1.128. 23 Polemo, Physiognomici, 1.194. 24 Polemo, Physiognomici, 1.238. 25 Polemo, Physiognomici, 1.238.

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complexioned, and tall hyperborean, I find the physical description rather precise (despite my thin legs and flat stomach), but I definitely do not approve of the corresponding character. Nevertheless, concerning the conclusions or deductions by Polemo on both the “Southern” and the “Northern” peoples, we would be justified in claiming that such generalizations and idiosyncratic opinions are wrong and morally deplorable. However, that is not the point here. The point is that from “within” a certain cultural-religious-ethnic-political perspective, such propositions may be self-evident and scientifically true – even for doctors and philosophers such as Polemo and Galen. These doctors and philosophers actually tried to detect the character, disposition, or destiny of a person from external features. However, such descriptions may simply testify to the process whereby a certain type is reduced to a few, simplified, reductive, and essentialized features that are easy to identify, copy, and pass on. Thus, from a certain “in-group” perspective, such propositions are valid. If Paul shows just the slightest evidence of such idiosyncratic and stereotypical generalizations, we should be cautious about constructing anything like a universal or ontological anthropology on the foundations of his descriptions, because he may instead be merely passing on cultural, ethnic, and religious stereotypes. Now, the significant consequence of this way of perceiving people in antiquity was the belief that behavior and character were fixed and unchanging. Therefore, in light of the physiognomic literature, we may reasonably expect first-century Greeks, Romans, and Jews to have attributed certain behaviors to peoples based on their appearance, background, nationality, place of origin, or kin group. Those belonging to a particular geographical location or a certain race would have been expected to behave in a certain way, because the features one exhibited were taken to correspond to a certain behavior – i. e. you are the way you look. Cicero bears witness to such an understanding when he describes Jews and Syrians as “races born to slavery”.26 And also Aristotle, too, works from the assumption that certain races are only suited to, and destined to slavery, because of their collective characteristics.27 In effect, those who came from servile origins would have been expected to act like slaves – just as a gentile would have been expected to act like a gentile from a Jewish point of view. And since behavior did not change, then neither would the essential servility or “gentile-ness”. Consequently, when we read the descriptions of certain races or nationalities in Paul, we should be cautious about thinking of these descriptions as valid anthropological descriptions of universally or ontologically true character. Instead, we should analyze these descriptions as examples of stereotypical ethnic presentations of “the other”. When we begin reading Romans, we must apply the 26 Cicero Prov. Cons. 5.10. 27 Aristotle Politics 1327b1–2.

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distinctions from Hall’s theory of stereotyping, and see how it correlates to the ancient physiognomic (and medical) theories.

3.

Application of Stereotyping to Paul’s Practice

In order to identify a stereotyping process – or the result of stereotyping – in Paul, we must be able to identify the “us” and “them” in Paul’s regime of representation. In this process, we must figure out to whom Paul addressed his message.

3.1

Paul’s Addressees

From Paul’s own designation in Romans we learn that he perceived himself to be “apostle to the gentiles” (Rom 11:13). This is supported by evidence from Galatians, where Paul explicitly states that he addressed his message to the gentiles, whereas Peter addressed his message to the Jews (Gal 2:7ff.). We should take these propositions very seriously when we try to figure out what the historical meaning of Paul’s letters was, and these propositions should constitute the point of departure from which we try to reconstruct the addressees of the letters of Paul. Thus, in order for us to grasp what Paul wrote we must stick to the point that he directed his message to gentiles – not to humankind. And he considered himself and Peter “Jews by nature (ἡμεῖς φύσει Ἰουδαῖοι), and not gentile sinners” (οὐκ ἐξ ἐθνῶν ἁμαρτωλοί, Gal 2:15). Consequently, when we move on we should continuously hold present the categories of the Jew and the gentile, because within these categories lie the fundamental perceptions of morality, history, religion, behavior, character, and bodily/physical constituency. Whenever Paul describes his addressees, we should be able to detect whether his descriptions match the categories of either Jew or gentile. When he uses the very significant designator, “gentile sinners”, in contrast to “Jews by nature”, we should consider whether Jews were considered sinners (in general), or whether Paul specifically and exclusively applied this designation to gentiles. Such considerations will have important consequences for any construction of a Pauline anthropology. In Romans, which I will mainly address here, Paul is quite explicit in the opening verses (adscriptio) about who his audience or addressees are. According to ancient epistolary practices, the receiver of a letter stands in the dative case. In 1:7, Paul addresses “all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints” in the dative case. Thus, these are the addressees. However, in 1:5–6, Paul states that he has been appointed apostle to bring about the obedience of faith among all the

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gentiles including yourselves. Thus, all God’s beloved in Rome are explicitly addressed as gentiles. Paul repeats this claim in 1:13–15: He wants to come to them in Rome to reap some harvest among them, as he has done among the rest of the gentiles (ἐν τοῖς λοιποῖς ἔθνεσιν). So, right from the outset of Romans, and in his framing of the letter (1:1–17 and 15:7–33), it is obvious that Paul does not address humankind or an ontological human being in an anthropological sense. He addresses gentiles, because he perceives himself to be “apostle to the gentiles” (Rom 11:13; Gal 2:7ff.). And of course his message is colored by this approach, because gentiles were identified as the ethnic, religious, moral, and political “other” of the Jews. Thus, if Paul “engages in” either Hall’s stereotypical practice or the idiosyncrasies of the physiognomic writers, he presents and reproduces a stereotypical perception of his addressees in Romans – i. e. of gentiles.

3.2

“Us” – the Jews

Throughout the letters, Paul makes extensive use of “us/them” language.28 This tells us that he operates with a dichotomous perception of cultural, ethnic, and religious identities, rather than a unified and universal essentiality. Paul addresses his audience through a series of juxtapositions of Ioudaioi and nonIoudaioi:29 Jew/gentile, Jew/Greek, circumcised/uncircumcised. The decisive factor for Paul in sticking to this idea is that ethnic identity – in continuation of the stories of God’s handling of Israel in the Hebrew Bible – is inextricable for a people’s standing before God. This national, ethnic, or united criterion of evaluation is explicitly stated in the historical interpretations of Judah’s and Israel’s past (cf. e. g. 1 Kings 14:22; 15:11). Obviously, as a first-century Jew, Paul exhibits perceptions that support the view that gentiles are who and what they are because they have rejected the God of Israel.30 That was how Jews interpreted God’s handling of history (cf. e. g. 1 and 2 Macc). That is exactly what Romans 1:18–32 28 Paul’s use of “us/them” language is pervasive throughout his letters. Some of the most explicit examples are: Rom 1:18–32; Rom 5:1–10; Rom 9:4–5; Rom 11:1; Gal 2:11–16; Phil 3:5–6; 1 Cor 5:1; 1 Cor 12:2; 1 Thess 4:3–5. 29 I am aware of the discussion scholars have had concerning how to translate the Greek word Ioudaioi (Ἰουδαῖοι). Some have argued it should be translated as “Judaeans” (a national and geographic aspect), while others have argued that it should be translated as “Jews” (a religious and trans-national aspect). I am very sympathetic to the account and discussion by Caroline Johnson Hodge ( Johnson Hodge, Sons, 11–15), because she reflects both positions. In some of her early articles, she argued for a translation of Ἰουδαῖοι as “Judaeans”. However, she has come to rethink her position and renders Ἰουδαῖοι as either “Jew” or Ioudaioi. She often uses the transliterated word in order to call attention to the problems clinging to the translation. 30 An interesting collection of articles explores the religious, ethnic, and cultural roles of the gentiles in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and the role is through-and-through negative (cf. Holt/Kim/Mein, Concerning).

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testifies to, and what we will return to further down. But first, a telling discourse from Galatians. Paul’s language reflects his construction of Jewish and gentile identities. In Gal 2:11–16, Paul recounts a conflict between himself and Peter. Paul presents the conflict as existing between those who used to eat with gentiles, but now refuse to eat with them. Peter and the other Jews fear those from the circumcised (τοὺς ἐκ περιτομῆς, Gal 2:12), so Paul asks Peter: “If you, though a Jew (Ἰουδαῖος ὑπάρχων), live like a gentile (ἐθνικῶς), and not like a Jew (Ἰουδαϊκῶς), how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews (ι᾿ουδαΐζειν)? We are Jews by birth (φύσει Ἰουδαῖοι), we are not sinners descending from the gentiles (ἐξ ἐθνῶν)”. The oppositional ethnic strategy (or, in the vocabulary of Stuart Hall: the process of stereotyping) is fully displayed and morally evaluated here, since Paul explicitly contrasts two groups, the Jews and the gentiles. Paul’s term for Jews is ethnically specific, whereas his term for non-Jews is gentiles (ἔθνη), a non-specific, simplified, reductive, essentialized, and totalizing term that lumps together all nonJews into one group. Paul also explicitly splits the normal and acceptable – from a Jewish perspective – from the abnormal and unacceptable. Additionally, as previously noted, Paul does not designate the Jews as sinners; that designation is reserved for the gentiles, i. e. the deviant and unacceptable “others”. Paul deploys these designations in a moral-religious contrast to the Jews. Now, how did Paul perceive the “us”, the Jews, more specifically? First, I present a general firstcentury Jewish perspective, and afterwards, a more specific and personal Pauline perspective. Ioudaioi was a fairly common designation for Jews in Paul’s time, by both Jews and non-Jews.31 According to Shaye Cohen, Ioudaios was widely understood in the Roman Empire as an umbrella term for all Jews, and “both the Judaeans themselves and the Greeks and Romans had a sense that all Judaeans everywhere somehow belonged to this group”.32 Strabo (64 BC–24 AD) confirms this view when he writes that the Jews “have made their way already into every city, and it is not easy to find any place in the habitable world that has not received this nation and in which it has not made its power felt”.33 Even though the term Ioudaios has a history from the Persian period onwards, it was adopted as a self-designation by persons and groups in the Greek-speaking diaspora, who were bound ethnically, politically, economically, religiously, socially, and culturally to Judaea, Jerusalem, and its Temple. At the time of Paul, both insiders and outsiders used the term Ioudaioi to refer to the collective whole of the people belonging to Israel, including 1–2 Maccabees, Philo, and Josephus. Josephus explains that after the 31 Mason, Jews, 489ff. 32 Cohen, Beginnings, 75. 33 Strabo Hist. Hypomnemata, as preserved in Josephus Ant., 14.115.

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return from Babylon, both the people and the country were known by this name.34 Thus, at the time of Paul, Ioudaioi was a term well known and frequently used by both insiders and outsiders as an umbrella term for those loyal to the one God of Israel and the Temple – the Jews. Ancient ethnic groups, including the Jews, affiliated and defined themselves with reference to a particular god or gods. By participating in specific worship practices, ancient ethnic groups signaled membership by showing loyalty to a deity or deities. Jewish writings often equate following the one God of Israel with moral superiority, and they associate following other gods with moral depravity (cf. the examples further down). This means that Paul and the ancient Jews were monotheistic in their beliefs – but they were monotheistic in the ancient sense of the word: Their allegiance was firmly fastened on the God of Israel as the highest and most powerful god, but they were perfectly aware of other gods as well. Paul even insults these other gods, and he warns his gentile addressees to not have anything to do with these gods. He also complains about the effects of these gods: The god of this world (ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αι᾿ῶνος τούτου) has blinded the minds of Paul’s gentile addressees (2 Cor 4:4); the rulers of this world (ἄρχοντες τοῦ αι᾿ῶνος τούτου), which probably refer to some astral powers, have crucified God’s son (1 Cor 2:8); the divinities whom the Galatians formerly worshiped are not gods by nature (τοῖς φύσει μὴ οὖσιν θεοῖς), but mere weak and beggarly elemental spirits (τὰ ἀσθενῆ καὶ πτωχὰ στοιχεῖα), unworthy of fear or worship (Gal 4:8–9). Such gods are not “real” gods, but mere subordinate deities (δαίμονες, 1 Cor 10:20–21), as, indeed, there are many gods and many lords (1 Cor 8:5–6). But these lower powers, currently worshiped through images, will soon themselves acknowledge the one God of Israel when Christ defeats them and establishes God’s kingdom (1 Cor 15:24–27), since, in the end, all these beings will bend their knees to Jesus (Phil 2:10). The affiliation to a specific god and specific worship practices signaled membership in an ethnic group. And, it also exemplifies an ethnic construction of stereotypes: Peoples are defined by contrast to each other, or through how they deviate from “the normal and acceptable”, from a specific cultural and religious perspective – here, the Jewish. Paul defines both Jews and gentiles in this way, but whereas Jews reap the benefits of their loyalty to the one God of Israel, the gentiles suffer the consequences of having rejected the God of Israel. This is very obvious in Romans, where Paul contrasts the two groups. When he describes the Jews, he includes specific references to Jewish history, practices, ancestry, morality, and religion, each of which defines them as the chosen people of God. The most elaborate of these descriptions follow in Rom 9:3–5, which in my own translation reads: 34 Josephus Ant. 11.173.

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… my brothers, my kindred according to the flesh, who are Israelites, who has the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them comes the Messiah according to the flesh…

The content of this description states that the Israelite identity is rooted in the stories of their ancestors, the covenants, and the promises that established them as sons of God. Additionally, the (Mosaic) law and cult services mark this relationship and govern their lives as an ethnic group and people. Paul uses each of these characteristics (ancestry, worship, law, etc.) to construct and confirm the ethnic Jewish identity. Paul does this by commenting on their bodily/physical condition by stating that they are his kinsmen according to the flesh (τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν συγγενῶν μου κατὰ σάρκα). He also comments on their nationality: they are Israelites (οἵτινές ει᾿σιν Ἰσραηλῖται). He comments on their ancestry, kin group, family, place of origin, and relationship to the mythological patriarchs: they have the sonship and the fathers (ὧν ἡ υἱοθεσία, ὧν οἱ πατέρες). He comments on their religious status and power: they have the glory (of God in the Temple) (ἡ δόξα). He comments on their religious relationship to God and their religious practice: they have the covenants, the worship, and the promises (αἱ διαθῆκαι, ἡ λατρεία, αἱ ἐπαγγελίαι). He comments on their politics and social agreement: they have the law (ἡ νομοθεσία). And finally, they have the Messiah, according to the flesh (ἐξ ὧν ὁ Χριστὸς τὸ κατὰ σάρκα). All these privileges (features or bodily constituencies), which function in the same way as the physiognomic authors describe the characters of people, act as characteristics defining and distinguishing the Jews from the gentiles. This was precisely how ancient authors described and defined ethnic identities. And it exactly matches what Stuart Hall describes as the process of stereotyping. It is not something special in the practice of Paul; we find similar criteria and descriptions defining Greek identity in Herodotus, and other ancient authors: The Greek people are of the same blood and the same tongue, and we have in common the edifices of our gods and our sacrifices, and our traditional ways are all the same.35

Thus, Paul’s construction of ethnic identities resembles the way other ancient authors thought about and arranged their worldviews. Just as in the physiognomic literature, certain characteristics define the conduct, behavior, and social position in the world and before the god(s) of these people. This is how they are, because this is the way they look and behave. However, according to my perception, this does not amount to any universal or ontological anthropology in the way we know it from various Systematic or New Testament anthropologies. Paul’s description of gentiles is idiosyncratic and stereotypical from a Jewish point of view – exactly as Herodotus’ is from a Greek point of view. Paul’s 35 Herodotus Histories 8.144.2 translation amended from Loeb.

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practice merely represents ethnic stereotypes – not universal-anthropological statements. So, when it comes to Israel or the Jews in general, Paul paints a rather positive picture. And why would he not? After all, he still considered himself part of Israel and a proud Jew. This becomes even clearer when we turn to Paul’s presentations of himself in ethnic terms. When Paul explains his own ethnic identity – as a representative of the Jewish group – something similar to what is found in Romans 9 takes place; he positions himself within a common Jewish history as a descendant of the same ancestors, with the same stories, values, and privileges: “For I, too, am an Israelite, out of the seed of Abraham, the tribe of Benjamin” (Rom 11:1). In Philippians, Paul emphasizes not only his ancestry and membership in a particular tribe, but also his devotion to the (Mosaic) law: “Circumcised on the eighth day, descended from the lineage of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, according to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness I was blameless in the law” (Phil 3:5–6). And the same is said in 2 Corinthians: “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I” (2 Cor 11:22). Throughout his letters, Paul lists both his broader membership in an ethnic group (Hebrews) and his membership in a sub-group defined by descent from an ancestor (Benjamin). And for Paul, circumcision, the practice of the law, and kinship are all factors in his own ethnic identity as an Israelite – and they are extremely positive factors. Paul highly esteems and values all the characteristic ethnic features defining himself and his people/nation in the ancient world. He positions himself and his people on a scale/hierarchy (according to social values) and his whole project of proclaiming the gospel to the gentiles concerns their removal from far down this hierarchy to a much better and more favorable position (cf. Rom 11:17–25). In the words of Hall’s theory of stereotyping, then, Paul presents his own type as simple, vivid, easily graspable, and widely recognized. He describes the normal and acceptable features, but he also highlights the splendor and spectacle of his own and his people’s position. His presentation of Israel and his own Jewish identity reflects the process of splitting the abnormal and the deviant from those who live by the rules of the cultural codes. This is who he is, and this is the group he represents – and he is proud of it. He does not present this in any ontological sense, but in a stereotypical way, as though it were cultural history. In contrast to the descriptions of Paul himself and the Jewish people are the manifold depictions of the gentiles. Paul describes the gentiles as weak, sinners, and enemies of God (cf. Rom 5:6–10), and he describes them in the most elaborate way in Rom 1:18–32. These descriptions work as the “negative side” of the oppositional pairs through which Paul presents his gospel, and thus represent the stereotypical “backside” or “surface” of the Jewish “front” or “depth”. I now turn

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to Rom 1:18–32 in order to define the “them” in Paul’s reproduction of Jewish stereotypes concerning gentiles.

3.3

“Them” – the Gentiles

In contrast to the specific practices and attributes of a people loyal to the God of Israel, Paul describes the gentiles as a people who have rejected God. The description of the gentiles in Rom 1:18–32 is an almost perfect inversion of the privileges and characteristics of the description of the Jews in 9:3–5. In this passage, Paul outlines the history (both now and then) of the gentiles. Even though they had the opportunity of knowing the one and true God, who revealed himself to them, they nevertheless failed to recognize him. “For though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened” (Rom 1:21). Because they failed to recognize him as God, and because they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, God handed them over to the desires of their hearts, dishonorable passions, and an undiscerning mind. As a consequence of this, they worshipped the created rather than the creator (1:25), they became morally depraved, engaged in intercourse which is beyond nature (1:27–28), and they are filled with every injustice, evil, greed, and wickedness (1:29). What Paul presents in these verses amounts to the reproduction of stereotypes: Paul presents the gentiles through a series of representational practices that reduces them to a few essentials, as though they were fixed in nature or ontologically. The description – when read from a disengaged distance – suddenly stands out as the description of “stereotypes on steroids”. These people have not just occasionally done something wrong; they have done everything wrong “ever since the creation” (1:20). They do all the wrong things and they revel in the worst of these. Additionally, Paul deploys the strategy of splitting, when he writes that they could have known God, but they do not; they could have honored and given thanks to him, but they do not; they claimed to be wise, but became fools, and so on. Through this stereotypical process of “othering”, Paul constructs the gentiles as “others” of the Jews – as “them” in contrast to “us”. The Jews at the time of Paul understood the idolatry described in 1:18–32 as describing the lives of the gentiles – not mankind’s original sin.36 Paul reflects this understanding elsewhere in his letters, when, in 1 Thess 1:9–10, 1 Cor 12:2, and Gal 4:8, he writes that they (his gentile addressees) earlier slaved under such dumb and lifeless gods. In general, this was the way the gentiles lived before they 36 This is obvious from other contemporary Jewish texts, e. g. Wisd. of Sol. 11–15; Sib. Or. 3.8–45; Philo, De Decal. 76–80; De Vit. Cont. 8f.; Abr. 135–36; Let. Arist. 134–141, 152.

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turned to the God of Israel and became members of Paul’s congregations. We should consider the purpose of Rom 1:18–32 in similar ways: When, in 1:18, Paul writes that the wrath of God is revealed against “all people”, he is not referring to all people as in “all mankind” in an anthropological or universal sense; he is referring to all people who are qualified as impious and unjust, those who, by their wickedness, suppress the truth. Thus, “all” qualifies the impiety and injustice that, in a traditional, historical Jewish context, would be referred to the gentiles; it represents a typical “in-group” perception of the ones “outside”. This is obvious from Rom 5:6–10, where Paul writes about a time when the addressees were weak (ἀσθενῶν), where they were sinners (ἁμαρτωλῶν), and where they were enemies of God (ἐχθροὶ). But as in 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians, he does not consider these designations to be suitable anymore, because now they have turned away from this earlier life. Nevertheless, in general, such descriptions exactly match that of gentiles, from a Jewish point of view. From a historically-contextualized understanding of 1:18–32, it is obvious that Paul exclusively addresses gentiles. In fact, it is so obvious that even those scholars who still cling to the perception that 1:18–32 reflects a general, universal, or ontological “fall of humanity” often confess that this may not be the intention of the passage.37 This is the case with Robert Jewett in his commentary of 2007. He explains Paul’s use of the term “all” in 1:18: Despite a later reference to characteristically pagan failures (1:23), the formulation with “all” indicates that Paul wishes to insinuate that Jews as well as Romans, Greeks, and barbarians are being held responsible.38

However, this understanding of “all” suffers from a misunderstanding. First of all, “all” need not refer literally to all humanity in any anthropological or universal sense. If we look at a contemporary Jewish text, Wisdom of Solomon 11–15, this is clearly the case. Wisdom of Solomon 13:1 employs the exact same expression in its accusation of idolaters. For all people who were ignorant of God (πάντες ἄνθρωποι … οἷς παρῆν θεοῦ ἀγνωσία) were foolish by nature; and they were unable from the good things that are seen (ἐκ τῶν ὁρωμένων ἀγαθῶν) to know the one who exists (ει᾿δέναι τὸν ὄντα), nor did they recognize the artisan while paying heed to his works.

Obviously, from what we know about those the author of Wisdom of Solomon addresses in these chapters, he does not address any “universal man”. Thus, if 37 Scholars who see a reference to Adam or “the fall of man” cf. Longenecker, Eschatology, 173– 4; Dunn, Theology, 91–93; Bryan, Preface, 78; Stuhlmacher, Brief, 34; Haacker, Brief, 46; Lohse, Brief, 85. Philip Esler designates the introduction of Adam into the passage as “flatly antipathetical” (Esler, Conflict, 18). 38 Jewett, Romans, 152, my italics.

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Paul expresses something similar to Wisdom of Solomon, “all” means nothing more than all those under scrutiny, which means gentiles. I will return to Wisdom of Solomon shortly. Another and more important argument in Romans 1 may be brought to the fore: In 1:18, Paul does not write “all people”. Paul does not target the impiety and injustice of “all people”. What Paul targets is the impiety and injustice of persons who “unjustly suppress the truth”. “All” describes the impiety and injustice – not the people (Ἀποκαλύπτεται γὰρ ὀργὴ θεοῦ ἀπ᾽ οὐρανοῦ ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἀσέβειαν καὶ ἀδικίαν ἀνθρώπων τῶν τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐν ἀδικίᾳ κατεχόντων). Consequently, Paul is not accusing all humanity in any anthropological or universal sense; Paul indicts all the wickedness of those persons who subvert the truth, and he gives no indication here that such persons include the entire human race in any universal or ontological sense. To the contrary, Paul examines the identity of those persons in the ensuing discussion, which should be identified as stock Jewish polemic against gentiles in something comparable to an ethnic stereotype. Consequently, Paul’s description in 1:18ff. does not amount to a description of a universal fall with ontological consequences for humankind. Such a reading of “all” in 1:18 is hardly justified, and it reads much better in a discourse delineating the gentile shortcomings.39 From a historical-contextual reading it is clear that 1:18–32 presents a largescale Jewish account of how the gentiles became gentiles. By refusing to acknowledge God as God, they were given over to enslavement of their passions by a measure-for-measure justice. This account concerns neither universal humankind nor any individualistic and introspective subjectivity. What Paul presents is the story of the gentiles as a group on the periphery of Israel’s story. Paul’s perspective – all through Romans – is collective and historical. Paul lies in continuation of the discourses found in the Hebrew Bible, in other Jewish literature of that period, and in the writing of the Greek and Roman ethnographers and historians. Israel as a group and nation has a relationship and a history with God, just as the gentiles do, even though it differs in significant ways. However, both peoples are involved in a history over which God rules and judges. Salvation in this history does not concern a universal question of a human essence being 39 The famous German New Testament scholar Ernst Käsemann (1906–1998) made Rom 1:18– 32 into a universal allegation against humankind from only the most meager justification. However, this interpretation was widely accepted because Käsemann repeats Lutheran stereotypes of an anti-Jewish reading. Yet, Käsemann was not unaware of the obvious reference to gentiles. He notes how “vv. 19–21 characterize the guilt of the Gentiles, and vv. 22–23 portrays God’s judgment” (Käsemann, Commentary, 37). However, shortly thereafter he further adds: “To the intensity of the judgment corresponds the totality of the world which stands under it, so that the statements about Gentiles applies to the heathen nature of mankind as such, and hence implies the guilty Jew as well” (ibid., 38).

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simul iustus et peccator, but concerns salvation from God’s anger, even if that anger is justified. God’s wrath, which had long and justly been stored up against the gentiles, presented an urgent and obvious problem; Paul turns to this specifically in 2:1–16. Even though the narrative in 1:18–32 is dominated by verbs in the past tense, the passage is framed by references to current states of affairs, with verbs in the present tense (Ἀποκαλύπτεται (1:18); ποιοῦσιν, συνευδοκοῦσιν (1:32)). Paul does not merely elaborate on the gentiles’ past history; he connects their history with their present condition. The historical narrative serves merely to explain and substantiate the present condition. As Runar Thorsteinsson puts it: “Paul is not only saying here to his gentile readership ‘you once were…’ but also ‘beware, you are still…!’”40 Consequently, what Paul lays out in Romans 1 resembles the ancient physiognomic (and medical) descriptions of groups, and it may be taken as constructing a regime of representation in a process of ethnic stereotyping.

3.4

A First-Century Contemporary Parallel

Just like Paul, the author of the Wisdom of Solomon (approximately dated to 50 BC–40 AD) constructs a religious and moral history of the ethnic “other” – the gentiles. In this narrative, idolatry plays a central role, since idolatry leads to participation in vices, particularly those having to do with porneia. Chapters 11– 15 in the Wisdom of Solomon elaborate on the enemies of Israel and the ungodly – and it connects these peoples to the origins and forms of idolatry. It cannot be determined whether Paul actually knew the Wisdom of Solomon and explicitly drew on it in 1:18–32, but it is very likely that Paul and the author of Wisdom of Solomon worked in similar traditions. Wisdom of Solomon does not attribute evil in the world to Adam, so we should be reticent about attributing something like that to Paul.41 Like Paul, Wisdom of Solomon attributes the beginning of vice to idolatry, and emphasizes sexual evil (14:12–13). Additionally, Wisdom of Solomon finds the origins of idolatry in the actions of specific groups (or individuals) after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden (cf. 14:15–16; 14:17–21). In 12:3–4, Wisdom of Solomon describes the gentiles as “[t]hose who lived long ago in your holy land [whom] you hated for their detestable practices”. In 12:23–24 it speaks about: 40 Thorsteinsson, Interlocutor, 173. 41 Cf. the article by John Collins, where he analyzes stories about the origin of evil in contemporary Jewish literature and concludes that hardly any texts dated prior to the destruction of the temple make Adam’s disobedience the foundation of the origin of evil (Collins, Origin). In fact, it seems to be quite the opposite: Adam is perceived as a genuine Jewish hero.

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those who lived unrighteously (ἀδίκως), in a life of folly, you tormented through their own abominations. For they went far astray on the paths of error, accepting as gods those animals that even their enemies despised; they were deceived like foolish infants.

Just as in Romans 1, a long list of the resulting vices (focusing on sexual, marriage, and gender roles) follows the account of the origins of idolatry (14:22–31). There is another example worth quoting because of its striking similarity to Paul: For the idea of making idols (ει᾿δώλων) was the beginning of fornication (πορνείας), and the invention of them was the corruption of life (φθορὰ ζωῆς); for they did not exist from the beginning, nor will they last forever. For through human vanity (κενοδοξίᾳ) they entered the world, and therefore their speedy end has been planned. (14:12–14)

And it continues in 14:27–30 in the same style as in Romans: For the worship of idols not to be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil. For their worshipers either rave in exultation, or prophesy lies, or live unrighteously, or readily commit perjury; for because they trust in lifeless idols they swear wicked oaths and expect to suffer no harm. But just penalties will overtake them on two counts: because they thought wrongly about God in devoting themselves to idols, and because in deceit they swore unrighteously through contempt for holiness.

It is without a doubt clear that Wisdom of Solomon depicts the gentile peoples’ decline into idolatry and vice. It explicitly says so in 15:14–15: But most foolish, and more miserable than an infant, are all the enemies who oppressed your people. For they thought that all their heathen idols (τὰ εἴδωλα τῶν ἐθνῶν) were gods, though these have neither the use of their eyes to see with, nor nostrils with which to draw breath, nor ears with which to hear, nor fingers to feel with, and their feet are of no use for walking.

What Wisdom of Solomon presents here is very comparable to what Paul presents in 1:18–32, and it should be taken as working in a similar way to construct and reproduce ethnic stereotypes about the ethnic “other” of the Jews. In Wisdom of Solomon, as in Romans, impious and unrighteous behavior is representative of gentiles; and Paul and the author of Wisdom of Solomon explicitly state that their description concerns gentiles. Thus, “gentile” comes to mean gentile in contrast to, and as an exaggerated and simplified presentation of the Jewish identity. Through these descriptions we come to learn what a Jewish author and a pharisaic Jew perceived to be the gentile identity, not because of some essentialist characteristics, but because of its marked difference – its otherness – from the Jewish identity.42 Paul does not deliver universal and ontological truths, but stock Jewish polemics against gentiles. 42 There are several other similar and contemporary examples of ethnic stereotyping, cf. Philo De Vit. Cont. 8–9: De Decal. 76–80; Abr. 135–136; Spec. 3.37–42. Cf. furthermore Jubilees 22:16–18; Sib. Or. 3.8–45; Letter of Aristeas 134–141.

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Conclusion

New Testament scholars such as James Dunn, George van Kooten, and Udo Schnelle (among others) 43 have described Paul’s universal (or ontological) anthropology as something valid for all humanity, through all times, as a psychologically true description of “the inner human being”. However, what I have presented in this article challenges such a perception. Paul may have been serious about his claims throughout his letters: He merely and exclusively addressed gentiles with his gospel. The negative descriptions of moral and religious depravity may have been addressed specifically and exclusively to his gentile addressees, because he applied, copied, and reproduced a perception of gentiles that was common and disseminated among first-century Jews. Paul’s description of gentiles may very well represent a stock Jewish polemic, not universal or ontological truths. Of course, gentiles must have been able to somehow identify themselves in this outright Jewish story and description, if they were to be attracted to Paul’s gospel. But Paul also shows evidence of gentiles “straightening up” and living according to the prescriptions of the law (cf. the paraenetical parts of his letters). So even though Paul may apply and reproduce a Jewish ethnic stereotype of gentiles, he also brings evidence of the shortcomings of such stereotyped presentations. The gentiles who match his descriptions in Rom 1:18– 32 are the same gentiles as the ones encouraged to present their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Rom 12:1). Even though these gentiles somehow matched the description in Rom 1:18–32 they probably also managed to live a just life from a Jewish perspective, not constantly fighting with themselves or being handed over to an “introspective conscious”, continually judging themselves and being found wanting in the search of a merciful God.

Bibliography Barth, H.-M., ‘Ich lebe, aber nicht mehr ich…’ Christlicher Glaube und personale Identität, NZSTh 44/2 (2002) 174–188. Barton, T.S., Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the Roman Empire, The University of Michigan Press 1994. Bottomley, F., Attitudes to the Body in Western Christendom, Lepus Books 1979. Boyarin, D., A Radical Jew, University of California Press 1994.

43 Dunn, Theology; van Kooten, Anthropology; Schnelle, Anthropologie. Cf. furthermore, Labahn/Lehtipuu, Anthropology; Gundry, Soma; Bottomley, Attitudes; Heckel, Mensch; Ruzer, Seat; Kister, Body; Frey, Antithese; Brandenburger, Fleisch; Flusser, Dualism; Barth, Glaube; Scornaienchi, Sarx.

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Brandenburger, E., Fleisch und Geist: Paulus und die dualistische Wesiheit, Neukirchener Verlag 1968. Bradley, K.R., Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire, Oxford UP 1987. Bryan, C., A Preface to Romans, Oxford UP 2000. Cohen, S.J.D., The Beginnings of Jewishness, University of California Press 1999. Collins, J.J., The Origin of Evil in Apocalyptic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls in idem., Seers, Sibyls, and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism, Brill 2001, 287–300. Dunn, J.D.G., The Theology of Paul the Apostle, T&T Clark 1998. Esler, P.F., Conflict and Identity in Romans, Fortress Press 2003. Evans, E.C., Physiognomics in the Ancient World, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 59/5 (1969) 1–101. Flusser, D., The “Flesh-Spirit” Dualism in the Qumran Scrolls and the New Testament, in: D. Flusser (ed.), Judaism of the Second Temple Period vol. 1, Eerdmans, 2007, 283–292. Frey, J., Die paulinische Antithese von ”Fleisch” und ”Geist” und die palästinesch-jüdische Weisheitstradition, ZNW 90 (1999) 45–77. Gundry, R.H., Soma in Biblical Theology with Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology, Cambridge UP 1976. Haacker, C., Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer (THKNT), Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 1999. Hall, S., The Spectacle of the ‘Other’, in: S. Hall (ed.), Representation, cultural representations and signifying practices, Sage 2003, 223–283. Heckel, T.K., Der innere Mensch: Die paulinische Verarbeitung eines platonischen Motivs (WUNT 2. Reihe 53), Mohr Siebeck 1993. Holt, E.K./H.C.P. Kim/A. Mein, Concerning the Nations: Essays on the Oracles against the Nations in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, T&T Clark 2015. Jewett, R., Romans, Fortress Press 2007. Johnson Hodge, C., If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul, Oxford University Press 2007. Käsemann, E., Commentary on Romans, Eerdmans 1980. Kister, M., Body and Sin: Romans and Colossians in Light of Qumranic and Rabbinic Texts, in: J.S. Rey (ed.), The Dead Sea Scrolls and Pauline Literature, Brill, 2014, 171–207. Labahn, M./Lehtipuu, O. (eds.), Anthropology in the New Testament and its Ancient Context, Peeters 2010. Lawrence, L.J., An Ethnography of the Gospel of Matthew: A Critical Assessment of the Use of the Honour and Shame Model in New Testament Studies (WUNT 2. Reihe 165), Mohr Siebeck 2003. Longenecker, B.W., Eschatology and the Covenant, JSOT Press 1991. Lohse, E., Der Brief an die Römer (KEK), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2003. Malina, B., The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels, Routledge 1996. –, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, Westminster John Knox 2001 (3rd ed.). Martin, D., Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity, Yale University Press 1990. Mason, S., Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History, J SJ 38 (2007) 457–512.

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Meggitt, J., Review of Bruce Malina, The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels, JTS 49 (1998) 215–219. Moltmann, J., Mensch, Christliche Anthropologie in den Konflikten der Gegenwart, Kreuz Verlag 1971. Neyrey, J., The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation, Hendrickson 1991. –, Paul, in other Words: A Cultural Reading of his Letters, Westminster/John Knox Press 1990. Pannenberg, W., Systematische Theologie vol. 2, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1991. Pilch, J.J./Malina, B., Biblical Social Values and Their Meaning, Hendrickson 1993. Polemo, Scriptores Physiognomici 2 vols., edited by R. Foerster, Leipzig 1893. Rohrbacher, D., Physiognomics in Imperial Latin Biography, Classical Antiquity 29.1 (2010) 92–116. Ruzer, S., The Seat of Sin in Early Jewish and Christian Sources, in: J. Assmann/G.G. Stroumsa (eds.), Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions, Brill 1999, 367– 391. Said, E., Orientalism, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1978. Schnelle, U., Neutestamentliche Anthropologie, Neukirchener Verlag 1991. Scornaienchi, L., Sarx und so¯ma bei Paulus, in: M. Labahn & O. Lehtipuu (eds.), Anthropology in the New Testament and its Ancient Context, Peeters 2010, 33–54. Stuhlmacher, P., Der Brief an die Römer (NTD), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1989. Thorsteinsson, R., Paul’s Interlocutor in Romans 2, Almqvist & Wiksell 2003. van Kooten, G., Paul’s Anthropology in Context (WUNT 232), Mohr Siebeck 2008.

René Falkenberg

The Old and New Human Being: A Pauline Concept in Manichaean Texts

1.

Introduction

It has often been noted that Mani (third century AD) was fond of the concept of the ‘old/new human being’ from Paul and his disciples. This view has been expressed generally as follows: “Many of his [= Mani’s] most basic teachings, such as regards the ‘old’ and the ‘new man,’ must be directly sourced to a knowledge of the Pauline corpus”.1 In line with this concise statement, the majority of scholars have simply noted that Mani and the Manichaeans were inspired by Paulinism, mentioning only in passing Col 3:9–10 and Eph 4:22–24, without investigating the subject much further.2 Hence it remains a desideratum to determine not that the Pauline double concept was used, but instead how it was used in Manichaeism. This will, accordingly, be the task at hand. For heuristic reasons we limit the present study in two ways: First, by focussing only on nomenclature that deals specifically with the notion of the “old/new human being”, excluding related themes of the “earthly/heavenly” or “inner/ outer” nature. Second, by relying on the results of the Aarhus research project Biblia Manichaica, which aims to detect the Manichaeans’ reception of the Bible in their own texts and, as far as they are quoted, in the anti-Manichaean sources.3 The Aarhus project includes a variety of ancient languages where I deal with the Greek and Coptic sources, which form the basis of the present study. Since the former text cluster does not attest the notion of the ‘old/new human being’, the 1 Cf. Gardner, Mani’s, 4. See also, e. g., Waldschmidt/Lentz, Stellung, 31–32; Schmidt/Polotsky, Mani-Fund, 23 n. 1; Gardner/Lieu, Manichaean, 18. 265; van Oort, God, 168 n. 75. 2 Only a few studies touch on the subject, cf. Böhlig, Bibel, 46–47; Klimkeit, Lehre, 131–32. However, they do not mention the most obvious Manichaean source which clearly connects the old/new human being with the Pauline letters and which even quotes Col 3:9–10 and Eph 4:22– 24, namely Augustine’s Contra Faustum 24,1. 3 Cf. Pedersen et al., Biblia, which comprises the Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, and Iranian texts. At a later stage the project also aims to include the Latin, Turkish, and Chinese sources. The Biblia Manichaica project has been funded by the Danish Research Council | Humanities (2012–15) and is lead by Nils Arne Pedersen.

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Greek witnesses are not further dealt with.4 The latter group of texts, on the other hand, are rich in references to the anthropological notion and thus the Coptic witnesses will form the starting point for studying the Manichaean reuse of the Pauline concept.

2.

The Old and New Human Being in Corpus Paulinum

The concept of an ‘old/new human being’ does not, strictly speaking, occur in the genuine letters of Paul,5 in the sense that there the old human being (παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπος) is not yet paired with the new human being (νὲος/καινὸς ἄνθρωπος). The first half of the anthropological concept, the παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπος, is in fact found once in one of Paul’s authentic letters, in Rom 6:6. By contextualising this old human being in its nearer context, i. e. the mythological and baptismal section of Rom 5:12–6:14, we can detect related concepts that will appear later on in Colossians and Ephesians where the concept of the old/new human being is fully unfolded.6 The passage in Romans where the term “old human being” occurs goes as follows. Thus we were buried with him through baptism unto death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father we also will walk in newness of life (καινότητι ζωῆς). For if we have grown together with him in the likeness of his death, indeed we also will be in the resurrection. We know this: Our old human being (παλαιὸς ἡμῶν ἄνθρωπος) was crucified with him so that the body (σῶμα) of sin is annulled and we are no longer slave to sin (Rom 6:4–6).7

In the context of Rom 6:1–14, “Our old (παλαιὸς) human being” refers to human existence before conversion or baptism. Even if the old human being is not explicitly paired with the new here, Paul speaks of a corresponding “newness (καινότητι) of life” to characterise the Christ-believer after baptism. The present passage is known for its baptismal discourse, where initiates are described as 4 The Greek texts include the Manichaean Cologne Mani Codex as well as the anti-Manichaean literature: E. g. Epiphanius, Panarion 66; Alexander of Lycopolis, Critique of Mani’s Doctrines; Serapion of Thmuis, Against the Manichaeans; Theodoret of Cyrus, Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium 26. 5 Most scholars agree that Paul’s authentic letters are Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon. 6 We can therefore conclude that the explicit double notion attests to a development of Paul’s own anthropology within Corpus Paulinum. Both Colossians and Ephesians are generally held to have been authored by disciples of Paul and are, accordingly, labelled deutero-Pauline letters. 7 New Testament texts are translated from Aland et al., Novum. All translations, unless otherwise stated, are my own.

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sharing in the events of the passion and resurrection of Christ.8 Although the believer’s intimate co-existence with Christ relates to the idea of a congregation (ἐκκλησία) where its members are presented as limbs (μέλη) of the body (σῶμα) of Christ, Paul does not unfold that ecclesiological theme at this point in Romans, but only later on in 12:4–5. Here, on the other hand, the body (σῶμα) of each Christ-believer is mentioned in relation to the dire dominion of sin and death over all of embodied humankind (6:6, 9, 12). Also their bodily limbs (μέλη) are called for, as divine weaponry acquired through baptism against the all-pervading reign of sin (6:13): When they, through baptism, share in the Christ-event, sin simply loses power over them, and they no longer are under the restriction of law (νόμος) but under grace (6:14).9 The latter part of chapter 5 (vv. 12–21) focuses on Adam as a type (τύπος), or antitype, of the Christ to come (5:14) and, accordingly, Paul presents the two figures in a successive scheme: The first human being (Adam), by his trespass, causes the old reign of sin and death in the world (5:12), whereas the second human being (Christ), by divine grace, causes a new and opposite reign of righteousness and life (5:17, 21). Since the power vocabulary in 5:12–21 parallels the baptism section in 6:1–14, Adam apparently comes to represent all of humankind (i. e. “Our old human being”) in its primordial and present state as ruled by sin and death.10 8 Indicated by the use of compound expressions, based on the συν-preposition: The Christbelievers have been crucified with Christ (συνεσταυρώθη, 6:6), have died with him (ἀπεθάνομεν σὺν Χριστῷ, 6:8), were buried with him (συνετάφημεν αὐτῷ, 6:4), and will live with him (συζήσομεν αὐτῷ, 6:8); hence they have grown together with him (σύμφυτοι γεγόναμεν, 6:5) in his death as well as his resurrection. 9 The broader context of the παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπος is chapters 5–8, which generally deal with law and grace, death and life, and in our context specifically with the old and new life of Christbelievers. In the rhetorical dispositio of Romans, chapters 5–8 function as the second of four proofs of the probatio section (1:18–15:13): “The parameters of the four proofs are widely accepted among current commentators”, cf. Jewett, Romans, 30. As for the overall thematic in chapters 5–8: “The other major polarities in these chapters – sin and righteousness, death and life, flesh and spirit – are largely brought into the service of explaining the fundamental polarity of the Law and grace”, cf. de Boer, Paul’s, 2. 10 Paul says that “Our old human being was crucified with him” to set aside “the body of sin (σῶμα τῆς ἁμαρτίας)”, so that humankind “no longer slave (δουλεύειν) for sin” (6:6); and “sin must not reign (βασιλευέτω) in your mortal bodies to obey its desires” (6:12); and not sin only but also death since Christ’s resurrection proves that “his death no longer rules (κυριεύει)” (6:9) over neither him, nor his followers. Paul says in chapter 5 that “through one human being (ἀνθρώπου = Adam) sin entered the world and through sin death” (5:12); “death reigned (ἐβασίλευσεν) from Adam to Moses” (5:14); “death reigned (ἐβασίλευσεν) through that one” (5:17); and “sin reigned (ἐβασίλευσεν) in death” (5:21). So, here it becomes clear that baptism ultimately aims to free Christ-believers from the domination of sin. The power vocabulary entailed here, i. e. δουλεύω (6:6), κυριεύω (6:9, 14), and βασιλεύω (6:12), is closely connected to the preceding chapter 5 and helps to pinpoint the identity of “Our old human being” (6:6) as a representation of Adam in chapter 6.

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Moving on to the later deutero-Pauline letters, Colossians and Ephesians, we find the concept of the old human being paired with that of the new. Furthermore, both letters agree to introduce this anthropological notion by using clothing metaphors and the idea that human cognition will be renewed.11 Do not lie to one another while putting off the old human being (παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον) with its deeds and putting on the new (νέον) which is renewed in knowledge according to the image (κατ᾽ ει᾿κόνα) of he who created it (Col 3:9–10). Put off your earlier way of life, the old human being (παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον) corrupted by deceptive desires, but be renewed in the spirit of your mind (πνεύματι τοῦ νοὸς) and put on the new human being (καινὸν ἄνθρωπον), created by God in righteousness and piety of the truth. Therefore, put off falsehood and let each one speak truthfully with his neighbour for we are each other’s limbs (μέλη) (Eph 4:22–25).

Even if the mythological scheme (i. e. humankind’s slavery under sin and death) is not as explicitly found here as in Romans, both letters stress that stripping oneself of the old human being equals leaving bad behaviour behind (“Do not lie to one another while putting off the old human being”, “Put off your earlier way of life, the old human being corrupted by deceptive desires”, and “put off falsehood”). The two letters also agree that being clothed in the new human being involves some kind of cognitive renewal (“putting on the new [human being] which is renewed in knowledge” and “be renewed in the spirit of your mind [νοὸς] and put on the new human being”). Reminiscences of Paul’s presentation of creation theology (i. e. his Adam/Christ speculation) may be detected in the letters of Colossians and Ephesians too (“according to the image [κατ᾽ ει᾿κόνα] of he who created it [cf. Gen 1:26]” and “created by God in righteousness”). Finally, the concept of the new human being is related to ecclesiology when it is stated that “we are each other’s limbs”, thus bringing to the fore the body (σῶμα) of Christ as a congregation (ἐκκλησία) consisting of members, here designated “limbs” (μέλη) – a central theme found throughout Colossians and Ephesians.12 Such themes are also found in the last Pauline passage under scrutiny, two chapters earlier in Ephesians. He annulled enmity with his flesh and the law of commandments (νόμον τῶν ἐντολῶν) with decrees so that he in himself will make the two into one, a new human being (καινὸν ἄνθρωπον), thus making peace and reconciling both to God in one body (ἑνὶ σώματι) (Eph 2:14–16).

The two parties mentioned (“make the two into one” and “reconciling both to God”) are Gentiles and the people of Israel (Eph 2:11–12), but what is of im11 Paul himself uses clothing metaphors in Rom 13:12–14 and also describes the renewal of the human mind in Rom 12:2, cf. also 7:23–25. 12 Cf. Col 1:18; 2:19; 3:15; Eph 1:22–23; 4:12–16; 5:29–30.

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portance in our context is the fact that the “new human being” aligns with the “one body” of Christ. By implication, then, the “new human being” can also refer to the Christian ἐκκλησία. Furthermore, the present passage presents the Mosaic rule (“the law of commandments”) in a rather negative, or at least ambiguous, light.13 So, in the Pauline letters, the ‘old human being’ relates to the pre-Christian existence, as exemplified by Adam, where life is dominated by sinful behaviour and the inevitable occurrence of death. Figuratively, Christ-believers are urged to divest themselves of that former condition (i. e. the old human being). The deutero-Pauline notion of the ‘new human being’, on the other hand, relates to morally good behaviour, a renewed understanding (e. g. through the νοῦς), and the potential to be conformed/recreated according to the image (ει᾿κών), or original intention, of God. Metaphorically, believers are said to clothe themselves in that new form of existence. The notion of the new human being not only serves an anthropological purpose, but an ecclesiological one too: The new human being is the body of Christ and, as such, the congregation where the members are his limbs. Additionally, the formation of this ecclesiological body reveals a critical view of the Jewish law.

3.

Mani and Manichaeism

Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, lived from 216 until c. 277 in Mesopotamia.14 He was raised in a Jewish-Christian Baptist sect, which he left in order to establish a church based on his own interpretation of the Christian message. He was a prolific author and wrote a number of works, mainly in Syriac, of which only fragments or smaller quotations have survived. His disciples and later adherents, on the other hand, seem to have kept the productive pace of their founder and left extensive works which to a large extent have been preserved. Since the movement existed for more than a millennium and was spread from the Mediterranean basin to Eastern China, the Manichaean texts exist in a great variety of languages, most prominently in Coptic and Iranian, but also in Latin, Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Turkish, and Chinese. Manichaeism is known for its dualistic outlook where the principles of good and bad are clearly separated. This dualism is envisioned in the Manichaean myth describing a primordial battle between the forces of light and darkness. In the aftermath of that war the two principles were mixed, and salvation took place 13 A view also to be detected in Paul’s authentic letters, e. g. Rom 7:21–25; Gal 3:19–25. 14 For a broader introduction to Manichaeism and its history, cf. Lieu, Manichaeism; for a briefer introduction, cf. Gardner, Kephalaia, xi–xxxvi.

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by the purging of light from matter with the aim of finally separating the two in the eschaton, as it was in the beginning. The myth is rich in multiple divine and maleficent figures that operate at every cosmological level, from the highest heaven to the lowest earth. One of the tokens of Manichaeism is that many of these mythological figures not only roam the cosmos, but also move in each human being, so that Manichaeism closely relates the primordial cosmological war to current anthropological battles within the Manichaean adherent. Salvation is thought to be attained by the members of the Manichaean church who are divided into hearers and chosen ones (electi). Ever since the primordial war, light elements have been scattered throughout existence and in all living beings. The only way to separate light from matter is through the digestive system of the chosen ones whose primary soteriological task is a strict ascetic diet. This is why the hearers bring fruit and vegetables (thought to be especially rich in lightsubstance) to the chosen ones who then, through a holy meal, make sure that light particles can return from chained existence on earth to freed existence in heaven.

4.

The Old and New Human Being in Manichaeism

The Coptic Manichaean texts that attest the Pauline double notion are the PsalmBook (Part II) and the Kephalaia (from Berlin).15 None of the hitherto edited psalms from the Manichaean Psalm-Book has the ‘old/new human being’ as a central theme, but the concept is mentioned briefly in nine passages. In the Kephalaia (i. e. “Chapters” or “Main Points” viz. of Mani’s teaching), on the other hand, the notion occurs in eleven kephalaia and in a more elaborated form.16 Two of the kephalaia even have this concept as their central theme. The first one, kephalaion 136, is entitled: “On the birth of the two human beings: [In] which manner the new human being (ⲡⲣⲙⲛⲃⲣⲣⲉ = ὁ νὲος/καινὸς 15 Both texts belong to the Coptic Medinet Madi find and have only been partially edited: As for the Psalm-Book Part II, cf. Allberry, Psalm-Book; Wurst, Psalm Book; Richter, Psalm Book. As for the Berlin Kephalaia, cf. Polotsky/Böhlig, Kephalaia; Böhlig, Kephalaia; Funk, Kephalaia (Lief. 13/14 and 15/16). Of the remaining Medinet Madi texts only the Manichaean Homilies have been fully edited, cf. Polotsky, Manichäische; Pedersen, Manichaean, whereas the rest of the texts still awaits publication: The Psalm-Book Part I, the Dublin Kephalaia, some Letters of Mani, excerpts from his Living Gospel, a historical work, and leaves not yet identified. The Coptic Kellis material has recently been fully edited according to the Documentary Texts, cf. Gardner et al., Documentary (Vol. 1 and 2), and the Literary Texts, cf. Gardner, Literary (Vol. 1 and 2), but neither does the Manichaean Kellis find attest our Pauline concept. 16 Each kephalaion bears a number and a title, and is presented in a setting where Mani either gives a teaching on his own or answers questions posed by one or a group of his disciples. Many scholars consider this setting to be authentic (third century), but caution is called for here since the Kephalaia is authored a century later, at least, and probably mirrors a later and more developed form of Manichaeism, cf. Pedersen, Alexander, 574–75.

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ἄνθρωπος) the old human being (ⲡⲣⲙⲛⲉⲥ = ὁ παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπος) are born” ˙˙ (Kephalaia [136] 337,11–13).17 Unfortunately the text is severely damaged and the concept does not seem to appear again. But we hear that there are two different births, one of flesh, another of spirit.18 People of the two kinds of birth are said to be in need of “a nourisher” (ⲟⲩⲣⲉϥⲥⲁⲛⲉϣ), both in regard to the physical birth, probably meaning maternal care, as well as the spiritual birth (337,17–[25]), probably the care of a Manichaean teacher.19 The other kephalaion that focuses on the Pauline concept is number 146 entitled: “The old human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛ¯ ⲉⲥ) has five meals he lives from, the [new] human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ [ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ]) has five others” (Kephalaia [146] 348,28–30).20 We ˙ know that the Manichaean electi had ritual meals, but here the five meals are presented metaphorically as part of their religious practice.21 Even if the text is lacunous and “the new human being” is absent in the extant text, the context suggests that these five meals apply to that human being. Counter to the holy meals is the food of “the old human being” (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛ¯ ⲉⲥ),22 i. e. five meals that characterise the behaviour of those who prefer the material world instead of the Manichaean alternative.23 These two kephalaia shed light on Manichaeism in general and not on the specific Manichaean use of the deutero-Pauline concept. However, often the Manichaeans repeat what is said in Colossians and Ephesians: “[Greetin]gs, O Resurrection of the dead, New Aeon of [so]uls which has stripped us of the old human being (ⲡⲣⲙⲛ¯ ⲉⲥ) and [pu]t upon us the new human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ)” (Psalm-Book 25,12–14).24 As in the Pauline letters, the old human being is here put off and the new human is put on. 17 Translated from the Coptic text in Funk, Kephalaia (Lief. 13/14), 337. 18 Possibly the Pauline concept here is interpreted with an allusion to John 3:3–8. 19 It is not entirely clear in the context (due to destroyed text), but those of a spiritual birth may depend on “a true [and per]fect teacher” (ⲟⲩⲥⲁϩ ⲙⲙⲏ[ⲉ] ⲉ[ϥϫ]ⲏⲕ), most likely a Manichaean ˙ teacher, whereas those of fleshly birth (i. e. without the spirit) may depend on “the evil and useless teacher” (ⲡⲥⲁϩ ⲉⲧϩⲁⲩ ⲙ¯ⲡⲟⲛ[ⲏ]ⲣ[ⲟ]ⲥ), cf. Kephalaia 338,8–[13]; translated from the Coptic text in Funk, Kephalaia (Lief. 13/14), 337–38. The teachers (Coptic ⲛ¯ ⲥⲁϩ, Greek διδασκάλοι, Latin magistri) was in Mani’s church aligned with the apostles and thus possessed one of the highest ranking positions in the hierarchy, cf. Lieu, Manichaeism, 27. 20 Translated from the Coptic text in Funk, Kephalaia (Lief. 13/14), 348. 21 The “holy meals” (ⲧⲣⲟⲫⲏ ⲉⲩⲟⲩⲁⲃⲉ) consist of [1] “spirit” (ⲡⲛⲉⲩⲙⲁ), [2] “prayer” (ϣⲗⲏⲗ), [3] ˙ ˙ book” (ⲟⲩϫⲱⲙⲉ ⲉϥⲟⲩⲁⲃⲉ) “joy” (ⲧⲉⲗⲏⲗ), [4] “preaching” (ⲧⲁϣⲉⲁⲓ¨ϣ), and [5] reading ˙“a holy ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ (349,1–19); translated from the Coptic text in Funk, Kephalaia (Lief. 13/14), 349. 22 The old human being is mentioned explicitly in 349,26 and 350,5 but, again, in damaged sections. 23 “The five meals of matter” (ⲧⲣⲟⲫⲏ ⲛ¯ ⲧⲉ ϩⲩⲗⲏ) consist of [1] “all speculation of the world” (ⲑⲉⲱⲣⲓⲁ ⲛⲓⲙ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡⲕ[ⲟ]ⲥⲙⲟⲥ), [2] “evil company” (ϩⲟⲙⲓⲗⲓⲁ ⲉⲧϩⲁⲩ), [3] “the ple[asa]nt thing” ˙ (unreadable), ˙˙ (ⲡϩⲱⲃ ⲉⲧⲁⲛ[ⲓ]ⲧ), [4] and [5] “the lust of intercourse” (ⲉⲡⲓⲑⲩⲙⲓⲁ ⲛ¯ ⲧⲥⲩⲛⲟⲩⲥⲓⲁ) ˙˙ (349,24–350,4); translated from the Coptic text in Funk, Kephalaia (Lief. 13/14), 349–50. 24 Translated from the Coptic text in Wurst, Psalm Book, 70.

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We noted earlier that Ephesians (2:14–15) promoted the Pauline concept with an accompanying critical view of the Mosaic law of commandments (νόμος τῶν ἐντολῶν), which can be confirmed in both the Psalm-Book and the Kephalaia. [When] you (= Mani) came to [human]kind, [you an]nulled [the com]mandments ([ⲉⲛ]ⲧⲟⲗⲁⲩⲉ) which the old human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛ¯ ⲉⲥ) […] of the earth (Psalm-Book 3,30– 32).25 The fourth night is the law (ⲛⲟⲙⲟⲥ) of [sin] (…). (Matter) is being formed and is shown in the old human being (ⲡⲣ︤ⲙ︥ⲛⲉⲥ), but also the hours of this [fou]rth night which is the old human being (ⲡⲣⲙⲛⲉⲥ), who rules in the sects, are the [tw]elve [evi]l spirits (Kephalaia [4] 27,13–20).26

In the first quotation, “the old human being” is associated with a negative view of “[the com]mandments”, which may refer to the Jewish law, and which is said to be “[an]nulled” by the Manichaean message. The combination of the concept of the old human being and a critical view of the law is also present in the quotation from the Kephalaia which allows Mani to bring teachings that use the figurative language of ‘four (good) days’ and ‘four (evil) nights’ to explain aspects of Manichaean mythology.27 Thus the present passage about the fourth night is linked to a Pauline-inspired negative view of the law: “The fourth night is the law (ⲛⲟⲙⲟⲥ) of [sin]”. In what follows the twelve hours of the fourth night are explained as being twelve erroneous teachings, i. e. sects, which correspond to the Zodiac of Matter. Even though there are some lacunae, it is readable that matter “is being formed and is shown in the old human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛⲉⲥ)” (28,17–18). The text then continues, saying: “but also the hours of this [fou]rth night which is the old human being (ⲡⲣⲙⲛⲉⲥ), who rules in the sects, are the [tw]elve [evi]l spirits”. Thus the text identifies “this [fou]rth night”, “the law of [sin]”, and “the old human being”. Even if Mani were critical towards the Jewish law, he still was a founder of a new branch of the Christian religion (with its Jewish roots) and therefore it also became necessary for him to act as law-giver for his own adherents, issuing commandments as the following passages indicates. He, the physician of souls, is the Light-Mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲛ¯ ⲟⲩⲁⲓ¨ⲛⲉ). He i[s the] new human being ([ⲡ]ⲣⲙ¯ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ), the burning medicines are the command[ments] (ⲉⲛⲧⲟⲗⲁ[ⲩⲉ]) ˙˙ ˙˙˙˙ (Psalm-Book 40,13–14).28

25 Translated from the Coptic text in Wurst, Psalm Book, 26. 26 Translated from the Coptic text in Polotsky/Böhlig, Kephalaia, 27. 27 Kephalaion 4 is entitled: “On the Four great Days th[at have] come forth from one another; together with the Four Nights” (Kephalaia 25,7–8); translation from Gardner, Kephalaia, 28. 28 Translated from the Coptic text in Wurst, Psalm Book, 98–100.

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Strip yourself of the world, despise the […], leave father and mother, leave brother and sister, subdue the old human being (ⲡⲣ︤ⲙ︥ⲛⲉⲥ), build the new human being (ⲡⲣ︤ⲙ︥ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ), fulfil your commandments (ⲉⲛⲧⲟⲗⲁⲩⲉ) (Psalm-Book 167,49–56).29

In the first quotation from the Psalm-Book we learn that one of the primary gods, “the Light-Mind”, is identical with “the physician” and “[the] new human being”. The doctor’s “medicines” are here said to be “the command[ments]”, which clearly are presented positively.30 In the second quotation, “the world” with family ties (“father and mother” and “brother and sister”) and “the old human being” are said to be left behind in order to “build the new human being” instead and “fulfil your commandments”.31 This building up of the new human being could refer to the process of establishing the Manichaean church which, then, brings us close to Ephesians (2:15–16) where the new human being was presented as the “one body” (= ἐκκλησία) of Christ. Another passage of the Psalm-Book strengthens such an assumption. Holy heart[s], holy minds (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ), may we buil[d into] a church (ⲉⲕⲕⲗⲏⲥⲓⲁ). We weave. A new king comes, may we build also a ne[w] house. We weave. [The] new house is the new human being (ⲡⲣ︤ⲙ︥ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ), the new king is the Light-Mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲛ¯ ⲟⲩⲁⲓ¨ⲛⲉ). We weave ˙ (Psalm-Book 153,16–21).32

What is built here is “a church” which seemingly is “a ne[w] house” identical with “the new human being”, thus pointing to this human being as the church. The leader (“king”) of this church/house is “the Light-Mind”. Even if it can be argued that the new human being here is used ecclesiologically, other witnesses stress the fact that the new human being is only a part of that church. [O M]ind ([ⲛ]ⲟⲩⲥ) that subdues matter, spread your mercy upon my spirit. I will anchor in your church (ⲥⲁⲩϩ︤ⲥ︥ = ἐκκλησία) – I, the [ne]w human being (ⲣ︤ⲙ︥ⲛ¯ [ⲃⲣⲣ]ⲉ) – and receive ˙ ˙

29 Translation, mod., and Coptic text from Allberry, Psalm-Book, 167. 30 In a related passage the Light-Mind again seems to function as a physician: “Let us not hide our sickness from him (= the Light-Mind) – and leave the cancer in our members (ⲙⲉⲗⲟⲥ) – the fair and mighty image (ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ) of [the] new human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ), so that it destroys it” (Psalm-Book 46,16–18); translated from the Coptic text in Wurst, Psalm Book, 112. 31 Another psalm even differntiates between the physical family and the spiritual one (i. e. church members): “I left my parents of the flesh because of my true parents. Do not (forsake me). I left my brothers of the body because of my brothers of the spirit […]. Behold, I have been far away from them. Do not (forsake me). […] I have despised them. Do not (forsake me). As for the labours of the new human being (ⲡⲣ︤ⲙ︥ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ), behold, I have passed over them. D[o not] (forsake me)” (Psalm-Book 87,29–88,1); translation, mod., and Coptic text from Allberry, Psalm-Book, 87–88. The refrain, “Do not (forsake me)”, is found in its plene form earlier in the psalm, cf. 87,18–19, 21, 23. 32 Translation, mod., and Coptic text from Allberry, Psalm-Book, 153. The shortened refrain, “We weave”, refers to the first two lines of the psalm: “we weave a royal garland and give it to all the holy ones” (157,8–9); translation from Allberry, ibid.

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all the gifts you have promised [me], the victory in your eternal kingdom (Psalm-Book 59,11–14).33

The Light-Mind is found again, here in an abbreviated form as “[M]ind”. Above we saw that the Light-Mind could equal the new human being (cf. Psalm-Book 40,13–14), but usually he is its helper, companion, and redemptive principle as envisioned in the following two kephalaia. This is also the case with the body (ⲥⲱⲙⲁ) that the chosen ones wear. There are another five camps there, and the Light-Mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲛ¯ ⲟⲩⲁⲓ¨ⲛⲉ) is watching over them together with the new human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ) who is with him (Kephalaia [70] 172,1–4).34 ˙ When they (= the light elements) enter the body (ⲥⲱⲙⲁ), they are cleansed and purified and established in their living image (ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ) which is the new human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ). They shall live […] and receive the Light-Mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲛⲟⲩⲁⲓ¨ⲛⲉ) and be purified in their image (ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ); and they come forth, being cleansed and holy (Kephalaia [94] 240,2– 6).35

Both kephalaia are concerned with the human body which, in the first kephalaion, is imagined as consisting of military camps that ultimately are protected by “the Light-Mind” and “the new human being” together. In the second kephalaion, the light elements to be liberated are “established in their living image which is the new human being”, where the Light-Mind comes to function as the one who ensures that the elements are prepared for salvation as “purified (…) cleansed and holy”.36 That the light elements, as the new human being, are formed and purified in a “living image (ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ)” could relate to Colossians where we heard about “the new (human being) which is renewed in knowledge according the image (ει᾿κόνα) of he who created it” (Col 3:10). In fact, the Manichaeans do not only operate with one image but with three. [The fi]rst is the [s]piritual image (ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ), which [is] the new human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛⲃⲣⲣⲉ) that the Light-Mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲛ¯ ⲟⲩⲁⲓ¨ⲛⲉ) forms in him, and it goes [i]nto him and dwells in him. The second image (ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ) is [the] remnant and remainder of the new human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛⲃ¯ⲣⲣⲉ), which is the soul-endowed image (ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ) that is bound in the flesh, since

33 Translation, mod., and Coptic text from Allberry, Psalm-Book, 59. 34 Translation, mod., from Gardner, Kephalaia, 181; Coptic text from P˙olotsky/Böhlig, Kephalaia, 172. 35 Translation, mod., from Gardner, Kephalaia, 246; Coptic text from Böhlig, Kephalaia, 240. 36 The Light-Mind as purifier is found in two other kephalaia: “[The] Light-[Mind] ([ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲛ]ⲟⲩⲁⲓ¨ⲛⲉ) puts the five signs in the new human being (ⲡⲣⲙⲛⲃⲣⲣⲉ), [whom he has] purified, cleansed, supported, and [chos]en” (Kephalaia [103] 257,28–30); translation, mod., from Gardner, Kephalaia, 262; Coptic text from Böhlig, Kephalaia, 257. “The soul that assumes the body (ⲥⲱⲙⲁ) when the Light-Mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲛ¯ ⲟⲩⲁⲓ¨ⲛⲉ) will come to it, shall be purified by the power of wisdom and obedience, and it is cleansed and made a new human being (ⲟⲩⲣⲙⲛⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ)” (Kephalaia [86] 215,1–4); translation, mod., from Gardner, Kephalaia, 222–23; Coptic text from Böhlig, Kephalaia, 215.

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the old human being (ⲡⲣⲙⲛⲉⲥ) […]. (…) The other one is the [bodi]ly image (ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ [ⲥⲱⲙⲁ]ⲧⲓⲕⲟⲛ) that is added to them all (Kephalaia [114] 269,19–25).37

The “[s]piritual image” clearly is the same as the above-mentioned “living image” (Kephalaia [94] 240,4) since both are identical with “the new human being” and also formed by “the Light-Mind”.38 The second and “soul-endowed image” is called “[the] remnant and remainder of the new human being” and additionally associated with “flesh” and “the old human being”, even if the exact context disappears in a damaged line. The last of the three is “the [bodi]ly image” which refers to the human body that most likely contains the two other images.39 It is not the physical body as such that causes trouble for the Manichaeans, but mainly sinful flesh and its affiliation with the old human being, which also is the case earlier in the Kephalaia: “For when quarrelling will arise among the holy ones (= the electi) […] since the old human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛⲉⲥ) too dwells in their [b]ody ([ⲥ]ⲱⲙⲁ)” (Kephalaia [88] 221,13–15).40 Even the highest ranking persons in the Manichaean church (“the holy ones”) suffer from his influence. The most detailed discourse on this problem is found in kephalaion 38 which is entitled: “On the Light-Mind (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲛ¯ ⲟⲩⲁⲓ¨ⲛⲉ), the apostles, and the holy ones” (Kephalaia [38] 89,19–20).41 This long kephalaion mainly focuses on the Light-Mind, but also on how this divinity helps the Manichaeans to suppress the evil inclination of the old human being within the body. The text commences with a disciple who confronts Mani with the following predicament: You have also told us that when he (= the Light-Mind) enters [the body (ⲥⲱⲙⲁ) of] flesh and binds the ol[d human] being (ⲡⲣ[ⲙⲛ]ⲉⲥ) with his five counsels, he [se]ts his five

37 Translation, mod., from Gardner, Kephalaia, 275; Coptic text from Böhlig, Kephalaia, 269. 38 The Light-Mind is even said to be “the fair and mighty image (ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ) of [the] new human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ)” (Psalm-Book 46,18); translated from the Coptic text in Wurst, Psalm Book, 112. The spiritual image also seems referred to later on in the Psalm-Book: “Guide my new human being (ⲣ︤ⲙ︥ⲛ¯ ⲃⲣ¯ⲣⲉ) who b[ears the] honoured image (ϣⲓⲥⲙⲉ)” (Psalm-Book 150,29); translated from the Coptic text in Allberry, Psalm-Book, 150. The lexical meaning of ϣⲓⲥⲙⲉ is not exactly “image”, but “statue, idol”, cf. Crum, Coptic, 589b. However, since Crum (ibid.) also attests a close semantic parallel with ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ (ει᾿κών) the present translation is justified. 39 In kephalaion 141 we learn that two human beings exist within the human body and are only separated at death when they leave the body, and both then receive their own judgement: “So, when the new human being (ⲡⲣⲙⲛⲃⲣⲣⲉ) leav[es] the body (ⲥⲱⲙⲁ), the old human being (ⲡⲣⲙⲛⲉⲥ) goes out too […] while he separates himself from the new human being and to[gether with him] he appears before the Judge” (Kephalaia 344,18–21); translated from the Coptic text in Funk, Kephalaia (Lief. 13/14), 344. 40 Translation, mod., from Gardner, Kephalaia, 228; Coptic text from P˙olotsky/Böhlig, Kephalaia, 221. Also kephalaion 138 touches upon the subject since the Living Soul (i. e. the lightsubstance) co-exists in the sinful body with the old human being (341,1–6), and only by means of the salvific teaching of the Light-Mind is the Living Soul enabled to escape the old human being’s evil clutches (341,11–24). 41 Translated from the the Coptic text in Polotsky/Böhlig, Kephalaia, 89.

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[coun]sels upon him in the five limbs (ⲙⲉⲗⲟⲥ) [of his] body (ⲥⲱⲙⲁ). [So], now, where is he? – since the old human being (ⲡⲣⲙ¯ⲛⲉⲥ) is chained in the body (ⲥⲱⲙⲁ), for I see that ˙ rebellions arise there despite his bondage, from ti[me] to time (Kephalaia [38] 89,25– 42 31).

In Mani’s answer we learn that the Light-Mind is the one who frees and purifies both the five fleshly limbs of the physical body and the five limbs of the human soul, where the latter limbs become the new human being in the purification process (96,7–97,19). And Mani confirms, by detailed examples, that even if freedom and purification are gained, sin and bad behaviour are still potential dangers for any member of his church (97,26–99,17). Again the Light-Mind is the one who saves the Manichaeans from the pitfalls of sin.

5.

Conclusion

Even though the Greek and Coptic sources of Manichaeism never quote the passages in Colossians (3:9–10) and Ephesians (2:14–16; 4:22–25) with ‘the old/ new human being’, we can be sure that the Manichaeans alluded to the Pauline notion and reused it at length. The Manichaean Psalm-Book and the Kephalaia attest knowledge of the deutero-Pauline concept and its affiliation with bad/good behaviour, clothing metaphors, the negative view of the Jewish law, and an ecclesiological use of ‘the new human being’. Among Manichaeans, though, the primary use of the old/new human being is clearly the anthropological one: Their widespread use of ‘body’ and its ‘limbs’ is, in our context, never envisioned ecclesiologically (as is the case in the Pauline letters), but only in relation to human physical and soul-endowed nature. They transcend the Pauline notion of the divine “image” (ει᾿κών/ϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ) by applying it to a tripartite understanding that corresponds to the spiritual, the soul-endowed, and the bodily nature. Finally, the deutero-Pauline invitation to “be renewed in the spirit of your mind (νοὸς) and put on the new human being” (Eph 4:23–24a) is taken seriously by Mani and his adherents since “mind” (νοῦς/ⲛⲟⲩⲥ) plays an important role in Manichaean anthropology and theology. The “mind” (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ) is the most prominent member (“limb”) of the human soul, and the “Light-Mind” (ⲛⲟⲩⲥ ⲛⲟⲩⲁⲓ¨ⲛⲉ) the most prominent of the divinities in the Manichaean pantheon in passages where the old/new human being occurs. Mani’s invention of this god may be indebted to his own interpretation of Eph 4:23–24a, since there is evidence that he understands the human mind as identical with the Light-Mind.43 42 Translation, mod., from Gardner, Kephalaia, 94–95; Coptic text from Polotsky/Böhlig, Kephalaia, 89. 43 E. g. in Mani’s Seventh Letter to Ctesiphon, where the superior limb of the human soul is

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Bibliography Aland, B. et al. (eds.), Novum Testamentum Graece, 28. revidierte Auflage. Herausgegeben vom Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung Münster/Westfalen unter der Leitung von Holger Strutwolf, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft 2012. Allberry, C.R.C., A Manichaean Psalm-Book, Part II (Manichaean Manuscripts in the Chester Beatty Collection 2), W. Kohlhammer 1938. Böhlig, A., Kephalaia, zweite Hälfte, Lieferung 11/12 (Seite 244–291) (Manichäische Handschriften der staatlichen Museen zu Berlin), W. Kohlhammer 1966. –, Die Bibel bei den Manichäern und verwandte Studien (NHMS 80), ed. by P. Nagel/S. Richter, Brill 2013 [1947]. Crum, W.E., A Coptic Dictionary: Compiled with the Help of Many Scholars, Oxford at the Clarendon Press 1939. de Boer, M.C., Paul’s Mythologizing Program in Romans 5–8, in: B.R. Gaventa (ed.), Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropology in Romans 5–8, Baylor University Press 2013, 1–20. Funk, W.-P., Kephalaia I, zweite Hälfte, Lieferung 13/14 (Manichäische Handschriften der staatlichen Museen zu Berlin), W. Kohlhammer 1999. –, Kephalaia I, zweite Hälfte, Lieferung 15/16 (Manichäische Handschriften der staatlichen Museen zu Berlin), W. Kohlhammer 2000. Gardner, I., The Kephalaia of the Teacher: The Edited Coptic Manichaean Texts in Translation with Commentary (NHMS 37), E.J. Brill 1995. –, Kellis Literary Texts, Volume 1 (Dakhleh Oasis Project Monograph 4; Oxbow Monograph 69), Oxbow Books 1996. –, Kellis Literary Texts, Volume 2 (Dakhleh Oasis Project Monograph 15), Oxbow Books 2007. –, Mani’s Letter to Marcellus: Fact and Fiction in the Acta Archelai Revisited, in: J. BeDuhn/P. Mirecki (eds.), Frontiers of Faith: The Christian Encounter with Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus (NHMS 61), Brill 2007, 33–48. – et al. (eds.), Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis, Volume 1: P. Kell. V (P. Kell. Copt. 10–52; O. Kell. Copt. 1–2) (Dakhleh Oasis Project Monograph 9), Oxbow Books 1999. – et al. (eds.), Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis, Volume 2: P. Kell. VII (P. Kellis Copt. 57–131) (Dakhleh Oasis Project Monograph 16), Oxbow Books 2014. Jewett, R., Romans: A Commentary (Hermeneia), Fortress Press 2007. Klimkeit, H.-J., Die manichäische Lehre vom alten und neuen Menschen, in: G. Wießner/ H.-J. Klimkeit (eds.), Studia Manichaica: II. Internationaler Kongreβ zum Manichaismus, 6.–10. August 1989, St. Augustin/Bonn (SOR 23), Harrassowitz 1992, 131– 150. Lieu, S.N.C., Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China. 2. edition, revised and expanded (WUNT 63), J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) 1992.

labelled “Light-Mind” instead of mind, cf. Pettipiece (Manichaean, 306, esp. n. 14) who quotes the epistle.

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Pedersen, N.A., Manichaean Homilies: With a number of hitherto unpublished fragments (CFM, Series Coptica II), Brepols 2006. – et al., Biblia Manichaica I–III, Brepols 2017–18 (forthcoming). –, [Review of] Alexander Böhlig, Die Bibel bei den Manichäern und verwandte Studien. Herausgegeben von Peter Nagel & Siegfried Richter (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 80), Leiden-Boston: Brill 2013, Vigiliae Christianae 68 (2014) 572–577. Pettipiece, T., The Manichaean Reception of Apocryphal Traditions: The Case of the “Five Limbs”, in: P. Piovanelli et al. (eds.), Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent: New Perspectives on Early Christian and Late Antique Apocryphal Texts and Traditions (WUNT 349), Mohr Siebeck 2015, 303–313. Polotsky, H.J., Manichäische Homilien (Manichäische Handschriften der Sammlung A. Chester Beatty 1), W. Kohlhammer 1934. – /A. Böhlig, Kephalaia, 1. Hälfte (Lieferung 1–10), mit einem Beitrag von Hugo Ibscher (Manichäische Handschriften der staatlichen Museen zu Berlin), W. Kohlhammer 1940. Richter, S.G., Psalm Book, Part II, Fasc. 2: Die Herakleides-Psalmen (CFM, Series Coptica I), Brepols 1998. Schmidt, C./H.J. Polotsky, Ein Mani-Fund in Ägypten. Originalschriften des Mani und seiner Schüler, in: Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Phil.-Hist. Klasse 1, Akademie der Wissenschaften, in Kommission bei Walter de Gruyter 1933, 4–90. van Oort, J., God, Memory and Beauty: A ‘Manichaean’ Analysis of Augustine’s Confessions, Book 10,1–38, in: J. van Oort (ed.), Augustine and Manichaean Christianity: Selected Papers from the First South African Conference on Augustine of Hippo, University of Pretoria, 24–26 April 2012, Brill 2013, 155–175. Waldschmidt, E./W. Lentz, Die Stellung Jesu im Manichäismus (APAW.PH 1926, no. 4), Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, in Kommission bei Walter de Gruyter 1926. Wurst, G., Psalm Book, Part II, Fasc. 1: Die Bema-Psalmen (CFM, Series Coptica I), Brepols 1996.

2. Anthropology in Christian History and Culture: Systematic and Ethical Perspectives

Svend Andersen

The Golden Rule: An Anthropological Universal?1

The idea of an ethical principle of universal, trans-cultural validity does not seem to be of good standing. Rather, the opposite view is widespread: moral and ethical norms are historically changeable and variable according to cultural context. However, if we cast a glance back to the tradition of European thinking, things looked different: the doctrine of natural law (lex naturalis) was commonplace for centuries, implying the idea of human nature as the basis for universal ethicolegal normativity. In this article I will briefly sketch the formation of the doctrine of natural law and particularly its formulation as the Golden Rule in western, Christian thinking. Then I will look more thoroughly at Martin Luther’s reformation of the doctrine. And finally, after the presentation of some philosophical interpretations of the Golden Rule, I will present the congenial transformation of a Golden Rule ethics by the Danish philosopher and theologian Knud E. Løgstrup (1905–1981). His view will be discussed in comparison with the one put forward by Paul Ricoeur.

1.

The Historical Background

A strong line in European thinking about ethics is the idea that natural law – the fundamental ethical principle(s) founded in universal human nature – can be summarized in the Golden Rule: “Do to others what you want others to do to you!” In Jewish thinking the Golden Rule appears in the discussion about whether or not the many prescriptions in the Torah of the Hebrew Bible can be summarized in one rule or principle. Hence, the ground was prepared for similar considerations among the earliest Christian theologians. The idea of the Golden Rule as a summary of natural law can be seen if we combine two passages in the New Testament. The first is Paul’s letter to the Romans in which we read: “For when 1 Thanks to Robert Stern for linguistic improvement of the text and useful comments.

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the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves” (Rom 2:14). By ‘law’ (νόμος) Paul means the Torah of the Hebrew Bible, and so his claim is that non-Jews who do not have the Torah, nevertheless have a kind of natural knowledge of the same content as the Torah. The second passage is in the Gospel of Matthew: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to others: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt 7:12. Cf. Luke 6:31). Jesus here seems to claim that the whole body of moral (and legal) norms in the Hebrew Bible can be summarized in the Golden Rule. If we combine this with Paul’s statement it seems a reasonable assumption that ‘the gentiles’ by nature have knowledge of the Golden Rule as the basic ethical norm. This assumption was formulated by several of the church fathers, and one of the most precise is probably due to Origen: It is certain that the Gentiles who do not have the law are not being said to do naturally the things of the law in respect of the Sabbath days, the new moon celebrations, or the sacrifices written about in the law. For it was not that law which is said to be written in the heart of the Gentiles. The reference is instead to what they are able to perceive by nature (quod sentire naturaliter possunt), for instance that they should not commit murder or adultery, they ought not steal, they should not speak falsely, they should honor father and mother, and the like … And yet it seems to me that the things which are said to be written in their heart agree with the evangelical laws, where everything is ascribed to natural justice (ad naturalem aequitatem). For what could be nearer to the natural moral senses (naturalibus sensibus) than that those things men do not want done to them, they should not do to others (quae nolunt sibi fieri homines, haec ne faciant aliis). Natural law (lex naturalis) is able to agree with the law of Moses according to the spirit but not according to the letter.2

A perspicacious treatment of the Golden Rule is given by Augustine, who in his explanation of Psalm 57 specifies what people actually expect or do not expect from others: that others will not approach one’s wife, and that one will not be robbed or otherwise injured by them. And then Augustine asks: “Come now, tell me: if you do not want to be treated like that, do you think you are the only person who matters?” I take this to mean that humans have in common certain basic positive or negative expectations towards others. We could call this the universal expectations view. Furthermore, Augustine claims that it is unjustified to believe that one is entitled to special treatment for oneself. This we could call the identity or equality claim. And finally he gives another remarkable interpretation of the 2 Commentarius in Epistulam ad Romanos, II,9, Migne, Patroliga series graeca, Paris, 14, 892; English translation by Thomas Scheck, Washington D.C. The quotation is from dy Roy Golden Rule, 89–90. This brilliant article has now been widely expanded in the author’s two-volume book La regle d’or (2012).

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Golden Rule: in connection with an example of a stranger, of whom nobody takes care, he says: “You perhaps are insensitive to it; but you should imagine yourself in the same situation …”.3 For my purposes it is not necessary to mention more examples of Golden Rule thinking in the Patristic and Scholastic periods. It suffices to refer to de Roy’s remark that the Golden Rule tradition “suffer[ed] at the hands of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, who vigorously disparaged this interpersonal conception of natural law in favour of a philosophy of Good”.4 Du Roy here presupposes a clear difference between an Aristotelian-Thomist teleological natural law ethics of the good life for the individual, and an ethics founded in the interpersonal character of human life. The fact that classical natural law thinking has by and large been associated with Aquinas may be part of the reason why the Golden Rule version has largely been ignored.

2.

Luther

Luther not only endorses the Golden Rule as a summary of Natural Law, but in the core doctrine of his theology – justification by faith – we find a structure that resembles that of the Golden Rule.5 I would characterize it as the structure of role exchange. Luther teases out this structure more precisely in his exposition of the Philippians hymn in Sermo de duplici iustitia: [He] made himself (…) the servant of all, and did not act in a way different from the case that all our evils were his. Therefore, he took our sins and punishments upon himself and used his power to conquer them, as if it were for himself, although he defeated them for us.6

In another text, Luther explicitly states that Christ, in saving sinners, follows the Golden Rule as formulated Matthew 7:12. Now, as Christ is actually not a sinner himself, he cannot want others to save him. Therefore, Luther explains the content of the Golden Rule in a special way. First, he states that everybody (yderman) wants it to be the case that another would free him/her from sin, death and hell. So Christ does to sinners what everybody wants – except for himself! This brings Luther to the second explanation: 3 Again the quotation is from du Roy, Rule, 91–92. 4 Du Roy, Rule, 93. 5 In the present section on Luther I reuse parts of Andersen Lutheran Political. – A comprehensive study of the Golden Rule in Luther’s early thinking is Raunio Summe. See also du Roy La règle d’or, 425–455. 6 “[C]um esset liber (…) omnium se servum fecit, non aliter agens quam si sua essent omnia ista mala, que nostra erant. Itaque super sese accepit peccata nostra et penas nostras, et egit ut vinceret ea tanquam sibiipsi, cum tamen nobis ea vinceret” (WA 2, 148).

