Ecumenical Anthology VII: Integrity in Integration

Integrity in Integration

Developing Sustainable Dialogue

1

Integrity in Integration Developing Sustainable D i a log u e

Ecumenical Anthology VII of the WSCF Central European Subregion

Edited by Rachael Weber, Nagypál Szabolcs & Peter Sˇajda

BGÖI & WSCF-CESR & Oikumené – Akademická YMCA Budapest – Praha, 2008

© Rachael Weber, Nagypál Szabolcs & Peter Šajda (2008)

Co ntents

Illustrations: Boldi

(Hungary)

(http://boldi.sculptor.hu) Art Editor: Szalamiki (Budapest, Hungary) Publisher: Békés Gellért Ecumenical Institute (BGÖI, Pannonhalma), WSCF Central European Subregion (CESR) & Oikumené – Akademická YMCA (Praha) ISBN 978-963-86946-6-9

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Peter Šajda – Nagypál Szabolcs – Rachael Weber:

Building with Integrity

I. Romany Minority in Central Europe 18

Karolína Ryvolová: The Roma in the Czech Lands:

Past and Present

27 35

Eva Davidová: Romanies in Cˇeský Krumlov Bryce Belcher: Cˇeský Krumlov and the Roma Population

after 1989

40

Further Reflections on Roma in Cˇeský Krumlov by the First Freely Elected Mayor, Jan Vondrouš

44

Németh Márton: Folk Culture, Literature and Nation

Building Efforts in the Romantic Age of Central Europe

II. Christianity and Sustainable Renewal 52

Peniel Jesudason Rufus Rajkumar: Being Church Today:Paradigms of Discipleship

for a Context of Transition

65

Rozs-Nagy Szilvia: Ecumenism:

The Way of Poverty, Fidelity and Obedience

76

Sören Asmus: Ecumenical Dialogue as a Project of Mutual

Perception

85 This publication has been funded with support from the European Commission, the International Visegrád Fund (IVF) and WSCF Lingua Franca.

This publication reflects the views only of the contributors.

The European Commission, the International Visegrád Fund (IVF) and WSCF Lingua Franca cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Pavel Hanes: Messianic Prophecies on the Transformation

of Human Society

100

John George Huber: An Ecumenical Reflection on

Fundamentalism by an Evangelical Catholic from Missouri

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III. Religious Integrity in a World of Plurality 107

Henrik Lindberg Hansen: Faith to Faith Relations

in a World of Plurality

128

Nagypál Szabolcs: Risks and Means of Interreligious

Dialogue in Community

144

Peter Šajda: Søren Kierkegaard’s Methodological

Contribution to Interreligious Dialogue

158

Robert S. Jones: Religion in American Politics

and the Civil Rights Movement as a Unifying Element

166

Sárkány Péter: Outlines of Viktor Emil Frankl’s

Religious Philosophy

IV. Culture, Contemplation and Meditation 180

Rebecca Blocksome: The Central European Imaginary:

Four-dimensional Borderlands in Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies

196

Jamie Moran: Earth Wisdom: Not Plato’s Preformed

Forms up in the Sky

203 214 217

6

Jennifer Stiles: United together in Praise (Psalm 148) Luca M. Negro: Meditation on the Sibiu Icon

(John 1,5–14; 3,25–30) Daniel Pastircˇák: A Story about Love

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Peter Šajda – Nagypál Szabolcs – Rachael Weber

Building with Integrity The Turkish poet Nâzim Hikmet wrote, in his famous poem I love my Country, the following verses: I love my country: I’ve swung on her plane trees, been inside her prisons.

Nothing dispels my depression Like her songs and tobacco.

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These few words depict in a very condense way the ambivalence of the poet’s feelings for his country – an ambivalence that many of us experience from time to time. Both for our own country and for other countries, for the community we belong to and for other communities.

This book – and the project in which it is rooted – attempt to look for the best in our own identity and in the identities of others, in our own tradition and in the traditions of others. In other words, to bring forth what connects and enriches us and to maximise the space for it.

Only by understanding ourselves, our heritages and dreams, and those of others around us, can we truly look towards creating and developing the future together. As Winston Churchill once said: “First we shape our buildings, then our buildings shape us.”

