Ever New Creativity of Sin

Recently I read an interesting piece on Christianity and capitalism. The author argued that these two in the current situation of capitalist societies are an unfortunate combination; while socialism should abandon the close link with anti-religious atheism, contemporary Christianity should consider - or, realize - that the radical edge of the Gospel's social message is, in today's situation in the west, most compatible with a novel version of socialism.

It is, of course, naive to talk about socialism and capitalism as these were two monolithic politico-economic systems which exist(ed) in a pure state. There were many socialisms, and many capitalisms, and, in a want for any other epithet, some or other combination of socialist and capitalist ideas seems to me the only sensible way forward. But I will completely ignore here the million dollar question ("How exactly should that combination look like?").

What strikes me as theologically more interesting in relation of Christianity with politics is the insight that most, or all, versions of either socialism or capitalism have obviously failed to build an effective awareness of human nature into itself. The reality of an 'ever-new creativity of sin' can corrupt, and almost always does, any political system. The socialist ideals are fantastic: emphasis on the rights of workers and of the poor, protection of the poor from the rich and their abuse, international brotherhood of all men, anti-nationalism, etc. but corruption and abuse has been widespread in socialism as soon as it was first realized as a political system. Capitalism, of course, the same paradox: freedom of the market, freedom of thought and speech, entrepreneurship,... very nice. But it is clear that the perversion and a ridiculous multiplication of desire, and sanctification of greed into a virtue have led to systematic abuse which doesn't seem to be remediable within the same system. It has shown the inability of capitalism to "correct itself"; it needs to be monitored and, yes, put in check by nothing less than higher values which go beyond making money.

I know this all sounds very 'preachy'', but it has to be said. Capitalism is in need of an infusion of non-capitalist values which are able put the value of getting rich into a much wider perspective on human being, a perspective where human happiness refuses to be defined by economic prosperity but is seen as much more complex phenomenon of our embeddedness in our social and natural environments.

Christian wisdom has it that human sin is always smarter than our (selfish) reasoning about our well-being; for the most part, we can realize that some well-meaning plans or actions have been perverted by sin, only in hindsight. And this hindsight must direct our social and political decisions for measures against the effects of human sin. A credible, social interpretation of the Augustinian focus on human corruption should make us very much alert and ever-wiser to keep our political system in check, be it capitalism or socialism, or whatever else (or combination of those). As I see it, this means that the state should control the market in several ways since the market, as any other social reality or space, is a fertile ground of the ever-new creativity of sin. It demands our ever-new vigilance and countering the developing nature of sin with virtuous creativity, in order to minimize the evil effects of selfishness. What else?

God as a Father and Other Metaphors

It is the question which I am still somewhat struggling with: Should the picture of God as a person - and more precisely, as a father - have a distinct place and be above all other metaphors for God that we find in the Christian tradition? In other words: God is portrayed variously in Christianity: as a rock, as a wind and/or spirit, as a fire, a vine, a tree, a lion; and then, of course, as a father, a mother, as a groom, a close friend, etc. many social/personal pictures. Is the father picture in any way privileged? Should it be?

Privileging the image of the father in comparison with other pictures of God in Christianity is usually taken for granted. 'Our Father who art in Heaven': this is often understood as a rock-solid fact describing God himself directly. Other pictures of God are then thought to be 'only' metaphors, as if 'father' would be something else than a metaphor.

As Janet Soskice reminds us in her book Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender and Religious Language - referring to Paul Riceour's point - the title 'father' or 'daddy' for God had a surprise and subversive element in it when Jesus used it. This is at the very heart of what this metaphor is supposed to do. By using it so extensively and involving his followers into this language, Jesus was forcefully bringing home the point about God's intimate closeness to everyone; God is not distant, not anti-human, not available for religious or political establishment to 'use' Him. Instead, he is everybody's God, he is approachable, he is Abba-'daddy'.