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If Christ himself were included in [the fate of] death, sin and hell as we are, he would also have wanted that somebody would free him, take his sin from him and give him a good conscience. Because he would have the same done to him, he gets to work and does the same to the others.7

Christ so to speak follows the Golden Rule in a hypothetical sense. The exchange that thus takes place when Christ saves ( justifies) the believer should be repeated when the believer relates to his or her neighbor: “[Everybody] should act toward his neighbor with a mind as if the neighbor’s weakness, sin and stupidity were his own …”.8 What Luther describes here, however, is not Natural Law, but rather the very connection between accepting the gift of Christ with justifying faith – and practicing neighbor love. In other words: we have here the essence of Luther’s Christian ethics. As a justified sinner the Christian has justice, but he/she should not take pride of his/her justice in relation to his/her neighbor, but rather act towards him as a servant. Against this Christian way of acting, nature according to Luther offers resistance: it feels pride over its own justice and takes up a riumphant attitude towards the neighbor’s unrighteousness. In his commentaries on Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, Luther unfolds this thought. Real neighbor love follows from grace and faith alone, but nature imitates grace in its way of acting towards one’s neighbor. However, this is only possible until this natural way of acting reaches the cross, i. e. hardship. Nature only loves as long as no harm is done to it. It stays with the external and does not really love the neighbor, but rather his goods. “The cross is the touchstone of love” (Itaque crux est probatio et lydius quod aiunt lapis charitatis).9 In the Large Commentary Luther – explaining the same verse: 5:14 – admits that humans have a natural knowledge of the love-commandment. However, owing to Satan, human reason, the seat of this knowledge, is “perverted and blind” (corrupta et caeca est vitio diaboli humana ratio).10 This is “the opposite of the love that does not seek its own good but rather the good of the neighbor”. And then Luther makes the following statement: One should feel pain if the case of one’s neighbor is not better than one’s own and wish that it should be better than one’s own, with a joy not lesser than the one with which one

7 “Und wen Christus selbs mit todt, sund und helle, wie wyr, umbfangen were, ßo wurde er auch wollen, das yhm yemandt erauß hulffe, seyne sund von yhm nehme und yhm eyn gut gewissen machet; darumb weyl er dasselbige wollt von andernn yhm gethan haben, ßo feret er tzu unnd thutt auch dasselbige den andern…” (WA 10/I.2, 42–44). 8 “[A]gat cum proximo suo eo affectu, quasi sua sit propria infirmitas, peccatum, stilticia proximi …” (WA 2, 148–149). 9 WA 2, 579. 10 WA 40/II, 66.

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feels joy because one’s own case is better: this namely says the law and the prophets (Matt 7:12).11

Here Luther explicitly refers to the Golden Rule, but writing here he cannot regard it as a summary of Natural Law. As indicated, Luther often simply identifies the Golden Rule with the neighbor love commandment in its genuinely Christian sense. Thus, in the Large Catechism he states that Christ summarizes all commandments concerning the neighbor in the Golden Rule (WA 30/I, 173). And in the first Commentary on Galatians he equates Christian neighbor love with the Golden Rule: Thus, this written law: “Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself” says perfectly the same as the law of nature: “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you” (for that is the same as to “love oneself”) “do ye even so to them” (that is the same as “like oneself, so also love the others” – that should be clear).12

In order to understand the relationship between Christian neighbor love and ‘naturally’ following the Golden Rule, it is important to see what exactly neighbor love means according to Luther. We have already learned the answer from the Sermon on Double Justice, and it is confirmed in the Commentary of Galatians (1519): “Love means out of one’s heart to wish good for the other, or seek another’s wealth”.13 The passaged quoted thus far demonstrate, I think, that we need to distinguish between two elements in the Golden Rule. What Luther here emphasises is what one could call (1) the identity-aspect: I should feel the same joy over the other’s situation being ‘better’ as I would feel if my own situation were better. The other element I would call (2) the agent-perspective/attitude: in the case of genuine Christian love the agent is prepared to be happy for the other being in a better position, because Christian love is marked by humility and self-denial. Thus, Luther’s treatment of our subject is rather complex. For one thing he both equates the Golden Rule with the Christian commandment of neighbor love – and (as we shall see) regards it as a summary of Natural Law. Besides, he expresses an ambiguous view on (human) nature: it is both said to contradict Christian love – and to be able to obey the Golden Rule. Against this background a coherent line of thought would be this: There is indeed a contradiction between

11 “Debet enim dolere, quod causa proximi non est melior quam sua, et optare, ut sit melior quam sua, non minori gaudio quam quo gaudet suam esse meliorem: haec est enim lex et prophetae” (WA 2,150). 12 “Proinde haec lex scripta ‘diliges proximum tuum sicut teipsum’ prorsus idem dicit quod lex naturae ‘Quae vultis ut faciant vobis homines (hoc enim est seipsum diligere), eadem facite vos illis (hoc certe est, sicut seipsum ita diligere et alios, ut claret)’” (WA 2, 580). 13 “Diligere autem est ex animo alteri velle bonum seu quaerere quae sunt alterius” (WA 2, 604).

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‘nature’ and self-denying Christian love, but ‘nature’ is able to obey the Golden Rule in a non-Christian sense. Luther presents this, so to speak universalistic, interpretation of the Golden Rule at various places. First we should take into account his very endorsement of the idea of a natural law.14 This he manifests in his approval of Paul’s statements in Romans, not only 2:14–15, but also 1:19 (“Because that which may be known of God is manifest to them [the ungodly]; for God has shewed it unto them”). Luther describes the content of natural law in different ways. In a Sermon on John 1–2 he recognizes the possibility of natural knowledge of God, and in that connection he says: For the law of nature is known to all, all pagans know that murder, adultery, theft, swearing, lying, fraud and slander is wrong, and they were not so mad that they did not understand that there is a God, who punishes such vices.15

The implicit reference to the Decalogue which Luther makes here, he at many places spells out explicitly. Thus in Against the Heavenly Prophets he makes the famous claim that the Mosaic law is only binding to Christians in so far as it expresses natural law. And to the question why then the Decalogue is still taught he answers: “Because the natural laws are nowhere stated so fine and orderly as in Moses”.16 In the Sermon on Matthew 5–7 Luther exemplifies how we actually expect others to act towards us in certain ways, and the examples he gives are: others should not steal, not molest one’s wife, not slander. In short: “Thus go through all commandments of the second table and you will find that this is the right sum of all preaching …”.17 According to Luther, the Golden Rule is not simply identical with the Decalogue, but was rather known before the latter was revealed. This he makes clear in his interpretation of the biblical story about Cain and Abel: 14 Luther’s understanding of natural law – seeing it as summarised in the Golden Rule – differs significantly from the natural-law theory of Thomas Aquinas. Even if Aquinas mentions the Golden Rule, two other features are important: First, he thinks of natural law as a systematic body of norms with one highest selfevident principle: “the good is to be done and evil avoided” (bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum). Second, he purports a correspondence between norms derived from the first principle and “inclinationes naturales”, e. g. self-preservation. Among the more specific natural law norms Aquinas mentions “to know the truth about God” and “to live a social life” (Summa Theologiae II,I 94,2). 15 “Denn das Gesetz der natur ist jnen allen bekant, es wissen die Heiden alle, das Mord, Ehebruch, stelen, fluchen, liegen, triegen und lestern unrecht sey, und sind so toll nicht gewesen, sie haben wol verstanden, das ein Gott sey, der solche Laster strafe” (WA 46, 666). 16 “Warumb hellt und leret man denn die zehen gepot? Antwort: Darumb, das die naturlichen gesetze nyrgent so feyn, und ordenlich sind verfasset als ynn Mose” (WA 18, 81). 17 “Also gehe durch alle gepot der andern tafel, so findestu das dis sey die rechte summa aller predigt” (WA 32,495). – Luther’s connecting the Golden Rule with the last seven commandments of the Decalogue expresses a view that resembles what I above called Augustine’s universal expectations view.

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But Cain and the hypocrites do not do this. God threatens them with a spear. On the contrary, they do not humilate themselves and do not seek grace, but also threaten God with a spear. This way Cain acts here. He does not say: I did it, Lord, I killed my brother, forgive me. But he, being accused himself, turned the accusation towards God: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In what does this haughtiness result? Certainly that he himself admits that he does not care about this law: “Love your neighbor as yourself”. And similarly: “What you do not want others to do to you, that do not to others”. For this law was not only promulgated in the Decalogue, but is inscribed in the mind of all humans. Against this Cain fights. It witnesses the fact that he does not care about it, but simply despises it.18

What kind of reciprocity is demanded by the Golden Rule, according to Luther? It is not reciprocity in the sense of return or repayment. There are several, he says, who think: “I will wait, and also do what I should, if other people first have done it to me”. But, Luther emphasises, the rule requires one to act first, even if others do not follow the rule.19 As mentioned above, the reciprocity rather means role exchange: when I am about to act and consider what to do, I should put myself into the shoes of the other and imagine how I would want to be acted against, if I were the other person. This is clear even when Luther describes Christ’s saving act in terms of the Golden Rule. The way Luther represents the justifying act that faith receives can better be described as role-exchange, rather than as gift-giving. Of course an exchange of ‘something’ takes place: Christ takes upon himself the evils of humans and gives humans his own justice. But that is not all: a different exchange takes place, not of ‘something’, but of persons and situations. The same is true when it comes to Luther’s description of the Christian repeating Christ’s way of acting: give-and-take is not all; following the example of Christ implies putting oneself in the position of the other. Thus we have to distinguish between the reciprocity of gift-giving – as described by anthropologists in the wake of Marcel Mauss20 and the reciprocity of role-exchange. 18 “Sed Cain et hypocritae hoc non faciunt. Intentat eis Deus hastam. Ipsi contra non quidem humiliantur nec petunt veniam, Sed quoque hastam Deo intentant. Sicut Cain hic facit. Non dicit: Fateor, Domine, occidi Fratrem, Ignosce. Sed ipse accusandus ultro accusat Deum: ‘Nunquid ego sum custos Fratris mei?’ Hac superbia quid efficit? Nimirum, ut ultro fateatur se legem hanc nihil curare: ‘Dilige proximum tuum sicut te ipsum’. Item: ‘Quod tibi non vis fieri, alteri ne feceris’. Haec enim lex non in Decalogo primum promulgata sed omnium hominum animis inscripta est. Contra hanc Cain pugnat. Hanc se non curare, sed simpliciter contemnere testatur” (WA 42, 205). – It is interesting that Luther here treats the commandment of neighbor love as a universal norm on a par with the Golden Rule. 19 WA 32, 498. 20 As is well-known, in more contemporary discussions the Essai sur le don by the French sociologist Marcel Mauss plays an important role. On the basis of various anthropological field studies in ‘archaic’ cultures, Mauss identifies the phenomenon of gift-giving which involves three obligations: to give, to receive and to requite. As to giving, Mauss emphasises the importance of generosity, which as such differs from reciprocity in the strict sense – in spite of the obligation to requite.

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When Luther speaks of ‘natural’ humans he not only thinks of people of nonChristian religions, but also of some members of Christian societies. This line of thought Luther presents in a context where he describes the role of a Christian ruler as enforcer of the law. More precisely, as judge he must enforce the “Recht der Liebe”, the law of love which refrains from punishing evil-doers too rigorously and which compensates those who have been injured. Not all sides are willing to accept this kind of adjudication. When confronted with such stubborn parties the Christian prince-judge should make the following appeal: [N]ature teaches as love acts: that I shall do unto others as I want done to me. Therefore I cannot strip somebody in such a way, whatever my right may be, because I myself do not want to be thus stripped; rather, as I want the other to conceal his rights towards me … likewise I should refrain from my right.21

So Luther endorses the traditional theological doctrine about natural law as an ethical and legal normativity that on the one hand is founded in divine creation, but on the other hand is universally known to all humans as rational beings, and summarized in the Golden Rule. The quotation expresses an interesting relation between Christian neighbor love and acting in accordance with the Golden Rule, a relation I would describe not as full convergence, but rather as overlap. Having foreshadowed some characteristics of Luther’s understanding of the Golden Rule as a summary of natural law I will now try to collect the main elements. The Golden Rule is the manifestation of the one law, originated in God, as shaped by the fallen status of human beings. It is universal as it is inscribed in the hearts of all human beings as creatures. The rule demands reciprocity not in the sense of return or repayment, but rather in the sense of role exchange: it demands beneficence, and specifies the content of the demanded action by inviting the agent to put him-/herself in the position of the other. The rule presupposes a kind of autonomy or authenticity in the sense that the content of the demanded beneficence is known to the agent from his/her own experience independently of written rules or exemplars. The metaphor of being written in the heart means that the knowledge of the rule has a strong emotional component; this becomes clear from Luther’s association of the rule with conscience and shame. Our knowledge of the Golden Rule according to Luther is also due to reason. This becomes clear in the mentioned appendix to the treatise on Secular Authority. Luther here emphasises that a judgment according to natural law, i. e. the Golden Rule, issues out of “free consideration” (freie Besinnung) which he 21 “[D]ie Natur lehret, wie die Liebe tut, daß ich tun soll, was ich mir wollt getan haben. Darum kann ich niemand also entblößen, wie gut Recht ich immer habe, so ich selbst nicht gern wollt also entblößt sein; sondern wie ich wollt, daß ein anderer sein Recht an mir nach ließe in solchem Fall, also soll ich auf mein Recht verzichten” (WA 11, 279).

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identifies with reason (alle Vernunft), the source of law (Rechtsquelle). A judgement out of “free reason” (freie Vernunft) will be approved by all because everybody finds this kind of law “written with him/herself in his/her heart” (bei sich selbst im Herzen geschrieben).22 If we take ‘heart’ to designate the emotional and affective aspect of human cognition Luther seems to regard them as closely connected with the rational aspect. Luther’s praise of reason may seem surprising in the light of his well-known chastisement of reason as a ‘whore’. It is true that Luther has a quite ambiguous view on reason as is evident from e. g. his theses for the Disputatio de homine. Taking his starting point in the classical definition of human as ‘animal rationale’ Luther praises reason as a “divine power” which is Inventor and govenor of all arts, medicine, jurisprudence and everything that in this life is possessed by humans in terms of wisdom, power, capability, and fame.23

The qualification “in this life” is important. The philosophical definition of a human being as a rational animal is only valid for the mortal human (homo mortalis). As far as earthly life is concerned, reason is essential as it aims at peace as the epitome of human flourishing. But earthly life is lived after the fall, and this means for reason that it is corrupted and actually under the power of Satan (sub potestate Diaboli). Human reason has no place in the goal of human life, theologically speaking: salvation in the sense of reconciliation with God. But as far as earthly life is concerned, reason is central, even if always marked by the corruption caused by sin. For the Golden Rule this means – as far as I can see – that humans have a natural capacity for knowing the meaning of the rule, but not for fully grasping the essence of the law as this is only possible on the basis of faith.24

22 WA 11, 279–280. 23 “Quae est inventrix et gubernatrix omnium Artium, Medicinarum, Iurium, etquidquid in hac vita sapientiae, virtutis et gloriae ab hominibus possidetur” (WA 39/I, 175). 24 In the texts quoted Luther does not give a definition or precise description of what he understands by reason and its function. He certainly does not presuppose the concept of practical reason found in medieval theology, in both its intellectualist and voluntarist versions. Here reason plays together with the will in discerning some kind of good and pointing at a conclusion as to a concrete way of acting. Basically, practical reason is here understood in the sense of Aristotle’s practical syllogism. The different positions are determined by the way they understand the respective roles of the intellect and the will. Whereas for Aquinas the will follows the intellect’s determination as something as good, in Duns Scotus the reasoning of the intellect always leaves room for the will to make its own free decision. Clearly, Luther’s stance on the freedom of the will prevents him from adopting Scotus’ voluntarism.

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Secularisation of the Golden Rule

In the wake of the reformer’s thinking a particular Lutheran branch of natural law theory developed, with Philip Melanchthon as decisive inspirer. However, already in Melanchthon Luther’s idea of the Golden Rule as summery of natural law was replaced by a more Aquinas-like conception of natural law as consisting of a set of fundamental principles.25 It is not the place here to go into a discussion of this change, I rather want to mention two examples of theories in practical philosophy, where the Golden Rule actually plays a role and which pave the way for contemporary discussions of the rule.

3.1

Hobbes

In Thomas Hobbes we seemingly find again the classical theological view of the Golden Rule as summary of natural law. However, “natural law” is given a totally new meaning by Hobbes. Natural law here consists of those norms that humans are able to apprehend out of fear of death and with the help of their reason. Terminologically, Hobbes designates the Golden Rule as “law of the Gospel” and as “that law of all men” which can be seen as expressing a secular interpretation of the Golden Rule.26 Apart from that Hobbes does quote the rule both in its positive and its negative form. Although the Golden Rule according to Hobbes represents the summary of all individual norms of natural law, he particularly quotes the rule in connection with the second of the natural laws he enumerates: … that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far-forth, as for peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow ohter men against himself.27

A person must be prepared to resign his or her own rights, if others do the same to him or her. We here have to do with a reciprocal transference of rights or freedoms, the institutional shape of which – as is well-known – is the contract. Interestingly, Hobbes makes the remark that if the transference is not reciprocal: “this is not contract, but gift, freegift, grace …”.28 The natural laws according to Hobbes essentially imply equality among humans, whereby disregard of this equality is tantamount to a transgression of the Golden Rule: “men require for 25 Probably the most prominent representative of classical Lutheran natural law theory is Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694), who also does not regard the Golden Rule as the basic principle of natural law. On Pufendorf see du Roy Règle d’or, 672–676. 26 Hobbes, Leviathan, 147. 27 Hobbes, Leviathan, 147. 28 Hobbes, Leviathan, 149.

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themselves, that which they would not have to be granted to others”.29 The Golden Rule requires that the individual performs an exchange between his/her own acting and the one of the others – in order to obtain an equilibrium between the two. In summary we can say that the Golden Rule in Hobbes (i) presupposes a uniformity of human nature (fear of death), (ii) manifests human reason in the shape of instrumental reasoning (‘Zweckrationalität’) and (iii) acquires a collective meaning thanks to the instrument of the contract.

3.2

Kant

Among the modern features of Kant’s ethics is his strong emphasis on respect (Achtung) – and thereby on the worth (Würde) of each human being. But at the same time he integrates in his rational ethics the aspect of beneficence contained in Christian neighbor love. In his more detailed accomplishment of this integration it is necessary for Kant to include the Golden Rule – however without explicitly using this expression. Actually, Kant is regarded as a sharp critic of the Golden Rule which he in Grundlegung characterizes as trivial, thereby formulating a general objection which one could call the criminal argument: a criminal could maintain before a judge that were he, the judge, the criminal, he would not want to be sentenced.30 Unlike Hobbes, then, Kant presupposes an arbitrary application of the Golden Rule. However, I will now take a look at what I regard as the kantian reformulation or reconstruction of the Golden Rule. The commandment of neighbor love in the sense of the duty to benevolence or beneficence according to Kant is founded in the fact that “I want everyone to be benevolent toward me (benevolentiam)”.31 Now, if I had this will without being prepared to show my benevolence towards others I would think selfishly (selbstsüchtig). And that would contradict the “morally practical relation to human beings”, which is determined by pure reason, i. e. by acts according to maxims that “qualify for a giving of universal law”.32 Through the categorical imperative’s demand of universalisation a rule of benevolence is unfolded: I want everyone to be benevolent toward me (benevolentiam); hence I ought also to be benevolent toward everyone.33

29 30 31 32 33

Hobbes, Leviathan, 164. Kant, Groundwork, 30. Kant, Metaphysics, 200. Ibid. Ibid.

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In other words: According to Kant the obligation to benevolence (and beneficence) towards others is founded in the Golden Rule. However, in the version quoted the rule does not possess full universality, for “all others with the exception of myself would not be all”. If I must show benevolence towards all in the strict sense, I myself must be included in the object of benevolence. Now, a demand to show benevolence towards oneself seems to be meaningless, and so Kant is forced to make a really remarkable clarification: Lawgiving reason, which includes the whole species (and so myself as well) in its idea of humanity as such, includes me as giving universal law along with all others in the duty of mutual benevolence, in accordance with the principle of equality, and permits you to be benevolent to yourself on the condition of your being benevolent to every other as well …34

The formulation is remarkable because it very nicely shows that universalisation in Kant’s ethics is not a more or less arbitrary procedure, but rather manifests that a person as moral agent is a representative of humanity or humankind. In spite of universalization, the Kantian obligation to benevolence retains one crucial feature of the Golden Rule: it is the wish of the individual that is the basis of the obligation. Looking back on Luther we can realise that Kant in secularizing Christian ethics totally integrates the command of neighbor love into the Golden Rule – and re-interprets the latter according to the principle of universalisation of the categorical imperative. We now have to look more closely into the question in which sense the Golden Rule involves reciprocity. I will therefore discuss some philosophical interpretations of the Golden Rule, thereby respecting the difference between the two lines of thought in Anglo-american analytic and continental-hermeneutic philosophy respectively.

4.

The Golden Rule in Analytical Ethics

As an example from the former line I choose, first, the classical essay by the American philosopher Marcus G. Singer (born 1926), “The Golden Rule”. Singer regards the Golden Rule as a “fundamental moral truth”, a moral principle rather 34 Ibid. Cf. “die gesetzgebende Vernunft, welche in ihrer Idee der Menschheit überhaupt die ganze Gattung (mich also mit) einschließt, nicht der Mensch, schließt als allgemeingesetzgebend mich in der Pflicht des wechselseitigen Wohlwollens nach dem Princip der Gleichheit wie alle Andere neben mir mit ein und erlaubt es dir dir selbst wohlzuwollen, unter der Bedingung, daß du auch jedem Anderen wohl willst ..” (Kant, Metaphysik, 587).

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than a rule.35 Singer rejects the “criminal-objection” stated by Kant on the basis of a distinction between a particularistic and a generalistic interpretation of the Golden Rule. According to the former interpretation (“Do to others what you expect from them”) I choose my way of acting on the basis of my own particular wishes and needs, which of course cannot be the meaning of the rule. In contrast, the generalistic interpretation (“Do to others as you wish to be treated by them!”) means that the Golden Rule demands a general regard for the interests of others: “One should act in relation to others on the same principles or standards that one would have them apply in their treatment of oneself”.36 Thus understood the Golden Rule is a fundamental demand of justice: What is just for one person should also be just for all others in a similar situation. In this sense the Golden Rule according to Singer expresses a principle of generalisation. Remarkably, Singer does not interpret the rule as demanding role exchange: “The Golden Rule (…) does not tell me that I must imagine myself to be another” – “the Rule does not really require anyone to think along the lines of the ’if I were he’ sort of hypothesis”. The reason is that a “reversal of roles” would have to be repeated in infinitum.37 A similar view can be found in the ethics of Richard M. Hare (1919–2002). Not unlike Kant, Hare understands the Golden Rule in connection with his theory of universalisation. Actually, his so-called universal prescriptivism leads to a position that unites the allegedly opposed views of utilitarianism and Kantianism.38 Moral philosophy according to Hare does not formulate substantial moral principles, but rather explores the logic of moral language in order to critically evaluate moral reasoning. The part of morality primarily dealt with by Hare centers around the word ‘ought’, which serves to turn a subjective desire or preference into a moral prescription. If I do not only say “I want you to pay my money back”, but “You ought to pay my money back”, universalizability is presupposed: in similar situations, the same act is prescribed. Hence the universalizability thesis is the most important tool for testing the rationality and tenability of moral claims. Closely related to the universalizability thesis is the Golden Rule argument. If I say “I ought to cancel my meeting with NN for the sake of my wife”, I must test the ethical validity of the utterance by universalising, the point of which is to be prepared to prescribe the same way of acting “for all like situations”. But this means “imagining ourselves in others’ positions” so that I would have to ask: “If I were NN would I then find it appropriate that our meeting was cancelled for the 35 36 37 38

Singer, Rule, 294. Singer, Rule, 301. Singer, Rule, 310. 312. 313. Hare, Freedom, 123f.

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sake of my wife?”39 The Golden Rule is subordinated to the principle of universalisation and functions as a kind of test for the performance of universalisation. Using the Golden Rule this way for the moral agent means to give the inclinations and interests of another the same weight “as if they were his own”. This does not have to be a real-life procedure, but could be a hypothetical consideration: the moral agent only needs to have “sufficient imagination to envisage what it is like to be A”.40 This consideration Hare also characterizes as showing, “if necessary fictionally, a situation in which the roles were reversed”.41 The requirement of knowing “what it is like to be those people in that situation” of course raises epistemological questions, even ‘puzzles’. For one thing, the condition we are to acquaint ourselves with, has both affective and cognitive aspects, and one has to imagine what it means to have the preferences of the other. For example, according to Hare it makes a difference whether I now prefer something, if I were in the other’s situation – or whether I, being in the other’s situation would prefer something.42 Also, it is important that the roleexchange involves identifying oneself with another. The very word ‘I’ according to Hare carries prescriptive meaning so that putting oneself in the other’s situation means identifying with his or her prescriptions.43 In Hare’s moral philosophy, then, the Golden Rule plays a role as a formal tool equivalent to the universalizability thesis. However, Hare does recognize that the rule also can be interpreted as a moral principle. This is the case when it is read: “One ought to treat others as one would wish to treat oneself”.44 45

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Hare, Universal, 460. Hare, Freedom, 94. Hare, Freedom, 104. Hare, Moral, 92f. 95. Hare, Moral, 96f. 221. Hare, Freedom, 34. Against Hare it has been objected that the Golden Rule cannot always be used the way he describes. In a typically analytical way a counter example has been constructed: the so-called deathbed promise. A plans to make a promise to a dying person B that he intends not to keep – with the motivation not to make the dying B unhappy. But it is impossible for A to put himself in the situation of B: either he imagines that B knows that the promise is false, but then he precisely does not put himself in B’s position. Or he imagines that he does not know – but then it is not himself that he puts in the place of the other. The situation is “morally Gödelian”. The issue of the discussion is whether the role exchange required by the Golden Rule has to be complete, e. g. in comprising both cognitive and emotional or appetitive aspects. See Robins Hare, Rule.

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The Golden Rule in K.E. Løgstrup’s Ethics – with a View to Ricœur

5.1

Løgstrup

185

The place of Danish ethicist K.E. Løgstrup’s (1905–1981) view of the Golden Rule can be characterised as “between Luther and Hare”. This claim can be vindicated through the very concrete fact that Løgstrup’s main treatment of the Golden Rule can be found in his book Norm og spontanitet (1972), an important part of which deals with “economy and politics”. In his critique of liberal economy Løgstrup connects with Luther’s treatise On Trade and Usury, and in the introductory chapters on moral theory he deals with Hare as one representative of analytical ethics. Løgstrup discusses the Golden Rule in one earlier text than Norm og spontaneitet, viz. an article from 1948 on existential philosophy and theology. He here counters the claim that existential philosophy reduces the relation to the other person to general knowledge and hence distorts the specific character of human existence. Løgstrup’s refutation is to the effect that the ethical situation is marked by the togetherness of a cognitive and a trans-cognitive aspect. He puts the argument like this: In the Golden Rule the cognitive presupposition is obvious: what you want that people do to you, that you shall do to them. The content of the demand raised by the existence of the other is made clear to me through my own demand on life and other humans; it is made clear to me by the pointing out of my neighbor being a human like myself. In other words, the ethical situation is actually expressed by the homogeneity of humans as a cognitive presupposition for understanding the demand that constitutes the situation as an ethical one. The cognitive presupposition simply serves to make the demand radical and not at all to limit it with regard to the alleged reciprocity of the relation to the other. To point out that my neighbor is a human like myself in order to make intelligible the demand raised by his existence does not equal making the relation morally reciprocal; a moral homogeneity is not thereby posited.46

We here have Løgstrup’s main ethical idea in a preliminary stage: he emphasises that the very existence of the other raises a demand to the agent, hence we are situated on a pre-conventional level. Løgstrup also attributes the predicate ‘radical’ to the demand, thereby probably meaning one-sided. Nevertheless, we are dealing with a kind of reciprocity, viz. cognitive as distinct from moral reciprocity. The Golden Rule presupposes homogeneity between humans in order for it to make sense that the agent knows from him-/herself what is de-

46 Løgstrup, Eksistensfilosofi, 17.

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manded in relation to the other. But this is not moral reciprocity in the sense of a kind of ‘do-ut-des’ thinking. In order to understand the place of the Golden Rule in Løgstrup’s mature ethical thinking one needs to acquaint oneself with the basic features of his ethics. This latter Løgstrup himself characterises as ontological ethics, adopting the predicate ‘ontological’ from Martin Heidegger’s existential analysis in Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). ‘Ontological’ points at the basic formal structures of humans’ being in the world. Like Emmanuel Lévinas, Løgstrup complains about the absence of ethics in Heidegger’s analysis. The connecting factor for ethics here is Heidegger’s so-called “Mit-Sein” – being-with – that Løgstrup develops into his own concept of interdependence. A fundamental feature of interpersonal life according to Løgstrup is self-exposure: “the communication between persons (…) always involves the risk of one person daring to lay him or herself open to the other in the hope of response”.47 The moral agent, thanks to the self-exposure, always possesses a kind of power over the other, a power that involves “a given alternative of care or ruin”.48 And this alternative again gives rise to a radical demand to unselfishly take care of the life of the other. It is not the place here to go further into Løgstrup’s exposition of the “ethical demand”49 – suffice it to note that it is his ambition to present the demand “in strictly human terms”,50 i. e. to analyse the commandment of neighbor love without reference to Christian faith. But this enterprise actually is tantamount to expounding the natural law aspect of neighbor love. In the aforementioned Norm og spontaneitet Løgstrup introduces the ethical demand in a different way from the one in The Ethical Demand, viz. on the basis of the so-called “sovereign expressions of life”. I leave the latter on one side51 and go directly to Løgstrup’s crucial formulations regarding the Golden Rule: The demand comes to expression in, for instance, the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is anything but a tepid rule of reciprocity even if, taken literally, it might seem to be such. On the contrary, it is a rule governing the use of the imagination. It requires of us that we seek to imagine how we would wish to be treated were we in the other’s stead – and then that we actually go on to act towards the other in that way. Clearly, it is as radical as anything could be.52 47 48 49 50 51

Løgstrup, Ethical, 17. Løgstrup, Ethical, 20. For a more comprehensive presentation see M. Møller’s contribution to this volume. Løgstrup, Ethical Demand, 1. As examples of sovereign expressions of life Løgstrup mentions mercy and the openness of speech. By sovereignty Løgstrup means the feature that the expression of life “is there beforehand”. Another characteristic is spontaneity: the expression of life “preempts us; we are seized by it” (Løgstrup, Beyond, 84). The connection between ethical demand and sovereign expression of life is that if the latter is wanting, the demand voices itself (85). 52 Løgstrup, Beyond, 85–86.

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Løgstrup does not discuss the interpretations of the Golden Rule by other ethicists. However, in an earlier section of the book he puts forward a critique of Hare which implicitly is a rejection of his understanding of the rule. Put briefly, Løgstrup rejects the idea that role exchange and imaginary putting oneself in the position of the other is ethically significant because they are elements of universalisation, which alone gives moral quality to an act. The critique is part of a more comprehensive rejection of the thought – primarily found in AngloAmerican analytic moral philosophy – that it is general/universal principles or norms that constitute moral quality. As an alternative Løgstrup points at “moral experience” and “the fact that, in their interdependence, our lives are fulfilled when we engage ourselves in the concerns of others”.53 According to Løgstrup, then, the Golden Rule is not a general or universal principle, but rather an expression of concrete moral experience in the context of interdependence.54 The homogeneity which Løgstrup emphasises in the 1948 article is not just sameness, but is rather closely connected with interdependence in that the individual directs expectations toward the other. In this point as in many others Løgstrup is influenced by the phenomenological analyses of Hans Lipps (1889– 1941), who like Heidegger was a pupil of Husserl. In the book Die menschliche Natur (1941) Lipps claims that humans are characterised by shaping affects through attitudes (Haltung). And with an attitude we meet the other and anticipate his/her reaction. Conversely, we have attitudes because demands are raised to us as selves from the others.55 It is this phenomenological analysis 53 Løgstrup, Beyond, 103. 110. 54 Løgstrup deals with the Golden Rule in a text simultaneous with Norm og spontaneitet. He here emphasises that the rule is radical because it essentially involves an “element of imagination”. The element of imagination is crucial in the role exchange demanded by the rule: “It is in imagination that the individual puts himself in the place of the other, and then does what the other would appreciate him doing”. In this text Løgstrup also discusses the Golden Rule’s role in political ethics: transferred to this context the rule has to be ‘reduced’ into an ideal. Løgstrup, Begreber, 50–51 and 52–53. 55 Lipps, Natur, 18–24 and 45–50. – In a German context Lipps is counted among the philosophical anthropologists, i.a. by Jürgen Habermas in an early encyclopedia article. In his presentation of Lipps and his analysis of the attitude, Habermas makes the important observation: The ‘nature’ of man, that which counts as human, is not simply ‘given’ like the nature of things or animals. It manifests itself as ‘determination’ in the double meaning of that word: it makes a claim on objecitivity and is removed from human arbitrariness; but still it is in need of subjects and their effort and insight in order to become real. (Habermas, Anthropologie, 30. My translation). Habermas here calls attention to the ambiguity of the word ‘natura’: it can mean both the biological characteristics of humans – and the non-biological specifics. This ambiguity of course also marks the concept natural law. In the case of Løgstrup ‘natural’ in my view means those fundamental features of human existence which can neither be reduced to biology nor understood as historical or cultural contingencies.

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Løgstrup approves and develops in his analysis of self exposure as the foundation of the ethical demand. According to Løgstrup, in the case of humans we speak of conduct or manners rather than behavior, and that is because we humans are acting in interdependence, which among other things means: “my conduct (as also … [the other person’s]) is at one and the same time concern for and a claim upon the other person’s reaction”.56 I would say that in Løgstrup’s version the Golden Rule is an ethical amplification of this structure of expectation.57 The structure of expectation could be understood in a kind of Hegelian way, in the sense that the self is confronted with the other in his/her alterity and foreignness. But the Golden Rule furthermore demands of the individual to put him-/her-self into the position of the other, which implies some kind of identification. This feature of interpersonality Løgstrup makes the subject of a phenomenological analysis in the context of this work on art and literature. According to Løgstrup the way we react to a person in real life and a character in a novel, a play or a movie respectively are both similar and different. They are similar in so far as the same kind of emotions are involved, but one main difference is that the intensity of the emotions is significantly higher when we are confronted by fictitious persons. In both cases an “emotional person-identification” takes place: the emotions of the other person are transferred to the individual. But this latter also reacts on his/her own behalf, e. g. when I feel pity because the other has been betrayed. In real life the same is true in the case of “altruistic attitudes”: Thanks to interdependence, to be afraid on one’s own behalf is not the same as being afraid for oneself. And likewise, to be afraid for the other is not the same as being afraid in the same way he/she is afraid. According to the third possibility of interdependence I am, on my own behalf, afraid for the other without being afraid for myself and without being afraid the same way the other is afraid.58

Løgstrup explicitly rejects the view that the “altruistic attitude” originates from an “identification with the other person, a transference of his feelings to me”59 60 Løgstrup’s essay on the aesthetic experience of literature (fiction) is probably written in the early 1960s, whereas his ‘return’ to the Golden Rule and his 56 Løgstrup, Demand, 66. 57 This phenomenological description of the self-other relation to a large degree coincides with the one found in George H. Mead, who writes: “He becomes a self in so far as he can take the attitude of another and act toward himself as others act” (Mead, Mind, 171). For a further discussion of Mead’s view in relation to Løgstrup and Lipps see Andersen, Praktisk, 161–163. 58 Løgstrup, Kunst, 47. 59 Løgstrup, Kunst, 47. 60 This rejection seems to contradict the earlier mentioned claim about the “emotional personidentification”. But according to Løgstrup our reaction to another person’s situation is complex, containing both an emotional identification and a reaction on behalf of ourselves.

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identifying it with the ethical demand seems to have taken place in the end of that decade. This temporal distance may explain the fact that the earlier considerations concerning the place of identification in ethical situations do not fit Løgstrup’s remarks about imagining being in the other’s stead – at least the former do not explain the latter. It seems that we have to leave open exactly how Løgstrup understands the identification inherent in the role-exchange required by the Golden Rule.61

5.2

Ricœur

In his book Soi-même comme un autre (1990) 62 Paul Ricœur – a representative of the same philosophical tradition as the one to which Løgstrup belongs (existential phenomenology63) – dedicates three chapters to a “little ethics”, in which the Golden Rule plays a prominent role. Even if Ricœur mentions his affiliation with Biblical faith, he emphasises that there is no Christian morality, but only a “morale commune”. The “great code” of the Bible is not without ethical significance, but Biblical agape is rather a “meta-ethics”, and the relation to God only puts the common morality into a new perspective.64 As we shall see below, this also has bearings for the interpretation of the Golden Rule. As the book’s title suggests, Ricœur’s ethics is part of a theory of the self, which runs through the concepts of identification, action, narrative, and life plan. And it is the latter two which form the transition to the ethical part, which aims to combine an Aristotelian and a Kantian approach. The former – the ethics of the good life – ensues from a person conceived as the author of a whole life-narrative. The complete conception of ethics Ricœur defines as “la visée de la ‘vie bonne’ avec et pour autrui dans des institutions justes” (the aim of the ‘good life’ together with and for the other in just institutions).65 Ricœur makes the move from the individual’s aiming at the good life and his/her concern for the other via the Aristotelian virtue of friendship. Even within ethics – the Aristotelian component – friendship involves reciprocity in the sense that friendship is a good both for the 61 Løgstrup contributes a significant role to imagination both in the context of fiction and in real life. However, his analysis of the latter in the essay on literature does not shed light on its role in the Golden Rule. 62 English translation: Oneself as Another, University of Chicago Press 1992. 63 The characterisation is not quite precise as Ricœur himself presents his work as “phénoménologie herméneutique”, cf. Ricœur, Soi-même, 37. (My italcs). – In 1970 Ricœur gave a guest lecture at Aarhus University with the title “Hermeneutique du language religieux”, in which he touched upon the Golden Rule. Theoretically, he may have discussed the latter with Løgstrup. 64 Ricœur, Soi-même, 37. 65 Ricœur, Soi-même, 202.

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individual and the other. But the reciprocity of friendship leads to the Kantian component: the realm of norms, summarized in the categorical imperative in the person-as-end-in–itself version. Here the Golden Rule plays an intermediate role in the following way. Like Løgstrup, Ricœur emphasizes that interaction essentially involves power: “A vrai dire, toute action a ses agents et ses patients”.66 In other words, interaction and interpersonality unfolds in asymmetric relations, which according to Ricœur involves the potentiality of violence.67 Now, the Golden Rule is the moral norm which so to speak commands the agent to deal with the asymmetry in a reciprocal way and thus resist the possibility of violence and regard the other as one’s equal. In Ricœur’s own words: … not just that it places the emphasis on interaction but that within this interaction it emphasizes the fundamental asymmetry between what someone does and what is done to another. In this sense, it does not bring one agent face-to-face with another agent, but rather brings together an agent and a “patient” of the action, a patient being someone to whom something is done. To dramatize this initial asymmetry, I will say that the other is potentially the victim of my action as much as its adversary. Owing to this, the golden rule recalls to us that the moral problem is contemporary with the problem of violence.68

I take it that the demand for reciprocity means that the agent should recognize that the other is in the same position as him-/her-self. Ricœur expresses this by quoting Alan Gewirth: “The receiver of your action is also an agent”.69 The explicit version of the Golden Rule’s command Ricœur finds in the aforementioned version of the categorical imperative.70 These are the central features of Ricoeur’s account of the Gold Rule within morality. Placed in a Christian context it acquires a somewhat different meaning. Ricœur here focuses on the doctrine – or rather the “symbol” – of creation in the Judeo-Christian religion. Creation means that humans are dependent on a higher power that “precedes us, envelops us, and supports us”. The sense of dependence on the power expresses itself in “a love for the creature, for every creature, in every creature – and the love of neighbor can become an expression of this

66 Ricœur, Soi-même, 186. Cf. more explicitly: “to act is already to begin to exercise power over others” (Ricœur, Ethical, 295). 67 As Ricœur himself makes clear, he is here inspired by E. Levinas’ understanding of the relation to the other. 68 Ricœur, Ethical, 294. 69 Ricœur, Ethical. 70 Ricœur does not follow Kant in the latter’s reformulation of the Golden Rule to the universalistic categorical imperative. – The Golden Rule also plays a certain role in Ricœur’s depiction of the third part of his ethics, viz. the life in just institutions: the rule requires the recognition of equality between the agent and the other, and this equality is transferred in the collective sphere of politics as a rule of equality and justice. But I refrain from going further into that.

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supramoral love for all creatures”.71 To the believer the creator unites power with benevolence, and this unity according to Ricœur is the basis for the “economy of the gift”. This latter concept he does not explain further here, but its significance for the Golden Rule is clear. For Ricœur it is important that the Golden Rule in one gospel is placed within the context of the command to love one’s enemies (Luke 6:27–36). The context determines the meaning of the rule to the effect that it is not just part of “everyday morality”, but presupposes a “logic of superabundance” and manifests the economy of the gift in this sense: “Because it has been given to you, you give in return”.72 In the article quoted Ricœur goes so far as to talk of the Golden Rule as “the supreme moral principle that thoughtful people will agree upon”.73 But, as we have seen, besides this universal meaning the Golden Rule acquires a different significance within the religious context, which he now instead of “Christian ethics” calls “communal ethics in a religious perspective”.74

6.

Conclusion

The foregoing presentation of some important interpretations of the Golden Rule in no way pretends to be exhaustive. But despite its selectivity it shows that the interpretations broadly speaking fall into four groups. The Golden Rule can be regarded as (1) the “tepid rule of reciprocity” mentioned by Løgstrup, (2) a rule for universalisation, either as it stands or as in need of Kantian improvement, (3) a rule for beneficial role-exchange, which is the case in Løgstrup, (4) as equivalent to the commandment of neighbor love in the specific Christian sense. Interpretation (1) is represented by Hobbes and probably also by the model of gift giving described by Mauss. It is explicitly rejected by Luther, Løgstrup and Ricœur. Interpretation (2) makes a more or less abstract principle out of the rule, thereby neglecting its interpersonal and interdependency character. This latter is of course essential to interpretation (3), which is defended by Luther, Løgstrup 71 72 73 74

Ricœur, Ethical, 297–298. Ricœur, Ethical, 297–300. Ricœur, Ethical, 293. Ricœur, Ethical, 301. – Ricœur’s interpretation of the Golden Rule is presented and discussed in du Roy, Règle d’or, 1040–1073.

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and in some sense by Ricœur.75 However, the precise meaning of the rule as demand is not necessarily clear. Should we understand it in the sense of universal expectations, or rather as a so to speak situation-ethical demand related to the concrete Other? Also, the meaning of the identification implied by role-exchange is not made clear by any of our theorists. According to this interpretation, the agent in the interpersonal situation indeed expects the other to act in a similar situation in the same way as the agent now, following the Golden Rule, is obliged to act. As we have seen, Luther advocates a dual interpretation comprising both versions (3) and (4), and remarkably he in this is followed by Paul Ricœur. Løgstrup, on the other hand, omits the Christian interpretation, exclusively giving the Golden Rule meaning (3) and thereby following Luther in regarding the Golden Rule as the summary of natural law. However, the agent’s acting is not dependent upon it being the case that the other actually is going to act that way. That the Golden Rule can be regarded as a summary of natural law I would – following Løgstrup – understand in the sense that the demand of role exchange is grounded in a structure inherent in the interdependence of human existence. ‘Natural’ would here also mean evidenced by phenomenological analysis. But in order for it to make sense that we have to do with universal human nature, phenomenology needs to go into dialogue with anthropology and other empirical kinds of studies. Is the question of my title thereby convincingly answered in the affirmative? Probably not. But hopefully the way to defend such an answer has become clearer.

Bibliography Andersen, S., Praktisk fornuft, in: A.M. Rasmussen/P. Thyssen (eds.), Teologi og modernitet: Tilegnet H.C. Wind på 65-årsdagen 17. maj 1997, Aarhus Universitetsforlag 1997.

75 The third part of his ethics – about living in just institutions – brings Ricœur into a dialogue with John Rawls’ Theory of Justice, se e. g. Soi-même comme un autre, 267 and 330. Ricœur’s basic claim is that Rawls presupposes a foundation in the sense of justice contained in the Golden Rule, cf Ricœur, The Just. As to the different interpretations of the Golden Rule, one could – using the terminology of Rawls’ later work – say that (1) it is based on what Rawls calls rationality, i. e. the activity of rational choice. In contrast, version (3) would be based on Rawls’ reasonableness, which involves reciprocity. As to the latter, I find it noteworthy that Ricœur – without knowing the later Rawls’ differentiation of reason – talks about rationality as “aptitude for putting themselves in the place of another” (Ricœur, Just, 57). I think that this understanding of rationality comes closest to the reason which Luther declares to be the origin of natural law.

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–, In the Eyes of a Lutheran Philosopher: How Løgstrup Treated Moral Thinkers, in: S. Andersen/K. v. K. Niekerk (eds.): Concern for the Other: Perspectives of the Ethics of K.E. Løgstrup, University of Notre Dame Press 2007. –, Macht aus Liebe: Zur Rekonstruktion einer lutherischen politischen Ethik, De Gruyter 2010. –, Lutheran Political Theology in the Twenty-First Centurt, in: Ch. Helmer/B. Holm (eds.): Transformations in Luther’s Theology, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2011. Celano, A., Medieval Theories of Practical Reason, in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/practical-reason-med/ (accessed 29. 12. 2015). Habermas, J. Anthropologie, in: A. Diemer/I. Frenzel (eds.), Das Fischer Lexion Philosophie, Fischer Bücherei 1958. Hare, R.M., Freedom and Reason, Oxford University Press 1978 [1963]. –, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point, Clarendon Press 1981. –, Universal Prescriptivism, in: P. Singer (ed.): A Companion to Ethics, Blackwell 1993. Hobbes, Th., Leviathan: Edited and abridged with an Introduction by John Plamenatz, Collins Fount Paperbacks 1983. –, Man and Citizen (De Homine and De Cive): Edited with an Introduction by B. Gert, Hackett Publishing Company 1991. Kant, I., Die Metaphysik der Sitten: Tugendlehre: Werke in zehn Bänden. Hg. W. Wischedel: Band 7, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1968. –, Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals 2008 http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/ assets/pdfs/kant1785.pdf. –, The Metaphysics of Morals, Translated and edited by M. Gregor, Cambridge University Press 1996. Løgstrup, K.E., Eksistensfilosofi og Theologi, in: Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift 11/1948. –, Norm og spontaneitet: Etik og politik mellem teknokrati og dilettantokrati, Gyldendal 1972. –, Kunst og erkendelse: Kunstfilosofiske betragtninger: Metafysik II, Gyldendal 1983. –, Etiske begreber og problemer, Gyldendal 1996. –, The Ethical Demand, University of Notre Dame Press 1997. –, Beyond the Ethical Demand: Introduction by Kees van Kooten Niekerk: Notre Dame, Notre Dame University Press 2007. Mauss, M., Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l′échange dans les sociétés archaïques http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/mauss_marcel/socio_et_anthropo/2_essai_sur_ le_don/essai_sur_le_don.html. –, Gaven: Gaveudvekslingens form og logik i arkaiske samfund, Spektrum 2006. Raunio, A., Summe des christlichen Lebens: Die ”Goldene Regel” als Gesetz in der Theologie Martin Luthers von 1510–1527, Verlag Philipp von Zabern 2001. Ricœur, P., Soi-même comme un autre, Édition du Seuil Paris 1990. [Oneself as Another, University of Chicago Press 1992]. –, The Just. Translated by David Pellauer, The University of Chicago Press 2000. –, Ethical and Theological Considerations on the Golden Rule, in: Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, Fortess Press Minneapolis 1995. Robins, M.H., Hare’s Golden-Rule Argument: A Reply to Silverstein, in: Mind LXXXIII 1974.

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du Roy, O., The Golden Rule as the Law of Nature, in: J. Neusner, B. Chilton (eds.): The Golden Rule: The Ethics of Reciprocity in World Religions, Continuum International Publishing Group 2008. –, La règle d’or histoire d’une maxime morale universelle: Premier volume: de Confucius à la fin du XIXe siècle, Second volume: le XXe siècle et essai d’interprétation, Les édition du Cerf Paris 2012. Singer, M.G., The Golden Rule, in: Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Vol. XXXVIII. No. 146 1963. Speer, A. et al., Vernunft; Verstand D, F, in: J. Ritter et al. (eds.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2001. Toner, C., Medieval Theories of Practical Reason, in: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://www.iep.utm.edu/prac-med/ (accessed 28. 12. 2015).

Bjørn Rabjerg

Evil Understood as the Absence of Freedom: Outlines of a Lutheran Anthropology and Ontology Man is his own prisoner; this is the hopelessness of existence, because it implies that we are powerless in the pursuit of self-liberation – any attempt will only entangle us even further in ourselves. Cf. Luther’s struggle with monasticism. (Løgstrup, Journal XXV.3.1., 34 [my translation])

It is commonplace to see evil in connection with the freedom of will, so you may argue that the foundations of ethics lie within philosophical and theological anthropology. Correspondingly, evil has to do with choice, that is, with the human being’s administration of freedom of will. This close connection between the moral categories good/evil and the anthropological and metaphysical question of the freedom of will also lies at the root of Rüdiger Safranski’s work of 1997, Das Böse oder Das Drama der Freiheit (‘Evil or the Drama of Freedom’), where he analyses evil as the result of our freedom to choose evil over good. Within the history of moral philosophy, you find a good argument for this close connection between anthropology and ethics, with the ought-can implication principle probably being the most well-known example. The principle that ought implies can is normally attributed to Kant. A general formulation of it is that moral categories (good/evil) and norms are limited anthropologically (by human nature), by circumstance (contingent on the agents involved and the situation), by the laws of nature and physics, and so on, meaning that the moral imperative ought is valid if and only if the person in question actually can (meaning is able to with respect to abilities, knowledge, physical and situational circumstances etc.) perform what is demanded of him or her. Consequently, if the human being is not able to choose between good or evil then how can he or she be good or evil? 1 In this article I will suggest a counter-analysis to the idea of connecting evil with freedom, where, on the contrary, evil is understood as being captives of our own self, that is, an analysis suggesting that evil is not the drama of freedom, but of the absence of freedom. This counter-analysis will begin with an examination of the idea of self-development and self-liberation, which may be found in many different forms nowadays. I will do this by scrutinizing the philosophical anthropology implied in the idea of self-development, and this anthropology will be 1 Both the actual meaning of the can-ought principle and its attribution to Kant are debatable. For an overview of both problems, see Stern, Ought.

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contrasted with the understanding of the self and of human nature found in the philosophical theology of the Danish thinker K.E. Løgstrup (1905–1981), who is still an influential figure in Scandinavian philosophy and theology. The sharp opposition developed through this contrast will make an analysis and a critique of the idea of self-development and self-initiated self-liberation possible, thereby allowing us to question and clarify what is to be understood by concepts such as evil, good, and the self. Self-development is closely related to the idea of formation (or what is referred to as Bildung in German). But when speaking of formation, we have to address the question, ‘what are we formed by?’ Is the human being formed by him- or herself, or by resources originating from outside the self ? From where do the resources needed for this formation (or re-formation) originate? Seen from Løgstrup’s perspective, it is absolutely crucial to keep this in mind, because according to him, proper formation must be understood as formation caused by outside influence – never as formation caused by the self. I will focus on a critique of the idea of self-development and -liberation, but in the final part of this article I will touch upon an alternative conception of formation that is not understood as being caused by the self. This will lead to a few critical remarks on Løgstrup’s own conception of the self and an attempt to use Løgstrup against Løgstrup’s own radical rejection of humankind’s possibilities with regard to self-development.

The Idea of Self-Development and Self-Realization When trying to grasp the field of self-development, you encounter some typical expressions. Apparently, self-development concerns nurturing inner qualities such as love for one’s neighbour, compassion, or moral responsibility, working with yourself, your formation and spiritual growth (e.g. through analysis of your dreams); it concerns raising your self-esteem and confidence through a personal process, where you find happiness (or get closer to it) while, at the same time, you experience an increase of meaning and meaningfulness. Meditation is often seen as an important tool in the process of ‘getting in touch with oneself ’ or of a way of ‘releasing oneself from oneself ’, seeing introspection and inward attention as a means for providing outward attention to other persons; ‘you must learn to love and care for yourself, before you can love and care for others’, is a common conception. When thus directing your attention towards inner qualities, you gain access to the tools needed for mobilizing yourself, enabling you to lead a fuller life – both alone and with others. The idea of self-development and self-realization rests on a philosophical anthropology where the human being is conceived of as harbouring potential for

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good, and for realizing and developing the good through his or her own resources (e.g. yoga, psychotherapy, personality-developing courses, gaining particular knowledge or insights, and so forth). Now, the problem arises if the premise of this anthropology is false. What if human beings harbour something very different from good and its source, and the freedom to pursue them?

The Idea of Self-Realization Rooted in Greek Anthropology Seen from a certain perspective, the conception of human beings as good is ultimately founded in ancient Greek philosophy and religion.2 Greek virtue ethics presupposes an anthropology where we are potentially virtuous and good. This inner goodness must be groomed and nurtured for us to realize our potential, and to succeed as citizens and as individuals.3 Thus, Greek virtue ethics stands in sharp contrast to the ethics found in Løgstrup’s Lutheran-Protestant philosophy and theology – what he calls the ethical demand. The ethical demand is Løgstrup’s term for the moral imperative, the moral ought, but his analysis differs in various respects from both Greek virtue ethics and from other formulations of the ‘ought’ in moral philosophy.4 In The Ethical Demand of 1956, Løgstrup describes the ethical demand as silent (not telling us what to do, but only that we have to act), as one-sided (not allowing us to make any demands of our own, e.g. demanding anything in return), as radical (it extends to friends and enemies alike, leaving no room for us to escape our responsibility), and finally – but most importantly – the demand is unfulfillable: we are powerless to accomplish what is demanded, because the demand demands that our actions be motivated by love for the other, but as we all know, when love is demanded, it signifies that there is no love – leaving room for us to only act as though we loved, hence the unfulfillability of the ethical demand.5 2 Cf. Løgstrup, Kristendom, 524–526. 3 This grooming and nurturing may require socio-cultural factors such as social education, but the main point is that this education or these tools supposedly provide us with the means to work on this on our own. 4 The four characteristics of this demand are the main topic of the analysis in Løgstrup’s main work, The Ethical Demand. Cf. Løgstrup, Demand, 5. 5 The unfulfillability (or impossibility) of the demand raises the question addressed by the ought-can implication principle. Robert Stern distinguishes two uses of the principle, a strong and a weak, and he argues that Kant actually advocates the weak use of the principle, meaning that the moral law is not limited by human capacity (or lack of capacity), cf. Stern, Ought. Consequently, I would argue that Løgstrup respects the weak use of the principle, and hence that he does not violate the use of the principle intended by Kant. Thus, the demand retains its meaningfulness and its motivational force in spite of its unfulfillability.

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By contrast, Greek ethics has no place for an unfulfillable ethical demand. This difference in ethics is rooted in a difference within the implied philosophical and theological anthropology. In Greek philosophy we find what we might call solidarity, or a common existential ground, between human beings and gods. For example, human emotions are seen as manifestations of the very same emotions felt and represented by the gods (whether love, violence, ecstasy, lust, or others) – Plato even speaks of feelings as states where human beings are possessed by the gods. Similarly, there is a common ground between humankind and gods with respect to knowledge. The nous in human beings is a reflection of nous in the world and in the world of forms, and the truths held in the world of forms and the insights it holds are, in principle, the same for humans and gods. When we perceive truth or knowledge, we perceive reality as it is. A harmonious intellectual connection or relation is established between us as perceivers and the truth perceived. Actually, truth is a part of us all – we already know it, we just need to be reminded of it. As the Greek or Socratic understanding finds no opposition, but instead conjunction, between the true and the good, it follows that intellectual realization of what is true implies moral motivation for the activity of realizing (or doing) good. Through realization of the true and the good, humankind’s perception of truth and its moral motivation to act accordingly harmonize the relationship between human beings and the world (and human beings and gods) in Greek philosophy.

Løgstrup’s Lutheran Protestant Perspective The conception of the relationship between human beings, the world and God found in the Lutheran theological anthropology, by which Løgstrup was influenced, is very different from the one found in Greek Socratic philosophy. The human being is created in the image of God, but according to contemporary Danish and German theological existentialism, this imago Dei is entirely corrupted by sin: Humankind was created in God’s image, but has left God, turned away, and according to Kierkegaard, because the chasm between God and human beings is infinite6, we can find no resources within ourselves enabling us to get closer to God, and thus to attempt the harmonization between God and humans found in Greek philosophy. Thus conceived, in Christianity, the human being is God’s enemy, to use Løgstrup’s own words, as found in an article of 1971: The crucifixion is not a necessary condition for Christianity – Christianity would have survived through time and with its essential message intact even if Jesus had died of natural causes, Løgstrup claims. As a result, Løgstrup continues, we would 6 Cf. Kierkegaard, Indøvelse, 132.

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have been spared all the nonsense concerning pain and suffering and its relation to Christianity, and this would have been a huge benefit! But on the other hand, it would have created a new problem: (…) we would have been able to knight [to credit, to merit, B.R.] ourselves on our friendship with God, and thus give hypocrisy even better conditions. This was prevented by the animosity between God and humans, which was nailed down [established, B.R.] once and for all with the crucifixion of Jesus.7

Here we find evidence that Løgstrup acknowledges the understanding of Nietzsche’s madman (‘der tolle Mensch’) from The Gay Science, who seeks God, while he runs into the town square carrying a lantern: The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Where is God?’ he cried; ‘I’ll tell you! We have killed him, – you and I! We are all his murderers! (…)’.8

Humankind killed God, and thus any attempt made by humans to harmonize the relationship with God is rejected by Løgstrup, and by contemporary dialectical theology and theological existentialism. Today we cannot hide behind the circumstance that it was human beings 2000 years ago who killed Jesus, because we and our ancestors are equal: Were God to return, we would kill him again, Løgstrup claims. The human being does not possess the resources needed to reconcile with God. Only faith in God’s undeserved forgiveness and love remains.

The Contrast between Greek and Lutheran Anthropology Løgstrup’s anthropology is rooted in the Lutheranism found in theological existentialism, even though he also modifies theological existentialism. He does this by maintaining that human beings are powerless when it comes to escaping egotism and inner self-confinement, but that life nevertheless holds the very possibilities for reconciliation that we ourselves lack.9 Here, Løgstrup is referring to reconciliation with both God and with fellow man.10 Good exists, even though we are sinners through and through. Both statements hold: The evil of human beings and the goodness of human life are both parts of existence. The Greek 7 Løgstrup, Han sagde, (my translation). 8 Nietzsche, Science, 119–120 (aphorism 125). 9 Hence, Løgstrup’s ‘school’ of theology is termed creation theology, but instead of seeing Løgstrup’s creation theology as being a complete contrast to theological existentialism I suggest that it is understood as an ontological modification within theological existentialism and dialectical theology. 10 To Løgstrup these two relations are actually the same. He cites Friedrich Gogarten as pointing out that in Christianity, the relation to God is settled in the relation to the neighbour, cf. Løgstrup, Demand, 4.

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misconception lies in seeing reconciliation and harmony between human beings as the result of a human effort. Through this misconception they confuse world order (ontology) with human nature (anthropology). Hence, they are unable to realize that any effort made by the self in any relation to other people is already selfish: every moral thought has hidden ulterior motives, according to Løgstrup.11 Luther experienced this himself, when he entered the monastery. According to him, monasticism is institutionalized selfishness, it is pharisaic, because monastic life is centred on the attempt to secure oneself and one’s relationship to God. One of Løgstrup’s existentialist contemporaries, who specialized in Luther, expresses it like this: He [Luther, B.R.] knows that he must seek and serve God and fellow man, but he experiences that he is inescapably turned inward on himself [incurvatus in se, Luther’s definition of sin, B.R.], so that he steals any action – even the one appearing to be the most unselfish – for himself, seeks himself in everything, undertakes no action that is not an attempt at securing himself, saving himself, or earning merit, so that he is protected from God.12

And from another article: A bit of moral improvement or reformation into a personality infused with Christian fervour does not lift us from sin, death, and judgment. On the contrary, they only entangle us even more deeply. Indeed, real sin is the unwillingness to accept that we are mere sinners before God.13

Here Christianity’s criticism of any human effort towards reconciliation or harmony with God or fellow human beings is emphasized. The sin committed by monks and nuns alike was specifically that they would not accept being mere sinners. In the eyes of Løgstrup and contemporary theological existentialism, the Greeks and the Catholics were naïve in their belief in humankind and its resources. The Catholics and the Greeks share a mutual anthropological optimism, believing that the abilities and potential inherent in human beings lead upwards in the hierarchy of either Christian faith or Plato’s world of forms (respectively). Like mountain climbers, Greek philosophers engage in maieutics while pursuing the inner, forgotten insight, which may lead them along virtue’s narrow path, out of Plato’s cave, up and towards the summit of the highest peak, where the form of the good shines like the sun upon the hopeful ascendants. By contrast, Christianity must be understood as a rejection of any conception of such an endeavour, where we seek unity with the good and the true world order:

11 Løgstrup, Tanke. 12 Jensen, Frelsesvished, 45 (my translation). 13 Jensen, Retfærdiggørelse, 93 (my translation).

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Here the ground must be cleared. The human being must apprehend its position before God. The uncertainty of our salvation must rise to the desperate certainty that humans can accomplish nothing, that nothing counts before God. (…). Everything a sinner does is sin and deserves only wrath and punishment. When God has confined everything under sin once and for all, and judged us all as sinners, all is lost. Everything we do is under these conditions, and we cannot escape; we can do nothing to change the position and earn God’s love. There is no path from humans to God.14

Løgstrup’s Anthropology At this point, where so far Løgstrup has been presented as a theological existentialist, people familiar with Løgstrup’s authorship may ask what this has to do with Løgstrup? It is well known that Løgstrup was critical of the theological existentialism of his time, and of Kierkegaard. Now, it is important to stress that Løgstrup did indeed criticize Kierkegaardian theological existentialism, but his dispute concerned the view of human life (ontology) – not human nature (anthropology). Theological existentialism placed not only the human being within the confines of sin, but the whole of existence, life – or finitude as Kierkegaard calls it – was placed under the sign of sin. That life is created was understood by Danish existentialists to mean that life is alien to God – finitude is godless – because God is transcendent. This ontological disagreement resulted in Løgstrup’s emphasis on the positive valuation of existence; human beings are not first and foremost the subject of God’s wrath, but of God’s love: This function [that human beings have to earn God’s love through their actions, B.R.] disappears in Christianity. There is nothing, no cult, no ceremony, no moral behaviour, no political order, through which human beings have to secure God’s affection. Christianity begins with God’s affection, it does not have to be earned, meaning that the actions of the individual are not meant to rise up to God to bring his love down to us, but they are meant to go out to fellow man. The moral and political order is set free. The sole question is how best to arrange our lives with one another [i.e. our cultural life, B.R.].15

The anthropological result is, however, the same for both Løgstrup and Jensen: we cannot and should not try to earn God’s love. So, Løgstrup disputed the inherent (ontological) nihilism of theological existentialism – not its concept of sin, that is, its anthropology. In fact, Løgstrup stresses Luther’s conception of sin in an article from 1940.16 Here, Løgstrup quotes the following in complete agreement with Luther: 14 Jensen, Frelsesvished, 45–46 (my translation). 15 Løgstrup, Begreber, 40 (my translation). As a side note, Jensen would of course agree with Løgstrup that human beings are loved by God, but the emphasis on love and wrath differs. 16 Løgstrup, Viljesbegrebet.

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‘Necessarily’ I tell you (everything we do is evil, when God’s work is not present within us), (…). This means that man without the Spirit of God does not do evil against his will, under pressure, as though he were taken by the scruff of the neck and dragged into it, like a thief or footpad being dragged off against his will to punishment; but he does it willingly, intentionally and gladly. And man cannot let go of, tame or alter his lust and will by his own means, but he continues to will it and lust for it.17

This quote is not just a young man’s flirtation with theological existentialism! On the contrary, Løgstrup repeats it word for word thirty years later in a book-length article from 1971.18 At the very time when Løgstrup unfolds his grand ontological project, centred on the concept of the so-called sovereign expressions of life, with which he tries to refute ontological nihilism, he maintains the anthropology of theological existentialism without changing even a comma. It is actually quite remarkable, but it is even more remarkable that it has been almost entirely overlooked – not only today, but also by Løgstrup’s contemporaries. Consequently, Løgstrup’s thoughts concerning the conception of an ethical demand, the exposure of the self in basic trust, and the accentuation of love in The Ethical Demand was misapprehended as a tremendous desertion of, or apostasy with respect to, evangelical Lutheran Christianity, supposedly providing evidence of Løgstrup coming into the open as a Greek-anthropological optimist. However, nothing could be further from the truth. We find this misconception in numerous places in the debate between Løgstrup and Danish existentialists in the 1950s and 60s. The Danish author Henrik Stangerup offers some very clear examples of this. In a critique of The Ethical Demand he labels Løgstrup’s thinking ‘unbelievably banal’ and ‘preacher’s talk in its most diluted form’, before he delivers his most devastating salvo: Here we have arrived at the greatest problem with The Ethical Demand: at its core it is a jubilantly naïve vote of confidence in humankind, in humankind’s talent – to be honest, a position any thinker in the 20th century ought to find completely untenable.19

However, what Stangerup and his compatriots fail to realize is that Løgstrup keeps two accounts, and that his emphasis on love of one’s neighbour and the goodness of trust do not mitigate the evil of human beings by even a syllable. Had they bothered to read beyond the first few chapters of The Ethical Demand they would have found evidence of this: To show trust and to expose oneself, to entertain a natural love is goodness. In this sense goodness belongs to our human life, though we are evil. Both apply completely, so there can be no reckoning of this, even though this is done often enough when it is said that 17 Martin Luther from On the Bondage of the Will, quoted from Løgstrup, Demand, 141, where Løgstrup reused parts of the text from 1940. 18 Løgstrup, Begreber, 68–69. 19 Stangerup, Replik, 44 (my translation).

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there is ‘at least some’ good in a person! To this we can only reply, no, there is not! The notion that there is ‘at least some’ good in a person amounts to subtracting something from the evil and adding it to the goodness – on the individual’s own account, as though trust and natural love were not given to the person, but were his or her own achievements, and could be credited to the account of the self.20

In Ethical Concepts and Problems we find the notion of the two accounts repeated: ‘But there are two accounts to keep and to distinguish from each other, the account of our given life and the account of our ego’.21 Stangerup confuses these accounts, but Løgstrup certainly does not. Løgstrup’s point is precisely that when it is demanded of us that we ought to love and care for our neighbour, this demand actually reveals our lack of love – or rather, our love for ourselves: However, nothing can be subtracted from the evil of man. The self takes everything in its selfish power. In it, man’s will is bound. The demand to love, which as a demand is addressed to our will, is an unfulfillable demand.22

Løgstrup’s anthropology is in no way a jubilantly naïve vote of confidence in man! But he maintains that there is more to be said about human existence than the wickedness of human nature. Good exists in spite of our inability to produce it: Nor can anything be added to the goodness of human life. It is there in completeness, but beforehand – always beforehand, among other things in the realities of trust and love.23

Self-Development or Self-Liberation What does this anthropological criticism of humankind’s supposed inherent goodness imply for the problem at hand, namely the understanding of evil, good, and self-development? Well, according to Løgstrup the ethical demand reveals two things. Firstly, it tells us that we are selfish, that we love ourselves whereas we ought to love our neighbour. This is also the reason for Løgstrup calling the demand a judgment upon us.24 The demand has the anthropological function of disclosing our selfish nature and ethical inabilities (corresponding to Luther’s second, theological, use of the law). 20 Løgstrup, Demand, 140–141 (my revised translation). 21 Løgstrup, Begreber, 23 (my translation). We could call this Løgstrup’s two-accounts doctrine, inspired by Luther’s so-called two-kingdoms doctrine. 22 Løgstrup, Demand, 141 (my revised translation). 23 Løgstrup, Demand, 141 (my revised translation). 24 Løgstrup, Demand, 120.

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The disclosure of our selfish nature is not the only thing revealed by the demand. The demand does not just disclose the selfish self (cf. ‘the account of our ego’); it also reveals the possibilities within interrelated (or interdependent) human existence, which could have come to fruition if they had not been suffocated by our self-centredness. Hence, the demand reveals the love, compassion, trust, honesty, and so on, which could have been realized, had they not been trampled underfoot and destroyed by us (cf. ‘the account of our given life’). In revealing these possibilities, the demand identifies features of human existence that Løgstrup claims may be understood only as good (or blessings, if you like), features that are threatened by human egotism. This kind of disclosure is not a disclosure of the selfish self, but a revelation of value or possibilities within human social life. This revelation may be called the demand’s ontological function. In Løgstrup’s terminology, ontology has to do with the part of existence that is not produced by the self, and hence we cannot take credit for the existence of these ontological possibilities – we do not owe them to ourselves. Ontology has to do with the foundation of existence, which rescues and relieves us from ourselves, because it supports our social existence in spite of our destructive selfishness. This is where Løgstrup introduces the sovereign expressions of life. In Etiske begreber og problemer (‘Ethical concepts and problems’) of 1971, Løgstrup calls his ethical position ontological. In doing so, he formulates a position separate from both deontological and teleological ethics. Ontological ethics is an ethics founded on the existential basis of interdependent human life – the existential basis that supports human existence in spite of our selfishness, and that we do not produce ourselves. As mentioned earlier, identifying the basis of human formation is a fundamental philosophical question. Are we formed by our own means, or by something other than ourselves; do human beings hold the resources for this formation, or do the resources lie outside our own reach? Obviously, if you adopt a Greek-inspired anthropology, you have every reason to be optimistic when it comes to finding potential within human nature that should be nurtured, groomed, and brought forth. This is made possible due to our ability to choose between good and evil, right and wrong. But Løgstrup’s Lutheran anthropology does not allow for such optimism. The reason is that according to Løgstrup, our will is bound to the self – the human being is inescapably selfish and egotistical by nature. Martin Luther describes sin as incurvatus in se – being turned or bent inward on oneself. The evil of humankind is our self-orientation and self-centredness – our self-absorption. Because we are consumed with ourselves, we shut out our fellow man, so that the love we ought to have felt for our neighbour is in fact diverted and perverted because of our love for ourselves. Figuratively speaking, our self may be likened to the centre of a centripetal force. The centripetal force is the opposite of the centrifugal force. Where the centrifugal force pulls away from the centre, the centripetal force pulls

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towards the centre. Thus, Løgstrup’s conception of the self is akin to the centre of a gravitational field – a black hole – that pulls everything within its reach into its centre and consumes it. If we apply Løgstrup’s considerations concerning human nature to the idea of self-development we arrive at a very different view from the one inspired by Greek anthropology. Thus conceived, we may very well find resources and power within ourselves, and develop them, but from a moral point of view it is highly questionable whether these resources ought to be developed! Thinking along Løgstrup’s lines, the self-development project is in fact a way of facilitating humankind’s ultimate problem – being self-absorbed. Seen in this light, selfdevelopment is self-containment, a way of being hopelessly caught in our own gravitational pull, and through the process of development we are pulled further and further into ourselves. This was exactly what Luther experienced in the monastery: the more the monks sought God, the more they were entangled in sin. As in the realm of physics, where the centrifugal force directed outward is in fact a fictitious force, altruism and the love of one’s neighbour, understood as human achievements, are also fictitious: overly optimistic anthropological illusions. Ironically, the idea of self-development leads to self-entanglement and thus selfcontainment, while actual self-development is to be understood as self-liberation – to be set free from the entanglement and containment of the selfish self. But focusing on the self and its potential does not liberate – it confines.

Formation by outside Resources Løgstrup’s Lutheran anthropological analysis leaves us with quite a bleak view of humankind and existence. We are captive within ourselves, and we are unable to find a way out of our self-absorption, leaving us equally unable to pursue altruistic neighbourly love (unselfish love of either fellow human beings or of God). Thus it would seem that we are left at the mercy of our own selfishness. However, this is not the case, according to Løgstrup. When assuming this bleak view of human existence, we focus one-sidedly on the anthropological disclosure of our selfishness, and thus forget the ontological function of the demand. The ontological function is the revelation of possibilities within interrelated human existence, which support our existence but are not produced by the self. Løgstrup’s examples are the so-called sovereign expressions of life: love, trust, mercy, and the openness of speech, to name his prime examples. Within Løgstrup’s ontology, that is, his philosophy of created life, we find the positive counter-balance to his pessimistic anthropology. In order for the human being to be able to break away from its destructive, selfish, and evil nature we must never look within ourselves for inner potential, but instead we must look away from ourselves! However, the

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problem is that we do not possess the resources needed for looking away from ourselves. Any inclination originating from ourself is already selfish – as we recall, Løgstrup wrote specifically that, ‘The self takes everything in its selfish power’. The only possible way to be caught up in something different from, or other than, ourself is to be liberated of ourself, something we ourselves are unable to do. If Løgstrup’s ontology is correct in saying that life holds possibilities for good (such as love, trust, compassion) then how do we break through to them? He already addressed this problem in a sermon in 1937: Our created life is so excessively wonderful and strange that it seems like we can only endure its strangeness and wonder by forgetting it. If only we could fathom the wonder of hearing – and that we can hear notes. If we were so open, so purely receptive that we could perceive all the beauty and wonder of the notes – then we would forget ourselves in favour of the beatitude of the tone; in hearing we would be nothing but hearing. (…) If only we could experience the wonder of seeing – and that we can see colours and shapes! (…) then in seeing we would be nothing but seeing, that is, purely receptive (…). If only we could fathom the wonder of language. That man is given to us as fellow man through language and conversation, so that community is formed. If we could really receive fellow man through the words of conversation, then we would forget ourselves, due to the joy and wonder of the community of language.25

If we could receive…; if we were open…. Goodness is there, but we are too selfcontained to receive it, according to the early Løgstrup we encounter here. However, the change brought about in Løgstrup’s system by the introduction of the so-called ‘sovereign expressions of life’ means that humankind’s inability is rectified by the power of interdependent existence. Where humankind fails, the expressions of life prevail – hence their sovereignty. They penetrate our selfconfinement; they are a mass that is not produced by the self, and that cannot be taken unconditionally in the self ’s selfish power. The sovereign expressions of life are not mystical, free-floating phenomena, but they are cognitive emotional states brought about by the presence of the other ( just as love is love for the other, and trust is trust in the other). The sovereign expressions of life hold the power to shatter our reservation and transform us from closed to open creatures. This transformation is not enduring, but it is a recurrent possibility of existence. However, thinking that you can learn how to escape your selfishness is an illusion, according to Løgstrup. No courses or techniques can teach you how to be a more open and receptive vehicle for the sovereign expressions of life. We cannot bring about lasting changes in our nature. At this point, however, I see a way of modifying Løgstrup’s view – and oddly enough, he provides the means for this himself.

25 Løgstrup, Skabt, 76–77 (my translation).

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The Fictitious Space In Løgstrup’s anthropology, self-formation or self-development is conceived as a dangerous dead-end resulting only in furthering the self-confinement and selfabsorption which is humankind’s ultimate problem: to engage in self-development projects is to embrace our inclination to narcissism and navel gazing. However, real self-development is to be understood as self-liberation, according to Løgstrup – liberation from the self, in order to become captivated by something different from yourself; liberation to be captivated by the other or by something other than yourself. Contrary to the thoughts and feelings we produce, and our self-made captivity in reflection and selfishness, the sovereign expressions of life are not produced by the self, but must be understood as possibilities made available by the proximity of the other. Thus, love, trust, compassion, and so on are to be conceived of as ways of ‘opening’ my self-centred existence that are made possible by the other person – to be compassionate is to be released from the self ’s selfish confinement, seeing the grief of the other person while forgetting yourself. Hence love, trust, compassion, the openness of speech, and so on, are expressions of interdependent social life – as opposed to hate, vengefulness, distrust, and such; they are our encircling thoughts and emotions, and thus not expressions of life, but of human nature.26 Here, spatiality becomes an important concept or figure to Løgstrup. In his book of 1978, Creation and Annihilation, Løgstrup reflects on the impact of time and space on ethics. When the human being is left to itself, a spatial contraction occurs. Without space, our perspective narrows, confining us to our own inner lives. But this inner space, which Løgstrup calls the fictitious space, may also be expanded – providing openness and perspective.27 This may only come about through an outside force, which penetrates our self-circling thoughts and emotions. In fact, this penetrative outside force is a life necessity, according to Løgstrup. Through his authorship, Løgstrup indicates three ways in our human existence that this outside influence may occur – three ways for human beings to be formed or shaped by something different from ourselves. Initially he sees only one real possibility. In an unpublished journal record, probably from around 1940, he writes: ‘We are captive within ourselves. Liberation is only possible through fellow man’.28 In the following paragraph, he addresses what has been

26 Cf. Løgstrup, Opgør, 95–100. The passage is translated into English in Niekerk, Beyond, 50– 55. 27 Løgstrup, Creation, 38–42; 119–131. 28 Løgstrup, Journal, 34 (my translation).

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my main topic here, namely, the impossibility of self-motivated self-development and self-liberation: Man is his own prisoner; this is the hopelessness of existence, because it implies that we are powerless in the pursuit of self-liberation – any attempt will only entangle us even further in ourselves. Cf. Luther’s struggle with monasticism.29

Hence, the first possible way of opening our self-contained existence is the other person’s ability to penetrate our self-absorption and set us free. Interdependent social life holds the possibility of being influenced and captivated by the other. Art and sensation (the two other ways of liberation from the self and the expansion of the inner, fictitious space) are developed later on in Løgstrup’s authorship. ‘If only we could experience the wonder of seeing – and that we can see colours and shapes!’, Løgstrup wrote in the sermon of 1937. In the 1960s Løgstrup withdrew these reservations. The colours, shapes, and sounds affect us, meaning that they have an impact on us – sensation imbues us with energy and vitality, it attunes our spirit. Sensation can pierce our reservations and expand our fictitious inner space. The common feature here is self-forgetfulness. When we are captivated by another person or attuned by sensation, we are liberated from ourselves. A third kind of outside influence, art, holds the same possibilities. Our selfconfinement leads to an existential blindness – a forgetfulness of existence where things lose their power to affect us. Løgstrup calls this triviality. In the monumental novel, My Struggle, Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgård provides us with a description of how this triviality occurs. The narrator realizes that there is a price to be paid for the familiarity with, and confidence in the world one acquires through life and experience: So when my father raised the sledgehammer above his head and let it fall on the rock that spring evening in the mid-1970s he was doing so in a world he knew and was familiar with. It was not until I myself reached the same age that I understood there was indeed a price to pay for this. As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to keep a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years we strive to attain the correct distance from objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days 29 Løgstrup, Journal, 34 (my translation).

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pass by in a flash and before we know what is happening we are forty, fifty, sixty … Meaning requires content, content requires time, time requires resistance. Knowledge is distance, knowledge is stasis and the enemy of meaning. My picture of my father on that evening in 1976 is, in other words, twofold: on the one hand I see him as I saw him at that time, through the eyes of an eight-year-old: unpredictable and frightening; on the other hand, I see him as a peer through whose life time is blowing and unremittingly sweeping large chunks of meaning along with it.30

Time flows, and meaning drowns in the frozen life form, where triviality has led to lethargy. However, according to Løgstrup, art can expose life and give it an expression, a form, in which our attention is re-captured by the parts of life we have forgotten to take notice of, due to our self-absorption. Triviality means that we are blind, even though we still have the ability to see. But a work of art can make us see through the eyes of the artist – turn our attention towards what we are ignoring, because we are too caught up with ourselves. The work of art holds a revelatory force, it reveals existence – brings it into focus again. In art, life may be brought to our attention without it being subjugated to the self and its selfish power. The motif of a painting, the tonality of music, and the fictitious life world of a narrative rest outside our sphere of influence and manipulation when we encounter them (maybe less so, when we try to speak on their behalf). And because we cannot manipulate them, they can involve us. To mention just one example of the revelatory force of art, I will mention the Danish poet, Klaus Rifbjerg, and his 2001 collection of prose poems entitled 70 Epifanier (70 epiphanies). Under the motto ‘Epiphany is a sudden experience, e.g. of the trivial or banal’31 he pays homage to the piece of soap, the razor, the toothbrush, the door handle32 and ‘[…] all the public lavatories you have entered, where somebody recently released himself of his burden’33 – all these are examples of everyday experiences threatened by triviality. Interestingly, in 2015 Knausgård published the first volume of what he calls a personal encyclopaedia. The complete encyclopaedia will consist of four books, mirroring the four seasons, and here Knausgård tells his unborn daughter about the world she will encounter, when she is born and grows up. In his first Letter to an unborn daughter he writes: This wonder that you will soon meet and get to see is so easy to lose sight of, and there are almost as many ways in which to do that, as there are people. That is why I write this book for you. I want to show you the world as it is all around us all the time. Only by doing so am I able to see it myself.34 30 31 32 33 34

Knausgård, Struggle I, 11–12. Rifbjerg, Epifanier, 5 (my translation). Rifbjerg, Epifanier, 20. Rifbjerg, Epifanier, 44 (my translation). Knausgård, Høsten, 16–17 (my translation).

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Knausgård calls this the ‘close reality’. Among many other things, we find entries on ‘wasps’, ‘toilets’, ‘tin cans’, and so on. Thus, it bears strong resemblance to Rifbjerg’s project. Without the penetration and shattering of our self-encircling thoughts and emotions we are left in our own captivity, thus narrowing the fictitious inner space and leaving us at the mercy of time. This self-centred spatial contraction is nurtured by self-development projects; projects where the outside world is set aside due to the focus on promoting your own possibilities and your own self. However, it is only when you forget yourself that you are liberated from the inner confinement caused by the self. This happens when the fictitious inner space is expanded and filled with something different from the self and its own production, that is, by other people, sensation of shapes, smells, sounds, and colours, and the ability of art to turn our attention towards foreign places, conceptions, and points of view. Hence, happiness and true formation do not lie in our own hands, according to Løgstrup, but they lie in the outside world – in the hands of existence as it is provided through the other. At this point, one might ask Løgstrup this question: Does this ontological and anthropological analysis not provide us with a useful insight? If Løgstrup is correct, then knowledge of our own inabilities and of the possible ways for opening our self-centred existence seem to enable us to act. Even though it would seem almost heretical to Løgstrup, this knowledge might actually make us more receptive vehicles for the sovereign expressions of life – contrary to Løgstrup’s explicit intent. This could leave us with the responsibility of exposing ourselves to these penetrative forces, thus leading to blame or guilt if we fail to act on this knowledge. Before this humanistic jubilantly optimistic vote of confidence in humankind (to give credit to Stangerup’s characterization above) goes too far, it should be emphasized that this line of reasoning opens the door that Løgstrup so vehemently tries to shut – namely, the self-righteousness often evident in those of us who tend to feel confident about our own efforts and virtues. However, one could argue that the risk of self-sufficient admiration of the vastness of our own inner fictitious space and our perspective on things is no more than a potential risk; we do not necessarily have to relapse into this state of mind.