I. History of a Movement

Our Central European ecumenical youth cooperation has aimed to build up paradigms of peace and reconciliation through dialogue, and to strengthen Central European identity before and after joining the European Union (EU) by mutual education, cooperation and cultural exchange.

The idea of a Central European ecumenical youth cooperation was born in 2001 amongst a group of young people from Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, who came to know each other through the activities of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF).

Established in 1895 as the first international youth and student organisation, and the first ecumenical movement, WSCF has more than a hundred years of experience in grassroots activities similar to ours: breaking down barriers of centuries-old enmities and mistrust.

The first incarnation of our Central European cooperation began during the interwar years (1921–1939), starting just after the Versailles treaties, in the form of conferences of Austrian, Czech, Slovak, Magyar, Polish, and even Romanian and Yugoslav students, devoted to reconciliation and developing future ecumenical leaders.

In 2001 we felt that our respective countries were facing very similar and parallel challenges and we could benefit immensely from addressing these issues in a multinational context, which would also further awareness of cultural diversity and help to establish a Central European identity within Europe as a whole.

WSCF was founded for the specific purpose of healing the painful divisions which tear apart Christianity. She wanted to heal it by coming to a full knowledge and understanding of each denomination’s uniqueness and the special richness each denomination adds to our common body, the Church.

II. Dialogue and Identity

We are committed to realising in society the values issuing from our faith: peace, justice and respect for human dignity, developed through a culture of dialogue, tolerance and appreciation of diversity.

There is an ongoing dialogue among the countries situated between Germany and the former Soviet Union, in the heart of Europe, to rediscover their belonging together, and to develop their sense of common identity. Central Europe is in a strategic geopolitical as well as spiritual position. Here not only Orthodoxy meets Western Christianity, but also Protestantism meets Roman Catholicism. The issue at stake is identity – how we define ourselves and how we define the ‘Other’.

Identity is a sensitive issue particularly in this region of the world, where the legacy of crumbled empires is a collection of nation states haunted by a history of majority (or minority) oppression and

1 Hikmet Nâzim, Beyond the Walls. London, 2002. 100.

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Š ajda – N agypál – W eber : Building with Integrity

subjugation. In order to fully integrate in the EU, it is imperative that citizens of our countries come to define themselves in terms larger than our own nationality, culture, religion or religious denomination.

Central Europeans can contribute to the unity of Europe with their own unity within Central Europe.

Thus our objectives are to deconstruct national, denominational and religious prejudices in Central Europe through intercultural and interdenominational dialogue; to build additional supra-national identities and relationships through cross-border cooperation; and to educate new generations of committed leaders through training and practical leadership experiences.

III. Ongoing Methodology

We organise two seminars each year, and the responsibility to host each seminar rotates. Special care is also taken to ensure that all participants have the opportunity to share their perspectives, in particular many minority voices. The themes are carefully chosen to cover a broad area, providing a solid background on issues of importance to future Central European leaders and youth leaders. Our first seminar on Ecumenism and Central European Identity was held in the Békés Gellért Ecumenical Institute (BGÖI), in Pannonhalma, Hungary, in 2002.

Since then, we have focused on a variety of topics: Growing EU: Hopes and Fears of Members and Candidates; Central European Culture; The Myth of Independency; Searching for Security in the XXIst Century; Ecology and Environmental Protection, Corporate Social Responsibility; Leadership and Decision-Making in Democratic Communities; Conflict Resolution in our Inner Life and in Community; Overcoming Nationalism, Xenophobia and Populism in Modern Societies; The Spirit of Central Europe Sixty Years after Shoah; Minority Integration and Sustainable Renewal; Equality of Chances or Equal Discrimination.

Each year we publish an ecumenical anthology (which are also downloadable from our website: www.wscf-cesr.org) to follow up the themes of the seminars and to spread them to a broader audience. The first anthology, A Pentatonic Landscape: Central Europe, Ecology, Ecumenism was compiled and published by the Békés Gellért Ecumenical Institute (BGÖI) in Pannonhalma, Hungary, in 2002.

The title and topic of the other five publications are as follows: The River Book: Identity, Culture and Responsibility; medi(t)ations, (re)

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Introduction

conciliations: Conflict Resolution and European Integration; Subtle as Serpents, Gentle as Doves: Equality and Independence; Dreaming Our Neighbour: The Shoa and the Utopia of Yesterday; Roots of Vision, Routes of Change: Nationalism and Ecumenical Leadership.

