Kurt Vonnegut’s “Armageddon in Retrospect”

During a recent visit in Denver, USA, while browsing in a university bookshop, in ran into the book Armageddon in Retrospect (2008) by Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), a US author for whom I have great admiration because of his anti-war stance, expressed so powerfully in his Slaughterhouse-Five, written as a powerful protest against the infamous Dresden bombings. I will not give a full review of Armageddon in Retrospect, but I recommend it, of course. I just want to stay with two powerful claims I found there.

(1) “There should have been a secretary of the future”. It’s a phrase I have been thinking quite a lot about. Not so long ago I was talking to a good friend, a fellow Flemish Jesuit. Given the rapidly shrinking number of active Jesuits in Flanders (our average age is around 75), we often ask the question which of the activities and institutions we should keep, while closing down others, restructuring them, or passing them on to interested people. The issue, therefore, is: “what do we want to maintain”? We look at our (successful) past to decide what we can still do: how to pass on the past into the present, and what to pass on.  This is also the type of question we address often in our local and global politics. The desire to maintain the worthwhile things of the past is important, but it risks to become a rearguard skirmish if it is not connected to the discernment about what we desire for the future. Who are amongst us the “secretaries of the future”, those people who think in terms of the future, even when gauging the past? This enquiry is very similar to the attempt to uncover ways towards a sustainable future. The real question, therefore, is: what is our vision of the future and what does this vision entail as a mission and responsibility in the present, in faithfulness to the past. In a theological perspective, this is an eschatological issue: how do we imagine the Kingdom of God? This vision can never be a fixed, unchangeable structure or pattern – it is always again discerned in the concrete present context, it is an attractor that we discover concretely by allowing it to attract us. Discernment more than knowledge is the method here.

When Kurt Vonnegut says “should have been”, he indicates, with critical regret and anger, that the consequences of not having such a secretary of the future are dire. I read this also as an encouragement to take on that responsibility today.

(2) “Darwin gave the cachet of science to war and genocide”. This sounds to me like a clear warning to so many people who tend to give to Darwin’s scientific theories more than scientific credits, allowing them to become, too easily, worldviews and philosophies. Of course, this needs not be the case – and the idea of evolution is a very productive one, both in philosophy and in theology, as well as in many other fields of enquiry -, but we should be careful … The fact that Nazi ideologists, such as Martin Bormann, referred to Darwin and evolution theory to provide ideological support to Nazi thought and the Holocaust [*I am not particularly keen on the website to which I refer here, as it reflects creationist perspectives that want to discredit evolution theories, which is not my intention*] illustrates possible abuse of ideas of Darwin beyond the scope they were meant to have. These are particularly sensitive issues today, in a context where creationist thinkers are of the opinion that the theological concept of creation and theories of evolution are contradictory (a claim I do not agree with). Ideological suspicion should be raised with regard to possible abuse of Darwin’s insights, not because these insights might be wrong in themselves but because they may by some people be used ideologically for political purposes. Opponents of creationism should, therefore, also exercise a critical attitude towards their defense of Darwinian ideas, particularly when these ideas become part of a larger quasi-religious worldview. Striking correctly the balance between the theological concept of creation and the scientific theories of evolution is a political and societal crucial issue today.

Kurt Vonnegut is an author one should read for passion and critical sense. I recommend his Armageddon in Retrospect.

René Girard’s Understanding of Violence

René Girard’s understanding of violence – focusing on the dynamics of mimesis, on the role of scategoating in resolving the unbearable escalation of social and societal violence, and on the importance of christology (Jesus the Christ submitting as the innocent lamb to violence, unmasking it and subverting it definitively) – is very attractive to many theologians, as for example Wolfgang Palaver and James Alison. After an interesting conversation this afternoon, I would like to formulate some thoughts and questions. Undoubtedly, some of these reflections will be the result of my lack of knowledge of René Girard’s thought, and I apologize for that. Any answers or further reflections are welcome, of course.