Bibliography Jensen, N.O., Frelsesvished hos Luther, in: H. Koch (ed.), Luthers Gudstro: En indførelse i Luthers tankeverden (Kirkehistoriske studier II, 6), Gads forlag 1959, 41–52. –, Retfærdiggørelse og helliggørelse hos Luther, in: H. Koch (ed.), Luthers Gudstro: En indførelse i Luthers tankeverden (Kirkehistoriske studier II, 6), Gads forlag 1959, 81–100.

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Kierkegaard, S.Aa., Indøvelse i Christendom (SKS 12), Gads forlag 2008, 5–253. Knausgård, K.O., My Struggle I: A Death in the Family, Vintage 2014. –, Om høsten, Forlaget Oktober 2015. Løgstrup, K.E., At være skabt, in: E. Diderichsen/O. Jensen (eds.), Prædikener fra SandagerHolevad, Gyldendal 1995, 76–79. –, Creation and Annihilation (translated excerpts), in: R.L. Dees (ed. and transl.), Metaphysics volume I by K.E. Løgstrup (Metaphysics vol. I-II), Marquette University Press 1995. –, Enhver moralsk tanke er en bagtanke, in: Menighedsbladet 18 (1936) 429–438. –, Etiske begreber og problemer (Løgstrup Biblioteket), 3rd ed., Klim 2014. –, Han sagde det der ikke måtte siges, in: Politiken April 11, 1971 (Feature article). –, Journal XXV.3.1., unpublished, unknown date. –, Kristendom uden skabelsestro, in: Vindrosen 9:7 (1962) 523–535. –, Opgør med Kierkegaard (Løgstrup Biblioteket), 4th ed., Klim 2013. –, The Ethical Demand, 2nd ed., University of Notre Dame Press 1997. –, Viljesbegrebet i De servo arbitrio, in: DTT 3 (1940) 129–147. Niekerk, K.v.K. (ed.), Beyond The Ethical Demand, University of Notre Dame Press 2007. Nietzsche, F., The Gay Science, in: B. Williams (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), Cambridge University Press 2001. Rifbjerg, K., 70 Epifanier, Gyldendal 2001. Safranski, R., Das Böse oder Das Drama der Freiheit, Carl Hanser Verlag 1997. Stangerup, H., En replik i diskussionen om ”Den etiske fordring”, in: Perspektiv 8 (1960) 40–44. Stern, R., Does Ought Imply Can? And Did Kant Think It Does?, in: Utilitas 16:1 (2004) 42– 61.

Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen

Anthropology between Homo Sacer and Homo Oeconomicus: Luther’s Theological Anthropology of Human Capital

1.

Introduction

Luther constructs his theological anthropology around a complex of binary principles: the human being is at once just and sinner (simul iustus et peccator) in the binaries of the inner and outer person, of law and gospel, and of God and devil. In contrast with an anthropology grounded on the abstract ideal of being human as we know it from e. g. 19th century idealism, Luther perceives the human being from behind, that is, on the backdrop of the fall rather than on the backdrop of the created imago Dei. Luther looks at the human being from an infralapsarian (or post-fall) perspective, not from a supralapsarian (or pre-fall) perspective, when he diagnoses the human being as a sinner no matter what it does. Due to his doctrine on sin and his view on the human will as bound, Luther’s anthropology has more often than not been deemed negative or pessimistic. By contrast, I contend that we should rather see Luther’s theological anthropology as realistic, and which he pushed for some real social and liberating consequences. When Luther points to human sinfulness it is always as a contrast to God’s good creation and grace, but not because he despises the world. On the contrary, he sees the world as the materialization of God’s Word, and, in that capacity, humans as God’s good creatures. In this respect, I claim that the human as God’s creature in Luther’s view is a homo sacer, and that the distortions of things mundane should be corrected by the homo oeconomicus. I hope to demonstrate that Luther by way of his dialectical method lays out a much more complex anthropology than he is often attributed, and that his theological anthropology impacted positively on real human life.

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Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen

The Human Being as Homo Nudus Between God and Devil

In his series of theses on the human being, Disputatio de homine, from 1536, Luther summarizes his theological anthropology in three theses, theses 21–23, reflecting the three aspects of being human: First, the human being is God’s creation, consisting of flesh and a living soul, made from the beginning in the image of God, without sin (21); second, the human being is that being whose nature as creature is perverted, after Adam’s fall subject to the devil, i. e. sin and death (22); and third, the human being is that being who by Jesus Christ has been brought out of sin, its perversion of nature as a creature, and has thus been made right again.1 Luther is unfolding a theological anthropology where the human being in a way is seen “from behind”, from the perspective of fall and redemption. Luther does not doubt that originally the human being was created by God as a good creature, without sin. That Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God, in Luther’s perception means that they were able to live without fear or other dangers, as he explains in his Lectures on Genesis (given in the years 1535– 1545).2 Adam and Eve were naked in the flesh, they were homo nudus, and could rule over all the other creatures without weapons or walls.3 Interestingly, Luther criticizes Augustine’s understanding of the human imago Dei as the tripartite abilities of remembrance (memoria), reason/intellect (ratio/intellectus), and will (voluntas). Luther ironizes, that if these three abilities are taken as an exhaustive definition of what it means to be created in the image of God, then Satan – whose remembrance is as good as that of humans and whose intellect and will are so much bigger – will be so much more the image of God.4 Yet, the fallen human is not the image of the devil. Although Luther finds that only Christ, the God-human, is God’s explicit image, he is also adamant that humans were originally made in the image of God. Due to the fall the human image of God has become perverted, but humans are still God’s creatures, though they no longer have even a remote idea of what that means. On the other hand, when Luther speaks of the image of the devil, it is not a characteristic of the postfall human being per se. The devil is a metaphor of the evils, Luther can think of: So we see now what great dangers and how many varieties of death and chances of death this wretched nature is compelled to meet with and to endure in addition to the execrable lust and other sinful passions and inordinate emotions that arise in the hearts of

1 2 3 4

Luther, WA 39, I, 7–13. Luther, WA 42, 46. Luther, WA 42, 49. Luther, WA 42, 45–46.

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all. We are never secure in God; terror and apprehension cause us concern even in sleep. These and similar evils are the image of the devil, who stamped them on us.

Hence, according to Luther, the devil has imprinted his stamp, all kinds of evils, on humans, but they are not created with this stamp of evil and this is not their true or lasting image. Thus, as Luther further notes in his Lectures on Genesis 1, God does not leave humans to such a devilish image.5 Luther not only saw any human being as a being positioned between God and the devil, including himself.6 His awareness of being existentially positioned between God and the devil permeates much of his writing, most famously formulated in his treatise against Erasmus in the controversy on the free choice of the human being, De servo arbitrio. While holding that no human has a free will pertaining to the God relation, Luther stated that the human being is like a mule ridden by either God or Satan. The human will will (pace Luther) always be bound to one or the other, hence never free.7 Luther understood this split between God and the devil as an existential condition that indeed entailed his own life, as he explained in his Summer Postil in 1526: Dear Lord Jesus, I know that, when I have lived at best, then I have still lived miserably. But then I find comfort in the fact that you died for me and that you have sprinkled me with the blood from your holy wounds. For I am baptized on you and have heard your Word, through which you called me and spoke grace and life to me as well as you told me to believe. On this I will fare, and not in the unknown, anxious doubt and thought: Oh, who knows how God in Heaven will judge me.8

In this quotation, we witness a mature Luther who is integrating his own experience in his overall theological enterprise. Late in life, Luther explains his long struggle to become a theologian, emphasizing the importance of experience in order to understand the Holy Scripture. He sees “such a devil” as a pedagogical device toward becoming a theologian: I did not learn my theology at once, but had to seek ever deeper and deeper after it. That is where my spiritual distress led me; for one can never understand the Holy Scriptures without experience and tribulations. … If we do not have such a Devil, then we are nothing but speculativi Theologi, who handle their thoughts badly and speculate about

5 Luther, WA 42, 46–48. As indicated, I feel prone to see Luther’s use and understanding of the image of the devil as an explanation of sin as a real and structural phenomenon. 6 Luther was a man placed between God and the devil, as Heiko Oberman so felicitously put it. See Oberman, Luther. Through this perspective, Obermann provides nuanced descriptions of Luther as a theologian and a human being. 7 Luther, De servo, WA 18, 635. 8 Luther, WA 22, 228. Luther’s outcry in German is “verdammlich”, here translated into the English “miserably”.

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everything with their reason – that it must be like this and like that – just like the way of the monks in the monasteries.9

Luther thus points to life experience as the basis for understanding Scripture whereas the image of God is unknown to humans. “Not only are we not experts, but we perpetually experience the opposite; and so we hear nothing except bare words”.10 Yet, “the gospel has brought about the restoration” of the image of God in humans. The gospel tells humans that they are “formed once more according to that familiar and indeed better image”. The gospel brings about the beginning of a new life and a new righteousness in this corporeal life. Though humans cannot attain perfection in the flesh,11 the sanctification has begun. Notwithstanding, Luther often emphasizes that God created the world and the creatures in order that they could take part in God’s constant fight against the devil and for life.12

3.

Luther’s New Anthropology: The Homo Sacer between Just and Sinner

From that observation, I will heuristically determine Luther’s perception of the human being as that of a homo sacer.13 When I use the concept homo sacer about Luther’s understanding of the human being, it has not only to do with the fact that Luther never doubts that the human being is created by God, and created in the image and likeness of God, but that it even in its distorted imago Dei due to the fall is embraced by the grace of God. Hence, what I mean by the term homo sacer for the human being in Luther’s understanding is not that the human being is perfect and has obtained the perfection of sanctification. Luther considers 9 10 11 12 13

Luther, WATR 1, 352. Luther, WA 42, 47. Luther, WA 42, 48. Luther, WA 42, 56. Cf. Lohse, Theologie, 259. I am not using the concept homo sacer in the same way as Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben uses it in his now famous Homo Sacer project, beginning with his work Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995). Drawing on the philosophies of Heidegger, Benjamin, and Foucault, Agamben addresses a vulnerable state of being human, or a human category: homo sacer, the human being reduced to “bare life” (Greek zoê). Agamben’s homo sacer is the person who within Roman law was outside of protection, paradoxically excluded from and included in the law at one and the same time. Claiming that the paradigm of all modern politics is the concentration camp, Agamben defines the homo sacer as the one who can be killed by impunity but not sacrificed. With this he analyzes sovereign power as power over life, while he perceives the modern human being as an animal whose politics calls his existence as a living being into question, living in a state of emergency. Distinct from this use, I use the term homo sacer for the human being who is created by God and as fallen still embraced by the grace of God.

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Christians a holy people that will always be on earth, a people that is redeemed by Christ and vivified as well as sanctified daily by the Holy Spirit. Yet, in the life lived between law (the Decalogue) and gospel (the Word of God), humans are not only redeemed through Christ’s grace and forgiveness of sins, they are also sanctified through the Holy Spirit’s removal of their sins and calling to a new life. It is Paul’s teaching that there will always be a Christian, holy people in which Christ lives, works, and rules per redemptionem, by grace and the remission of sin; and the Holy Spirit per vivificationem et sanctificationem, by daily purging of sins and renewing life in such a way that we do not remain in sins but can and shall lead a new life in all good works, as the Ten Commandments or Moses’ two tablets demand.14

However, according to Luther, not only the Christian is part of a holy people on earth, a people characterized by a common or catholic holiness. In his Confession of 1528, Luther asserts that even the godless are holy by way of the external orders instituted by God: For to be holy and to be saved are two entirely different things. We are saved through Christ alone; but we become holy both through this faith and through these divine foundations and orders. Even the godless may have much about them that is holy without being saved thereby.15

Through this more complex distinction between being holy, sacer, and being saved, Luther notes that a human being is not saved just because it is holy. The human being is holy because God has embraced it and even come in the flesh as a human being. But it is saved or blessed through faith only. Hence, when Luther perceives humans “from behind”, they are subject to God’s grace and therefore posited in the binary of just and sinner (simul iustus et peccator). With this double characterization of every human being Luther is not describing the human being as it was originally created. Luther is describing fallen humanity who is being justified through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Luther’s anthropology is theo-logical, and it is important that both aspects are reflected in the right order: first just in the face of God, coram Deo, then sinner in the face of other humans, coram hominibus. The simul thus expresses Luther’s understanding of the human being as a relational being in a dual perspective. In the eyes of God (coram Deo), the human being is already just due to both the creational grace and Christ’s justifying act. In the eyes of the world (coram mundo), the human being is always a sinner due to the fact that it constantly fails, even when trying to do good works. Luther does not speak ontologically as did Augustine, but relationally. He completely transforms Augustine’s ontological concept to a relational concept: sin is no longer pride and desire, but unbelief. To 14 Luther, Konziliis, WA 50, 624–634; 641–643. 15 Luther, WA 26, 505. See also below on quotidian life as graced human life.

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be just is to believe in God’s promises and forgiveness, to be a sinner is to not believe. Grace and sin are not substances gradually poured into the human like in a container as in Augustine’s teaching, but two total perspectives – coram Deo and coram mundo – denoting that humans are relational beings, always living in relation to other human beings and God as two simultaneous, yet different relationships. However, the simul also denotes that both are embraced by God’s relation to the human, for God’s grace as a favor and the justification of the sinner in Christ come first and are always present as a promise waiting to be received in faith as a gift. Hence, the simul is asymmetrical in that God’s grace is so much greater than human sin.16 What Luther is actually saying is that sin is a condition under which all creatures are living and that no creature can do anything to alter this condition. Existentially perceived, sin is a conditio sine qua non. Sin is not bound to the body or sexuality, but to being human under the condition of the fall, i. e. from an infralapsarian perspective. This entails that no one human is more perfect or more sinful than others. The simul iustus et peccator principle says that, as God’s creatures, humans are embraced by God’s grace despite their constant failure in being perfect. The human deficit is divinely embraced, without anyone having to do special actions or pay special dues in order to be graced. The human being simply has to live an ordinary life with rocking babies, washing diapers, making beds, laboring at one’s trade, etc., because it is divinely adorned: What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am certain that you have created me as a human being and have begotten this child from my body, I also know for certain that it meets with your perfect pleasure. I confess to you that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving your creature and your most precious will? O how gladly I will do so, even if the duties should be more insignificant and despised”.17

I thus see Luther as sacralizing the common everyday life of humans. When fulfilling this very common everyday life, the human being is homo sacer.18

16 Luther, WA 8, 103–115. 17 Luther, WA 10, II, 295–296. 18 Cf. Thiemann, Realism, 172.

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Humanization of Ministry and Church: The Priesthood of All Believers

Theologically, Luther can but emphasize the equality of all human beings, women and men of faith. Everything else would contradict the substance of his reformation theology. This becomes particularly concrete in the texts where he explicates his idea of the priesthood of all believers: that all baptized as their priestly obligations have “to teach, preach and proclaim the word of God, baptize, consecrate and administer the Lord’s supper, bind and solve from sins, pray for others, sacrifice oneself and judge all teachers and spirits”,19 or as he states in a letter to Spalatin, referring to 1 Peter 2:10: “The apostle Peter drives me strongly when he says that we are all priests (sacerdotes)”,20 concluding that all are equal in the ministry of the word and sacrament and in the state of being human. Luther’s idea of the priesthood as a responsibility toward the neighbor and his rejection of an ontological distinction between lay and ordained in this letter, as in writings from 1520 such as To the Nobility and The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, opened avenues to common people, including women. Although nothing happened overnight because the Protestant churches were integrated in patriarchal states and principalities, we should not discard the fact that the potential of the idea – even spelt out in Luther’s ambiguous-ambivalent statements in On Councils and the Church, in which he exempts women (and children) from his principle of the task and not the person doing the task being the issue21 – did not stay in spe, but eventually came out in re. In a fusion of horizons (Gadamer), Lutherans have aptly interpreted Luther against himself when it came to such ambivalences, which contradicted his own high ideals. It cannot be overstated that when Luther propounds his central theological principles, he always employs the generic term homo (or in German: Mensch), a human being, not the gender term vir (or in German: Mann), a (male) man. The texts propound the equality of believers in Christ through baptism, as Luther also does in his treatise On the Freedom of a Christian. In the latter, Luther, however, makes a significant differentiation within the priesthood of all 19 Luther, WA 12, 180. Cf. WA 6, 484–573. 20 Luther, WA, BR 1, 595 (Letter 231). 21 Luther, WA 50, 633. Three things should be noted here: 1. Luther formulates his understanding of ministry in a universal way, before seemingly absolving this universality by stating that the Holy Spirit has exempted women (and children) from the ministry, except when in need. 2. Luther does not say, that it is not allowed women to be ministers. Instead he calls upon the Holy Spirit to state an unclear exemption from his rule. 3. Text critically, the exemption in lines 12–24 stands as an interruptive interpolation parallel to Paul’s in 1 Cor 14:34–35. It is in discord with the main discourse and immediately again absolved by Luther’s statement that the efficacy of the ministry is independent on how and who the person in ministry is.

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believers.22 Everyone is spiritual and a priest through baptism and faith in Christ, but to the ministry of the word (ministerium verbi; i. e. servant of the word) only some are called. For Luther the difference lies in the calling, which is not a secret inner calling but a public calling by the community of believers. Likewise, he clearly rejects a sacramental understanding of ordination as well as any special character indelebilis attached to such an ordination and the priesthood (of only males). An extremely liberating factor is also that simultaneously with perceiving the pastoral office as instituted by God, Luther humanizes it.23 No pastor is more than a human being and no less a sinner than any member of the calling community. Whereas the Catholic understanding of ministry is based on an ordination tied to a hierarchy of especially sacral males (officium sacerdos), Luther’s understanding of ministry is based on baptism, the true ordination sacrament, and tied to the equality of all baptized believers. The minister is a follower (succesor) of the gospel and as such a servant of the word (ministerium verbi). While the Catholic vicarius Christi is a representation of Christ’s divine nature, the Lutheran ministerium verbi is a representation of the incarnate Christ, the infleshed Logos. In Luther’s perception, God wanted to be known in Christ in his humanity, as a human being, spelled out in On the Freedom of a Christian as Christ’s similitudo hominis, the likeness to a human being.24 Therefore, the external word should be proclaimed orally “by humans, like by you and me”.25 The pastor must in all aspects be a human being, which is also the backdrop against which Luther’s critique of celibacy and of monastic life as a status perfectionis should be perceived. All in all, Luther could be said to in fact humanize both ministry and church, quite adversary to its prior segregation from an ordinary life, placing both in the midst of what he saw as a lived everyday life. I see this de-sacralization of ministry and church as a process of humanization more than a process of secularization, as it goes hand in hand with an actual sacralization of the everyday life of common people.26 It comes particularly to the fore in Luther’s catechisms from 1529. In both the Small Catechism and the Large Catechism, Luther highlights life as part of a creational grace and sacredness that should never be suspended: [God] gave us body, life, food, drink, nourishment, health, protection, peace, and all temporal and eternal blessings… Creatures are only the hands, channels, and means through which God bestows all blessings. For example, he gives to the mother breasts 22 Luther, WA 7, 20–28. 23 Luther, WA 40, I, 59. Here commenting on Gal 1:1 thus: “ministri sunt ex nobis electi…Deus vocat nos omnes ad ministerium vocatione per hominem estque divina vocatio”. 24 Luther, WA 7, 37. 25 Luther, WA 50, 629. 26 Cf. Witte, Sacrament, 42–73, and Lindberg, Martin Luther, 28.

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and milk for her infant, and he gives grain and all kinds of fruits from the earth for man’s nourishment – things which no creature could produce for himself.27

5.

Shaping the Human: The Education of All

Luther has been accused of reducing the educational options for girls and career options for women due to his stark criticism of monastic life.28 However, Luther’s criticism should be seen against the backdrop of his own experience as an Augustinian friar and his understanding of human freedom as a gift of God that does not set divides between humans coram Deo, only different charismata to be lived out in service of the common faith.29 Because monastic life claims to be an elite ranking higher than other estates, with celibacy as a status perfectionis, it is against evangelical freedom in Luther’s perception. Only in one respect does the monastic life live out evangelical freedom, namely in the monastic schools that offered children of both sexes an education. But different from the monastic elite schools for the children of nobility and the affluent bourgeoisie, Luther emphasizes the importance of free Christian schools for boys and girls for the sake of a well-educated worldly regime with humanist standards. His advice is to establish the very best schools for both boys and girls at all places because in order to maintain its worldly estate outwardly the world must have good and capable men and women.30

It is possible to interpret Luther’s text in the sense that he advices more schooling of boys than of girls regarding worldly ministries.31 However, I do not see this as the heart of his message. Actually, Luther only explicitly requests more education pertaining to spiritual ministries and without making sex divides. His argument is that those who are to serve in the spiritual regime, such as male and female teachers, should learn more than others because they should be instrumental in elevating the cultural standard of the entire people. Hence, Luther recommends that those amongst capable people, both male and female, who are expected to hold spiritual ministries,32 should be given more education. In this vein, Luther 27 Peters, Kommentar, 205. Cf. Luther’s exposition of the first of the Ten Commandments in Der Grosse Katechismus, WA 30, I, 132–139. Luther calls upon God’s commandment to every human, irrespective of position, to do good to her neighbor, for in the same way as a mother has been given breasts and milk to feed her child every creature is God’s hand, channel, and means (136). 28 See e. g. Ruether, Sexism, 117–126; Karant-Nunn/Wiesner-Hanks, Luther, 10–13. 29 Luther, WA 8, 612. 30 Luther, WA 15, 44. Cf. WA 8, 615: “et puellae quoque erudiebantur”. 31 E. g. Karant-Nunn/Wiesner-Hanks, Luther, 10. 32 Luther, WA 15, 47: “lerer und lereryn, prediger und andern geistlichen emptern”.

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invited educated women to teach the little girls publicly and show their work as an example for others, as when he asks “the honorable and virtuous Maiden Else von Kanitz” to come and instruct the little girls in Wittenberg.33 Carter Lindberg formulated it to the point: “Luther developed the office of parenting not only in the catechisms, but also in his writings on education as an instrument for change”, by demanding “priority of the estate of ‘parenthood’ over other estates in the interest of community”.34 Luther had an eye for how the education of boys and girls would be of immense importance for the future quality of political institutions and leadership tasks, as he expounded his ideas in the Sermon on Keeping Children in School in 1530.35

6.

The Human Reality: Theology of the Cross

There are strong humanizing features in Luther’s theology of the cross. From his basis of critique of the hierarchical church and papal sacramentality/sacral priesthood, Luther in his Disputatio Heidelbergae habitat, theses 19–20, opposed a theology of glory and called for the true theologian who could identify with suffering and the cross.36 Just as Luther’s anthropology is a view of the human being from behind, his theology of the cross teaches that God can only be known from behind, from God’s backside (posteriora dei). As God is only revealed in God’s opposite (sub contrario specie), Luther notes that it is under the masks of commonplace things, beyond the mundane surface, that God hides. The “visible and manifest things of God [are] seen through the suffering and the cross”.37 Besides addressing the abuse of indulgences and of the cross as a relic that was sold as wood taken from the historical cross of Christ, Luther called theologians to identify with real suffering and the real cross of Christ who suffered for all humanity, not with arbitrary merits. Luther’s calling is not a calling to seek suffering per se or even to see it as a redeeming factor. Luther’s calling for a theologian of the cross is to see human life in its fullness of joys and sorrows as divinely embraced. The theologian of the cross envisages reality and real life, “calling a thing what it is”, and does not explain away suffering. Directed toward the scholastics’ rational and abstract explanations of divine mathematics, Luther’s theology of the cross (as also his concept of Deus absconditus) is a non-explanation of real human life. God and the God-created life are not part of any petty human logic, but are 33 34 35 36 37

Luther, WABR 4, 236 (Letter 1133), a letter from 1527. Lindberg, Martin Luther, 40. Luther, Eine Predigt, WA 30, 2, 508–588. Luther, WA 1, 354 and 361–362. Luther, WA 1, 354.

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completely theo-logic and as such highly complex. Luther’s message is that life should not be rationalized, but accepted, experienced and lived in its fullness. Only when humans call suffering what it is and see what it does to the other, can they identify with this other in empathy, i. e. enter the pathos, the suffering, of others as did Christ on the cross. Luther could not only identify with those in doubt from his own “Anfechtunge”, but as banned by both church and empire also with the excluded and marginalized, and as a father who lost some of his children with those in deep distress. As he stated when his beloved daughter, Elisabeth, died at 14 years old, he suffered “almost with a female spirit” (animum paene muliebrem).38 However, suffering or sacrifice should not be sought per se. As Luther spells it out in his Sermon on the New Testament, the only sacrifice people should make is to “believe that Christ is a priest for them in Heaven” and thank him in prayer for the sacrifice he made for them. In that respect “all are equally priests for God”, “all Christian men and women are priests, whether they are old or young, female and male masters of the house or female or male servants, learned or lay. Here is no difference – unless faith should not be the same for all”.39

7.

Human – Not Divine: The Humanization of Humans

Luther has not only been criticized for having a negative anthropology, but also for devaluating Mary and thereby discharging a female figure from the divine power center. This is, however, a huge misunderstanding of his eminent transformation of the role of Mary as a supernatural being to a human being. Although Luther remains faithful to the confessing to Mary as virgin and the sinless mother of God, as is evident from his Epistel am Sonntag nach dem Christtage, Gal 4,1–740 his most coherent and comprehensive interpretation of Mary’s role is based on the lowly and poor maiden of Luke 1, who by her earthly humanity subverts inhuman earthly powers.41 Luther utilizes his commentary on the Magnificat in his reformation program by addressing it to his supporter, Prince John Frederick, Duke of Saxony, as a “Fürstenspiegel” written in the vernacular for laypeople. Luther’s choice of Mary’s hymn to God is not arbitrary. It stems from a tradition in primarily the prophetic literature of the Old Testament called “the poor of Jahve”, in which poverty is perceived the collective sin of a society unable 38 39 40 41

Luther, WA, BR 4, 511 (Letter 1303). Luther, WA 6, 370. Luther, WA 10, I, 352–369. Luther, WA 7, 538–604.

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to create justice in accordance with the purpose of God’s creation. The Magnificat links the understanding of the history of Israel as God’s history with his people and the message about Christ who liberates and saves all people, and it tells about real experiences of richness versus poverty and real hopes directed toward the savior of the wretched, thus weaving the ecclesiological experiences of God’s people together with their eschatological hopes. Luther takes this line of tradition and elaborates it. Furthermore, as the vernacularization of scripture is an important aspect to his church political purpose, he translates it from Greek into German. Hence, in his return to the German John Frederick’s interest in the cause of the Reformation Luther combines his understanding of God’s saving practice with his view on justice and princely power, contrasting the rich and powerful prince with the poor and powerless girl.42 Luther is indeed writing about real and concrete poverty that cannot be beautified in any way in his reminder of how to employ worldly power rightly.Explicating the depth and reality of Mary’s poverty, disgrace and lowliness, Luther presents her hymn as a paradigm of God’s just ruling from which the prince should learn: “God is the kind of Lord who does nothing but to exalt what is lowly and put down what is high”.43 In Luther’s perception, God does his creational and salutary work by subverting the ungodly social architecture, by healing the broken, and even breaking what is whole.44 This Mary has learned from the Holy Spirit and honors God for it, and Luther expects the prince to learn the same from Mary’s God. Luther employs Magnificat as a “program” of his ecclesio-political goals: to cleanse the God relationship from devotional amends that function as mere plaster, without healing what is broken. Also a lord and ruler must love his subjects and have for his chief concern not how to live at ease but how to uplift and improve his people, or he rules only for the perdition of his soul. How Luther liberates his whole argumentation from any kind of ecclesial piety or sacramentality can hardly be overemphasized. Again, his argument is theological. No doubt, the text will gain by being read intertextually with Luther’s address to the nobility and related to his idea of the two realms (the latter never spelled out as a system but running through his oeuvre). But the main point here is that Luther reminds those who are in rule that they have a special responsibility in taking care of God’s creation. Mary represents the real human being as part of God’s creation. Luther breaks with tradition by pulling down Mary from all pedestals and presents her – sola scriptura – as someone ordinary: “a poor and 42 For a fuller exposition of this in contrast with a Mariology of glory, see Wiberg Pedersen, Holy Spirit, 23–41. 43 Luther, WA 7, 546. 44 Luther, WA 7, 547.

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plain citizen’s daughter”.45 Mary is an ordinary woman who possesses the human characteristics, which enable her to experience divine grace and justice and to bear Christ. Mary’s lowly state is of immense importance in Luther’s exposition, not only as a contrast to elite worldly powers but also as a contrast to elite monastic and devotional piety. Hence, he makes a point of translating the Greek term for humility, tapeinåsin teis douleis (Luke 1:48), into “lowly estate” in a social sense “as that of human beings who are poor, sick, hungry, thirsty, in prison, suffering, and dying”.46 Humility is not some deed that frees people of sin and perdition in the sight of God. Luther’s focus is human beings living an ordinary and responsible human life together with other human beings. In that respect one might say that Luther is in fact propounding an everyday theology centered round the human being as God’s graced creation. Luther does not denigrate Mary but translates her role into a humanization and a democratization of the worldly regime.

8.

A Human Economy: Luther’s Homo Oeconomicus

With his Ninety-Five Theses from 1517 Luther took up the fight against abuse of the common people and called for helping the poor and the needy (e. g. theses 43) instead of paying for the forgiveness of sins that Christ already paid for all humanity, irrespective of class, sex, education, etc. Together with his sola gratia and sola fide principles Luther’s critique of the church hierarchy gives a very strong signal of an egalitarian and inclusive view of humans: if you believe, you already have. Based on these principles, Luther’s theology perceives the common people and the everyday life of each and every one as already graced and redeemed. By contrast, Luther’s theses will unmask the corruption and exploitation of the new fiscal economy that was emerging in his time, with its interest (usury) and speculations. Luther feared that the Roman church, with the potentials of the new colonies, as he worries in for example his Sermon von dem Wucher,47 would take advantage of the economic system over against the common people. When Max Weber deemed Luther and his ideas of the economic atavist and obsolete, it was because he compared it to the three-hundred years younger Adam Smith, but also because he never made an in-depth analysis of Luther’s own ideas. Weber rather built on the ideas of others before and after Luther. The picture he painted from scanty readings of a few Luther texts, actually never 45 Luther, WA 7, 548. 46 Luther, WA 7, 561. 47 Luther, WA 6, 1–8.

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bringing one single quote from Luther’s oeuvre, was that of a hopeless theology that only deteriorated from its original focus on human beings as God’s creatures to a focus on obedience to God and the temporal authorities as part of providence.48 Weber’s emphasis on Luther’s concept of vocation and his principle of sola fide makes him ignore Luther’s own emphasis on sola gratia, the governing factor of Luther’s theology and economy being that of a gracious God. Weber speaks ironically of Luther’s gratia amissibilis as an ineffective capitalist device,49 totally ignoring the effect of sola gratia as the a priori principle which governs the other soli principles and in fact functions as their nexus for a human capital. The sola fide principle without a doubt is fundamental to Luther as that which leads to salvation and makes the Christian spontaneously do works of love, but not without grace.50 In tandem with his emphasis on the grace of God, Luther endeavors to establish a generous economic system. If one reads some of his key texts carefully, it becomes clear that Luther is not simply advocating an old economy or combating a modern economy per se. Rather, Luther is criticizing an economic system that commercializes the church and exploits the common human being, the people of God. Luther is not fighting a needed modernization of the economic system but the unnecessary money speculation that tricked ordinary fellow humans out of their property or robbed them of what they owned so that they could no longer provide for those dependent of them. Hence, it is possible to perceive Luther’s stark criticism of monopolies and usury a modern, social corrective and a memento to the graceless greed of the global neo-liberal economy of our time.51 But while Luther’s critique of economic speculation is pertinent, he does not offer any real economic alternative. His overall concern is – based on his criticism of the current social, juridical, and ecclesial situation – to poke at people’s consciousness to think of the poor and weak, especially of those in rule, and to point out equity (Billigkeit) as a principle of a just ruling that best mirror the gracious God. After all, in Luther’s terminology equity (aequitas) is to oeconomia what reason is to politia. This governing equity is the theme of the aforementioned Magnificat that Luther wrote in 1521 as a Fürstenspiegel, making Mary’s poverty and humility ideals for the ruler to mirror. Likewise, it is evident from his theological arguments for how the church should be ordered with a special ministry, and in his criticism of usury in a number of texts from 1519, 48 49 50 51

Weber, Ethic, 79. 86–88. Weber, Ethic, 126. This is the main point of e. g. The Freedom of a Christian. In fact, Marx saw Luther as the first German political economist with the opposite perception of modern economy than Weber: “By the old-fashioned but still renewed capitalist form, usury, Luther very well illustrated domineering as an element in the craving for riches”. See Marx, Kapital, 619 and 905.

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1524, and 1540 in which he balances the questions of rights and obligations against the questions of righteousness and consciousness, e. g. the matter of fair interest.52 It goes without saying that Luther’s understanding of economy was not identical with that of a twentieth or twenty-first century economist. Luther first and foremost used the term oeconomia when speaking of the three fundamental forms of life, the drei Stände or spheres of society by which God sets a frame for human life, which (pace Luther) is also the first principle of scriptural exegesis: ecclesia, the church, is the basic order of creation that secures the God-human relation, while oeconomia, the second order of creation concerns the household (the root meaning of the Greek contraction, oeconomia) and the family, and politia, the third order which is not an order of creation but a necessity caused by the fall.53 Luther began developing his own understanding of the traditional three orders in his sermon on The Holy and Blessed Sacrament of Baptism in 1519, relating on par people’s different callings to the three estates instituted by God: matrimony, clergy, and temporal rule – each an expression of the toil and labor that he perceives as fundamental to human life, each sanctified by the same grace in the one Baptism.54

9.

Quotidian Life as Graced Human Life

How Luther views the relation between sin and grace, and the dialectics between the law and any Christian’s obligations towards a fellow human being, is evident from his overarching design of the Catechisms. Luther first explicates the Decalogue as a Menschenspiegel for any human being (it is a lex naturalis), before he expounds matters concerning the gospel and any Christian: the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacraments. But particularly in his exposition of commandments four, five and seven, Luther’s emphasis on what we would call human, social glue, the exercising equity and care with different members of society, stands out. It is important that we note how much weight he puts on honesty and care as virtues that provide the right framework conditions for human welfare and private economical enterprise (seventh commandment) as well as constantly accentuating the duty of every human being to the common people and to the poor. However, where the ecclesial and economic strata are only obligated to instruct by way of God’s word, it 52 For more on Luther’s critique of usury in his late work from 1540, see Westhelle, Aspect, 37– 50. 53 Luther, WA 42, 79; cf. WA 26, 505; WA 50, 652. For a comprehensive outline of this tripartite division, see further Bayer, Nature, 126–28; and Westhelle, Power, 287–89. 54 Luther, WA 2, 734.

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is the responsibility of the political stratum “to establish and maintain order in all areas of trade and commerce in order that the poor may not be burdened and oppressed and in order that they themselves may not be responsible for other people’s sins”.55 On the other hand, those who do good works will be “heartily acceptable and pleasing to God”, so much so that God “lavishes upon them a wonderful blessing”.56 God will generously reward them for helping and befriending their neighbors, particularly the poor, Luther asserts, while warning those who trick and commit fraud in everyday business or underhanded business transaction, no matter on what scale, of God’s displeasure. It is Luther’s intention to radicalize and enhance the meaning of all the commandments, applying them to all levels of society. In order to show how radical the seventh commandment, not to steal, is, Luther also addresses the fraud and plundering committed by the papal church and the government, accentuating the plundering and deception of the common German people, not least of the poor. Without regard for social class or responsibility, any human being is “also obligated faithfully to protect their neighbors’ property and to promote and further their interests, especially when they get money, wages, and provision for doing so”57 in all three spheres. In this respect, Luther points forward to a public anti-poverty program, which may very well be seen as a precursor of the modern welfare state’s social security system.58 The commandments are, as he has it, “a summary of the divine teaching on what we are to do to make our whole life pleasing to God. They are the true fountain from which all good works must spring, the true channel through which all good works must flow”. The commandments are “common, everyday domestic duties of one neighbor toward another, with no show about them” that simply teach us “practicing gentleness, patience, love towards enemies”, etc. such as when “a poor girl tends a little child”.59 Luther clearly understands the Decalogue as laying out the model for a social life and a just society, which again builds on the God relationship. Luther concludes that it will be a long time before human beings produce a doctrine or social order equal to the Ten Commandments, for they are beyond human power to fulfill.60

In fact, Luther asserts, that when following the commandments concerning our neighbor we should ask, what God wants and demands of us. If we omit doing

55 56 57 58 59 60

Luther, Large Catechism, 419. Luther, Large Catechism, 420. Luther, Large Catechism, 417. Lienemann, Frihed, 91. Cf. Kahl, Roots, 91–126; Kahl, Doctrines, 267–295. Luther, Large Catechism, 407. Luther, Large Catechism, 408.

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that, we have an angry judge. But if we do ask, we have a gracious and parental God.61 In the same vein, Luther places the church in the midst of the common everyday life in On the Councils and the Church, when he explicates where the true church is and, grounded in Matt 5:11–12, makes the cross the seventh nota ecclesiae. The church is constituted by the Word of God as a spiritual congregation, the people of God. But furthermore, the church is an earthly institution which has a socializing function of calling everyone to act like Christ: to be upright, obedient, and willing to serve. The uprightness and service do not pertain to the public authorities only, such as Weber claimed. It is about being upright, obedient and serving in relation to every fellow human, through body and property. Just as important is the other side: not to harm anyone. As Luther is expounding on the cross of Christ as a nota, he is vehement in his opposition to the fraud that takes place when the papal church sells relics in the form of pieces of wood or bone, claiming that they were from the holy cross. For it is the true cross, the cross of Christ, that not only sanctifies people, but also blesses them.62 In Luther’s perception there is reciprocity between the three spheres (ecclesia, oeconomia and politia) that all have a public character, and therefore also reciprocity between the public authorities and the society at large. Exactly Luther’s sola scriptura principle, here his thorough study of Scripture, led him to declare that hierarchical privileges associated with priesthood and monasticism were human constructs. Thus, he accentuates that, although the grace of Christ is what alone saves and though all Christians are equally holy, the Christian is obligated to work and be upright in all human enterprises and spheres.63 Since works of love must be free and spontaneous, as he spells it out in Freedom of a Christian, it is important for Luther to underline that no person is forced to follow Christ’s instructions as they are rendered in the Sermon on the Mount. Integral to his doctrine on justification – not only sola gratia, but also solus Deus and solus Christus in the sense of the God who wants to be known sola humana – Luther has a very strong emphasis on love of neighbor and enemy, on faith as trust and forgiveness that together function as genuine socializing factors in the quotidian human life. In concordance with that, he emphasizes that this earthly life is created and given by God as a quotidian life to be lived with others, all being highly common people with different callings, and in Luther’s overall

61 Large Catechism, 409–410. Cf. Small Catechism, 344: “he promises grace and every blessing to all who keep them”. 62 Luther, WA 50, 642: “Denn mit diesen Heilthum macht der Heilige Geist dies Volk nicht allein heilig, sondern auch selig”. 63 Luther, WA 50, 625. Cf. above, note 14. I see this distinction in Luther’s teaching as so significant that I am bringing the citation once again in this context.

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distinction in his Confession between being holy and being saved that frames the economy-grace relationship: For to be holy and to be saved are two entirely different things. We are saved through Christ alone; but we become holy both through this faith and through these divine foundations and orders. Even the godless may have much about them that is holy without being saved thereby.64

This distinction totally frames the economy-grace relationship, as everyone is holy through faith and the divinely instituted orders (which latter one could translate as daily labor), whereas one is saved through Christ alone.

10.

Grace and Human Capital

In his large commentary to Galatians, commenting Gal 1:1, Luther further asserts that the right calling is God’s vocation qua being human: God calls us all to the ministry of vocation through the human that is divinely called.65

Luther’s point is that this is a calling by grace that will lead humans to a human life, as God’s grace justifies and forgives sinners, not the law, or else Christ died in vain.66 Already in his Sermon on Two Kinds of Righteousness,67 Luther explicates his understanding of righteousness within the framework of the two regimes, the private (the ecclesial and economic sphere) and the public (the political sphere), that none of them can be separated though they should be discerned from each other. Taking his point of departure in Philippians 2:5f, Luther expounds the operation of the two kinds of righteousness of a Christian: the primary, alien righteousness (iustitia aliena) and the secondary, proper righteousness (iustitia propria). In order to explain this operation, Luther uses an image from human life, the famous bridal imagery that he further employs in Freedom of a Christian.68 Christ as bridegroom and the church as bride are one flesh (Gen 2:24) and one spirit (Eph 5:29–32). As the bridegroom’s alien righteousness gracefully is given to the bride against her alien original sin, it prompts the bride’s proper righteousness to sanctify her through faith. Hence, the marriage is consummated as the righteousness that seeks the welfare of the others in the exclamatory 64 Luther, WA 26, 505. 65 Luther, WA 40, I, 59: “Deus vocat nos omnes ad ministerium vocatione per hominem estque divina vocatio”. 66 Luther, WA 40, I, 303–307. 67 Luther, WA 2, 143–152. See the new English translation, Wiberg Pedersen, Sermon, 9–24. 68 Luther WA 7, 54–55. Cf. the German version WA 7, 25–26.

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exchange of bridegroom and bride: “I am yours” (Song 2:16). The second part of the sermon demonstrates the earliest example of Luther’s idea of the two regimes. While differentiating between how justice works in the public and the private spheres (vel publici vel privati), Luther contrasts justice with injustice. With Rom 13:4, he defines public justice as that exercised through a worldly regime in the service of God and for the sake of order. Hence, his definition of Christian righteousness and its servant form (forma servi) apply to the private sphere alone, to those who act according to the gospel for the sake of the other. Luther thus describes how grace circulates from God in the nuptial, and indeed, erotic embrace to humans, and how the mercy and benevolent righteousness should govern in all matters, yet warning against mingling the justice of the two regimes. In his treatise Freedom of a Christian, the prevalence of the erotic over the pedagogical metaphor is evident. Though both metaphors belong to the economic paradigm, Luther employs the nuptial imagery and the exchange of love (stupendo duello) about God’s giving of grace (Christ as gift) and the parental imagery for the human love of neighbor (Christ as example). Taken together they express the different social relations that are mirrored in the Godhuman relation in a three-dimensional way: a physical dimension, a grace-economical dimension, and a social dimension. Expounding the relation between the outer human being and God, Luther shifts from the erotic to the pedagogical metaphor, transitioning from the dogmatic to the ethical domain, from the creational-anthropological aspect of the human being as imago Dei to the soteriological-Christological aspect of God in Christ being similitudo hominis such that the solus Christus expresses God’s human side and can thus be translated into a sola humana.69 The exchange of love is completed as both aspects concur in a circulation of love, from God to the individual human to the inter-human, lifting up the interrelatedness of otherness.70 All the different social images of the God-human relation are expressions of diverse forms of love of neighbor and service at the inter-human level that accounts for the human being as the homo sacer between just and sinner.

69 Luther, WA 7, 60–61. I deliberately refer to the Latin version, the vocabulary of which seems more accurate. Cf. the German version WA 7, 34–35. 70 Cf. how Luther in his sermon On the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ, and the Brotherhoods emphasizes the Eucharistic community of love as an ideal for the secular community, WA 2, 742–758.

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Conclusion

In many of his writings Luther seems to perceive human life as sacred, and to more or less perceive the human being’s quotidian life rather than the ecclesial institutions as sacred. Hence, I see a close connection between the homo sacer and the human being as just and sinner in Luther’s anthropology. Also, Luther’s perception of the homo oeconomicus vis-a-vis the modern economy (eoconomia moderna) that emerges in Luther’s time to demonstrate how he esteemed the worldly realm as the framework for a fair balance of interests in human life in the intersection of the three spheres: household (eoconomia), church (ecclesia), and state (politia). I have here proposed an outline of what one could also label an ecumenical approach, namely that of taking as my point of departure a common ground for all humans by way of the category homo, the human being. In Luther’s theology of justice and grace in which homo, the human being, is the central constitutive category, I contend that it is possible to perceive the human being as homo sacer in what could be seen as realistic theological anthropology with positive potentials. On this ground one can perceive Luther’s theology as more than a theological program. His theological anthropology is also a social program for the homo sacer, in whom grace and economy intersect in a three-dimensional human life where money is life sustaining, as such being sacred as life itself (!), but not a prerequisite for or an expression of salvation. What counts eschatologically and soteriologically in the here and now is human capital graced by God. As such, and in its all its endeavors to be fair and good, the human being is the homo sacer on its way from its situation as the God-created and fallen sinner to the restored image of God who can live without fear and terror.

Bibliography Agamben, G., Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press 1998. –, The State of Exception. Homo Sacer II, 1, University of Chicago Press 2005. Bayer, O., Nature and Institution: Luther’s Doctrine of the Three Orders, Lutheran Quarterly (1998) 125–159. Kahl, S., The Religious Roots of Modern Poverty Policy: Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed Protestant Traditions Compared, European Journal of Sociology (2005) 91–126. –, Religious Doctrines and Poor Relief: A Different Causal Pathway, in: K. van Kersbergen/ Ph. Manow (eds.), Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare State Regimes, Cambridge University Press 2009, 267–295. Karant-Nunn, S./M. Wiesner-Hanks, Luther on Women, Cambridge University Press 2003. Lienemann, W., Om et kristenmenneskes frihed. Det økonomiske tema, in: A. Grøn/H.C. Wind (eds.), Frihed – idé og virkelighed, Anis 1989, 75–112.

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Lindberg, C., Martin Luther on Marriage and the Family, Perichoresis (2004) 27–46. Lohse, B., Luthers Theologie, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1995. Luther, M., Disputatio Heidelbergae habita, WA 1, Hermann Böhlau 1883. –, Ein Sermon von dem heiligen hochwürdigen Sakrament der Taufe; Ein Sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heiligen wahren Leichnams Christi und von den Brüderschaften, WA 2, Hermann Böhlau 1884. –, Sermon von dem Wucher; Ein Sermon von dem neuen Testament; De Captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae praeludium, WA 6, Hermann Böhlau 1888. –, Rationis Latomianae confutatio; De votis monastici iudicium, WA 8, Hermann Böhlau 1889. –, De instituendis ministris ecclesiae, WA 12, Hermann Böhlau 1891. –, De libertate christiana/Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen; Das Magnificat verdeutschet und ausgelegt, WA 7, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1897. –, An die Ratherren aller Städte deutsches Lands, dass sie christliche Schulen aufrichten und erhalten sollen, WA 15, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1899. –, Vom eheliche Leben, WA 10, I, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1907. –, De servo arbitrio, WA 18, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1908. –, Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntniss 1528, WA 26, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1909. –, Eine Predigt, dass man Kinder zur Schulen halten sollen, WA 30, II, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1909. –, Eyn klein Unterricht, was man ynn den Euangeliis suchen und gewarten soll; Epistel am Sonntag nach dem Christtage, Gal 4,1–7, WA 10, I, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1910. –, Der Grosse Katechismus, WA 30, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1910. –, Genesisvorlesungen, WA 42, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1911. –, WATR 1, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1912. –, Von den konziliis und kirchen, WA 50, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1914. –, Disputatio de homine, WA 39, I, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1926. –, Sommerpostille, WA 22, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1929. –, Luther an Spalatin, WA, BR 1, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1930. –, Luther an Else von Kanitz; Luther an Nikolaus Hausmann, WA, BR 4, Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger 1933. –, The Small Catechism; The Large Catechism, in: R. Kolb/T. Wengert (eds.), The Book of Concord, Fortress Press 2000. Marx, K., Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, vol. 1, Dietz Verlag 1965. Oberman, H.A., Luther: Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel, Severin und Seitler Verlag 1982. Peters, A., Kommentar zu Luthers Katechismen 1: Die Zehn Gebote, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990. Ruether, R.R., Sexism and God-Talk, Beacon Press 1983. Thiemann, R.F., Sacramental Realism, in: C. Helmer/B. Holm (eds.), Lutherrenaissance Past and Present, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2015, 156–175. Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, George Allen and Unwin Ltd 1976 [1930]. Westhelle, V., Power and Politics: Incursions in Luther’s Theology, in: C. Helmer (ed.), The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern Times, Fortress Press 2009, 284–300.

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–, What Aspect of Lutheran Theology Contribute to a Holistic Development Model? Or, Is there Something to be Looked At?, in: K. Mtata (ed.), Religion: Help or Hindrance to Development. LWF Documentation 58, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2013, 37–50. Wiberg Pedersen, E.M., The Holy Spirit shall come upon you. Mary – the Human ‘Locus’ for the Holy Spirit, in: E.M. Wiberg Pedersen et al (eds.), Cracks in the Walls: Essays on Spirituality, Ecumenicity and Ethics, Peter Lang 2005, 23–41. –, A Man Caught Between Bad Anthropology and Good Theology? Martin Luther’s View of Women Generally and of Mary Specifically, Dialog 3 (2010) 190–200. –, Liberating Aspects of Luther’s Theology for a Post-Gender Politics, in: C.-H. Grenholm/ G. Gunner (eds.), Lutheran Identity and Political Theology (Church of Sweden Research Series, Vol. 9), Pickwick Publications 2014, 101–116. –, Disciplined Freedom, or Free versus Slave? Recuperating Luther for Feminist Theology in an Age of Terror, Lutherjahrbuch (2013) 284–88. –, Economy and Grace: A Defense of Human Capital, Dialog 54/3 (2015) 224–32. –, Sermon on Two Kinds of Christian Righteousness, in: K. Stjerna (ed.), The Essential Luther 2, Fortress Press 2015. Wiesner-Hanks, M., Women and the Reformations: Reflections on Recent Research, History Compass 2 (2004) 1–27. Witte, J., From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition, Westminster John Know Press 1997.

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‘The God Within’ and Religious Self-Reliance: Emerson’s Radical Interpretation of Christian Anthropology

1.

Introduction

It has often been remarked that ‘theology is anthropology’ but what is implied in such a statement? A first and general answer could be that how we conceive of God and the myths of Creation and Fall determine our views on the nature and destiny of man. Even where this declaration is turned in a subversive direction, as in Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity, the connection still holds. Is the reverse also true? May we also submit that ‘anthropology is theology’? Yes, in the sense that even in a widely secularized context our more or less taken for granted ideas of human rights and dignity will more often than not turn out to have theological roots. Finally, by Christian or theological anthropology is usually meant a part of systematic theology reflecting upon how the views on the origin, nature, and destiny of man contained in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are interpreted and made relevant in any given time and cultural context. The following contribution is a brief exercise in theological anthropology focusing on American religious thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). There are at least two reasons behind this choice: First, the 19th century witnessed the profound change of beliefs and values that still influences us, and thus it may be regarded as the crucible of our own time, regardless whether we prefer to label this as ‘post-’ or ‘late’ modernity. Second, by gradually giving up his theological commitments in favor of a more universal religious vision, Emerson may be considered a paradigm case for a modern trend towards more individualistic and eclectic forms of religious commitment. The purpose of this article is to focus on just one aspect of Emerson’s moral and religious vision, i. e. his radical interpretation of Christian anthropology by way of interpreting Jesus as a teacher of ‘the God within’, and further to show how this is connected to his often misrepresented idea of individual ‘self-reliance’. In order to demonstrate that this project (although undergoing significant change during Emerson’s life) constitutes a core element of his entire oeuvre, I have deliberately included examples and quotations spanning both his early, middle,

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and late career. Emerson will thus prove an illustrative case of how theology and anthropology interact. In order to establish an interpretive background, the first section outlines Emerson’s self-understanding of witnessing a profound, ongoing religious revolution, which calls for a radical reinterpretation of Christianity. This theme of crisis and transition may even be called a constant feature of his thinking, appearing as it does already in his sermons, as well an in his late work, The Conduct of Life. In the second section, focusing on Emerson’s sermons as well as his ‘transcendentalist’ period (including the notorious Divinity School Address), my aim is to show how core elements of Jesus as ‘the true man’ are being transferred to the individual, thus enabling her to establish an immediate and living relation to God, irrespective of churches or dogmas. What emerges, in other words, is a portrait of the self-reliant individual, communing with God through the moral sentiment. This internal connection between God-reliance and self-reliance forms the subject of the third section. Finally, the last section attempts a broader interpretive perspective by considering Emerson’s religious vision in the light of the ‘Mysticism’ type as described by Ernst Troeltsch.

2.

The Unitarian Background and Emerson’s Diagnosis of a ‘Revolution in Religious Opinion’

What was the lay of the land if we inquire into the religious situation of the Boston area around 1820? Traditional Calvinism was on the wane and split between conservatives and liberals. The latter had gradually gained the upper hand, not least thanks to their leader, Boston minister W.E. Channing (1780– 1842) who was esteemed and admired (not least by young Emerson) for his rhetorically powerful sermons. For our purposes here, it will suffice to refer to the titles of two of his most famous sermons in order to indicate the core of this theological revolt: In ‘The Moral Argument Against Calvinism’ (1820) Channing launched a frontal attack on Calvinism’s understanding of sin as man’s total depravity. This idea, Channing objected, was no longer acceptable because it degraded man and prevented him from heeding the Gospel’s call for moral improvement. Channing’s own alternative centered on the notion of self-culture, which also exercised considerable influence on Emerson. This is no less true regarding the second sermon to be mentioned here, ‘Likeness to God’ (1828), which developed the liberal party’s positive and optimistic theological anthropology.1 The conservatives early on reacted by pejoratively labeling the 1 The sermons by Channing mentioned here may be found in Channing, Writings.

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liberals as ‘Unitarians’ because of their marked reservations toward Trinitarian (and Christological) speculation. At first, the liberals strongly rejected this designation, but eventually they came to wear it as a badge of honor, and in 1825 the American Unitarian Association was formed. Only a decade later, however, some Unitarian ministers and intellectuals experienced Unitarianism as being pale and outgrown, and inspired by recent trends in European literature and philosophy, they established a small group of ‘Transcendentalists’ with Emerson as the leading figure.2 Emerson was a Unitarian, and having finished his studies at Harvard he was ordained as minister to Boston’s Second Church in 1829. After just three years, however, a dispute over how to celebrate the Lord’s Supper gave Emerson the occasion to leave the ministry, although the congregation was reluctant to part with him. In 1832–1833 he travelled for six months to Europe, and when arriving in England he took the opportunity of meeting with luminaries like Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle – the latter to become a life-long friend and correspondent. Returning to New England, he settled at Concord and embarked on a new career as a free writer and frequent lecturer on the newly established ‘lyceum circuit’, America’s version of adult education. Although Emerson gave up his ministry, he continued to preach in various churches until 1837, and it has been aptly said that instead of a break in his career we should rather regard him as having exchanged the pulpit with the lectern.3 The movement from Calvinism to Unitarianism, and in turn to Transcendentalism, may well qualify as a revolution in ideas and attitudes. But this is not all. A recurring theme of Emerson’s sermons is his deep conviction of witnessing a broader and ongoing revolution in the religious opinion of men. Since this diagnosis of the times forms the background for his bold moves in theological anthropology, much like the correlation between a question and an answer, this will serve as the proper starting point of our investigation. In a sermon on Acts 17 (delivered on May 27, 1832), Emerson uses a solar eclipse on the previous day as an occasion to elaborate on the marvelous discoveries of astronomy that has led to a revolution in our perception of the

2 For more on this, see Gura, Transcendentalism. 3 This interpretation is corroborated by a statement by Emerson himself in a letter to Carlyle (November 2, 1837) where he explains how he regards ‘preaching’ in the lyceum as his proper calling: “I find myself so much more and freer on the platform of the lecture-room than in the pulpit, that I shall not much more use the last; and do now only in a little country chapel at the request of simple men to whom I sustain no other relation than that of preacher. But I preach in the Lecture-Room and then it tells, for there is no prescription. You may laugh, weep, reason, sing, sneer, or pray, according to your genius. It is the new pulpit, and very much in vogue with my northern countrymen”. Quoted from Carlyle/Emerson, Correspondence, 137.

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universe.4 Moving on from this, he makes the point, as were he simply stating a fact, namely that a similar revolution has taken place regarding our religious ideas. Thus, he tells his congregation, it “was the effect of this new knowledge, to make an equal revolution in religious opinion, as in science, for it was impossible to regard the earth any longer, as the only object in the care of Providence”.5 From this, Emerson goes on to distance himself from the traditional theological system, and in particular he finds that Copernican astronomy has “made the theological scheme of Redemption absolutely incredible”.6 He has no regrets about this; on the contrary he calls it an ‘enlargement of our religious views’ as well as a ‘purification’. On the consequences of this for our understanding of God, he has the following message to his congregation: “And I thus say, my friends, that to the human race the discoveries of astronomy have added vast meaning to the name of God. Once God was understood to be the governor of this world. Now they perceive him to be an Infinite Mind. An awful, an adorable Being, yet as affectionate in his care as he is surpassing in Wisdom”.7 Just a few months later, now in a sermon on Colossians 1:9–10, Emerson elaborates more systematically on this theme of a gradual purification of religious ideas. Anticipating later theories of religious evolution, he encourages his congregation to consider “the successive steps (..) whereby men ascend to the knowledge of God”.8 Moreover, outlining these steps has a specific purpose, i. e. [T]hat we may see, each for ourselves, what errors yet cleave to our own views. For the knowledge of God is not a knowledge, as is often supposed, to which we are born, and that the children of Christians will be Christians, but there is a process which each individual must go through. Only by his own reflexion, only by his own virtue, can a man grow in the knowledge of God. And in the bosom of Christianity you may find as false views of God as those which are taught on the banks of the Ganges.9

As the above quotation indicates, Emerson is not afraid of stating his independence vis à vis traditional theology and the teachings of the church. He 4 A profound interest in all branches of the natural sciences is a constant feature of Emerson’s entire oeuvre. 5 Emerson, Sermons 4, 156–157. From a contemporary perspective it is remarkable to what extent Emerson has grasped the radical nature of the discoveries of astronomy and the intellectual challenge that these entail. Thus, he poses the following question: “Let me ask the younger members of this assembly, have you ever settled it in your mind and do you believe that space is really boundless?” (ibid., 155). And a little later he speculates that “whatever beings inhabit Saturn, Jupiter, Herschel, and Mercury, even in this little family of social worlds that journey like us around the sun, they must have an organization wholly different from man” (ibid.). 6 Emerson, Sermons 4, 157. 7 Emerson, Sermons 4, 158. 8 Emerson, Sermons 4, 172. 9 Emerson, Sermons 4, 172.

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proceeds by outlining ‘a few of the successive steps’ in humanity’s knowledge of God. The first important indication on God’s behalf was his strict prohibition on worshipping idols and images. This step is important since to Emerson (and here we may perhaps detect a residue of Calvinism) adoration of images is linked to ignorance. The second step in religious evolution was the abolition of sacrifice and of sacrificial thinking more generally. Giving sacrifices, according to Emerson, indicates a rather primitive conception of God. Nonetheless, he is able to accord them at least one positive trait, namely that they may have prepared the way for “the great moral truth that all high attainments, all true heroism, can only exist by self-denial and self-sacrifice”.10 And despite all deficiencies pertaining to Jahveh, Emerson acknowledges that the God of the Hebrew Bible is “one that loves and benefits men”.11 On the third level, and now seemingly advancing to the God of the New Testament, humanity has realized the truth that “not power, but benevolence is the basis of the Divine character”,12 and also that in the Providence of God “Evil is only good unfinished”.13 Emerson makes it clear that he regards this progress in religious knowledge as being also an ‘advancement’ in humanity. The virtue of Christianity’s conception of God is that it “makes men acquainted with him as the Father, and introduces the sublime doctrine of his dwelling with man, and that under the name of the Comforter”.14 The problem, according to Emerson, is that this joyful message has not been preached. Instead, Christianity has been “connected with stern and sad images” and with man’s fear of death. This, however, directly contradicts the spirit of the gospel, for characteristic of Jesus is that “He was a teacher of living”.15 Characteristic of the fourth step is “the discovery that God is not to be worshipped by specific acts but by the conformity of the whole character to his laws. This is a very high point and very slowly reached”.16 Clearly, this is important to Emerson, so let me try to unpack this. True to his Calvinist heritage, Emerson upholds a strong version of God’s law as something that is meant to be fulfilled. He is aware that a Christian life consists of faith and works, and in a sermon on Matthew 7: 16 (‘Ye shall know them by their fruits’) he says that either is imperfect without the other. Nonetheless, he finds it ‘safer’ and ‘a sure test’ to encourage men to do good works, and he concludes that: “Works prepare the mind to receive the idea of God; and, as I believe, with every good work, a juster 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Emerson, Sermons 4, 173. Emerson, Sermons 4, 195. Emerson, Sermons 4, 173. Emerson, Sermons 4, 174. Emerson, Sermons 4, 195. Emerson, Sermons 4, 196. Emerson, Sermons 4, 174.

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idea of God is entertained; but Faith must come in to perfect the man, by connecting him and his works to God”.17 To Emerson, the great merit of Christianity is that it is a practical system with the purpose of improving man; it gives us principles to live by. From this follows a close connection between religion and morality, and in some instances Emerson even seems to identify religion with his favorite notion of the moral sentiment. From a Lutheran perspective, this cannot but appear erroneous, but it should be noted in all fairness that Emerson is not to be faulted for preaching works righteousness: As we saw in the quotation above, what is important is not specific acts but ‘the conformity of the whole character’ to God’s eternal and universal laws. In other words, what we detect here is a theological application of the Unitarian fondness for self-culture. Finally, the fifth step in the evolution of man’s knowledge of religion and God is presented by Emerson in the following manner: After all these doctrines respecting the divine character have been received, there still remains the greatest truth – greatest in mystery and greatest in practical effect, – this namely, that God is within us. It is the tendency of all the instruction we receive, whether by the Scriptures or by the cultivation of our minds, to withdraw our search after God continually from without and to make us more and more sensible that the brightest revelation of the Godhead is made in the depths of our own soul. It is not our soul that is God, but God is in our soul.18

Obviously, this statement leads us directly into the next section of this article, but before going into that, let me demonstrate how similar ideas are to be found in the mature Emerson, e. g. in his The Conduct of Life published in 1860. Here, the essay on ‘Worship’ contains not just his diagnosis of the religious situation of the times but also his proposal for a cure or remedy. “We live in a transition period”, says Emerson, “when the old faiths which comforted nations, and not only so but made nations, seem to have spent their force”.19 And he spends several pages describing the widespread skepticism and infidelity, not least among the intellectuals.20 At the same time, however, he is merciless in his criticism of the surrogate forms attempting to replace traditional religion: A silent revolution has loosed the tension of the old religious sects, and in place of the gravity and permanence of those societies of opinion, they run into freak and extravagance. In creeds never was such levity; witness the heathenisms in Christianity, the periodic “revivals”, the Millenium mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression to Popery, the maundering of Mormons, the squalor of Mesmerism, the de17 18 19 20

Emerson, Sermons 2, 49. Emerson, Sermons 4, 175; first emphasis by me. Emerson, Works 6, 199. For an excellent account of 19th century loss of faith among intellectuals and artists, see Wilson, Funeral. In the present context Wilson’s book is of particular relevance for containing a chapter on Thomas Carlyle.

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liration of rappings, the rat and mouse revelation, thumps in table-drawers, and black art.21

The remedy for the crisis, according to Emerson, is to be sought elsewhere, namely in obeying the moral sentiment and accepting the existence of moral and spiritual facts as a reality. Since this spiritual realism and the connection between morality and religion are indeed characteristic of Emerson, I take the liberty of including a somewhat longer quotation from the same context: We say the old forms of religion decay, and that a skepticism devastates the community. I do not think it can be cured or stayed by any modification of theologic creeds, much less by theologic discipline. The cure for false theology is mother-wit. Forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour. That which is signified by the words “moral” and “spiritual” is a lasting essence, and, with whatever illusions we have loaded them, will certainly bring back the words, age after age, to their ancient meaning. I know no words that mean so much. In our definitions we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing. Men talk of “mere morality”, – which is much as if one should say, ‘Poor God, with nobody to help him.’ I find the omnipresence and the almightiness in the reaction of every atom in Nature.22

Let me tie up this part of the argument by concluding that Emerson holds an optimistic idea of an ongoing, progressive evolution of religious ideas, where stages four and five above mark the contours of his own religious position.

3.

Jesus as Teacher of the God Within: Emerson’s New Anthropology

What are the nature and function of Jesus Christ if God is within us, for example as being felt in our conscience? 23 As we shall see shortly, Jesus is first and foremost the teacher who has been sent in order to lead us to God. Another important point, however, is Emerson’s view of Jesus as being the true man, as living life as it was meant to be. This feature is a direct consequence of Emerson’s Unitarian opposition to a Chalcedonian (or more generally: dogmatic) principle of the two natures of Christ. Here is how he presents Jesus as the true man:

21 Emerson, Works 6, 200. 22 Emerson, Works 6, 205–206. For more on this phase of Emerson’s thought, see Robinson, Emerson. 23 Given the importance of the moral sentiment and the connection between religion and morality, ‘conscience’ is a central concept in Emerson. Cf. Nørager, Gud, 40–56.

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He worshipped the Father as he appeared to him in his own heart. He felt that his own being was derived from one Source with the sun and moon, with man and beast. He felt that one law prevailed throughout the whole, one love animated all, and that only by a faithful, an affectionate obedience to that law, could God be approached, be known. And so the whole of his instruction down to the last sublime act of sacrifice, was to make men submit the outward to the inward, the flesh to the spirit.24

But why then was Jesus crucified? This is not entirely clear in the sermons, and at any rate there is no necessity about this (as in traditional theories of atonement for the sins of humanity). Emerson, however, at one place offers the following explanation: “That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus was crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes that have followed him, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our wellbeing in the reformation of the soul”.25 And we are surely justified in seeing this reason as a reflection of Emerson’s personal, theological agenda. In the early sermons, Emerson can still use more traditional language and speak of Christ as ‘Saviour’ and as ‘Son of God’, but gradually this gives way to his preferred idea of Jesus as teacher. But we should not overlook that this also entails a concept of salvation; thus, Jesus is ‘the Mediator’ by being “an Instructor of man. He teaches us how to become like God”.26 This important theme is further developed in a sermon (dated October 21th 1832) entitled “The Genuine Man” where we can detect how Emerson’s implicit Christology is transformed into a new anthropology. Having criticized how the world venerates celebrities and ‘runs after externals’, Emerson tells his congregation what they should do instead: It seems to me, brethren, as if we wanted nothing so much as the habit of distinguishing betwixt our circumstances and ourselves; – the habit of rigorous scrutiny into our daily life, to learn how much there is of our own action, and how much is not genuine, but imitated and mercenary; the advantage of arriving at a precise notion of a genuine man such as all good and great persons have aimed to be; such as Jesus designed to be, and to make many become; such, in short, as, in the language of the Scriptures, is ‘the New Man, created after God in righteousness and true holiness’.27

In Emerson’s pointing to the need for ‘rigorous scrutiny’, we may discover a residue of Puritanism, but other than that we find a tendency (to become more prominent in his subsequent writings) to portray Jesus as being part (albeit a very important one) of a long line of true prophets or sages who Emerson can also

24 25 26 27

Emerson, Sermons 4, 176. Emerson, Sermons 4, 193. Emerson, Sermons 4, 192. Emerson, Sermons 4, 203.

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refer to as great or ‘representative’ men.28 Put differently, to us (in the tradition of Christianity) Jesus may be the most important teacher but he is neither the only one nor necessarily the last. The ‘new’ man or the ‘genuine’ man (and this is where we see Christology being transformed into anthropology) has four characteristics: 1) he takes an earnest interest in himself – not in the sense of selfabsorption – but believing in ‘the powers and worth of his own nature’ (as a means of fulfilling a desire of improvement and even ‘perfection’;29 2) he has ‘a regard for truth’, and 3) his ‘action corresponds to his speech’, and, finally, 4) the genuine man displays fearlessness and ‘habitual tranquility’. And Emerson concludes that, “This is the New Man who is to be formed – the end of the life and teaching of Jesus; Jesus did not conform to the corruptions of the times, to the way of the world. He did not teach as the Scribes but departed at once from them to obey that inward teaching, the God in him which is also in us”.30 Having returned from his journey to Europe, Emerson was invited to his former congregation and preached a sermon (October 27th 1833) on John 16:13. The importance of this sermon lies in showing us how Emerson begins to take the first steps in moving beyond traditional Christianity. Once again, he hints at the ongoing revolution in religious ideas and makes it quite clear that he considers this a most important subject: “Before I parted from you I anxiously desired an opportunity of speaking to you upon the subject of that change which seems to be taking place under our eyes in the opinions of men on religious questions; of that Teaching which all men are waiting for, and of that Teacher who has been predicted and hath not yet come”.31 Emerson uses his text from the gospel of John to tell his congregation that Jesus himself foresaw a continuous revelation and hence also a gradual growth in religious insight. But how does this square with the fact that the Jesus of the fourth gospel calls himself ‘the Truth’? Says Emerson, “He never said, All truth have I revealed – but all which was committed to me”,32 and therefore the emphasis is still on the Teacher to come. The following quotation illustrates how Emerson’s radical interpretation connects anthropology, soteriology, and the idea of an ongoing religious revolution: The Teacher is teaching but has not finished his word. That word never will be finished. It was before the heavens and shall be after them. But a part of this message is spoken this day and every day. There are truths now being revealed. There is a revolution of 28 Cf. “Representative Men: Seven Lectures” in: Emerson, Collected Works 4. In Emerson’s own time Representative Men was published in 1850. Significantly, it opens with a lecture on Plato. Among his other representative men are Shakespeare, Swedenborg, and Goethe. 29 The exhortation by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matth. 5: 48) is one of Emerson’s favorite New Testament sayings. 30 Emerson, Sermons 4, 207–208. 31 Emerson, Sermons 4, 210. 32 Emerson, Sermons 4, 213.

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religious opinion taking effect around us, as it seems to me the greatest of all revolutions which have ever occurred, that, namely which has separated the individual from the whole world and made him demand a faith satisfactory to his own proper nature, whose full extent he now for the first time contemplates. A little while ago, Men were supposed to be saved or lost as one race; Adam was the federal head and, in books of theology, his sin was a federal sin which cut off the hopes of all his posterity. The atoning blood of Christ, again, was a sacrifice for all, by which the divine vengeance was averted from you and me. But now, men have begun to feel and to inquire for their several stake in the joy and the suffering of the whole. What is my relation to Almighty God? (…) Man begins to hear a voice in reply that fills the heavens and the earth, saying, that God is within him, that there is the celestial host. I find that this amazing revelation of my immediate relation to God, is a solution to all the doubts that oppressed me.33

A clear illustration of this demand for an ‘immediate relation to God’ is found in Emerson’s notorious Divinity School Address to which we now turn. At the same time, this text, reflecting Emerson in the heyday of his transcendentalist enthusiasm, is a good illustration of a further step away from orthodox Christianity. But first a few words of background: In 1837, students of Harvard Divinity School approached Emerson (by then a notoriety due to his transcendentalist breakthrough book, Nature, from 1836) and invited him to speak at the graduation of the senior class. Emerson happily obliged unaware of the commotion and controversy to be sparked by his address. After an initial tribute to the beauty of outer nature, Emerson invokes the major theme of his talk: “A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue”.34 Already from the sermons we are familiar with the emphasis on virtue, morality, and character, but from around the time of the address, the sentiment of virtue (or ‘the moral sentiment’) becomes a core concept of Emerson’s thinking.35 His characterization of it is not without a dose of pathos: thus, man should strive and learn to say, “‘I love the Right; Truth is beautiful within and without, forevermore. Virtue, I am thine: save me: use me: thee will I serve, day and night, in great, in small, that I may be not virtuous, but virtue;’ – then is the end of creation answered, and God is well pleased”.36 Emerson defines the sentiment of virtue as “a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws” but finds it necessary to add that “[t]hese laws refuse to be adequately stated”.37 The intimate connection between morality and religion that we noticed in the sermons is reinforced here, when he 33 Emerson, Sermons 4, 215. 34 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 77. 35 This, however, is in line with his tradition and background. Both Calvinists and Unitarians could agree that ‘moral perfection’ was a major attribute of God (hence his laws would also be perfect and eternal), and emphasizing the moral sentiment is also characteristic of Channing. 36 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 77. 37 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 77.

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declares that ‘this sentiment is the essence of all religion’.38 Invoking also the idea of likeness to God, he ventures the following bold statement: “If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God”.39 Despite the boldness and pathos, however, one should not overlook the extent to which Emerson simply reinterprets (and in that sense may be said to remain within) a Calvinist heritage with its emphasis on the beauty of God’s moral perfection. But it is nonetheless a radical reinterpretation. Turning now to the portrayal of Jesus, Emerson begins by ecumenically placing him within a long line of ‘holy’ or ‘divine’ bards covering both East and West, specially gifted people who are friends of both virtue and intellect. Says Emerson, “And thus by his holy thoughts, Jesus serves us, and thus only. To aim to convert a man by miracles, is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments”.40 But is there then nothing distinctive or exclusive about Jesus? Is he just a wise man like so many others in human history? Not quite. As the following quotation shows, Emerson attempts to maintain what we may at least call an ‘implicit’ Christology: Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. (…) He felt respect for Moses and the prophets; but no unfit tenderness at postponing their initial revelations, to the hour and the man that now is; to the eternal revelation in the heart. Thus was he a true man. Having seen that the law in us is commanding, he would not suffer if to be commanded. Boldly, with hand, and heart, and life, he declared it was God. Thus was he a true man. Thus is he, as I think, the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of a man.41

The twice repeated phrase, ‘Thus was he a true man’, echoes a central tenet of traditional Christology.42 Less conventional are the Platonic motif of the mystery of the soul (in some of the sermons Emerson describes the message of Jesus as being the immortality of the soul), as well as identifying ‘the law in us’ (the sentiment of virtue) with God. But it is obvious that this latter move serves to 38 As the following quotation demonstrates, Emerson connects the moral and religious sentiment to happiness: ”The perception of this law of laws always awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness”. Emerson, Collected Works 1, 79. 39 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 78. 40 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 83. 41 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 81–82. 42 This theme should no doubt be seen in close connection with the earlier mentioned sermon on ’Genuine Man’.

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elevate man (cf. the idea of ‘likeness to God’), hence the emphasis on the ‘greatness’ and ‘worth’ of man. Immediately following this ‘gospel according to Emerson’, however, comes his harsh criticism of the church and its transformation of an eternal revelation into a fixed and authoritarian dogma of the two natures of Christ: But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet’s lips, and said, in the next age, ‘This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man’. The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt before”.43 What Emerson demands is a living religion here and now, and he complains that, “Men have come to speak of the revelation as something long ago given and done, as if God were dead”.44

Appropriate to the occasion, Emerson devotes the last half of his talk to directly addressing the soon-to-be preachers and revealing to them his own ideas of preaching and the true preacher. In line with his sermon on the Teacher to come and his idea of continuous revelation, he begins by saying that “it is my duty to say to you, that the need was never greater of new revelation than now”, the reason being “the universal decay and now almost death of faith in society”.45 So what is to be done? What should the coming preachers do? The remedy, says Emerson, “is already declared in the ground of our complaint of the Church. We have contrasted the Church with the Soul. In the soul, then, let the redemption be sought”.46 For the same reason, he encourages his audience ‘to go alone’ and to cast behind them all formalism and conformity in order to “acquaint men at first hand with the Deity”.47

43 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 81. Later on elaborates this critique as follows: “Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love. But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man is made the injurer of man”. Emerson, Collected Works 1, 82. 44 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 84. In line with this, he also notes that “[t]he stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that the Bible is closed; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by representing him as a man; indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology” (ibid., 89). 45 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 84. 46 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 89. 47 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 90.

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In further elaborating his desired solution, Emerson may be said partly to revert to Channing’s idea of self-culture. Thus, he points his listeners to the importance of ‘the culture of the moral nature’, and defines preaching as “the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life”.48 What the preacher should be able to do is to ‘convert life into truth’, and hence the “true preacher can always be known by this, that he deals out to people his life, – life passed through the fire of thought”.49 But in doing this he is – like Jesus – primarily a teacher; therefore, Emerson, once again emphasizing the idea of living religion, concludes that, “[i]t is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake. The true Christianity, – a faith like Christ’s in the infinitude of man, – is lost”.50 This main section has demonstrated how Emerson’s portrait of Jesus as preaching the immortality of the soul, the greatness of man, and ‘the God within’ results in a new and optimistic anthropology drawing heavily on the ideas of ‘likeness to God’ and God’s law being present in the soul as conscience and ‘the moral sentiment’. To Emerson, traditional Christology and soteriology belong to the formalism of historical Christianity, and therefore he transforms this heritage into a religious anthropology assisted by the ideas of continuous revelation and the quasi-Messianic expectation of ‘the Teacher to come’. While Emerson’s interpretation of Christianity is no doubt radical,51 it is nonetheless able to find historical support, particularly in early Christianity. Above, I have mentioned his emphasis on Jesus as the ‘true’ or ‘genuine’ man, but we may also think of the idea, prevalent in the early church, of incarnation as deification: God became man in order for man to become God. Moreover, Emerson’s fondness for portraying Jesus Christ as the teacher leading us to God may be read as an (albeit somewhat distant) echo of Origen’s pedagogical soteriology and Christology.52 These ideas may have entered Emerson’s thinking through his study of Cambridge Platonism of the 17th century (Ralph Cudworth, in particular). In evaluating his bold moves, we should not overlook that a driving force behind 48 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 85. At one point Emerson laments that “historical Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man, where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power” (ibid., 87– 88). 49 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 86. 50 Emerson, Collected Works 1, 89. 51 The Divinity School Address did not fail to cause theological outcry and opposition at the time, much to Emerson’s surprise. And in fact, had his opponents listened carefully to his late sermons, they would no doubt have been able to acknowledge the continuity of his religious thinking. The texts of two of his most noteworthy critics may be found in Myerson, Transcendentalism, 246–260. Emerson himself, always averse to polemics, refrained from responding to his critics. 52 See Jacobsen, Christ.

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Emerson’s radicalization of Christian anthropology and soteriology is the theological problem of contemporaneity: If Christianity is to be a viable option today its message must be conveyed in a way that bridges the historical gap separating us from the New Testament portrayal of Jesus. This problem, famously stated by Lessing in the 18th century, was acutely felt in the 19th century, and as we have seen, it is characteristic of Emerson that he demands a living faith and searches for a live and unmediated relation to Jesus. In the following section I want to briefly discuss what we may regard as a specific application of Emerson’s transformation of Christian anthropology, i. e. his celebrated notion of self-reliance.

4.

Self-Reliance as God-Reliance

Among his modern interpreters, Emerson has suffered the ill-fate of being proclaimed as the prophet of self-reliance and an unbridled individualism. As would already appear from what has been said above, this is a serious distortion: Emerson is a religious thinker, and his anthropology is suffused by a mixture of Christian, Platonic (including Neo-Platonic and Stoic), and Romantic-idealistic ideas.53 Normally, those who write on this particular subject limit themselves to a reading of Emerson’s famous essay Self-Reliance (1841). But if God, rightly understood, is the God within, surely it must follow that self-reliance is to be regarded as God-reliance? To substantiate this claim, in what follows I shall tease out how the idea of self-reliance originates in Emerson’s sermons, and thus constitutes an integral element in his theological reflections. At the same time, this will round off our treatment of his theological anthropology.54 In a sermon from 1830 on Matthew 16:26 (‘For what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’), Emerson sets out from the premise that the precepts of Christianity presuppose “that every human mind is capable of receiving and acting upon these sublime principles”.55 But what about the reality of sin? He does not deny that “compared with their capacity men are not such as they ought to be”.56 However, in this kind of theology sin is not regarded 53 The most prominent example of an interpreter deliberately going against the religious roots of Emersonian self-reliance is Kateb, Emerson. For an interpretation more in line with the one attempted here, see Freeman, Self-Reliance, 27–53. 54 Already in ‘The Moral Argument against Calvinism’ (1820) Channing had sowed the seeds of self-reliance: “It is an important truth, which we apprehend, has not been sufficiently developed, that the ultimate reliance of a human being is and must be on his own mind. To confide in God, we must first confide in the faculties by which He is apprehended, and by which the proofs of his existence are weighed”. Quoted from Channing, Writings, 110. 55 Emerson, Sermons 2, 263. 56 Emerson, Sermons 2, 263

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as a corruption of man’s nature; instead, “it springs from his own neglect to cultivate some part of his mind”,57 or from specific acts of the will. Hence, Emerson can state the overall purpose of this sermon as follows: “I wish to enforce the doctrine that a man should trust himself; should have a perfect confidence that there is no defect or inferiority in his nature”.58 This, in my interpretation, is the germ of self-reliance seen as a Christian duty. And in fact, when we read further in this sermon we notice that not only does Emerson explicitly use the term self-reliance, he also anchors it in the idea of man being created in the image of God. At the same time, he is acutely aware of the obvious objection that preaching self-reliance seems to go squarely against the gospel ideals of self-abasement and humility. To counter this objection, he assures his congregation that: “It is important to observe that this self-reliance which grows out of the Scripture doctrine of the value of the soul is not inconsistent either with our duties to our fellow men or to God”.59 Emerson does not deny that in terms of Christian morality we should always prefer the good of our neighbor to that of our own. But when a clash of opinion occurs as to what is our moral duty in a specific situation, we should always trust and follow the voice of our own conscience. According to the great commandment, however, a Christian has duties not just to his fellow man but also to God, and what about this latter relation? Emerson brings the worries of his congregation to rest in the following manner: Nor, on the other hand, let it be thought that there is in this self-reliance anything of presumption, anything inconsistent with a spirit of dependence and piety toward God. In listening more intently to our own soul we are not becoming in the ordinary sense more selfish, but are departing farther from what is low and falling back upon truth and upon God. For the whole value of the soul depends on the fact that it contains a divine principle, that it is a house of God, and the voice of the eternal inhabitant may always be heard within it.60

In other words, true self-reliance equals God-reliance and helps explain why Emerson consistently shuns all kinds of shallow conversation, formalism, and conventionalism. In The Divinity School Address he notes that, “That is always best which gives me to myself. The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself”.61 As one would expect, the theme of self-reliance emerges 57 58 59 60 61

Emerson, Sermons 2, 264. Emerson, Sermons 2, 264. Emerson, Sermons 2, 266. Emerson, Sermons 2, 266–267. Emerson, Collected Works 1, 82. The classic theme of knowing yourself is elaborated as follows by Emerson in the sermon treated here: “It is those who have steadily listened to their own who have found out the great truths of religion which are the salvation of the human soul. My friends, let me beseech you to remember that it is only by looking inward that the outward

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also in the sermon (mentioned earlier) attempting to portray ‘The Genuine Man’. Here as elsewhere, Emerson emphasizes the importance of moral improvement and perfecting one’s character, and once again he has apparently felt the need to assuage the concerns of his congregation: But men are apt to hear these representations with distrust and say, ‘Yes, but have I the right to trust myself so far? – A strong self-reliance will do very well for men of original mind, – but for me, for most men, it seems safest not to leave the beaten track’. – My friends, and I speak from the deepest conviction to every person who hears me, – You are an original mind. You have a higher right to speak your own thought and to act it, – however obscure, or indigent, or unlearned, – than any eminence of station or any forms of education can confer; for, you derive that right from the Creator of the world who made you a new being. There are thoughts in your breast, that never existed in any other soul. (…) And you cannot hope to make any progress to real power, until you realize this secret strength, – this right of leaning upon your own mind and the duty of obeying it.62

To further emphasize that self-reliance is anchored in the Creation story and imago dei, Emerson can say that the genuine man is “walking in the world with the free step of Adam in the Garden”,63 from which we may conclude that he deliberately downplays the Fall. But also in the New Testament is Emerson able to find support for his views; most importantly, of course, because the idea of ‘The Genuine Man’ follows directly from his Christological emphasis on Jesus as the true man. And thus he can say that “[t]his is the New Man who is to be formed – the end of the life and teaching of Jesus”.64 However, an additional and rather interesting interpretation is at work when Emerson says of the genuine man that he is “not accustomed to adopt his motives or modes of action from any other, but to follow the leading of his own mind like a little child”.65 So now we have not only ‘the free step of Adam in the Garden’ but also the little child, which obviously connotes to the way that Jesus connects the attitude of children and the Kingdom of God. Again: self-reliance is God-reliance and is identical to becoming the genuine man that you potentially are qua being created in the image of God.