Our cooperation is wholly conceived and implemented by youth (ages eighteen to thirty-five). We work to promote civil society – young people engaging in private efforts for the public good, taking the initiative for social development through collective action. Young people are involved at all levels in activities, from organisation to participation, implementation to strategic oversight. The participating countries, following the example of the EU, take turns providing the chairperson for the cooperation every half year. Our main goal is to educate generations of students and young people, who acknowledge their responsibility and are prepared to take up the challenge of building a common Central European future.

We also implement cooperative informal education in all our seminars, led by the participants themselves, in the form of workshops, working groups, discussion groups and moderated panel discussions.

Special care is taken always to ensure that each participant is properly encouraged and provided with a space to share her or his knowledge and experience related to the general or specific topic.

To the theoretical dimension we add the practical dimension of learning by doing, not just from lecturers and leaders, but also from each other, as we come together to learn and work across boundaries of nation, gender, ethnicity and religion. We believe that the only way young people can learn to work and make decisions in an international and intercultural context is simply to be enabled to do so, within a suitable and supportive environment.

In a seminar, one significant topic is explored in depth through a variety of methodologies, considering it from every angle to give a true multidisciplinary approach. The seminar programme itself consists of a combination of lectures as well as first-hand experiences through cultural excursions.

The interdisciplinary method to themes encourages the synthesis of information, drawing together understanding and expertise from many walks of life. Education is by its very nature a long-term investment, many times passing through generations: knowledge, wisdom and erudition have no expiration date.

Our cooperation is designed entirely in a ‘bottom-up’ manner, with the needs of the partner organisations determining the direction of the project. Therefore, our programme is structured to provide these

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Š ajda – N agypál – W eber : Building with Integrity

opportunities at different intensities, suitable to the various levels our participants are at and allowing space for them to develop during the course of the project.

Our emphasis is on informal education combined with leadership training, which interact and mutually enrich each other. We also foster a sense of ownership and responsibility among the many youth involved.

The concept and theory of dialogue is central to our philosophy and provides the unifying foundation, which subsumes all our work.

We understand it to be an end as well as a means; the experience of engaging in dialogue has value in and of itself. The mentality of dialogue is complementary; it is relational and involves mutual correction: not ‘superior-than’ but ‘in-relation-to’. It allows for issues to be addressed in a multidisciplinary way, rather than artificially removing them from their natural and proper relations.

Dialogue is a crucial prerequisite for deconstructing the oppressive historical dualisms and hierarchical relationships, which breed prejudice, hostility and intolerance. True dialogue assumes that the parties engaging in it meet as equals, each bringing a uniquely valuable perspective. Through all our enlisted principles and activities we try to facilitate knowledge, reconciliation and appreciation among our nations, thus contributing to an assertive, more unified and ecumenical Central Europe.

IV. Minority Integration and Sustainable Renewal

Near the border to Austria and Germany, within Bohemia, the city of Cˇeský Krumlov offers a fascinating case study of minorities within society and of urban renewal and development despite historical political turmoil and international economic pressures. Thus the nearby Poneˇšice provided a fitting venue for our youth seminar, entitled Together and Developing: Minority Integration and Sustainable Renewal in Central Europe. A society, a community at large, can only truly maintain sustainable development with cooperation and participation of all its members, minority and majority.

Karolína Ryvolová, a PhD student from the Czech Republic, gave a lecture on the history of Roma within Central Europe. She revealed common misconceptions about the origin of the Roma, and gave an overview of the changes in society throughout history that led to the realities of today. Her lecture provided a backdrop for discussion of minority integration in Central European society, a topic which was to be addressed throughout the week.

12

Introduction

Ostap Paparega, a specialised trainer from Romania working with community development in Harlowe, Great Britain, led an introductory activity on community development. He began by speaking about community leadership, focusing on the difference between management and leadership as well as on the balance between meeting urgent needs and working towards long term goals.

Bryce Belcher, an American who has lived in Cˇeský Krumlov for the past fifteen years, gave a lecture on the history and current situation in Cˇeský Krumlov, revealing it as a case study in sustainable renewal and minority integration. The town originated to serve the needs of the castle, and is an example of seven hundred years of development.