(1) René Girard’s understanding and analysis of the genesis of violence is very interesting and challenging – as is the fact that he intimately connects violence and religion -, but is it the only possible analysis? Mimesis obviously is a key feature of human existence – and in theology one could argue that, to understand creation and christology properly, it will be crucial to mark the difference between “mimesis” and “following Christ” (or “being made in the image and likeness of the Creator”). Certainly, mimesis can also generate competition, conflict and even violence … is this always the case, however? I am not sure, moreover, whether a too one-sided focus on mimesis would not over emphasize (socio-)psychological dynamics … What about the violence of injustice as deadly uneven distributions of wealth, means, and power? What about the increasing violence that arises from our abusive relationships with our environment? I do not want to say that there would not be a way to connect these forms to processes of “mimesis” – in fact, I think that can probably be done -, but I fear that by doing so one might narrow down our understanding of (in)justice and (un)sustainability. I also feel a strong need to remain very sensitive to structural forms of violence that are not mere interpersonal categories. Mimesis surely is a form of structural violence, in the sense that we are caught up in its dynamism, while at the same time we maintain it and, thus, also bear responsibility. But, development that forgets to take into account its cost to be paid by others, defines a different form of structural violence.

(2) If – and I would venture to make this claim – violence, as part of original sin, is an unavoidable part in our life-together without being an ultimate defining feature of our existence, then the example of Jesus or the commitment of God in Jesus’ life up to the cross and the resurrection, may only be part of the answer christians give to violence – the “eschatological” part. Christians trust that it is God who, finally, unravels our skin of violence where we are unable to skin ourselves of it. But this eschatological resolution of violent conflicts cannot be a cheap grace (if we want to get rid of violence, we should just wait for God to do this job for us …). God’s commitment to overcoming violence is very concrete and practical, feet and hands on in Jesus amidst messy human reality. Jesus’ life is God’s gift and promise, it is also a praxis that we can attempt to follow (to imitate … imitatio Christi), even if all of our practices of following Jesus have to pay the tribute of an eschatological proviso. Practices of forgiveness and reconciliation may be good examples of such human practices, “feasible” for human beings in their commitment to resolving and transforming violent conflicts, although never “full” if disconnected from the graceful relationship with God in Christ. Therefore, the question has to be asked how exactly the tension between “grace” and “nature” builds up the choice and willingness of the innocent (Christ: God and human being) to become the lamb that undoes the violent mechanism of scapegoating by subverting it, so to say, from the inside out. How can human beings, concretely in the struggle against violence, follow Jesus of Nazareth in a commitment that, ultimately, can only be God’s?

(3) In a very interesting 1940 review of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, George Orwell, the well-known author of Animal Farm and 1984, illustrates the perversion of victimization that can arise when someone like Adolf Hitler draws his appeal from being and embodying the suffering victim, seemingly similar to the Saviour Jesus Christ. This is profound misunderstanding and a perversion of deep Christian faith, but a very attractive perversion it is. Also Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the members of the Confessional Church understood this (pseudo-)religious features of Nazi ideology and denounced them, e.g. in the Barmen Erklärung. (Recent authors, such as Michael Burleigh, show great sensitivity to the “religious” features of Nazi-Germany; I also recommend one of the best – at least in my opinion – books on Hitler: Sebastian Haffner’s Anmerkungen zu Hitler). This means that a human perversion – victimization or a calimero-attitude – of God’s dismantling of the scapegoat violence in Jesus of Nazareth the Christ, can become a powerful weapon to initiate and justify violence on quasi-religious grounds. Victimization as a response to victimhood is a cunning but perverse political strategy banking on resentment – it is not the christian way of dealing with “being a victim”. How to be a victim or to take on the suffering of the victim, without entering into the self-serving powergame of victimization? This question is at the core of a correct understanding of René Girard’s thought, at least I think so. Whereas there is, in the process of scapegoating, a tendency to divinisation of the scapegoat (who takes on the societal violence and so defuses its destructive character), the suffering and cross of Jesus represent a dark night in which God is present by being explicitly absent: the focus, here, is not on the suffering as such but on the suffering in the perspective of the resurrection as a gift of God.