62 63 64 65

means of knowledge can be made of any avail. The soul, the soul is full of truth. The bible is a sealed book to him who has not first heard its laws from his soul”. Emerson, Sermons 2, 267. Emerson, Sermons 4, 204. Emerson, Sermons 4, 207. Emerson, Sermons 4, 207. Emerson, Sermons 4, 205; emphasis by me. The famous image in the later essay on SelfReliance of the young boys who are sure of their dinner may well be an echo of this New Testament idea.

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The Precariousness of Liberal Theology: A Brief Comparison with Ernst Troeltsch

If one were in the mood for attaching specific labels to theological opinions, there could be little doubt that Emerson belongs within the camp of liberal theology. ‘Liberal theology’, however, is often (particularly in Europe) understood in a rather narrow sense. To counter this, therefore, it is helpful to be reminded by Gary Dorrien that “[t]he idea of liberal theology is nearly three centuries old. In essence, it is the idea that Christian theology can be genuinely Christian without being based upon external authority”.66 To further clarify Emerson’s interpretation of Christianity, however, I have found it helpful and illuminating to consider it in light of the typology developed by Ernst Troeltsch in The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches (1912). Interestingly, in this major work the ‘Mysticism’ – type of Christianity (as opposed to the ‘Church’ and ‘sect’ type) is intended to include a kind of spiritual and intellectual religion with roots going all the way back to The New Testament and the philosophical Christianity of 2nd century Alexandria, including Origen.67 We know that Emerson was heavily influenced by this strand of Classical heritage. While it falls outside my scope here to address the scholarly debate on the mysticism-type, I think it will prove worthwhile to take a look at Troeltsch’s characterization of this type of religion in the chapter entitled ‘Mysticism and Spiritual Idealism’. This appellation alone should alert us to the fact that what we are dealing with here is something much broader than mysticism, as it is generally conceived. This should be borne in mind when ‘mysticism’ is used below as a convenient short-hand to cover the whole thing. In the widest sense, says Troeltsch, “mysticism is simply the insistence upon a direct inward and present religious experience”. It is found in the New Testament, in particular in John and Paul. This mysticism, he goes on to say, “has expressed itself in a very vital way at all periods of Church history, and particularly at all periods of criticism of tradition, of religious decline, and of new religious

66 Dorrien, Making, xiii. 67 Hence the following evaluation from a specialist in the field of early Christianity: “Die prosopographischen Daten über das Christentum in Alexandria im 2. Jahrhundert deuten in das Umfeld von Philosophenschulen. Um die Mitte des Jahrhunderts haben Christen angefangen, sich als Philosophen zu verstehen, wie Philosophen zu leben und das Christentum als Philosophie zu konzipieren und zu propagieren“. Quoted from Fürst, Christentum, 105. Compare this with the following tribute to Alexandria from an essay by Emerson on Plutarch: “What a fruit and fitting monument of his best days was his city Alexandria, to be the birthplace or home of Plotinus, St. Augustine [sic!], Synesius, Posidonius, Ammonius, Jamblichus, Porphyry, Origen, Aratus, Apollonius and Apuleius” (quoted from ‘Plutarch’ in: Emerson, Works 10, 300).

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developments”.68 Mysticism is further characterized as ‘an independent religious principle’ aiming to restore an immediate union with God. In particular, Troeltsch makes no secret of his fondness for Protestant mysticism which he understands as pointing to similar insights as those found in modern philosophy of religion.69 The importance of this connection is highlighted by the fact that in a famous foot-note Troeltsch reveals that his own, personal theology is of this type: “My own theology is certainly ‘spiritual’, but for that very reason it seeks to make room for the historical element, and for the ritual and sociological factor which is bound up with it”.70 This confession by Troeltsch is part of the reason why in the headline of this section I speak of the ‘precariousness’ of liberal theology. Emerson and Troeltsch have a liberal, ‘spiritual theology’ in common; unlike Emerson, however, Troeltsch thinks more historically and is aware that without church and rites Christianity would not have been able to survive and maintain its distinctiveness.71 A further feature reminding us of Emerson is Troeltsch pointing to mysticism as a ‘radical individualism’: “In itself, this kind of spirituality feels no need for sacraments or dogmas, for a ministry or for organization”.72 For the same reason, continues Troeltsch, it also harbors a marked tolerance toward other religions. This feature is certainly characteristic of Emerson who early on found inspiration in the texts of Eastern religions (including Islam), and over the years developed an increasingly ‘ecumenical’ and universalistic approach to interreligious dialogue. Another important feature is that Troeltsch sees ‘spiritual religion’ as a response to the historical criticism of the Bible which became acutely felt precisely when Emerson started his career.73 Troeltsch comments on this by noting that, “very often the need for release from historical uncertainty led to the demand for 68 Troeltsch, Teachings, 733. 69 “Only upon the basis of Protestant individualism and Paulinism did specifically Christian mysticism attain an independent development, with new creative power, which exercised an ever deeper influence upon ecclesiastical Protestantism, and yet always remained inwardly separated from it. Anticipating the results of the modern, speculative, and autonomous philosophy of religion, it pointed forward to the development of modern Protestantism”. Troeltsch, Teachings, 740–741. 70 Troeltsch, Teachings, 985. 71 “Since all mysticism first arises in opposition to objective dogmas and forms of worship, it assumes in a very aristocratic way that the concrete forms of worship will continue to be the religion of the masses. It is its mission, however, to call the true children of God out of that external worship in order to lift them up into the Kingdom of God which is purely within us”. Troeltsch, Teachings, 746–747. 72 Troeltsch, Teachings, 744. 73 In 1824–1825 Emerson’s older brother William studied theology at Göttingen, the center of German historical or ‘higher’ criticism, and this disturbed him to such a degree that by returning to Boston he gave up his plan to become a minister in favor of studying law. Obviously, this decision of his brother made a profound impression on young Emerson himself.

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the pure immediacy, present character, and inwardness of the evangelium aeternum, to the expectation of the Third Dispensation in which each individual, out of the depths of his own life, independently and personally, and yet essentially in agreement with others, gains his own knowledge of God”.74 This theme of intellectual religion as an evangelium aeternum certainly resonates in Emerson where we can find the following, rather elitist, reflection in his journal from 1838: It is idle to represent the historical glories of Christianity as we do. There are no Christians now, but two or three or ten. There never were at any time but a few. The accepted Christianity of the mob of churches is now, as always, a caricature of the real. The heart of Christianity is the heart of all philosophy. It is the sentiment of piety which Stoic and Chinese, Mahometan and Hindoo labor to awaken. The miracles, if you please, add proselytes of the thousand and thousand to Christianity, as in other climates other miracles (reputed) do to the Shaster and Koran and Mass-Book. But converts to the soul of Christianity, sympathisers with the man Jesus, are as rare as lovers of Socrates, and are added by the same means, the reception of beautiful sentiments, never by miracle.75

Troeltsch further notes how mysticism as spiritual religion is found in the philosophy of religion of Leibniz, Spinoza and German Idealism. And then he continues with a characterization that fits Emerson surprisingly well: “In them spirit becomes genius, and the physical is treated as an external intellectualism which is calculable and tangible.76 In them faith is treated as a feeling which the Presence of God effects in the soul, in which He alone and all His works can be experienced”.77 Of particular importance are the Romantic Movement and what Troeltsch calls ‘religious Romanticism’ which, he goes on, is “the source of that which the modern German Protestant of the educated classes can really assimilate – his understanding of religion in general. This is the secret religion of the educated classes”.78 And, significantly, it is in this narrower context that Troeltsch refers to ‘the literature of the Emerson group’ – by which, presumably, he means the Transcendentalists – headed by Emerson.

74 Troeltsch, Teachings, 791. 75 Emerson, Journals 4, 428–429. It should therefore not surprise us that late in his career Emerson toyed with the idea of one, universal religion. In a journal note from 1868 he writes: “Can any one doubt that if the noblest saint among the Buddhists, the noblest Mahometan, the highest Stoic of Athens, the purest and wisest Christian, Menu in India, Confucius in China, Spinoza in Holland, could somewhere meet and converse together, they would all find themselves of one religion, and all would find themselves denounced by their own sects, and sustained by these believed adversaries of their sects?” Emerson, Journals 10, 234. 76 ‘Genius’ figures as a central concept in Emerson. For a broader, historical treatment of genius, see McMahon, Fury. 77 Troeltsch, Teachings, 792. 78 Troeltsch, Teachings, 794.

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Finally, in the ‘Conclusion’ to his Social Teachings Troeltsch touches upon the internal connection between mysticism and modernity: “Mysticism has an affinity with the autonomy of science, and it forms a refuge for the religious life of the cultured classes; in sections of the population which are untouched by science it leads to extravagant and emotional forms of piety, but in spite of that if forms a welcome complement to the Church and the Sects”.79 Based upon the above, therefore, I believe we may conclude that Emerson’s variety of Christianity reveals itself as a paradigm case of the historical and specifically modern ideal-type that Troeltsch has labelled ‘mysticism and spiritual religion’. But at the same time it is precarious in the sense that it opposes external authority, distances itself from church and dogmas, and tends to rely exclusively on individual experience.

6.

Conclusion

Departing from Emerson’s views on the progressive evolution of religious ideas, implying a gradual ‘purification’ of Christianity, we have outlined central tenets of his theology. Without equating God and the soul, Emerson emphasizes ‘the God within’ and his implicit Christology portrays Jesus as the teacher saving us by leading us to God and attesting through his life and death to the immortality of the soul. If we add to this the demand for an immediate and living religion that figured so prominently in The Divinity School Address, we are certainly justified in characterizing Emerson’s theology as being of the ‘spiritualist’ type outlined by Troeltsch.80 Taking into account the profound influence that Classical literature and philosophy exerted on Emerson, we could also conceive of his position as a form of Platonic theology, which is reflected in the fact that his sermons insist on the connection between insight/knowledge and virtue. Labels can be misleading, however, and at any rate we should not overlook the extent to which Emerson also is influenced by and pays homage to his Calvinist heritage.81 More specifically, he retains a commitment to the ideas of God’s Providence exerted through His immutable laws and to His moral perfection discernible by way of the individual’s moral sentiment. A major point of the article has been to demonstrate the often overlooked internal connection between theology and anthropology, and hence also theology’s impact on a given culture and society. In the case of Emerson, we have seen 79 Troeltsch, Teachings, 994. 80 During his lifetime Emerson was often accused of pantheism, and due to his distaste for formal religion his behavior was characterized as being ‘Quakerish’. In fact, he harbored great respect for George Fox and the Quakers. 81 A seminal article representing this line of interpretation is Perry Miller, From Edwards to Emerson, in: Miller, Errand.

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how his theology of ‘the God within’ is reflected in a markedly optimistic view of man situated in what an astute interpreter has called ‘the hospitable universe of Emerson’.82 But what, more generally, may we learn from the example of Emerson? Let me conclude this contribution by pointing to four insights of potential relevance. First, and perhaps most generally, theologians steeped in a Lutheran tradition may learn a thing or two from Emerson’s Calvinist ability to closely connect religion and morality. Thus, a recurring thought in his sermons is the idea that the general purpose of Christianity is the improvement (or even the perfection) of man, and we have seen how he can almost equate the moral and religious sentiment. Religion, according to Emerson, is primarily a practical matter, and the great merit of Christianity is that it contains principles for developing a moral character as well as a virtuous life. From a Lutheran standpoint it may of course be objected that in Luther there is an internal connection between faith and works, but not least from a contemporary perspective this seems sometimes to be more theory (and preaching) than actual practice.83 Second, Emerson’s idea of self-reliance as God-reliance may be a useful antidote to a pervasive tendency in Christian theology to portray humility as the virtue par excellence. In his sermons Emerson can and does speak positively of humility, but due to his conviction of ‘the God within’ (and his commitment to the Platonic-Stoic ‘know/obey thyself ’) religious self-reliance gains the upper hand. This, it seems to me, may serve as a critical corrective to a trend (at least in Denmark) in contemporary sermons to preach the law by indiscriminately castigating all forms of self-realization. Third, Emerson is of interest because he succeeds in attaining a kind of synthesis between humanism (broadly speaking) and Christianity. It is open to criticism for being an ‘intellectual’ religion (pace Troeltsch), but Emerson nonetheless strives to avoid elitism and maintains that developing a moral and religious character is a possibility for everyone. Fourth, and finally, Emerson’s increasingly ecumenical approach to religion may be of inspiration to those engaged in constructive, interreligious dialogue – a rather urgent matter in a contemporary world where religion is often perceived as a trouble-maker.

82 See Clebsch, Thought. 83 It should be noted here that Emerson always mentions Luther with great respect and even admiration. This respect, however, relates not to Luther’s theology but to his general attitude and to what he accomplished, in other words to Luther as a courageous and self-reliant individual.

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Bibliography Carlyle, T./R.W. Emerson, The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson 1834–1872, 2 vols, ed. by Ch. E. Norton, Ticknor and Company 1888. Channing, W.E, Selected Writings, ed. by D. Robinson, Paulist Press 1985. Clebsch, W.A., American Religious Thought: A History, The University of Chicago Press 1973. Dorrien, G., The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, Westminster John Knox Press 2001. Emerson, E.W., Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 4 (1836–1838), ed. by E. W. Emerson and W. E. Forbes, Houghton Mifflin Company 1910. –, Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 10 (1864–1876), ed. by E. W. Emerson and W. E. Forbes, Houghton Mifflin Company 1914. Emerson, R.W., The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 1, Introductions and Notes by R.E. Spiller, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1971. –, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 4, Introduction and Notes by W.E. Williams, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1987. –, The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 1, ed. by A.J. von Frank, University of Missouri Press 1989. –, The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 2, ed. by T. Toulouse and A. Delbanco, University of Missouri Press 1990. –, The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 4, ed. by W.T. Mott, University of Missouri Press 1992. –, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 6: Conduct of Life, Riverside Edition, The Waverly Book Company, [no information reg. year of publishing]. –, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 10: Lectures and Biographical Sketches, Riverside Edition, The Waverly Book Company [no information reg. year of publishing]. Freeman, R.L., Religious Self-Reliance, The Pluralist 7 (2012) 27–53. Fürst, A., Christentum als Intellektuellen-Religion: Die Anfänge des Christentums in Alexandria, Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk 2007. Gura, P.F., American Transcendentalism: A History, Hill and Wang 2007. Jacobsen, A.-C., Christ – The Teacher of Salvation: A Study on Origen’s Christology and Soteriology, Aschendorff Verlag 2015. Kateb, G., Emerson and Self-Reliance, Sage Publications 1995. McMahon, D., Divine Fury: A History of Genius, Basic Books 2013. Miller, P., Errand into the Wilderness, Harvard University Press 1956. Myerson J. (ed.), Transcendentalism: A Reader, Oxford University Press 2000. Nørager, T., Gud og samvittigheden: Et tema i Ralph Waldo Emersons prædikener, DTT 76 (2013) 40–56. Robinson, D. M., Emerson and the Conduct of Life: Pragmatism and Ethical Purpose in the Later Work, Cambridge University Press 1993. Troeltsch, E., The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, vol. 2, translated by O. Wyon, The University of Chicago Press 1981. Wilson, A.N., God’s Funeral: A Biography of Faith and Doubt In Western Civilization, Ballantine Books 1999.

Maria Odgaard Møller

What is Human in Human Beings?

1.

Løgstrup Meets Moral Anthropology

In the final discussion at the conference “Moral Engines: Exploring the Moral Drives in Human Life”, held at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in June 2014, philosopher Thomas Schwartz Wentzer asked the anthropologists present if they above all scholars should not satisfactorily answer the question “What is a human being?” before starting to reflect on the question “What is ethics?” My question to Thomas Schwartz Wentzer would be whether the two questions are so closely linked that in offering an answer to the first, we have already answered the second. In this article I will show the interrelatedness of these two core questions in theology, philosophy, and anthropology, by placing the reflections of the Danish philosopher and theologian K.E. Løgstrup (1905–81) on human beings, human life, and ethics in the context of the large and still expanding field of moral anthropology. Although Løgstrup is well known by some anthropologists working with moral anthropology, the discussion of ethics and human beings in this field has much to gain from an engagement with the central points of Løgstrup’s thought, which have not yet been fully developed as he is currently read in moral anthropology. Furthermore, Løgstrup scholars would also find it rewarding to examine his method of phenomenology and his claim about certain universalities in human life in the context of concrete ethnographic fieldwork, with a view to seeing if his phenomenological claims about human life can be verified – or falsified – in this way.

2.

Moral Anthropology

In his article of 2002, “For an Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom”, anthropologist James Laidlaw criticizes anthropology for not having developed a body of theoretical reflection on the nature of ethics. His article is seen as the starting

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point for a new field of research known as moral anthropology, the anthropology of ethics, or the ethical turn in anthropology. Since the turn of the millennium, this field has developed as a fruitful discussion between anthropologists and philosophers, as well as an ongoing debate within the field of anthropology itself. Central questions are: How can we define “ethics”? What is freedom? What is a human being? What is the place of the ethical in human life? These questions could also be summed up in a paradox, or binary opposition. In anthropologist James D. Faubion’s words: It has various terminologies. Philosophically, we frequently encounter it as the opposition between “determinacy” and (indeed) “freedom”. Social scientifically, it’s more familiar as the opposition between “structure” and “agency”.1

Several anthropologists have pointed to the surprising fact that until the publication of Laidlaw’s article in 2002, the concept and indeed the question of freedom had been almost completely ignored by anthropologists. This stems from the very strong influence of Émile Durkheim, whose conception of the social identifies the collective with the good. According to Laidlaw, one consequence of the Durkheimian view is that the concept of “the moral” for anthropologists means both everything and nothing. What Durkheim has left the anthropologists with is “Kant with the freedom taken away”.2 In his most recent book, The Subject of Virtue, Laidlaw has pinpointed anthropology’s long tradition of a blind spot on the subject of freedom in human life – and brought his own bittersweet comment on this: Whatever one thinks one is doing, one is always in fact playing a maximizing game in such a way as to reproduce the structures in which one is placed (…) It is therefore a relentlessly watertight explanation of a world in which it would be a miracle if anything were ever to change, one also from which cruelty, pride, and jealousy are quite as absent as love, and in which, I am pleased to report, we do not in fact live.3

Hence, central to the ethical turn in anthropology is a discussion of how, and in what ways, human beings are free ethical subjects.

2.1

Positions

Before the development of the ethical turn, there were two main models for addressing ethics within anthropology. The British tradition, mainly inspired by Durkheim, linked ethics to social rules – so heavily that “anthropologists were 1 Faubion, Anthropologies, 438. 2 Laidlaw, Anthropology, 313. 3 Laidlaw, Subject, 8.

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unable to distinguish the ethical from the entire realm of the social”.4 In the American anthropological tradition, relying on Franz Boas, questions of ethics were reduced to debates over cultural relativism.5 Anthropologist Michael Lambek summarizes both these models as Kantian: “Both the Boasian and the Durkheimian approaches have strong roots in Kant”.6 There was thus a strong focus on the rational in anthropology’s treatment of ethics. The ethical turn in anthropology, broadly speaking, went back to Aristotle in order to “take ethics to be fundamentally a property or function of action rather than (only) of abstract reason”.7 This has given rise to a wide variety of “moral anthropologies”. Generally, a renewal of virtue ethics has inspired a number of positions, in many of which Michel Foucault plays a central role, for instance in James Laidlaw’s recent book. Here, Laidlaw draws both on a Foucault-inspired genealogy and on the Anglo-American tradition of virtue ethics, specifically on Bernard Williams.8 In what follows, I will unfold two of the many variations of moral anthropology in order to discuss their definitions of ethics, freedom, and human beings: Laidlaw’s virtue ethics position, and ordinary ethics, as represented by Michael Lambek and Veena Das. I will also briefly touch upon Jarrett Zigon’s ethics of dwelling. The field of moral anthropology is voluminous and still growing, so a complete overview of it is not possible here.9 My aim in unfolding two positions which to an extent can be rendered as typical of certain tendencies within moral anthropology is to make possible a conversation between moral anthropology and Løgstrup’s thought on ethics and moral anthropology. Hopefully, both Løgstrup’s admirers and the anthropologists can benefit from this. As Michael Lambek has put it, anthropologists in these years “attempt a collective conversation” with philosophers on ethics.10 For a deeper discussion and a more adequate picture of what can be said on such important topics as ethics and human life, this conversation should include theological perspectives as well. Not because theologians claim that the theological human being is the ideal human being; rather, because they claim to be able to see and discuss features in human life that are universal.

4 Lambek, Introduction, 12. 5 For a discussion on and a critic of the idea of moral relativism, see Laidlaw, Subject, 23ff: “The second obstacle to sustained progress in the anthropology of ethics is the idea of ‘relativism’ as the anthropologist’s ex officio stance on moral life and as a sort of disciplinary membership badge”. 6 Lambek, Introduction, 13. 7 Lambek, Introduction, 14. 8 See Laidlaw, Subject. 9 For a survey of the field, see for instance Lambek, Introduction; Fassin/Léze 2014. 10 Lambek, Introduction, 5

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2.1.1 Virtue Ethics In his highly praised book, The Subject of Virtue,11 Laidlaw reaches his own position in the broad field of moral anthropology by criticizing a number of positions, both classic and contemporary. As already noted, he is not impressed by anthropology’s previously narrow, almost naive description of ethics either as equated with the social (Durkheim) or dismissed as a question of cultural relativism (Boas). Both positions neglect the obvious and important role of freedom and reflection in human life. And as Laidlaw’s subtitle “For an Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom” indicates, he wishes to highlight the role of human freedom when speaking of ethics. Although Laidlaw himself introduces a version of virtue ethics,12 he also advances a harsh critique of Alasdair MacIntyre’s version of virtue ethics13 for not recognizing the inevitable moral pluralism of people’s lives. Moreover, according to Laidlaw, MacIntyre departs from the Aristotelian foundation for virtue ethics when he replaces critical argument and reflection with the authority of the traditions, especially the religious traditions, thus placing all the weight of explaining people’s ways of acting and reasons for acting as they do on habituation: It is possible, according to MacIntyre, to live a life that may be coherently “conceived as a whole” only if the practices, narratives, and institutions one lives within are in turn integrated within what he calls a “tradition”.14

In formulating his own position, Laidlaw closely follows Foucault and his theory of subjectivation, which implies a heavy focus on techniques of self-formation. These practices: permit individuals to effect, by their own means, a certain number of operations on – their own bodies, their own souls, their own thoughts, their own conduct – and this in a manner so as to – transform themselves, modify themselves, and to attain a certain state – of perfection, happiness, purity, supernatural power.15 (…) ethics: consist of the ways individuals might take themselves as the object of reflective action, adopting voluntary practice to shape and transform themselves in various ways.16

11 See the discussion of the book in “Book symposium”, HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory Vol. 4 (1) (2014) 429–506. 12 For a general introduction to virtue ethics, see Laidlaw, Subject, 48ff. 13 His most influential work is After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 14 Laidlaw, Subject, 63. 15 Foucault, Ethics, 177, 255, cited in Laidlaw, Subject, 101. 16 Laidlaw, Subject, 111.

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These quotations make it obvious why anthropologist Cheryl Mattingly has named Laidlaw’s position “an ethics of the self”.17 Mattingly criticizes Laidlaw, and others on the Foucauldian path in moral anthropology, for placing “such stress on the subjectivation as the primary ethical project”18 – a critique with which it is hard, from almost any theological point of view, not to agree. From a narrower Løgstrupian point of view, we must ask, is ethics not first and foremost about the Other rather than about the Self ? 19 Doesn’t the fact that we can talk about “ethics” show the unfreedom of human beings? Or, looking to Løgstrup’s sovereign expressions of life, you can even say that this self-shaping and having oneself as the very center of one’s own life has nothing to do with ethics at all. On the contrary, being constantly engaged with shaping and transforming oneself in various ways must be seen as something that pulls you away from what human life is really all about. These claims will be further developed below. “The claim on which the anthropology of ethics rests is not an evaluative claim that people are good: it is a descriptive claim that they are evaluative”.20 Initially, this sounds reasonable. However, anthropologist Webb Keane has criticized the subject who emerges from Laidlaw’s reflections: The subject of virtue is thus not merely a human who evaluates, but one who is selfconstituting. Laidlaw means self-constitution in a specific way: “[H]uman reflective consciousness means that we ‘step back’ from and evaluate our own thoughts and desires, and decide reflectively which desire we wish to have and to move us to action”.21

Keane is critical of this way of understanding ethics as “a private feeling about oneself” (2014, 451). He calls for a way to “place ethical life within a social world without going back to the social determinism that Laidlaw rejects” (Keane 2014, 451).22 In his attempt to free the ethical subject from being forever trapped in the Durkheimian reproduction of social structure, Laidlaw wishes to show that his subject of virtue is free in shaping their life, their body, their mind, and their soul. Thus what ethics is all about is a free subject’s self-shaping.

17 18 19 20 21 22

Mattingly, Deliberation, 477. Mattingly, Deliberation, 479. Laidlaw knows and opposes this critique of Foucault: see Laidlaw, Subject, 115ff. Laidlaw, Subject, 3. Keane, Freedom, 450, citing Laidlaw, Subject, 148. This third way is the project of Keane’s own research, which is part of ordinary ethics, see Keane, Minds, and below. But according to anthropologist Jarrett Zigon, ordinary ethics doesn’t solve the problem: “… there must be some way of distinguishing moralities/ethics from social activity in general while at the same time not turning it into a transcendental realm” (Zigon, Ethics, 749).

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From a Løgstrupian point of view, however, human beings do not constitute themselves; they are always already constituted as interdependent beings, since human life is first and foremost a life among and with other human beings, with whom one is intertwined. But before going deeper into Løgstrupian perspectives on human beings and ethics, we will turn to the ordinary ethics approach. 2.1.2 Ordinary Ethics I argue that ethics is an intrinsic dimension of human activity and interpretation irrespective of whether people are acting in ways that they or we consider specifically “ethical” or ethically positive at any given moment.23

Locating the ethical as a dimension of everyday life, and thus grounding it “in agreement rather than rule, in practice rather than knowledge or belief”,24 ordinary ethics builds on the approach of ordinary language philosophy, whose proponents include J. L. Austin, Ludwig Wittgenstein and more recently Stanley Cavell. Ordinary ethics, though siding with Aristotle against Kant in situating ethics in action rather than in reason as a natural and implicit aspect of the human condition, does not at all agree with the Aristotle-inspired positions of virtue ethics. These are criticized on the grounds that they place too much emphasis on the self-shaping element in ethics.

2.2

Michael Lambek

Summing up his experiences in his ethnographical fieldwork over many decades, Lambek concludes that the people he has met have routinely attempted: to do what they think right or good (…). Put another way, they have acted largely from a sense of their own dignity; (…) and they have treated, or understood that they ought to treat, others as bearing dignity of their own.25

The assumption that people want to do good raises the question of criteria. What counts as the ethically good? And whence come criteria? Lambek argues that ethics are intrinsic to human life because there are always criteria already in place: some come from mind or reason, some from experience. Criteria for what counts as good or right are given with life itself. “In the ordinary course of events, criteria are implicit, internal to judgment itself, but they are also available for conscious discernment and deliberation”.26 If ethics and criteria are intrinsic to 23 24 25 26

Lambek, Ethics, 42. Lambek, Introduction, 2. Lambek, Ethics, 40. Lambek, Ethics, 43.

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human life, human life must be constituted as something definite prior to and independently of people shaping or defining it. Lambek cites Wittgenstein asserting that “our form of life and our criteria are one”,27 which, according to Lambek, indicates the fundamental given-ness of ethics. So, one could ask from an ordinary ethics point of view, how would human life and human beings be defined? Since everyday speech and everyday action necessarily imply both a speaker/actor and a receiver, it seems that human intertwinement must be recognized as a human condition. Lambek could be influenced here by Hannah Arendt, on whom he draws in order to explain what it means to live and act as a human being. According to Arendt,28 beginning, forgiving, and promising are three of the most significant characteristics of human beings. This is closely linked to Arendt’s recognition of human plurality or intertwinement as a human condition – “for no one can forgive himself and no one can feel bound by a promise made only to himself”.29 Arendt sees the ability to act, to take an initiative, to begin, as a fundamental principle of freedom for human beings. But to begin and to act have consequences, namely the ethical consequence that to act bears the burden of the irreversibility and unpredictability of the act. My actions have consequences for others; I can never undo an act. The only possible redemption from this is the faculty of forgiveness. To forgive is a new, unpredictable, unconditioned act. Lambek sums up his own understanding of ethics and human life in opposition to both classic and contemporary positions in anthropology: By contrast to those who have seen the substance of ethics as either values or rules, or as the freedom to break away from the obligation of adhering to rules, I have argued that the ethical is intrinsic to human action, to meaning what one says and does and to living according to the criteria thereby established.30

There is no doubt that ordinary ethics, not least in Lambek’s version, extends the field of the ethical in the direction of the universal, claiming that ethics are internal to human life. In that sense, this way of addressing the ethical is closer to a Løgstrupian view than either that of Durkheim/Boas or Aristotle/Laidlaw. This is clear in ordinary ethics’ immediate recognition of the Other rather than the Self as the central person when talking of ethics, and consequently in Lambek’s critical view on the notion of human freedom:

27 28 29 30

Lambek, Ethics, 44. Arendt, Human. Arendt, Human, 237, cited in Lambek, Ethics, 52. Lambek, Ethics, 61,

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We are never free insofar as we are always already spoken, spoken to, and spoken for; we are always free insofar as we are always already responsible for exercising our practical judgment.31

However, the fundamental assumption that people want to do good and are capable of doing it when they act by answering when spoken to, is still too positive a view of human nature, according to Løgstrup. For him, it is even more problematic to talk about human freedom, as I shall show below.

2.3

Jarrett Zigon

An interesting voice in moral anthropology is Jarrett Zigon. Some would place him among the anthropologists of ordinary ethics, since he wishes to critically address both the Durkheimian path in moral anthropology and the Foucaultinspired critique of that path. But according to Zigon himself, he is not a follower of ordinary ethics.32 Zigon is inspired by Løgstrup and Heidegger, among others, in formulating his thoughts on moral breakdown33 and on an ethics of dwelling.34 The human condition is being-in-the-world, which according to Zigon can also be described as involvement or involved dwelling. Dwelling in the unreflective comfort of the familiar; dwelling in one’s relationships with others, is the state of being that human beings desire; dwelling is even an ethical imperative for human existence.35 When this dwelling is interrupted, we can talk of a moral breakdown, in which the subject hears the ethical demand and is called to act so as to reestablish the state of dwelling in the unreflective mode of everyday life.36 Zigon thus focuses on the distinction between the unreflective moral dispositions of everyday life (dwelling) and the conscious ethical actions performed in the ethical moment – in the moral breakdown of the state of dwelling. Zigon agrees with ordinary ethics in claiming the immanence of ethics in everyday life. He disagrees, however, when it comes to defining what is meant by this immanence. Zigon’s suspicion is that ordinary ethics is grounded on the Kantian transcendental moral philosophy that it wishes to overcome: (…) there is a built-in assumption to the ordinary ethics approach that “we already know” what ethics/morality is and so there is no need to provide an analytical means for recognizing what counts as morality/ethics in any particular situation.37 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Lambek, Ethics, 62. See Zigon, Ethics. Zigon, Moral breakdown. Zigon, Ethics. Zigon, Ethics, 758 Zigon Moral breakdown. Zigon, Ethics, 751.

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According to Zigon, advancing an analysis of what counts as ethics and morality is precisely what the anthropological study of ethics should be doing.38 It seems that Keane’s critique of Laidlaw’s virtue ethics for being only a “private feeling about oneself” could also be applied to Zigon’s ethics of dwelling, even if Zigon seems to recognize intertwinement as a human condition. Thus, Zigon’s focus on a subject’s own dwelling in the world fails to recognize the Other as the most important person in the subject’s own life, which is one of Løgstrup’s main points. For Zigon, the re-established dwelling in one’s relations to others is important for a person’s own sake, rather than from the point of view of the Other. Before turning to Løgstrup himself, we will look briefly at the thought of anthropologist Veena Das, which is very interesting in the context of a Løgstrupian discussion.

2.4

Veena Das

Veena Das is usually positioned within the field of ordinary ethics. Perhaps her reflections on the ethics of everyday life as a kind of vague ethics from below are more accurately placed on the border of ordinary ethics. Das draws on philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Stanley Cavell. She pays attention to what is at stake in people’s striving throughout life, in which everyday life is seen as an achievement rather than something to be taken for granted. She is highly skeptical of any ethical reflections that rely on rule-following or technologies of selfshaping – broadly speaking, of any kind of idealism. As she puts it: I think the usual paths that moral theory takes with its “ought” and “should” simply do not suffice. The paths to a moral life do not lie here in either rule following or taking recourse to technologies of self-making, but rather in the attentiveness through which one ties one’s own fate to that of the Other.39

Moreover, Das is skeptical about the tendency to set up an opposition between being in the midst of action and standing apart in moments of reflection. The question is whether action and reflection are to be separated in this way. Furthermore, you can ask whether it is ever possible to track the motive for a particular action through critical reflection. To support her ethics of everyday life, Das tells a story from her fieldwork among low-income families in Delhi: 38 Central in Zigon’s critique of ordinary ethics for being Kantian is a discussion on the notion of ‘dignity’; see Zigon Ethics, 755. 39 Das, Ethics, 492.

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Manju’s eldest son was having an affair with a girl in the neighborhood who was from a different caste. Also, rather than being a dutiful son, he was more of a vagabond, a footloose character who could never hold a job for long. In contrast, his younger brother was very sober and stable and contributed consistently to the family income. Manju and her husband were completely opposed to the prospects of a “love marriage” for the elder son, but the boy used all kinds of threats, including that of suicide, so they bent to his will. Unfortunately within two days of the marriage the girl ran away with another man with whom she was also having an affair, taking away with her the jewelry that had been gifted in dowry and also stealing the jewelry that Manju had given her for wearing during the wedding. I will not go into the details of the negotiations with the girl’s family, the police reports they had to file, the suicidal depression in which the son fell, but, instead, fast forward to an event one and a half years later. It transpired that the man she had run away with sold all the jewelry. They ran out of cash at the end of the first year, having traveled to various places and lived lavishly in fancy hotels. The girl became pregnant and at that point her lover abandoned her. Neither his parents, nor her parents were willing to give her refuge. Her parents did support her till the birth of the child, but then threw her out of the house. Manju said that one evening she found that the girl had come back and was sitting on the doorstep with her infant daughter in her lap. Manju was furious, but after a few hours of enduring this disturbing scenario, she invited mother and daughter to come into the house. As she explained, she could not bear the idea that the woman might have to turn to prostitution and that this or sexual abuse would mark the infant girl’s future. Since the family had kept the details of the elopement secret from the wider kin, though there must have been rumors, Manju was able to receive the girl back in the family without incurring enormous shame. Manju’s son, too, said he was reconciled to the fact that in his past birth he had “owed” her and her daughter something—a debt or a restitution for his own bad behavior toward her in an earlier birth—so their conjugal relation was re-established. From a wayward daughterin–law, the girl became a dutiful wife, mother, and daughter-in–law. Manju said with some ferocity that if the girl had given birth to a boy, she would not have accepted her, for “she should have been punished for what she did”.40

This story is a perfect example of Das’s insistence that ethics is not about sovereign subjects complying with intersubjective contracts; it is about “our willingness to accept responsibility for an Other whom fate has placed in our vicinity”.41

40 Das, Ethics, 492f. 41 Das, Ethics, 491.

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267

Moral Anthropology: Summing Up the Views on Ethics and Human Existence

In moral anthropology, we find a very positive view both of human beings – their nature and existential ways of reflecting and acting ethically – and of ethics. Ethics has to do with the ways in which human beings strive to live well and do well, mostly to themselves but also to others. For instance, being healthy or striving for happiness are examples of acting ethically: Whereas an ethics of the extraordinary might posit freedom as its end or even its condition, an ethics of ordinary practice does better stick to happiness (…). For Aristotle, acting ethically, like being healthy, is not a means to an end but constitutes a happy life (…). To be happy is for people to realize their nature, thus to exercise their capacities (…).42

Although this passage appears in the context of a description of the roots of the path of virtue ethics, in Lambek’s overview of the field in his introduction to his book Ordinary Ethics, the generally positive view of human beings and of their will and ability to do good is not really being called into question by him or by other so-called moral anthropologists. Human beings are free ethical subjects: free in shaping themselves and their lives. Differences can be seen within the field as to whether reflection or actions should be stressed when defining what ethics is all about; but there is never doubt about the fact that ethics fundamentally is a positive phenomenon. Ordinary ethics (and also Zigon) recognizes intertwinement with others as a fundamental condition of human life. Still, the Other is not necessarily the most important person or the main goal of people’s ethical actions – except in Das’s ethics of everyday life.

3.

Løgstrup’s Ethics

Central to Løgstrup’s philosophy is a fundamental distinction between human beings and life itself. Life itself is something definite, prior to and independent of what human beings think, evaluate or decide about it. For this reason, Løgstrup uses the term “ontological” to characterize his own form of ethics, when forced to categorize it. My claim is that this basic distinction brings new and important perspectives into the discussion of the content and the place of the ethical in human life in moral anthropology. Løgstrup expands on his distinction in several ways: 42 Lambek, Introduction, 20.

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My life made me its own before I made it mine. My life has given me to understand what is good and evil before I take a position on the issue and evaluate it.43 The wickedness of human beings and the goodness of life.44

Generally, Løgstrup stresses our fundamental dependence on phenomena given with life itself. He thereby opposes the usual understanding of and emphasis on human independence and autonomy that are dominant in moral anthropology. And yet, Løgstrup claims that it is only because of our dependence on these phenomena – the so-called sovereign expressions of life – that human beings can also be free when the expressions of life defy our selfishness and realize themselves in our life spontaneously, as goods given to us.

3.1

Phenomenology

In this brief overview I will focus on two fundamental concepts in Løgstrup’s ethics, namely the ethical demand and the sovereign expressions of life. First, I will give a short introduction to his method: phenomenology. This can be seen as standing between clear theoretical thinking and ethnographic fieldwork. The young Løgstrup stated that he was seeking an ethics in the sense of “the study of actual human beings”.45 Unlike Laidlaw, who stated that “The claim on which the anthropology of ethics rests is not an evaluative claim that people are good: it is a descriptive claim that they are evaluative”,46 Løgstrup wants to take a step further back. Working phenomenologically is striving to highlight and describe the universal and pre-cultural phenomena that form the base of the structure of human life. These phenomena, according to Løgstrup, have intimated to us what is good and bad before we consider the matter ourselves and evaluate it: “Whether something is positive or negative, good or evil, is not decided at the moment when we evaluate it; it is not originally decided at the moment when we make it our own”.47 Taking such phenomenological descriptions as the point of departure for ethical considerations gives a concrete character to Løgstrup’s ethics. At the same time, the standard way of seeing the role of the ethical subject in much of traditional ethics is challenged. Løgstrup learned of existential phenomenology from Heidegger and from Hans Lipps. In contrast to more traditional subject object philosophy, Løgstrup shares Heidegger’s phenomenological pre43 44 45 46 47

Løgstrup, Beyond, 6. Løgstrup, Demand, 138. Løgstrup, Besvarelse, cf. Andersen, Eyes, 32. Laidlaw, Subject, 3. Løgstrup, Beyond, 6.

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supposition that human existence involves a fundamental understanding of one’s being-in-the-world. What Løgstrup learned from Lipps’s phenomenology is not least to analyze word usage in natural language, because he is convinced that such usage contains a fundamental understanding of human being-in-theworld.48 In his principal work, The Ethical Demand, written in 1956, Løgstrup opens with a phenomenological analysis of trust, which he finds is precisely the sort of pre-cultural phenomenon from which we learn something fundamental about human life. Trust is described as a positive phenomenon, and it is implicit to this understanding of trust that its positivity is inherent to trust itself; it is not something that we add to it.49 Hence, implicit in the analysis of trust is the basic assumption of the book – and generally of Løgstrup’s thinking – that the difference between good and evil is ontological in character and prior to all decisions and judgments by human beings. A Løgstrupian answer to Laidlaw could then be: “The claim on which the ontological ethics rests is not an evaluative claim that people are good: it is a phenomenological claim that they are wicked whereas life itself is good”. From his analysis of trust, Løgstrup concludes that interdependency or interrelatedness is a fact of our way of living. Whereas Kant and the Kantian tradition, according to Løgstrup, picture human beings as isolated individuals, Løgstrup claims that the most fundamental thing there is to say about human beings is that we are mutually dependent on one another; this is a fact that we cannot escape. We have the curious idea that a person constitutes his own world, and that the rest of us have no part in it but only touch upon it now and then. … This is really a curious idea, an idea no less curious because we take it for granted. The fact is, however, that it is completely wrong because we do indeed constitute one another’s world and destiny.50

3.2

The Ethical Demand

Trust is to lay oneself open. Self-surrender goes with it: we are mutually delivered to one another. In Løgstrup’s famous words: “A person never has something to do with another person without holding some of the other person’s life in his hand” (my translation).51 From the fact of interdependency and our mutually delivering ourselves to one another grows and springs the ethical demand. The 48 49 50 51

Niekerk, Introduction, xii–xiii. Løgstrup, Beyond, 1–5. Løgstrup, Demand 16. Official translation: ”A person never has something to do with another person without also having some degree of control over him or her” (Løgstrup, Demand, 15–16).

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content of this is that you are required to take care of, not destroy, that of the other person’s life you hold in your hand. The choice is yours, and there is no third or neutral option. The demand … is not dependent upon a revelation, in the theological sense of the word, nor is the demand based on a more or less conscious agreement between the persons with respect to what would be mutually beneficial.52

The ethical demand takes its content from the fact of the intertwinement of our lives. Our life has been given to us, and it entails certain structures, first and foremost interdependency, to which we are called to respond. Being obedient to the ethical demand means recognizing that, as receivers of the gift, we owe something: namely, taking care of the Other.53 In this sense, ethics for Løgstrup is both about the relation between the individual and the Other, and about the invisible relation between the individual and the demand itself.54 The ethical demand is silent, radical, one-sided, and unfulfillable.55 In the first place it is silent, because it does not tell you how to act in a concrete situation in which you are required to take care of the Other; it only tells you that you should do so. Neither the other person, nor the social norms can predict the demand, or tell you how to act. In transforming the demand into concrete actions, each one of us must use our imagination, insight, and experience. Next, the demand is radical: that is, it is unconditional and absolute. Even if we want to, we cannot negotiate with it. And since it springs from the fact of interdependency and hence stems from the implicit structures of human life, it is also without any special cultural preconditions. Further, the demand is onesided: it is a demand on you, and you cannot tell other people that they should take care of you. No one can predict the demand, because it is intrinsic to life itself.56

52 Løgstrup, Demand, 17–18. 53 For a discussion of Løgstrup’s thoughts on life as a gift, see Reinders, Donum and Wolf, Response. For remarks on the difference between Løgstrup’s ethical demand and Søren Kierkegaard’s “command”, see Andersen, Eyes 37. 54 Cf. Andersen, Eyes, 41. 55 According to Hans Fink, these four characteristics oppose the ethical demand to moral demands, because the latter are articulated, relative, mutual, and possible of fulfillment. See Fink, Conception, 16. 56 Even though Jesus of Nazareth predicted the demand, he didn’t invent it. The demand was there before Jesus predicted it; the demand is eternal. Jesus does not dissolve the silence of the demand; in Løgstrup’s view, not even Jesus says anything concrete about how to fulfill the demand. What Jesus inflicts the demand is an authority: God. Whereas the silence, the radicalness, and the unfulfillability of the demand stem from the fact of interdependency, the one-sidedness stems from the understanding of life that lies inherent in the demand: the givenness of life, see Løgstrup, Demand, 123.

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Finally, a very significant characteristic of the demand is that it is unfulfillable. It demands of you to unselfishly do what will benefit the other person most. But because of our wicked nature, this is not possible for us. We disregard the silent, radical, and one-sided demand. It is resisted by our selfassertion and will to power, by our ceaseless concern about what we ourselves will get out of what we do (…) On the one hand, it is impossible to escape the demand, inasmuch as we cannot dismiss the fact out of which the demand arises, namely, that one person has been delivered over into the hands of another person. We cannot dismiss this fact any more than we can deny that life has been given us as a gift. Our existence is greater than we are; it is superior to us. In fact we constitute one another’s world, whether we wish to or not. On the other hand, we distort the demand through that unnaturalness in which alone we are able – only apparently to fulfill it. The demand is impossible of fulfillment.57

Furthermore, the demand always comes too late, because it hits you as a reminder of what you should have done spontaneously but did not. What is called for – the real content of the ethical demand – is for the demand not to have been necessary. The demand demands its own annulment.58 In that sense, ethical actions that try to respond to the ethical demand are always compensations for actions that should have been taken spontaneously. When the demand is heard, it is already too late: ethics consist in actions to compensate, which remind us that we are selfish individuals. Hence, ethics is not a positive phenomenon after all. It reminds us of what we should have done, but did not do. And it reflects the fact that while life itself is good, we are wicked: we ruin the gift that has been given to us – the interdependent life – because we care so much more for ourselves than for the Other. This we do even though all that we need for taking care of the Other lies implicit in the life we have been given, in the form of trust and love. This may also be expressed in another way if we consider the fact from which the demand derives, namely, that we are one another’s world, the one being delivered over to the Other – if we consider that this fact is at the same time the blessing of our life. Along with this blessing of our life that we have together, existence has given us everything necessary for the fulfillment of the demand.59

This aspect of the ontological grounding of Løgstrup’s view on human life becomes even clearer when he develops his concepts of the sovereign expressions of life.

57 Løgstrup, Demand, 164.165. 58 See also Løgstrup, Beyond, 69. 59 Løgstrup, Demand, 207–208.

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The Sovereign Expressions of Life

Løgstrup’s thinking on ethics, human beings, and human life is developed mainly in dialog with Heidegger, Lipps, Martin Luther, Kant and Søren Kierkegaard.60 Though he is also positively inspired by the latter two, Løgstrup develops his thought especially in opposition to central perspectives in Kant and Kierkegaard. This is true both of his thinking on the sovereign expressions of life and of his claim that the ethical demand has its origin in the universal fact of interdependency. Løgstrup’s concept of the sovereign expressions of life emphasizes his basic critique of both Kant and Kierkegaard: that they place too much weight on reflection both in ethics (Kant) and on becoming a self (Kierkegaard). At the same time, Løgstrup rejects the possibility that an ethics of virtue could be a real alternative to Kant’s ethics of duty: “Just as duty is a substitute motive, virtue is a substitute disposition”. What they substitute is the spontaneous act in which the individual is moved and called to action by the need of the Other, rather than by “the thought and the sense of the rightness of the action”. In acting out of duty or virtue, the subject’s concern is ultimately for himself—for the wish to be a good person—and not for the Other. Hence, “[d]uty and virtue are moral introversions”. Morality is inferior to the sovereign expressions of life, which Løgstrup also describes as pre-moral.61 Løgstrup uses the biblical story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25–37) to explain mercy as one of the sovereign expressions of life. The Samaritan is moved by compassion for the victim of the assault as he spontaneously takes care of him. His thoughts are occupied with the victim’s needs and the question of how to help him in the best way. This, together with his spontaneity and non-reflective way of acting, constitutes the act as merciful. Furthermore, exactly the story of the Good Samaritan sustains Løgstrup’s point in The Ethical Demand that there is no such thing as a specifically Christian ethics. The fact of interdependency compels us all to take care of the Other: the demand is universal, not a particular demand for Christians. As a gentile, the Samaritan confirms this point. As examples of sovereign expressions of life, Løgstrup mentions mercy, trust, love, and the openness of speech. Their sovereign character indicates their ability and power to break through our selfishness and to express themselves in our behavior and actions. They are glimpses of the goodness of life with the power to defeat our wickedness. Therefore, they are not to be taken as the results of our

60 For a survey on the thinkers, whom Løgstrup is inspired by in either a positive or negative way, see Andersen, Eyes, 29–53. 61 Løgstrup, Beyond, 78–79

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goodness or our will to be good.62 The expressions of life do not stem from us: on the contrary, they are blessings in our lives in spite of our selfishness and will to destroy what has been given to us. When the sovereign expression of life breaks through my selfishness and my constant preoccupation with myself, I become a true self. Løgstrup also states this against Kierkegaard, for whom reflection is necessary for a person to become a true self. For Løgstrup, however, reflection has the opposite effect: reflecting on oneself, whether in duty or virtue, means that engagement with the world and the Other is loosened and the Other is forgotten as what they should be in your life, namely, the main character. When the sovereign expression of life breaks through in our lives, however, this allows us to become our true selves. Furthermore, in the sovereign expression of life, we are free. Hence, even more fundamentally than the ethical demand, the sovereign expressions of life respond to the fact of interrelatedness: the gift of life is an interdependent life. When the sovereign expressions of life break through in our behavior and actions so that we act toward the Other in mercy, love, and trust, we live life as it is meant to be, and we realize the blessings of the interdependent life in spite of our wickedness. The ethical demand, on the other hand, is heard when we have not acted spontaneously as we should have done. Therefore the demand is secondary compared to the sovereign expressions of life. Although actions set in motion by the ethical demand might benefit the Other – as the Other might not be able to tell the difference from actions done spontaneously out of mercy – they are still compensational actions. This fundamental distinction between being occupied with oneself or with the Other, and the basic preoccupation with the importance of spontaneity and immediacy in human life as opposed to reflection, are central in Løgstrup’s thinking. They appear long before he developed the concept of the sovereign expressions of life.63

4.

Conclusion

What then is human in human beings? When Løgstrup encounters moral anthropology, the immediate positive understanding of “human” and “ethics” is problematized because of his basic distinction between life itself, which is good, and human beings, who are wicked. The “human” in human beings is not positive at all, because basically we are unable to answer the demand of the interpersonal life: taking care of the Other. Due to our wicked nature, we are always preoccupied with taking care of ourselves. “Human” is to be understood as some62 See Løgstrup, Beyond, 67–68. 63 Cf. Niekerk, Genesis, 63.

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thing negative; hence “ethics” is to be understood as substitute actions for what we should have done spontaneously. Rather than what we do to live a good life, ethics is what we do to make up for the fact that we are selfish. This is what the ethical demand reminds us. A very important point in Løgstrup is his conviction that his phenomenological analyses highlight some features of human life that are universal: our interdependency, the ethical demand, the sovereign expressions of life, and the understanding of life as a gift. Eternity has incarnated the demand it imposes upon us in the interpersonal situation and in the sovereign expressions of life that correspond to it. Eternity incarnates itself not, in the first instance, in Jesus of Nazareth, but already in creation and the universality of the demand. Christianity itself contends that the idea of creation is not a peculiarly Christian notion, and it is a Christian contention that the radical demand is not a peculiarly Christian demand.64

Moral philosopher Hans Fink supports this view: “… I am convinced that his philosophical argument can, in fact, stand on its own without any specifically Christian presuppositions…”.65 It makes a significant difference whether human life is seen as something definite and constituted in itself, prior to and independent of our evaluation of it, or whether it is seen as our invention or as the result of our efforts. Are we constituters of ourselves and of our lives, or are we first and foremost receivers of a gift – of a life that is already constituted with certain structures before we do anything with it or to it? This is the central question. And though the discussion of moral anthropology is very broad, a more thorough consideration of this core question could bring in new and important perspectives of ontological character. One link between moral anthropology and Løgstrup that is both interesting and obvious is Veena Das’s realistic ethics of everyday life. This corresponds in many ways with Løgstrup’s phenomenological approaches. Das shares Løgstrup’s skepticism about justifying moral norms by deriving them from general principles. The central idea in her considerations on ethics is that we live our lives intertwined with one another, and that this fact asks something of us: to act with responsibility toward the Other. Where Løgstrup, in his ethics, uses examples from literature to highlight some of his points, Das – like every anthropologist, I suppose – uses stories from her fieldwork. This adds a concrete and realistic character to her ethical considerations. Her story about Manju, reproduced above, makes a great impression in a Løgstrupian context. The story could be seen as a Hindu version of the story of the Good Samaritan. Just like the Samaritan, Manju broke the conventions about “good behavior” when – moved 64 Løgstrup, Beyond, 71. 65 Fink, Conception, 10–11.

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by compassion – she invited her former daughter-in–law and her daughter into her house and let them be part of the family. In this situation, general principles of behavior in Indian society would not have helped the woman at Manju’s doorstep. But in a movement of compassion for the woman and her daughter, Manju acted differently, occupied above all with the needs of the two human beings at her doorstep and with the question of how to help them in the best way. Maybe something broke through in her, something that did not come from herself. And in that act, Manju was immediate herself, a true self – living the interdependent life in a spontaneous act. In being bound to the persons whom fate had placed in her vicinity, she was also immediately free.

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thik”, (submitted prize essay on Scheler’s ethics), University of Copenhagen 1932 [Written in 1931]. –, The Ethical Demand, University of Notre Dame Press 1997. –, Beyond The Ethical Demand, University of Notre Dame Press 2007. MacIntyre, A., After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd Ed, University of Notre Dame Press 2007 [1981]. Mattingly, C., Moral deliberation and the agentive self in Laidlaw’s ethics, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4, no. 1 (2014) 473–486. Niekerk, K. van Kooten, “Introduction”, in: K.E. Løgstrup, Beyond The Ethical Demand, University of Notre Dame Press 2007, ix–xxxii. –, The Genesis of K.E. Løgstrup’s View on Morality as a Substitute, in: S. Andersen and K. van Kooten Niekerk (eds.), Concern for the Other: Perspectives on the Ethics of K.E. Løgstrup, University of Notre Dame Press 2007, 55–83. Reinders, H.S., Donum or Datum? K. E. Løgstrup’s Religious Account of the Gift of Life, in: S. Andersen and K. van Kooten Niekerk (eds.), Concern for the Other: Perspectives on the Ethics of K.E. Løgstrup, University of Notre Dame Press 2007, 177–206. Wolf, J., A Response to Hans Reinders’s “Donum or Datum?”, in: S. Andersen and K. van Kooten Niekerk (eds.), Concern for the Other: Perspectives on the Ethics of K.E. Løgstrup, University of Notre Dame Press 2007, 207–215. Zigon, J., Moral breakdown and the ethical demand: A theoretical framework for an anthropology of moralities, Anthropological Theory 7, no. 2 (2007) 131–150. –, An ethics of dwelling and a politics of world-building: a critical response to ordinary ethics, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20 (2014) 746–764.

David Bugge

Unlike Hitler, God is Not Human: On Karl Ove Knausgård’s Anthropology and Theology

Seldom has a modern novel caused such passionate debate as the monumental work My Struggle by Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgård (b. 1968).1 Far outside the borders of its native country, the book has given rise to an intense discussion about the justice of allowing, by name, one’s closest relatives to enter fiction. From the beginning, we have witnessed an excited dispute about the literary genre of this strange publication, which has been compared to In Search of Lost Time as well as to Ulysses. Unfortunately, the interesting genre-specific inquiry has often overshadowed the actual contents of the novel. To some degree, the approach has neglected several existential points, even though My Struggle is a veritable cornucopia in that respect. Not least, Knausgård’s narrative and essayistic characterization of man and his social life is most original. Further to this anthropology, we catch a glimpse of a no less interesting theology, contrasting divine grace with our human way of acting. In either case, Hitler proves to be an eye-opening figure, albeit in different ways.

1.

Fellow-Strugglers

My Struggle deals with Karl Ove’s everyday existence from early childhood to his present adult life.2 However, due to the charged title, Knausgård is compelled to discuss Hitler and his identically titled book, Mein Kampf, more thoroughly.3 1 My Struggle is a novel in six volumes (orig. Min kamp), of which vols. 1–4 have been translated into English. Quotes from the two remaining volumes (as from Knausgård’s collection of essays Sjelens Amerika [America of the Soul]) relate to the Norwegian original, and the translations are mine. The present article is based on my Danish essay, Bugge, Mennesket, developing some of its insights. 2 In the present article, ‘Karl Ove’ is used as the protagonist of the novel, and Knausgård as the author.

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This is done in a good 400 page long essay called “The name and the number” in the sixth and last volume of the novel, forming a highly original attempt at understanding Hitler and the ethos of Nazism. The direct occasion of the essay is the question of the names of actual people in My Struggle, which leads to a general reflection on the influence names have on identity and a passage about reducing individuals with names to mere numbers in the multitude during the Holocaust. Literarily, however, the essay and the rest of the novel communicate primarily through the connection between Hitler and Karl Ove. The observant reader recognizes a number of traits of (the young) Hitler, stressed in the essay, from the description of Karl Ove in the first five volumes. The novelist mentions some conspicuous resemblances: love for the mother and hatred for the father; the use of art for self-oblivion; social problems; elevation of and anxiety concerning women; and, chastity and longing for purity.4 As an underlying mood, we may add the lack of humour, from which part of Karl Ove’s social discomfort stems.5 An easy, joking tone is not in Karl Ove’s nature – a trait he shares with his Austrian fellow-struggler. Time and again, the essay dwells on Hitler’s seriousness, based on the memoirs of Hitler’s early friend August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew.6 Indeed, Knausgård even stresses the unveiling and anti-utopian quality of laughter, and why this was also the vulnerable point of Nazism: if the Germans had laughed at Hitler, he notes, his ideas would have been harmless.7 On closer inspection, however, the similarity between the two individuals goes much further than the lack of humour and things referred to by Knausgård himself. As will be demonstrated, the similarity regards one of the most precarious elements of Karl Ove’s struggle. As a child, young man, and adult, Karl Ove is characterized by a vanity verging on the feminine. His rattling-off of fashion brands is never-ending. One day at school, he realizes that they all call him Femi, which still haunts him in his student days in Bergen; the situation is further accentuated when a female fellow student states that he is a little femi – though adding that, to some degree, his strong hands make up for that.8 Even in his forties, he is brushing his hair back with a gesture that he recognizes as feminine.9 3 The Norwegian title Min kamp is the same as the Norwegian title used for Hitler’s work Mein Kampf. 4 Knausgård, Kamp 6, 796. 5 Knausgård, Kamp 5, 74. 6 Knausgård, Kamp 6, 507. 511. 540. 7 Knausgård, Kamp 6, 354. 8 Knausgård, Kamp 5, 88. 9 Knausgård, Kamp 6, 42.

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We notice a constant fear of being feminine, and, like everything else, this complex is connected to his father who, by his tough attitude, forms a contrast to Karl Ove. It is his father who forces him to wear the female swimming cap that his mother has bought for him by mistake; it is his father who calls him a girl when he is crying; and, it is his father who throws the bunch of flowers in the sink that Karl Ove is handing him, making it clear that only small girls pick flowers.10 Many years after his father’s death, the son continues to feel the impact of these events. One day, urinating, he recollects his father’s dark yellow, almost brown pee, which was masculine, unlike his own feminine, almost white urine.11 Considering this ‘femi’ complex, haunting Karl Ove throughout the novel, it is striking that his essayistic portrait of Hitler stresses Hitler’s feminine appearance over and over again: his clear voice, his thin and unmanly body, even the gesture with which he brushes aside his fringe. He continues, stressing Hitler’s sensitivity and artistic interest: in the lulls at the front during the Great War, he engaged in watercolour painting.12 As in Karl Ove’s case, not least the opposite sex would notice Hitler’s lack of masculinity: “He is a neuter”, the American-born Mrs Hanfstaengl tells her husband. In line with Karl Ove’s fellow student in Bergen, one is almost tempted to supply with Heidegger’s famous answer when Jasper asked how on earth he could admire Hitler: “Sehen Sie nur seine wunderbaren Hände an!”13 Accordingly, the young Hitler had no contact with women. About his first time in Vienna, Knausgård notes: “He is eighteen and completely inexperienced. Kubizek writes that there were no women in Hitler’s life during the four years they spent together, and that he didn’t masturbate either”.14 The latter is hard to verify, Knausgård admits, but stresses that it corresponds to our general picture of Hitler’s sexuality. How does Knausgård actually know that? And why, at all, is it so important that the 18-year-old Hitler didn’t masturbate? More than 1000 pages earlier, the novel gives an answer: the 18-year-old Karl Ove, we are told, didn’t masturbate either.15 This abstinence, lasting exactly until he is 19 and causing a lot of problems (involuntary erection, praecox, etc.), is a leitmotif throughout My Struggle and serves to establish a link to his Austrian fellowsufferer.

10 11 12 13 14 15

Knausgård, Struggle 3, 129. 145. 378. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 899. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 541. 705–706. 721. Cf. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 706. 790. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 539. Knausgård, Struggle 4, 392.

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Hitler’s Lifelong Good Qualities

By including such intimate common traits between Hitler and himself, Knausgård has paved the way for an attempt to look at Hitler as a human being and understand him from within. This is the main theme in “The Name and the number”, and thus Knausgård distances himself from two different ways in which Hitler’s human sides are normally ignored. Firstly, Knausgård criticises the tendency to eliminate Hitler’s positive traits. As a main representative of this tendency, Knausgård refers to the British historian Ian Kershaw and his famous biography, Hitler. In Kershaw’s book, the Holocaust casts a shadow over everything that Hitler did, even in his youth. There can be nothing good at all about this man. Everything is torn to pieces – from his behaviour towards his strict father to his circadian rhythm as a young man. Even Hitler’s way of whistling is ridiculed. Knausgård is almost indignant with Kershaw on behalf of Hitler. Such tendentious negativity, he remarks, would have been unthinkable in a biography on, e. g., Rilke or Wittgenstein.16 But Kershaw is the rule rather than the exception, and Knausgård recognizes his position far too well from himself. At the time he buys Mein Kampf (or, symptomatically: has a friend order it for him), it almost makes him feel sick to unwrap the book and read it. He can’t savour the flavour of the volume, as he would normally do with new books. He can neither bring it out on the plane nor have it on his shelves. It is as if it were “written by the Devil himself”.17 Everything that took place afterwards affects it. But when Hitler wrote his book, he had not killed anybody. If he had never come into power, the book would not have had this charge. Now it is “almost impossible” to read the book for what it was originally. Knausgård, however, decides to carry out such an “almost impossible” reading.18 The difficulty lies in biography as a genre. The biographer knows what followed, and subconsciously looks for tracks pointing to the result. And when the result is Treblinka and Auschwitz, the past tends to adapt to it. Instead of reading Hitler backwards, however, Knausgård insists on reading forward, beginning with his childhood and youth in Vienna. Only by this approach, and against this background, does it become possible to spot positive traits – also of the fullygrown dictator – because naturally Hitler also had “lifelong good qualities”.19 In particular, two episodes about the mature Hitler made a deep impression on Knausgård: a film which shows the defeated Hitler, sick and trembling with 16 17 18 19

Knausgård, Kamp 6, 501. 697. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 481. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 481. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 538.

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Parkinson’s, ascending from his bunker to inspect some boys from the Hitler Jugend: “in his eyes there is a gleam, something unexpectedly warm”; and, the story about 10-year-old Bernhardine Nienau, whom the Reich Chancellor liked so much that he invited her for strawberries and cream, keeping up a correspondence with her for some years, even after his close collaborator Martin Bormann’s annoying information that the girl’s grandmother was Jewish. Hitler was devoured by hate, Knausgård writes, but as soon as someone (e. g. his beloved mother or her old Jewish doctor) entered the small space between his self and his conviction, the hate disappeared.20

3.

One of Us

It is one thing that we won’t admit such positive human traits about Hitler. It is quite another to try to dehumanize him: stamping his negative sides and the crimes of Nazism as something qualitatively different from anything else known from mankind. Knausgård insists, however, that Hitler – also in that respect – remains human. Literally, Hitler is not sui generis: “He was human, his associates and party comrades were human. It doesn’t mean that they were good; also the bad and brutal is human”. So Hitler is “one of us”.21 Human, all too human. This second front must be said to be the crucial one in “The name and the number”. Whereas the emphasis on the positive human traits has to do with Hitler himself, the humanization (or de-dehumanization) of the negative traits is about all of us. Thereby, the focus on Hitler’s positive points serves to prepare the analysis of his negative ones: seeing his positive points makes it easier to recognize his negative points in ourselves. Somehow, Knausgård ventures a classic and precarious debate: are Hitler and Nazism (and possibly other war crimes and criminals) unique and qualitatively distinct from what we know from ourselves? Knausgård’s answer is: no. In order to realize the radicalism of his no, however, it may be instructive to leave Knausgård for a while to have a look at two, fairly representative, contributors to the debate whose points of view, seemingly, are similar to that of My Struggle. In his informative article, “Understanding the holocaust: The uniqueness debate”, the moral and political philosopher Bob Brecher distinguishes between two ways in which the claim of uniqueness is made: on empirical grounds (the number killed etc.) and on conceptual grounds (the nature of evil etc.). The conceptual case is persuasive to Brecher; however, he rejects the uniqueness thesis in favour of ‘unprecedented’. If the holocaust were unique, we could not 20 Knausgård, Kamp 6, 469. 804. 21 Knausgård, Kamp 6, 698. 725.

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understand it – and understanding is vital as that alone makes it possible to learn from the past and do it justice. The question for Brecher, however, is whether such an attempt at understanding Nazism is legitimate, referring to Primo Levi’s prominent claim in the afterword to his classic, If This is a Man: “understanding a proposal or human behaviour means to contain it, contain its author, put oneself in his place, identify with him”. Brecher’s reply is: yes and no. He argues for an understanding, but not an empathetic one (“empathy is irrelevant here”) – rather a completely intellectual understanding. Consequently, he can join Levi’s further statement: “Now, no normal human being will ever be able to identify with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, and endless others”.22 The understanding offered by Brecher thus remains external. And one may ask if this is a real understanding at all. Certainly, we find more empathy in the Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic´’ book, They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague. The subject is not Nazism but war crimes in ex-Yugoslavia. The question, however, is the same: are the people who committed these crimes essentially different from us? In the final chapter, “Why We Need Monsters”, Drakulic´ seeks to avoid any externalization: “If we believe their perpetrators are monsters, it is because we wish to create as great a distance as possible between us and them, to exclude them from humanity altogether”. She protests against such dehumanization of radical evil: “Only if we understand that most perpetrators are people like us can we see that we too might one day be in danger of succumbing to the same kind of pressure”.23 Seemingly, Drakulic´ is in line with Knausgård, avoiding every externalizing tendency. However, two small wordings reveal that her position is far less radical: firstly, the identification is limited: most perpetrators are people like us – i. e., a small space is left for the extreme demonic evil; secondly, the identification is futurized: we too might one day – i. e., the journalist following the trials in the courtroom is not in the same position as those standing trial. In My Struggle, Knausgård instead insists on the humanity of no less a person than Hitler who has otherwise been mythologized as the monster of all monsters, exceeded by no other criminal. Furthermore, he compares Hitler with himself – not in a hypothetical future situation under pressure scenario, but wandering around in the everyday life of his safe Scandinavia.

22 Levi, Man, 395; Brecher, Understanding, 25. 23 Drakulic´, Fly, 188. 191.

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Hitler the Ethicist

Thus, in both respects, Knausgård insists on Hitler’s humanity: he is not devoid of positive qualities, and his negative traits are not, qualitatively, unique. Among Hitler’s human traits is his strong ethical awareness. Mein Kampf, Knausgård notes, is written in a tone of righteous indignation.24 And Kubizek’s memories of their common years in Vienna show a deep social involvement and commitment to the circumstances of humble people.25 Evidently, Knausgård has made a close reading of Mein Kampf; further, his many quotes from the book contribute to showing that Hitler’s argumentation for Nazism is also ethical in nature. Righteousness is a common word in the book. True, Hitler may appear rather as self-righteous; however, as Knausgård points out, this is but an external judgment: “Who is able to decide where the limit is between the righteous and the self-righteous?” Morals are neither unchangeable nor absolute.26 The ethical argumentation for Nazism seems to apply both to its justification, to the sense of duty on which it is based, and to its consequences. Already on the first page of Hitler’s book, we are told that the German people, when they have brought all their children together into one state, have a “moral right” to acquire foreign soil. Furthermore, the plan is legitimated both with reference to the order of nature (“eternal nature” and “her commands”), perhaps in a creation-theological variant (the “will of the Almighty Creator”), and with reference to reason; e. g., reason had to defeat Hitler’s immediate sentiment to convince him of anti-Semitism.27 At the same time, the fulfilment of this ideal implies that the individual is capable of ignoring his own selfish needs; such a readiness to subordinate one’s personal interests in order to serve the community characterizes the Aryan race in particular: “Our own German language possesses a word which magnificently designates this kind of activity: Pflichterfullung (fulfilment of duty); it means not to be self-sufficient but to serve the community”. Unlike the Jews’ seeming selfsacrifice; they only stick together when threatened by danger, or when tempted by prey. In this way, Hitler has not only excluded the Jews from the German community, he has even displayed their mutual solidarity as an illusion.28 Finally, the entire idea of the health of the people is rooted in a wish to create a better world with less suffering. It begins with the sterilization of the handi-

24 25 26 27 28

Knausgård, Kamp 6, 482. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 539–540. 558. 562–563. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 736. Hitler, Kampf, 3, 65. 55; cf. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 482. 744. Hitler, Kampf, 298, cf. 302: cf. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 748–751.

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capped: “It was done by good people with good wills”.29 Later, this is extended to so-called killing of mercy by gas. To this end, the Nazis obtained an extensive expert statement from Joseph Mayer, professor of theological ethics, weighing the pros and cons. The pros carried the greatest weight.30 Regardless of the grounds – nature and reason, an appeal to the sense of duty, or a wish to minimize suffering – ethics implies a dividing line: between a we and a they.

5.

We, We, We

The power of the we is enormous. Hitler had never really belonged to a community but it was something to which he aspired; furthermore, according to Knausgård, he had an exceptional ability to create and lead the great we in which individuals were melted. And the we was principal to Nazism. Knausgård refers to the German-Jewish philologist Victor Klemperer’s The Language of the Third Reich: LTI. Lingua Tertii Imperii. Based on notes made during the Nazi era, this pioneering work documents how Nazi ideology was settling in the language: “The people, it sounded everywhere, Germany, it sounded everywhere, we, we, we, it sounded everywhere”.31 It is noteworthy that the title LTI was chosen with irony, as Klemperer draws attention to the excessive usage of abbreviations in Hitler-German. The book explains this usage by the extreme technification and organization of Nazism;32 in our context, however, we may consider if the mania of abbreviation might also be a way of creating a circle round the initiated, strengthening the sense of a we (not unlike the high level of abbreviations in post-Biblical Hebrew). The unity made up by the I – less community calls for a they to exist – the Jews: “What made the misdeeds of the Third Reich possible, was an extreme strengthening of the we, and the implied weakening of the I reduced the resistance against the gradual dehumanization and expulsion of the non-we, that is the Jews, which strengthened the we additionally”.33 With allusions to Girard, Knausgård speaks of a basic mimetic structure of violence: “a we against a they that is sacrificed so that the we can remain alone and entire”.34 29 30 31 32 33 34

Knausgård, Kamp 6, 758. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 787. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 774. Klemperer, Language, 85–86. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 463. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 693.

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Already in Mein Kampf, Hitler displays this mechanism. When he finally realizes the true nature of the Jew, he states: “gradually, I began to hate them”; this statement is followed up by the observation that “my love for my people inevitably grew”.35 We lives on they. As Klemperer points out, the Jew is the most important person in Hitler’s state; if the Fuehrer had succeeded in annihilating all Jews, he would have had to invent new Jews: “without the swarthy Jew there would never have been the radiant figure of the Nordic Teuton”.36 However, this dialectical relationship between we and they is two-sided: it is also being experienced by the they. Not only were the Jews excluded from the community in several ways (the yellow star, offices, Judenhäuser, etc.), but the more Hitler included in the we (e. g. by removing all class division), the clearer was the feeling of exclusion for those kept out: “He was the one opening a we, saying you are one of us, he was the one closing a we, saying you are one of them”.37 Inclusion and exclusion are walking hand in hand. They strengthens the feeling of being a we, and we strengthens the feeling of being a they. Gradually, this they was reduced to an it, paving the way for extermination. It was not people with names who were gassed, but rather bodies reduced to numbers.

6.

The Formula of Everything Human

However, Knausgård’s point is that this way of thinking, in which I and you gradually disappear in favour of a we and a they (an it), is not coupled solely with Hitler and Nazism. On the contrary, this is “the formula of everything human”.38 Dividing and shutting out are simply embedded in human sociality, as it is basic to both holiness and rational thinking.39 For instance, we recognize the dichotomy between we and they in the holy scriptures of the Jews – i. e., of the Nazis’ they. Circumcision, e. g., is a sign of the Chosen People, its we. And that applies to God’s promises as well. True, there are a good many stars and grains of sand, Knausgård writes, but at the same time these are alike: “The promise is not to all people, it is not mankind as such who are to spread innumerably, it is Abraham and his family, that is a we …” In fact, one might say that the entire Old Testament stems from tensions “created by the boundary between we and they”.40 35 36 37 38 39 40

Hitler, Kampf, 63; cf. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 742. Klemperer, Language, 164. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 797. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 934. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 356. 409. 638. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 664.

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Karl Ove is familiar with the attraction towards something greater, towards a we, though for his part it doesn’t really happen until the Norwegian fellow-feeling following Anders Breivik’s massacre on Utøya in 2011, an event which enabled him to enter into the spirit that consumed Germans in the thirties.41 As he tells his friend Geir, everyday triviality can create a “desire for something pure and great into which you can dissolve and disappear … One people, one blood, one earth”.42 Furthermore, Karl Ove also knows the aversion for the they (or the it). In his early years, working at a home for people with disabilities, he is disgusted with one of the inmates who keeps on provoking him. Not only the man’s body is deformed, he realizes; his thoughts and soul are also crippled: “What did it make him? / Ugh! Like hell!” While Karl Ove catches himself being scandalized at the weakest of the weak, he cannot get rid of this unacceptable feeling. “It was I who was not human. But I couldn’t stop it”.43 Or perhaps he should have said, more consistently: it was I who was (all too) human. However, most original in Knausgård’s analysis is his demonstration that we, in our approach to Hitler and Nazism, use the very same formula. Hitler and the Nazis (making a they of the Jews) have “become our great ‘they’”.44 We make Hitler into something incomprehensible, something non-human, something outside ourselves, almost into an it. Holocaust literature is full of examples of such dehumanization of Hitler and the Nazis. In fact, one could point to Klemperer, one of Knausgård’s principal witnesses. Klemperer traces back Nazism to German Romanticism; even in his comparison of Hitler to Herzl, which, one may think, might have led to a more general diagnosis, German Romanticism has to bear the brunt. Nowhere does Klemperer suggest that the source could be the human as such. So the question he asked himself during the war remains a riddle to him: “How was it possible for educated people to betray their entire education and humanity to such an extent?”45 In some sense, Knausgård’s analysis provides the answer: it is due to the very same humanity, the formula of everything human. So Knausgård insists that Hitler is nothing strange outside ourselves; he is “one of us”.46 Nazism is human. However, this annulment of distinctions is unbearable. Indistinctness is a “primal anxiety of man”.47

41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Knausgård, Kamp 6, 603. 775–776. Knausgård, Struggle 2, 558. Knausgård, Kamp 5, 378. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 791. Klemperer, Language, 250. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 725. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 678.

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A Primal Anxiety of Man

The anxiety of indistinctness, and the associated need for boundaries, is a general subject in Knausgård’s works. Time and again, he stresses the extreme role of boundaries in Hitler’s personal and social morals and his enormous fear of everything crossing the boundaries.48 The newspeak employed by the Third Reich confirms Knausgård’s assumption: artrecht, deutschblütig, Halbjude, Mischehe, Mischling, Rassenschande, Verniggerung, etc. Further, the continuous dividing into we and they is a reflection of this fear. Accordingly, the boundless thought of “forgiveness for everybody”, Knausgård notes, is completely absent in Mein Kampf.49 However, in this respect, too, Hitler shows his human side. Not least in his essays, Knausgård has displayed our basic anxiety of the unlimited. The annulment of usual boundaries, he asserts, is filling us with aversion; for if all things are equal – “blood, vomit, faeces, sunrises, lawns” – the ‘order of things’ is fading away. And everything totters.50 The anxiety of indistinctness also applies to the interpersonal relationship. In his essay “Equal to everyone”, Knausgård refers to an experience by the French author Jean Genet. When Genet happened to catch the eye of a shabby, repulsive man sitting opposite him on a train, he realized, for a moment, their equality. It filled him with sorrow and darkening. Why sorrow and darkening? Because the indistinctness deprived Genet of his own worth: “All worth stems from distinctions, and our entire social reality is based on it”.51 Genet’s memory almost forms a parallel to the young Knausgård’s confrontation with the deformed cripple. For in his humanity, Knausgård too has an inclination for boundaries and e-limination, in the true sense of the word. And he cannot avoid it. True, art creates a place in which we – momentarily and outside reality – are able to experiment with boundaries. Even in this refuge from sociality, however, we feel disgust if basic boundaries are suspended. In his essay “Pig-Man”, Knausgård references the American photographer Cindy Sherman’s picture Untitled # 263 where male and female genitalia are conjoined, and Untitled # 250 where three brown sausages, reminiscent of faeces, are protruding from a woman’s vagina: “It is an impossible mixture, it is impure, we react by strong feelings as if we push it back …”.52 Alcohol, however, seems to open a world within the real world in which Karl Ove is released from his human propensity to boundaries. With his awkward self48 49 50 51 52

Knausgård, Kamp 6, 541. 556. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 722. Knausgård, Amerika, 153. Knausgård, Amerika, 272. Knausgård, Amerika, 165.

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control, he enjoys the freedom caused by alcohol: “I loved being drunk. I came closer to the person I really was and dared do what I really wanted to do. There were no limits”.53 Furthermore, intoxication does not only annul the boundaries that he, when sober, puts up between himself and the world, between usual and unusual; the interpersonal boundaries between we and they also vanish; alcohol, he proclaims, gilds everything you see – even the most disgusting human being becomes beautiful; by “one great gesture”, alcohol suspends all evaluation; it is a “supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful”.54 Even the deformed cripple and Genet’s tramp. However, the spirits of alcohol evaporate, and inevitably the hangovers arrive. Karl Ove never succeeds in integrating the visions of his intoxication into the real world. On the contrary, it always turns out that he has offended against sociality and its boundaries. That brings its own punishment, and anxiety appears. For the indistinctness is a primal anxiety of man. That is why Christianity makes us anxious.

8.

The Non-Human

Everywhere, social reality is based on distinctions. Sociality, Knausgård writes, aims at creating and keeping up distinctions; it is dividing and excluding.55 At this point, Christianity proves to be diametrically opposed to sociality: “The social is a system of distinctions, a world where everything and everybody are graduated and differentiated. Grace cancels all distinctions, in grace all people are equal”.56 Indeed, there are analogies to grace in our human world. In the last essay of America of the Soul, appropriately called “Where narration doesn’t reach”, Knausgård touches on three important people whom he had difficulties in portraying when writing his autobiographical novel: his mother, his wife, and his editor. Now, what is the link between these three quite different people? They are all – one way or the other – a matter of course in his life. The more unknown, strange and disharmonic something is, the easier it is to describe it literarily. These three individuals, however, were so close that they were almost impossible to portray: “they did not need to be said, they were saying themselves”.57 Their matter of course is partly due to the way they give: “They give, and they require nothing, or very little, in return”. And precisely the one who gives non53 54 55 56 57

Knausgård, Struggle 4, 356. Knausgård, Struggle 4, 481. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 356. 409. Knausgård, Amerika, 263. Knausgård, Amerika, 369.

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demandingly is so difficult to spot. You can see a demand, Knausgård notices, but the non-demanding is nothing, it is the absence of something. For that reason, the adequate reaction from the recipient is not repayment but “unconditional trust”, which can only be fostered by a matter of course.58 In a sense, the non-demanding is nothing, but that does not make it less vital. In the third volume of My Struggle, dealing with Karl Ove’s childhood, the novelist reveals what may be characteristic of his mother’s giving. Whereas his father tries to clear the sons’ lives of everything that is not absolutely needed (unnecessary talk at table, birthday parties, visits from playmates), it is the opposite with his mother; she has a sense of the superfluous: “she often served food that was not absolutely necessary, such as waffles, buns, cocoa and bread fresh out of the oven”.59 And Karl Ove lived on this superfluity. Still, the analogy to divine grace of Knausgård’s trinity: mother, wife, and editor, remains but an analogy. A small reservation is invading the unconditionality: they require nothing or very little in return – a ‘very little’ which makes all the difference. And even more essential, in all these relations the people are giving to somebody rather than others: to the mother’s own sons, the wife’s own husband, the editor’s own writer. The store from which the human giver is drawing is always limited. Furthermore, however naturally and unpretentiously human beings may give, there will inevitably be a we, followed shadow-like by a non-we. So, despite all analogies, Christianity breaks fundamentally with our human line of acting. The sixth volume of My Struggle accentuates the radicalism of this thought: “Adolf Hitler is worth as much as the Jews he gassed to death”.60 In the space of grace – outside human sociality – the store is unlimited. There is “cocoa and bread” for anyone. And this boundless grace is not just one aspect of Christianity: “that and nothing else is what Christianity is all about”. This notion of absolute equality for all rouses our anxiety and our opposition. For it is “no human thought”; it is a “divine thought”.61

58 59 60 61

Knausgård, Amerika, 369–370. Knausgård, Struggle 3, 150. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 357, cf. 796. Knausgård, Amerika, 263.

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The Radically Other

In this way, grace is “something radically other”.62 This has consequences for the human attitude to Christianity. In continuation of Knausgård’s rather sparse reflections, we may characterize grace as inevitable, unbelievable, and nonimplementable – to man. Grace involves a suspension of the human subject. In the indistinctness of grace, man’s boundaries, and thus in a way man himself, are wiped out.63 Furthermore, the contribution by which we seek to establish differences to others is annulled in the light of grace, as is the notion that the human subject is able to provide or renounce grace; such possibility would just generate new limits. Grace totally undermines the system of value that Knausgård diagnoses in an essay on Kierkegaard: what you gain by effort surpasses what you are given.64 In Christianity, it is the other way round: man is never a subject, always an object. More precisely (and to put it grammatically): man is always a dative object. However, the system of gaining is so deep-rooted in man that the inevitable grace and its suspension of the subject have to be revealed to Karl Ove in a dream; the “most fantastic” dream ever. Thanks to the line breaks of the novel, the account of the dream nearly appears like a poem, fitting its visionary character: It was the sound of God’s voice. I stopped and looked up at the sky. And then I was pulled up! I was pulled up into the sky! 65

The passivum divinum of the vision is not only classical; it is absolute. No conditions are required, and no demands are made. That would unavoidably draw new boundaries. The hand of God, which is never mentioned directly, is the sole and sovereign agent, apparently overcoming even the common primal anxiety. If only momentarily, Karl Ove experiences a flash of grace, and his feeling is unambiguous. As he puts it in a play on the wording of the Old Testament prophet’s future vision: “It was a moment of peace and perfection, joy and gladness”.66 Furthermore, he was completely unprepared – unprepared as only a dream could make him.

62 63 64 65 66

Knausgård, Kamp 6, 681. Knausgård, Amerika, 166. Knausgård, Amerika, 287. Knausgård, Kamp 5, 516. Knausgård, Kamp 5, 517; cf. Is 35:10.