Though Cˇeský Krumlov escaped destruction during both World Wars, it was left as a ghost town, known as the “dead city”, after the Second World War and the evacuation of the Sudeten Germans.

Gradually, Cˇeský Kumlov was resettled by young Czech and Slovak families, as well as by Roma. Uniquely, the town encouraged its residents themselves to rebuild, after decades of decay and abandonment. The city council and residents did not turn towards outside investment and involved all, including the Roma minority, in the renewal process. Today, Cˇeský Krumlov is a model in successful development and about two million tourists visit this town of fifteen thousand inhabitants each year.

Jan Vondrouš was the first freely elected mayor in Cˇeský Krumlov after the Velvet Revolution, and served for eight years. Through his efforts and vision, the Roma were incorporated into the development of the town and the renewal process occurred through local actions, rather than through foreign investment. Our time of discussion with the former mayor provided an inspiring first hand experience with the topic of sustainable renewal.

Martina Nováková and Karol Zbor ˇil from Cˇlovek v Ohrození (People in Peril), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working with immigrants and refugees in Slovakia, delivered a lecture on the integration of disadvantaged minorities and migrants. Efforts for enduring solutions involve legal, economic, social, and cultural processes. Integration is a dynamic long-term two-way process, involving both the migrant or minority and the hosting society.

Participants gathered in the cinema to watch Smell (The Brats) (Smradi) (Rotzbengel), a Czech film by Zdeneˇk Tyc (1956–) in 2002, about a family with two adopted Roma children who migrate within the Czech Republic, revealing the everyday tolerance and intolerance that exists towards the other in regular life.

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Š ajda – N agypál – W eber : Building with Integrity

V. Folk Traditions in Intercultural Dialogue

Culture is changing and redefining itself along transnational lines. Therefore, our student seminar Folk Traditions as a Basis for Intercultural Dialogue in Central Europe, organised in Supraśl, Poland, aimed to discuss the importance of folk culture today, examining for example the following questions: What are the roots and shared components of our folk traditions? Is folk culture still developing today? What are the influences? Can it be modern? Can young people influence and contribute to folk culture?

Do they feel responsible for it? How is folk art and culture preserved or continued among younger generations within Central Europe today? What role does folk culture have in personal identity? Can we use our folk traditions as a source for intercultural dialogue?

Participants joined in a scavenger hunt around the venue, the nearby Orthodox monastery, Monaster Zwiastowania Najświętszej Marii Panny w Supraślu, and in the town of Suspraśl. Their task was to both photograph and sketch the folk art they found around them, in this way allowing all to explore their conceptions of folk culture and how it is portrayed or used within the local context.

On another day, participants also went by a small transport train to the monastery for a tour of its icon museum. The tour guide explained the religious traditions and origins surrounding the icons in the museum’s extensive collections.

On the excursion day, all travelled to Czarna Wies Koscielna, a small Polish town, to visit a blacksmith and a pottery shop, before going to Czarna Białostocka to see the weaving process. These artisans showed traditional techniques, told about their histories and efforts to preserve and market their goods in an increasingly globalised world.

In Kruszyniany, the home of a Tatar minority, participants had a traditional Tatar lunch before visiting a Tatar mosque and hearing a presentation from a local Tatar about the integration of traditional Tatar culture and lifestyles in the area throughout history and today.

Németh Márton, a masters’ student of European history, who works at the Magyar National Library, gave a lecture entitled Folk Culture, Literature and Nation-Building Efforts in the Modern Age of Central Europe.

A lecture was given about traditional Slovak town bynames by Katarína Babicová and Zuzana Babicová, from Slovakia. By focusing on the origin of these names, they were able to explore the roots of various histories and current names in contemporary society.

14

Introduction

An orthodox priest from Białystok, Włodzimierz Misijuk, who had formerly been the Eastern European Coordinator for WSCF global from 1991–1995, gave a lecture on folk traditions and religion, following up from the earlier excursion to the monastery. He talked about the history of the region as well as the difference between Tradition and traditions in the Church, and about how these traditions, both similar and different, influence dialogue among youth.

A film-screening of Pacho: The Thief of Hybe (Pacho, Hybský Zbojník, 1976), written by Peter Jaroš and directed by Martin Ťapák, parodying the Slovak national hero, Juraj Jánošík, was shown before an outdoor picnic one evening, complete with a Polish folk band and dancing.