(4) And this leads me to a last reflection: to what kind of understanding of the unicity of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ does René Girard’s thought lead? Is Christianity the only religion that allows for the dismantling of the scapegoat mechnanism to control social and societal violence? How can we frame and state the contribution of Christianity to the transformation of violent conflicts? Does this contribution of Christianity also explain its emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation?

These are questions that I want to raise, discussions I want to initiate. In my opinion, here, we touch some of the core elements of the Christian faith and praxes. Here also, we touch the deep nerve of Friedrich Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity.

Does “ignatian theology” make sense?

Does it make sense to highlight features that would be characteristic of an “ignatian” way of doing theology? The question arose today, as we compared – in the context of interreligious, intercultural and comparative theological praxes – Francis X. Clooney, K. Rahner, Chr. van Nispen tot Sevenaer, Hugo Carmeliet, Egied van Broeckhoven, and Aloysius Pieris. I was struck, in these cases, by some similarities. This is not enough, of course, to really speak about a specific “ignatian” or “jesuit” style in theology, but these similarities are interesting pointers.

(1) A close interaction between spirituality and theology. The reason may well be that, in an ignatian perspective, faith concerns relationships: with oneself, with the others, with the world, with God. Theology, then, will focus on Christianity as the religion of relationships more than of books and clearcut theories. The Christian tradition is about introducing people into the web of relationships that constitutes the church.

(2) The experience of the Spiritual Exercises articulates these relationships in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. That means that ignatian approaches will always be concrete (as they contemplate and meditate the concrete events of a concrete life) as well as focussed on the relationship with God. “To find God in all things” is a clear ignatian motto – ignatian theologians will, therefore, really pay attention to God’s presence and perspectives in given human situations. The focus on the concrete, in which human beings take on their responsibilities, ánd on the divine are deeply intertwined: they represent a “hypostatic union” not only in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, but also in our own lives. Not surprisingly, “ignatian theologian” will be focussed on Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, attentive to concrete lives of people and to God’s presence amidst these lives. Particular attention goes to entering into human realities of suffering, fighting them as God does by become incarnate as the least human being, a human being who dies on the cross. Ignatian theologians are theologians of the incarnation, entering into the world with the love of God who enters into the world. This also means that ignatian theologians will attempt to be transdisciplinary theologians: taking into account all the sciences and valueing the experiences in the fields of reality, so as to create new forms of knowledge and new approaches to understand reality as God’s gift.

(3) Roland Barthes has pointed out that the transmission of these experiences of encounter and relationships, happens in a narrative process capable of transmitting relational experiences by involving people in them. In a way, Ignatius Loyola introduces people in his relationship with Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ – a relationship which has opened up Ignatius to the relationship with God -, so that they themselves, through the relationship with Ignatius (and the people who sustain the tradition that originates with him) enter into a relationship with Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ and, through him, with God (as Father, Son and Spirit). In their turn, these Christians will proceed to offer their own experiences as an opportunity for others to enter into similar experiences. For such processes to be genuine, praxes of discernment, personal and in common, are necessary, that aim “apostolically” (through relationships as those of the apostles with Jesus) at creating a space (of friendship) in which the experiences of God amidst concrete life circumstances are recognized, stimulated and discovered. Not surprisingly, ignatian theologians will be sensitive to theological heuristics and narrative approaches; they will also attempt to allow praxes of common discernment to become part of their theological endeavours.

(4) The Lord, who enters in relationships of friendship with people, fosters friendship between people and between people and other creatures. The expression “friends in the Lord“, although little used by Ignatius Loyola, expresses this well. The early friends in the Lord, however, decided to remain connected, to share in a common project and to build up structures that would allow them to do so … in this way they became companions in the Society of Jesus, building a “body” of people very diversely engaged, but sharing a common passion for embodying God’s presence and saving action in the world. The friendship mirrors the innertrinitarian love, that unfolds itself into an active and committed “economic Trinity” at the service of fulfilling human and creational reality by bringing about interconnectedness in view of the Kingdom … an effort that is called “church”. Again, not surprisingly, ignatian theologians will like to speak about the Trinity, will pay close attention to the church in its universal scope (the special vow of obedience to the pope with regard to the missions expresses this in the Society of Jesus), and will display a sense of vision that profoundly shapes their mission responsibility.