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By that, Knausgård’s constant proclamation that he doesn’t believe in God somehow becomes irrelevant.67 Once and for all, grace has moved all focus and all activity away from the human subject. Grace is bound to do so because Christianity, in its radicalism, is no less than un-believable – not only to Knausgård. Even when it comes to salvation, we insist that the sheep must be separated from the goats. We cannot accept the absolute equality cancelling any human ‘we and they’. As Knausgård writes in his essay “Grace”: “Its radicalism is so great, its ideas so unlike everything else that the sense of it is impossible to grasp, really”.68 That’s why Karl Ove is not grasping in his dream vision above; he is being grasped. Finally, Christianity is “no instrumental thing”.69 Grace undermines the identity made up by differences – and we cling to this identity: “that is what makes Christianity non-implementable, we cannot think away ourselves, there is too much to lose, it is everything we have”.70 Not only Hitler insisted on the social boundaries – it is deeply ingrained in everybody: “He was a little man, but we all are”.71 When humans are ousting and denying one boundary of ‘we and they’, another is coming up, inevitably. We cannot implement the non-differential: “We are too small”.72

10.

Not My Struggle

Whenever Karl Ove is looking up on his own initiative, he sees nothing but a “huge, empty space”73 – above us only sky, to quote John Lennon. But when God lets his voice sound, sky turns into heaven. God shows his appearance when and where we expect him least of all: A little boy named Karl Ove is watching a TV transmission of a drowning accident off the North Norwegian coast; he is starring at the sea-surface, when “suddenly the outline of a face emerges”.74 Many years later, the same Karl Ove is sitting in an office in Stockholm, letting his eyes wander across the wooden floor, when all of a sudden the tree rings appear to form an “image of Christ wearing a crown of thorns”.75 Or he is looking at his mother’s plastic bucket which once 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Knausgård, Kamp 6, 605. 611; Knausgård, Amerika, 258. Knausgård, Amerika, 263. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 681. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 357. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 797. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 409. Knausgård, Kamp 6, 612. Knausgård, Struggle 1, 8. Knausgård, Struggle 1, 210.

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stood too close to a fire and is now melted a little on one side, and “a man’s face, with eyes, a crooked nose, and a twisted mouth” is appearing.76 Whether in a marble cake, a piece of burned toast, a blotched cloth, or even an “ultrasound image of a man’s testicles” – the “face of Jesus” can turn up anywhere, all by itself.77 And whenever that happens, man is reminded that, in Christianity, he is never a subject. It is no longer my struggle.

Bibliography Brecher, B., Understanding the holocaust: The uniqueness debate, Radical Philosophy 96 (1999) 17–28. Bugge, D., Mennesket: Kain – Hitler – Knausgård, in: D. Bugge, S.R. Fauth, O. Morsing (eds.), Knausgård i syv sind, Anis 2015, 27–53. Drakulic´, S., They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague, Pinguin Books 2004. Hitler, A., Mein Kampf (transl. R. Manheim), Houghton Mifflin 1971. Kershaw, I., Hitler: A Biography, Norton & Company 2008. Klemperer, V., The Language of the Third Reich: LTI, Lingua Tertii Imperii: a philologist’s notebook (transl. M. Brady), Continuum 2006. Knausgård, K.O., Min kamp [My Struggle] 1–6, Forlaget Oktober 2009–11. –, My Struggle 1–3 (transl. D. Bartlett), Vintage 2014. –, My Struggle 4 (transl. D. Bartlett), Harvill Secker 2015. –, Sjelens Amerika [America of the Soul], Forlaget Oktober 2013. Kubizek, A., The Young Hitler I Knew (transl. G. Brooks), Frontline Books 2011. Levi, P., If This Is a Man / The Truce (transl. S. Woolf), Abacus 1987.

76 Knausgård, Struggle 2, 396. 77 Knausgård, Amerika, 13.

Benedicte Hammer Præstholm

Human in the Flesh: Gendered Anthropology between Theology and Culture

1.

Gendered Anthropology between Theology and Culture

In recent years, Danish historical studies have increased their focus on the relationship between theology and history, and have demonstrated that Lutheran theology has played an essential part in the Danish history of the norms related to gender, the body, and sexuality. For instance, Danish historian Nina Koefoed has contributed to the examination of this connection in her dissertation, Besovede Kvindfolk og ukærlige barnefædre: Køn og ret i dansk ægteskabs – og sædelighedslovgivning i det lange 18. århundrede (2003). Here, she has demonstrated the massive theological influence on Danish legislation concerning marriage and sexuality in the 18th century and thereby on the construction on gender norms.1 Also, historian Louise Nyholm Kallestrup has focused on this area of research in her articles, “Knowing Satan from God: Demonic Possession, Witchcraft, and the Lutheran Orthodox Church in Early Modern Denmark” (2011), and “De besmittede og de skyldige” (2012). In the area of religious studies we should mention Søren Feldtfos Thomsen’s postdoctoral project at Aarhus University: Impious Bodies: Sex, Gender and the Lutheran Reformation in Denmark (to be completed in 2016). These works are examples of the interest taken in the way Lutheran theology has affected the general perception of gender in Danish society. In Danish scholarly work within the fields of history, religious studies, and theology, it seems that less attention has been paid to the reverse situation: how cultural ideas and traditions concerning gender have influenced the anthropology of theology and church.2 Lyndal Roper has shown how fruitful this reverse 1 The significance of Lutheran theology for the construction of gender in Denmark in the 18th century is also the subject matter of several of her works, for instance, Kofoed, Utroskab; Kofoed, Fruentimmere. 2 In my dissertation, Kønfrontation. Køn, kultur og forandring i nyere dansk teologi (2014), I investigated how Danish theology has transformed itself and its anthropology in relation to cultural ideas concerning gender and sexuality within the past 100 years. This article presents some of the findings.

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perspective is in her classic work, The Holy Household, of 1989. Focusing on early Reformation history, she demonstrates how traditional, conservative ideas of the household affect Lutheran theology and its understanding of the human being. The consequence is the development of an “evangelical household moralism”,3 which to Roper explains the loss of the new, gendered opportunities that were, in fact, included in Lutheran theology, for instance, in the idea of the priesthood of all believers (men and women alike).4 Roper clearly demonstrates that Lutheran anthropology is shaped not only through “pure” theology, but also through links to cultural ideas concerning the human being. In many ways, such a “two-way exchange” between cultural and theological ideas shows in the cultural and theological debates about gender norms from within the past 100 years of Danish history: In the 19th century, the dominating view of men and women, their opportunities in life, their status in society and marriage, were dependent on what had become the normative Lutheran anthropology. This anthropology built on certain selected biblical texts on social ethics, such as Gen 2:18–24 (the definition of the woman as the helper of the man), Gen 3:16 (the statements concerning women’s heterosexual desire, her painful labor, and her husband’s mastery), and Eph 5:22 (the command to wives to submit to their husbands), 1 Cor 14:34 (the command to women to be silent in the congregation and to submit), and 1 Tim 2:11–15 (which states that a woman should live in silence, should not be a teacher, should not control her husband, and which states that a woman will be saved through giving birth). Such extracts from gendered biblical social ethics were combined with the theology of the orders of creation. This specific kind of theology was seen by its followers as a genuine part of Lutheran theology and anthropology, based on Luther’s concept of the three hierarchies of the world instituted by God: ecclesia, politia, and oeconomia (the household). With reference to Luther, gendered anthropology focused on the callings specific to man and to woman, and the inner connection between a calling and the body. In short: God gave man physical strength and intellectual powers in order to lead in the home, society, and the Church, whereas he gave woman a womb and heterosexual desire in order to bear children. Owing to the natural abilities with which man and woman are endowed by God, their place in the world and their areas of work are defined, and these should not be transgressed. Man and woman are equal before God (coram Deo), but in worldly life (coram hominibus) they are not. In this theological anthropology based on Luther’s writings, biology is destiny. Gender-specific callings are seen as central parts of creation, of the way in which God regulated the world for human beings to live in.

3 Roper, Household, 4–5. 4 Roper, Household, 264.

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Beginning in the middle of the 19th century in Denmark, as in other European countries, the traditional Christian definition of man and woman, the understandings of physically-defined callings, sexuality, marriage, and work were underpinned by both the new natural sciences and by Romanticism. The investigations into the female anatomy and physiology produced the theory that the reproductive organs constituted womanhood, and new insights from Darwin’s zoological research strengthened the understanding that men are naturally superior to women.5 The natural sciences underpinned and developed the traditional understanding of sex differences. In Denmark, the gynecologist Franz Howitz emphasized motherhood as woman’s purpose, and argued that the upbringing, clothing, nourishing and occupations of women should target women’s health, in order for them function well as human beings in general, and as mothers, specifically. According to Howitz, this implied that girls and women should not be educated, since reading books, which requires an exertion of the brain, may cause an afflux of blood, and thereby affect the inner organs and lead to a slackening of the womb’s musculature.6 Therefore, education hinders women in the fulfillment of their purpose: motherhood. Motherhood was also the key concept in Romantic gender idealism.7 Through the development of the division between the private and the public spheres in the middle class, the division of labor between man and woman was emphasized. The family father spent his working life outside the home in the public sphere, and women’s lives took place inside the home, in privacy.8 Their tasks were to give birth to and raise the children with motherly love, to take care of their husband, and to develop “home life culture”, including a comfortable atmosphere and feeling of coziness in the home, expressed through the special Danish term, “hygge”.9 Women serve in the home, and their strengths are patience, love, and self-denial, specific female characteristics that define their place in the world. Through the natural sciences and Romanticism, the identification of motherhood as a woman’s calling was strengthened. A woman’s natural place in the world was no longer constructed only by biblical texts and Christian concepts of the gendered orders of creation.10 Thus, by the late 1800s, Lutheran theology and influential cultural movements together formed a strong and dominating gender idealism, in Butler’s words, a strong concept of the intelligible gender, which defined “the right” relationship among physical body, social gender, and

5 6 7 8 9 10

Rosenbeck, Kroppens Politik, 15. Howitz, Sundhedslære, 19–20. Giese, Moderskab, 122–123; Busk-Jensen, Forfatterinder, 131–132. Lützen, Byen tæmmes, 18. Busk-Jensen, Forfatterinder, 120. Melby et al., Inte ett ord, 53

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heterosexuality.11 However, at the same time, new ideas about gender and the sexes appeared in Denmark, ideas that challenged what had become “the traditional” Christian understanding of gender. Cultural breakthroughs, including enlightenment ideas about freedom, equality, and autonomy (for men primarily), the struggle for civil rights, and the new Danish constitution of 1849, Grundloven, and its democratic tendency, eventually led to a struggle for, and a public debate about, women’s citizenship and emancipation. The change in the view of women, their autonomy, public opportunities, access to education, and work outside the home was pushed forward in several ways. Danish literature raised questions of women’s emancipation and rights for consideration. For instance, the female writer Mathilde Fibiger wrote a muchdebated novel about a woman’s journey to self-support and independence (Clara Rafael, of 1850). Also, Georg Brandes’s translation of John Steward Mill’s book, The Subjection of Women (1869) had great influence. In 1871, Dansk Kvindesamfund (Danish Women’s Society) was established, and this organization included many skilled and politically interested women, who significantly influenced the public debate.12 Some of the suggestions from Dansk Kvindesamfund related directly to church practices, for instance they worked persistently for a new marriage ritual.13 This new situation led to an immense theological discussion, and a massive production of theological texts reflecting on Christianity and gendered anthropology.14 In the following paragraphs, I concentrate on some of the texts that were written as part of the church debates on the marriage ritual (late 1800), and the theological education and ordination of women (from the late 1800s to the mid–1900s). I intend to show how these texts express two very different understandings of the relationship between Christianity and the new gendered anthropology: One pole claims that Christianity and the changes in gendered social ethics are incompatible, while the other pole claims that the changes in gendered social ethics are indeed compatible with Christianity.

11 12 13 14

Butler, Gender Trouble, 23. Lemche, Historie, 20–24. Lemche, Historie, 192–193. I term these texts “theological texts”, not because they are written by theologians – several of the texts are actually not written by theologians – but because they deal with theological issues. The material on which this article is based was collected from a rather large number of journals, books, and pamphlets from the past 100 years of Danish history. All the texts were written in Danish, and the English translations are mine.

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2.

Examples from the Danish Theological Debates on Gender

2.1

New Cultural Ideas and Christianity are Incompatible

The theological rejection of the new understanding of women is strongly represented in both the discussion of the church marriage ritual and the discussion of the ordination of women. In both cases the changed view of women is seen a violation of true Christianity and genuine Christian anthropology. In the case of the marriage ritual, this view is based on the ritual’s biblical quotation concerning women’s subordination to their husbands, which had been part of the Danish marriage ritual since 1580, based on Luther’s model in his Traubüchlein.15 Ideas concerning the emancipation and independence of woman clash with this biblical definition, and therefore must be rejected. These new ideas constitute a rejection of the Creator’s will regarding man and woman. The same goes for women’s theological education and possible inclusion in Church ministry. In 1875, when the Danish university16 opened its door to women, the Faculty of Theology was the exception.17 This was largely due to the theological opinions of the dean, C.H. Scharling. In a letter to the Ministry, he writes that female students should not be expected to bring any benefits, and that the emancipation of women should be limited, since it rests on “a misunderstanding of woman’s natural abilities and predispositions, and the life task that they assign to her”.18 The emancipation of women causes “great danger to society, because it threatens to topple one of its pillars, family life”.19 In Scharling’s eyes, women have certain callings or tasks in the world, which are related to home life and family life, and come from God and nature. Moreover, with reference to 1 Cor 14:33–35 and 1 Tim 2:12, he states that the ordination of women is against the Bible. In 1904, after the abolishment of the 1875 restriction, the discussion of the ordination of women increased, and it was heavily discussed for a very long period, even after the ordination of the first three women, in 1948. The arguments against the ordination of women concern biblical social ethics and the orders of creation. As shown in the following examples, theological texts emphasize again and again that genuine Christian anthropology emphasizes the sex differences and the gender-related callings, and that these differences should be upheld in Christian homes, as well as in Church. If this gendered anthropology is changed in relation to contemporary culture, it amounts to a transgression of God’s will. 15 Holm, Brudevielsesritualet, 62–71. 16 At this time there was only one university in Denmark. 17 This exception took the form of women being permitted to study theology, but being excluded from being able to receive a degree in the subject. 18 Black, Akademikere, 131. 19 Black, Akademikere, 131.

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The leader of the Inner Mission, “Magdalenehjem” (an institution for “fallen women”), Thora Esche, wrote a small book on the ordination of women, Kvindelige præster, in 1919. She argues that God created man and woman with different gender-related natures, and gave them different tasks to fulfill in the world. Specifically, she refers to the understanding that God created woman to be the “helper” of the man.20 “Man was created first, then woman. The woman was given to the man to be his helper, not to be his superior”.21 According to Thora Esche, this is the reason Jesus chose only men as apostles, and the reason women should not be ordained to the ministry. But God gave women “female eyes” that look upon the world in a different way than do the eyes of men, and therefore, a woman’s task is: …in a genuine female way to meet him (the man) with modesty in dressing and in every movement, and in a meek and quiet spirit to offer him help to see his various life tasks, not only with his own eyes, where the intellect more often runs ahead of the heart, but with the eyes that God gave woman.22

The woman is a heart person. Therefore, she has the ability to work for the church among children and other women, but she must abstain from entering into the ordained ministry. That is the task of a man. The created difference between men and women is also the key argument in numerous theological texts of the 1940s. In a 1946 publication by Inner Mission, the theologian Johannes Pedersen emphasizes the God-given, gender-related differences in a way that is quite similar to the description of women in scientific texts from the late 1800: As little as a man is suited to give birth and run the house, as little is a woman suited to be the spiritual father and teacher of a congregation. The mind and emotional life of a woman – and thereby the ability to consider calmly a matter from both sides – are subject to so extreme fluctuations that in some periods she is hardly normal, and needs much peace and tolerance, until nature restores itself again.23

And he underlines the agreement between the Creator, creation, and “the natural order”: In the apostles’ views on women, there is more chivalry towards, and mercy for the female nature and more common sense than in the modern women’s movement ideas, which respect neither the Creator nor his work … The Spirit of God would never

20 Unlike various other writers, Thora Esche does not refer to the call to motherhood. This may have to do with the fact that she did not have children of her own, but lived her entire life in the companionship of a woman (see Lützen, Hjertet, 73). 21 Esche, Præster, 10. 22 Esche, Præster, 11–12. 23 Quoted from Christensen, Indre Mission, 409.

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encourage a woman to a calling that is not only against Scripture and all shared traditions of the Church, but also against the natural order.24

Pastor A.M. Bårris refers directly to the way in which the theological definition of the differences between the sexes is confirmed by science, and states that God “has from the beginning created man and woman with their specific mentality (“psyche”), and therefore each will continue to have their mentality until the end of the world, because neither man nor time can change God’s creation”.25 The gender-specific characteristics aim at different areas of work for man and woman: The ministry in the congregation was absolutely not part of her God-given, special working area … This is what has validity today and always, founded in God’s own creation, that he created woman with her special mentality and man with his, designed for the special working areas that may only be attended to satisfactorily by the mentality that was given to them for exactly this purpose.26

Pastor Bårris’s thinking is clearly in line with the romantic understanding of women, when he writes that the working area of women includes raising children, housekeeping, and the “hygge” (comfort and coziness) of the home. The identification of the woman with “hygge” also led pastor Bårris to be one of the first in Denmark, I believe, to criticize the so-called “feminization of the church”; the ordination of women will make the church “hyggelig”, cozy and comfortable.27 Pastor Aage Kühle emphasizes that women are, by their God-given nature, more caring and sensitive than are men. In his small book, Hvorfor Nej til Kvindelige Præster (Why “no” to women pastors) of 1956, he writes that the call to be a mother is what constitutes womanhood (as may be seen from the two most important women in the Bible, Eve and Jesus’s mother, Mary). This calling restricts women’s opportunities for self-realization – the calling to motherhood is the reason that a woman can never become more than her husband’s helper. Similar arguments may be found in numerous texts from the beginning of the 20th century, until the 1960s. They represent a theological position that claims that Christianity is characterized by certain unchangeable gendered forms of life. Culture-related changes to this are a transgression of God’s will, and if such changes are allowed to affect theology and Church practices, the core of Christianity will change: Christianity will become less Christian. The traditional Lutheran anthropology, the traditional concept of the intelligible gender of the church, based on certain biblical texts and the theology of the orders of creation, 24 25 26 27

Quoted from Christensen, Indre Mission, 409. Bårris, Hovedskellinjen, 15. Bårris, Hovedskellinjen, 23. Women’s so called “feminization of the church” is still an issue in the Danish public debate, most recently in the winter of 2014/2015 (see Præstholm, 2015).

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overwhelmingly patriarchal and heterosexual, must be maintained by theology as the genuine Christian anthropology. Therefore, new cultural ideas concerning gender, and equality and new opportunities for women in society must be dismissed by the church.

2.2

New Cultural Ideas and Christianity are Compatible

The other position that appears in theological texts debating new, gendered anthropology expresses the wish for a transformation of the traditional Christian anthropology, and a basic conviction that the new perceptions of gender are not incompatible with Christianity. In the discussion of the marriage ritual, which ran from the late 1800s to 1912, when a new ritual was authorized for use, campaigners for theological change argued that the words from Eph 5:22–29, stating that the wife must subject herself to her husband, should be removed from the ritual. For instance, the chairperson for Dansk Kvindesamfund, Astrid Stampe Feddersen, argued that equality between the sexes and between husband and wife in marriage is key to a Christian understanding of the human being: She states that while both slaves and women were poorly treated in Judaism, Christian anthropology claims every human being’s human rights, since every human being is created in the image of God. Moreover, she refers to Galatians 3:28, which says: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. Furthermore, she states that the ethical and societal issues of today cannot be measured by biblical standards. Christ did not give eternal, unchangeable rules for society, and Paul’s views on women were mostly ultraJewish. Christians must be free to work out new ethical standards based on the living word of Christ.28 Pastor C.J. Brandt argued for the same change: He states that the church needs to recognize the historical background for the marriage ritual, and that Luther chose this text in order to claim the sacredness of marriage, to counter the Catholic praise of celibacy. Present times have given the church another reality to speak to, and therefore the text of the old ritual now seems outdated. New circumstances may make new choices of text necessary. He concludes: “The ritual must divide sun and wind alike in marriage – not because of modern theories, but in agreement with the Holy Scripture”.29 The same thought is presented in rural dean Axel Kemp’s text on the marriage ritual: The consequence of the fact that the words from Eph 5 (regarding the women’s subjection to her husband) have been chosen as part of the marriage ritual is that 28 Feddersen, Vielsesritualet, 586–590. 29 Brandt, Vort brudevielses-Ritual, 738.

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other biblical statements about the relationship between men and women have been overlooked: These chosen words, …stand in the light of the wonderful words by the same Paul, that “in Christ there is neither man nor woman, but they are one in Christ” – and they make people forget that from the lips of Jesus and from his relationship to men and women, never was one word spoken, or one step taken, to suggest that he ranked man above woman.30

Many examples can also be mentioned from the discussion about the ordination of women: In 1924, Bishop Valdemar Ammundsen wrote to the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs that the outer forms of the church must be “shaped by an interaction between the basic principle of Gal 3:28 and the practical circumstances of life”. He continues: To tie the life of the congregation to every statement in The New Testament concerning questions like these would go against the liberating spirit of the gospel, and deprive Christianity of a part of its propulsive power. Even though the apostle Paul accepted slavery, we fought this later on because it does not fit the basic idea of Christianity concerning the equality of humans before God. At the time of the apostles it would have been impossible to comprehend the emancipation of women. But later periods have not bound themselves to these statements in The New Testament, as when Paul ordered women to carry a veil in the congregation (1 Cor 11). Whether we should go all the way and entrust the women with full pastoral functions is mostly a practical question.31

The foregoing argument is found in the writings of a later bishop, Halfdan Høgsbro who clearly takes an interest in the relationship between cultural development on one hand and the church and its use of biblical social ethics on the other. Concerning the biblical words on women’s subjection to men, and comparing this with developments in the views on slavery, he writes: It is possible that as long as the question of the conditions of the woman was not a problem, neither were the words. That was also the way things were as long as slavery was taken for granted. Later on, it became different. The same thing happened with regard to the words of the Scripture concerning the woman’s state. It no longer presents itself as clear and obvious. On the contrary, the unconcerned certainty of the Church has been broken at this point.32

Here, the bishop emphasizes that changes in the surrounding world may challenge the church and its Christian anthropology, and he indicates that sometimes such outside-world changes may make changes necessary within the church. Both maintaining slavery and excluding women from the ordained ministry are phenomena that circumstances have helped the church to identify as illegitimate 30 Kemp, Historie, 571. 31 Quoted from Bisgaard, Debatten, 154. 32 Kvinden, 96.

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expressions of Christian anthropology. The same understanding may be found in statements from some of the first female theologians and ordained women. For instance, Johanne Andersen (ordained in 1948, and also affiliated with Dansk Kvindesamfund) states that the ordination of women is a question of the right relationship between the forms and the preaching of the church.33 In her view, the church should not ordain women because of the demands of women’s rights movements, but the church should ordain women because this brings the church into agreement with its own understanding of the gospel and of the human being. In her view, a church with only men as pastors would under the present circumstances allow its order to confuse its content including its theological anthropology. The foregoing texts are but a few examples of the theological position that argues that the theological understanding of gender may be changed without eroding true Christianity and Christian anthropology. A changed Christian understanding of the human being is not necessarily a decline. On the contrary, new cultural understandings of gender, and parallel new theological understandings of the human being may be consistent with, and emphasize, biblical thought, and may bring Christianity into agreement with Christianity under new cultural circumstances.

3.

The Understanding of Change

The positive understanding of change concerning Christian anthropology has to do with the theological perception of social ethics. Clearly, these texts represent an understanding other than the one expressed through the theology of the orders of creation. In several cases, this more dynamic understanding of anthropology and ethics is explicitly based on another Lutheran concept, namely, the concept of God’s law concerning human life as a law of love. In the Lutheran tradition, the law of love has been accentuated as the basic concept underlying Luther’s understanding of ethics, focusing on this law as the natural law that is the core of ethics, norms, and legislation everywhere and in all times.34 The law itself is an abstract demand, and therefore it must always be incarnated anew in concrete lives and contexts.35 This means that the definition of what is good and just, which may be seen as a concrete manifestation of natural law, cannot be separated from its context. This understanding of the law of love has been used to 33 Bisgaard, Debatten, 171. 34 For instance, in Althaus, Theologie. 35 Prenter, Skabelse, 211

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criticize the static view of ethics based on the theology of the orders of creation.36 In terms of anthropology, this means that Christianity ought not to insist on an immutable understanding of the human being, and on determining the opportunities given to men and women based on the order of creation. Instead, the Christian understanding of the human being needs to be dynamic, based on the law of love, and related to time and place. But something else is extremely important, in order to grasp this position, namely, the implicit understanding of the nature of theological change and of change in church practices. When framed by the theological position that dismisses change in traditional theological anthropology, change is illegitimate, change in anthropology means a decline in Christianity. But according to the latter theological position, change is legitimate, maybe even necessary. I believe that the theories of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, especially his concept of structural coupling, are helpful to understanding these texts and this position, and to grasp the essence of theological change in relation to cultural ideas about the human being.37 According to Luhmann’s theories, society consists of various social systems concerning specific parts of reality, such as law, economy, education, aesthetics, and religion. The systems themselves consist of specified communication. Human beings take part in the communication of several systems, but not necessarily in every system. The systems are characterized as closed and autopoietic, which means that they continuously recreate themselves from their own potential, through reuse of their own resources and guidelines.38 In case of Christianity, the Bible, the creeds, and the confessions function as such guidelines. They are essential parts of the identity, the skeleton of the system of theological communication. In recreation, not only is repetition possible, so are variation and innovation. This relates to the fact that even though the systems are autopoietic and closed, they may react on each other. Being autopoietically closed does not mean being immune to the surrounding systems; instead, a closed system’s identity is the precondition for openness. Luhmann describes this re36 In a Danish context, this has been done by professor of dogmatics, Regin Prenter (1907–1990), and by K.E. Løgstrup (1905–1981). In a broader Scandinavian context, one must mention Gustaf Wingren (1910–2000), who, in line with both Prenter and Løgstrup, has emphasized a dynamic understanding of creation. In his article, Från ordningsteologi till revolutionsteologi, he criticizes the mechanical use of the orders of creation based on his understanding of the concept of creation in Luther’s theology, where creation motivates continual change (Wingren, Ordningsteologi, 41–45). 37 The concepts of change and continuity have been recurrent themes in the history of theology (Thunberg, Äkta). In a Scandinavian context, Gustaf Wingren made it the theme of his book, Växling och kontinuitet, in which he argues that continuity can only exist through change (Wingren, Växling). I believe that Luhmann’s theory may contribute to theology by offering a theoretical language that can describe the methods for change, and grasp and frame such theological ideas regarding the need for change in order to maintain continuity. 38 Luhmann, Systeme, 79.

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lationship between autopoietic systems as “structural coupling”: Through language, the surrounding world (including human beings) can “irritate” a given system, and such irritation may be given influence on the development of an autopoietic system.39 For instance, it is possible that through outside-world communication “genug Irritation erzeugt werden, um die Semantik der Funktionssysteme auf bisher nicht genutzte eigene Möglichkeiten aufmerksam werden zu lassen”.40 Outside-world communication may eventually lead the system to innovation. However, the coupling to the surrounding world is not determined by the surrounding world. All “irritating” information from the outside world from other types of communication (e. g. information about a change in the understanding of gender) will be filtered through the identity and the guidelines of the system.41 This means that the system itself decides what to take in and what to reject. Based on its inner resources, theology decides whether and how communication with the surrounding world may function as a resource for theological thought. In theological practice, this is typically handled by hermeneutics which is an autopoietic activity. Because of the normative character of its guidelines (for instance, the Bible), theology must combine new situations and experiences, new questions, and new information with an old truth fixed in old texts. Therefore, the interpretation of Biblical texts and the selection between different biblical texts become crucial to theological processes of transformation. Informed by new cultural ideas about the human being, theology may develop new interpretations of central biblical texts, or may choose to highlight other biblical texts than did the previous tradition. Therefore, a culturally informed, hermeneutically facilitated transformation of Christian anthropology is not defined through the exchange of genuine Christian concepts for cultural, secular concepts, but relates to the selection of biblical interpretations and of various biblical texts and their anthropological possibilities. Based on Luhmann’s theory, Niels Henrik Gregersen has developed four models for a system’s reaction to outside-world information: 1) “Assimilation” (absorption of ideas), 2) “re-coding and integration” (creative reformulation), 3) “Segmentation” (to ignore) and 4) “Horizontal competition” (rejection).42 His point is that theology may legitimately use every one of these models in its relationship to culture. All the examples given in the previous section represent the model of “re-coding and integration”, and from my perspective, they display a theological, autopoietic use of cultural insights, a productive structural coupling between theology and the surrounding culture. Culture is handled as a 39 40 41 42

Luhmann, Gesellschaft, 113. Karle, Kirchenreformen, 10. Tække, Vilkår, 80. Gregersen, Kulturteologi, 56.

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resource, and this is recognized and explicitly phrased to varied degrees in the texts, but clearly, the integration of new ideas, that is, the transformation of tradition’s gendered anthropology, happens only through theological thought and filtration. The positive view of the new cultural anthropology and the significance given to it in theology is dependent on a meaningful link to basic Christian guidelines. The arguments for a transformation of theological anthropology are found within theology itself. Seen from a systems theory perspective, the theological changes of anthropology in relation to culture must be described as self-change. This also comes to the fore in the theological examples. To Astrid Stampe Feddersen, the cultural concept of gender equality is clearly understood and framed through theology: To her, equality and the human rights of every individual draws on the Christian thinking about imago Dei. Human beings, men and women, are equal and have the same value, because they are all created in the image of God. Therefore, the church should oblige and integrate gender equality in its practice. Gender equality is (also) a Christian concept. C.J. Brandt also accepts the new gender equality, as he argues in favor of a new marriage ritual that expresses equality and the equal value of husband and wife, but at the same time, he emphasizes that the reason behind his suggestion is not just some modern gender theory – the reason is in the Bible itself. From C.J. Brandt’s perspective, the new ideas express in fact what the Bible says (and has always said). But Brandt is also very clear when he writes about the relationship between a text-based Christian anthropology and the surrounding world of the church: He says that today we need other texts in the marriage ritual – not because Luther’s choice was bad, but because it refers to another time, with other questions. When the situation change, it may become necessary for the church to interpret biblical texts anew, or to emphasize other biblical texts than those chosen by tradition, because other biblical texts may better meet the thoughts and realities of a new time. The same idea is stressed by Axel Kemp. Today, the texts concerning the subjection of women should be discarded, in order to make room for texts that make it absolutely clear that Jesus treated men and women as equals. The idea of gender equality is not strange to Christianity – on the contrary, it was already present, although it was set aside for many years. These texts show how new circumstances, new information from other systems, may make theology aware of important things that have been overlooked, and that lead to autopoietic innovation. In Halfdan Høgsbro’s text, this point is taken even further, when he indicates that new circumstances may make theological change necessary for the church: Culture has brought the dignity and the many social possibilities of women to the fore, and the naturalness of the traditional view on women is no longer natural. This is also the case in the church, therefore it is no longer possible or wise to act as though Christian anthropology may only be defined in one way, based on the Bible, and new cultural ideas about women are

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an opportunity for the transformation of previous theological anthropology, as much as they are a challenge. Culture may be seen as a resource for theological innovation. To Johanne Andersen, the problem of the church is precisely that a discrepancy has occurred between the form and the content of the church. Because of the cultural development around the church, the church now appears to be out of step with its own preaching, with its own understanding of the gospel and the human being. In Johanne Andersen’s view, the new gendered anthropology of society makes a more evangelical Christian anthropology possible, and if the church chooses to maintain the order according to which only men may be ordained pastors, the gospel will sound hollow. A systems theory reading of these examples makes it clear that theological thought and reflection are the most important elements for change related to culture, but also that cultural ideas about the human being are significant as a resource and a motivation for theological reflection and transformation. Information from without may help the theological system to detect ideas within the system that have been overlooked or overruled by dominating theologies in previous times. Irritation from culture may be equivalent to basic Christian values, and may be integrated into theology through a reuse of internal elements and a hermeneutic rearrangement of texts and interpretations. From this perspective, cultural change should not be seen solely as a threat to theological anthropology, and theological changes of the understanding of anthropology in the interrelatedness with culture should be seen as theological self-change and not as changes determined by culture. Thus, culture-related transformations of Christian anthropology do not necessarily make Christianity and the church less Christian, or more secular or worldly. Through structural coupling to the surrounding world, theological anthropology may be changed from within.

4.

Take It or Leave It? The Need for a Focus on the Transformation of Theological Anthropology

The conclusion drawn in theological texts written by conservative theological opponents to new perceptions of the human being and to the theological change of gendered anthropology is that Christianity and modern understandings of gender have nothing in common. On the contrary, they are natural enemies. Therefore, any integration of such new ideas means an undermining of true Christianity. Either you are a Christian, and then you subject to traditional Christian gender moral, or you embrace modern gender ideas and thereby abandon Christianity. Interestingly, a similar understanding also seems to be represented in scholarly work on Christianity and gender liberation movements.

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In her book, Emancipation och religion, the Swedish historian Inger Hammar examines the relationship between the church and the Swedish feminist movement from 1860 to 1900. She states that a common thesis is that the church and the women’s rights movements were completely antagonistic in the 19th century, and that Christianity provided absolutely no breeding ground for women’s rights.43 One of the places where this widespread thesis is found is in Linda Woodhead’s book, Christianity: A very short introduction, of 2004. In the chapter on gender and Christianity, she presents Christianity and women’s rights movements as diametrically opposed: “Although some early campaigners for female emancipation belonged to the churches, and though some church-related movements helped nurture women’s entrance onto the public stage, the campaigners who embraced the feminist cause most wholeheartedly nearly always made a break from Church and Biblical Christianity…”.44 This is also the case in her description of “the situation today”: “Of the many threats that Christianity has to face in modern times, gender equality is one of the most serious…”.45 “The shift towards gender equality in modern Western societies poses a serious threat to traditional Christian imagery, teaching and organization”.46 From a Danish perspective, this is certainly not the whole truth. In Denmark, gender equality was not seen as only a threat, as I have demonstrated with a few examples from some of the many Danish theological texts concerning this issue. Rather, gender equality was seen by many as something good for the church, and as something completely in line with Christianity and Christian anthropology. Due to this understanding, Christian men and women worked for a transformation of what had become the traditional theological view on gender, and for an integration of gender equality in church practice. And they succeeded in transforming Christian anthropology from within. From 1912 on, the marriage ritual no longer referred to women’s subjection, instead, the ritual quoted Paul’s invitation to carry each other’s burdens (Gal 6:2), and in 1948 the first women were ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark. Other historical processes, too – such as the theological discussion about women’s right to vote (adopted in 1915), and the much later discussion of same sex marriages (adopted in 2012) – show how agents have found support in their Christian understanding of the gospel and the human being in their struggle for a transformation of current gendered practices in church and society. Based on Danish material, I suggest that the thesis proclaiming a natural conflict between Christianity and women’s rights

43 44 45 46

Hammar, Emancipation, 34–35. Woodhead, Christianity, 141. Woodhead, Christianity, 141. Woodhead, Christianity, 145.

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must be challenged and complemented by a focus on the theological, culturerelated transformation of Christian anthropology from within.

Bibliography Althaus, P., Die Theologie Martin Luthers, Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn 1962. Bisgaard, Debatten om de kvindelige præster, in: E.M.W. Pedersen (ed.), Se min kjole: De første kvindelige præsters historie, Samleren (1998) 144–188. Black, C. et al. (eds.), Kvindelige Akademikere 1875–1925, Gyldendal 1925. Brandt, C.J., Vort Brudevielses-Ritual, Dansk Kirketidende 46 (1878) 729–742. Busk-Jensen, L., Romantikkens forfatterinder, vol. 1–3, Gyldendal 2009. Butler, J., Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge 1999 (1990). Bårris, A.M., Hovedskellinjen i Menneskeverdenen er Skellinjen mellem Mand og Kvinde, Menighedsrådenes Blad 2 and 3 (1947), 15; 22–23. Christensen, H.D., Indre Mission og de kvindelige Præster, Menighedsbladet 46 (1946), 409–410. Esche. T., Kvindelige Præster, Lohse 1919. Feddersen, A.S., Vielsesritualet, Dansk Kirketidende 37 (1905) 585–591. Giese, S., Moderskab. En rejse gennem moderskabets kulturhistorie, Gyldendals Bogklubber 2004. Gregersen, N.H., Henimod en postliberal kulturteologi, Svensk Teologisk Kvartalsskrift 2 (1993), 49–57. Hammar, I., Emancipation och Religion: den svenska kvinnorörelsens pionjärer i debatt om kvinnans kallelse ca 1860–1900, Carlssons 1999. Holm, J., Historisk indledning om brudevielsesritualet, in Dåb og brudevielse: Betænkning afgivet af Kirkeministeriets liturgiske kommission, Betænkning nr. 973, 1983, 62–88. Howitz, F., Bidrag til en Sundhedslære for Kvinder 1892. Kallestrup, L.N., Knowing Satan from God: Demonic Possession, Witchcraft, and the Lutheran Orthodox Church in Early Modern Denmark, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 6 (2011), 163–182. –, De besmittede og de skyldige, Religionsvidenskabeligt tidsskrift 59 (2012), 55–72. Karle, I., Kirchenreformen und ihre Paradoxien, in: Karle I. (ed), Kirchenreform. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2009, 7–23. Kemp, A., Dansk Kvindesamfund og Ritualet, Dansk Kirketidende 36 (1905) 569–572. Kofoed, N., Besovede kvindfolk og ukærlige barnefædre: Køn, ret og sædelighed i 1700tallets Danmark, Museum Tusculanum 2008 (2003). –, Utroskab, ægteskab og forsørgelse i 1700-tallets Danmark, 1066– Tidsskrift for Historie 2 (2005) 3–13. –, Løsagtige fruentimmere og kontrollen af dem – Prostitutionslovgivningens udvikling i 1700–tallets Danmark, Insitut for Kultur og Samfund, Historie, Aarhus Universitet 2014.

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Kvinden og kirkens embede: En meningsudveksling mellem Johs. I Hansen, Dag Monrad Møller, Verner Schroll, Regin Prenter og Halfdan Høgsbro, Nyt nordisk forlag – Arnold Busck 1959. Kühle, A., Hvorfor nej til kvindelige præster? Lohse 1956. Lemche, G., Dansk Kvindesamfunds historie gennem 40 år, Gyldendal 1939. Luhmann, N., Soziale Systeme. Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie, Suhrkamp 1988 (1984). –, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Suhrkamp 1998 (1997). Lützen, K., Hvad hjertet begærer: Kvinders kærlighed til kvinder 1825–1985, Tiderne skifter 1986. –, Byen tæmmes: Kernefamilie, sociale reformer og velgørenhed i 1800-tallets København, Hans Reitzel 1998. Melby, K. et al. Inte ett ord om kärlek. Äktenskap och politik i Norden ca 1850–1930, Makadam Förlag 2006. Prenter, R., Skabelse og genløsning: Dogmatik, Gads Forlag 1967 (1951–1953). Præstholm, B.H., Kønfrontation. Køn, kultur og forandring i nyere dansk teologi, Ph.D. dissertation, Aarhus University, Arts 2014. –, Vi elsker det fælles: Om den svage feminisme i nutidig dansk teologi, KFPT 2015 51–60. Roper, L., The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg, Clarendon Press 1989. Rosenbeck, B., Kroppens Politik: Om køn, kultur og videnskab, Museum Tusculanum 1992. Thunberg, L., Äkta kristendom? Från fornkyrkan till vår tid, Artos 2005. Tække, J., Samfundets vilkår: Habermas og Luhmann, Unge Pædagoger 2009. Wingren, G., Från ordningsteologi till revolutionsteologi: Svensk Teologisk Kvartalsskrift 45/1 (1969) 37–47. –, Växling och kontinuitet, Gleerup 1972. Woodhead, L., Christianity: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press 2004.

Ulrik Becker Nissen

What is a Human Body? Moving Towards a Responsive Body

1.

Introduction

If we ask a random human being, we meet on the street what a body is, I am sure we would be met with considerable surprise. It would be regarded as a rather strange question in the midst of one’s everyday life. What an odd thing to be asking someone on their way to the post office. I am also quite certain that the answer would seem rather straightforward. Everybody knows what a body is, seems to be the presumption. Look around you, all these people surrounding you have bodies; how can anyone seriously raise such a strange question? In many ways, such a reaction would be very understandable. It is an unsuitable question for the everyday hustle and bustle of most people’s lives. However, it is not a question that is straightforward to answer; on the contrary, it is a question that is quite difficult to answer, and one which requires close examination and thoughtful analysis. When we approach the question in order to understand what a human body is, we have to differentiate it from other kinds of bodies and focus our question on this particular kind of body; we have to differentiate it from more abstract concepts such as political or mystical bodies, just as we have to distinguish it from a purely biological or animal body. The animal body takes us a long way in the understanding of what a human body is; however, as we will see in this essay, there are also significant characteristics of the human body that make it different from the animal body. Even when we set aside these other understandings of the body, however, we still have to differentiate between, on the one hand, the body related to our conception of it, as when we approach the body as interpreted, encountered, or socially construed, and, on the other hand, the body as something that “is” there in the sense that the body is considered a given reality before our conception of it. This essay offers an overview of different understandings of what a body is. As such, it can be read as an overview of what we mean, when we speak of a “human body”. However, the essay also goes a step further; in the last section, a responsive understanding of the human body is outlined. This is

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understood as responsiveness in three ways: viz an embodied self that responds to natural life, other human beings and, ultimately, to God.

2.

What is a Human Body?

When we turn to the question of what a human body is, we are immediately paused by semantics attempting to come to terms with some of the intricacies of the enigmatic body. The language and terminology used to characterize the body reveal some of the epistemological difficulties surrounding the body. When there is a distinction between Körper and Leib in German, for example, it is an attempt to differentiate between a corporeal concept of the body (the undertone of Körper) and a more abstract and broad concept of the body, associated with the understanding of a living being (as implied in Leib). We find a similar pair of words in Danish with krop and legeme. Even if there is some fluidity between the two words in Danish (the two words cannot be distinguished quite as sharply as the German Körper and Leib), legeme is often used in (i) the geometrical and objective sense and (ii) a more spiritual meaning (particularly with regard to its use in Holy Communion). Krop, however, is used with more materialist and corporeal connotations, sometimes with a pejorative meaning. As such, the Danish krop comes close to the German Körper – and the French corps. In French, there is a distinction between chair and corps; the latter is differentiated between the material, corporeal body (le corps objet) and the lived and experienced body (le corps sujet). Chair, on the other hand, is only related to the biological tissue: the flesh of the human body. In English, some of the same “dualism” is implied with the concepts of embodiment and corporeality. Whereas the latter refers to a more concrete and physical understanding of the human body, the former implies a more abstract concept of the human being as a unity of a self and a body (sometimes with a dualist implication of a self in a body). This very brief overview of some of the central concepts in these European languages pertaining to the body demonstrates an attempt within these languages to come to terms with a tension between (i) an objective-materialistphysicalist and (ii) a subjective-idealist-experiential concept of the body. This is an enduring tension in the concept of the body and lies behind many of the controversies over the body in bioethical debates. The challenge is how to maintain both sides at the same time. If either one is abandoned, we end up with a reductionist concept of the human body. We have to insist on the unity between the biological and biographical reality of the human body. However, we also need to assert the spiritual reality of the human body. As human bodies, we are more than our biology or our experiences of our embodiment: we are also bodies in relation to God. The reality of our bodily lives is situated in a relation to God; any

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attempt to understand our bodily lives separate from this relation ignores its most fundamental condition of being. This is a point which is also made by the French phenomenologist, Michel Henry, when he argues that it is not the experienced body that is the primary condition for the body; rather, the condition of the fleshly body lies before the reality of the visible body, in life itself.1 The understanding of the human body as inseparable from the relation to God also plays a central role in the Bible. From the origins of mankind and to the eschatological consummation, the human being as a bodily being stands in relation to God.

3.

The Body in the Bible

When we turn to the Bible to shed light on our understanding of the body with regard to bioethics, we are well advised to take into consideration what we could call the silence, strangeness, diversity, and abuse of Scripture.2 It is true that the Bible is silent on many of the issues that we wrestle with in bioethics; it is difficult to reconcile it with the strangeness of a secular and technocratic society; it does not speak with one voice pertaining to moral dilemmas arising in a contemporary context; further, there is a risk of applying it as an immediate solution to contentious issues without reading it thoughtfully. However, these problems should not cause us to ignore the importance and significance of the Bible for theology and theological bioethics. The Bible is the primary text for theology: the text all other texts are compared with. If we forget the importance of the Bible for theology, we end up with a shallow and uninteresting theology. Therefore, I also concur with Verhey, when he formulates the significance of the Bible as follows: Without the practice of reading Scripture, the church suffers amnesia; she forgets who she is and what she is called to be and to do. There is no Christian life that is not shaped somehow by Scripture. There is no moral discernment that is not tied somehow to Scripture. There is no Christian ethics – and no Christian bioethics – that is not formed and informed somehow by Scripture.3

One of the immediate challenges we meet, however, when we seek to ponder the understanding of the body in the Bible, is that we do not find any theoretical account of the body, soul, person or the relation between either of these.4 Nancey Murphy makes a similar observation, when she – in her Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? – writes that even if she would like to see that the Bible spoke 1 2 3 4

Henry, Incarnation. Verhey, Reading the Bible. Ibid., 41. Ibid., 81.

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more clearly on the body, she admits that this is not the case: “… the Bible has no clear teaching here. This has made it possible for Christians in different eras to recognize a variety of views in the texts, and, perhaps more importantly, to have read a variety of views into the texts”.5 One of the reasons for the confusion with the Biblical understanding of these issues seems to be a matter of translation. When the Hebrew terms basar (‫)בשר‬ and nephesh (‫ )נפש‬were translated into Greek in the Septuagint around 250 BCE, they were rendered into words with a more dualist connotation than they had originally. The Hebrew nephesh originally meant a “living being” or “the whole living person”.6 It did not refer to an immortal soul more or less independent of the body. When the psalmist speaks of the nephesh thirsting for God, he is concerned with the wholeness of his being longing for God (Ps 63: 1; 84:1. See also Ps 16:10 and 25:20). When this was translated into psyche in the Septuagint and later into “soul” in e. g. the King James translation of the Bible, the dualist misunderstanding was obvious. For the Hebrews, the understanding of the human being was more that of a psychosomatic unity: “Hebrew vocabulary itself, it is fair to say, points away from anthropological dualism and toward an understanding of the human person as a psychosomatic unity”.7 When basar is translated into Greek, it is usually done with either soma (σωμα) or sarx (σαρξ), with the former meaning “body” and the latter “flesh”. Again, this tended toward a dualist reading under the inspiration and influence of Greek philosophy with the body (soma) as a certain form of particular matter (sarx). Paul Ramsey, among others, points to the importance of the Biblical understanding of the whole human being as flesh: “Biblical authors not only speak of love to God and neighbour. They also hold a very realistic view of the life of man who is altogether flesh (sarx) […] No one who has been consciously formed by Biblical perspectives is likely to be beguiled by notions of the person whose origin actually is a Cartesian dualism of mind and body”.8 The Hebrew understanding of basar refers to the whole of human existence; it is not just the corporeal or material reality of being human; rather, it is the wholeness of the human being. The human being is his or her basar.9 Therefore, in general, the Hebrew vocabulary 5 Murphy, Bodies and Souls, 154. See also pp. 6–10 for an account of how diverse readings and interpretations shifted during the twentieth century. 6 More broadly, the term nephesh can be used in several different ways in OT. Seebass gives an account of how it may be used for both the throat, desire, vital self, individuated life, living creature, and even the nephesh of God. In an excursus devoted to the translation of nephesh with soul, he argues that to use this as a general translation does not do justice to the texts. Rather, one should see it as referring to “the whole person”, see H. Seebass, Nephesh. 7 Verhey, Reading the Bible, 82. 8 Ramsey, The Patient as Person, 187. 9 Bratsiotis agrees predominantly with this interpretation, see Bratsiotis, Basar. He emphasizes that this term is “… the most comprehensive, most important, and most frequently used

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points away from an anthropological dualism, affirming instead the human being as a psychosomatic unity. When we turn to the New Testament (NT), things become a little more complicated. The vocabulary in itself does not seem to point to a clear use or understanding of the body. With regard to soma, for instance, it can be used with a variety of meanings implying both the human body, the body of Jesus, and the body of Christ (either as the bread of the Eucharist or the social body of the church).10 Also, various passages seem to indicate a dualism foreign to the Old Testament (OT) – e. g. Matt 10:28; Luke 16:19–31; and 2 Cor 5:1–10. It is not possible to enter here into the long and complicated debate on the interpretation of these passages; instead, reference is made to the summary of this debate in Murphy.11 For the present, it is sufficient to note that even if there are different uses, there is also some degree of consistency. In the present context, I follow Rudolf Bultmann’s reading of Paul’s understanding of soma, where he argues that for Paul the soma refers to the whole human being (very much in line with the understanding of the human being as basar).12 “The most comprehensive term which Paul uses to characterize man’s existence is soma, body […] (t)he only human existence that there is […] is somatic existence […] by “body” he means the whole person”.13 The meaning of sarx has a slightly more negative connotation. It is inspired by the concept of the flesh as identified with lustful desires under the influence of Epicurean hedonism.14 However, an even stronger influence is derived from the Hebrew basar and its understanding of the wholeness and totality of the human being. Therefore, when the NT uses the concept sarx, it is often used to describe

10 11

12 13 14

anthropological term for the external, fleshly aspect of man’s nature …” (325). Yet, at the same time, he points to the psychosomatic unity characteristic of the Hebrew understanding: “… basar and nephesh are to be understood as different aspects of man’s existence as a twofold entity. It is precisely this emphatic anthropological wholeness that is decisive for the twofold nature of the human being. It excludes any view of a dichotomy between basar and nephesh, “soul”, as irreconcilably opposed to each other, and reveals the mutual organic psychosomatic relationship between them” (326). In this immediately preceding passage, I gratefully acknowledge inspiration from Verhey, Reading the Bible, 81ff. Murphy gives a good overview of the debate between several leading NT scholars on this question. Several NT scholars argue for a dualist view in the NT ( John W. Cooper; William Hasker; J.P. Moreland; and Scott B. Rae). However, as she refers to other readings ( Joel Green; James Dunn), Murphy argues that New Testament authors affirm “… first, that humans are psychophysical unities; second, that Christian hope for eternal life is staked on bodily resurrection rather than an immortal soul; and, third, that humans are to be understood in terms of their relationships – relationships to the community of believers and especially to God”. See Murphy, Bodies and Souls, 154. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 192ff. Ibid., 192. Schweizer, Sarks, 105.

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the spiritual rather than the bodily reality of the human being; for example, when in Gal 5: 16–21 Paul speaks about the fleshly desires and works of the flesh, he uses the word sarx, referring to the fleshly life as being opposed to the life and fruits of the spirit. For the NT, therefore, sarx is not necessarily related to a negative assessment of the corporeal reality of human life. The central concern lies with the relation to God and fellow human beings. It is the spiritual reality and relation of the Christian that is of concern. As such, the NT draws on the emphasis of the OT on the human being as basar living in relation to God. In conclusion to these terminological reflections, therefore, we can say that the more important meaning of human embodiment in the Bible is not, finally, drawn from a terminological account, but from a broader understanding of human embodiment. Verhey calls this “a narrative” (or a story): Christians think about their selves and about the body in the light of a story. It is a story they love to hear, love to tell, and struggle to live in Christian community. It is the story of Scripture. It is a story that begins with creation, continues with covenant, climaxes in Christ – his works and words, his suffering, death, and resurrection – and promises the renewal of all things by the same power of the same God who created all things and took Jesus from the dead. In the light of that story Christians struggle both to understand their embodiment and to shape their lives and common life into something worthy of Paul’s admonition, “glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:20).15

The Christian narrative sets the human being within three determining contexts for a proper understanding of the human body: Creation, the life in Christ, and the eschatological fulfilment. Having seen some of the main contours of the body in the Bible, we will now turn to more broadly conceived theological and philosophical concepts of body in order to come closer to an understanding of what a human body is.

4.

The Animal Body

One of the immediately evident concepts of the body is the animality of the body. Since Aristotle, we have been reminded of the characteristics that human beings share with non-human animals. The human being is that particular animal with the ability to reason, or, to phrase it differently, the human being is a rational animal. The animality of the human being is also reflected in a more recent philosopher, inspired by Aristotle’s philosophy – Alasdair MacIntyre. He differentiates between seven different concepts in his essay on what the human body is.16 Among these, the first he considers is the understanding of the human body 15 Verhey, Reading the Bible, 83. 16 MacIntyre, The Tasks of Philosophy, 86–103.

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as an animal body with various powers of movement. As an animal body, the human body is capable of exercising movement of both a voluntary, intentional, and a spontaneous kind. The voluntary movement is constituted as an action that we perform for a particular reason; in contrast, the spontaneous movements (such as blinking the eye or reflexive responses to stimuli) are not the result of underlying reasoning or intention. Further, as an animal body, the human body is vulnerable to injury or diseases.17 The animality of the human being is also reflected in MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals, even if the aim here is also to argue how human beings live and are formed in social relations of dependence.18 He makes the point that the term “animal” from early sixteenth-century English has been used for both a class of beings including both human and non-human animals, and also only for nonhuman animals.19 This term signals the linguistic awareness of the human animality and the likeness between humans and animals. This similarity is particularly due to the vulnerability and dependence that humans and animals share. As bodily beings, we are dependent upon others for our survival, and we are vulnerable to affliction, pain, and injuries. These sides of the human condition are an expression of our bodily lives and the conditions that we share with all animals – whether they are nonhuman or human:20 “… our bodies are animal bodies with the identity and continuities of animal bodies, and … in this present life it is true of us that we do not merely have, but are our bodies”.21 If we approach the animality of our bodies from a broader perspective, it is expedient to differentiate between what we could call a biological, organismic, and organic understanding. The biological understanding is found in the natural sciences and medicine, where the body is often perceived as that which can be objectified, studied, and measured. It is the understanding of the body which has roots in the rise of modern science going back to the early seventeenth century with René Descartes and Francis Bacon as significant fathers. The body became understood as that which is distanced from the true “rational” self and the aim of science and medicine was to understand and control the corporeal human body in order to further medical treatments and prevent disease. Even if this, in many ways, is a laudable goal, and our current cures and possibilities in science and medicine are inconceivable taken apart from this history, it had the drawback that the body became objectified and thereby distanced from what was considered the human being’s true self (see later in this essay).

17 18 19 20 21

Ibid. MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals. Ibid., 11. Ibid., 6f. Ibid., 6.

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The biological understanding of the human body may also be understood in a more holistic sense, where the human body is not understood in an objectified sense, but rather as a living organism. Here, human corporeality is understood as an organismic whole, and the question of how the human body thrives and flourishes becomes central. The concern does not lie so much with the different parts of the human body as separate from the body as a whole, but rather with the question of how cells, metabolism, the various organs, and other parts of the body are related to each other as an organism. A central concern here becomes how the various parts of the body serve the purpose of the flourishing and wellbeing of the healthy body and human life. The organismic understanding of the human body can be expanded to a consideration of the human being as sharing life conditions with other biological life forms. In this sense, the human being is not an isolated biological being, but dependent upon fundamental natural goods and life conditions with non-human nature: including life conditions arising from inanimate nature, such as air quality, clean and accessible water etc. From this perspective, the bodily reality of human life serves as the foundation of an organic (or ecological) kinship with other biological life forms. From an ecological perspective, therefore, it can be argued that there is a wholeness of this mutual interrelation and dependence that substantiates an organic concept of the relation between the human being and other life forms. This understanding is particularly found in various forms of ecological thought and environmental ethics, where it is often argued that it is important to soften our anthropocentrism or even to move toward a more radical biocentrism. Finally, the animality of our bodies is also affirmed in Christian thought. A relatively recent anthology has shown how the relation between humans and other animals plays a central role in Christian theology,22 even if this relation has not had quite the attention it rightly deserves. One of the essays in this work engages with the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas.23 Berkman shows that, despite the tendency to read Aquinas as having a lesser interest in non-human animals, the human being’s relation with and distinction from non-human animals plays a central role. He particularly points to sensation and desire as two traits that humans share with non-human animals. Aquinas understands all living creatures as beings with souls, plants included, derived from the Aristotelian notion of anima. Human beings and non-human animals share the sensibility, whereas only the human beings seem to have rational souls. Even if Aquinas is quite emphatic on the exclusion of non-human animals from having rationality, Berkman attempts to approach the Thomistic sources in ways that 22 Deane-Drummond/Clough, Creaturely Theology. 23 Berkman, Towards a Thomistic Theology.

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lead to a more affirmative concept of animal rationality. With regard to the animality of the human being, Aquinas links this to natural law, arguing that the human being is naturally inclined toward that which is good, viz. “… an inclination to good in accordance with the nature which he has in common with all substances [i. e. preservation of its own being]”. More specifically, the human being has an inclination in accordance with natural law that is shared by all animals. “… [T]here is in man an inclination to things that pertain to him more specifically, according to that nature which he has in common with other animals: and in virtue of this inclination, those things are said to belong to natural law, which nature has taught to all animals …”.24 For Aquinas, natural law serves as a foundation for a bodily life in accord with nature, which determines the flourishing of bodily life. Life in accord with nature is seen as being in accord with the moral law given with creation. The body responds to the moral law given to humankind.

5.

The Constructed Body

When MacIntyre argues for the animality of the human body, this is not in contrast to his understanding of the social embeddedness of the human being; rather, he argues that the human being learns the appropriate virtues of being a human within the social praxis of human relations and communities. It is here that human embodiment takes on a social dimension.25 As the unity of agency requires that the “I” and the “body” are united, the exercise of the powers of the body require an engagement with others. Here, MacIntyre makes a significant distinction. The “I” refers to the responsible and responsive agent, i. e. the agent and patient who acts, suffers, and responds. The “body” is not answerable as it presents itself to others, even if the body is still who I am. Therefore, MacIntyre argues, we need two modes of self-reference: “It is because we are specifically human bodies, that is, embodied minds, that we need two modes of self-reference and that we do need both modes is itself a salient fact about the kind of body that we are”.26 However, this self-reflexive understanding only holds meaning if the other “you” also interprets these expressions in somewhat the same sense, and if you at the same time present yourself “… as responsible and responsive in presenting your body to me”.27 In this shared understanding, there is an exchange between the I and the you, where they are “both interpreters and interpretable”.28 24 25 26 27 28

Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a, 2ae, 94, 2. MacIntyre, The Tasks of Philosophy, 100f. Ibid., 100. Idem. Idem.

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It is in the social relations that we are both interpreters of the body of the other, and we are presenting ourselves, as the bodies we are. In other words, the body is given meaning in this social interrelation. The social context of the body lies behind some of the more recent concepts of the body, where it is claimed that it is socially and culturally contingent as to what the body is. These approaches to the body will often argue that there is no foundation of human nature or substantial concept of the human nature. Rather, the general contention is that the body is given meaning within social and cultural settings and, as a consequence, we cannot speak of the body in any meaningful way separate from these contexts. This understanding of the body has been very influential in discourses concerned with race, gender, and politics. Also, in the debates inspired by postmodern (and postliberal) theology and philosophy, this approach to the body has been significant.29 Whereas the understanding of the animality of the body presupposes that the body somehow is “given” with the biological reality of human life, the social understanding of the body emphasizes the body’s social contingency and formation. One of the inspirational sources behind this approach to the body is the critique of modernity found in Michel Foucault’s work, not least his The Birth of the Clinic.30 The aim in Foucault is to show how the contemporary clinic arises epistemologically, as he argues this is dependent on the historical formation over the last four centuries. The central concern is to determine how the clinical gaze develops and changes along with the alternation in the understanding of the human body. He specifically focuses on three phases in medical history: classificatory medicine,31 clinical medicine,32 and medicine in the light of pathological anatomy.33 His approach as a whole can be read as a substantiation of the social and historical contingency of the perception of the body, which is why he has been inspirational for more discursive and constructivist approaches to the body. This is seen, for example, when he ponders “Signs and Cases”.34 As he reflects on the conditions of clinical medicine in late eighteenth-century France, he argues that “… the sovereignty of the gaze gradually establishes itself – the eye that 29 See e. g. Holloway, Private Bodies, where it is argued that bioethics is to be understood in a cultural context. She claims that the concept of race and gender is culturally contingent and the approach to many ethical dilemmas is shaped by these underlying social and historical narratives. Even if I widely concur with the critical approach underlying Holloway’s approach, I will still maintain that we have to be careful not to overlook what we share as human beings. In the aim to point to struggling and conflicting ideologies, we sometimes risk overemphasizing the difference between human beings. 30 Foucault, Birth of the Clinic. 31 Ibid., 3ff. 32 Ibid., 64ff. 33 Ibid., 124ff. 34 Ibid., 88ff.

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knows and decides, the eye that governs”.35 Medicine is gradually becoming free from the classification of the species of diseases, and instead it is the visibility of symptoms and the reading of these that is becoming more and more central. The disease presents itself through its symptoms, whereby the signified (the disease) expresses itself in the signifier (the symptom).36 The disease is no longer thought of as having an essence. Instead, it is the clinical gaze that sees and interprets the symptoms of the disease. This gradually leads to the understanding that the perception, the gaze, and the linguistic description of the disease gives an account of what the disease really is. In this movement, the perceived and the perception come together and hereby constitute the being of the disease: “The doctor’s discursive, reflective perception and the philosopher’s discursive reflexion on perception come together in a figure of exact superposition, since the world is for them the analogue of language”.37 When he turns to the rise of the pathological anatomy and the influence of the French anatomist, Marie François Xavier Bichat, Foucault argues that this again changes the perception of the disease and the body. With the immediacy of the “pure gaze”38 following the pathological anatomy and the opening up of corpses,39 the understanding of the body is now determined in the light of death. It is death and what death reveals about the body that casts a light on how to understand life: “Life, disease, and death now form a technical and conceptual trinity […] with Bichat, knowledge of life finds its origin in the destruction of life and in its extreme opposite; it is at death that disease and life speak their truth …”.40 Foucault’s critique of modernity and the way it has shaped contemporary medicine finds a powerful reformulation in Bishop’s recent book, The Anticipatory Corpse. Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying, where Bishop argues that medicine has become shaped by a culture of death.41 The important thing, without engaging with a deeper analysis of Foucault’s work here, has been to point to his “archaeological method”, where he as an archaeologist digs out forgotten and hidden preconditions of the contemporary perception of the body. Hereby, Foucault has been influential for the understanding that our concepts of the body are always historically, socially, or ideologically construed. Even if this understanding is dominant in some circles of post-modern and post-liberal theology and philosophy, I hesitate in taking this course all the way. I agree with a critique of modernity fundamentally shaped by 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Ibid., 89. Ibid., 91. Ibid., 96. Ibid., 107. Ibid., 124ff. Ibid., 144. Bishop, The Anticipatory Corpse.

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the values of the Enlightenment and the ways in which this has impoverished our concept of the body. I find it crucial that we strive for a critical awareness of underlying ideologies (be they economic, political, or scientific) that have a formative influence on our understanding of the bodies (and other issues). Clearly, we live in the midst of a multitude of influences that constantly have an impact on our epistemology, moral lives, and calling as Christians. However, it is maintained here that there is something “given”: a reality that we share in spite of this diversity. From a theological perspective, I contend that this fundamentally follows from a substantial understanding of creation. If we are to maintain that we are created beings, reconciled with God in the new humanity of Christ, and longing for the eschatological consummation, then we also have to maintain that we “are” living in a relation to God. There is a givenness with our relation to God as His created beings. This givenness sets limits to how fluid we can speak of the human body. We will therefore turn to another French philosopher, where we find more awareness of the given and lived body.

6.

The Lived Body

When we speak about the experienced or lived body, we emphasize that the body is the place, from where we experience the world. The body is a reality in the sense that it is the situatedness from which we encounter the world. We live as bodily beings and perceive the world through our bodies. This understanding is particularly found in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.42 Merleau-Ponty approaches his understanding of the body from a reflection on what perception is. He establishes a “third” position between empiricism and rationalism in the sense that he both acknowledges the sensing of the world and yet acknowledges how the sensation is shaped by the sensing subject. In this way, he argues for a middle way between extreme subjectivism and extreme objectivism: “The phenomenological world is not pure being, but rather the sense that shines forth at the intersection of my experiences and at the intersection of my experiences with those of others through a sort of gearing into each other”.43 For Merleau-Ponty, it is important that the world (and the body) is there before our conception of it or our account of it. It is not merely construed: “The world is there prior to every analysis that I could give of it … [t]he real is to be described, and neither constructed nor constituted”.44 At the same time, however, he also maintains that the scientific and objective approach to the world does not give a 42 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology. 43 Ibid., lxxxiv. 44 Ibid., lxxiii.

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full account of what it is. There is an ambivalence to the “real” world that is more fully accounted for from the perspective of the phenomenological thought.45 When he turns to the body, his phenomenological approach implies that he is critical of the impact that modern science has had on the body. The body was no longer understood as the unity between the objective and subjective body. In other words, the living body was ignored: “The living body thus transformed ceased to be my body, that is, the visible expression of a concrete Ego, in order to become one object among others … It was nothing more than a machine”.46 What is required, therefore, is to “… return to the lived world beneath the objective world”.47 This also means that the body is not just an object singled out for an individual’s apprehension; the body is apparent to the individual’s gaze and yet it is also more than this apprehension.48 It cannot be reduced to this gaze, and yet “… every perception is perception of something”.49 In arguing that the perception is always situated and yet a perception of something, Merleau-Ponty acknowledges that to see is always to see from somewhere.50 We do not see or perceive the body from a universal point beyond the spatial and temporal situatedness of the individual or of the perceived body. This is also why he can say that “… [t]o see is to enter a universe of beings that show themselves”.51 With regard to the body, however, the problem is that the body that perceives other bodies is also the body that shows itself. The situatedness of the body implies that the world is always experienced from the body. The body is that condition of human life from which we experience the world. Therefore, Merleau-Ponty can also argue that the body is not just in the world; rather, it inhabits the world.52 The body is not merely in the world as a more or less strange object, but it is the place and situatedness within the world from where I know the world: “… far from my body being for me merely a fragment of space, there would be for me no such thing as space if I did not have a body”.53 For Merleau-Ponty, the embodiment of the human being is, therefore, no accidental circumstance; rather, it is part of who I am: “… I am in my body, or rather I am my body …”.54 The human being cannot be separated from his or her body. This is part of who this individual is. It is as the lived and perceiving body

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Ibid., 11. Ibid., 56. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 71. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 69. Ibid., 70. Ibid., 140ff. Ibid., 104. Ibid., 151.

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inhabiting the world that we come to know what the world is and who we are as bodily beings. Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on being one’s body is also reflected in what he calls the intentionality of the body. In the movements of the body, it presumes a unity of the world and a directedness of its actions in the world.55 The intentionality of the movements of the body requires that there is a coherent reality within which the body moves. This intentionality is in itself an argument against the idea that reality or the human body is merely construed. As such, MerleauPonty‘s understanding of the body’s intentionality also differs from MacIntyre’s. For MacIntyre, the intentionality is an expression of the social interaction rather than a claim about the objectivity of the world. This intentionality of the body is found in MacIntyre, when he argues that the human body is “… a body whose movements afford expression to intentions and purposes that hereby possesses a certain directedness”.56 The movements of the body cannot be understood appropriately, if they are abstracted from the intentionality underlying the action. MacIntyre understands “action” as the intentional movement, whereas the un-intentional is rather a response. Therefore, he also argues that the corpse of the human being is no longer a human body, as it no longer has the unity of a human body. The corpse cannot have the teleology or directedness of the movements that characterize the human body. He points forward to the human body as an expressive body (interpretable by others and responsive to others). As such, the body is an expression of a mind: “The primary expressions, although not the only expressions, of mind are bodily expressions and human minds exist only as the minds of this or that particular body. The particularity of mind is initially the particularity of the mind’s body”.57 As such, it is also an interpretable body. It carries signs of meaning and is interpreted in the context of social relationships to other bodies. With his characteristic communitarian approach, MacIntyre emphasizes the social embeddedness of this interpretation as each interprets what others communicate by their expressive movements, and how these interpretations are based upon socially established conventions of interpretation.58 Accordingly, MacIntyre argues that human bodies and movements can only be fully characterized and understood within the context of social networks and interaction.59 However, even if MacIntyre contends that the human body is given meaning in this social interaction, he still would not say that the body is merely a social construct. As we have seen, the animality of the body also plays a central role for him. So, when he emphasizes the social interaction as the 55 56 57 58 59

Ibid., 139ff. MacIntyre, The Tasks of Philosophy, 86. Ibid., 89. Idem. Ibid., 95.

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context of the body’s intentionality, this is rather to be understood as the setting within which this facticity of the body is given meaning. The emphasis on the “facticity” of the body – viz. that the experience and perception of the world is inseparable from our embodiment takes us a very long way in the argument for the importance of the human body. The limitation in Merleau-Ponty’s understanding, however, is that he does not really address the question of the embodiment separate from perception. It is the perceiving, intending, and conscious body with which he is concerned. Even if he considers the majority of human beings and offers a good argument for the phenomenological significance of the human body, we are left with questions pertaining to the role and significance of the body for human beings in the early and late stages of human life. If the early human being in its foetal stages of life does not have a consciousness of the world, what does this imply for its embodiment? If older human beings with severe cognitive impairment have a reduced subjective awareness of the reality of the world, what does this imply for their embodiment? The same question could be raised with regard to human beings in other situations with reduced cognitive awareness such as comatose patients in a permanent vegetative state. There seems to be no easy way around this in MerleauPonty; here we come to one of the limitations of his position. For Merleau-Ponty, it is the perceived body and the perceiving body that is of significance. For Henry it was crucial that the body is more than what is perceived.60 For now, we will turn to the argument of the significance of the body that has its foundation in the historical nature of human life.

7.

The Historical Body

One of the concepts of the body that is often overlooked is what we could call the historical body. We find this concept of the body in Gilbert Meilaender, who also strongly emphasizes the biological side of human life, albeit often linked with his emphasis on the historical understanding of the body. In this way, he argues for a unity of the biological and biographical life, which we can also find in authors like Paul Ramsey and Oliver O’Donovan.61 In the present context, however, the focus will be on the historical body. For Meilaender, it is essential that the human being holds a personhood and has a dignity from conception and throughout life. One of his central arguments is that we live our lives in dependence. We begin our lives as human beings in dependence and we end our lives in dependence: “Our 60 Henry, Phenomenology of Life; Henry, Phénoménologie; Henry, Subjectivité. 61 Ramsey, Fabricated Man; Ramsey, Patient; O’Donovan, Person; O’Donovan, Keeping Body; O’Donovan, Begotten.

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personal histories begin in dependence – first within our mother’s womb and then as newborn. Often our life also ends in the dependence of old age and the loss of capacities we once had. Personhood is not something we “have” at some point in this history. Rather, as embodied spirits or inspirited bodies, we are persons throughout the whole of that life … Dependence is part of the story of a person’s life”.62 This holds immediate implications both for the understanding of pre-natal life and for the bioethical issues arising as the body grows old or weak. The foetal human life is of no lesser value or dignity than the life of a newborn. When Meilaender ponders the beginning of human life, he points to the biblical, philosophical, and scientific reasons for arguing that fertilization is the crucial point, where we can say that “… a new human being comes into existence”.63 This also implies for him that “personhood” is not dependent upon a set of capacities that the individual may or may not possess – whether this is in the early stages of human life or when the human being grows older. Meilaender is highly critical of the tendency to develop exclusive personhood criteria, whereby the class of persons becomes smaller than the class of human beings. Rather, to be a human being – and thereby be entitled to the protection of one’s life – one “… need only be begotten of human parents”.64 In other words, what distinguishes the human being is the biological and bodily bond; it is being in that bodily continuity between parents and children that is essential. This also implies that it is as a member of that human community that a person has dignity. That we begin and end our life with reduced capacities is just an expression of the history of our lives: “Those who never had or who have now lost certain distinctive human capacities should not be described as nonpersons; rather, they are simply the weakest and least advantaged members of the human community. Like us, such a person is someone who has a history. Each of our personal histories begins with very limited capacities and may end in the same way. Personhood is not a thing we possess only at some moments in that history; we are persons throughout it”.65 When this understanding of the body is not just the “animal” or corporeal body, it is to do with the understanding that our bodily life as human beings does not just concern our life as earthly creatures. We are not “merely” bodies. As bodily beings we are situated in space and time; however, as beings made for God, we also transcend this particular space in time. As human beings we are made for God.66 Meilaender derives this idea from the Thomistic understanding of the natural inclination to know the truth of God. To understand human nature is not just to comprehend its origins, but also to think of it in terms of its destiny. This 62 63 64 65 66

Meilaender, Bioethics. Ibid., 29 Ibid., 32. Ibid., 32. Meilaender, Terra es animata.

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truth is embedded in the purposiveness of organic life and points forward to God’s affirmation of the covenant community with Him.67 It is central to Meilaender’s argument that these deliberations follow from an affirmative view of the bodily life. Who we are is inseparable from the bodily reality of our lives. It is as bodily beings that we are situated within our families, social contexts, and are oriented toward God: “To have a life is to be terra animata, a living body whose natural history has a trajectory. It is to be someone who has a history, not a someone with certain capacities or characteristics”.68 Human life is always as a “someone who”. It is a concrete individual – before birth, after birth and beyond earthly life; “… every human life is a story and has a narrative quality – a plot to be lived out […] each narrative is the story of “someone who” – someone who, as a living body, has a history”.69

8.

The Alienated Body and the Baconian Project

The animal, lived, and historical body all presume the significance of the biological body. They have significantly different understandings of this body, but the biological reality of the human body is beyond dispute. This emphasis on the biological body is by no means self-evident. Since the rise of Western philosophical thought, there has been an influential strand of thought emphasizing the rational or reflective side of human beings as the more significant. We can trace this already in Plato’s understanding of the soul as the significant part of human nature. In his dialogue Phaedo, Plato discusses the relation between the body and the soul, arguing that the body is the mortal part of the human being, whereas the soul is the immortal. The soul is the higher, divine part of the human being, imprisoned and confined by the body.70 The Gnostics developed this dualism even further, developing a whole cosmology on the opposition between good and evil, light and dark, spirit and matter. The material and physical reality was considered evil and that from which the spirit of the human being had to be liberated. The Gnostic movement influenced several religions in the period around the New Testament and in the first centuries of early Christianity. During the second century, catholic Christianity increasingly became aware of the problematic nature of Gnosticism and eventually rejected it during the fourth century. However, some bioethicists argue that even today there is a certain Gnostic influence on some of the tendencies in contemporary thought to 67 68 69 70

Meilaender, Neither Beast nor God. Meilaender, Terra es animata, 386. Ibid., 387. Plato, Phaedo.

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downplay the significance of the body, and that a genuine Christian bioethics must go against this.71 With the rise of modern philosophy and science, the human body once again becomes seriously challenged. This is particularly the case with the influence arising from the philosophy and scientific thought derived from Francis Bacon. When Bacon argued for scientific control and mastery over nature in order to relieve suffering and prolong life, the effect of this aim, also for the natural sciences, was that the human body became reduced to an object of technological and scientific control.72 Allen Verhey describes how Bacon’s thought implies that the body became reduced to an “it”, confidence in technology shaped modern compassion, and distrust of nature became dominant.73 When Bacon formulated this vision for science, it was his aim to set forth a reform of science and medicine that would further human well-being. It was his conviction that through increased knowledge about nature and, thereby, extended power and mastery over nature, science and technology could increasingly save human beings from diseases, illness, and suffering. Even if Bacon formulated his vision within a theological frame, the effect of his approach to technology and medicine was that the approach to the body increasingly became characterized by “… practices and techniques of control over the body rather than on traditions of wisdom about the body”.74 The Baconian vision for science, technology, and medicine paved the way for a modern understanding of the faith and trust in technology. Even if it was not Bacon’s aim to liberate humankind from the relation to God, the trust in technology gradually pushed faith in God to the margins. O’Donovan formulates it very precisely: “Technology derives its social significance from the fact that by it man has discovered new freedoms from necessity. The technological transformation of the modern age has gone hand in hand with the social and political quest of Western man to free himself from the necessities imposed upon him by religion, society, and nature”.75 Apart from the immediate implication this holds for theology and faith in God, the influence of the modern concept of science was also seen in René Descartes. Descartes has particularly been criticized for his dualistic concept of the human being. His first formulation of his famous cogito ergo sum is found in his Discourse on the Method. As he ponders his methods of achieving indubitable knowledge and certainty, he eventually comes to the 71 Meilaender, Honoring the Bios. 72 See Gerald McKenny for an account of “The Baconian Project”, in McKenny, Bioethics; McKenny, Human Condition. Allen Verhey also gives a succinct account of the Baconian project’s impact on medicine, see Verhey, The Christian Art of Dying. 73 Ibid. 74 McKenny, Human Condition, 20. 75 O’Donovan, Begotten, 6.

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conclusion that anything can be doubted, except for the fact that he is doubting, or thinking. “I think, therefore I am”.76 When he later reflects on this claim in his Meditations on First Philosophy, he still maintains that the only thing he can be sure of is that he thinks. This is closely related to his theory of the sharp distinction between the extended objects (res extensa) and the thinking substance (res cogitans). These two realms belong to two separate spheres; whereas the first can be described analytically and with the approach of geometrical and mathematical sciences, the latter is understood as the thinking and doubting self: “But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms …”.77 Anything can be doubted, except that you are doubting. Hereby, you can know that you exist as a thinking substance, even if this cannot be certified for the senses. This understanding of the difference between the extended object and the thinking substance implied two fundamental challenges for Descartes: firstly, it remained a problem for him how to argue for the connection between the mind and the body; he never quite found a convincing argument for their connection, hence the critique that the mind was like a ghost in a machine for him;78 secondly, the understanding of the body remained a fundamental challenge; as he was influenced by the scientific and technological views of his days, he understood the human body mechanically; the human body was considered an object that science could control, master, and potentially manipulate: “Cartesian dualism gave medicine permission to see and to treat the body as manipulable matter, as res extensa, and it would permit nothing else!”79 Hereby, Descartes moved away from the more substantialist understanding of the human body that had been influential for centuries. The human body no longer had any natural or moral substance. Bacon and Descartes are both often considered fathers of modern science. They share two fundamental presuppositions that came to be central for faith in technology and science: (i) emphasis on the natural sciences and faith in the abilities of science and technology to save the human being from illness and diseases, and (ii) the new understanding of the human body where it was no longer considered in substantial categories, but instead as matter void of any implicit moral implications. The understanding of science moved away from the Aristotelian influence that had played a significant role during the Middle Ages; however, the influence from Aristotelian philosophy did not just disappear. This was apparent during the period around the late eighteenth century at the time of Immanuel Kant. His contemporary, Christian Wolff, still argued for a basically 76 Descartes, Discourse, 18. 77 Ibid., 66. 78 See e. g. Gilbert Ryle’s critique of Descartes and the Cartesian influence on moral philosophy, see Ryle, Concept. 79 Verhey, The Christian Art of Dying, 35.

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Aristotelian concept of science and nature. It was the influence of Kant, however, that came to shape the post-enlightenment understanding of science, which also influenced the understanding of the human being.80 While Wolff still understood the human being in terms of its substance, Kant furthered the tendency we have already seen in Bacon and Descartes. Whereas Bacon argued that nature is that which is to be mastered and controlled, and Descartes sharply distinguished the extended objects from the thinking substance, Kant was concerned with the human being’s freedom as a rational being. The question about the human body was not in itself a central issue for Kant; he was more concerned with human nature and human dignity. Especially in his moral philosophy, we find the understanding that the human being as a moral agent is not determined by the laws of physical nature, or the phenomenal world, as Kant would call it. It is not the human being’s bodily nature that determines what is morally good; rather, the human being should be considered as an autonomous and rational moral agent acting according to a moral law that is considered universally valid.81 The moral law is derived from the moral agent’s reason. It is this moral law that the human being knows by reason that determines what the moral agent is obliged to do. Kant’s philosophy had a tremendous impact on modern thought and significantly influenced the modern understanding of the rational and autonomous self. The emphasis on autonomy in contemporary bioethics cannot be understood separate from the influence from Kant. For Kant, the rationality of the moral agent also determined the human being’s dignity.82 The dignity of the moral agent was derived from being an autonomous, rational, lawgiving individual. This understanding had two significant implications: firstly, it severed the moral agent from the body in terms of the moral foundations; and, secondly, it emphasized that the morally significant part of the human being is its rational self. These influences all lie behind the tendency in contemporary thought to reduce the moral significance of the human body. They have all been influential in shaping a modern concept of the body that is considered void of moral significance and meaning; they have supported an understanding of the body as mere matter that is under the control of science and technology, a malleable concept of the human body that can be shaped and formed according to the preferences and wishes of a secular culture. In this sense, the body has become alienated and distanced from “the true self” of the human being. This understanding has had a significant impact on the bioethics debate, where the dignity 80 See my previous work on the concepts of nature and reason in natural law thought and environmental ethics, where I analyze Wolff and Kant in further detail, Nissen, Nature. 81 Kant, Grundlegung, 55. 82 Ibid., 53–64.

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of the human being in some versions of bioethics is deposited in a concept of the “person” as a rational being capable of having preferences. This holds immediate implications for the questions surrounding the dignity of human beings in their earliest and latest stages of life. When these debates ignore the bodily dimension of the human being and, at the same time, reduce the dignity of the human being to its consciousness and preferences, we end up with an understanding of the human being as being extremely vulnerable in its most helpless circumstances. These consequences of the alienated body are partly the reason why there is a return to an ethical reflection on the human body in recent years: a renewed attempt to understand the body as more than just contingent matter. Even if the body has been challenged over the centuries, there is still something about the body that makes it return as morally and spiritually significant. I contend that one fruitful approach to a renewed understanding of the human body is to conceive of it as a responsive body.

9.

The Responsive Human Body

As a further contribution to the understanding of our bodily reality, I contend that we can also speak of a responsive concept of the human body.83 This responsiveness is understood in a threefold way – viz a bodily being that responds to natural life, other human beings, and, ultimately, to God. This understanding draws on the outlined concepts of the human body, and yet the aim is to argue for an understanding that goes partly beyond the concepts we have seen here. The main idea in the argument for a responsive understanding of the human body is (i) that we are our bodies. To put it crudely, bodies matter. Our bodies are important for our understanding of ourselves and others, and for our relation to God. We cannot understand ourselves and others without our bodies. We cannot flourish and live meaningful lives without our bodies. We are our bodies. And, (ii) that we are responsive beings. The ability to respond morally and take responsibility is a constitutive trait of humankind. However, the responsivity is more than just moral, it is also biological and spiritual. Organisms respond to their surroundings and life conditions, which gives rise to the flourishing of life. The human being responds to natural life conditions, fellow human beings, and God’s calling. In this sense, I employ a broader concept of responsivity, where it is not just understood in a narrow, reflective sense; rather, it is understood as a broader 83 The understanding of the responsive body is also found in Waldenfels, Das Leibliche Selbst. Waldenfels is inspired by Merleau-Ponty in his argument for the bodily self as a responsive body. My contribution supplements Waldenfels with a more theological approach and an attempt to view the responsivity of the body in the light of the concept of responsibility.