VI. Behind the Images

Boldi, alias Szmrecsányi Boldizsár (http://boldi.sculptor.hu), was born in 1970 in Budapest, Hungary. He majored in the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Wien, and in the Magyar Academy of Fine Arts, before completing his Master’s School in the Janus Pannonius University of Sciences in Pécs.

He had individual exhibitions in Budapest, Veszprém, Tihany, Győr and Fonyód in Hungary; as well as in Rome, the Hague and Wien. His sculptures can be found in public places in Körmend and in various districts of Budapest; as well as in Dunajská Streda (Dunaszerdahely, Slovakia), Rome and Campocecina (Italy), La Charité-sur-Loire (France), Brusque (Brazil), Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Woerden (the Netherlands), Ayia Varvara (Cyprus) and Guatemala Town.

His overwhelming passion is marble, especially marble quarried in Carrara. His technique is taille directe (direct carving): forming the material with (flat, toothed or claw) chisel, hammer, point, file and finally polisher, without set plans, sketches and models. Thus the concept and idea of the sculpture comes into light in the process itself.

His works are organic, impressive, monumental, elementary, individual, and highly original. Their authenticity comes in a great measure form their and the artist’s orientation Godwards. Thus there are not only æshetic, but also ethical standards shining and radiating from his artwork: patience and care, dignity and honesty, precision and passion.

We are very grateful that we could include photos (most of them made by Rátki János from Képesítő Műhely; as well as by

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Š ajda – N agypál – W eber : Building with Integrity

Csíkszentmihályi Márton and Varga Gábor) of his wide-arching artwork.

These sculptures are: Golden Fish (front cover), Odysseus (Ulysses, inner front cover), Archer (2004), Concerto, Morning, Dance, Theatre, Woman Braiding her Hair, Brazilian Woman, Shell, Mother with her Child (2001), Sitting Archer, Head II., Straight Back, Saint Francis, Watching the Stars, Motherhood, Archer (2004), Music, Genesis IV., Orpheus, The Good Shepherd, Stone Head, Sunbathing, Mother with her Child, and Europe (inner back cover), Shell (back cover).

VII. From Back to Foreground

We remain thankful to the Benedictine Archabbot of Pannonhalma, Bishop Várszegi Asztrik OSB, the director of the Békés Gellért Ecumenical Institute (BGÖI), for his strong and unceasing support.

We are especially grateful to our seminar donors: the Youth in Action Fund of the European Union, the International Visegrád Fund (IVF, www.visegradfund.org), and the Lingua Franca programme of WSCF-Europe.

In particular, we would like to thank our mother organisation, the World Student Christian Federation Europe Region (WSCF–E, www. wscf-europe.org), and the European Regional Committee (ERC), especially her chairperson, Alessia Passarelli, and her regional secretary, Jooa Vuorinen, for their support and valuable incentives.

Finally, we would like to thank the preparatory and the hosting committees of our two seminars, as well as our coordinator, who spent valuable time and care planning and working for the realisation of our activities.

At our winter seminar, in Ponĕšice, the preparatory committee members were Zuzana Babicová, Marianne Bsteh, Jiří Bukovinský, Adam Gajdoš and Németh Zsófia. Myroslava Bukovinská was on the hosting committee.

In Supraśl, in the summer, the preparatory committee members were Katarína Babicová, Tobias Hecht, Sára Pokorná, Anna Skiepko and Szűcs Laura. Marlena Rysio and Grzegorz Sawicki were on the hosting committee.

The preparation of both of the mentioned seminars was overseen by our coordinator Rachael Weber, whose excellent work and experience greatly contributed to the smooth course of the events.

In addition, Jiří Bukovinský and Stephan Anzengruber both served

16

Introduction

as chair of CESR this year, and were deeply involved in the planning and organization of the seminars, also supporting and overseeing the Subregion through their work.

Together, these teams of members of our sister organisations worked to fundraise, organise, implement, and follow-up our joint activities. We are extremely grateful for their efforts and vision.

VIII. Developing Community

At each seminar, a community of dialogue is developed within the setting of the week. The challenge to build such communities, sustainable spaces for dialogue and peace, lasts beyond the time constraint of the seminar, providing an aim for WSCF, CESR, and all individuals involved.

