From Hermeneutics to Heuristics

This post should be read not as a finished and well polished theological thought, but rather as an attempt and an invitation to allow Christian experiences to find a path into theology. It’s tentative, open to further exploration.

Theologians of the Leuven school (K.U.Leuven faculty of theology) are well known for their excellent library (I am convinced it is the best in the world) and for their hermeneuticalapproaches that allow for a creative and faithful understanding of tradition, allowing a close interaction with concrete lived realities as well as for powerful interpretations of biblical texts and foundational texts from the tradition. The deep concern of this hermeneutical approach is to clarify that faith and tradition are really alive, that they mean something to people in today’s world – there is a deep concern here to communicate what Christians find most precious, their relationship with God in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, shaping their lives for the better and the happier.

Hermeneutics is a dynamic process, in which both our lives and our traditions are deepened precisely through their mutual interaction. That is why I like to call tradition an adventure – some will think this is paradoxical, while others may fear a betrayal of tradition here … but I don’t agree with them: when I read the lives of saints and of great Christians, I do this precisely because they inspire me to interact with tradition (the relationship with God through the relationship with Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, as transmitted from generation to generation precisely again through relationships) and to deepen our understanding of our lives and of tradition. The Christian tradition transmits a deep relationship with God who commits to us in Jesus Christ, and it does so by again and again involving us in relationships (building the church while receiving from it) that point to this foundational relationship and its deep work in our world.

In that dynamic sense, hermeneutics is heuristics: trying to “unearth” (the word is beautiful as it seems to refer at the same time to the importance of the incarnation, God’s commitment to the earth, and how the delving into the earth – becoming profoundly human, without escaping the world – allows us to move beyond the earth (“un-earth”) as God fills us with grace the more we commit, as Godself does, to the fullness of creation) both the meaning of life and of the tradition that embodies God’s commitment and graceful promise. Today, I am wondering whether we should not rather use this word “heuristics” instead of “hermeneutics”, particularly in view of the fact that young people today are facing a world that is changing so radically and rapidly, that they will need all their faith and faithfulness to tradition to commit to people, particularly to those who suffer from the profound changes that are happening. They have to re-discover how one lives as a committed Christian in a world for which the traditional ways of framing tradition do not anymore offer cheap security. The challenges for young people are enormous – they will need all the faith they can muster as well as the courage to entrust themselves to the relationship with God in Jesus Christ, a relationship which they will be able to discover, experience and transmit, to the extent that they commit as Jesus to the world, which has a very different face and complexity than it had in Jesus’ lifetime. The commitment of young people, to the world and to God, is a costly commitment – it doesn’t come cheap (cheap and costly grace are insights I gained from reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work).

When I reflect upon what I want to transmit as a Christian and as a theologian to others – particularly to young people -, I tentatively would say the following: to commit to people and to the world, as God commits to the world and to people in Jesus Christ, and in that commitment that allows us to enter deeply into the world and into life, to encounter God as challenging us, in this world and in the faces and lives of people, to the “beyond the world and the people” that is, at the same time, the deepest intimacy of the world and the people. It’s complex to formulate and I don’t know whether I say it correctly. I recognize it in the mystical experience of one of the 20th Century greatest mystics, a Jesuit worker priest, Egied Van Broeckhoven, who entered into the world of factories to encounter people (incarnation in line with God’s incarnation) in such ways that in the intimacy of these encounters God reveals the very deep love that is God as Father, Son and Spirit. The movement towards the intimacy of the world is the movement into the intimacy with and of God: incarnation and Trinity strengthen each other.

I am not sure whether I manage to formulate this with sufficient theological sharpness, but I am convinced this touches the depth of the Christian experience, and it is an experience in which love for and from the world, and love for and from God, grow together in a mutual exploration and grace … an experience that is, to me, and particularly in a world that has become threatening and insecure in totally new ways, profoundly consoling and empowering.

Discerning about what we want to do with our lives

I have been very impressed by the movie Lions for Lamb and the website that has been set up for this movie. I just want to share some impressions on the movie, in the hope of luring some of my readers into watching it. The movie is about people discerning about what they want to do with their lives, precisely in the tension field of individual decision and political and structural context. As it is easy to identify with the people in the movie, viewers and movie goers are also challenged to think, discern and decide. It made me reflect about what I do and where are my priorities. It made me also reflect how easy it is to throw away oportunities or not to make the best out of the gifts one has received.

The background situation is a military operation in Afghanistan and the fate of two concrete soldiers, whose decision to become part of the military is presented as part of the movie. This allows broader analyses: how the military work, how political decisions are taken (Tom Cruise plays the ambitious senator Jasper Irving), how the media reflect on their own role (Meryl Streep, as the journalist Janine Roth, is feeling uneasy about her work and how she is being used in political games), how important intellectual life and academic work are (Robert Redford, as professor Stephen Malley, confronts and is confronted by one of his very bright students, Todd, played by Andrew Garfield). The structure of the movie is impressive: on the one side the military action, on the other side two main running conversations (the politician and the journalist, the professor and his student), with a set of other smaller but not less important conversations and events (e.g. a class, the journalist and her boss, the very important contrast between the white Todd and the two students – a Latino and a black US citizen – who decide to join the military, …). To me, these two main conversations as part of the whole movie, have been crucial: I had the impression of being part of them.

The website reflects the desire of Robert Redford to make people face important societal issues and to call them to task: what is what you want and can contribute? do you want to contribute?

This is a movie I will ask my students to engage with. Of course, as a theologian I cannot but regret that so little is being said about religion and faith in the movement … although … is what I have just said really correct? Is this movie not about “religion” in the broad and deep sense of the word? Religion as the capacity to reflect (religion seems to be connected to the Latin ‘re-legere’, which means ‘to re-read’) about what really matters for us (religion seems also to be connected to the Latin ‘re-ligare’, which means to ‘re-bind’ or to ’solidly bind’).

I was also impressed by one of the professor’s claims: “I have the ability to recognize great potential” … It’s a humble and an important statement. In the movie “Amadeus”, the composer Salieri is capable of recognizing Mozart’s genius, but he resents the fact that he doesn’t have that genius himself and he challenges God on that ‘injustice’. In the gospel, John the Baptist recognizes the Lord and is happy about being the friend of the bridegroom, not the bridegroom himself. Professor Stephen Malley (R. Redford) in the movie, seems to be of the kind of John the Baptist.