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concept implying that human beings are created beings living in relations of responsivity.84 The responsive understanding of responsibility is derived from both the root meaning of responsibility, where it is fundamentally derived from respondeo,85 and from the claim that our lives as a whole can be understood as responses to God’s act of creation and saving grace. This understanding of the wholeness of our lives as lives of responsivity is also found in Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Barth argues that “… [i]t is the idea of responsibility which gives us the most exact definition of the human situation in face of the absolute transcendence of the divine judgment”.86 The human being does not belong to himself, but lives his life in responsibility to and accountability before God. For Barth, responsibility is, therefore, a fundamentally Christian concept as this notion so explicitly says that the wholeness of the human life is lived before God: The seriousness of the human situation consists in the fact that it is always lived in responsibility, both as a whole and in detail, and whether we understand it or not. We come from pure responsibility. We are caught up in responsibility. And we shall always be responsible. The whole of our life indeed, the filling out of the time allotted to us by our being and willing, by what we do and do not do, is one long responsibility.87

Whereas Barth’s understanding of responsibility implies quite a strong emphasis on accountability, the accentuation is different in Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer also argues that our whole lives may be considered as lives of responsivity,88 but there is a stronger emphasis on the reality of Christ as that which places one in a concrete calling before one’s neighbour. This is a calling that comprises the wholeness of one’s life in concrete life situations. The question of the place and the limit of responsibility has led us to the concept of vocation. However, this answer is valid only where vocation is understood simultaneously in all its dimensions … Vocation is responsibility, and responsibility is the whole response of the whole person to reality as a whole.89

The broader understanding of responsibility as responsivity implies that the human being lives in relations of responding to God’s grace, calling and eschatological will. However, as Bonhoeffer rightly reminds us, concrete responsibility is also a response to my immediate neighbour. It is in responding to the other that 84 I am partly inspired by H. Richard Niebuhr’s understanding of responsibility as responsivity. See Niebuhr, Self. 85 See e. g. Gerald P. McKenny’s excellent article on the concept of responsibility, McKenny, Responsibility. 86 Barth, Church Dogmatics. Hereafter CD. 87 CD 2, 2, 642. 88 DBW 6, 253–56. 89 DBWE 6, 292f.

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our responsibility arises, and yet this is inseparable from the Christological qualification of reality.90 For Bonhoeffer this is closely connected to his Christology and theological anthropology. In this response to the other, I contend that we are responding as bodies. When I argue that we are our bodies, I draw on the phenomenological thought of Merleau-Ponty and other positions also arguing for this same position. I therefore follow the line of thought that we have seen in this essay, where it is argued that we should endorse a unified concept of the human being: that the human being is a unified whole of its biographical and biological life. This is also essentially in line with the understanding of the human body that we found in the Biblical writings. However, I also go a step beyond Merleau-Ponty in the understanding of the human body. For Merleau-Ponty, it can be argued that it wasn’t really his concern to argue for the normative implications of the perception of the human being.91 He was primarily interested in how to understand the phenomenon of the perception of the human being as a bodily being. However, I contend that the reality of our bodies as responsive bodies also holds normative and ethical implications. In the argument for the normative significance of our bodies, our animal bodies play an important role in the good life and in our relation to God and fellow human beings. We should cherish the bodily reality of our lives and approach our bodies with respect and care, just as we should take care to approach others with love and care – as bodily beings. This also implies that there are normative implications of our being bodies. It is a reality of our lives that we are bodily beings and this reality gives rise to normative implications. This side of my argument draws on the natural law tradition and its implied claim that is and ought cannot be separated. I maintain that there is a given reality that holds normative implications. This does not mean that I am not sympathetic to the formative and discursive understanding of our moral values that we find in many recent theories of ethics – not least in various versions of post-modern virtue ethics. I acknowledge the formative influence of the moral traditions and communities that we are part of. Indeed, I find this theologically significant. However, I also contend that we are taking this approach too far, if it implies that we give up on the things that we have in common as human beings. We are partly shaped and 90 I develop this doublesidedness further in my article on responsibility and responsiveness in Bonhoeffer’s concept of responsibility: Nissen, Responding. These two sides of Bonhoeffer’s concept of responsibility seem to be derived from his attempt to develop a position between accommodation and radicalism. 91 This is the critique raised in Körtner, Leib. Körtner argues i.a. that the phenomenological tradition speaks affirmatively of embodiment, but at the same time it does not develop this sufficiently with respect to its ethical implications. Therefore, Körtner turns to the concept of responsibility as an alternative. I am not convinced that we should see these two approaches as opposites. The concept of responsivity plays a central role in both approaches and can be used to engage these two traditions with one another.

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formed by our moral traditions and communities, but we cannot be equated with the effect or the summation of these contexts. As Christians, we are shaped by our inclusion into the church as the community of faith, but we are more than that. We are also human beings, sharing aspirations and life conditions with other human beings. We are responsive beings sharing life conditions with other responsive beings.

Bibliography Aquinas, T., Summa Theologica, Vol. 1–5, edited by Dominicans, English Province, Christian Classics, Ave Maria Press 1981. Barth, K., Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, Vol. 2, Translated by G.W. Bromiley et al., edited by G.W. Bromiley/T.F. Torrance, T&T Clark 1957. Berkman, J., Towards a Thomistic Theology of Animality, in: C. Deane-Drummond/D. Clough (eds.), Creaturely Theology: On God, Humans and Other Animals, SCM Press 2009, 21–40. Bishop, J.P., The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying, University of Notre Dame Press 2011. Bonhoeffer, D., Ethik, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke (DBW), Vol 6, 2. Auflage, Herausgegeben von I. Tödt et al., Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus 1998. –, Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (DBWE), Vol. 6, edited by C.J. Green, Fortress Press 2005. Bratsiotis, N.P., “Basar”, in: G.J. Botterweck/H. Ringgren (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Vol. 2, William B. Eerdmans 1975, 317–332. Bultmann, R., Theology of the New Testament, Scribner 1970. Deane-Drummond, C./D. Clough (eds.), Creaturely Theology: On God, Humans and Other Animals, SCM Press 2009. Descartes, R., Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, Translated by D.A. Cress, Hackett 1998. Foucault, M., The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, Vintage Books 1994. Henry, M., Incarnation: Une Philosophie De La Chair, Seuil 2000. –, De La Phénoménologie. 1, Phénoménologie De La Vie, PUF 2003a. –, De La Subjectivité. 2, Phénoménologie De La Vie, PUF 2003b. –, Phenomenology of Life, in: C. Cunningham/P.M. Chandler (eds.), Transcendence and Phenomenology, SCM Press 2007, 241–259. Holloway, K.F.C., Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics, Duke University Press 2011. Kant, I., Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Felix Meiner 1994. Körtner, U.H.J., Leib und Leben: Bioethische Erkundungen Zur Leiblichkeit Des Menschen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2010. MacIntyre, A., Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, Duckworth 1999.

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MacIntyre, A., The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press 2006. McKenny, G.P., To Relieve the Human Condition: Bioethics, Technology, and the Body, SUNY Press 1997. – Responsibility, in: Meilaender, G.C./W. Werpehowski (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics, Oxford University Press 2005, 237–253. –, Bioethics, the Body, and the Legacy of Bacon, in: Lysaught, M.T. et al. (eds.), On Moral Medicin: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, Third ed., William B. Eerdmans 2012, 398–409. Meilaender, G., Terra es animata: On having a Life, in: Lysaught, M.T. et al. (eds.), On Moral Medicin: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, Third ed., William B. Eerdmans 2012, 379–386. –, Honoring the Bios in Lutheran Bioethics, Dialog 43 no. 2 (2004) 118–124. –, Neither Beast nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person, Encounter 2009. –, Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, 3. ed., Eerdmans 2013. Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception, trans. by D.A. Landes, Routledge 2012. Murphy, N.C., Bodies and Souls, Or Spirited Bodies? Current Issues in Theology, Cambridge University Press 2006. Niebuhr, H.R., The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy, Westminster John Knox Press 1999 (1963). Nissen, U.B., Responding to Human Reality: Responsibility and Responsiveness in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, in: B. Gregor/J. Zimmerman (eds.), Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought, Wipf & Stock Publishers 2010, 203–225. –, Nature and Reason: A Study on Natural Law and Environmental Ethics, Ph.D. diss., Faculty of Theology, Aarhus University 2001. O’Donovan, O., Again, Who is a Person?, in: Lysaught, M.T. et al. (eds.), On Moral Medicin: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, Third ed., William B. Eerdmans 2012, 367– 371. –, Keeping Body and Soul Together, in: Lysaught, M.T. et al. (eds.), On Moral Medicin: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, Third ed., William B. Eerdmans 2012,1053– 1064. –, Begotten or Made?. Repr. ed., Clarendon 1984. Plato, Phaedo, trans. with notes by D. Gallop, Clarendon Press 1975. Ramsey, P., The Patient as Person: Explorations in Medical Ethics, Second ed., Yale University Press 2002 (1970). –, Fabricated Man: The Ethics of Genetic Control, 5. printing, Yale Univ. Press 1974. Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind, University of Chicago Press 2002. Schweizer, E., “Sarks: Sarks in the Greek World”, in: G. Kittel/G.W. Bromiley (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. 7, William B. Eerdmans 1971, 99– 105. Seebass, H., “Nephesh”, in: G.J. Botterweck et al. (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Vol. 9, William B. Eerdmans 1998, 497–519. Verhey, A., Reading the Bible in the Strange World of Medicine, William B. Eerdmans 2003. –, The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus, William B. Eerdmans 2011. Waldenfels, B., Das leibliche Selbst: Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Leibes, Suhrkamp 2000.

3. Current Contextual Anthropologies: Perspectives from Church and Society

Peter Lodberg

The Neo-Liberal Human Being in the Competitive State – A Sociotheological Perspective

In his book on World Order, Henry Kissinger emphasizes the importance of the discussion in Western political philosophy on the issue of the relationship of the human being to the circumstances in which he finds himself.1 Philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jacques Rousseau, together with the American Founders, all framed their concepts in terms of a humanity “whose inherent nature and experience of reality were timeless and unchanging”.2 According to Kissinger, however, the situation has changed today because of the global media and internet revolution. The ever-growing complexity in the globalized world may change human consciousness, the character of individuals and the nature of their interactions, and “so begin to alter the human condition itself”.3 Following Henry Kissinger, the aim of the following is to analyse how social changes in society alter the human condition, leading to a new understanding of what it is to be a human being. Confronted with a new anthropology, the role of a theological understanding of anthropology becomes very important. In order to grasp the two dimensions of theological anthropology and the importance of social change, the methodology of sociotheology is used. Sociotheology was introduced by Marie Augusta Neal in 1972, and the terminology has recently been reintroduced by Mark Jürgensmeyer and Mona Kanwal Sheikh.4 In this article, sociotheology is understood as the analysis of how theological motives influence social and political action and vice versa. The intention is neither to overemphasize nor to underestimate the importance of theological motivated actions in the public sphere. In the following, it opens up for a new discussion on how anthropology and theology can interact when trying to un-

1 2 3 4

Kissinger, World Order, 348ff. Kissinger, World Order, 348. Kissinger, World Order, 348. Neal, Socio-Theology; Jürgensmeyer/Sheikh, Approach.

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derstand the development of Danish society as part of the Nordic Welfare Model over the last 75 years. However, it is important to note that, historically, issues of a theologically based anthropology related to the formation of the Nordic Welfare States after 1945 have largely been excluded from social science. Following the Enlightenment suspicion of religion and secularization theses taught at Western universities, social science has viewed religion either as an unimportant factor in building the new secular society after the havoc of World War II or as a source of conflict that should be eliminated by a secular conception of society, politics, and the rule of law. Recently, however, scholars such as Jørn Henrik Petersen, Uffe Østergaard, and Niels Kærgaard have begun to ask whether religion – with specific reference to Lutheran theology – has contributed to the formation of the Danish Welfare State.5 They differ in their analysis but have a common interest in asking whether and how Lutheran Christianity has played a significant part in people’s lives over the centuries in Denmark and helped to form important Danish institutions such as school, church, and monarchy. The underlying concern is to consider if Lutheran Christianity still has a role to play as an important resource for the structure of nation, state, and society today and in the future. While the role of Lutheran Christianity may not be very visible in discussions on how society should be organized, this does not necessarily imply that Lutheran Christianity is absent from the formation of the fabric of society. It could play a more hidden role because, over the centuries, it has become an implicit part of the vocabulary used in public discourse. This also indicates that different elements of Lutheran Christianity can play different roles according to the contexts where they are applied. In the following, it is the intention to discuss the concept of anthropology, e. g. the understanding of human being, from a theological perspective in relation to the establishment of the Danish Welfare State after World War II and to analyse the changes in anthropology in the wake of the emerging new society that is both more competitive and globalized than before 1945. The change from welfare to competition does not only imply a change from Welfare State to Competitive State but includes also a change in anthropology from the rational human being to the neo-liberal human being. This change can be illustrated in many different ways; one approach is to look at literature on the history of the welfare state, management, and life-style. The aim is to discuss the role of theological anthropology in light of the change from welfare state to competition state and from the rational human being to the neo-liberal human being.

5 See Schjørring/Bak, Velfærdsstat.

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The Sociotheological Context: Development of the Danish Welfare State

Klaus Petersen and Jørn Henrik Petersen quote in an article on Danish “Church People” and the Modern Welfare State an often repeated statement in Danish political discussion: “It can be argued that the particular Danish welfare state is an expression of Christianity, having permeated every corner of society, daily life and social life. We are Christians without saying we are Christians – and almost without going to churches”. – Editorial in the Danish newspaper BT, April 14, 20066

The sociologist Sigrun Kahl argues along the same line, when she maintains that Scandinavian social democrats can be described as a secularized Lutheran movement.7 Also the Danish historian, Uffe Østergaard, has stressed that the Danish welfare state is more a secularized Lutheranism than a democratized socialism.8 His argument goes back to his understanding of the close relationship between state/king and Lutheran church that was established in the Middle Ages and strengthened after the Lutheran Reformation in 1536. Jørn Henrik Petersen and Klaus Petersen, however, are critical towards the last ten to fifteen years of research into the relationship between religion and the development of the welfare state. They find the explanations of the importance of Lutheranism for Nordic political culture too abstract, and it tends to focus on a historical period prior to the emergence of the modern Danish welfare state. Petersen and Petersen don’t find a faith-conditioned social doctrine in Lutheran theology and culture compared to Catholicism that has an official text corpus defining social principles and moral teachings. That makes it more difficult to establish links between Lutheran theology and the welfare state. Nonetheless, they have contributed to the discussion in a very fruitful way through their impressive work by publishing six volumes of “Danish History of Welfare”.9 Petersen and Hansen understand the Welfare State as a political experiment. It has its roots in the industrialization of society in the late 19th Century and was an attempt to address a number of issues and problems that came out of the social and political revolutions in the first part of the 20th Century. The idea was to combine social security and political stability with the possibility for all citizens to realize their full potentials through equal access to education and welfare benefits as part of fulfilling their human rights. The core of the welfare state is the acceptance of the citizens to pay taxes according to their ability and the State’s 6 7 8 9

Petersen/Petersen, The Good, 904. Hansen et al., Himlen, 13. Østergaard, Lutheranismen. Petersen et al., Velfærdshistorie.

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ability to be benevolent and distribute its taxes according to people’s needs. The high degree of redistribution of income in the Welfare State presupposes a very high degree of trust in the tax system and the centralized State. The Welfare State is both an uncompromising state and a benevolent state. It demands people to pay their taxes according to the rules, and it has the power to punish people if their try to avoid paying their tax. But it is also benevolent, because it helps people where they are in need. Students get: students receive grants; parents receive grants as long as they have small children; old people receive a pension; healthcare and education are free; and, public transport, together with theatres and other cultural institutions, are subsidized by the state. You could argue that a Welfare State that is uncompromising and benevolent at the same time is a construction that builds upon the Lutheran understanding of the civil use of Law. According to this tradition, it is necessary to force people to act in a good way towards their neighbour in order to build and maintain a good society. People do not necessarily behave in the right way to other people in society, and according to Lutheran anthropology the State power has the duty and ability to show people how to behave. A strong and centralized State, which is a necessary pre-condition for the welfare state, was established in Denmark after the Reformation in 1536 and enforced during the Absolute Monarchy from 1660– 1849. In this period, a strong alliance between the Lutheran King and the Lutheran Church was formed, partly because the Danish King often lost wars and therefore needed the support of a subordinated Church. The strong centralized and absolute Lutheran Monarchy was substituted by the principle of government by the people (Folkestyre) in 1849. Only a small proportion of Danish citizens were allowed to vote in the first democratic election; however, in the course of time, the right to vote was given to more and more people. In 1915, women were allowed to vote alongside men with a small income. The strong and centralized form of state bureaucracy was continued, however, from the time of the Absolute Monarchy to the establishment of a democratic system. The Parliament (Folketinget) took the place of the King, and the state system continued without further alterations. This was an important advantage after World War I, when new ideas of public governance were introduced in the US by President Franklin D. Roosevelt with his “New Deal” reform programme from 1933. The New Deal was built on the idea of a strong state that is able to secure minimum wages for the working people, social security through insurance against unemployment, and huge public infrastructure projects in order to create growth and employment. The state was no longer a night watcher but an active player, employing the latest scientific knowledge to organize and develop the new society. Social science was invented on the basis of natural science as a tool for fixing the problems in the machinery of society. Sociology, anthropology, and

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management leadership were established as university disciplines in order to understand and guide human behaviour in the right direction to the benefit of welfare for all. In Denmark, politicians followed the American recipe. In 1933, a broad coalition of political parties in the Parliament agreed on a Danish ‘New Deal’ called Kanslergadeforliget and a reform of the social system, named K.K. Steincke’s Socialreform (Social Reform) after the minister in charge. New state regulated initiatives were introduced to secure Danish export of agricultural goods and the social security of the working and middle classes. It is often said that the Danish welfare system was introduced in 1933 because the political reforms were based on the principles of universality and justice instead of partiality and mercy. Everybody in need could receive social benefits as a basic human right, and within a short period of two years the results showed themselves successfully. However, the efficiency of the politics presupposed a strong and centralized bureaucracy. The state was working and helping people in need. The human being was able to decide on a common plan and had the tools to change society. In the years following1933, the way was paved for a positive understanding of human beings’ ability to master the development of society. This was an important insight and experience that was decisive for the architects of the modern welfare state from 1945–1973. The main welfare state architect and engineer was Jens Otto Krag, who was a central member of the inner circle of the Social democratic Party (Labour). He was the main editor of the political programme of the party from 1945, named “Denmark of the Future” (Fremtidens Danmark). As an economics graduate from University of Copenhagen, he introduced a whole new concept of how to manage a society. He wanted to bring in rational economic science to create the best conditions for private industry to grow. His idea was to have economic growth so that there was more to share among all citizens. The days of the unregulated market were over because nobody would gain from a continuous fight between workers and owners. Based on ideas from the US, Jens Otto Krag and his colleagues in the Socialdemocratic Party started to gather information about the actual financial situation in Denmark in order to find the right tools to develop more growth and more social welfare. Krag welcomed the Marshall Plan in 1948, using it to modernize the private and public sector. The overall idea and consensus among Danish politicians, workers, and industrialists was that financial growth was linked to rational planning and production that would lead to new and better products developed through the use of new technology. And the plan worked. From 1958–1973, Denmark experienced one of its strongest periods of economic growth in modern history: 5 % pr. year, making one of the smallest nations in the world one of the richest per capita.

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Peter Lodberg

Sociotheological Anthropology: The Rational and Benevolent Human Being

As an economic person, the human being was understood by the architects of the Welfare State as an active and engaged rational worker. However, there was more to be said about the Modern Person according to Jens Otto Krag. This person was not only interested in economic growth for their own benefit; they were also interested in eradicating poverty in society for the benefit of others. The understanding was that a human being is also a benevolent person who works for the benefit of their neighbour. The idea of the benevolent person and the aim to develop and educate this person became an important dimension in the pedagogy of the Danish national school (Folkeskolen). In 1960, Minister for Education K. Helveg Petersen presented “The Blue Report” that changed the pedagogical focus from “learning by rote” to the pupils’ interests, motivation and social well-being. The pupils should find it meaningful to go to school and be driven by an inner motivation to learn instead of being forced to learn by a teacher. This more positive anthropology has its theological and pedagogical background in the Danish Folk High School (Folkehøjskolen) and N. F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872), who introduced the idea of “the school for life”, by which he meant a school that places emphasis on appeal to the pupil’s interest, and on conversation being diverted from the abstract to the here and now and useful.10 A key concept in Grundtvig’s writings is “interaction”, which is necessary if the pupil should gain more insight into the meaning of life. He wanted education to contribute to the “clarification of human life”. This is a life where pupils will understand themselves as created in the image of God and “an experiment of dust”. This kind of knowledge can only come to fruition through dialogue between a teacher and their pupils. Through his “Blue Report”, K. Helveg Petersen introduced the pedagogy of Grundtvig and the Folk High School into the Danish national school, formulating a new pedagogical tradition. The aim of the national school is to educate engaged, critical, and self-dependent pupils and citizens who would take an active part in developing Danish democracy. According to K. Helveg Petersen, only free and well-educated citizens were able to develop Danish society and not be tempted to follow the ideologies of communism, socialism or fascism.

10 See Bugge, School, 274.

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The Problem of Financing the Welfare State and the Crisis of Anthropology

The optimism and even enthusiasm of the individual’s ability to follow their own positive interests to the benefit of wider society was supported by a dramatic enlargement of the public sector after 1960. New schools, kindergartens, hospitals, and homes for elderly people were established all over the country. Infrastructure was renewed and new suburbs were established. Working class people could afford to buy their own car and their own small houses in the new suburbs. Welfare for all was almost realized in the beginning of the 1970s. However, it soon became clear that there was a limit to human solidarity. There was a growing resistance from an increasing number of people to paying still higher taxes to fund a growing public bureaucracy. Politically, this growing resistance was witnessed in 1973 by the “land slide election” that changed the old and stable political system based on the four old parties: The Socialdemocratic Party, the Conservative People’s Party, Liberal Party and Radical Left and a newer party: The Socialist People’s Party. In 1973, Mogens Glistrup and his Progress Party (Fremskridtspartiet) won 28 seats out of 179 in the Parliament on the revolutionary message of no taxes and dismantling the public sector. At the same election, Erhard Jacobsen brought his new party, the Center Democratic Party, into Parliament, winning 14 seats on a ticket to cut taxes on private housing and private cars. It became clear in 1973 that public spending was out of control, and the crisis was intensified by very high inflation after the US devaluated the dollar in order to strengthen its competitive power towards Japan and Germany who were back on foot after 1945. The situation worsened in October 1973 when the oil-producing OPEC countries decided to cut their production of oil to punish the Western world, and especially the US, for supporting Israel in its war with Egypt and Syria. Within days, oil prices were increased by 300–400 %. The consequences were devastating. Prices went up, growth disappeared, and unemployment spiralled out of control. Political and financial instability had shown it was not possible to regulate the national economy though the instruments of the welfare state. The machinery was broken, and the welfare architects and engineers did not know what to do. In Denmark, the criticism against the ideology of the welfare state was formulated in different ways by Bertel Haarder11 and Jørgen S. Dich.12 They focused on the uncontrolled growth in the public sector and the necessity to find a new balance between private and public spending. From 1970 to 1980, social expenses 11 Haarder, Statskollektivisme. 12 Dich, Klasse.

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grew from 19 % to 28 % of BNP, and it became too expensive to have more than 25 % of the working force on social benefits. According to Professor Jørn Henrik Petersen, it became a growing problem that the old connection between right and duty was suspended and replaced by the principle of receiving social benefit without having to do something in return. The question was if the welfare state turned people into passive recipients instead of active citizens? 13 As shown by Mikael R. Lindholm,14 this discussion goes back to the Danish theologian Hal Koch, who already in 1946 coined the opposite terms of “the human being of society” (samfundsmennesket) and “the private human being” (privatmennesket). The “human being of society” is a person who sets aside their own interests, concentrating instead on the well-being of other people; it is a person who pays taxes with joy. The “private human being” has a different ethos: they wants to gain as much as possible when an initiative has been taken; they want to keep hold of their money, paying as little tax as possible. The welfare system was built on the principle of “the human being of society” but people behaved as “private human beings”, which the welfare system experienced too late. According to Lindholm, the welfare system was built on a naïve anthropology coloured by ideology instead of sufficient scientific evidence about human behaviour. You could also say that this knowledge was present in theology and Lutheran Christianity; its negative anthropology, however, was not activated in the Socialdemocratic discussion; this may have been due to the young socialdemocratic engineers and architects of the welfare system having a negative relationship to the Lutheran Church or because they subscribed to the positive anthropology of the Grundtvigian High School Movement.

4.

The New Sociological Context: New Public Management

The period from 1973–1983 was a time of great uncertainty in many Western countries. In Denmark, the economy became worse and unemployment grew at an alarming rate. The welfare system was protected by obtaining huge international loans that became difficult to repay. In 1982, Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen, from the Socialdemocratic Party, handed over power to Poul Schlüter, who formed a right-wing government without any election being held. Seen from the perspective of sociotheology, the introduction of New Public Management as a way of modernizing society had severe consequences for anthropology: it changed the public discourse about work and workers. 13 See note 6 14 Lindholm, Kampen, 142.

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The minister of finance in the new government, Henning Christoffersen, introduced a programme of modernization of the public sector. The idea was to govern the public sector by the same guiding principles as in the private sector in order to make the public sector as effective as possible. The new approach to the public sector was quickly known as “New Public Management”, and it has become the headline and programme for all successive governments in an attempt to make the public sector as cost effective as possible. It is still discussed whether or not New Public Management has indeed been effective in obtaining the goals it sets out to address. The critics say the result has led to more administration and less time for the actual work as a social adviser, nurse or kindergarten worker. Also, a dramatic change in the relationship between state and people has taken place. People are no longer regarded as citizens; rather, they have become customers and clients in a public domain that is run according to the principles of market economy. The opposite argument is that there is still a long way to go before we will see the necessary and positive changes in the public sector. The basic idea behind New Public Management is “market”, “individual choice”, and “competition”. In the wake of globalization of trade and economy after 1989, “competition” and “individual choice” have become the new catchwords and organizing principles in the Neo-liberal economy. This development has its own history. Ove Kaj Pedersen, Professor at Copenhagen Business School, has coined this new reality for the state in the concept of “the Competition State”.15 It is a state that helps its citizens in the public and private sector to be as competitive as possible in order to create economic growth in an increasingly competitive global market. Success in the global market begins locally, establishing school systems that educate pupils to be globally orientated and equipped with the right tools to survive in the global jungle. Not only schools but all sections of society are changed in order to be more competitive. This also involves competition among people in the same public institution, such as hospitals, universities, and administration. The idea is to introduce the market system and practice of competition in the public sector as it is already a reality in the private sector. It can be discussed if the idea of the Competition State brings anything new to the public/ private sector debate; what is important, however, is the connection Pedersen makes between the welfare state and the competitive state. According to Pedersen, the competitive state has the potential to fulfil the goals of the welfare state by producing more goods in a more effective way to be sold in a bigger market. This involves an internalized ethics that builds on the role of the state as the educator as shown by Michel Foucault.

15 Pedersen, Konkurrencestaten.

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Foucault has shown how the inner historical cohesion in the development of the modern new liberal state started with the change of the role of the State in the late 16th Century that did not so much control geographical territories, but peoples and citizens.16 In the neo-liberal society and state, the aim is to govern through invisible presence. The ideal situation is that individuals behave as the state wants by individual self-governance. State authority becomes a therapeutic effort where the aim is to change the way the individuals control themselves.17 Foucault introduces the terminology of gouvernementalité, which illustrates the interaction between the invisible hand of the State and the consciousness of the citizens. In the theory and practice of nudging, the basic principle is governmentality, whereby citizens think they behave individually without realizing that the actions have already been planned and foreseen by the authorities. Ole Jacob Madsen has shown how this internalized ethics is being promoted by psychology and its categories like “autonomy”, “self-realization”, and “identity”.18 He criticizes how psychology has adapted to the growth of neoliberalism, which basically understands the human being as a person that can be manipulated and programmed by the invisible hand of the State though the knowledge and means of psychology. Thus, just as in the welfare state system, there is an anthropology involved in the new vision of the competitive state. In the following, the aim is to analyse this emerging new understanding of anthropology under the heading: the neo-liberal human being. The idea is to show how anthropology interacts with contemporary political and economic discourse. Two examples will be used: the management of the inner feelings of employees in the Danish public sector, and the growing wellness industry. The starting point is an interesting observation by Professor Nanna Mik– Meyer from Copenhagen Business School, who has followed how neo-liberal anthropology is formed through counselling overweight employees in Danish municipalities.19

5.

The Sociotheological Result: The Neo-Liberal Human Being

According to Mik–Meyer, public management leadership is taking place under new circumstances characterized by the concept of “supervision”. The modernization of the welfare state is not only a change in the power structures from 16 17 18 19

Foucault, Forelesninger. Madsen, Vorherre. See Madsen, Vorherre. See Mik–Meyer, Ledelse, 156.

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state to market; it also involves a change from the public to the private domain. This means that the individual and their inner feelings are of interest for modern management. The ideal is to make it possible for the individual employee to gain control of their emotions and feelings and function as their own coach. Thus, an overweight employee must want to lose weight, with much effort directed in convincing the employee to change their life-style. Behind this new culture of management is a dominating discourse on “risk”. An overweight person is not a healthy person; rather, they are a person in danger of falling ill. By addressing the inner feeling of the employee, in order to correct bad behaviour, the employee is regarded as a person with a problematic identity. Nanna Mik–Meyer’s anthropological and sociological studies make it crystal clear that the modern manager of today wants the individual to take the greatest possible responsibility for their own life and situation. By taking responsibility, it is assumed that employees will find their true identity in their inner core. This is very clear from a number of interventions where a health consultant tries to challenge an overweight participant in a weight-loss retreat to locate his willpower: ““The cookie is always beckoning you … and if you want to cope with that, you’ll have to give your willpower a bit of space … where is your willpower inside you? Where? Is it in your knee? In your side or back, where is it?” The participant responds, “I’m damned if I know””.20 The neo-liberal autonomous human being is a person who is expected to master self-control and management. People must take responsibility if they belong to one of the risk-groups, while the role of the state is to provide new legislation that makes it possible for organizations to regulate the health of their employees. The competitive state/ neo-liberal state understands the citizen as an active partner who wants a healthy life and who is capable securing their own well-being. Thus, the state provides rules to be implemented privately and publicly to secure the good life. And if you violate the neo-liberal values, such as self-control, responsibility, willpower, and self-management, it is your own fault and you have to bear the consequences yourself. Through this discourse of being overweight as a potential risk for falling ill, obesity is constructed as a personal problem of identity that provides the reason for institutions to take up the issue of management of the inner life. To be healthy, which means to be thin, is not only a right but a duty. The normal person should constantly pursue freedom, happiness, and health. And it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact that overweight people do not link their weight problems to a psychological defect in their identity leads the health consultants in the survey to conclude that these people in particular have even greater psychological problems. The more you deny the identity that is suggested by the organization, the 20 See Cederström/Spicer, Wellness, 45.

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more it is stressed by the organization that the suggested identity is the correct interpretation. You are caught in a catch 22-situation.

6.

Wellness as the New Religion

Mik–Meyer’s observations are dealt with in an analysis by Carl Cederström and André Spicer of the present cult of wellness. They see her work in a much broader picture as part of a wellness syndrome that has developed into an ideology. By wellness syndrome, they try to offer a critique of a post-political situation where people are obsessively tracking their wellness, while continuously finding new ways of self-enhancement that leaves little room to live. It is a situation where the body has become the ultimate project of our life. The body is constructed in Mik–Meyer’s word as “the somatic person”.21 It means the body has become the new Archimedean point that determines where we live, how we live, whom we spend time with, how we exercise, and where we go on holiday. According to Cederström and Spicer this explains our obsession and fascination about what we eat and how we eat. Eating correctly is thought to be a way to cook up a happy and prosperous life, free from stress, risk, and despair. Pascal Bruckner points to the fact that eating has taken on a new meaning, “The dining table is no longer the altar of succulent delights, a place for sharing a meal and conversation”. Instead, it has become, “a pharmacy counter where we keep an eye on our fats and calories and conscientiously eat food reduced to a form of medication”.22 All pleasures serve the purpose to improve our wellness and have almost taken on a metaphysical dimension. This might explain why often in restaurants the grace before the meal has been replaced by a long and very detailed description from the waiting staff of the food and how it is prepared, before we are allowed to eat. Food and wellness have become an ideology of being perfect; we now turn to celebrity chefs and nutritionists instead of religious figures or politicians to find answers to the big questions in life. They will help you to find your real self; it is a symptom of what Chantal Mouffe has stated, that today the political is played out in the moral register.23 It becomes the responsibility of the individual if anything goes wrong: the role of politics disappears. Cederström and Spicer discuss the depoliticization of the public sphere and the moral privatization of politics that is central to the wellness syndrome, whereby happiness and health become the fundamental criteria for what passes as a moral life. Health problems become the 21 See Mik–Meyer, Ledelse, 160. 22 See Cederström/Spicer, Wellness, 7. 23 See Mouffe, Political, 5.

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individual’s ultimate sin.24 The consequences can be dramatic when people who smoke or are fat are excluded from hospitals or employment because it is more important to treat people or hire employees who have cared for their health so they can quickly return to the labour market or take on the new job. According to Cederström and Spicer, it is important to escape the clutches of wellness and recognize that humans are defined by potential and impotence, happiness and failures, sorrow and joy, love and hatred. They conclude their book by pointing to the mixed experience of being human, which is important to find anew if we are to avoid the consequence of isolation of the individual to which we are so susceptible in times of the wellness syndrome. The anthropology of the wellness syndrome is an anthropology that matches the anthropology of the neo-liberal and global market/competition society. In some respects, it takes on religious connotations when it links wellness to the perfect human life; however, the wellness syndrome does not only look like secular religion; its main characteristics are also found in contemporary globalized Protestant Christianity.

7.

Health and Wealth

The ideals for the perfect individual life in happiness, love, and joy as described in “The Wellness Syndrome” are found in the worldwide Christian movement known as Word of Faith. The basic theological idea is that Christ’s atonement means complete healing of the whole body, which is possible for anyone who believes. The movement talks about healing in the present tense, teaching that people should believe in a reality that already belongs to them. Alongside good health, the Word of Faith movement stresses the importance of wealth and prosperity. A central theological theme is that God wants his people to be wealthy and blesses everybody who believes in Him with prosperity, just as it is described in the Old Testament. Good health, good marriage, and good friends are ways to create a wealthy life. In a sermon, one of the most prominent preachers in the Word of Faith movement, Reverend Joel Oesteen from Lakewood Church in Houston, US, encourages his congregation to be selective and only connect to people who will help them succeed in life.25 He uses the image of chickens and eagles from the Gospel of Mark. His message is that if you want to fly like an eagle you don’t hang out with chickens but find other eagles. According to Joel Oesteen, life is too short to be together with the wrong people, i. e.

24 See Cederström/Spicer, Wellness, 29–30. 25 See Madsen, Vorherre, 8.

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people without integrity and with problems. Obviously, these people can be compared to chickens, while eagles are strong, healthy, and wealthy people. Lakewood Church is the biggest Protestant mega-church in the US, and Joel Oesteen has become one of the most popular preachers. He understands the Bible as a guide to a perfect and happy life. It is a tool for personal success; in his preaching, he doesn’t stress theological issues like sin and suffering, but ways to be a success. His theological books relate to issues of being best, being a winner, and finding ways to the best life now. This is a different approach compared to the former generation of televised preachers in the American megachurches. They had a very negative understanding of moral decay and development in society. They preached against the sins of the world: drugs, homosexuality, and abortion, trying to make their influence felt in political life. This is no longer the case. Joel Oesteen doesn’t raise political issues or encourage his congregation to be active politically. Instead, he concentrates on the individual’s feelings, wellness, and perfect life. It is a privatization and depoliticization of the individual and their relationship with the wider society.

8.

A Sociotheological Perspective: The Meal as a Theological Counternarrative

This brief description of the Word of Faith movement makes some of the important theological issues involved in the neo-liberal anthropology clear when interpreted as part of a wider global, financial, and cultural development called Neo-Liberalism as it is also expressed in the idea of the wellness syndrome. The individual is portrayed as the calculating individual, who is at the centre of all social relationships. The objectified world is a resource for the calculating individual, who “calculates his material interests with regard to his consumption and the accumulation of opportunities to increase his income”.26 Human relationships are seen through the eyes of the cost-benefit mechanism of the market; individuals understand themselves as human capital that must be invested in order to increase opportunities for consumption and income. The somatic body becomes not only a body who determines where to live and what to do; it becomes human capital in the calculated pursuit of material interests. This commodification of human relationships is part of a general phenomenon today, which can be called rational action (Max Weber) and applied to all areas of life including culture and religion. The entire social system, including the ecclesial system, is regarded as a mechanism designed for its own purpose and following its own 26 See Duchrow/Hinkelammert, Transcending, 153–154.

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inner logic. The basic dynamic is that everything is an input for an output. Not only everything, but everybody are means to my own end. The question is: what is in it for me? The end result has no value in itself; rather, it is judged according to the personal or financial growth it provides. Not only hospitals, schools, and kindergartens become systems for creating human capital; even religion, as in the case with the Word of Faith movement, is subject to functional norms. Faith in God must show its value through the financial success of the individual, and the rationality of the ecclesial system is that it provides people who can be tools for my success in life. The idea of the rational system is to be constantly able to optimize the dynamics of the entire social system, fulfilling the individual’s potential in order to optimize the dynamics of the social system and fulfil individual potential. It is a dynamic that has only its own survival and continuation as content. It has no sets of values or purpose that is not itself a product of the dynamic. This is the nihilism of modern society. An illustrative image of the nihilism of our society is Pascal Bruckner’s description of the changed meaning that eating has taken on, as mentioned above. The dining table is no longer the altar of succulent delights, a place for sharing a meal and conversation; rather, it has become a pharmacy counter where we keep an eye on fat content and calories, conscientiously eating food reduced to a form of medication. From sharing a meal and conversation to the reduction of the meal to some form of medication is an image of the nihilism of the Neo-liberal society.27 Theologically, Bruckner facilitates a new consideration about the importance of the meal. In the New Testament, it is a basic idea that how we eat qualifies our lives. When people are cured from diseases, called down from a tree, or called to follow Jesus on his way through the landscape, it always ends with a meal. The meal is an interpretation of the meaning behind the different actions, qualifying them as signs of the Kingdom of God. It points towards the Last Supper and the Heavenly Meal. The meaning of the meal and its connection with the Last Supper is very well captured in Karen Blixen’s novel Babette’s Feast, later adapted for film and directed by Gabriel Axel in 1987.28 The narrative on the meal in the New Testament, as mediated in the novel Babette’s Feast, becomes a counternarrative to the narrative in the Competition State, where the individual is left to oneself.

27 See Cederström/Spicer, Wellness, 139. 28 Blixen, Gæstebud.

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A Sociotheological Conclusion: Eating Together

Babette’s Feast tells about the story of two elderly and pious Christian sisters, Martine and Philippa, who live in a poor village on the West coast of Jutland in 19th Century Denmark. One day, Babette Hersant appears at their door and asks for refuge. She is from Paris and is invited to work as cook and housekeeper. One day, she wins 10,000 francs on the lottery and decides to spend the money on preparing the most delicious dinner for the two sisters and their small and poor Pietistic conventicle. It becomes a heavenly dinner that breaks down all their internal distrust by elevating them physically and spiritually. Old wrongs are reconciled and new love among former lovers creates a totally new environment. The human spirit is redeemed and the fellowship is felt in a very different way than before. The next day, the sisters assume that Babette will leave them and go back to Paris. However, she tells them that all the money spent on the twelve guests around the table the night before is gone. One of the sisters says with tears in her eyes, “Now you will be poor the rest of your life”. Babette’s answer is, “An artist is never poor”. There are several layers in this novel and film; however, it will suffice here to point to how the individual is restored in their individuality through the other. This happens unexpected and by surprise. The other is not meant to be a tool for my success by purpose or calculation; together, however, all those involved get a feeling and sense of what the perfection of life means. They are reconciled through Babette’s gift, learning her real identity and history. It is reminiscent of the meal in Emmaus from Luke 24:30–31: “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him”. It is a moment of creation. They saw who she was through her gift and their relationship was renewed. They recognize her as she giver of the ultimate gift, just as the disciples recognized Jesus as the giver of all gifts. Just as as Jesus at the table in Emmaus, however, Babette is not only the giver; she is the gift itself. She stays and continues to be giver. She will be present and what in the eyes of instrumental rationality looks like being poor is transformed and transcended when Babette says that an artist is never poor. This may be a reference to Paul’s words about Christ Jesus, who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, before God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name, which is above all names (Phil 2:7–9). Just like an artist, God’s own Son is never poor when he is serving and doing what he is supposed to do. In Babette’s Feast, the theological themes of gift, creation, reconciliation, fulfilment, and serving are closely interrelated. There is also a very important division of labour and sequence of events. Babette is the first mover who acts out of her own pure will. She creates the meal and changes the lives of the guests

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forever. Past is reconciled in the present and gives hope for a new common future. This is the important biblical division between God and human being, and the Trinitarian sequence: creation, reconciliation, and eschatology as a present possibility waiting to be an everlasting reality. This is a different way of understanding the identity of human being and its role in society compared to the neo-liberal human being in the wellness syndrome. It is not risk and efforts to avoid risk that is the driving force. The wellness syndrome and the risk syndrome are built upon the mechanism of instrumental rationality; the human being will never achieve the perfection they long for. The rationality of the meal is the opposite. It might be called the instrumental irrationality. You get, before you do; you are created, before you can work; you are loved, before you love; it is paid for you, before you are able to pay yourself. We should not separate creation from work, love from loving, and pay from paying. There is a growing need to retell this narrative as an alternative to the narrative of the Competition State: before it is too late.

Bibliography Berg, P.O./F. Poulfelt, Ledelseslæren i Norden: En tribut til professor Erik Johnsen, Dafolo Forlag 1998. Beutel, A., Luther’s Life, in: D.K. Mckim (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, Cambridge University Press 2003, 3–19. Blixen, K., Babettes Gæstebud, Skæbne-Anekdoter, Gyldendal 1958. Brown, P., The Body and Society, Columbia University Press 1988. Bugge, K.E., The School for Life. The Basic Ideas of Grundtvig’s Educational Thinking, in: A.M. Allchin et al. (eds.), Heritage and Prophecy: Grundtvig and the English-Speaking World, Aarhus University Press 1993, 271–282. Cederström, C./A. Spicer, The Wellness Syndrome, Polity 2015. Coakley, S., Religion and the Body, Cambridge University Press 1997. Dich, J.S., Den herskende klasse, Borgen 1974. Duchrow U./F.J. Hinkelammert, Transcending Greedy Money, Palgrave 2012. Foucault, M., Forelesninger om regjering og styringskunst, Cappelen akademisk 2002. Haarder, B. Statskollektivisme og spildproduktion, Bramsen og Hjort 1973. Hansen, N.G. et al., I himlen således også på jorden? Danske kirkefolk om velfærdsstaten og det moderne samfund, Syddansk Universitetsforlag 2010. Johnsen, E., Ledelse i det 21. århundrede: Afskedsforelæsning Fredag d. 20. november 1998, Dafolo Forlag 1998. Jürgensmeyer, M./M.K. Sheikh, A Sociotheological Approach to Understanding Violence, Oxford University Press 2013. Kissinger, H., World Order, Penguin Books 2014. Lindholm, M.R., Kampen om velfærdsstaten: Ledelse af samfundsforandringer, Gyldendal Business 2014.

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Madsen, K., Vorherre er vejen til venner, kærlighed og succes, Dagbladet Politiken May 3rd 2015 Madsen, o. J., Psykologi, samfunn og etikk, Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologiforening 46 (2009) 144–152. Mik–Meyer, N., Ledelse i intimsfæren: Sundhedsledelse og konstruktion af overvægtige som risiko, in: C. Sløk/K. Villadsen (eds.), Velfærdsledelse i den selvstyrende velfærdsstat, Hans Reitzels Forlag 2008, 156–178. Mouffe, C., On the Political, Routledge 1996. Neal, M.U., A Socio-Theology of Letting go: The Role of First World Church Facing Third World Peoples, Paulist Press 1972. Pedersen, O.K., Konkurrencestaten, Hans Reitzels Forlag 2011. Petersen, J.H. et al. (eds.), Dansk Velfærdshistorie, Vol. 1–6, Syddansk Universitetsforlag 2010–2014. Petersen, K./J.H. Petersen, The Good, the Bad or the Godless Society?: Danish “Church People” and the Modern Welfare State, Church History 82:4 (2013) 904–940. Schjørring, J.H./J.T. Bak (eds.), Velfærdsstat og kirke, Anis 2005. Østergaard, U., Lutheranismen og den universelle velfærdsstat, in: J.H. Schjørring/J.T. Bak (eds.).

Johannes Nissen

‘Something for Something’ or ‘Something for Nothing’: Theological Reflections on Diaconia, Welfare Society, and Human Dignity

1.

Introduction

The thesis of this paper is that the modern welfare society is marked by a number of changes, and that these changes have great effects on the way in which we understand human beings. There is a tendency to replace the principle of the classical welfare society – ‘something for nothing’ – with a new principle, ‘something for something’. Three terms are used in this essay: ‘diaconia’, ‘welfare society’, and ‘human dignity’. Since there are different ways of understanding these terms, I shall indicate how they are used in this contribution. The first term, diaconia, may be defined in many ways. Two ways are of special interest: on the one hand, diaconia may be comprehended as charity and philanthropy; on the other hand, it may be seen as a prophetic action of transformation.1 The first definition is linked to an understanding of the doctrine of the two Kingdoms, which divides ethics into two separate fields: individual ethics and social ethics. This doctrine has often been interpreted in ways that preclude the Church’s critical involvement in social and political issues. In contrast, a prophetic understanding highlights the justice of God who favours the excluded and the oppressed. If diaconia is defined in the traditional sense of the word, as ‘charity’, it will be seen as an act directed at helping individual persons without raising the issue of structural change. However, if the concept of diaconia is given a broader and more comprehensive meaning – as prophetic diaconia – it may be seen in the light of God’s kingdom (reversal of values, compassion and justice). Diaconia is understood as sharing through solidarity, rather than serving; diaconia means taking concrete measures to express ‘God’s preference for the poor’. Both defi1 The new Plan for Diakonia adopted by the Church of Norway in 2007 refers to four elements: ‘Diakonia is the caring service of the Church. It is the Gospel in action and is expressed through love for the neighbour, inclusive community, care for creation and fight for justice’. An overview of the various aspects of diaconia is given in my book, Diakoni, 16–40.

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nitions are relevant to this article. However, the emphasis is on the prophetic understanding of diaconia.2 The second term is welfare society. In this article the terms ‘welfare society’ and ‘welfare state’ are used interchangeably. There are many pointers to indicate that the classic welfare society is under pressure due to modern individualism and neo-liberalism. The relation between Church and society (or state) may be interpreted in three different ways: conformity, nonconformity, and critical solidarity.3 Conformity means that all values, acts, and structures of the Church are assimilated into the structures of society. Nonconformity (or critical distance) means that the Church develops values, acts, and symbols that are completely different from those of society. Critical solidarity means that the Church is resistant to what is unjust and false in society, but at the same time gives support to those initiatives that aim for a just social order. What is said about the Church may also be said about diaconia, although the relevance of nonconformity is less obvious. Diaconia can adopt three roles in relation to society: a partner, a constructive critic, or a pioneer.4 In particular, the roles of constructive critic and pioneer correspond to the prophetic role of the Church. The third term used in this essay is human dignity. As mentioned in the introduction, I am asking how development within a welfare society affects our understanding of the human being. It is my thesis that those who are usually considered to be in a weak position are becoming the losers of society.5 This point will be illustrated by three examples: unemployed people, persons with dementia, and disabled persons.

2 For further reflections on diaconia and the doctrine of the two the Kingdoms, see Nissen, Diaconia, 140–143. 3 Cf. Nissen, Conformity, 254–256. 4 Cf. Nissen, Diakoni, 150–161. 5 Also see Schmidt, Poverty. In her article, Ulla Schmidt offers an overview of the main positions on the understanding of human dignity. In particular, two positions are prominent. On the one hand, there is the biblical tradition, which emphasizes that the human being is created in the image of God and is the object of God’s loving action. This is essential to the understanding of the distinctive uniqueness and infinite worth of human beings. On the other hand, early modernity and the Enlightenment emphasize that equal dignity is grounded in the human being’s rational nature. More recently, one may find accounts that attempt to ground dignity in the relational character of human life; cf. M. Buber and E. Levinas (p. 12–14). Below, in this article, I address these issues, especially see the paragraphs in ‘The weakest members of society’ and ‘Created in the image of God’.

‘Something for Something’ or ‘Something for Nothing’

2.

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Recent Developments in the Welfare Society

In recent years, the welfare society has undergone a number of changes.Three of these should be noted. First, life has become commercialized. Modern society is marked by a strong emphasis on the predominance of money. Philip Goodchild rightly notes, ‘Whatever one cares about, one must care first and most about money. Here one encounters the divinity of Mammon: money as both a measure of prices and a means of payment, is the supreme value, the value against which all other values are measured and through which they may be obtained’.6 The commercialization of society means an emphasis on the achievements of individuals: they are usually seen as consumers. The rise of New Liberalism at the beginning of the 1980s resulted in the handing over of many social tasks from the state to the civil society. In short, the focus on the achievement of the individual has replaced the focus on social values.7 Secondly, it is often said that the individual must be available for the market – not the other way round. The background for this idea is a distinction between the ‘deserving poor’ and the ‘undeserving poor’ – a distinction that played a significant role in the past. Some people were seen to be poor through no fault of their own, while others refused to work. Today, efforts are made to motivate the unemployed to be employed. However, what is overlooked is that many of these people are socially excluded and often they cannot manage to be available for the market. Thirdly, the basic values of the welfare society – solidarity and loyalty to the state – have been increasingly replaced by a new mentality of demanding. People react to the complexity of the society by stopping to be citizens who are thinking of society as a whole. Instead, they understand themselves as consumers who think only of their own benefit. In that sense, welfare as egotism has replaced welfare as solidarity. Today it seems that we are living with the tension between the classic idea of solidarity that ‘the broad shoulders ought to carry the heavy burdens’, and a new, market-oriented approach according to which there must be a balance between what the individual contributes to the welfare state, and what the individual receives in return. Alexandra Lu and Lisa Sig Olesen point out a gap between principle and practice in the Danish welfare system.8 The basic idea of the Danish welfare society was, essentially, ‘contribute what you can and get what you need’. Today, our system operates more in accordance with the idea that you should ‘contribute what you can and get in proportion to your contribution’. In other 6 Goodchild, Exposing, 49. 7 Cf. Vetlesen, Dydenes, 283–284, 319. 8 Lu/Olesen, Illusion, 2.

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words, it has effectively changed from a system rooted in solidarity to a system rooted in individualism. It is a fact that poverty in Denmark has increased, and it threatens to continue rising in the coming years if current trends remain unchanged.9 Preben Brandt, founder of Project Outside, has characterized the problem as a ‘schism between what you would like to show and what you really are’. ‘People still feel they want more solidarity in the system but they are acting differently’.10

3.

The Modern Welfare Society is Facing Some Dilemmas

The modern welfare society is facing a number of dilemmas. In a paper from 2012, Jørn Henrik Petersen identifies four dilemmas.11 The first dilemma is the difficulty of switching roles. If the same people always depend on transfer income, there is the feeling that ‘the others’ are not contributing to the same extent as oneself. The idea of our switching roles is bound to fail. However, the importance of the individual is not dependent on the kind of contribution to the community this person has made, is making, or will make in the future. This would be cruel to those in need. That is why the insistence on non-reciprocity has to be made – ‘something for nothing’. The second dilemma is the weakening of the sense of responsibility. When ‘the governmental system’ has taken over a responsibility that would otherwise be mine, I no longer feel an actual obligation with regard to ‘the other person’. ‘The others’ become impersonal, faceless, and anonymous. The individual does not see himself as interacting with other people, but with ‘the system’: the argument is ‘I have paid my taxes, so I have a right to all this’. The third dilemma is the order of being of the welfare state versus privateeconomic rationality. On the one hand there are the demands made by the welfare state (i. e. the order of being of the state), ones that it cannot itself guarantee, and on the other hand there is the private-economical, rational impulses that we learn at our mother’s knee. ‘In actual fact, a functional welfare state that lives up to its normative standards requires people to behave in a private-economically irrational way’.12 A fourth dilemma is the incentive to work. It is often emphasized that ‘it must be worth it to work’. Arguments advanced either state that earned income must 9 On poverty (in Denmark) as a challenge to diaconia, see Iversen, Denmark, 148–159. 10 Cf. P. Brandt, Byen og social ulighed (‘The City and Social Inequality’), here quoted in Lu/ Olesen, Illusion, 1. 11 Petersen, Theory. This paper was presented at the 22nd Annual Conference of the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education. 12 Petersen, Theory, 5.

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be sufficient so that there is an incentive to work, or that not working reveals a lack of solidarity. There is a tension between the two arguments: The first argument expresses the private-economic rationale, while the second is based on the idea that it is ultimately the work on offer that underpins the welfare state. The first argument makes sense only if the other argument does not hold water. If most people unselfishly worked in order to support the welfare of others, one would not need to operate with explicit economic incentives to work. Although reciprocity has arguably always undergirded the Danish Model, the obligation for people to work seems to have begun to take priority over the obligation of the society to provide for the needy. One may see evidence of this change in discussions about welfare policies such as the ‘Start-help’ programme, under which people who have not lived in Denmark for the past ten years will receive lower social benefits.13 Beneath the four dilemmas is one basic dilemma, namely that of two principles: ‘something for something’ or ‘something for nothing’. The welfare society in the Nordic countries is often said to be based on the concept of reciprocity. Yet, one may ask if this is quite accurate. While many other welfare societies rely more or less on the principle of reciprocity, the hallmark of the Nordic welfare societies is that individual contributions through taxes to the state are separated from the benefits flowing to the individual from the state. Benefits are unilateral by nature: this means that they are decoupled from any reciprocity. This welfare model does not imply any quid pro quo. It may be argued that the Danish welfare model is a genuinely de-commodified tax-transfer system, because the link between financing and benefits has been broken. The individual single members of the working generation pay taxes on the basis of accepted principles of taxation. Benefits are to be distributed on the basis of principles of social policy, with due considerations of the weak groups and the general objectives of redistribution. Therefore, at the individual level, there is no nexus between individual ‘contributions’ and individual benefits. Benefits and contributions are decoupled. The model is based on mutually dependent but unconditional obligations.14 To contribute and to enjoy are disconnected from each other. Thus, in principle, it is possible to give ‘something for nothing’.15 Jørn Henrik Petersen claims that the Danish theologian and philosopher K.E. Løgstrup comes close to creating an ethical foundation for the welfare state through his thoughts about ethical demand. Reciprocity involves conditionality, unilaterality does not. The core of Løgstrup’s thinking is that reciprocity does not help anyone, either individually or politically. Those who are in need of help are 13 Lu/Olesen, Illusion, 2. 14 Cf. Petersen, Reciprocity? 13–14. 15 Petersen, Theory, 3.

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most frequently those who are unable to reciprocate at present, and it is highly uncertain whether they will be able to reciprocate in the future.16 The welfarestate mindset originates in the conception that life is lived in a state of dependence on others, that human lives are interdependent in such a way that there is a moral obligation to take care of ‘the other person’ – exclusively for that person’s sake, and regardless of whether that person has merited this in some way or another. Via legislation, we ensure a welfare state as an institutionalized surrogate for the love of our neighbour we find so hard to realize.17 The values of the classical welfare state are the love for one’s neighbour, solidarity, equality, justice, community, security, and trust as the basis for popular unity. These values are not created by the welfare state but are the underlying prerequisites that keep selfish impulses in check. The classic welfare state was a society where redistribution took place, from the healthy to the sick, from the employed to the unemployed, from those engaged in active employment to the elderly, from those without children to those with many children, from the fortunate to the less fortunate, from the fit to the disabled, from the rich to the poor, and so on.18 It is interesting to note that the distinction between reciprocity and unilaterality plays a significant role in recent studies of the economy of gift-giving. For instance, Genevieve Vaughan notes that living in a market-based society makes us think of all bonds in terms of exchange, of debt and repayment; however, the bonds that are established through gift-giving are positive and life-enhancing, in contrast to onerous debt and responsibility.19

4.

Reciprocity and Unilaterality – Understanding the Golden Rule

Many people connect the idea of reciprocity to the principle of the Golden Rule. The argument is that the rule corresponds to a basic principle of behaviour that dominates the relationship between people: What people do to you, do the same thing to them. Be a friend to a friend and an enemy to an enemy; cf. the jus talionis that is presupposed in the end of the antitheses in the Sermon on Mount, Matt 5:38. If this is the meaning of the rule, it is based on fact, on experiences. And then it is nothing more than re-action. In a positive sense, the rule would add more good to what one receives. But in a negative sense, it would just create more evil in a vicious circle. 16 17 18 19

Løgstrup, Begreber, 232. Petersen, Theory, 2–3. Petersen, Theory, 1. Vaughan, Introduction.

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The Golden Rule takes on a new tone when used by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Matt 7:12 and Luke 6:31. It does not mean, ‘Do to people what they have done to you – or what they do to you’, neither does it mean, ‘Do to people what one is used to doing – according to the custom’. Nor does it mean, ‘Do to people what you want them to do to you – provided they do it for you’. Instead, it means, ‘Take what you naturally wish others to do for you as the criterion for your actual action towards other people no matter what their actual behaviour towards you’.20 This means that the Golden Rule is not just a rule of paying back, of reciprocation.21 It has to be understood as an injunction to do for others the good things we wish for ourselves, quite apart from the behaviour we experience or expect from them. In this way the rule corresponds to the behaviour that is characteristic of the heavenly Father. He grants in advance and he grants contrary to what we would expect. ‘He makes His sun rise on the evil and the good’ (Matt 5:45; cf. Luke 6:35). However, this means, ‘Following the Golden Rule opens up in practical life the perspective of the merciful Father in a world marked by the principle of retaliation’.22

5.

The Weakest Members of the Society

The principle of ‘something for something’ is what dominates the modern welfare society that is marked by a functionalist view of human beings. Our culture insists on effectivity, and the most important capacity of human beings is the capacity to function. We have to act in a way that is very fast, expedient, and appropriate, in order to waste no time. This concept of the human being emphasizes the efficient and well-functioning person. Intelligence, strength, purposefulness, enterprise, creativity, and promptness are considered to be important values. This view of humanity is supportive of a narrow individualism, and degrades those values that are essential for a committed community. The weakest members of society are not able to meet the demands for effectivity and productivity. This point may be illustrated with three examples.

20 Behnish, Rule, 94; Nissen, Character, 134. Løgstrup, in a similar way, underscores that the Golden Rule is quite radical, due to its element of imagination. The rule does not appeal to our experiences of how much or how little the other person has done to us, but it appeals to our imagination; Løgstrup, Begreber, 232. 21 Cf. Ricoeur, Rule. He distinguishes between ‘the logic of equivalence’ and ‘the logic of superabundance’ which is the reading of the Golden Rule in the light of the gospel. 22 Behnish, Rule, 94. Italics in the original.

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1. Unemployed people. These persons are exposed to the doctrine of ‘something for something’ in the modern welfare society. In 1991, Klaus Nürnberger argued that …in modern Western contexts especially, persons are only considered to be worthy members of the community if they are seen to work for their living or make an active contribution to the overall welfare of the community. Those who do not, are considered to be social parasites, both in their own eyes and in the eyes of the public. To be considered parasite implies contempt. The elderly, the destitute, the handicapped, the bankrupt, and also the jobless are not accorded full human dignity.23

Even though this statement was made some decades ago, it still holds true, and it has much to do with the ‘Protestant ethic’ where human worth is measured by achievement. A usual consequence of unemployment is social exclusion that may take various forms. People may exclude themselves by dropping out of the market economy. People may refuse jobs, preferring to live on benefits, or they may be excluded by others. Unemployed people are socially excluded because they are powerless to change their own lives. The welfare system, too, may be exclusionary, insofar as it stigmatizes recipients of income support, and labels people receiving benefits as ‘scroungers’ or dependent members of the community.24 2. Persons with dementia. Today we live in a hypercognitive culture with emphasis on the idea that ‘I am = my ability to think’ (cf. Descartes). This culture emphasizes a fully working brain and economic productivity as the source of human worth and dignity. It dismisses as useless (or even inhuman) those who no longer possess such capacities (or never did). Clearly, persons suffering from dementia are prime candidates for being devalued, to be considered less than fully human, perhaps even to be called ‘vegetables’, and therefore not treated with the respect we still affirm is due all human beings. The reason is that dementia takes from these people precisely that which our society increasingly sees as giving human beings value, in fact, as making us human, namely, our memory, reason, and language, and thus our ability to be ‘productive and contributing’ members of society.25 Due to our post-Enlightenment emphasis on rationality, a widespread understanding of ‘the image of God’ is that it refers to our ability to reason, to produce complex language, or to relate to one another and to God in ways

23 Nürnberger, Prospects, 33. 24 Forrester, Worth, 227. 25 Cf. Sapp, Things, 32–33.

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mediated by our intellect. This interpretation creates problems for persons with dementia, in whom all these capacities are precisely the ones that are lost.26 3. Persons with developmental disabilities. These persons live in a situation that is comparable to the situation of persons with dementia. Disabled people suffer from society’s emphasis on the brain and economic productivity; they long for places where they are welcomed and accepted. L’Arche – a worldwide network of small homes and communities – welcomes the mentally disabled and those who share their lives with them, their ‘assistants’. Within these communities, people with developmental disabilities are accepted and welcomed, not for what they can or cannot do, but simply for what they are. If those with whom we seek to have communion are understood as gifts, this opens up the possibility of loving people simply for what they are. This is revolutionary. As John Swinton puts it: ‘Societies such as our own thrive on meritocracy and processes of valuing that are contingent on the exchange of particular social, psychological and material goods’.27 At L’Arche, daily community life springs from the belief that each person has unique gifts inherent in the dignity bestowed upon them by being uniquely created by God. These communities are marked by the primacy of being over doing. They are built on the conviction that it is important that there are people who chose to be with the disabled, rather than to do something for them.28

6.

Created in the Image of God

In light of these examples, we must ask the fundamental question, ‘What is the meaning of being created in the image of God?’ (cf. Gen 1:26–28). Does it mean that we as human beings have an inherent value or an instrumental value? The dividing line in the debate is between those who think that human beings have a fundamental value, and those who think they have a functional value. If human dignity is fundamental, we have our dignity because of the simple fact that we exist. This dignity is independent of what we do or what we refrain from doing. If, however, human dignity is a consequence of what we do, the extent of our ability to function is decisive for whether or not this person has human dignity.29 The fundamental question is whether human beings are valuable simply because they exist, or valuable because they are useful. From a theological point of 26 27 28 29

Sapp, Things, 30–31. Swinton, Body, 3. For further reflections, see Nissen, Partners, 88. Nissen, Diakoni, 248.

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view, the answer is obvious: Human beings have an inherent value that is independent of what they can do. That is why there is no favouritism in the concept of human beings. God shows no partiality (cf. Acts 10:34; James 2:1–2). The concept of the human being as a psychophysical or psychosomatic unity is an important aspect of the anthropology of the Hebrew Bible. ‘Body’ and ‘soul’ (or ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’) were not seen as separate entities. Instead of having a body, as we tend to think of ourselves, as though the real person is somehow separate from the body, the person in fact is a body.30 Our consumer society is characterized by the idea that ‘I am = what I have and what I consume’ (cf. Erich Fromm), ‘And the conclusion in this “being vs. having” conflict has been overwhelmingly that the biblical religions come down firmly on the side of being over having as the criterion for human worth’.31

7.

Being Uplifted to Dignity

The notion of being created in the image of God is important – not only in the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament, although the expression is not used explicitly. On the other hand, the notion is presupposed in many New Testament passages, particularly in many of the acts and words of Jesus. As mentioned in the introduction, diaconia has a prophetic role that is expressed in acts and words; it is a liberative practice: On the one hand, it must indicate what is wrong at the social and political levels; on the other hand, it has to proclaim that there is an alternative. Empowering diaconia is to help give a voice to those who have been silenced. In this way, ability and human dignity are discovered in situations that are dominated by poverty and misery.32 In other words, where periphery has deprived people of all dignity and hope, where their belonging to the community is denied, the authority of Jesus is manifested as a power to invert values and relations. It is prophetic in the sense that the periphery is defended and promised divine care and mercy. It is messianic in the sense, that it represents the coming of a new age and qualities of the Kingdom that is being proclaimed.33

According to the gospels, Jesus reveals an amazing authority that differs, not only from that of the scribes, but also from ‘the rulers of this age’. While their authority envisages submission, distance, and silence, the authority of Jesus is marked by the opposite: It lifts up, it includes, and it empowers.34 The prophetic 30 31 32 33 34

Sapp, Things, 31. Sapp, Things, 33. Nissen, Transformation, 35. Nordstokke, Diaconate, 117–118. Nordstokke, Diaconate, 118.

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character of diaconia is proved above all in its commitment to the periphery. This means that the aim ‘is not to be a Church for the poor, but much more a Church with the poor, or even a Church of the poor. For that purpose prophetic diaconia seeks to promote a praxis that opens space to the periphery, dignifies the expendable and empowers the excluded’.35 A similar way of thinking is expressed in First Corinthians. Paul insists that God reveals his grace and power in choosing ‘what is low and despised in the world’ (1 Cor 1:28). This has inspired diaconal workers in Latin America to add a parallel concept to empowerment, namely ‘dignification’, which means establishing diaconal practices that lift up the dignity of people, and give them their ability to be ‘subjects’ – in both the Church and in society.36 Often, we see reality in the form of a pyramid of domination. Everything is judged in terms of super- or subordination. Things tend to be assigned a ‘divine order’, with God at the top, man next, and so on along the ladder to dogs, plants, and ‘impersonal’ nature. Those people, ideas, or things that do not fit because they are foreign, weak, or disruptive are pressed down or out of the picture so that they disappear from consideration. In this view of reality, to be truly human is to achieve power and superiority within the pyramid of domination. Those who do not make it because of sex, age, class, race, or nationality are simply not quite human.37 God’s arithmetic is different from ours. In God’s arithmetic the least likely person becomes the bearer of the good news. Perhaps, if we take this arithmetic seriously, we would do well to look for a clue to the meaning of humanity among the ‘losers’ in society. Somehow, it is the losers who seem to get the messages of God’s love, and who seem able to communicate that message of meaning and hope to other people; cf. the demoniac in Mark 5:1–20 and the Samaritan woman in John 4:1–42. We spend our lives searching for who we are. One clue to our search for identity is that humanity is to be discovered in weakness, among those whom society considers of no account. This clue is confirmed by God’s action through Jesus Christ. In Him, God has chosen to be with us as a nobody, to show what it means to be somebody. In the hymn to the Philippians, the point is that the beginning of new humanity is the incarnation and resurrection. ‘Because he was willing to be less than human in the form of a slave, Jesus also became more than human, and those who called him Lord belonged to him and not to Caesar or to any human or demonic authority’.38 35 36 37 38

Nordstokke, Diaconate, 125 (italics added). Nordstokke, Diakonia, 46. Russell, Human, 29. Russell, Human, 52.

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The Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard

Jesus demonstrated in acts and words how he understood human dignity. This is particularly true of his parables, many of which have an element of reversal, for example, the story about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25–37) and the story about the workers in the vineyard (Matt 20: 1–16). The history of these two parables indicates how our moral identity is shaped by biblical stories.39 At the same time, it indicates how society has been influenced by Christian values. This point is supported by some observations on the parable of the workers in the vineyard. The parable articulates the equality of all, rooted in the gracious goodness of God. Its background is Jesus’ table fellowship with outcasts. The social world of the parable is that of a first-century Palestinian landowner, who, in order to save money, hired labourers day by day and hour by hour during the harvest. The contrast between the world of the parable and the actual labour practices and exploitation of the poor labourers underlines God’s goodness and justice. Those who are last receive a whole day’s payment. Yet, the parable also points out the offence taken by some of the first hired. They were treated justly, since they received the promised payment for the day’s work. If the last had received less, they would have been satisfied. However, they grumbled about the landowner saying: ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat’ (Matt 20:12). The parable of Jesus startles its hearers into recognizing that God’s gracious goodness establishes equality among all people, righteous and sinners, rich and poor, men and women. ‘It challenges the hearer to solidarity and equality with ‘the last’ in Israel. The all-inclusive goodness of Israel’s God calls forth human equality and solidarity’.40 In the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, each receives the same wage, independent of how long they worked. Their equality as human beings is recognized. But those who worked throughout the heat of the day complain that they have been unjustly treated. And in a sense, so they have. The parable expands the notion of justice beyond the rules that protected the worker by insisting that a worker should be paid fairly, to a broader and more generous justice that responds to the misfortune and need, rather than the work of those who stood waiting to be hired all day. Duncan Forrester points out that such a generous 39 To understand the parables of Jesus is to be changed by them, to have our vision of the world reshaped by them, see Nissen, Bible. 40 Fiorenza, Memory, 131–132; Schottroff/Stegemann, Güte. Similarly, in a book on work and unemployment in biblical and contemporary perspectives, I have shown that the parable of Matt 20:1–16 involves a new understanding of what it means to be a human being. See Nissen, Ansigter, 49–67 (65).

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understanding of justice must find its place in public policy, if we are not to have welfare policies that despise and mistreat the non-achievers, the handicapped, and the poor.41 To sum up, in Matt 20:1–16 we see a collision between two worlds, between two sets of experiences, that is, life as fairness versus life as grace. The story indicates a justice informed by love – a justice that is more than fairness. The parable of the labourers in the vineyard and other sayings of Jesus (e. g. Matt 6:25–34) are reminders that the human being is always more than his or her performance. This notion is a challenge to modern culture insofar as it tends to emphasize that we ‘are’ what we ‘perform’. However, the claim of biblical traditions is that all people are God’s people before they are ‘labourers’, and this is totally independent of whether or not they are labourers. We receive our dignity from God, and not from our work.42

9.

Transcending Group Solidarity

The Danish welfare system is ostensibly grounded in the principle of solidarity among citizens. People still believe that the system operates in accordance with its founding values of solidarity and universal welfare. But what was once a universal welfare system based on solidarity is now becoming an individualistic, libertarian one. As mentioned previously, there is a tension between principle and practice.43 For instance, people speak about the importance of solidarity and welfare, while simultaneously enrolling in private health insurance and private pension plans, not realizing that those private plans further undercut an already faltering public welfare system. Usually, it is argued that the insistence on solidarity is a socialist or social democratic idea. However, it is also an idea that is in line with what Jesus proclaimed. He significantly extended one’s neighbour to include one’s enemies. He could not have found a more effective way of shocking his audience into the realization that he wished to include all people in this solidarity of love. The natural contradiction between neighbour and enemy, between outsiders and insiders must be overcome so that enemies become like kinsmen and all outsiders become insiders.44 Furthermore, Jesus did not hesitate to spell out the consequences. ‘Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you’ 41 42 43 44

Forrester, Justice, 205. Nissen, Ansigter, 77–78. Lu/Olesen, Illusion. Nolan, Jesus, 61.

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(Luke 6:27–28). ‘If you love those who love you, what credit is that for you? For even sinners love those who love them’ (Luke 6:32). These passages reflect a criticism of group solidarity. Group solidarity – that is, loving those who love you – is no virtue. Any community, including the Christian community, runs the risk of being reduced to group solidarity. Jesus appeals not for group solidarity, but for an experience of solidarity with all human beings, an experience of what is non-exclusive, an experience that is not dependent upon reciprocity, because it includes even those who hate you, persecute you, or treat you badly. The conflict between group solidarity and solidarity with all human beings is reflected in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. The dissatisfaction of the first-hired labourers originates in group solidarity. Those who worked from the beginning of the day united themselves against those who had been unemployed most of the day (cf. Matt 20:12). This is a clash between the logic of justice against the logic of grace, or – we might say – a clash between the principle of ‘something for something’ and the principle of ‘something for nothing’.45 Yet, the message of the parable is that of solidarity among all, based on the goodness of the landowner – a metaphor for God (cf. Matt 20:15). It is noteworthy that Jesus dealt with each individual person who came into his life in such a way that nobody was excluded, and everybody was loved for his or her own sake, and not for the sake of his or her ancestry, race, nationality, class, family ties, intelligence, achievement, or any other quality. In this concrete sense, Jesus loved all persons and lived in solidarity with all people. For this very reason he sided with the poor and the non-privileged, with those who had nothing to recommend them except their humanity, with those who were excluded by others. ‘Solidarity with the “nobodies” of this world, the “discarded people” is the only concrete way of living out a solidarity with mankind’.46 This biblical perspective is of great importance when we discuss the relation between diaconia and the modern welfare society. Prophetic diaconia, in particular, draws on the vision of the Kingdom of God to articulate a utopia that informs social criticism and guides moral action. The Kingdom of God is expressive of a solidarity that knows no bounds.

45 Due to a specific tone in the Danish language, there is a play on words, since the Danish wording ‘noget for intet’ (something for nothing) sounds almost like ‘nåde for intet’ (grace for nothing). 46 Nolan, Jesus, 65.

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The Vision of the Community as the Body of Christ

Mutuality and solidarity between the weak and the strong is the principal thing in Paul’s comparison of the Church with the human body (1 Cor 12:14-26). It is important to notice how Paul uses this analogy. The comparison between the body and human societies was a rhetorical commonplace (topos) in the ancient world, particularly in speeches calling for social concord. However, Paul develops this well-worked rhetorical topos in an unexpected direction. This metaphor was ordinarily used to urge members of the subordinate classes to stay in their places in the social order and not to upset the natural equilibrium of the body by rebelling against their superiors (the classical example is the oration of Menenius Agrippa to the plebeians of Rome). Paul uses the image of the body in a more complicated way to argue for the need for diversity in the body (vv.14–20), and, at the same time, interdependence among its members (vv.21–26). ‘Thus, he employs the analogy not to keep subordinates in their places but to urge more privileged members of the community to respect and value the contribution of those members who appear to be their inferiors, both in social status and spiritual potency’.47 The question is: What is the relevance of the mutual solidarity among Christians, for society as a whole? 48 It is often asserted that the early Christians showed little or no interest in changing society as such. This assertion is based on the question, ‘To what degree did Christians perform actions outside the community – actions that could change the social situation or even the structure of society?’ However, to present the problem in this way is problematic. The search for a just society was a central concern for the first Christians (cf. the last paragraph of this article) but they did not try to achieve this goal by acting outside the community. Instead, they aimed to construct a community that in itself was an example of a just society. As J.H. Yoder has put it, ‘the primary social structure through which the gospel works to change other structures is that of the Christian community.’49 In other words, the early Christians aimed to construct a community that in itself was an example of a just society. For this reason it is no surprise that contemporary studies of mentally disabled people, persons with dementia, and other weak groups of society often draw on Paul’s description of the Church as the body of Christ, to mention just two examples. The first example is from a study of dementia and theology. Stephen Sapp notes that an obsession with independence permeates our culture. ‘Un47 Hays, Corinthians, 213. 48 In this context, it is not possible to give a detailed discussion of this question. However, see my discussion in Nissen, Authority. 49 Yoder, Politics, 157.

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fortunately, just as dementia inexorably leads to the loss of cognitive function, so it also unavoidably brings on that “abhorrent” condition of dependence’.50 However, in contrast to this individualistic attitude (particularly characteristic of American society), our dominant religious tradition affirms that human beings are more than merely autonomous beings who exist as separate atoms in discrete moments of time, able to do exactly as they please, whenever they please. According to this tradition, God sees humans not as radically disconnected individuals, but as social-historical beings that are undeniably linked with others, living in community, and changing over time in ways over which they do not always have control.51 The second example is from a study of disabilities and theology. Amos Yong demonstrates the importance of the metaphor of body. Many L’Arche communities around the world may be seen to incarnate the Pauline principles (from 1 Cor 12): ‘that the body of Christ and the fellowship of the Spirit are constituted by many different members, each with his or her own spiritual gifts, that none of the members of their gifts are more or less valuable, and that, if anything, those deemed less worthy of honour are more so, and are indispensable’.52 This is because in the Pauline scheme of things, God has chosen in Christ and in the cross the foolish things of the world rather than the wise, the lowly and despised rather than the conventionally valued, the weak rather than the strong. Once we understand this fundamental ecclesial truth, we will see how God has not only elected people with profound disabilities as his friends, but that God has also opted to make God’s gracious gifts even more palpable in and through the ‘weaknesses’ of their lives.53 As members of the body of Christ, Christians are not only in an unbreakable relationship with one another, but are also entrusted to one another and responsible for one another. In his book, Jesus and Community, Gerhard Lohfink describes the solidarity among the first Christians as the ‘praxis of togetherness’.54 Working with Paul’s admonition that Christians are ‘to build up one another’ (1 Thess 5:11), Lohfink says a life of such mutual edification demands that Christian learn to be responsible for one another. The Church should be an edifying community, a community that inspires because in it, people find 50 Sapp, Things, 35. 51 Sapp, Things, 35–37. 52 Yong, Disabilities, 349. Another example is Thomas Reynold’s study of disability and theology: ‘Paul directs our attention to those whose body capital might seem unworthy of welcome according to normal conventions and expectations. This kind of vision squares with that of Jesus: not the first, but the last, not the strong, but the weak, not the privileged, but the underprivileged. God works in, through, and for the vulnerable and broken, drawing together a community of the beloved based upon radical inclusion’ (Reynolds, Communion, 237). 53 Yong, Disabilities, 348–349. 54 Lohfink, Jesus, 99.

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women and men who know how to live together in charity, truthfulness, joyfulness, and peace; it is a community in which people honour one another, bear with one another patiently, admonish one another, console one another, and forgive one another.

11.

The Quest for a Just Society – the Quest for Human Dignity

As mentioned previously, the search for a just society was a central concern for the first Christians. The message contained in the biblical vision of society is a message concerning the individual worth and dignity of all people realized in community with others. More specifically, it is a heritage grounded in the story of a people who are the focus of God’s special care, despite their lowly and despised status in the world – whether they be slaves in Egypt, the poor of Israel, widows, orphans, the sick or the oppressed of society.55 The people of God must be a righteous people with a special concern for all those who are lowly and oppressed, for all the ‘nobodies’ of this world, for the ‘discarded’ people.56 The challenge is to see the world ‘from the viewpoint of the poor and the little ones’. In the Bible, justice appears again and again as the vindication of the poor and the oppressed.57 The justice of God’s Reign has an objective reality: it is something that we seek; we do not construct it or make it. It is a gift, not a prize to be earned. But the gift carries with it a call. Those who seek God’s righteousness are called to walk in the ways of justice, to anticipate in their practice the justice of the Kingdom. Justice is pervasively relational. It has to do with the proper structure of relationships between God and people, and among people. To make this point clear, one may distinguish between covenant and contract. In the Bible, God’s justice is displayed particularly clearly in the covenant in which he binds himself to his people in love and grace. The covenant is not a contract in which God’s grace is conditional on the response of God’s people. In contrast, within the covenant, God’s people experience the gracious, generous justice of God as care, discipline, protection, and a call. A just society founded on covenant principles recognizes obligations to care for those who cannot, for one reason or another, contribute directly to social production – people who would be declared redundant in a society founded simply on a contractarian basis.58

55 56 57 58

Villa–Vicencio, Theology, 165. Nissen, Conformity, 242. Forrester, Justice, 198. Forrester, Justice. The author emphasizes that in the field of social justice, Christian theological ethics would suggest that more than fairness is necessary at the heart of a decent society. A just society must be based on a justice informed by love. This means ‘a justice which

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Today, the welfare society is threatened by economic growth and greed. James Childs rightly insists that the economy should be a servant of the community. That is the sense of the Greek oikonomia, from which the word economy is derived: it means ‘household’. The exchange of money in the management of the household is for establishing and sustaining those values essential to the flourishing of the whole of creation. The real issue for the Christian community as it considers economic matters at the personal level and the level of public policy is that the limits of my freedom for gain are set by the needs of my neighbour.59 The idea of the common good is an important one, when we try to understand the modern welfare society. However, the common good cannot be perceived by identifying some statistical middle ground; it can only be perceived by identifying how the weakest members of the society are doing. As Jörg Rieger has pointed out, only if the weakest members of society can live, can all live.60 This perspective on the common good is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The rejoinders in the Hebrew Bible to respect widows, strangers, and orphans are not just moral rules that protect special interests. Just the opposite: concern for widows, strangers, and orphans is tied to the wellbeing of the community as a whole. Only when they can live can everyone live. Conversely, if their humanity is disrespected, everybody’s humanity is disrespected.61

Rieger speaks of the good of the weakest. ‘Solidarity is no longer based on heroic commitments to others in need, but on the realization that we find ourselves in the same boat with others’. Elsewhere, he characterizes this form of solidarity as ‘deep solidarity’.62 This is in line with Paul’s description of the Christian community as the body of Christ: ‘If one member suffers, all suffer together with it’ (1 Cor 12:26).

12.

Towards an Inclusive Community of Hospitality

The Christian community is fundamentally an inclusive community marked by hospitality. The willingness to accept others in their ‘otherness’ is the hallmark of true hospitality,63 as has been pointed out in recent ecumenical documents.64

59 60 61 62 63 64

is more than fairness, a justice which is sometimes generous and sometimes is capable of eliciting sacrifice for others’ (p. 204–205). Childs, Budgets, 10–11. Rieger, Turning, 31. Rieger, Turning, 31. Rieger, Turning, 35. On the concept of ‘the others’ also see Nissen, Creating. For instance, the WCC document, Religious Plurality and Christian Self-Understanding,

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Here, the theme of ‘hospitality’ has become a hermeneutical entry point to reflection and discussion. The idea of the hospitable and inclusive community is also underlined by the social work of the Church. A fine example of this is the L’Arche communities. As John Swinton has put it: ‘The primary emphasis within L’Arche is on friendship and mutuality-in–community. Within the L’Arche communities it is in and through the relationships of friendship that people are transformed, “reconstructed” and taught how to be persons-in-relation with those whose life experiences are very different from the perceived norm’.65 In that sense, these communities have relevance not just for the diaconal work among disabled people, but also for other kinds of diaconal work among people who have met with social exclusion. The theology of L’Arche is a pointer to the understanding of the Christian community as an inclusive community of hospitality. An important biblical passage is Rom 15:7: ‘Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.’ Christian hospitality involves seeing the ‘other’ not as a threat but as a gift. It involves embrace rather than exclusion, and thus challenges notions of boundaries as walls of identity. Without embracing the ‘other’, there can be no transformation. In Paul’s view, the Church may be described as a place where we are ‘welcoming one another to new humanity’.66 The Christian community is a fellowship where the others are accepted in their otherness. ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal 3:28). The Church creates a community where people, no matter what their background, shape or form, are seen and accepted as equals. In the passage of Gal 3:28 the three pairs identify only three of the greatest separations and sources of inequality in the ancient world, but today it would be legitimate to broaden the perspective and say that the formula implies that all superior-inferior relationships are overcome in the body of Christ. The inclusive community of hospitality is of great significance, not only for our comprehension of the Church, but also for our comprehension of society as a whole. Hence, the broader framework is an understanding of the kind of society we should seek. According to Duncan Forrester, we should seek a well-integrated community with a high degree of solidarity and responsibility for and to one another. This is a community in which the weak and the poor are not shamed and relegated to the margins, but encouraged to play a full part in the life of the community; at the same time, those with greater endowments are not allowed to (2006) notes that in today’s context, ‘stranger’ includes not only people unknown to us, the poor and the exploited, but also those who are ethnically, culturally, and religiously ‘others’ to us. For further observations, see Nissen, Creating, 41–42. 65 Swinton, Body, 8. 66 Koenig, Hospitality, 52.