We are challenged to multiply the dialogue in our daily lives and environments. Quoting the Spanish poet, Antonia Machado: “Travellers, there is no path. Paths are made by walking.” And these new paths must be walked.

Each section of this publication elaborates on these themes, focusing on the development of sustainable integration in both society and the Church, on dialogue between cultures and religions and on integrity of identity in the plurality of a multicultural and multireligious Europe and world.

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Karolína Ryvolová

The Roma in the Czech Lands: Past and Present

The people we know as Romanies, Roma or Gypsies probably left the sub-continent of India around the year 1000. Based on linguistic evidence, most scholars believe that they are of Indian origin. It is also believed that their language belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family, more particularly to the Indo-Aryan subgroup along with, for example, Hindi, Urdu or Sanskrit.

I. The Origin of Roma Dissenting Theories

The language of the Roma is spoken, however, exclusively outside of India. Thus there exist dissenting theories concerning its origin, one of them being the theory of the so-called Dutch school represented

by Leo Lucassen and Wim Willems.

These scholars claim that the differences among the various subgroups of Roma in terms of language, religion, customs and even colour of skin are so vast that there hardly could have been a single original people.

They argue that a similar itinerant lifestyle alone does not qualify the Roma to be one nation, as from roughly 1400 until early 1900 so many different groups of people peddled goods, offered various services, divined future, entertained, and worked as seasonal labourers, that the term Gipsy was easily assigned to just about anyone.

This is an interesting challenge to the traditional understanding of who the Roma are, but it does not mean that Leo Lucassen and Wim Willems are coming from a different background from the rest of Romany studies experts.

18

They only choose to interpret the facts available differently. In this paper, we present Romany studies from the more conventional point of view of scholars such as Angus Fraser, Thomas Acton and Ian Hancock, or the late Milena Huebschmannová, who was extremely instrumental in establishing Romany studies as an academic discipline in the former Czechoslovakia.

II. From India to Central Europe

Why the ancient ancestors of the Roma left their original homeland of Punjab and Rajasthan is yet to be ascertained. There are numerous theories, but none of them has supplied sufficiently convincing evidence so far.

Some believe that proto-Roma accompanied trading caravans bound for Europe as entertainers, musicians and providers of various services. Others think it might have been a question of finding ever more removed areas of business, having satisfied the needs of local people for a considerable time to come.

Others still hold that the Persian king Bahram V was given a large number of Gipsy musicians, who did not know how to work the land but were eventually allowed to roam the Persian lands. Most likely it was a combination of several factors.

We would like to point out, though, that to contemporary Roma worldwide, India has very little meaning other than as an unreachable romantic paradise on which they sometimes place their hopes.

A common Romany, from for example the Czech Republic, has no specific relationship to India and their furthest memories of ancestry usually lead to Central Europe, Hungary or Transylvania, Romania.

This is not to say that the Indian origin is deemed false, let alone rejected, but it simply has no bearing on everyday life with its tangible up-to-date problems. Rather, questions of origin have become a useful political tool in the hands of Romany intellectuals, who struggle for the recognition of one unique Romany nation.

Linguistic evidence shows that the most probable route from India to Europe led across the Persian Empire, Armenia, the Byzantine Empire and Greece to the Balkans. In the early XIVth century, the first Gypsies arrived in Central and Western Europe.

They presented themselves as pilgrims leading an itinerant life in order to pay penance and be granted forgiveness for alleged crimes they had committed against Jesus Christ (legends of the nature of the crime vary).

In an overtly Christian mediæval Europe, this was at first accepted

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KarolĂ­na R yvolovĂĄ : The Roma in the Czech Lands: Past and Present

with understanding and the Gypsies were on the whole given a warm welcome. But soon the falsehood of their claim for protection and means became clear.

At the same time, the approach to labour following murderous plagues changed from hiring vagrant labourers to securing steady ones; therefore, Gypsies became victims of a vicious and bloodthirsty persecution, with the sole objective of banishing them from the countries they were then roaming.

In the Czech and Slovak lands this went on until the mid-eighteenth century, when Empress Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II of the Austro-Hungarian Empire came up with the first concept of integrating them into the standing system.