When this important, indeed crucial, work of the father-metaphor is lost on us, 'father' becomes a fixed and eternalized part of God's nature in a way that is open to multitude of abuses and misunderstandings. And since the history of the extensive use of the father metaphor in Christianity brings with it a multitude of religious and moral errors, we should remind ourselves today more than ever that 'father' is just one of the metaphors for God. He is also a rock, a wind, a lion. Decentralizing the father image from its too fixed place in our God-talk and thinking about God can only help our real worship today.

It certainly made my faith more real and at the same time much less susceptible to the edge of the Freudian critique of theism - the criticism which has not, as much as I see, lost its power even today, however persistently it is declared to be old hat.

And most importantly, only when we decentralize the father metaphor from our God-talk, can Jesus' talk of God as a father (together with the Our Father prayer) again strike us as surprising. In this way, this fantastic metaphor can again do some of the work for which it was designed to do.

Textual Animism and Christianity

I just noticed that three months have passed since my last post. I am sorry for that, but also happy since I was busy with other exciting things (mostly).

I am reading a book by an eco-philosopher David Abram, The Spell of the Sensous. In it, Abram developed an approach to the questions regarding our relatedness to/with nature and other beings on the planet which builds on the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger - in other words, it is very much "phenomenological" in terms of his philosophical approach.

There are lots of great topics explored in the book, but I would like to mention one in particular which strikes me as very relevant for Christian spirituality. Abram traces the historical replacement of oral culture which was more embedded in the interrelatedness of humans with our surroundings like plants, animals and seas, by a written (alphabetically) culture which had a tendency of somewhat removing us from our natural surroundings. But, the focus on the written texts done by humans after this technological revolution resembles, in many ways, our former way of relating to natural world, claims Abram. Here is how he puts it:

"In learning to read we must break the spontaneous participation of our eyes and our ears in the surrounding terrain (where they had ceaselessly converged in the synaesthetic encounter with animals, plants, and streams [ for hundreds of thousands of years of hunting and escaping the dangers of natural world]) in order to recouple those senses upon the flat surface of the page. As a [native American] elder focuses her eyes upon cactus and hears the cactus begin to speak, so we focus our eyes upon these printed marks and immediately hear voices. We hear spoken words, witness strange scenes or visions, even experience other lives. As non-human animals, plants, and even 'inanimate' rivers once spoke to our ancestors, so the 'inert' letters on the page now speak to us! This is a form of animism that we take for granted, but it is animism nonetheless - as mysterious as a talking stone." (Abram, Spell of the Sensous, 131)

Abram goes on to claim that "it is only when a culture shifts its participation to these printed letters that the stones fall silent. Only as our senses transfer their animating magic to the written word do the trees become mute, the other animals dumb". (same page).

Many might not agree with such a "magical" view of a very everyday activity as reading. The claim that stones fall silent when a culture focuses to the written word also sounds simplified. But even if Abram is at least partly right here as long as phenomenology of reading is concerned, interesting questions can be asked about Christian spirituality and Bible-reading practices:

If we are doing a form of "textual animism" when reading the Bible, what does this teach us about that aspect of Christian spiritual experience and practice? In other words, if we see the Bible-reading as not merely receiving information about God but as experience, the spirituality of Bible-reading could be related with wider mystical, felt way of experiencing all physical reality which surrounds us, most primary first: other humans, animals, stones, trees and rivers. Can Abram's philosophy shed any light on Christian ages-old doctrine of "the two books of God": The Bible and nature, and of relation between the two?

But more problematically: Has Christianity which has its beginnings in very urban (not rural) cultures, with its strong focus on texts (reading and interpreting the books of the Bible) dampen the voices of nature for Christians, so that Christians have harder time to hear those voices? Throughout Middle Ages, nature was increasingly described either in early scientific/mechanistic ways (less so) or (more) by way of Greeco-Roman mythology, in other words, with pagan religious narratives which were to be taken "only as stories". Did Christianity with its focus on the other world and abstract entities (God, angels) have problems to accommodate the strong presence and experiential force that our co-habitant natural environment continued to have on us, so that nature-mysticism was essentially "given up" to paganism? Did the excessive focus on a group of texts (Bible) and interpretations of those texts (which developed into abstract theology) have something to do with that?