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evade their responsibilities to the broader community.67 What matters in Christian ethics is ‘something for nothing’ and not ‘something for something’, that is, the principle of paying back. The point is not simple reciprocity, but rather, unilaterality. Discussions about the welfare society often seem to avoid one crucial issue: how to not only include and integrate, but to honour those who are prevented from making the usual sort of contribution to the economic and general welfare of society because of disablement or other factors. ‘From a biblical and a theological perspective such people have a privileged status and a decent society sees them as having a special contribution to make to the community flourishing together. But only too often they are systematically humiliated by the institutions of society and in day-to-day relationships’.68 Church and society have a common task in emphasizing the importance of recognizing each other. This mutual recognition is based on the human rights and the dignity of all. For the Church there is an additional motivation: the grace of God manifested in Christ calls the Christians to an attitude of hospitality that is not limited to those who belong to the same group, but extends to loving even the ‘others’.

Bibliography Behnisch, M., The Golden Rule as an Expression of Jesus’ Preaching, Bangalore Theological Forum 17/1 (1985) 83–97. Childs, J.M., Budgets are Moral Documents: Hunger, Money and Community, Dialog 52/1 (2013) 10–18. Fiorenza, E.S., In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, SCM 1983. Forrester, D.B., On Human Worth: A Christian Vindication of Equality, SCM 2001. –, Social Justice and Welfare, in: R. Gill (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics, Cambridge Univ. Press 2001, 195–208. Goodchild, P., Exposing Mammon: Devotion to Money in a Market Society, Dialog 52/1 (2013) 47–57. Hays, R.B., First Corinthians, John Knox Press 1997. Iversen, H.R., Denmark, in: H. Noordegraaf/R. Volz (eds.), European Churches Confronting Poverty: Social Action Against Exclusion, SWI Verlag 2004, 148–159. Koenig, J., New Testament Hospitality: Partnership with Strangers as Promise and Mission, Fortress Press 1985.

67 Forrester, Worth, 228. 68 Forrester, Worth, 229.

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Lu, A./L.S. Olesen, The Danish Illusion: The Gap Between Principle and Practice in the Danish Welfare System, available from www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/59the-danish-illusion. Lohfink, G., Jesus and Community: The Social Dimension of Christian Faith, Fortress Press 1984. Løgstrup, K.E., Etiske begreber og problemer, in: G. Wingren (ed.), Etik och kristen tro, CWK Gleerup/Gyldendal/Universitetsforlaget 1971, 205–286. Nissen, J., The Distinctive Character of the New Testament Love Command in Relation to Hellenistic Judaism, in: P. Borgen/S. Giversen (eds.), The New Testament and Hellenistic Judaism, Aarhus University Press 1995, 123–150. –, Arbejdets ansigter. Bibelske og aktuelle perspektiver på arbejde og fritid, Føltveds forlag 1996. –, Conformity, Nonconformity, and Critical Solidarity: The Church-State Issue and the Use of the Bible, Mission Studies 16/1–2 (2000) 240–262. –, Prophetic Diaconia: Biblical Perspectives and Present Challenges, in: V. Mortensen (ed.), The Role of Mission in the Future of Lutheran Theology, Centre for Multireligious Studies – University of Aarhus 2003, 139–161. –, Bible and Ethics: Moral Formation and Analogical Imagination, in: G.W. Ortiz/C.A.B. Joseph (eds.), Theology and Literature: Rethinking Reader Responsibility, Palgrave MacMillan 2006, 81–100. –, Diakoni og menneskesyn, Aros 2008. –, The Authority of the Bible in Private and Public Life, in: P. Lodberg (ed.), Religion, Politics and Law (Religion and Normativity, Vol. 3), Aarhus University Press 2009, 106– 118. –, Towards a transformation of power: New Testament perspectives on diaconia and empowerment, Diaconia vol 3:1 (2012) 26–43. –, Partners in Life: Reflections on Diaconal Spirituality, in: U. Zeitler (ed.), Spirituality, Diaconia and Social Work, Centre for Diaconia and Pedagogy 2012, 71–100. –, Creating a Space for the Others: The Marginalized as a Challenge to Diaconia and Church – a Theological Perspective, Diaconia vol. 5:1 (2014) 31–46. Nolan, A., Jesus Before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation, Darton, Longman and Todd 1977. Nordstokke, K., The Diaconate: Ministry of Prophecy and Transformation, in: G. Borgegård, et al. (eds.), The Ministry of the Deacon, Vol. 2: Ecclesiological Explorations, Nordic Ecumenic Council 2000, 107–138. – (ed.), Diakonia in Context: Transformation, Reconciliation, Empowerment. An LWF Contribution to the Understanding and Practice of Diakonia, The Lutheran World Federation, 2009. Nürnberger, K., Prospects of Employment: Scourge of Unemployment, in: J.R. Cochrane/ G.O. West (eds.), The Three-Fold Cord: Theology, Work and Labour, Cluster Publications 1991, 28–65. Petersen, J.H., Reciprocity or unilaterality? Reflections on Løgstrup’s ‘The Ethical Demand’ and the normative foundation of the Danish welfare state, (lecture given at Aarhus University in 2006).

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–, A normative theory concerning the welfare state and its inherent dilemmas, 2012, available from http://files.sdu.dk/mediafiles/6/5/6/%7B656961B2–3092–4334–9ABC765F01512870%. Reynolds, T.E., Vulnerable Communion. A Theology of Disability and Hospitality, Brazos Press 2008. Ricoeur, P., The Golden Rule: Exegetical and Theological Perplexities, NTS 36 (1990) 392– 397. Rieger, J., The Turning of the Tide: Theology, Religion, and Economics, Dialog 52/1 (2013) 29–36. Russell, L.M., Becoming Human, The Westminster Press 1982. Sapp, S., ’To see things as God sees them’: Theological Reflections on Pastoral Care to Persons with Dementia, Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy 8 (1998) 25–43. Schmidt, U., Poverty: A Challenge to Human Dignity?, Diaconia vol. 1:1 (2010) 7–31. Schottroff, L./W. Stegemann, Die Güte Gottes und die Solidarität von Menschen. Das Gleichnis von den Arbeitern im Weinberg, in: Schottroff & Stegemann (eds.), Der Gott der kleinen Leute, Kaiser Verlag 1979, 71–93. Swinton, J., The Body of Christ has Down’s Syndrome. Theological reflections on vulnerability, disability and graceful communities, (2004), taken from www.abdn.ac.uk/ cshad/ (Previously published in The Journal of Pastoral Theology 2004). Vaughan, G. Introduction to the Gift Economy, (2004), taken from www.gift-economy. com/theory.html. Vetlesen, A.J., Dydenes gjenkomst og omsorgens grunnlag, in: K.W. Ruyter/A.J. Vetlesen (eds.), Omsorgens tvetydighet – egenart, historie og praksis, Gyldendal Akademisk 2001, 282–322. Villa–Vicencio, C., A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation-building and Human Rights, Cambridge Univ. Press 1992. Yoder, J.H., The Politics of Jesus, Eerdmans 1972. Yong, A., Disabilities from the Margins to the Center: Hospitality and Inclusion in the Church, Journal of Religion, Disability and Health 15 (2011) 339–350.

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Theological Anthropologies in a Neighbourhood Church

1.

Anthropologies Studied in a Neighbourhood Church?

Anthropology is a central topic of Christian theology, as well as of the teachings and instructions of the Christian churches. As the churches engage in public debate over controversial ethical issues, views of human life and human beings are frequently cited as their specific contribution. The key points of Christian theological anthropologies have typically been identified by exploring the classic sources of Christian faith and subjecting them to critical and constructive scrutiny, mediated through the format of theological texts and documents. This article, inspired by recent developments in theology, takes as its starting-point that Christian faith is enacted locally, in the numerous symbolically, communicatively and morally structured actions and practices of churches: actions and practices that include worship and rituals, preaching, diaconia, and Christian formation. And to the extent that these enactments of faith also include attempts at exploring, interpreting and perhaps reformulating their meaning, they can also be said to embody a form of theology. According to this approach, theological anthropologies, views and images of what a human being is should also be investigated in the form of the concrete practices, conventions, patterns of interaction or symbolic expressions of churches. Theological anthropologies are not shaped solely by theoretically and conceptually developed documents and texts, but also in the embodied practices of the church. This article therefore explores practical enactments of anthropologies and images of human life.

2.

Theology Embodied in Practice

This investigation of anthropologies in a neighbourhood church relies on three related premises, all of which have to a greater or lesser extent become prominent in practical theology over the recent years. The first of these is the link between hermeneutics and the Aristotelian notion of practical knowledge, famously

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launched by Gadamer, subsequently developed by scholars of practical philosophy such as R. Bernstein, and later in the context of practical theology elevated to nearly paradigmatic status by Don Browning. Here the basic idea is that understanding and interpretation are inextricably linked to application, rather than discrete hermeneutical operations.1 Understanding a given phenomenon is part and parcel of knowing through practice the answer to the question “What should we do / be? with regard to that phenomenon. “[A]pplication is neither a subsequent nor merely an occasional part of the phenomenon of understanding, but codetermines it as a whole from the beginning”.2 Knowledge is therefore connected to practical enactment. Understanding Christian tradition with regard to what a human being is, what personhood is, and what characterises human life as distinct from other forms of life is in Christian practice intertwined with enactments and embodiments. The second of the three premises is that communities, and in particular communities of tradition such as a neighbourhood church, can themselves be hermeneutical agents and thus places in which understanding is enacted and performed. This premise is associated with practical theology’s emphasis on practice as the object of investigation.3 The concept of practice, despite its several different definitions, typically involves some form of collective, coordinated and at least minimally routinised interaction. The community, rather than simply being the recipient from outside of a body of Christian faith and doctrine which it then expresses and communicates further, is on these terms viewed as involved in forming and transforming enactments of Christian faith. The community as a community of practice is thereby also a community of the understanding and interpretation of Christian faith. This premise is also key to the more recent trend of using ethnography in theology, even of seeing ethnography as a way of doing theology rather than merely an aid in theological investigations.4 Ethnography is viewed as an epistemological and methodological approach that is suited for the analysis of the many dimensions of the many concrete and situated practices of enacted faith in a concrete community. This approach has also inspired the design and analysis behind this article. The third premise is that these enactments of Christian faith, through the complex and diverse situational practices of a community of practice and interpretation, can also be seen as a form of theology and theological reflection in their own right. This premise connects theology and theological reflection (as distinct from religiosity and faith) with the “ordinary workings of Christian 1 2 3 4

Bernstein, Science, 38–40. Gadamer, Truth, 324. Smith, Theories, 250; Graham, Practice, 96. Scharen/Vigen, Ethnography, 65.

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lives”.5 This is a somewhat more complex premise, but for the purposes of this article it does not have to mean anything more than what follows from introducing the notion of practice. Implying also ambiguities, inconsistencies and open-endedness, Christian practices will, as argued by Kathryn Tanner, “not work without critical theological reflection”.6 At certain junctures, they raise profound questions about their continuation – as when a church is considering whether to adopt a new hymn book or liturgy, or must establish a new church building, or needs to cut spending and make priorities, or to decide whether to house undocumented asylum-seekers. In other cases, continuing a certain practice might appear more routine, as with gathering to celebrate a regular Sunday worship service, sharing a meal in the setting of the church, or collaborating with local authorities in creating a meeting place for marginalised members of the community. Clearly, a number of factors influence how a practice is enacted and continued. Some of those, perhaps even the most important of them, may not even be a matter of conscious or intentional decision, but the result of various kinds of social or cultural dynamics. And of those that are a matter of decision and reflection, not all are necessarily theological in kind: they might simply be very practical. But some practices, to some extent, involve some consideration of their meaning and objective, of the right way to achieve that objective, and of the relation between that objective and others. Thus at least at some points, a community such as a neighbourhood church will be involved in theological investigation, in terms of critical and constructive scrutiny of the meaning of Christian faith and the way it is to be enacted in its concrete situation. It is against the background of these premises that we can now specify how formations and transformations of Christian faith and theology in the setting of a specific church are to be investigated, and how the choice of method and research design is to be justified. First, it is concrete practices as constructions and sites of meaning that are the analytical unit for investigating topics of Christian faith and theology – not individuals and their reflections, or official church documents. Practices are sites of theological meaning by virtue of the link between understanding and practical knowledge, as argued above. They are, as expressed by Graham, “embodiments of the self-understanding of the Christian community […] Embodied practices have meaning; but the meaning is implicit and inseparable from the practices themselves”.7 Important for the present investigation is how practices consist of some form of coordinated and purposeful social interaction, with some duration or history.

5 Tanner, Reflection. 6 Tanner, Reflection, 232. 7 Graham, Practice, 96. 103.

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Practice thus connotes doing, but doing in a social and historical context.8 Importantly, practice includes what is said as well as what is tacit. It might comprise various explicit expressions in the form of language – such as documents, regulations, codifications, scripts of procedures, images and symbols – as well as implicit conventions, habits, rules of thumb and unspoken rules, objects and tools, spatial as well as temporal structures. These elements are all potentially significant ingredients in the formation and transformation of meaning that occurs through practices. Thus, whereas practices are constituted by some form of interaction, this interaction and the construction of meaning that takes place through it may also involve material objects and spatial or temporal structures (such as a room, or a course of events and change). According to Bourdieu’s notion of practice, developed in close connection with his concept of habitus, practice is not merely rule-governed, but neither is it the product of a “virtuous agent”, as MacIntyre’s notion of practice seems to imply. On the one hand, habitus is conceived of as a deposit of past actions, knowledge and practice: structured structures, which by virtue of the way in which they determine human action and orientation then become structuring structures. On the other hand, habitus is also available as “raw material” for future agency, for regulated improvisations. This is argued to make room for a social system that can transcend the dichotomy between determination and choice, or structure and agency. Informed by habitus, everyday practices are at once the result of social structures and of personal invention and human agency. Graham refers to this as the self-reflexivity of practice. Social structures and power relations deposited in the residue of past actions and knowledge along the agential creativity together form the meaning, implicit in and inseparable from the practice.9 Practices are the product of the influence of a given social and symbolic order, including certain power relations, and of human activity. The important point for the present analysis is that this approach is a dual perspective on how meaning is generated in the practices of the community of a neighbourhood church: it combines the perspective of given social and symbolic structures and patterns embedded in the community with that of inventive and creative re-structuring by its participants. One particularly important point, highly relevant for the coming analysis, is that the community’s practices, thus understood, are in no way separate from the wider society. The social and symbolic structures informing the practices will be those deposited through the history of the church, as well as those of the society of which the community is part – including its distributions of power, difference and privilege.10 8 Wenger, Communities, 47. 9 Graham, Practice, 103. 10 Tanner, Reflection, 231.

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How to Study Anthropologies in a Neighbourhood Church: Method and Design

The methodological approach taken in order to explore these forms of lived or enacted theologies in a church is a case study of a single parish on the outskirts of Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city. Compared to, for example, a comparative study of two or more parishes, or an aggregate study of a larger sample of parishes, this approach enables an in-depth study of the dynamics and patterns between social, symbolic and material factors through which meaning is formed and transformed in the various practices as they appear in the concrete particularities of one specific parish. Case studies allow one to learn about the concrete complexity and richness of human activities and situations.11 The objective of this project is not to uncover rules and causal nexuses that can be generalised to congregational life in general, but to provide understanding of the multiple ways in which meaning, in this case theological meaning, is formed and transformed through congregational life and practices. Thus, the case in question neither represents a larger group of units (congregations), nor uncovers systematic differences or similarities between a number of cases. Rather, its aim is a close investigation of the context-dependent, process-related and dynamic production of theological meaning through interplays between the symbolic, social and material aspects in a Christian community’s practices. This also means that the form of inference allowed by this approach is abductive rather than inductive.12 It starts from tentative ideas or theories, uses them as hypothetical, explanatory concepts in relation to case data, and explores and discusses their interpretive plausibility and power in relation to the case. The case in question was selected strategically according to an atypical case sample. We were searching for a case that would permit analysis of a broad set of mechanisms and forms of interplay between symbolic, material and social elements in congregational practices and actions. Our interest in the formation and transformation of anthropologies also sent us looking for a parish situated in a context and environment that might challenge and impact these processes in specific, context-related ways, in particular with various kinds of socio-economic, ethnic and religious difference. Moreover, given our interest in the production of theological meaning through community practices, it was also preferable to have a case with some degree of explicit, fixed reflection on its own life and activities with potential relevance for anthropology. The selected parish met these criteria: it had a broad spectrum of activities as well as a high turnout for many of them, including above-average attendance at worship services, all de11 Flyvbjerg, Misunderstandings. 12 Thomas, Case Study.

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scribed in detail in an annually revised strategic plan (virksomhedsplan); and it was located in a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse neighbourhood. For the purposes of this article,13 two activities within the case study were chosen for in-depth analysis as possible sites of construction of meaning regarding human being and human life: a Sunday church service, and an evening lecture (Højskoleaften). As they were quite different with regard to profile, participants, content and objective, they were expected to provide opportunities first to explore how anthropologies are constructed differently and with various meanings through different practices, and second to investigate complexities and possible tensions in anthropologies of a church. Clearly, selection of different activities might have yielded different results. These two activities were not expected to reveal an anthropology that is representative for the parish in its entire life and its comprehensive set of activities. They were chosen because an initial and preliminary overview of the material suggested that these two events were interesting and relevant places to search for and investigate in detail examples of concrete and particular constructions of anthropologies. Furthermore, in addition to the Sunday service, which is obviously constitutive of the life of the church, the evening lecture too is a classical and quite typical element in the standard repertoire of a parish in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark. Anthropologies revealed here are therefore hardly irrelevant to understanding constructions of anthropologies in other parishes. In accordance with the general account of “practice” given above, these events were observed with regard to forms of interaction, verbal and symbolic expressions, and material, spatial and temporal aspects. Brief interviews were also conducted with participants immediately after the events, asking how they had experienced the event and about their general participation in the church.

4.

Church Practices and Anthropologies

To answer the question regarding how anthropologies are formed and transformed in church practices, we need to have some operational concept of anthropology to work from. Given the explication of “practice” as the unit of analysis, this working definition needs to be wide enough to account also for the significance of those aspects of the practices which derive from their situatedness, such as differences and power asymmetries in class, gender, ethnicity, etc. In the same vein, the definition of anthropology used needs to be open enough to 13 The analysis presented in this article is part of a larger project, including analyses of a broader selection of activities and data: document analyses, interviews with key staff members, elected leaders and participants, and observations of activities.

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accommodate dimensions of these practices and constructions that work decidedly differently from academic theology, for instance by encompassing meanings produced through habitual forms of interaction, spatial or temporal dimensions of interactions, or the place of objects or symbols in interaction. For this purpose, David Kelsey’s approach, arguing that anthropology involves three categories of judgements, is useful.14 One type of question pertains to what a human being is, in other words concerns a shared human nature. Another type of question has to do with how human beings should be oriented and relate to their social, physical and personal worlds, i. e. concerns human agency. And a third type pertains to identity, i. e. concerns who we are as individual persons and how human identities evolve and are established. The reason Kelsey’s definition of anthropology is useful for this analysis is that it is formal rather than substantive and enables the formulation of more specific research questions. “Human nature” refers to what human beings are assumed to have in common. Do church practices depict implicitly or explicitly what constitutes, defines or characterises human life and human nature as such, or does that fall outside their scope and interest? Tentatively one might ask whether basic features of human life are explicated in terms of categories of faith alluding to human beings’ relation to God, or independently of them. Another relevant question is to what extent such images refer to the human bodily existence or mainly to a spiritual dimension of life.15 Additionally, do church practices portray a vision of human flourishing, i. e. what constitutes not only human life, but a good human life? Or is human life portrayed as perfect as it is, with flourishing being a potential mode of its present existence rather than a future goal? Human agency can be defined, conceptually and formally, as the capacity of human beings to relate consciously, intentionally and responsibly to the self as well as to a surrounding social and physical reality.16 Given that human agency is always embedded in and conditioned by social structures, a relevant question regarding this dimension of anthropology concerns not only how human agency is envisioned as a formal concept, but also how it is shaped concretely. In particular it is interesting to investigate how church practices allow or disallow certain forms of agency. Do church practices enable, encourage or inhibit more concrete forms of agency? And do they do so in different ways for different groups, according to gender, age, ethnicity, church position, or other and more diffuse forms of status? Finally, questions of personhood or personal identity concern the identification of a human being as identifiable as a “self” or an “I”, distinguishable 14 Kelsey, Creature. 15 Woodhead, Anthropology, 243–245. 16 Taylor, Human Agency.

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from other “selves”. The self refers to “a person’s understanding of who they are, of their fundamental defining characteristics as a human being”.17 This can be explicated by referring to the use of these concepts in everyday usage, which seems to reveal two main trends. First, there is the idea of individual uniqueness, with the personal and “identity” referring to the uniquely and authentically “me” which it is important to express and manifest in order to be “oneself”. Charles Taylor famously traces this to a romantic vision of the “ideal of authenticity”. Identity is individual and unique. Second, identity refers to those features of a person which connect him or her with a particular group: here the understanding and qualification of who the person is derive from association with this group. Typically these are categories of ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, etc. As argued by Appiah, this understanding of identity as deeply inflected by social features has become commonplace.18 Identity is collective and relational. Identity being defined by outward relations rather than inward essence is obviously not a novelty to theological perspective or to formal church doctrine, not least in a Protestant tradition. The question here is how this is constructed in a neighbourhood church; in particular one that on the one hand is closely interwoven with Danish culture and society, but on the other is situated in a neighbourhood where “Danishness” is less dominant and where ethnic and religious minority groups are more visibly present compared to many other parishes. What are the identities offered through the practices of this church? Does this identity construction take the form of appeal to an authentic existence, attainable through various forms of perfections of the self ? Or does it offer collective and relational identities? If so, what kind of relational collectives are presented as the basis for personal identity, for “understanding who I am”?

5.

The Neighbourhood Parish: Basic History and Sociodemographic

This particular parish is situated on the outskirts of Aarhus, Denmark’s second city. It was established in 1975, when it was separated from a neighbouring parish. Just over 8,900 people live in the district. The area is characterised by a large group of younger people (40 per cent) compared to the national average of 18 per cent: this is explained by large housing facilities for students. The area also has a larger proportion of citizens of non-Danish origin (38 per cent compared to 11 per cent nationally), which also means there is relatively low membership of the 17 Taylor, Politics of Recognition, 25. 18 Appiah, Ethics, 65.

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Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark at 53 per cent (compared to 77 per cent nationally). Furthermore, the average income is considerably lower than the national average (Strategic plan 2015). The church is therefore situated in a relatively young and relatively poor area, with a variety of ethnicities and religions represented. The church employees consist of two male pastors, a male organist, two female diaconal workers (one with a focus on adults and the over60s, the other on children and youth), a female sexton, a male verger, and a female secretary. There is a church choir, which is remunerated for singing at services. About 200 volunteers are registered with the church. The church began in its early years as a mobile church with a very committed and energetic pastor, Helga Jensen, who was also the first female pastor in Jutland. She managed to bring together engaged parish members and students of theology to create an entrepreneurial spirit in which they established the church together. From the beginning, it was intended to be closely connected with cultural and social activities; in many cases it was pioneering in establishing activities, for instance for the elderly and children, in the newly built neighbourhood.19 The entrepreneurial spirit of the early church and Helga Jensen’s vision are still kept alive, partly because several of the current employees and parish members were involved in the church’s foundation. The church is situated on the neighbourhood square, close to cultural institutions such as the library, the civic centre and grocery shops; the square itself is located on the border of the parish district in a rather poor area. The social distance from some parts of the demographic in the area is emphasised by the attraction that the square holds for the young men who gather there in the evenings. There is no school in the parish district. The children either go to private school or to the public school in the neighbouring parish district. The church buildings are constructed in red brick, marked very discreetly as church buildings on the outside. Driving by or approaching from the square, you will not be able to identify the structure as a church without a good look at it. In this sense, the church almost melts into its secular surroundings, becoming a part of the local institutions. The church buildings consist of the sanctuary, office facilities, common rooms and a kitchen, as well as a basement with rooms for children’s activities and a prayer room. On entering the church through the main entrance, a diagonal corridor runs from the entrance through the doors to the sanctuary, becoming the aisle of the church space and finishing at the altar. The diagonal line strongly indicates the primary direction of the entrance when the doors to the sanctuary are open; when these doors are closed, you are led to either side of the building. To the right of the main entrance are the offices of the pastors, diaconal workers, sexton, secretary, and organist; to the left of the main 19 Hansen, Helga Jensen, 87–103.

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door are common rooms, lavatories, the kitchen, and stairs down to the facilities in the basement. The basement also has its own entrance, used for activities that take place there. The church has a wide range of activities. There are activities for children in three different children’s clubs, a summer camp, children’s religious services, and hymn-singing for mothers and babies. There are also a number of activities for adults, including daytime lectures, evening lectures, parish evenings, a club, and afternoons with workshops. There are also diaconal activities, such as arranged visits or assistance in practical matters, and an open café. The many activities supplement the weekly Sunday service, special services (for instance during Lent), and a number of church concerts in the sanctuary. In addition to the activities, the pastor points to engagement with the local area with respect to young people with problems, the homeless, or questions to do with the square. The church ideal is to be closely bound to the neighbourhood, both through church activities and through engagement in the life of the area. This is expressed in the strategic plan as the vision of being “a Christian Community that is active, visible, has outreach and is open to everyone” (Strategic plan, 12, italics in original). The church sees itself as an open community that signals itself as available in the local area. The various activities differ in their roles in relation to the overall vision: these are described under each activity in the strategic plan. The question to be analysed in the following section is in what ways anthropologies are expressed in the selected activities, to what degree they are in accordance with or possibly deviate from one another, and in what ways they can be said to outlive the church vision in concrete community life.

6.

Two Church Practices: Analysis

The analysis that follows – of a Sunday service and an evening lecture – builds primarily upon observations structured with specific attention to space and spaciousness, the participants’ characteristics, actions and interactions during and surrounding the event, as well as semantic elements in songs, readings, and talks. These observations are then utilised to cover the three anthropological dimensions addressed – human nature, human agency and human identity – and thereby to coin the expressions of anthropologies in the given event.

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The Evening Lecture

Evening lectures are a well-established and regular activity in this church, as in many churches. These, together with daytime lectures (daghøjskole), community evenings (sogneaften) and an adult club called 30+, are the activities tailored to the adult generation late in their working lives and early in their lives as pensioners. Within the broad range of church activities, evening lectures focus on cultural enlightenment rather than on preaching. In the strategic activity plan, the objective of the evening lectures is described as “general education and church lectures that convey cultural legacy”, whereas community evenings are described as closer to preaching, somewhere between evening lectures and the Sunday service. Both activities involve a talk by an invited speaker, led and introduced by one of the pastors, who opens with a short address focused on Christianity and then invites everyone present to join in singing a song from the songbook provided. The difference between “primarily cultural” and “primarily church” is demarcated by three factors: the choice of songbook (on community evenings they sing from the hymnbook, on evening lectures they sing from the High School Song Book, Højskolesangbogen);20 the degree of Christian ritualisation (on community evenings they close with devotion and prayers, on evening lectures just with the Lord’s Prayer); and the content of the talks (which are close to church life and Christianity on community evenings and more broadly cultural on evening lectures). In the overall vision of the church, evening lectures focus on “building a bridge to the target group”. Thus evening lectures could be seen as a missionary activity, taking the shared cultural heritage as the point of departure but locating it within a church framework. The evening lecture takes place in a large room adjacent to the sanctuary. The same space is also used for church coffee and lunch after the Sunday service, and for other types of talks as well as for teaching and workshops. Though adjacent to the sanctuary, this space differs markedly from it. It is furnished with rectangular tables and chairs in long lines, so that people can sit along the long side of the tables during the talk. The tables are set for coffee. A grey fitted carpet distinguishes the room from the entrance area and the sanctuary, which are tiled. On this evening lecture, the space consists of two of the three rooms that can be demarcated by mobile partitions. The space is free from any kind of symbolic decoration. At one end is a single table for use as a lectern by the speaker. Next to this is a piano, for the community singing. Forty to fifty people are gathered in the 20 Højskolesangbogen is a uniquely Danish phenomenon, closely connected to the Danish tradition of Folk High Schools. The songbook consists of an anthology of songs related to nationhood, historical events, festivals, seasons, and songs for evening and morning, including also a few hymns. The songbook is used for community singing in schools and associations, in church activities outside the sanctuary, and in some workplaces.

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room, occupying about two-thirds of the seats. Women are in the majority, but not overwhelmingly so. Both couples and singles are represented, all older and of Danish descent, and everybody appears to be in good health. The evening begins with a short introductory talk by the pastor. He announces a meeting in the church to be held in preparation for the coming election of the bishop in the diocese, and after a song by the Danish poet and pastor Kaj Munk has been sung, the pastor introduces the speaker and his talk. The speaker is a male pastor from Funen, with a talk entitled “Truthful Lies from Western Jutland”. The talk focuses on childhood stories of an upbringing in a small village in Western Jutland, and includes small iconic artefacts such as an old family photo illustrating the speaker’s points. Halfway through there is a short break, in which the female diaconal worker brings in a traditional Danish dish of tarteletter (pastry cases filled with creamed chicken and asparagus), coffee and biscuits to a table in the centre of the room. Tonight’s refreshments are a change from the usual coffee and cake, and the tarteletter are enthusiastically hailed by the pastor as particularly appropriate tonight because they are a traditional dish and associated with the countryside. After the break, the talk continues, with a focus on dialects. There is community singing of songs written by the speaker and readings of his own poems, written in dialect. At the end of the talk, people have the chance to buy his poems. No time is allotted to questions. The pastor concludes the evening with the Lord’s Prayer and an evening song, together with announcements about coming activities at church. The representation of anthropologies in the evening lecture is dominated by the talk, which constitutes the primary semantic content of the evening, supplemented by the songs selected and the pastor’s introduction. In addition to the semantic content, however, the participants and their interaction, as well the key agents and their role in the evening, signal understandings of anthropology.

6.1.1 Human Nature and Human Agency: Longing for the Old Days Though the evening lecture’s readings and songs are less directly descriptive of human nature than might be expected in, for instance, a Sunday service, they still indicate a specific understanding of what a human being is. The childhood stories and the appreciation of dialects in the talk create a feeling of nostalgia in the recollection of times gone by that is repeatedly referred to as a common ground, something that demarcates an in-group of imagined participants – older, growing up in the countryside – as different from younger generations. Implied is an understanding of the human being as deeply defined by origin and tradition. This is reinforced by the articulation of change as problematic – especially with respect to dialects – and by both the traditional tarteletter dish and

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the songs. In particular, the Kaj Munk song21 describes a longing for childhood landscapes and a feeling of alienation in new surroundings. The feeling of nostalgia is also reinforced by the pastor, who introduces the evening as “cosy” and “light-hearted”, with “a Jutlandic underplayed humour”. Thus to be enlightened or challenged is not the goal, and participants are not expected to reflect critically on the talk, something which becomes apparent in the absence of question time. The role of the participants is to sit back and enjoy themselves. Human agency is only to a very limited degree ascribed to the participants: human nature is primarily dependent upon upbringing and heritage, and the content of the evening is handed to the audience by pastor and speaker. Apart from listening and occasional laughter, the audience is not expected to contribute; in the same way, food and coffee are served to them in the break. The minimal expectation of agency among the participants has its counterpart in the clear demarcation of the agents who are conducting the evening. The primary agent is the pastor, who introduces and motivates the speaker and makes the concluding remarks. The pastor oversees both the series of evening lectures and other activities in the church, also acting as a cultural gatekeeper, placing the evening lecture in the context of the traditions and habits of the community. The other dominant agent – the speaker – is also male. He is dominant with respect to the contents of the specific evening, as it is given in the form of his talk. Furthermore, as the special guest of the evening he is carefully introduced at the centre of attention both before and after his talk. The two key agents together formulate the main objectives of the evening: the focus of the specific event, and the cultural markers that include the specific event in the general characteristics of the activity. They are accompanied by three minor agents, who assist primarily in practical matters. A male participant is asked to accompany the songs on the piano, in the absence of the organist; the female diaconal worker has the role of primary service person, bringing the tarteletter to the table in the break and giving practical information about food and coffee. Finally, another female assistant does the dishes. She is not visible in the room, but is present in the sense that participants are asked to clear their plates at the end of the break to allow her to do her job during the second half of the talk. Thus human agency is represented rather differently dependent on roles. The dominant agents are highly active and supply the objective and the framing of the lecture for the participants. The male pastor and speaker in particular stand out as strong agents, supported by mainly female assistants, so that the event depicts very traditional gender roles. The agency of the dominant agents is directed at the participants, who are largely represented as attentive and supportive as they

21 “Hvad var det dog der skete?” Højskolesangbogen no. 262

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listen and laugh at the jokes. Only in the break are they actively engaged, helping themselves to food at the buffet and socialising at the table. 6.1.2 Human Identity: The Neighbourhood Church is All of Us While human agency is unequally distributed, there appears to be a strong shared identity in the room. This could be characterised as “neighbourhood church identity”. In his opening talk, the pastor presupposes that every participant is familiar with the concept of the event and is interested in news about the church, and the participants appear to know one another from other church activities. The particular atmosphere at this church is also referred to in the conversations at table: one female participant expresses this by contrasting this evening with a series of lectures that she did not enjoy, given by an association for the elderly. She describes the special atmosphere here as something that works against the reserving of chairs at talks and get-togethers. She sees this as evidence that in this church there are no cliques and people can sit where they wish. In the interview, the pastor confirms her story, and recounts how on just one occasion, when a bad habit of reserving chairs had spread on a daytime lecture, he asked people not to reserve seats, because he wanted the church activities to be open and welcoming. This single intervention by him became a strong symbol of the church as open and welcoming, as described by the female participant. Though the evening lecture is set predominantly in a cultural framing, there is a strong neighbourhood church identity among the participants, but this is not translated into a common Christian identity. Christian identity is barely touched on in the talks, readings and songs, but is to some degree presupposed in the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Thus, it appears that the neighbourhood church identity is the dominant identity that cross-cuts both cultural and religious practices. The neighbourhood church identity does not presuppose individual religiosity, but rather interest and participation in church activities of all kinds. Whereas the neighbourhood church identity is depicted as an inclusive and open identity, strongly supported by the participants, the specific enactment of this identity in the evening lecture narrows its scope. The participants are a homogenous group and the openness and inclusiveness are thereby most likely to be felt if you yourself are similar to the group gathered in the room. The group identity of Danes over-60s in good health is narrowed further if the semantic and symbolic content of the talk and the songs are included, because a traditional countryside upbringing is so heavily praised that an inner-city upbringing, a distancing from rural life or problematic family relations would be difficult to integrate into the identity described. The identities represented in the evening lecture could be described as set and subset. The set identity is the open and inclusive neighbourhood church identity,

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which includes both cultural and religious activities and interests, and additionally seeks to welcome any new participant. The subset identity, however, is restricted with respect to age and ethnicity; and within this subset identity, the talk articulates an even more restricted subset, characterised by nostalgia and tradition. The differing anthropological aspects within the evening lecture to some degree reinforce one another, as the implicit views of human nature and the distinct evening lecture identity both emphasise age and tradition, and the divided agency ascription supplies the neighbourhood church identity with details that are not explicitly expressed. The neighbourhood church identity is not only open and inclusive, but is also characterised by a participant role that is primarily recipient.

6.2

A Sunday Service

This particular Sunday service took place on 22 February 2015, the first Sunday in Lent. The semantic content for this Sunday consists of three readings: Gen 3:1–19 on the Fall, 2 Cor 6:1–10 and Matt 4:1–11 on the Temptation in the desert.22 The first two readings are read from the altar; the reading from Matthew is read from the pulpit immediately before the sermon. The readings are supplemented by six hymns from the authorised hymnbook, and by prayers. There is no baptism on this Sunday. Together, the readings, hymns and prayers point to the fallen and still falling human being, and point to God for refuge and comfort. The church space is square with the entrance door at one corner and the altar at the diagonally opposite corner. Inside the sanctuary, chairs are placed in rows on both sides of the diagonal line from entrance door to altar that also constitutes the aisle. The rows of chairs face the altar, but also partly face each other diagonally. Behind the chairs to the right of the aisle, on a slightly raised platform, are the organ and the choir area. This platform is defined by a rail. In the far right corner is a door leading to the vestry. In front of the chairs to the left, set between the chairs and the altar, is the baptismal font. The altar is freestanding, surrounded by kneelers on all sides, so that the congregation can form a full circle when they gather at the Communion. Along the upper left side of the quadrant, close to the font, is also a small table where a candle can be lit or one of the prayer cards placed there read.

22 The Evangelical–Lutheran Church in Denmark has two reading lists that constitute obligatory readings at every Sunday service in a biannual circle. At an ordinary Sunday service, pastors are obliged to follow these readings, if not directly permitted to do otherwise by the bishop.

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Along both sides of the square’s upper triangle are large green indoor plants, planted directly in rectangular soil beds in the floor; both upper side walls are dominated by large, clear windows filling the room with natural light. The upper sides meet in the upper angle with the altar, and above the altar is a large wooden relief of the Tree of Life ornamented with Christian symbols. The relief is the dominant symbolic ornamentation in the sanctuary, supplemented only by a golden cross painted on the vertical side of the altar and facing the rows of chairs, and two golden candlesticks on the altar. Overall, the church space appears friendly and welcoming. The walls and the altar are white, the wooden ornamentation is light brown, lots of natural light illuminates the room, and the large green indoor plants contribute to a pleasant atmosphere. On this particular Sunday, 90 to 100 people are attending. They are mainly in their 60s and 70s, mainly of Danish origin, mainly appear to be in good health, and seem to be middle or lower middle class. The main group is however supplemented by additional types of participant. Some are persons with a disability, primarily walking-impaired; others appear vulnerable, both psychologically and financially; a few participants of non-Danish origin are taking part, as well as a few families with younger children. Everyone seems to be familiar with the room and the basic codes of conduct. The service follows the authorised liturgy for the Sunday service in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark, with its primary focus on readings and hymns.23 The pastor conducts the whole service from behind the altar, thus facing the congregation from the altar throughout, and most of the congregation joins in with the singing of the hymns and with the responses sung by the choir. Congregating for the service begins outside the sanctuary, and the pastor greets everybody as they come through the main entrance. All are welcomed with a handshake, and most people receive a few words of recognition or care. The friendly and open atmosphere continues in the arrival area between the main entrance and the church space. People socialise in a friendly and occasionally lively atmosphere as they leave their coats in the cloakroom; they appear to know each other. At the church entrance, people are greeted by the sexton and the verger, who hand out hymnbooks before people enter the sanctuary and find a seat. Though the church space accommodates 220 people, it feels well filled with 100 people; no one appears to sit alone. As the last person, the pastor enters down the aisle, but without any liturgy attached to his entrance. As he arrives at the altar, the service begins, with nine strokes of the church bell; the transition from informal welcome to liturgy appears unclear. 23 For the Danish liturgy in English see http://www.interchurch.dk/materialer/salmer-og-liturgier-paa-fremmedsprog/english/#c23495

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Compared to an evening lecture, the representation of anthropologies in a Sunday service is much more diverse and complex, among other things due to the rich symbolisation in architecture and decorations and to the richness of the readings, prayers and hymns that constitute the dominant semantic content. In the analyses, rather than delving into the complexities of the liturgy, hymns or biblical writings, we therefore focus on the dominant representations, which include several kinds of representation: semantic, structural, and bodily. 6.2.1 Human Nature and Agency: Created, Tempted, and Responsible In the Sunday service, human nature is understood and expressed in theological categories. As a part of the programme for Lent and with the specific theme of temptation, the biblical readings define human nature as a nature of temptation, and thereby point to the necessity of observing and controlling individual longings and needs. The hymns reply to this understanding in referring to God as refuge (Hymn 336, v.1, ll. 1–2) and support (Hymn 498, v.1, ll. 1–3). In the dialogue between the biblical texts and the hymns, the answer to human nature being subject to temptation is to lean on God in order to resist temptation; the sermon however points in another direction, as the pastor emphasises the diaconal and charitable obligation that follows from the relationship with God. The sermon begins as a retelling of the temptation in the desert. The Devil’s temptations of Jesus are read as examples of the temptation to lay claim to what belongs only to God. The temptation to acclaim a godly power is then translated into present-day examples: gambling addiction as the temptation to acquire infinite wealth, and the natural sciences as the temptation to reveal the secrets of life and thereby to reduce the understanding of life to a purely biological understanding. The sermon ends with a strong ethical appeal to reflect on what a good life really is and to respect life as created by God. The sermon thereby focuses on the human being as able to handle and to some degree control their temptations. Verse four of Hymn 698 points to the same kind of responsibility: “Cain, where is your Brother? Do you think that he does not demand you? Therefore give him the life that you yourself receive from me. See, he is your Brother”.24 Readings, hymns and sermon all describe human nature as subject to temptation, and thereby as vulnerable. Whereas the hymns predominantly handle the temptation by reference to infinite trust and dependence upon God, the sermon and other hymnal aspects emphasise the human being as responsible and to some degree able to handle the temptations. The semantic expressions of human 24 Translation of: “Kain, hvor er din bror? Mon du tror, at han ikke kræver dig? Derfor giv ham det liv, som du selv får af mig. Se, han er din bror!”

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nature as tempted, dependent on God, yet individually responsible are to a certain degree complemented or even contradicted by the architecture and ornamentation in the room. The dominance of light, of growing plants and the wooden relief of the Tree of Life all emphasise an understanding of human nature as created by God. In this way, both the original goodness of human nature and its temptation are juxtaposed, as space and semantics convey. The explicit characterisation of human nature as responsible and as capable of taking action means that an understanding of human agency as an ethical obligation dominates the Sunday service. The congregation gathers to celebrate the service, but they are urged when they leave to go out and show the importance of Christian belief in everyday actions. This very explicit encouragement and obligation to act on faith is complementary to the role ascribed to the participants during the service. With the full version of the authorised liturgy, a rather long sermon and an anthem sung by the choir after the sermon with a bare minimum of stage directions, the imagined participant in the Sunday service is represented as familiar with both liturgy and church. Participants are not guided, and no concessions are made in modifying the liturgy for those who might be less well acquainted with it. Furthermore, the direct expression of obligations in the sermon presupposes participants who accept and even appreciate Christian faith as an ethical demand. This expectation is pointed equally at younger and older and male and female members of the congregation, and at adults and children (though the children are offered a special children’s corner during the sermon). The whole congregation is included, with no differentiation with respect to gender or age. The familiarity with the liturgy and church etiquette includes acceptance of the rather passive role ascribed to the congregation in the liturgy. The role of the congregation is to stand and listen to the readings, sit and sing the hymns, join in with the choir’s responses to the chants, and take part in Communion, but the congregation and its members are not ascribed any representative role, whether before or during the service. Representative roles are performed by church employees. Only at the Communion are two congregational members included in the representative performance of the ritual. At the Communion, the pastor is assisted by an ordained member of the congregational council (male) wearing vestments, who, with the pastor, offers the Communion chalice; and also by the sexton and the (male) chairman of the congregational council, who offer the Communion plate. The assistants from the congregational council do not appear to be included as representatives of the congregation, but rather as demarcated set apart from the congregation by their special characteristics as either ordained or chairman. This is illustrated liturgically, as they approach the altar not from seats among the congregation, but from the vestry at the right-hand corner of the church space. Thus in the Sunday service, the roles of the congregation and the church employees are

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depicted as radically different. This distribution of roles also entails that all representative roles apart from the female sexton are performed by male agents. The Sunday service represents human agency in the form of two different, partly conflicting understandings of human agency. On the one hand, human agency is praised and emphasised as the ethical obligation to show the meaning of Christian faith in everyday life; on the other, the congregation is predominantly given a passive role in the liturgy. The service thus appears to distinguish between preaching and representative elements within church life (which are mainly “served” to the congregation) and life outside the church (in which the congregation is called upon to serve one another).

6.2.2 Human Identity: a Christian Community and a Neighbourhood Church The Sunday service strongly expresses a group identity, both as Christian community and as a neighbourhood church. The identity of Christian community is established through the good attendance of the congregation as well as their participation in the liturgy, but it is intensified at Communion. All participants in the Sunday service also participate in the Communion. When the pastor has introduced the Communion, all the participants rise and gather round the altar, and this very concrete intensification of bodily nearness also enhances the experience of community. People have a better view of one another, they kneel together, and they assist the less mobile members in getting to the altar. The neighbourhood church identity is established through the careful welcome and the friendly socialisation before the service, which seems to create a sense of community and togetherness even before the service begins. People know one another, and feel at home in the church buildings, and they gather to participate in the same event. The neighbourhood church identity is further reinforced in the lunch that follows the service, where the friendly socialising resumes. The group identity shifts almost imperceptibly from the neighbourhood church identity in the arrival area to the Christian community identity in the church space, and back to the neighbourhood church identity at lunch. These two identities are so subdued in their separation that the difference between the two seems to be of minimal importance both to participants and to church employees. Being part of the neighbourhood church is being part of a Christian community. Though both dominant identities are inclusive and undetermined with respect to age, ethnicity and gender, the concrete representation of these identities is predominantly in the 60s and above and of Danish origin. Though this representation is dominant, it is by no means exclusive, as ethnic minorities, the socially and psychologically marginalised, and younger families are also represented in the congregation, which allows for a fairly rich possibility of finding equals.

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Church Practices and Anthropologies

The above retelling and analysis of the two cases of church practice show that understandings of anthropology are indeed constructed and interpreted in church practices. Some of these constructions are intended; some are less so. All however contribute to forming and transforming Christian representations of the human being in the neighbourhood church. As you enter the church, these practices give the most direct access to the ecclesial depiction of anthropology – both intended and unintended. The evening lecture and the Sunday service have shared as well as divergent anthropological features which express the church’s basic understandings of the human being. With regard to agency, similarities are striking. The formation of identity and, especially, nature is more divergent in the two events. Anthropology in terms of views of human nature is embodied and formed in quite different ways in the two events. In the Sunday service, human nature is to a large extent described through the extensive use of rich and joyful symbols of creation and life in the church space. Human nature is created, received from God, embedded in and deeply connected with the rest of creation rather than standing apart from or above created reality. One expression of this is the way in which the church space is lined with trees rooted directly in soil, so that the community which has gathered is surrounded by them. The readings and sermon on this particular Sunday develop this understanding of human nature not only as created and given by God, but also as a kind of good which should not be tampered with through genetic, diagnostic or therapeutic practices. Human nature in its biological form, in concrete bodies, is valued as good or perfect in the sense that it is not to be interfered with or manipulated. Human will, on the other hand, is framed as weak and liable to temptation, one form of which is the desire to take control over and manipulate human nature as it is expressed in our bodily, biological being. Human spiritual nature, rather than human biological and bodily nature, is what should be morally improved and perfected, learning the discipline of self-restraint. In this, the locally enacted picture of human nature echoes Linda Woodhead’s claim, namely that modern theology and ethics seem to have overturned a traditional hierarchy in which the spiritual was seen as superior to the bodily, now valuing the bodily over the spiritual as defining of human nature, and valuing the way in which the bodily is understood as created and therefore as good.25 Human nature is enacted somewhat differently in the evening lecture. This event, set in a meeting room next to, but remarkably separate and different from the sanctuary, lacks the symbolic references to creation and to life. The verbal 25 Woodhead, Anthropology, 243–244.

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content of the evening speaks in various ways not to human nature as biological or bodily nature, but as defined through historical origin and background. Human life is defined – and is characterised as good – not by virtue of being embedded in a larger created nature through its bodily existence, but by being rooted in a given culture and tradition. Human nature is associated with its basis in the soil of tradition, culture and history, a soil which nurtures human life and gives it value, not with the life-giving soil shared with the rest of creation and nature. It is, in particular, life in the soil of rural 1950s Denmark that is affirmed as valuable, fulfilled and flourishing, held up as a model life. In other words, these two events enact different images of human nature. In one of these, human nature is affirmed as good by virtue of its biological and bodily nature as a created gift of God and bound to the rest of creation, a moral standard that human will, sinful and tempted to overreach itself, ought to respect and value. In the other, human nature is affirmed by virtue of its rootedness in culture, tradition and history: more specifically, its rootedness in the culture and traditions of rural Danish village life in earlier decades. This latter image – of human nature as rooted in culture and tradition – points to the construction of human identity in the two events. In both cases, identity construction is connected to three aspects of the ecclesial community that are closely linked to each other: neighbourhood ecclesial community, local community, and Christian community. Identity is primarily constructed as being part of the neighbourhood ecclesial community. A strong sense of being part of this particular church is expressed both in the evening lecture and in the social interaction before and after the Sunday service. This identity is neither determined with respect to residence within the parish borders (you can be part of the neighbourhood church identity through participation even if you live elsewhere), nor with respect to personal faith (you can be part of the neighbourhood church identity even if you only participate in the more cultural activities). But at the same time, the neighbourhood church identity cuts across both the local community identity and the Christian community identity. The evening lecture almost identifies local community and neighbourhood ecclesial community – and is thereby in accordance with the strategic plan that describes the church as open to everyone. In this sense, anybody in the local community is almost defined as part of the neighbourhood church. The Sunday service primarily focuses on neighbourhood ecclesial community and Christian community, in an almost invisible movement from informal arrival and greeting to liturgy and back to informal lunch. The Christian identity expressed in participation in the Sunday service is distinctly co–identified as belonging to this particular church. This is positively expressed in the warm welcome and recognition of newcomers, but is also found in the limited expression of Christianity as a cross-cultural and transforming identity. A Christian identity consists in participating in the

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neighbourhood church community and living a moral life. In comparison with the evening lecture, the Sunday service exhibits a more inclusive church identity as the dominant group of participants, over-60s of Danish heritage, is supplemented by smaller groups including young families, ethnic minorities, and marginalised individuals. The inclusive neighbourhood church identity is supported by church activities tailored to children and families, as well as marginalised and fragile individuals. Nevertheless, the dominant embodiment of neighbourhood church identity is over-60s heritage. This identity construction is in accordance with the strategic plan. This plan emphasises the church as defined by its relations to local culture as well as by its identity as a community of Christian faith, but the church here is not – at least not explicitly – represented as a transformative community of “the body of Christ”. In these events human nature appears as oriented towards and fulfilled in the local community, and supported and confirmed by the proclamation of the gospel, but hardly as something which is challenged or transformed by it. The dominant understanding of the neighbourhood church community is as a “social togetherness” in which people are invited to come together in a meaningful way. This “social togetherness” is modelled on the local community, and thereby to a high degree mirrors everyday groupings and relations with respect to ethnicity, age, and abilities. Likewise, the two events display quite distinctive patterns in the distribution of various types of agency among different groups. Ordinary church members are predominantly given receptive roles, as an audience and as being served, rather than as engaging actively in the activities. The receptive role is in strong contrast to the active representative roles: greeting, reading, praying. Representative roles appear as assigned to and performed by church employees or particular “highprofile” elected representatives or members. This means that agency in the sense of power and authority to form and define what this church is, appears to be available only to a limited number of people. Roughly put, the staff and especially the two pastors have the power and authority to define and enact what this church is; the members are primarily required to participate and show their support in so doing. In contrast to identity, the construction of agency in the two activities differs from the parish’s official self-understanding. The church is proud of its many volunteers – 200 are registered – and both pastor and diaconal worker emphasise that neither church lunches, children’s clubs nor diaconal activities could continue without the aid of those volunteers. In their self-understanding, this parish has rich and manifold opportunities for members’ agency in church activities. The above analysis of the two events does not deny that volunteers do indeed supply aid and assistance in church activities, although in these two particular activities this resides mainly in the lunch, cooked and served by volunteers. But

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participant agency is limited to supportive participation – predominantly as receptive, possibly as assisting. The encouragement to volunteer and contribute to church life is contradicted by the limitations of the agency that is enacted by the volunteers. There also appears to be a gender bias: it is the female employees that primarily handle practical matters, including introducing and serving food and handing out hymnbooks; the male staff and guests are the primary hosts, who welcome at the door, open the get-together, give the talk or sermon, and enact the liturgy. Unwittingly, the two church activities paint a rather biased distribution of church agency. In order to handle the most representative and authoritative roles, one must be a male, employed by the church or selected. In order to assist directly, one must be a church employee, either male or female. If not employed or selected by the church, one is welcome to assist in practical matters, but not to engage in any representative roles such as making welcoming remarks or giving liturgical readings.

7.

Conclusion

This case study of two selected activities in a neighbourhood church has enabled an in-depth understanding of the ways in which understandings of what the human being is are enacted and expressed – sometimes intentionally, sometimes by means of inhabited tradition. Kelsey’s differentiation of the concept of anthropology has provided the analysis with a fruitful, triple focus on the different aspects in anthropology. We have successfully avoided ascription of a singular and strict expression of anthropology to each activity, discerning rather the divergent – contradictory, similar, supplementary – understandings of anthropology represented in each activity. The analysis has taken several dimensions into account in its perspective – spatial, semantic, and performative – and points to the differing understandings of anthropology that one may encounter in the two activities. In these two church practices; human nature is enacted as determined both by nature and by cultural tradition, human agency as both active and passive, and human identity as both local and Christian. The case study thus reveals the multivalent ways in which a specific church enacts basic concepts of the Christian faith, such as anthropology. Some of these are predominantly determined by tradition and cultural habituation, such as the passive role ascribed to the congregation in the service of worship; others to a much higher degree reflect a conscious decision, such as the one-off request not to reserve seats, because cliques are seen as incompatible with being a Christian community.

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Whether conscious and intended or not, these enactments of church life are the immediate encounter between participants and church. They are thus the primary source of what a human being is, according to the church, for both regular and occasional congregational members. To examine how Christianity understands the human being, we must therefore expand our field of research to include the ways in which such understandings are enacted in churches today.

Bibliography Appiah, K.A., The Ethics of Identity, Princeton University Press 2005. Bernstein, R., Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis, University of Pennsylvania Press 1983. Flyvbjerg, B., Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research, Qualitative Inquiry 12 (2006) 219–245. Gadamer H.-G., Truth and Method, 2d rev. ed., Sheed and Ward 1989. Graham, E., Transforming Practice: Pastoral Theology in an Age of Uncertainty, Wipf and Stock Publ 1996. Hansen, O.H., Helga Jensen: Jyllands første kvindelige præst og Det skønsomme eftermæle, Forlaget Akka 2012. Kelsey, D., The Human Creature, in: J. Webster et al. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, Oxford University Press 2007, 121–139. Scharen, C./A.M. Vigen (eds.), Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics, Continuum 2011. Smith, T.A., Theories of Practice, in: B.J. Miller-McLemore (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, Wiley Blackwell 2014, 244–254. Tanner, K., Theological Reflection and Christian Practices, in: M. Volf/D.C. Bass (eds.), Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life, Wm. B. Eerdmans 2002, 228–244. Taylor, C., The Politics of Recognition, in: A. Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism. Examining the Politics of Recognition, Princeton University Press 1994, 25–74. Thomas, G., Doing Case Study: Abduction Not Induction, Phronesis not Theory, Qualitative Inquiry 16 (2010) 575–582. Wenger, E., Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge University Press 1998, 47. Woodhead, L. Apophatic Anthropology, in: R.K. Soulen/L. Woodhead (eds.), God and Human Dignity, W. B. Eerdmans 2006, 233–246.

Jakob Egeris Thorsen

Modern and Orthodox – the Transformation of Christianity in Atitlán and the Marginalization of Maya Traditionalism

1.

Introduction

Since the 1950s the Tz’utujil Maya town of Santiago Atitlán in highland Guatemala has experienced a thorough change in religious practice and belonging. Orthodox Christianity (Evangelical Pentecostalism and observant, orthodox Catholicism) is thriving, while the town’s traditional, syncretistic Maya-Catholic beliefs and rituals have been in decline.1 Both Protestants and Catholics accuse traditional religion of being demonic, and seek to marginalize it in public life in Atitlán. There is a disagreement about whether a modern Tz’utujil identity is best shaped by cultivating the distinctive traditional Atiteco-Maya costumbre (custom), or by wholeheartedly assuming an orthodox Christian worldview and anthropology. The purpose of this chapter is to give an historical account of the religious transformation that has occurred, to give an ethnographic description of the religious field in contemporary Santiago Atitlán, and to analyze how orthodox Christianity plays a crucial role in shaping an indigenous worldview and identity in a rapid process of modernization. For church-going Atitecos, being a practicing Christian (whether Catholic or Protestant) is associated with modernity and progress, whereas local costumbre is seen as backward and unmodern. This chapter seeks to understand why.2

1 I use the term “orthodox Christianity” as an inclusive and descriptive term that covers both diverse forms of Protestantism (Evangelical and (neo-)Pentecostal) and observant, orthodox Catholicism (both Catholic Action-oriented and Catholic Charismatic). “Orthodox” is here not used in a theological normative sense but as opposed to both syncretistic Maya Catholicism/ Traditionalism and folk Catholicism. 2 This chapter is based on three months of fieldwork in Santiago Atitlán (Guatemala) from Oct 15th 2014 to Jan 10th 2015. All informants are anonymized. A special thanks to Vincent J. Stanzione, Allan J. Christenson and Andrew Weeks for critical feedback.

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Conversions in Times of Turmoil

When I asked my landlord, Don Julio, why he, who had known and adored the martyred American Catholic priest Fr. Stanley Francis Rother († Jul 28 1981), had converted to an Evangelical Protestantism in the early 1980s, he answered frankly: I was convinced by the purity of the Gospel. Three friends and I decided to join the Christian [i. e. Evangelical] church together. I asked my father for permission and he said “yes” although he was a Catholic all his life. He could see the good fruits of the Evangelical Church.3

Don Julio and many others in Santiago who converted during the peak of the country’s civil war between the military and leftist guerillas in the early 1980s, grew up in a village, where costumbre played a significant role in both civic and religious life, and from their childhood they knew some of the stories and myths that belong to that tradition. They also experienced the flourishing of the Catholic parish when the Diocese of Oklahoma City adopted it, and from 1964 onwards, sent priests, sisters, doctors, and nurses with American funding and know-how.4 Nevertheless, they chose to leave both costumbre and parish behind, and join one of the Pentecostal or Evangelical congregations with rhythmic songs of praise, fiery preaching in the local Tz’utujil language, and vibrant prayers for healing. For Don Julio, joining the Evangelical church was a “walk-out” from both local traditions and “superstitions” (his word) and from the Catholic Church, where leaders were being targeted and persecuted by the military, suspected for being “subversive” because of their Human Rights engagement.5 Don Julio’s uncle, a catechist, was killed. Another uncle fled to the U.S. as a refugee. For a decade (1980–1990) the Guatemalan army had a camp at the outskirts of the town, and terror reigned: catechists, teachers, students, farmers, prominent followers of costumbre, and politically active persons were killed and tortured, and “disappeared”. Often, drunken soldiers randomly shot at Atitecos, and many women were raped. In a town of around 20,000 inhabitants, more than a thousand (or 5 %) were killed by the military.6 Many more were injured and tortured. For ten years, the streets of the town were empty from dusk until dawn, and in periods of severe persecution, many people would sleep in the churches out of fear of being anonymously pulled out of their houses at night; so too was Don Julio, who was seventeen when he converted to Protestantism, in 1981. That same year, he was detained by the police and a military interrogator in the municipal 3 4 5 6

Don Julio, age 50, Nov 7 2014. Early, Cultures, 162. Carlsen, War, 123. Cockrell, Pressure Forces; Carlsen, Report.

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buildings, accused of being a guerrillero. His friend alerted his family, classmates, and neighbors, and a big crowd gathered outside the building to prevent his being transferred to the military camp, where torture and death were almost certain. In this state of collective terror, U.S. Protestant missionaries and local churches offered a religion of radical change; a “walk-out” from both Traditionalism’s costumbre and Catholicism, and an otherworldly orientation that, it was hoped, would also offer some form of protection from persecution in this world. While there were also many Protestant victims of Guatemala’s civil war, membership in Protestant churches offered a form of protection, since they were perceived as explicitly apolitical and (more) loyal to the military governments.7 While fear of persecution was probably a contributing factor for many converts to Protestantism, it was never explicitly identified as the main reason, by those telling their conversion stories. The reasons people became evangélico were explained to me with more strictly religious terminology, as the “desire to know God personally” (and having done so through a conversion experience), the desire to give up vices (alcohol) and improve family relations, and the thirst for the “word of God”, that is, the bible, which they encountered in the Evangelical congregations.8 Nevertheless, two Protestant pastors told me that people sought refuge in their “Christian churches” in order to avoid persecution, because the Catholic Church “had preached socialism and politics instead of the Gospel” in the 1970s and ‘80s. When interviewing Protestants in Santiago Atitlán, it was striking how much they identified becoming Christian with “coming to know how things are”, that is, becoming enlightened, and how much the costumbre of the Traditionalists was associated with superstition, backwardness, illiteracy, paganism, and demon worship. Even more surprising was that this position was shared by many practizing Catholics, who used the same vocabulary as their Protestant kinsmen. The orthodox Catholics share the church building with the Traditionalists (who are baptized Catholics), and thus, costumbre is also practiced at the side altars of the parish church, and is intertwined with popular Catholic feasts throughout the year. While the Oklahoma priests maintained good relationships with the Traditionalists, conflicts have arisen since indigenous Guatemalan diocesan priests replaced the foreign mission in 2001.9 The new priests have been educated in the diocesan seminary in Sololá, where the Opus Dei movement is influential among the teachers.10 The new priests and the committed lay people in the church 7 Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism, 127–137. 8 I find my insights into the reason for conversion to Protestantism in accordance with that of other ethnographers; e. g., see Stanzione, Rituals, 250–253; Carlsen, War, 127–128; Early, Cultures, 239. 9 E. g. see Early, Cultures, 339; Prensa Libre on May 1 2012. 10 This was confirmed in an interview with the local bishop Mons. Gonzalo de Villa, Dec 19 2014.

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council began evangelization programs with a proactive missionary outreach to non-practicing Catholics, an increased focus on Catechism, and the organization of parishioners in lay groups. They have had a strong focus on doctrinal orthodoxy and morality. While conversion to Evangelical churches peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, orthodox Catholicism (including both the Catholic Action-oriented and Charismatics) experienced growth from the year 2000 until today. As we will see below, this has led to various conflicts between the church leaders and the cofradías. The cofradías are religious fraternities centered on the worship of one or various saints. They and their sites of worship, which shift between private homes on a yearly basis, are the backbone of costumbre. Traditionalists are marginalized with respect to both the religious life of the Catholic Church and the public sphere. The cofradia system in its traditional form has collapsed, and has been replaced by a new way of organizing costumbre. Though there now seems to be a stable group of Traditionalists, including a group of young people, they remain a minority in the town today.

3.

Religious Change in Highland Guatemala

The rise of Evangelical Protestantism and later orthodox Catholicism happened simultaneously, as the town underwent rapid and turbulent development with war and postwar violence, the breakdown of traditional civic authority, rapid population increase, economic growth, and greatly improved health and education infrastructures. More than ever, Santiago Atitlán is connected to the outside world (national and international) through business, migrant remittances, development projects, tourism, illegal drug trade, and information technology. After centuries of submission to the Spanish and Creole elite, and after decades of violent suppression by dictatorial state authorities, the indigenous Tz’utujiles (and the other Maya peoples of Guatemala) are lifting their heads and seeking to define their own future and identity.11 Considering the religious awakening that has swept throughout the Guatemalan highlands for the last four decades, Christianity seems to play a crucial role in shaping of identity and worldview of the Mayas.12 Among the three religious groups in Santiago Atitlán – Catholics, Protestants, and Traditionalists – there is a different understanding of the world and the place and the role of the Tz’utujil people therein; whether it should be strictly Christian or whether the distinctive local Tz’utujil tradition and cosmovisión should also form part of it. In a convincing article of 2009, C. James MacKenzie identifies the rise of and search for a purified Maya 11 E. g. see Arias, Word, chapter 8; Valle Escalante, Nationalisms; Goldín, Global. 12 Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism; MacKenzie, Judas; Samson, Re-enchanting.

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religion and spirituality in post-war Guatemala with the identity politics of the Maya movement within the framework of the modern, neo-liberal nation-state. The religious elite of the Maya movement distance themselves from the syncretism and messiness of Traditionalism’s costumbre, and seek to reinvent and re-establish a pure Maya religion that is free from all Christian elements.13 I intend to develop MacKenzie’s argument below, and thereby demonstrate how – in the case of Santiago Atitlán – it is useful to analyze the rise of Catholic and Protestant anti-syncretism, and search for doctrinal purity within the same framework of modernization processes. Although there is no current statistical data on religious affiliation in Santiago Atitlán on which to rely, one may assume around that about 50 percent are Catholics, 40 percent Protestants, and 10 percent unaffiliated or actively practicing Traditionalists. These numbers are based on Carlsen’s study from the 1990s, personal observation, and interviews with local pastors, priests, and observers.14 It must be acknowledged that numbers are approximate, since there are various examples of dual affiliation and rapid switching between the groups. That said, the general trend since the mid-twentieth century has been a decline in Traditionalism and a growth in orthodox Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism, which are the main competitors in the religious field today. As noted above, both seek to marginalize and demonize costumbre, either in part or entirely.

4.

The Religious History of Santiago Atitlán

At some time before the year 2020, or almost five hundred years after the conquest of the town of the Tz’utujil people on the southern shore of Lake Atitlán on Apr 18 1525, the population will reach the number it had prior to the arrival of the Spanish in Mesoamerica: around fifty thousand people.15 The epidemics of the Old World had travelled faster than Pedro Alvarado and his horsemen, and half of the Tz’utujil population had already succumbed to disease when the intruder and his indigenous allies set foot on Tz’utujil lands. In the decades following the conquest, the population was congregated in the new town of Santiago Atitlán, and Christianization began. Indigenous idols, religious artifacts, and sacrificial sites were destroyed. The area came under Franciscan jurisdiction, and permanent resident priests settled in 1552. In 1578 the friars opened a monastery that 13 MacKenzie, Judas. 14 Carlsen, War, 127. 15 See Orellana, Tz’utujil, chapter 10; “Guatemala: Estimaciones de la Población total por municipio. Período 2008–2020.” (xls). Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), cf. www.ine.cob.gt (accessed April 21st 2014).

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became the backbone of official religious life for several decades.16 The friars preached and catechized in the Tz’utujil language, taught the children of the nobility to write in Spanish, and established the religious cofradía sodalities to take care of the religious feasts, the saints, and the church. When the cacao production in the Tz’utujil lowlands declined and became less important to the Spaniards in the first decades of the 17th century, the Franciscans abandoned the monastery. For the next 350 years Santiago Atitlán would be almost permanently without a resident priest, and religious life would be taken care of by the cofradías.17 Despite the efforts of the missionaries, Tz’utujil religious practice and cosmology had not been eradicated, but had rather withdrawn to the private sphere, and gone “under cover” in the imagery and rituals of Spanish Catholicism. In the cofradías, this fusion of Maya and Catholic religious elements matured over centuries, giving birth to the syncretistic costumbre, where it is almost impossible to disentangle the indigenous Maya from the Catholic components. Over the years, visiting priests would again and again complain about the ritual practices of the Atitecos and their cofradías. In particular, the ritual dancing and drinking offended the clergy, who, over the centuries, constantly suspected the Tz’utujil people of worshipping other deities in the disguise of Catholic saints, and for conducting pagan rituals in the mountains and caves surrounding the town. They were most probably right, but little could be done to enforce orthodoxy. The priests depended on the cofradías, which maintained the church, upheld worship of the saints throughout the year, instructed the children, carried out funerals and – very importantly – collected funds for the occasional visiting priests.18 The most important characteristics of pre-Columbian Maya religion to survive the official religious change to Catholicism, often in an altered form, are the following: In traditional Maya religion there is a cyclical perception of time and the world. Life on earth unfolds in overlapping cycles of birth, life, death, regeneration, or rebirth. The life of a human, the agricultural and seasonal year, the female ovarian cycle, the phases of the moon, and the embryonic gestation all unfold in cycles. The corn must die in order for the corn to sprout, and the grandfather is replaced by his grandson, who will also carry his name.19 Two connected worlds, the visible and tangible (sur)face of the earth and the invisible and intangible internal sky-earth, constitute the cosmos wherein these cycles take place. The gods, who shaped the creatures of this world, made man (of corn) especially so that someone would worship and feed them, and keep track of time 16 17 18 19

Madigan, Santiago Atitlán. Carlsen, War, 95. Orellana, Tz’utujil, 210–215. Early, Maya, 62.

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and the feast calendar.20 The gods reside in the invisible world but have manifestations in the visible world, through which they are fed and worshipped. The gods themselves are emanations of the same cosmic force, and therefore the Maya religion cannot be described as strict polytheism. Some scholars suggest that “emanative pantheism” is a more fitting description.21 In pre-Columbian times the gods were kept in temples and caves, where sacrifices and offerings of incense, blood, fermented drink, and candles were made on their altars.22 The gods are very human: They depend on sacrifices and adoration in order to not perish, and even so, they must also follow a cycle of periodic death and rebirth.23 The visible and the invisible worlds are intimately connected, and caves and mountains are seen as especially privileged points of contact, since they create links between the surface and the hidden interior of the world. The famous Maya temples also have the form of a mountain with a cave on the top.24 The human soul stems from the invisible world and enters its body here on earth for the period of a human life, until it leaves it again in order to live on as a star in the sky, as an ancestor and/or as a grandchild.25 Ritual practice within this cosmos was and is about attempting to create balance and harmony through sacrifices to the gods, the spirits of the earth, wind and rain, and the ancestors (nawales), who guard the town. When a ritual is conducted properly, abundance and fertility will reign in Atitlán. Harmony is not easily attained, since both humans and gods fail; humans, by creating disorder and enmity in their community, the gods by succumbing to jealousy, lust, or other all-too-human impulses.26 Now, as in preColumbian times, there are both private and public sacrifices, and feasts and ceremonies may include fasting, ritual purifications, sexual abstinence, confession, processions of gods/saints, ritual drinking, and dancing. “Priests”, healers, and midwives seem to have been important figures before 1525 and remain so today.27

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Early, Maya, 63–65; Tedlock, Popol Vuh, 67–69. Early, Maya, 84. Orellana, Tz’utujil, 96. Christenson, Art, 157. Early, Maya, 64; Bassie-Sweet, Mouth, 10. Early, Maya, 67. Early, Maya, 68; Orellana, Tz’utujil, 106. Orellana, Tz’utujil, 99; Early, Maya, 75; Carlsen, War, 81.

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The Cofradía System Historically and Today

As mentioned above, for centuries after the conquest the cofradías were the religious backbone of Santiago Atitlán. In their original European form they are sodalities for specific saints. The cofradías were introduced early in the colonial period, and adopted by the indigenous leaders, who turned them into a relatively autonomous religious space, over which the institutional church and its priests had only limited control. On the surface, the confraternities with all the known saints looked Catholic, but at the same time provided a disguise for indigenous religion. Maya gods have a chameleon-like nature, and a saintly figure may simultaneously be a pre-Columbian deity and a Catholic saint. Additionally, in the cofradías ancient holy stones and bundles were kept and hidden. Indigenous leaders used the cofradías to barter with the official church, and as barriers against domination. Repeated attempts by the church to sanction and control the cofradías throughout Guatemala resulted in revolts and in refusals by the indigenous to receive the sacraments.28 The Maya of Atitlán adopted the system to an extent that they understood the cofradías as a manifestation of the mythical “world tree”, which, according to Robert Carlsen, “demonstrates the local Mayas’ continued capacity to integrate intrusive elements into Atiteco culture, converting them to a form acceptable to the local indigenous population”.29 Cofradías were not just religious societies, but also the basis of local civil authority. Because of population decline in the 18th century, the former system of indigenous local government gradually collapsed and fused with the cofradías system, which, from the late 18th century on, also became the political organization of the town.30 Until the introduction of a municipal town administration by the Guatemalan government in the 1920s, the cofradías elected the mayor (cabecera) and his helpers. Even after the introduction of a modern town government with an elected mayor (alcalde), the town has retained its old system in parallel. Today, the cabecera has no formal power, but he still is the keeper of la caja real (the royal chest), which holds, among other things, the titles to the communally owned lands, given to the Tz’utujil people by the Spanish King, and he is supposedly heard by the elected mayor on all important decisions in town. Needless to say, in past the cofradía system was the social setting to make a name for oneself and gain influence in town. The town’s ten cofradías were and are hierarchical, and people would work themselves up through the ranks, thereby showing their reliability and engagement in the common good. Many of the positions in this civil religious system were and are both expensive and very 28 Carlsen, War, 94–95; MacLeod, Spanish Central America, 328. 29 Carlsen, War, 104. 30 Carlsen, War, 103.

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time-consuming, since the holder must pay many expenses for the rituals and fiestas, and use many weeks for his religious duties.31 With the rise of Protestantism and orthodox Catholicism in the second half of the twentieth century, and with the general social changes in town, the cofradías are no longer the ladder to fame and influence. This may be attained in the churches and outside the religious realm, today. Many of the more costly traditions have disappeared, and most of the ten cofradías in town can fill only half of the traditional positions, and the different membership positions no longer rotate on an annual basis.32 The most (in)famous indigenous deity in Santiago Atitlán is the three-foot-tall trunk-in-bundles icon/idol known as “Maximón” ,“San Simón”, and (locally) “Rilaj Mam” (the grandfather). With his Stetson hats, stone-faced wooden mask, and a cigar permanently between his stiff lips, he is a draw for tourists, a much sought-after healer and helper for many locals, and a thorn in the side of most churchgoing Christians. The Maximón figure probably has pre-Columbian origins, but found his current form in the 19th century, when he was “bound” by the ancestors and/or by a legendary cultural hero named Francisco Sojuel.33 Maximón is the god of merchants, travelers on the road, and he takes care of the town and the wives while the men are traveling to the coast or over the mountains. He is the “grandfather” of the town, and he can help whoever asks him, if they are willing to give him an offering of candles, liquor, and money. He is a trickster, who will do both good and evil, and who answers conflict with conflict. He can appear in ever-changing forms, male and female, human and animal. He makes sure that your wife does not lie with another while you are working in the plantations of the coastal lowlands; he makes sure that you get a good price for your coffee at the market in Guatemala City, and he will help your cousin across the Río Grande, when he enters Texas as an illegal immigrant. Maximón incorporates many aspects in his person: He is the grandfather-grandchild, Saint Simon, Judas the Traitor, and a virgin-whore, who can create both sexual balance and chaos.34 He traditionally plays a key role in the redemptive drama of Holy Week, where he is hung as Judas Iscariot on Wednesday, but reappears in the burial procession on Good Friday.35 Here, he is said to transfer some of his masculine energy to Jesus, thereby enabling him to be resurrected on Easter Sunday. Whereas Jesus, whose spilled blood causes the rainy season to begin, is linked with rain, sprouting corn, and fertility, Maximón is the Lord of the dry 31 32 33 34 35

E. g. see Stanzione, Rituals, 167. Stanzione, Rituals, 250–254. Stanzione, Rituals, 44–45. Carlsen, War, 25. The English film-maker Andrew Weeks and the American professor Allen J. Christenson have made the film “Balancing the Cosmos” (2009) about the contemporary religious practices of the cofradías and their Holy Week rituals.

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season, with its dust, travels, games, and infertile sexuality (cf. grandfathergrandchild, virgin-whore).36 There are around 25 Maximón shrines throughout the Guatemalan highlands, but people in Atitlán consider the Maximón of Cofradía Santa Cruz in Santiago to be the original. For decades, the fact that Maximón is not a Catholic saint (although sometimes associated with Saint Simon), that he feeds on cigars and liquor, and that he may be approached for both for noble and immoral favors, has led both Protestants and orthodox Catholics to regard him as a demonic figure, if not Satan himself. Visiting Catholic priests in first half of the 20th century tried to destroy Maximón, most famously in 1950, when his head was destroyed and his mask stolen by a certain Father Recinos and his local allies. “The Maximón Scandals” reached the upper echelons of the Republic and the cult of Maximón was afforded protection by presidential intervention in 1951, and the stolen mask was eventually brought back from a museum in France in 1979.37

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Atiteco Protestantism

The first Atitecos to convert to Protestantism were Pedro Mendoza and his family, who came into contact with North American missionaries in the town of Panajachel on the opposite side of the lake in the 1920s. Mendoza was ostracized for breaking with tradition, but kept his newfound faith despite the hostility of his fellow townsmen. In 1935, the first mission, the Evangelical Misión Centroamericana, was opened in Santiago Atitlán, and small numbers of Atitecos followed Mendoza and converted.38 Other churches followed (e. g. Baptist and Pentecostal), and the Misión Centromericana split several times. Protestant church growth accelerated during the violent period from the late 1970s to the mid–1990s, when, according to numbers from Carlsen, this rose from 10 to 35 percent of the population.39 As noted above, today the estimated number of Protestants is around 40 percent. The Centroamericana church still exists under the name of Alfa y Omega, but today most churches have a Pentecostal or neoPentecostal style of worship. The largest church is the neo-Pentecostal megachurch, Iglesia de Jesucristo Palabra Miel, which is led by Gaspár Sapalú. The church is now located an impressive new building on the lakeshore. According to people in Atitlán, it has around five thousand members, and up to two thousand participate in the Sunday services. Sapalú is a native of the town, and the church 36 37 38 39

See Tarn/Pretchel, Scandals, 282; Stanzione, Rituals, 276. Carlsen, War, 125; Tarn/Pretchel, Scandals, 22.146. Carlsen, War, 123–124. Carlsen, War, 127.

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in Atitlán is the mother church to hundreds of Palabra Miel churches throughout Latin America, the USA, and in four European countries. Sapalú used to be a prominent leader of the ELIM church in Guatemala, but around 2005 he formed his own church, where he is acknowledged as an “apostle” and undisputed leader. Apart from the large Protestant churches such as Palabra Miel, Alfa y Omega, El Shaddai, and the Fraternidad Cristiana, there are many smaller churches throughout the town. In a 2014 mapping, I listed twenty-six active Protestant churches in central Santiago, but the number is probably close to forty, if the new settlements are included. Protestantism has a very visible and audible presence in town, and there seems to be active competition among the various Protestant denominations. In informal conversations and during interviews, Protestants often made the connection between Protestantism and progress, order, morality, and being civilized. Traditionalism, and to some extent, Catholicism, were associated with backwardness, superstition, and being morally flawed. Becoming “Christian” (i. e. Evangelical) was described by informants as a sort of enlightenment, where the “purity of the Gospel” made it clear to them in what the “proper worship” of God consisted, while they were simultaneously liberated from what they perceived as old superstitions, myths, ritualism, and fear of spirits. There was quite some disagreement whether the old stories – for example, about la Siguanaba, a mythological, long-haired woman who appears at night to lure men into her monstrous snares, the aj’xeya, the drowned who come up from the lake during windy nights to designate the next drowning victim, or the men who have been cursed and transformed into animals – were actually true or mere myths. The pastors I interviewed regarded them as superstitious myths, whereas some lay Protestants, such as my landlord, Don Julio, insisted that all these things had happened in the past, but that the evil creatures and forces had gradually lost their power, since more and more people had turned to Christ. A middle-aged member of the Alfa y Omega church described the shift from Traditionalism to Evangelical Christianity in the following way: This used to be a pagan town where people worshipped idols and believed in all kinds of stuff; for example, that you had to drink the dirty water after the (ritual) washing of the saints’ clothes and a lot of other stuff like that. […] Christianity is a total rupture with all that; it has to be. It is a very personal thing inside of you: It gives you an interior peace to know that whatever happens, he ( Jesus) is with you. […] I really don’t understand all the anthropologists who come here and promote costumbre as though they want us to return to paganism … and all the European organizations that support it … for them it’s only culture, not a spiritual reality.40

40 Juan, age approximately 50, Nov 5 2014.

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Among many Atiteco Protestants there was also the widespread assumption that conversion to Christianity would lead to increased prosperity and improved welfare, both individually and collectively. One aspect of the assumed improvement in welfare that informants emphasized were the obvious benefits of adopting a sober lifestyle and a Weberian Protestant work ethic, which would save the household from the expense of liquor and the familiar inconveniences of excessive drinking. Both Protestant pastors and lay people claimed that there had been a decrease in alcohol abuse and public scandal during the recent decades, due to the growth of Protestantism, but that much work still remained to be done. Another aspect was the widespread adherence to a central aspect of prosperity theology, namely, that the God-fearing and pious man, family, or village will receive divine blessings in the form of abundant harvests, numerous offspring, and good fortune in business endeavors. Not all Protestants (at all!) were wealthy, and not all expected to become so. There was huge variation in the degree of adherence to (and defiance of) the theology of prosperity, but even among those who consciously rejected it, the idea prevailed that God will provide for his people. When I asked Don Julio why he thought people had abandoned costumbre for the Evangelical faith, he reasoned as follows: People found that worshipping an idol [Maximón] did not give them either a spiritual or a material benefit [Sp.: provecho]. […] You know, before this used to be a very poor town with houses with dirt floors and thatched roofs. Now there are multi-storey houses with molded roofs [Sp.: terraza].41

Among Evangelicals there is a common perception that those who remain Traditionalists do so out of ignorance, and that the cofradía leaders uphold tradition for personal pecuniary benefit. A pastor from one of the Baptist churches explained to me how he felt sorry for them: Many of the costumbristas are poor and do not have any education. They don’t care whether or not their kids study. Many are drunk all day, I feel so sorry for them. Have you seen one of the streets behind the Catholic Church, where Maximón is, there are bars [Sp.: cantinas] and people are lying drunk in the street. Many die … there you see what it [i. e. costumbre] produces. But some of the leaders are well off, and those who run the cantinas make a lot of money.42

Naturally, my Traditionalist informants would disagree with this way of perceiving things, but the Protestant denunciation of costumbre is shared by many of the orthodox Roman Catholics in Santiago Atitlán.

41 Don Julio, age 50, Nov 7 2014. 42 Baptist pastor, Dec 3 2014.

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Evangelizing Catholics

As noted above, a change in the pastoral strategy of the Catholic Church has taken place since the parish passed from North American to local hands in 2001. A shifting group of young priests from a Maya background has attended to the parish for the last fifteen years, and has implemented a series of evangelization efforts. The parish council and the priests have made great efforts to heighten catechetical education, raise participation in the liturgical celebrations and the sacraments, and tie people to one of the hundreds of prayer groups that meet in the parish buildings or one of the four Catholic neighborhood centers. Compared to the pastoral and theological line of the North American priests, the new approach is more conservative and focused on doctrinal orthodoxy, and less on social and communal development projects.43 This has led to various confrontations with the ten cofradías, especially concerning the use of the church building and plaza, and the role of the brotherhoods in the public celebrations of Easter and other holidays and fiestas. While the North American priests were permissive with respect to cofradías rituals inside and outside the church, the new priests and successive church councils have attempted to exclude the Traditionalists from church and fiestas. Traditionalists are still allowed to decorate their side altars, change the saints’ clothes, burn candles and chant prayers, while what is perceived as boisterous singing, and especially all types of ritual drinking, have been banned inside the church and on the plaza in front of the church. A guard has even been employed to enforce the new public order. The public appearance of Maximón in the Good Friday processions has also been restricted to a minimum. We shall return to recent Holy Week controversies in a moment, but let us first pay closer attention to how the new evangelization efforts are visible in the décor of the church, and in some aspects of worship in the church. After some years of raising money, a new altar decoration, a brand new pulpit/lectern, and presider’s chair were inaugurated in the beginning of 2014. Every part shines with imitation gold leaf, and the Christian motifs are very marked: Jesus, a dove, a chalice, wheat, grapes and so on. The prefabricated pieces were ordered from a Catholic décor shop in Guatemala City. The style is kitsch, and neither motifs nor the way in which they have been molded has any affinity to the traditional style of craftsmanship of the Guatemalan Maya. The new pieces stand out in stark contrast to their surroundings in the church. There are seven side altars along the side walls of the church, and three tall altarpieces along the back wall. The main altar – now shiny and golden – is freestanding. The altarpieces at the back and six of the side 43 John D. Early, a liberation-oriented ex-Jesuit, who worked in Atitlán himself, derogatively calls this a turn to “Tridentine Catholicism”, see Early, Cultures, 96.136.138.452.