(5) Scholars of ignatian spirituality and the ignatian “modo de proceder” (way of doing things) have paid considerable attention to Ignatius Loyola’s Autobiography, as well as to the Spiritual Exercises and the Spiritual Diary which shows one of the crucial discernment processes of Ignatius with regard to the structures of the Society of Jesus. There is also a growing interest in the Constitutions, in the way Ignatius and his first collaborators structured and gave form to the emerging body of the Society of Jesus: governance issues, therefore, are crucial to practical ignatian theologians: they have a sense of the structural. There is another step to take in ignatian studies: Ignatius Loyola’s main activity as a general was the service of the whole body connecting it through letters, allowing out of this web of relationships for a body to emerge, a body that can act at a universal scale.

These are but some characteristics that may point to an “ignatian way” of doing theology. I would appreciate further discussion on the issue, as I am convinced that in the face of today’s worldwide challenges, this ignatian approach offers possibilities.

Conversational Theologies / Incarnation and Trinity

While reading a very good advanced master thesis by Joke Lambelin, presented at the K.U.Leuven Faculty of Theology, I started wondering about the theological groundwork that can be provided to lend support to intercultural and comparative approaches, as represented by Volker Küster and Frans Wijsen on the one side, and Francis X. Clooney on the other side. Obviously, here we deal with dynamic processes, in which theology provides a heuristic more than a hermeneutic, the latter being too static to unfold identities that are faithful by being on the move. The core insight of both intercultural and comparative theologies (in the case of Christian contexts) is that the encounter with difference is crucial to the understanding and construction of one’s own religious and theological identity (it may be more interesting to speak about the relationship between rootedness [cf. Simone Weil] and interaction, in which the former is permanently uprooted and on the move in conversations and interactions with others). The holy ground on which Christians become Christians, is constituted by the encounters with the others.

Such heuristic and dynamic perspectives may seem unsettling to many, as we tend to look for strong and fixed identities that give us security and root us in solid ground. It is helpful to realize that, in a tension between faithfulness and creativity amidst a myriad of interactions, our identities (plural) are often on the move and shifting. Identity is a verb (with an active, a passive and a deponent mode, reflecting its core feature of interaction). Identity is, therefore, history and requires narratives to be discussed and studied. Identity is the result of (un)conscious decisions and personal or common discernment processes.

Of course, one will have to look for the theological grounds that allow – in our case, amongst Christians – to take this view on identity and to trust that the histories of identity building, expressed in shared narratives and discernment processes, are crucial to our being and becoming Christians. From a Christian perspective, this is the place where we have to speak about the interwoven dynamics of the Incarnation and the Trinity (I will use the abbreviation Tr-In). One biblical story (the encounter of Jesus of Nazaret with the Syro-Phoenician woman) and a 20th century Flemish Jesuit mystic (Egied van Broeckhoven) .

Egied van Broeckhoven, who experiences friendship with others as the place for the encounter also with God, combines a desire for incarnation (moving into the world of the factory workers) with a deep sense of economic Trinity in the encounter with the others (in his friendships he participates in and experiences the very relationships of and in the TriUne God). Jesus, when encountering the Syro-Phoenician woman who comes to plead with him for the healing of her daughter, at first refuses harshly, telling the woman that we usually do not invite dogs at our table. But he is shocked, so to say, out of his prejudices by the answer of the woman: “the dogs are allowed to eat the crumbles that fall from the table”. One can read this encounter in a trinitarian perspective (I think): Recognizing in the woman the face of the challenging Father, Jesus responds as who he is, the Son, and so reveals the Spirit, in the woman, in himself, and in the healing of the daughter.

I think it will still need some time before Christian and Roman Catholic theologians in particular, reach the point of being able to theologically unfold the roots of intercultural and comparative theologies. This theological adventure, however, is crucial to our times as this will also be one of the paths on which to address contemporary worldwide challenges as globalization, violence and environmental crisis.