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altars are taken care of by the cofradías, who keep them clean, and every month change the clothes in which the wooden colonial figures of saints are dressed. The central altarpiece has nine colonial saints and is a very interesting piece, since it was creatively restored and reconstructed by Nicolás Chávez, in the period from 1976 to 1981. Many motifs from Maya mythology and scenes from the cofradía life (including Maximón) are included in the altarpiece, whereby the de facto syncretism of traditional Catholicism in Atitlán found artistic expression and interpretation inside the church. In a similar fashion, he carved a pulpit and a presider’s chair, where the latter depicted the Maya maize god, symbol of fertility and abundance. The altarpiece has been thoroughly studied by Allen J. Christenson, who uses the altar as the starting point for an ethnographic analysis of how Maya religion and cosmology unfolded under the then-existing conditions of civil war and postwar violence.44 The pulpit and the chair have now been replaced by the abovementioned ne installations, and the central altarpiece sits in darkness, since none of the lamps and spotlights are directed toward it. In the Marian months of May and October, a temporary Mary arrangement blocks the sight of it, as does a Nativity scene in December, an Assumption arrangement in August, and a Saint James installation in July. The altarpiece is unpopular among the orthodox Catholics in the parish council, and one of the former young priests attempted to have it replaced by something else. The Maya symbolism, the references to costumbre, and in particular, the depiction of Maximón, are the sources of the opposition to the altarpiece. Nevertheless, the replacement of the altar was prevented, due to vehement protests of Traditionalists and common Catholics, who, among other things, appealed to the bishop. Since the figures of saints in the church are attached to the cofradías, and hence outside the control of the parish council, and since more conflicts between the two parties have arisen in the last decade, the council has bought its own kitsch figures of saints, most importantly, the buried Jesus (used in the Good Friday procession), a nativity set with infant Jesus (for Advent and Christmas), and a Saint James figure for the town’s patron fiesta on Jul 25. In contrast to the colonial figures, these are not clothed and cared for, and most of them are in storage for most of the year, which many of my cofradía informants used as an example of how unprofessional the parish council was in the saints-handling business, and as proof of the “fakeness” of these “plastic saints.” One of the new saints that is always present in the one side altar that is in the control of the council is Saint Michael the Archangel. The new priests have introduced the pre-Vatican II custom of praying to this saint for protection in the spiritual battle against the forces of the devil after each mass.45 44 Christenson, Art. 45 Pope Leo XIII made the prayer to Saint Michael an obligatory prayer for the celebrant after mass in 1884. The short version used in Atitlán was obligatory from the beginning of the 20th

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The central altar piece with Santiago (Saint James) in the middle. It was restored in the 1970s and traditional Maya motifs were included in the frame. Photo by Allen Christenson.

One cannot help but wonder whether the supposedly evil spirits attached to local costumbre, and hence to the parish and the church, have led the new Opus-Deiinspired priests to reintroduce this prayer of exorcism. Another orthodox initiative has been the establishment and consecration of a chapel for perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the church comcentury until 1964. In Santiago Atitlán the whole congregation takes part in the prayer after mass. In the English translation: “Blessed Michael, Archangel,/defend us in the hour of conflict;/be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil./ May God restrain him, we humbly pray;/and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,/by the power of God, thrust, down to hell, Satan,/and with him the other wicked spirits/who wander through the world for the ruin of souls./Amen.”

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The new golden pulpit and the new main altar of the parish church. Photo by Jakob E. Thorsen.

pound. Since autumn 2013 there has been 24 hours of perpetual adoration of the consecrated host exposed in a monstrance. It is quite remarkable that it is possible to maintain an uninterrupted prayer roster in a town with a Catholic population no greater than twenty-five thousand. The priests and the church council are proud of the initiative, and take it as a sign that a Catholic awakening is taking place. Conflicts between the parish council and the cofradías culminated during Holy Week in 2012, when disagreement about the various traditional Holy Week rituals (inside and outside the church), and especially about the processions, led to mutual blockings of church and procession passage, to mutual lawsuits for damaging the national patrimony (some of the Traditionalists had repainted the buried Christ figure) and for the violation of cultural rights (the parish council had prevented the cofradías from carrying out their indigenous religious traditions, a right secured by presidential decree and inscribed in national law). It is a complicated story, the bottom line of which concerns authority and power: Who is in charge of the rituals and of the church? Is it the parish council, which formally represents the majority of Atiteco Catholics, or the cofradías, which have been in charge for centuries, and have only recently lost their status as representatives of the town’s religious and civic society? The situation was perceived as scandalous by the population. In the lengthy aftermath, there were

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The local deity Maximón, also known as Rilaj Mam (The Grandfather) or San Simón. Photo by Allen Christenson.

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The new saint figure of Michael Archangel. Photo by Jakob E. Thorsen.

various reconciliation meetings between the two parties and the bishop of Sololá. Moreover, the confrontational parish priest was moved to another town in the diocese. An unintended, de facto compromise is that two parallel processions of the buried Jesus go out of the church on Good Friday. Before that, two parallel masses are celebrated: a traditional one inside the church, where the Traditionalists plant the cross in the navel of the world and afterwards take down the crucified Christ who has sacrificed his blood, and honor his dead body with incense and aerosol deodorant spray before he is carried in an extremely slow procession, which, over more than twelve hours, passes only half a mile around the central streets of the town center. The other mass is celebrated outside, on the plaza, for the thousands who would never fit inside the church. This is the parish council mass with fiery preaching, songs of praise, and a second procession, a

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procession that also runs all night, but at a faster pace, and that may pass through all the neighborhoods of the town. Though this solution has temporarily calmed hostilities, it is nevertheless perceived as an impasse by most townspeople, whether orthodox or inclined to costumbre. It is a manifestation of a division that by all standards of traditional Maya spirituality is a sign of disharmony and imbalance that potentially threatens both peace and prosperity in the town. Even Protestants lamented the division within the Catholic community as being “a bad thing”, and some added that it was bad for tourism if the picturesque processions did not go out on time, or if conflicts where exposed in public. Despite lamenting the Holy Week scandals, all my Protestants informants noted that things were changing in Santiago’s Catholic Church, and they approved of the development: Some stated that the Catholic Church had become “more Evangelical”, and that the Catholics were now preaching more in “accordance with the Gospel”. Some wondered whether the Catholic Church had already given up on the “idolatry” (i. e. veneration of the saints), or whether it was only the Catholic Charismatic group that had done so. Evangelicals also respectfully acknowledged that dissociation between the parish church and the cofradías has taken place, and that the new indigenous priests were “strong” preachers who promoted a bible-based faith and were enforcing the same strict moral standards on the Catholic flock that used to be a hallmark of the Evangelical faith – that is, no smoking, drinking, or promiscuity. As we saw above, conflicts between orthodox Catholicism and Traditionalism are not new. They arose the moment the lay movement Catholic Action arrived in Santiago Atitlán in the early 1940s and challenged the practices of the cofradías. In 1966, the number of Traditionalists still outnumbered the group of orthodox Catholics and Protestants combined.46 Over almost forty years, the Oklahoma mission tried to maintain good relations between the parish and the cofradías, while raising a new generation of Catholics less attached to costumbre. From the second half of the twentieth century up until today, a dramatic shift has taken place in the Catholic Church, where orthodox Catholicism has become – by far – the most dominant form of Catholicism, and where Traditionalism has been marginalized. This development has coincided with the overall modernization of the town, and in the last section I will discuss how the rise of orthodox Christianity (both Protestant and Catholic) is related to this process of modernization.

46 Carlsen, War, 127.

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Religion and Modernity among the Maya Peoples

In his article, “Judas off the Noose: Sacerdotes Mayas, Costumbristas, and the Politics of Purity in the Tradition of San Simón in Guatemala”, C. James MacKenzie addresses, among other things, how Maya priests of the pan-Maya movement attack the Catholic and colonial elements of syncretistic costumbre in their efforts to (re)create a pure Maya spirituality and religion. As noted in the introduction above, MacKenzie links this quest for purity the introduction of a modern worldview and modern state policies of identity and religion. Though Maya “purists” are a rarity in Santiago Atitlán, and this chapter is about the relationship between church-going Christians and syncretistic costumbre traditionalists, MacKenzie’s compelling analysis and argument provides us with a meaningful framework for understanding how the link between religious identity formation and the quest for a modern Maya self-awareness is linked here as well. Applying the theories of modernity and modernization of Bruce Knauft, Peter Pels, Bruno Latour, and Charles Turner, MacKenzie identifies three characteristics of the cultural dimensions of modernity.47 The first is a “consciousness of radical temporal rupture”, which is experienced as a caesural change of epoch.48 The second is a change in practice and conduct due to the adoption of a clear teleological worldview, in which the attainment of freedom and the domestication of fate are the goals. This leads to a radical separation of the human sphere from the nonhuman.49 The third effect of modernity is the emphasis on (and recognition of) “human subjectivity”, which, in MacKenzie’s understanding, emphasizes both the universality of humanity, and the particularity and equality of the many unique cultures.50 MacKenzie describes how the reformulation of Maya Spirituality responds to each of these three characteristics: First, in ideological terms sacerdotes mayas [purist Maya priests] seek to both heal the rupture caused by modernity’s caesural need through connection with a reconstituted ancient Maya practice, and create a new and liberating break through the rejection of centuries of […] exposure to Christianity […]. Second, in practical terms, a modern telos of progress and freedom is seen in various works of purification and translation […], and especially the assertion of authority to engage in this work. Finally, in subjective terms, and with regard to universalism, sacerdotes mayas represent their religion as a unique cultural achievement which can be placed alongside other religious expressions of humanity, part of a multicultural world inhabited by a single otherwise undifferentiated human species.51 47 48 49 50 51

Knauft, Modern, 14; MacKenzie, Judas, 370–371 Pels, Magic, 30; Turner, Modernity, 9. Latour, Modern, 10–11. Pels, Magic, 31; MacKenzie, Judas, 371. MacKenzie, Judas, 371.

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Orthodox Christianity as a Modernizing Religion

When analyzing the Evangelical and orthodox Catholic conceptions of the ideal modern religious identity and worldview among the Tz’utujil Maya, I argue that these orthodox Christians’ way of understanding themselves vis-à-vis local traditionalism is formed by the same characteristics that MacKenzie described for the new purist pan-Maya religious movement, above. First, the growth of Christianity coincides with a radical temporal rupture with the mid–20th century onwards, where Santiago Atitlán became an effectively integrated part of the Guatemalan nation state, and where social change, population growth, education, civil war, and changed work and income patterns constitute a caesural change of epoch. The religious cosmos of syncretistic costumbre was ahistorical, chaotic-nebulous and cyclical-mythological. Religion was based on oral tradition and custom. Such an enchanted worldview would increasingly be at odds with the life and logic of a rapidly modernizing Guatemala. In order to heal the wounds of modernity’s caesura and the individual and social wounds of modern civil war, the Tz’utujil people of Atitlán have not followed the few (but influential) Mayas described by MacKenzie, who have reinvented pure Maya religious practice and philosophy, but have instead opted for “pure” orthodox Christianity in churches and prayer groups. These are not experienced as foreign intrusions of either Spanish-Ladino or US-American origin, since today, churches are locally led and have become vital spaces for Tz’utujil language. A Christian and a modern worldview are not contrary to one another, but largely overlap, the latter being a late, secularized version of the former, which leads us to the MacKenzie’s next characteristic of modernity. Modernity’s second feature was described as the process of change in practice and conduct due to the adoption of a clear teleological worldview, where attainment of freedom and the domestication of fate are the goals. The conversion to orthodox Christianity may be understood as an important component of that process. In an oversimplified way, Traditionalism may be said to be cyclical in its understanding of time, and collective in its social outlook, whereas Christianity is linear, and has a more individualistic character. Costumbre was intimately linked to the cosmos and community of the people in Atitlán: the navel of the world. It was an enchanted worldview with fatalistic characteristics. Atiteco Protestants and Catholics refer to a broader religious framework, and they clearly use their religion as a tool for managing life in a modern, commercial, indigenous town, where wages are low, business competition is fierce, and the temptations of vices are strong. In this environment of petty capitalism with no public social security, the diligence and sobriety of the breadwinner is essential. The churches teach individual responsibility, where every man is responsible for himself and his family, and where God blesses the wise and hardworking man. The churches

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cultivate the ideal of the close-knit nuclear family, and the themes of how to raise children, maintain spousal respect and affection, and responsibly manage the household were frequent in sermons. Both Charles Taylor and David Martin have described how Pentecostalism (and I should include orthodox, revivalist Catholicism) function as a disciplining force in Latin America, in the transition from a traditional subsistence economy to a monetary economy of wage labor, cash crop farming, and business.52 When Europe became industrialized, its former peasants were torn from the universe of village and church in which they had been organically embedded. They became urbanized and proletarized, and the church had to fight retain and mobilize its members. Charles Taylor describes this as the “age of mobilization”, when, for the first time, the church had to thoroughly organize its members. This was done to both retain the influence of the church in a society where strong forces were tending in a secular direction, and to equip the faithful to survive as individuals and families in the alienating urban society, where social bonds and norms were far weaker, and where there were enticing temptations. It seems reasonable to identify the churching of the population that happened in Atitlán in the second half of the twentieth century as something similar to Taylor’s “age of mobilization”. As we saw above, many of the first converts to Protestantism in Atitlán came from lower income families, who could not have advanced to high positions within the cofradía system. They were economically vulnerable, and had to rely on day labor and small trade. In an analysis of household income and occupations conducted around 1993, Robert Carlsen could still identify how Traditionalists tended to own more land and work as farmers, whereas Protestants where overrepresented in the group of merchants.53 Another aspect of this second trend in modernity was identified by MacKenzie as the separation of the human from the non-human sphere. Traditionalism is very linked to a place, Santiago Atitlán, with its volcanoes, mountains, caves, holy stones, and figures. Atiteco mythology centers on the land, the lake, and animals. There is no absolute boundary between the human zone and the surroundings. Humans can morph into animals, and the gods can manifest themselves as animals and natural phenomena. The surface of the earth, the visible, is intimately linked to the invisible; Jesus is the sun and the moon is his sister. Charles Taylor has described the understanding of personhood in the popular religious worldview of medieval Europe as “the porous self”, which is open to forces of all kinds from the outside, clearly evident in the fear of spirit possession. In such a worldview there is no clear-cut boundary between the subject and its surroundings, be they natural, social, or spiritual. Part of the modernization process is a gradual “buffering” of the self, where the delimited 52 Taylor, Age, 493. 552; Martin, Pentecostalism, 14–15. 41. 53 Carlsen, Report, 132–133.

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person emerges more and more vis-à-vis her surroundings, and where the conscious human is separated from other individuals, non-human animals, and matter in general.54 In the cofradías, the figures of saints are not just symbolic representations of the saints they represent; they are the actual colonial figures, which are venerated, clothed, and danced around. In the scandals of Holy Week described above, this became obvious. When it was not possible to resolve the disputes between the church council and cofradías regarding the Holy Week rituals, the orthodox Catholics of the former simply bought new figures of saints, which they bore along new procession routes. The new saints are packed away when they are not in use. They represent the holy, but are not themselves holy. Meanwhile, the Traditionalists believe it to be vitally important to give each of the old saints figures the proper treatment. Likewise, the procession route that takes in the four cardinal points of the old city center is of vital importance, and could never be changed without the ritual losing its meaning. Therefore, the Traditionalists laugh at the new “plastic” saints of the church council, while orthodox Catholics accuse the cofradías of idolatry. An objection to the idea that the turn to orthodox Christianity is part of a modernization movement would be that Protestants, and orthodox Catholics, too, hold an enchanted worldview, with angels and demons, with prayers for exorcism and for abundance. Nevertheless, in my view there is a considerable difference between the character of enchantment in the worldviews of Traditionalism and of orthodox Christianity: In the former, the world as such is attributed divinity and holiness (emanative pantheism), whereas in the second, there is a boundary between the created, factual, world (matter in time and space) and the transcendent spiritual realm. While angels and demons may operate in this world, there is no holiness ascribed to the earth, the sky, nature, or the planets as such. In that sense, Christianity represents enlightenment: This world (saeculum) is totally distinct from the transcendent realm of God, and therefore there are no deities in time and space, nor is the factual world holy in itself. In antiquity, this worldview led the Romans to accuse the first Christians of atheism, and it is, in the eyes of many, a precondition for the later development of the secular, “enlightened” worldview of the Western world. With the basic Judeo-Christian distinction between the immanent and the transcendent in place, modernity’s gradual closing of the “transcendent window” is a last side development.55 Tz’utujil Mayas, who exchange Traditionalism for orthodox Christianity because to them it seems to be both the most reasonable framework for understanding the modern world and maneuvering within it, are not stuck within a pre-modern enchanted worldview, but are basically positioned within the same epistemological paradigm as most of the 54 Taylor, Age, 35–37.239.285. 55 E. g., see Ratzinger, Introduction, 57; Taylor, Age, 638.

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secular-humanist anthropologists, who lament the disappearance of the culturally unique costumbre. The above leads us to MacKenzie’s third and last characteristic of modernity, namely the emphasis on, and the recognition of human subjectivity, both on an individual level and on the level of the cultural group. In late modernity, there is an understanding of humanity as being universal, and of the many cultures as being particular and equal expressions of the same human family. MacKenzie studies the Maya priests who reinvent a purist Maya spirituality, and convincingly argues that they present themselves within this multiculturalist framework.56 Churchgoing Protestants and Catholics do something similar, but instead of referring to universal humanism and a particular Maya religious tradition, the Tz’utujil Christians refer to a supposedly universal Christian cosmovisión and each particular culture’s equal place therein. In the many sermons I listened to in the Catholic Church in Santiago Atitlán during my fieldwork in 2014, the theme of being and becoming a “Christian-Catholic” people occurred several times.57 During the mass for the feast of Saint Jude and Saint Simon on Oct 28, when the Traditionalists also celebrate Maximón, the eagerly preaching assistant priest addressed the relationship between Christianity and culture. After having described how Saint Jude Thaddeus was not Judas Iscariot, and how Saint Simon had absolutely nothing to do with “that trunk [palo], that servant of the demon” (i. e. Maximón), he addressed the missionary journeys of the two saints to Mesopotamia. These journeys, along with the journeys of the other apostles, showed that the Catholic faith was for all, no matter their race, language, or to which people (etnia) one belonged. According to the priest the ongoing task of the Church is “to bring all the different peoples from the shadows [tinieblas] to the truth.” Two days before, in a Sunday mass sermon, the same priest had asked critically whether this was a converted people, whether visitors would think that this was a Christian town and people; whether they would notice the chapel of perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, or the houses of witchcraft and idolatry. He asked, again and again: “What is the testimony that we give as a people?” Among Protestants, similar ideas were expressed. They too would describe themselves as a people coming gradually out of the shadows of uncertainty and superstition, when becoming (Evangelical) Christian. Both Protestants and Catholics would downplay the local aspect, as we saw in the descriptions of shifts in church art above, and refer to a broader Christian framework, a global Catholic or Protestant world brought to their homes via cable television, radio, and internet, and the national ecclesial networks and organizations in which the dif56 MacKenzie, Judas, 371. 57 The sermons were sometimes in Spanish with Tz’utujil comments interpolated, and vice versa. I can refer only to the sermons in Spanish, since my Tz’utujil is very limited.

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ferent churches are involved. They took pride in the Tz’utujil being a very religious (i. e. Christian) people, who were now giving testimony among other peoples in Guatemala and abroad. Based on the analysis of religious change in Atitlán as an expression of MacKenzie’s three characteristics of modernization processes, I find it valid to conclude that the draw of orthodox Christianity may be seen as an adaptation to modernity; not merely a survival strategy, but also – as I have demonstrated – because an orthodox Christian concept of the world and the role of man therein simply fits the surrounding modern world better than the Traditionalist cosmology. One may correctly argue that there may be a de facto overlap of worldviews and practices in Traditionalism and (especially) in indigenous Pentecostalism; that there is a continuum of the worldviews, rather than a dichotomy, and that many of the Traditionalist practices, such as religious vows, sacrifices/offerings, and shamanic healing have been incorporated into the Pentecostal universe, where they take the form of conversion, tithing, and faith healing.58 It is apparent that the rise of orthodox Christianity is not just a break with past worldviews and practices and that it also takes place in continuity with them. I could give good ethnographic examples of these. Nevertheless, I would more strongly emphasize the break. Costumbre lacks all the above-mentioned characteristics of modernity (telos, dogmatic clarity, an omnipotent God and potent man), and although some Maya converts may initially “do religion” the Traditionalist way – a quiet, laborious attempt to create balance within a messy and nebulous world – within an Evangelical church, their children will do it differently.59 Orthodox Christianity, as it is practiced in Atitlán, wipes out the knowledge of and familiarity with all central elements of the costumbre, and among the broader population, the result of the churching of Atitlán has been the marginalization of Tradition and the gradual fall into oblivion of a whole mythological universe.

10.

Traditionalist Responses and Theological Unease

The orthodox Christian break with local costumbre and the orientation toward a national and global arena is resulting in the loss of local traditions, a loss of mythological knowledge, and a detachment from the specific geographic surroundings. Until recently, Santiago Atitlán was overwhelmingly illiterate, and local myths and stories were passed on through oral traditions. Much is fading

58 E. g., see Garrard-Burnett/Navarro, Protestantism(s), 111; and Early, Cultures, 397. 59 MacKenzie, Judas, 372.

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into oblivion, and we will increasingly rely on the thorough work of ethnographers and religious scholars who documented and analyzed many aspects of costumbre in the second half of the twentieth century, and continue to do so today. Nevertheless, there are also counter-movements – from within and without– that seek to strengthen costumbre and to curb the loss of tradition. The transformation of costumbre in the first decades of the 21st century is complex, and would require a detailed exposition, which falls outside the scope of this chapter. Therefore, the following are general observations. From within the community, there is a small, but relatively stable group of active Traditionalists, including young people, who maintain the cofradías and uphold many of the costumbres throughout the liturgical year, which draw hundreds of people to the celebrations on their saints’ feast days. Among Traditionalists there is disagreement about their relationship with the Catholic Church. Many understand costumbre as part of their Catholic tradition; they blame the new priests for being ignorant zealots, and want to seek reconciliation with the parish and keep costumbre attached to Church and Catholicism as it has always been. A smaller group within the Traditionalist field understands costumbre as being different from Catholicism and as a Maya religious alternative to foreignimposed Christianity. This group, which inclines to the positions of MacKenzie’s Maya priests, takes a more hostile and confrontational stance toward the parish council, and emphazises that the parish church belongs to the community, and not to the Catholic Church. They are right from a legal perspective, but who represents the community, the cofradías and the traditional mayor (cabecera), the parish council, or the politically elected city council and mayor? There is also support for the cofradías from without. Culturally sensitive Guatemalans and foreigners, and resident and visiting scholars, take a genuine interest in the religious traditions of the town, and lament the gradual loss of lived costumbre. Foreigners have become an important contributing factor in keeping costumbre alive and the cofradías financially afloat. Groups of tourists are brought to see the Maximón and leave economic offerings in exchange for pictures, and resident foreigners participate in the saints’ feasts at the different cofradía houses. During the last forty years, a few resident foreigners have occasionally even taken various official positions in the institutions of costumbre. To most external observers, the current exchange of the unique ritual and mythological world of costumbre for either conservative Catholicism or the kitschy, loud, and uniform revivalist Pentecostal temples that are indistinguishable from the hundred thousand similar churches throughout the Americas, cannot seem to be anything less than a tragic loss of human cultural and religious diversity. Needless to say, neither Pentecostalism nor the orthodox Catholicism of the catechists in the church council is held in high esteem by most foreigners

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and scholars drawn to Atitlán.60 As a Catholic theologian with a genuine interest in the relationship between faith and cultures, one cannot help but feel divided. One the one hand, one must respect and appreciate the testimony of Tz’utujil Christians, who describe their coming to believe in Jesus Christ as a thorough personal and communal liberation from both a mythological universe that caused fear, and a religious system that they perceived to be hierarchical, socially limiting, and outdated. They should be treated as fellow Christians, not as custodians of a religious tradition in which they have ceased to believe. On the other hand, one must also refuse the radical, one-sided rejection of a whole mythological universe, a tradition of inherited wisdom, and the ejection of both into oblivion. There must be a middle way. This is not the place for prescriptive, systematic theological mapping of possible middle ways, but I would like to mention the Danish 19th century theologian N. F.S. Grundtvig and his thorough treatment of Nordic mythology as a possible road. For Grundtvig, Nordic mythology encapsulated the essence of Nordic life wisdom, and could be perceived as a (non-canonical and non-liturgical) “Nordic Old Testament”. In this view, intimate knowledge of Nordic mythology and life wisdom are an important part of the existential education of any Nordic Christian.61 To apply Grundtvig’s approach to the 21st century highland Maya in Guatemala may seem as an odd endeavor, but to me, it seems worth the attempt, and entirely in accord with official Catholic theology of inculturation. Whether such “Old Norse solutions” would fit modern Tz’utujil gusto is another question.

Bibliography Arias, A., Taking Their Word: Literature and the Signs of Central America, University of Minnesota Press 2007. Auken, S., Sagas Spejl: Mytologi, historie og kristendom hos N. F.S. Grundtvig, Gyldendal 2005. Bassie-Sweet, K., From the Mouth of the Dark Cave, University of Oklahoma Press 1996. Carlsen, R.S., Report from Santiago, Report on Guatemala 11 (4), Guatemala News and information Bureau (1990) 4–5. Carlsen, R.S., The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town, University of Texas Press 1997. Christenson, A.J., Art and Society in a Highland Maya Community, University of Texas Press 2001. Cockrell, C., Popular Pressure Forces Army Out of Santiago, Report on Guatemala 11 (5), Guatemala News and Information Bureau (1991) 4–13. 60 E. g. see Early, Cultures; Stanzione, Rituals; Carlsen, War; Christenson, Art. 61 E. g. see Auken, Spejl.

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Early, J.D., The Maya and Catholicism: An Encounter of Worldviews, University Press of Florida 2006. Early, J.D., Maya and Catholic Cultures in Crisis, University Press of Florida 2012 Garrard-Burnett, V., Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem, University of Texas Press 1998. Garrard-Burnett, V./C.G. Navarro, Protestantism(s) and Mayan Worldviews in Chiapas and Guatemala in the Context of Civil Violence, Social Sciences and Missions 20 (2007) 99–116. Goldín, L.R., Global Maya: Work and Ideology in Rural Guatemala, University of Arizona Press 2009. Knauft, B.M., Critically Modern: An Introduction, in: B.M. Knauft (ed.), Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies, Indiana University Press 2002, 1–54. Latour, B., We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard University Press 1993. MacLeod, M.J., Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720, University of California Press 1973. MacKenzie, J.C., Judas Off the Noose: Sacerdotes Mayas, Costumbristas, and the Politics of Purity in the Tradition of San Simón in Guatemala, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, vol. 14 no. 2 (2009) 355–381. Madigan, D.G., Santiago Atitlán: A Socioeconomic and Demographic History, PhD Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh 1976. Martin, D., Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish, Blackwell 2002. Orellana, S.L., The Tz’utujil Mayas: Continuity and Change, 1250–1630, University of Oklahoma Press 1986. Pels, P., Introduction: Magic and Modernity, in: B. Meyer/P. Pels (eds.), Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment, Stanford University Press 2003, 1–38. Prensa Libre 2012, May 1st: “Disputa entre iglesia católica y cofradías por templo” by Ángel Julajuj. Ratzinger, J., Introduction to Christianity, Ignatius Press 2004 [1968]. Samson, C.M., Re-enchanting the World: Maya Protestantism in Highland Guatemala, The University of Alabama Press 2007. Stanzione, V.J., Rituals of Sacrifice, University of New Mexico Press 2003. Tarn, N./M. Pretchel, Scandals in the House of Birds, Marsilio Publishers 1997. Taylor, C., A Secular Age, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2007. Tedlock, D., Popol Vuh, Rev.ed., Touchstone 1996. Turner, C., Modernity and Politics in the Work of Max Weber, Routledge 1992. Valle Escalante, E., Maya Nationalisms and Postcolonial Challenges in Guatemala: Coloniality, Modernity and Identity Politics, School for Advanced Research Press 2009. Weeks, A./A. Christenson, Balancing the Cosmos – Living Traditions in a Modern Maya City (DVD), 2009.

Editors, List of Contributors and Abstracts

Editors Eve-Marie Becker, dr. theol. habil., is Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Aarhus University, Denmark. Jan Dietrich, Dr. theol., is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Aarhus University, Denmark. Bo Kristian Holm, PhD, is Associate Professor of Dogmatics and leader of the research network Reformation Theology and Confessional Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark.

List of Contributors and Abstracts Svend Andersen, dr. theol., is Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at Aarhus University. Among his recent publications is the monograph Macht aus Liebe. Zur Rekonstruktion einer lutherischen politischen Ethik (De Gruyter 2010) and the article “Kierkegaard’s Demand, transformed by Løgstrup”, in H. Fink & R. Stern (eds.): What is Ethically Demanded? Essays on K.E. Løgstrup: The Ethical Demand (Notre Dame University Press 2016). In his article “The Golden Rule: An Anthropological Universal?” he contributes to answering the question whether it makes sense defend the idea of a universal ethical and legal norm in the shape of the rule “Do to others what you expect them to do to you!” After having presented the role of the rule in Luther the article touches upon its secularization in modernity. And finally two modern interpretations by Paul Ricoeur and Knud E. Løgstrup are discussed.

Eve-Marie Becker, dr. theol. habil., is Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Aarhus University. Among her recent publications to the field of New Testament

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anthropology is the monograph: Der Begriff der Demut bei Paulus (Mohr Siebeck 2015), as well as the article: “Mimetische Ethik im Philipperbrief: Zu Form und Funktion paulinischer exempla”, in: U. Volp et al. (eds.), Metapher – Narratio – Mimesis – Doxologie: Begründungsformen frühchristlicher und antiker Ethik (Mohr Siebeck 2016 [WUNT 356]), 219–234. In her article: “The Anxiety (Sorge) of the Human Self: Paul’s notion of μέριμνα”, she argues that Pauline anthropology should be understood against a backdrop that does more than view Paul as a religious person in 1st century CE society or continue (post-) modern debates about the origins of religious identity. Instead, Pauline anthropology should recognize Paul as a literary author who reflects on his own role as founder and organizer of communitarian life as much as the living-conditions of his addressees; and, as such, it should acknowledge Paul’s involvement in widespread ancient intellectual discourses about anthropology and ethics. Becker suggests that, viewed in this context, the patterns of anxiety and care (μέριμνα, Sorge) are highly significant.

David Bugge, PhD, is Associate Professor of Theology at Aarhus University. Various publications on ethics, philosophy of religion, and literature & theology (i.a. K.E. Løgstrup, Martin A. Hansen, Karen Blixen, Milan Kundera and Karl Ove Knausgård). Bringing in views from the ‘uniqueness debate’ and other Holocaust literature, David Bugge’s article, “Unlike Hitler, God is not Human: On Karl Ove Knausgård’s Anthropology and Theology”, deals with the Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgård’s anthropology, unmasking human preference for dividing into we and they (‘the formula of everything human’), as well as with the theology contained in Knausgård’s work, insisting on God’s non-differential grace, cancelling all distinctions.

Line Søgaard Christensen, cand. theol., is PhD Fellow in Hebrew Bible at Aarhus University. Among her recent publications to the field of Hebrew Bible and anthropology is the article: “Cultural Evolution in the Hebrew Bible: Animal Sacrifices, Blood Sprinkling, Sacred Texts, and Public Readings”, in: Ithamar Gruenwald et al. (eds.), Journal of the World Union of Jewish Studies 50 (2015), 15–35. The idea of anthropotechnics (cf. Peter Sloterdijk) is present in some of the Deuteronomistic texts within the Hebrew Bible. The scribes who wrote these texts were aware of the necessity of leading a practicing life by following a self-shaping and repeated exercise system in order to assist their memory and persist as a special group separated from all foreign nations. The way Israel chose to keep out all foreign elements from their group – or enclave (cf. Mary Douglas) – can be seen as a specific sort of renouncing, namely, national-ethnic renouncer phenomenon. The exercise mentality as well as the renouncer mentality developed in the axial age (cf. Robert Bellah), and an individual who belongs to any kind of exercise system could be called homo repetitivus. Elite practitioners could function as teachers who assisted the public by giving guidance and instruction – and some were even sent on teaching missions in order to influence a

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broader audience. The scribes of these Deuteronomistic texts want the Israelites to remind each other and themselves of the importance of consistent practice within their specific mono-Yahwistic exercise system.

Ole Davidsen, dr. theol., is Associate Professor Emeritus of New Testament exegesis at Aarhus University. His main interest is narrative semiotics and its relevance for the sociocultural anthropological study of the New Testament’s story world. Recent publications are the articles “The Lord, the Lamb, and the Lover: The Gospel of John as a Mixture of Spiritualized Narrative Genres”, in K.B. Larsen (ed.), The Gospel of John as Genre Mosaic (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2015 [SANt 3]), 125–156; and “Religion: An Aspiration to Surmount Dualistic Reality?” in: J. Dochhorn et al. (eds.), Das Böse, der Teufel und Dämonen – Evil, the Devil, and Demons (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2016 [WUNT 412]), 243– 257. In his article: “Blended Reciprocation: Matt 5:38–42 in Narrative Perspective”, he argues that Jesus’ preaching of unconventional ethics is founded on solid anthropological experience. Taking and injuring are bad and are a force for death, since they hamper or destroy life and life possibilities, while giving and serving are good and are a force for life, because they promote and protect life and life possibilities. As victim of some morally illegitimate taking or injuring one should neither hide in passivity nor repay such evil with evil, but reciprocate evil with good by giving or serving. Such a positive kind of anarchical resistance is a call for nonviolent social revolution and based on an idea of anthropological inviolability comparable to Human Right.

Jan Dietrich, Dr. theol., is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Aarhus University. Among his publications to the field of Old Testament anthropology is the monograph: Der Tod von eigener Hand: Studien zum Suizid im Alten Testament, Alten Ägypten und Alten Orient (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2016 [forthcoming]), as well as the article: “Vom Umgang mit Rache im Alten Testament: Rechtliche, moralische und religiöse Grenzziehungen”, in: T. Moos/S. Engert (eds.), Vom Umgang mit Schuld. Eine multidisziplinäre Annäherung (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag 2016), 39–50. In his article, Jan Dietrich argues that the Old Testament texts consciously present man as a homo mundanus who is involved in the world with his relationality and sociality. Body terms, mutual social identity and collective identity reveal him as a creature that is always in relation with others and who gains his identity from the structures of the relationships in which he is involved. Man’s behaviour – and the attitudes on which this behaviour is based – aims primarily at maintaining honour and avoiding shame, as well as achieving steadfastness of character and acting in a community-promoting manner. These aspects of social anthropology are central for the anthropology of the Old Testament and for the understanding of various Old Testament texts. They can hardly be overestimated.

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René Falkenberg, PhD, is Associate Professor of New Testament at Aarhus University. Currently he works with biblical reception in Manichaeism and is coauthoring a reference work, Biblia Manichaica I–III (Turnhout: Brepols 2017–18), together with Nils Arne Pedersen, John Møller Larsen, and Claudia Leurini. In his article: “The Old and New Human Being: A Pauline Concept in Manichaean Texts”, he elaborates the long-standing insight that Manichaeans adopted the notion of an ‘old human being’ as opposed to a ‘new human being’ from the Pauline letters. Nevertheless, such interdependence between Corpus Paulinum and the Manichaean texts has hitherto been postulated rather than demonstrated. Thus, the article aims to analyse, in detail, which specific mythologoumena the Manichaeans took over from the Pauline letters and how these anthropological notions were transformed in the Manichaean sources.

Kirstine Helboe Johansen, PhD, is Associate Professor of Practical Theology at Aarhus University. Her main field of research is ritual studies and the liturgies of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark with a special interest in the transformation of ritual practices in contemporary Christianity. Ulla Schmidt, dr. theol., is Professor MSO (with special responsibilities) of Practical Theology at Aarhus University. Until 2014 senior researcher at KIFO centre for church research, Oslo, and adjunct professor of theological ethics, Oslo University. She has researched and published in the areas of religion and morality, religion and public life, state-church-relations and church organisation and reforms, most recently the edited volume Church reform and leadership of change (Pickwick Publ. 2016). Their article investigates anthropology as an example of enacted theology, namely in the life and practices of a local neighbourhood parish in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark. Starting from the basic premise that theological theory is intertwined with and embodied in, rather than separate from ecclesial practices, it studies in depth two specific church events. Relying on David Kelsey’s conceptualisation of anthropology as judgements about respectively human nature, agency and identity, it argues that ecclesial anthropology is indeed embodied in the plural, as anthropologies. Human nature is enacted as created and valuable as biological nature in a Sunday church service, but as defined and valuable through its origin in the soil of tradition, history and culture in an evening lecture. Similar results are reached with regard to human identity. Theoretically, the investigation thereby also challenges widespread assumptions that “church service”-congregation embodies particularistic human identities and the cultural church community the more inclusive identities.

Bernhard Lang, Dr. theol. habil., Dr. h.c., was Professor of Old Testament at the University of Paderborn, Germany, and is an honorary professor at Aarhus University. His publications include Heaven: A History (London: Yale University Press, 2nd ed. 2001; co-authored with Colleen McDannell); Joseph in Egypt: A Cultural Icon from Grotius to Goethe (London: Yale University Press 2009); Jesus

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der Hund. Leben und Lehre eines jüdischen Kynikers (Munich: Beck 2010; Danish translation by Hans J. Lundager Jensen: Jesus – en jødisk kynikers liv og lære, Højbjerg: Forlaget Univers 2012). His article “New Light on the Levites: The Biblical Group that Invented Belief in Life after Death in Heaven” deals with a seemingly marginal group of religious specialists in ancient Israel. A close look at the scattered sources about the Levites, especially at some of the psalms attributable to them, leads to new insight into the contribution they made to biblical thought. It was among the Levites, Lang argues, that belief in life after death in heaven first appeared as an esoteric teaching. It promised the Levites, and none else, a post-mortem existence near God. The majority of ancient Israelites believed that in the afterlife they would be united with their ancestors who lived in Sheol, the netherworld below the surface of the earth, far away from the heavenly realm inhabited by God.

Peter Lodberg, PhD, dr. theol., is Professor of Global Christianity and Ecumenical Theology at Aarhus University. Among his recent publications are the monograph: Tro (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press 2015), as well as the articles: “Grace and Reconciliation as Gift” (St. Paul: Dialog), 241–248 and “ReligionState-Society in Denmark” (Berlin: Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft, 15. Jahrgang, Heft 1 und 2), 121–134. In his article “The Neo-Liberal Human Being in the Competitive State – A Sociotheological Perspective”, his aim is to analyse and discuss the importance of Lutheran theology in Denmark and its notion of anthropology in relation to the history and development of the Danish Welfare State. It is also the goal to discuss the role of theological anthropology in light of the change from welfare to competition state. This change is understood as a change of anthropology from human being as a rational human being to a neo-liberal human being.

Maria Louise Odgaard Møller, PhD, is Pastor in the Danish National EvangelicalLutheran Church and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Department of Theology, Aarhus University. Møller’s current research project is entitled K.E. Løgstrup’s Ethics in a Multicultural, Globalised World. Her publications include the monograph The True Human Being: The Picture of Jesus in K.E. Løgstrup’s Thought (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming) and the article “Finding the true Jesus? Reception and Transformation of the Jesus Figure in the Homiletics and Sermons of Løgstrup”, in: Kirsten Nielsen (ed.), Receptions and Transformations of the Bible: Religion and Normativity, vol. 2 (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press 2009), 106–118. In her article: “What is Human in Human Beings? Løgstrup meets Moral Anthropology”, she discusses two core questions in theology, philosophy, and anthropology, namely “What is a human being?” and “What is ethics?” by placing the Danish twentieth-century philosopher and theologian K.E. Løgstrup’s reflections on human beings, human life, and ethics in the context of the large and still expanding field of moral anthropology. Since the turn of the millennium, this field has developed as a fruitful

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discussion between anthropologists and philosophers, as well as an ongoing debate within the field of anthropology itself. In unfolding two of the many variations of moral anthropology, Møller shows how, in moral anthropology, we find a very positive view both of human beings – their nature and existential ways of reflecting and acting ethically – and of ethics. When Løgstrup’s ontological ethics, in which the ethical demand and the sovereign expressions of life form the base, encounters moral anthropology, the immediate positive understanding of “human” and “ethics” is problematized because of his basic distinction between life itself, which is good, and human beings, who are wicked. “Human” is to be understood as something negative; hence “ethics” is to be understood as substitute actions for what we should have done spontaneously.

Jacob P.B. Mortensen, PhD, is Assistant Professor of New Testament exegesis at Aarhus University. He has two publications in press within the field of New Testament anthropology: A “Radical” Rereading of Romans (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming [SANt]), as well as the article: “Do we Uphold the Law for the “Weak” – Rom 3:31 and 14:1–15:6?” in: R. Falkenberg et al. (eds.), Nordic Interpretations of the New Testament: Challenging Texts and Perspectives (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming [SANt 5]). In his article: “Anthropology or Ethnic Stereotyping in Paul?” he argues that Pauline scholars may have been too quick in ascribing “universal” or “anthropological” validity to Paul’s description of “man” in his letter to the Romans. Paul perceives himself (exclusively) to be “apostle to the gentiles” (Rom 11:13), so he may not reflect any “universal” or “anthropological” perception of “humankind”. Instead, he may merely reflect Jewish ethnic stereotypes of gentiles, since these gentiles were the ones he addressed in his gospel. If scholars wish to continue to discuss anthropology in Paul, Mortensen argues that a separate anthropology of Jews and gentiles should be worked out.

Johannes Nissen is Associate Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Practical Theology at Aarhus University. He has published a number of books and articles, especially on hermeneutics, the Bible and ethics, New Testament and mission, Christian religious education and diaconia. His recent publications include New Testament and Mission: Historical and Hermeneutical Perspectives (Peter Lang 1999, 5th. ed. 2016), Bibel og etik. Konkrete og principielle problemstillinger (Aarhus Universitetsforlag 2003), Diakoni og menneskesyn (Aros Forlag 2008, 3rd. ed. 2015), The Gospel of John and the Religious Quest: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Pickwick Publications 2013), and Medvandring. Indføring i teologisk religionspædagogik (Religionspædagogisk Forlag 2014). This article suggests that recent developments of the welfare society affect the way in which we understand human beings. The principle of the classical welfare society – ‘something for nothing’ – has been replaced by a new principle – ‘something for something’. Many people connect this idea of reciprocity to the principle of the Golden

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Rule. However, others argue that the rule should not be reduced to a simple idea of reciprocity. In the Bible, the rule corresponds to a behaviour characteristic of the heavenly Father who grants in advance and grants contrary to what we would expect. While the perception of human beings in modern society is dominated by a functionalist view, diaconia emphasizes that people are valued simply for what they are. Their dignity comes from God, and not from their achievements. Diaconia has a prophetic character, which is proved above all in its commitment to those living at the periphery. The New Testament offers a vision of the community as the body of Christ, with mutual solidarity among its members. The weak and the poor are not shamed and relegated to the margins, but encouraged to play a full part in the life of the community. The Church is fundamentally an inclusive community marked by hospitality. However, it is argued that not the Church alone, but society as a whole, should become an inclusive community of hospitality. The challenge of diaconia is to create communities where human dignity is the highest priority.

Ulrik Becker Nissen, PhD, dr. theol., is Associate Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at Department of Theology at Aarhus University. Among his recent publications are Between Universality and Specificity. A Study of Christian Social Ethics with Particular Emphasis on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. dr. theol. dissertation (higher doctoral degree; Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University 2014), as well as the article: “Can Only Theology Save Medicine? Bonhoefferian Ruminations”, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 34/2 (2014) 159–175. In his article: “What is a Human Body? Moving Towards a Responsive Body”, he offers an overview of different understandings of what a body is. As such, it can be read as an overview of what we mean, when we speak of a “human body”. However, the article also goes a step further; in the last section, a responsive understanding of the human body is outlined. This is understood as responsiveness in three ways: viz an embodied self that responds to natural life, other human beings and, ultimately, to God.

Troels Nørager, dr. theol., is Associate Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at Aarhus University. Among his recent publications is the monograph: Taking Leave of Abraham: An Essay on Religion and Democracy (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press 2008), as well as the article: “Crisis of Religion and NineteenthCentury Spiritual Reform: Varieties of Nation Building in Grundtvig and Emerson”, in: J. A. Hall et al. (eds.), Building the Nation: N. F. S. Grundtvig and Danish National Identity (Montreal & Kingston: McGill – Queens University Press 2015), 284–299. In his article “’The God Within’ and Religious Self-Reliance: Emerson’s Radical Interpretation of Christian Anthropology”, Nørager presents a new perspective on American religious thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) and his core ideas of ‘self-reliance’ and ‘the God Within’. Having outlined Emerson’s Unitarian background as well as the radical anthropology to be found in his sermons and later works, the author argues that Emerson’s version of a liberal theology is best understood as a paradigm case of Ernst Troeltsch’s ideal-type ‘Mysticism and Spiritual Religion’.

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List of Contributors and Abstracts

Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen, PhD, is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology with special reference to Dogmatics at Aarhus University. Amongst her recent publications is the article: “Economy and Grace: A Defense of Human Capital”, in: Dialog. A Journal of Theology (2015) 224–232, as well as the revised translation with introduction and annotations to Luther’s Sermon on Two Kinds of Righteousness, 1519, in: Kirsi Stjerna (ed.), The Annotated Luther vol. 2: Word and Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2015), 9–24. In her article: “Anthropology between Homo Sacer and Homo Oeconomicus: Luther’s Theological Anthropology of Human Capital”, she argues that rather than perceiving Luther’s theological anthropology as negative, it should be seen as realistic as Luther actually pushed for some real social and liberating consequences of it. When Luther points to human sinfulness it is always as a contrast to God’s good creation and grace, but not because he despises the world. On the contrary, Luther views the world as the materialization of God’s Word, and, in that capacity, humans as God’s good creatures. In this respect, Pedersen suggests that Luther understands the human being as a homo sacer, and that the distortions of things mundane in his view should be corrected by the homo oeconomicus. Pedersen thus aims at demonstrating that Luther by way of his dialectical method – e.g. the human being is at once just and sinner (simul iustus et peccator) – lays out a much more complex anthropology than he is often attributed, and that his theological anthropology impacted positively on real human life.

Benedicte Hammer Præstholm, PhD, is Lecturer at The Center for Pastoral Education and Research, Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark. She has contributed to the systematic theological research on Lutheran anthropology, gender and sexuality with articles such as “From Breaking News to Old News. Homosexual Pastors in Denmark and the Pfarrhaustheologie”, Studia Theologica 67/2 (2013) 128–143 and “The Theology of the Unchangeable Gender and the Challenge from Scandinavian Creation Theology” (forthcoming). In her article “Human in the Flesh. Gendered Anthropology between Theology and Culture”, she examines two Danish gender-related theological debates, which were prompted by the new cultural views on women and the two dominating theological views on cultural ideas, which appear here: One position claims that new cultural ideas are incompatible with Christianity. The other claims that the new cultural view of gender is in line with true Christian anthropology and that the traditional Christian view on gender should be transformed. She offers a systems theory view of the latter position, and suggests that the transformation of Christian anthropology in Danish theology should be described as a culturally informed theological self-change. Moreover, she suggests that the common thesis of a natural conflict between Christianity and gender equality movements should be complemented with a focus on the autopoietic transformation of theological anthropology.

Bjørn Rabjerg, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at Aarhus University. Among his recent publications to the field of philosophical

List of Contributors and Abstracts

439

and theological anthropology is the monograph: Tilværelse og Forståelse [Being and Understanding] (Klim Publishers 2016), as well as the publication of K.E. Løgstrup’s Prize Essay on Max Scheler’s Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (Klim Publishers 2016) including a postscript discussing and introducing the main points of the Prize Essay. He has also written on Løgstrup’s reception of Søren Kierkegaard, most recently in Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 18. ed. by Jon Stewart (Ashgate Publishing, forthcoming). The modern ideas of self-development and self-realization rest on a philosophical anthropology where the human being is conceived of as harbouring potential for good, and for realizing and developing this good through him- or herself alone. This philosophical and theological anthropology is contrasted to the Lutheran understanding of the self and of human nature found in the philosophical theology of Danish thinker K.E. Løgstrup. Through this contrast we may raise the question concerning the origins and nature of the development and realization of the self. Does the self hold the resources needed for its own formation and development, or do these resources originate from sources outside the self ? In order to answer these questions, this article considers different ways of conceiving both human nature and social existence.

Jakob Egeris Thorsen, PhD, is currently Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Aarhus University. He has conducted various fieldworks in Latin America. His main areas of interests are ecclesiology, Pentecostalism/Charismatic Christianity, indigenous Catholicism, religious identity formation, and the theology of religion. His publications include the book Charismatic Practice & Catholic Parish Life: The Incipient Pentecostalization of the Church in Guatemala & Latin America (Brill 2015) as well as various articles and anthology chapters on Catholicism, religion in Latin America, and systematic theology. In his chapter “Modern and Orthodox – the Transformation of Christianity in Atitlán and the Marginalization of Maya Traditionalism”, he explores the rapid religious change that has swept an indigenous community in highland Guatemalan in the second half of the 20th century. Evangelical Christianity and observant Roman Catholicism have largely replaced traditional syncretistic Mayan Catholicism. He argues that the turn to orthodox Christianity can best be understood as a conscious religious adaption to modernity and as a new way of understanding and expressing the Maya identity.

Indices*

* The indices are compiled by stud. theol. Niels Peter Gubi (Aarhus).

Ancient and Modern Texts

Biblical texts Old Testament/Hebrew Bible Genesis 1:26–28 24, 365 1:26 158 2:4b–3:22 24 3:1–19 393 5:24 81 21:23 35 34:2f. 26–27 Exodus 21:22–25 21:26–27 Leviticus 24:19–20

2 Kings 2:1, 11

Psalms 16:10 78, 314 78 61 Proverbs 20:6 35

95

Isaiah 11:1–9 25 35:10 290 n.66

70

81

Nehemiah 8 55, 59 13 55

95 96

Deuteronomy 5:16 74 6 55, 61–62 15:15 32 19:4–6 34 19:18–21 95 34:6 81 1 Kings 19:19–21

2 Chronicles 17:7–9 57, 59–60 20 57–58

Jeremiah 7 55

Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha 1–2 Maccabees

143

Wisdom of Solomon 11–15 148

444

Biblical texts

New Testament Matthew 4:1–11 393 5:39a 88–89, 98, 102, 112, 115, 118 5:39b 88–89, 103 5:40 90, 105 5:41 106, 89 5:42 90, 114, 118 5:45 110, 363 5:48 243 n.29 6:24–34 115 n.36 6:25–34 121, 369 7:12 89, 110, 113, 172–173, 175, 363 7:16 239 20:1–16 368–369 Mark 5:1–20

367

Luke 1:48 225 6:27–28 370 6:27–36 89, 102, 191 6:31 89, 172, 363 6:32 370 10:25–37 272, 368 10:41 121–122 12:33 115 n.36 21:34 121 John 3:3–8 161 n.18 4:1–42 367 16:13 243 Acts 2:42-47 109 n.28, 115 n.36 4:32-35 109 n.28 17 237 Romans 1:18–15:13 157 n.9 5–8 157 n.9 5:12–6:14 156 5:12–21 157

5:12 157 5:14 157 5:17 157 5:21 157 6:1–14 156, 157 6:4–6 156 6:4 157 n.8 6:6 156, 157 6:8 157 n.8 6:9 157 6:12 157 6:13 157 6:14 157 7:21–25 159 n.13 7:23–25 158 n.11 12:2 158 n.11 12:4–5 157 13:12–14 158 n.11 15:7 375 1 Corinthians 1:28 367 7:32ff. 126, 129 12:14–26 371 12:24f. 125 2 Corinthians 6:1–10 393 11:28 124 Galatians 3:19–25 159 n.13 3:28 300–301, 375 Ephesians 1:22–23 2:11–12 2:14–16 2:14–15 2:15–16 4:12–16 4:22–25 4:22–24 4:23–24 5:29–30

158 n.12 158 158, 166 162 163 158 n.12 158, 166 155 166 158 n.12

445

Biblical texts

Philippians 4:4 124 4:6 124

9:1280b

Colossians 1:9–10 238 1:18 158 n.12 2:19 158 n.12 3:9–10 155, 158, 166 3:10 164 3:15 158 n.12 1 Thessalonians 4:3–8 128

Epictetus, Dissertationes 2:13 123 4:1.79 118 n.27 Hesiod, Works and Days 1:356 87 Plato, Phaedo 327

Classical Modern Literature

Blixen, K., Babettes Gæstebud 353–354 Butler, J., Gender Trouble 296 n.11

Rabbinic Texts

b.Yoma 23a 101 n.14

Descartes, R., Discourse on the Method 328 Descartes, R., Meditations on First Philosophy 329

Patristic Authors

Alexander of Lycopolis, Critique of Mani’s Doctrines 156 n.4 Augustine, Contra Faustum 24,1 155 n.2

Epiphanius, Panarion 66

127

156 n.4

Emerson, R.W., Divinity School Address 236, 244, 247 n.51, 249, 254 Emerson, R.W., Representative Men 243 n.28 Emerson, R.W., Self-Reliance 248, 250 n.65 Emerson, R.W., The Conduct of Life 236, 240

Serapion of Thmuis, Against the Manichaeans 156 n.4

Foucault, M., The Birth of the Clinic 320 Foucault, M., Forelesninger om regjering og styringskunst 348 n.16

Theodoret of Cyrus, Haer. Fabularum Compendium 26 156 n.4

Hitler, A., Mein Kampf 287

Graeco-Roman Literature

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1132b 38–31 97 Aristotle, Politics 1:2 130

137, 140 n.27

277, 280, 283, 285,

Kissinger, H., World Order

339

Løgstrup, K.E., The Ethical Demand 186, 197, 202, 269, 272, Luhman, N., Soziale Systeme 303 n.38 Luther, M., Confession 217, 230 Luther, M., De servo arbitrio 13 n.15, 215

446 Luther, M., Disputatio de homine 14 n.17, 179, 214 Luther, M., Der grosse Katechismus/Large Catechism 175, 220 Marx, K., Das Kapital 226 n.51 Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception 322

Biblical texts

Troeltsch, E., The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches 251 Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 226, 48

Subjects

Abbreviations, 284 Alcohol, 287, 288, 405, 414 Analogy(-ies), 118, 288, 289, 371 Anthropotechnics, 45–51, 56, 62, 432 Anti-Semitism, 283 Anxiety, 121–131, 278, 289, 432 – Primal anxiety, 286–288, 290 Art(s), 18, 46, 179, 188, 208–210, 241, 278, 287, 426 Aryan, 283 Autopoietic, 303–305, 438 Axial Age, 15, 46, 51–53, 57–58, 63, 432 Baptism, 156–157, 219–220, 227, 393 Bible, 65–66, 73, 78 n.30, 155, 189, 246 n.44,250 n.61, 252, 297, 299, 303–305, 313–316, 352, 373, 405, 421, 437 – Hebrew Bible, 23, 25, 29 n.45, 31 n.60, 35 n.96, 45, 51, 53–58, 60–62, 66, 81, 90, 96, 142, 149, 171–172, 235, 239, 366, 374, 432 Biography, biographical 32, 123–124, 125 n.19, 280, 312, 325, 333 Body, 15, 17, 25–26, 30, 47, 53, 65–66, 104, 108, 122 n.6, 125, 130–131, 139, 156–159, 163–166, 172, 176 n.14, 218, 220, 229, 257, 261, 279, 286, 293–295, 311–331, 333, 350–352, 366, 371–372, 380, 409, 420, 437 – Body of Christ, 125, 159, 315, 371– 372,374–375, 400, 437 – Body term(s), 25, 27, 433 Boundary(-ies), 29, 50, 55 n.48, 136, 285, 287–288, 290–291, 375, 424–425,

Calling(s), 112, 114, 217, 220, 222, 227, 229– 230, 237 n.3, 294–295, 297, 299, 322, 331– 332 Care, 47, 66, 73–74, 81, 121–126, 128, 130– 131, 138, 161, 173, 177, 186, 196, 203, 218, 224, 227, 238, 270–271, 273, 295, 333, 357 n.1, 359, 362, 366, 373, 394, 408, 411, 414, 416, 432 Catholic, Catholicism, 200, 217, 220, 300, 327, 341, 403, 404–408, 410–416, 418, 421, 422, 423–426, 428–429, 439 Change(s), 28, 48–50, 104, 106, 107, 112, 136, 140, 180, 201, 206, 222, 235, 243, 258, 296, 299, 300–306, 320, 321, 339–340, 343, 347–349, 354, 357, 359–361, 364, 371, 382, 390, 403, 405, 408, 415–416, 422–423, 427, 435, 439 Character(s), 30–31, 33–36, 69 n.14, 88, 91, 102, 116–117, 137–141, 145, 173, 185, 188, 191, 229, 239–240, 244, 246 n.44, 250, 253, 255, 266, 268–269, 272–274, 290, 304, 339, 358 n.5, 367, 423, 425, 433, 437 Church(es), 13, 108, 124, 146, 159–160, 161 n.19, 163, 165–166, 219–220, 222–223, 224, 225–227, 228–229, 230, 232, 236– 238, 246–247, 251–254, 293–294, 296, 297–300, 300–302, 303, 305–306, 307, 313, 315, 334, 340, 341–342, 346, 351– 352, 357–358, 367, 371–372, 375–376, 379–394, 396–402, 404–406, 408, 410– 411, 412–414, 415–418, 420–421, 423– 427, 428, 434, 437 Collective identity, 29–32, 433

448 Collectivist culture, 137 Common people, 219–220, 225, 227, 229 Consciousness, 226–227, 261, 325, 331, 348, 422 Creation, 24, 110, 147, 178, 190, 213–214, 224–225, 235, 244, 274, 294, 298–299, 303, 316, 319, 322, 332, 354–355, 357 n.1, 374, 398–399, 438 – Creational-anthropological aspect, 231 – Order(s) of Creation, 227, 294–295, 297, 299, 302–303 Cross, Theology of the, 222 Cultural Memory, 31–33 Dansk Kvindesamfund, 296, 300, 302, Decision-making, 129–131 Dehumanization, 105, 281 282, 284, 286 Deification, 247 Democratization, 225 Devil, – Image of the Devil, 214–215 Diaconia, 357–358, 360 n.9, 366–367, 370, 379, 437 Dialectical theology, 12 n.6, 199 Dream(s), 196, 290–291 Duty, 96, 125–126 n.19, 181–182, 227, 246, 249–250, 272–273, 283–284, 342, 346, 349 Ecclesiology, 158 Emancipation, 296–297, 301, 307 Empathy, 223, 282 Enactment(s), 104, 379, 380, 392, 402 Equality, 92, 172, 180, 182, 190 n.70, 219– 220, 287, 289, 291, 296, 300–301, 305, 307, 362, 368, 422, 438 Equity, 226–227 Eschaton, 160 Essentiality, 142 Ethical, 14, 16–17, 18, 29, 88, 93, 95, 100, 103, 107, 109 n.28, 112, 114, 116, 118–119, 125–129, 131, 171–172, 178, 183, 185– 189, 203–204, 231, 258–259, 261–265, 267–268, 271, 274, 283, 300, 320 n.29, 331, 333, 361, 379, 395–397, 431, 436

Subjects

– Ethical demand, the, 186, 188–189, 192, 197–198, 202–203, 264, 268–274, 361, 396, 436 Ethics, 12, 16, 23 n.3, 47 n.11, 88, 93, 110, 113, 115 n.36, 124, 126–128, 130–131, 171, 173–174, 181–183, 185–187, 189– 191, 192 n.75, 195, 197–198, 204, 207, 257–274, 284, 302–303, 313, 318, 330 n.80, 333, 347–348, 357, 373 n.58, 376, 398, 432–433, 435–436 – Ordinary ethics, 259, 261–265, 267 – Sexual ethics, 126–128, 129 – Social ethics, 294, 296–297, 301–302, 357 – Virtue ethics, 197, 259–260, 262, 265, 267, 333 Ethnic stereotypes, see also Stereotypes, 135, 146, 149, 151–152, 436 Evangelical Protestantism, 404, 406–407 Evil, The Realm of, 101 Exchange, 36, 88, 93–97, 101, 105, 108, 114, 119, 173–174, 177–178, 181, 183–184, 187, 189, 191–192, 231, 294, 304, 319, 362, 365, 374, 425, 428 Exclusion, 79, 136, 285, 318, 364, 375 Exercise system, 45, 46–50, 54–56, 58, 60, 61–63, 432–433 Existential, 16, 122–124, 126, 130–131, 186, 189, 198, 204, 208, 215, 218, 267, 277, 429, 436 – phenomenology, 189, 268 – philosophy, 122, 185 – theology, 185 Existentialism, 122 n.7 – Theological existentialism, 198–202 Existentialist(s), 200–202 Experience(s), 31–33, 62, 106, 119–120, 122–124, 130, 178, 187–188, 196, 200, 206, 208–209, 215–216, 221, 224–225, 251, 254, 262, 270, 287, 290, 304, 312, 322–323, 325, 339, 343, 351, 362–363, 369–370, 373, 375, 397, 405, 433 Externalization, 282

Subjects

Faith and works, 239, 255 Fall, the, 148–149, 179, 213–214, 216, 218, 227, 235, 250, 393 Feminine, 278–279 Free choice, 215 Free will, 13, 215 Fusion of horizons, 219 Gender, 54, 104, 136–137, 151, 219, 293–300, 302, 304–307, 320, 384–385, 391, 396– 397, 401, 438 – studies 15, 23 n.5 – Intelligible gender 295, 299 Gift(s), 36, 72–74, 78, 90, 93–94, 97–98, 100, 101 n.15, 104, 111–112, 114–115, 125, 164, 174, 177, 180, 191, 218, 221, 231, 270–271, 273–274, 354, 362, 365, 372– 373, 375, 399 Giving, 70, 73, 78, 87–88, 90, 92, 93–94, 98– 100–102, 105, 112–115, 119–120, 145, 177, 181–182, 191–192, 231, 239, 289, 362, 364, 399, 433 – birth, 294, 408 God within, the, 235, 247–248, 254–255, 437 God-human relation, 227, 231 Golden rule, the, 89, 110, 113, 171–192, 362– 363, 431, 437 Good, the, 72, 77, 174–175, 189, 197–200, 203, 221 n.27, 258, 262, 363, 374, 410 Grace, 157, 174, 177, 180, 213, 215–218, 220, 225–227, 229–232, 277, 288–291, 332, 350, 367, 369–370, 373, 376, 432, 438 Guatemala, 403, 405–407, 410–411, 413, 415, 422–423, 427, 429, 439 Heaven, 49, 56, 58, 65, 77–82, 83, 160, 215, 223, 243–244, 246, 291, 435 Holocaust, 278, 280–281, 286, 432 Holy, 54, 60, 72, 75, 81, 119 n.49, 130, 150, 152, 160–161, 163–165, 215, 217, 219 n.21, 224, 229–230, 245, 285, 300, 312, 410–411, 415, 418, 421, 424–425 Human agency, 382, 385, 388, 391–392, 396–397, 401

449 Human being(s), 13–14, 23–26–27, 35 n.96, 45–49, 78, 104, 142, 152, 155–166, 178– 179, 181, 195–202, 204–205, 207, 213– 220, 222–228, 231–232, 248 n.54, 257– 259, 261–264, 267–269, 272–273, 275, 280, 282, 288–289, 294–295, 300, 302– 307, 311–320, 323–334, 339–340, 343– 344, 348–349, 355, 357–358, 363–366, 368–370, 372, 379–380, 384–386, 390, 393, 395, 398, 401–402, 434–439 – Human being of society, The, 346 – Private human being, 346 – Real human being, 224 Human body(-ies), 25, 164–165, 311–313, 315–320, 322, 324–325, 327–331, 333, 371, 437 Human capital, 226, 232, 352–353, 438 Human consciousness, 339 Human dignity, 106, 330, 357–358, 364– 366, 368, 437 Human freedom, 221, 260, 263–264 Human identity, 388–399, 401, 434, Human life, 63, 88, 173, 179, 199, 201–204, 213, 217 n.15, 222, 225, 227, 229–230, 232, 257–263, 267–274, 302, 316, 318, 320, 323, 325–327, 332, 344, 351, 358 n.5, 379–380, 384–385, 399, 409, 436, 438 Human nature, 14, 16, 171, 175, 181, 192, 195–196, 200–201, 203–205, 207, 264, 318, 320, 326–327, 330, 385, 388, 390– 391, 393, 395–396, 398–401, 434, 439 Human right(s), 104, 235, 300, 305, 341, 376, 404, 433 Human subject, 290–291 Humanist standards, 221 Humanity, 13, 15, 148–149, 152, 182, 217, 220, 222–223, 225, 239, 242, 282–283, 286–287, 322, 339, 363, 367, 370, 374– 375, 422, 426 Humanization, 220, 225, 281 Humility, 34, 175, 225–226, 249, 255 Humour, 278, 391 Imago Dei, 198, 213–214, 216, 231, 250, 305 Immortality of the soul, 245, 247, 254

450 Inclusive community, 357 n.1, 374–375, 437 Indistinctness, 286–288, 290 Individualism, 28, 54, 248, 252, 358, 360, 363 Individuality, 16, 24, 26, 28–30, 31, 33, 45, 52, 61, 63, 68, 71, 76, 79, 91, 96, 103, 109, 113, 119, 123, 125–131, 137–139, 150, 173, 180–182, 187–190, 197, 201, 203, 231, 235–236, 238, 244, 253–255, 260, 269–272, 278, 283–284, 288, 305, 325– 327, 330, 339, 345, 347–354, 357, 359– 361, 370, 372–373, 381, 385–386, 392, 395, 400, 423–426, 432 Infralapsarian, 213, 218 Injuring, 93–94, 96–97, 99–103, 113–115, 117, 119–120, 433 Injury, 45, 93–99, 102–103, 111, 115, 125, 317 Inner human being, the, 152 Inter-human, 231 Jesus, – as the true man, 241, 250 – Face of, 292 Jew(s), 13 n.11, 62, 91 n.6, 115, 140–149, 151, 152, 283–286, 289, 300, 375, 436 Jewish, 16, 104, 106, 108, 110 n.30, 115, 128, 135, 140, 143–152, 159, 162, 166, 171, 281, 284, 300, 436 – Identity, 151 Just society, 228, 371, 373 Justice (The Realm of), 101 “Kin, cult, land and afterlife”, 66, 72, 74, 79, 83 Krop, 312 Latin America, 367, 413, 424 Law(s), 13 n.11, 35, 47, 55–57, 59–61, 88, 92, 95–97, 103, 106, 108–110, 127, 145–146, 152, 157–159, 162, 166, 172, 175–179, 180–182, 195, 197 n.5, 203, 213, 216–217, 227, 230, 239–241, 242, 244–245, 247, 249–250 n.61, 252 n.73, 254–255, 302– 303, 319, 330, 340, 342, 418 – Natural law, 14, 171–176, 178, 180, 186– 187, 192, 302, 319, 330 n.80, 333

Subjects

Leib, 312 Levite(s), 55–56, 59–61, 65–70, 72–83, 435 Life, 24, 45, 47–53, 59–60, 62, 65, 69, 72–73, 76, 78–80, 82, 87, 95–96, 102–103, 110 n.30, 119–120, 123–124, 126, 151–152, 156–159, 173, 179, 185–186, 189–190, 196, 199, 201, 203–204, 206–209, 215– 217–218, 220, 223, 227–229, 232, 235, 239, 241, 243, 245, 247, 250, 253–255, 260–263, 265, 267–275, 279, 282, 288, 294, 298–299, 301, 311, 313–314, 316– 319, 321, 325–328, 331–334, 344, 349, 350–354, 359, 362, 369–370, 372, 375, 380, 383–385, 388, 394–397, 398–399, 404, 408, 416, 423, 429, 432–434, 436–437 – after death, 77–80, 83, 435 – Ordinary life, 218, 220 – Real life, 94, 107, 114, 184, 188–189, 222 Likeness to God, 214, 216 Longue duree, 28, 36 Lutheran, 13, 149 n.39, 180, 197–198, 202, 204–205, 220, 240, 255, 293–295, 299, 302, 307, 340–342, 346, 384, 387, 393 n.22, 394, 435, 439 Manichaeism, 155, 159–161, 166 Marriage ritual, 296–297, 300, 305, 307 Masturbation, 279 Maximón, 411–412, 414–416, 419, 426, 428 Maya Religion, 407–409, 416 Menschenspiegel, 227 Mercy, – Killing of, 284 – Realm of, 101 Moral anthropology, 257–261, 264, 267– 268, 273–274, 436 Moral sentiment, 236, 240–241, 244, 247, 254 Motherhood, 295, 298 n.20, 299 Mysticism-type, 251 Narrativity, 87–88, 116 Nazism, 278, 281–286 Neo-liberal human being, 340, 348, 355 Newspeak, 287

Subjects

Non-differential, 291, 432 Non-human, 286, 316–318, 424–425 Non-implementable, 291 Obligation(s), 73, 90, 93–94, 97, 177 n.20, 182, 219, 227, 263, 360–362, 373, 395– 396, 397 Ontology, Ontological, 49, 52, 135, 140, 142, 146–149, 151–152, 186, 199 n.9, 200–202, 204–206, 210, 217, 219, 267, 269, 271, 274, 436 – Ontological anthropology, 140, 145, 142 Order of nature, 283 Ordination of women, 296–299, 301–302 Othering, 135–136, 139, 147 – Radically other, 290 Parable(s), 67, 116, 118, 368–370 People of God, 144, 226, 229, 373 Phenomenology, 189, 192, 257, 268–269, Philosopher(s), 11, 45, 51–52, 124 n.14, 128 n.27, 131, 140, 171, 182, 200, 216 n.13, 257–259, 265, 274, 281, 316, 321–322, 339, 361, 436 Philosophy, Philosophical, 11–12, 14, 16– 18, 25, 27 n.30, 53, 122, 124, 128 n.27, 131, 171, 173, 179–180, 182–185, 187, 189, 195–198, 204–205, 237, 251–254, 257, 262, 264, 267–268, 274, 314, 316, 320– 321, 326–330, 339, 380, 423, 435 – Philosophical anthropology, 11–12, 15, 135, 195–196, 198, 439 Practice(s), 31, 45–51, 55, 57–60, 68, 75, 129–130, 135, 141–142, 144–147, 150, 161, 224, 255, 260, 262, 267, 296, 299, 303–305, 307, 313, 328, 347–348, 359, 366–369, 373, 379–385, 388, 392, 398, 401, 403, 408–409, 411 n.35, 421–423, 427, 433, 434 Priesthood of all believers, 219, 294 Private, 65, 73, 90, 96–97, 100, 103, 227, 230– 231, 261, 265, 295, 343, 345, 347, 349, 360–361, 369, 387, 406, 408–409 Procession(s), 409, 411, 415–416, 418, 420– 421, 425,

451 Public, 14, 48, 54–55, 59, 77, 103, 105, 108, 125, 138, 209, 220, 228–231, 295–296, 299 n.27, 307, 339–340, 342–343, 345–350, 364, 369, 374, 379, 387, 403, 406, 409, 412, 414–415, 421, 423, 432 Punishment, 74, 94, 96, 103, 108, 112, 114, 173, 201–202, 288 Reason, 128 n.27, 174, 178–182, 192 n.75, 214, 216, 226, 246, 259, 262, 283–284, 316, 330, 364 Reciprocity, Reciprocate, see also Responsivity, 35, 93–94, 96–97, 100, 102, 105, 107–108, 112, 114–115, 119, 177– 178, 182, 185–186, 189–192, 229, 360– 362, 370, 376, 433, 437 Reciprocation, 94, 97 n.11, 99–103, 107, 111–115, 118, 363 Regime of representation, 141, 150 Relatedness, 23–26 – Interrelatedness, 231, 257, 269, 273, 306, Relational, 23–25, 27, 30, 35, 217, 358 n.5, 373, 386, 433 – Relational being(s), 217–218 Religion and morality, 240–241, 255 Religious transformation, 403 Renouncer(s), 52–53, 432 Repay, Repayment, see also Retaliation, 90, 93, 100, 102, 105, 115, 117, 177–178, 289, 346, 362, 433 Responsibility, 57, 59 n.58, 67, 73, 109, 196– 197, 210, 219, 224, 228, 266, 274, 331– 333, 349–350, 360, 362, 375–376, 395, 423 Responsivity, see also Reciprocity, 331–333 Retaliation, see also Repayment, 88–89, 95– 101, 103, 112–113, 118, 363 Revenge, 94, 96, 100–103 Reward, 100, 228 Righteousness, 59, 115, 123, 146, 157–158, 216, 227, 230–231, 240, 242, 283, 373 Rights, 25, 97 n.10, 104, 178, 180, 227, 296, 302, 307, 418 Romanticism, 253, 286, 295

452 Sacralization of the everyday life, 220 Sacrifice(s), 60, 70, 145, 152, 172, 216 n.13, 219, 223, 239, 242, 244, 284, 372–374 n.58, 409, 420, 427 Salvation, see also Saved, 48, 58, 149–150, 159–160, 164, 179, 201, 226, 232, 242, 249 n.61, 291 Sanctification, 127–128, 216–217 Santiago Atitlán, 403, 405–408, 410–412, 414, 416–417 n.45, 421–424, 426–427 Saved, see also Salvation, 58, 217, 230, 244, 294 Self, 47, 91, 104, 108, 126, 130–131, 188–189, 195–196, 200, 202–210, 261, 263, 272– 273, 275, 281, 312, 314 n.6, 317, 329–331, 350, 385–386, 424, 437, 439 Self-culture, 236, 240, 247 Self-development, 195–196, 203, 205, 207– 208, 210, 439 Self-realization, 196, 255, 299, 348, 439 Self-reliance, 235–236, 248–250, 255, 437 Sentiment of virtue, 244–245 Service(s), 67–69, 79, 90, 93–94, 97–98, 100– 102, 106, 111–115, 145, 157 n.9, 221, 229, 231, 357 n.1, 381, 383–384, 387–391, 393–401, 412, 434 Serving, 93–94, 99–102, 112–114, 119–120, 218, 229, 354, 357, 401, 433 Sexuality, 126, 128, 218, 279, 293, 295, 412 Sin(s), 34, 101 n.15, 130, 156–158, 162, 166, 173–174, 179, 198, 200–201, 204–205, 213–215, 217–219, 223, 225, 227–228, 236, 242, 244, 248, 352 – Original sin, 147, 230 Sinner(s), 33, 141, 143, 146, 148, 173–174, 199, 200–201, 213, 217–218, 220, 230– 232, 368, 370, 438 Social anthropology, 15, 23 n.3, 24–25, 27– 28, 30–31, 34, 36, 433 Social character, 31, 33, 36 Social glue, 227 Social identity, 27, 29–31, 33, 433 Social security, 228, 341–343, 423 Sociality, 23–24, 285, 287–289, 433 Soteriological-Christological aspect, 231

Subjects

Soul(s), 26, 65, 72, 77–81, 128 n.27, 162, 164 n.36, 165 n.40, 166, 214, 224, 240, 242, 245–250, 253–254, 260–261, 286, 313– 315, 318, 327, 366, 409, 416–417 n.45 Sovereign expressions of life, the, 186, 202, 204–207, 210, 261, 268, 271–274, 436 Spiritual realism, 241 Stereotype(s), see also Ethnic stereotypes, 140 Structural coupling, 303–304, 306 Subject, – of Being, 91–92, 104 – of Doing, 91–92 Superfluity, 289 Supralapsarian 213 Taking, 87–90, 93–94, 97–103, 105, 113, 115, 117, 119–120, 433 Teacher(s), 45, 50–51, 55–61, 117, 161, 219, 221, 235, 239, 241–243, 246–247, 254, 294, 298, 344, 404, 406, 432 Traditionalism, 403 n.1, 405, 407, 413, 421, 423–425, 427 Transformation, 17, 171, 206, 223, 246, 248, 300, 304–308, 328, 357, 375, 381–383, 403, 428, 438 Trust, 107, 109, 151, 202–207, 229, 249, 250, 269, 271–273, 289, 328, 342, 362, 395 Unconditionality, 289 Unique, Uniqueness, 24, 59, 281, 283, 358 n.5, 365, 386, 422, 426, 428 – The Uniqueness debate, 281, 432 Universal anthropology, 135, 140, 145, 152 Us/them language, 142 Vanity, 151, 278 Violence, 94 n.9, 99, 103–105, 108, 114, 118, 190, 198, 284, 406, 416 War crimes, 281–282 Welfare society, 357–361, 363–364, 370, 374, 376, 436 Yugoslavia, Ex-Yugoslavia, 282

Ancient Expressions and Termini Technici

Hebrew Terms Basar, 314–316 Nephesh, 26, 314–315

Greek Terms Merimna, 121–126, 129–131, 432 Nomos, 13, 110, 157, 162, 172 Physis, 110

Sarx, 314–316 Soma, 314–315 Zoê, 216 n.13

Latin Terms Anima, 318 Conatus essendi, 26 Coram Deo, 16, 24, 217–218, 221, 294 Coram hominibus, 217, 294 Coram mundo, 217–218 Cura, 47, 121–122, 125–126 n.19 Evangelium aeternum, 253 Homo, 122 n.6, 219, 232 – mundanus, 23–24, 433 – nudus, 214 – oeconomius, 213, 232, 438

– sacer, 213, 216, 218, 231, 232, 438 Lex naturalis, 171–172, 227 Lex talionis, 95–96, 98–100, 115 Passivum divinum, 290 Posteriora dei, 222 Similitudo hominis, 220, 231 Simul iustus et peccator, 150, 213, 217– 218,438 Sola humana, 229, 231 Sub contrario specie, 222

Ancient and Modern Persons and Authors

Adam, 81, 148 n.37, 150, 157–159, 214, 244, 250 Agamben, G., 216 n.13 Ammundsen, V., 301 Aquinas, T., 173, 176 n.14, 179 n.24, 180, 318–319 Aristotle, 97 n.11, 127, 140, 259, 262, 263, 267, 316 As´oka, 59–60 Augustine, 121 n.1, 172, 176 n.17, 214, 217– 218, 251 n.67 Bacon, F., 317, 328–330 Bårris, A.M., 299 Bartelmus, R., 33 Barth, K., 332 Bellah, R., 51–53, 432 Betz, H.D., 88 n.4, 98, 113–114 Bloom, H., 131 Bonhoeffer, D., 332–333 Bormann, M., 281 Brandt, C.J., 300, 305 Brecher, B., 281–282 Breivik, A., 286 Brichto, H., 66, 74–76, 83 Buddha, 52–53 Bultmann, R., 12–13, 315 Carlsen, R.S., 407, 410, 412, 424 Carlyle, T., 237, 240 n.20 Channing, W.E., 236, 244 n.35, 247–248 Cicero, 128 n.27, 140 Cohen, S., 143

Das, V., 259, 265–266 Descartes, R., 317, 328–330, 364 Dhamma-maha¯mattas, 59–60 di Vito, R., 29, 31 n,62 Dodds, E.R., 125, 34 n.89 Douglas, M., 32 n.70, 53–54, 432 Drakulic, S., 282 Early, J.D., 415 n.43 Eichmann, A., 282 Elijah, 69–70, 80–82 Emerson, R.W., 235–255, 265 Epictetus, 108 n.27, 123 Esche, T., 298 Feddersen, A.S., 300, 305 Fromm, E., 33, 366 Fustel de Coulanges, N.-D., 65–66 Gadamer, H.-G., 219, 380 Galen, 138, 140 Genet, J., 287–288 Girard, R., 284 Goebbels, J., 282 Goody, J., 66 Graham, E., 381–382 Hall, S., 135–136, 143, 145 Hausmann, J., 34 Heidegger, M., 122 n.6, 125–126 n.19, 187, 216 n.13, 264, 268, 272 Henry, M., 313, 325 Herodotus, 11, 145

456 Himmler, H., 282 Hitler, A., 277–287, 289, 291 Høgsbro, H., 301 Horsley, R.A., 118 n.45 Howitz, F., 295 (Ps-)Hyginus, 122 Janowski, B., 29 Jehoshaphat, 56–58, 60 Jesus, 13, 16, 52 n.35, 67, 79 n.34, 80, 91, 94– 95, 98–101, 103, 105–110, 115, 118–119, 121–123, 144, 172, 198–199, 214–215, 217, 235–236, 239, 241–243, 245–248, 250, 253–254, 270 n.56, 274, 298–301, 305, 315–316, 353–354, 363, 366–370, 372, 375, 395, 411, 413, 415–416, 420, 424, 429, 433 Jewett, R., 148 Josephus, 143 Kahl, S., 341 Kant, I., 12, 14, 181–183, 190 n.70, 195, 197 n.5, 258–259, 262, 269, 272, 329–330 Kanter, R.M., 109 n.28 Kelsey, D., 385 Kershaw, I., 280 Kierkegaard, S., 198, 201, 272–273, 290 Klemperer, V., 284–286 Knausgård, K.O., 208–210, 277–291 Koch, H., 346 Kubizek, A., 278–279 Kühle, Aa., 299 Laidlaw, J., 257–261, 263, 268–269 Lambek, M., 259, 262–264, Lang, B., 15 n.24, 16 n.30, 56 Lennon, J., 291 Levi, P., 282 Lindberg, C., 222 Løgstrup, K.E., 18, 171, 185–192, 195–210, 257, 259, 261, 264–265, 267–274, 303 n.36, 361, 363 n.20, 431, 436, 439 Lohmeyer, E., 123–124 Luther, M., 13 n.14, 14, 171, 173–180, 182, 185, 191–192, 195, 200–205, 208, 213–

Ancient and Modern Persons and Authors

232, 255, 272, 294, 297, 300, 302–303, 305, 431, 438 Macintyre, A., 260, 316–317, 319, 324, 382 MacKenzie, C.J., 407, 422–424, 426–428 Malina, B., 92 n.7, 137 Mani, 155, 159–162, 165–166 Marx, K., 226 n.51 Mayer, J., 284 Meilaender, G., 325–327 Mik–Meyer, N., 348–350 Nienau, B., 281 Nietzsche, F., 48 n.17, 199 Nissinen, M., 25 O’Donovan, O., 325, 328 Oberman, H., 215 n.6 Origen, 172, 247, 251 Paul, 11–13, 16, 122–131, 135, 137 n.10, 140–152, 155–159, 171–172, 176, 217, 219 n.21, 242, 251, 300–301, 307, 315– 316, 354, 367, 371–372, 374–375, 432, 436 Pedersen, J., 298 Pedersen, O.K., 347 Petersen, J.H., 340–341, 346, 360–361 Petersen, K., 341 Philo, 109 n.28, 143 Plato, 11, 52, 198, 200, 243 n.28, 327 Polemo, 138–140 Ramsey, P., 314, 325 Rifbjerg, K., 209–210 Rother, S.F., 404 Safranski, R., 195 Said, E., 136 Scharling, C.H., 297 Schmid, H.H., 33 Sherman, C., 287 Sloterdijk, P., 45–51, 53–54, 56, 58, 62, 432 Smith, M., 55–56 Stangerup, H., 202–203, 210 Stanzione, V.J., 403 n.2

457

Ancient and Modern Persons and Authors

Stavrakopoulou, F., 25 Strabo, 143 Tanner, K., 381 Theißen, G., 125 Thorsteinsson, R., 150 Thrall, M. E., 124–125 Troeltsch, E., 236, 251–255, 438 Turner, M., 116–117

Verhey, A., 313, 316, 328 Weber, M., 225–226, 229, 352 Wink, W., 103–108, 112, 118–119 Wittgenstein, L., 262–263, 280 Wolff, C., 329–330 Wolff, H.W., 12 n.6, 24, 27 n.27 Woodhead, L., 307, 398 Zigon, J., 259, 261 n.22, 264–265, 267