They wanted their labour, as well as wished for law and order to be established, but also exercised the typical absolutist belief that every pagan soul must be saved by and for the glory of Jesus Christ.

This period of utter assimilation when traditional costumes, customs and languages were ignored, interethnic marriages were encouraged and Gipsy children were placed in host families for re-education, also had some advantages.

Firstly, this was the first time the Gipsies received education of any sort, and secondly, since this time Gipsy clans gradually, if forcefully, started to settle and cultivate various crafts, such as blacksmithing, basket-weaving or coppersmithing.

Little by little, the various Gipsy subgroups became an integral part of the local rural population, more so in Slovakia, where their services such as music, trough-making or horse-dealing became indispensable to local economies.

III. From 1927 through 1948

In 1927, shortly after the independent Czechoslovakia had come into existence in 1918, the first of the two modern laws that would help disintegrate, massacre and culturally debase local Gypsies, was passed.

All Gypsies were registered, fingerprinted, exact routes of customary mobility were traced, and they were issued Gypsy identity cards. For one thing, this prevented semi-itinerary Gypsies from taking detours or digressing from the stated route, which in the hungry years to follow would lead to lack of means and starvation.

Secondly, these same identity cards, and the register of them, were used in WWII to identify and intern Gypsies, to place them in camps

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Karolína R yvolová : The Roma in the Czech Lands: Past and Present

and ultimately annihilate them in the gas-chambers of concentration camps.

The 1927 law and all other attempts before and after to keep track of Gypsies led to the general hate among the Roma for providing personal information and signing documents of any sort.

The memory of the people has retained the past reality that owning up to one’s name or origin automatically leads to trouble or death.

This explains why official censuses bring such inadequate information on real numbers of Roma in respective states (32.000 in the 1991 Czechoslovakian census. and 12.000 in the 2001 Czech census, while according to the official estimates there must be at least 250.000 Romanies in the current Czech Republic).

Concealing information is a self-preserving mechanism. While Slovakia, as a satellite state, supported Nazi Germany during the Second World War, Czech lands became part of the Nazi-ruled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

It is a disgrace that the modern Czech Republic has only just started to come to terms with the fact that it was not Germans who tortured and killed Czech and Moravian Roma in Lety u Písku and Hodonín u Kunštátu camps, but our own people, overly eager to deal with the “Gypsy scum” themselves. This, and the subsequent transports to Auschwitz, resulted in a fatal decrease in numbers of the so-called Czech Roma to some 600 surviving individuals after the war had ended.

In Slovakia, Gypsies were discriminated against, persecuted and interned as well, but they were spared the final solution thanks to the sluggishness of authorities and the war, which luckily ended just in time.

The reunited post-war Czechoslovakia was at first willing to accept Gypsies in their midst on equal measures, partly because of the effects of the Porrajmos (Roma Holocaust or Great Devouring).

The other reason was to recognize their courage and help as partisans in wartime. The communist coup of 1948, however, was about to bring yet another difficulty to the poor unsuspecting survivors.

Like Maria Theresa, communists believed that there was not a grain worth saving of the unique Gypsy culture, and they set out to destroy it. Similarly to the Nazis, they labelled them as a social group with dwindling residua of ethnicity.

There followed decades of tough assimilation, boosted by a final forced-sedentarisation law in 1958, when all itinerant Gypsies were ordered to settle and the wheels of their caravans were literally sawn off.

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Romany Minority in Central Europe

IV. From 1945 through 1989

The period of unrelenting assimilation affected the language and culture of the Roma heavily. Rural settlements in Slovakia, for centuries based on family and clan principles, were razed to the ground.

At the same time, the people were randomly moved to other villages and cities. The former Sudetenland along the Czech borders, which had been evacuated by Germans fleeing forced eviction from the country, was being re-populated by Gypsies.

But it was also being re-populated by people without means and by all sorts of adventurers who came for the easy loot. Large portions of Gypsies went to Czech cities especially in the North and West of the country.

There new industries were being created and there was need for cheap labour. The Gypsies were hardly to blame for poor maintenance of brand new living quarters, when often they had never seen a gas stove, a flushing toilet or an elevator before in their lives.

On the other hand, this influx of Slovak Gypsies meant that an unprecedently large number of Roma received decent accommodation, regular wages, employee securities, schooling for their children and holiday resort vouchers for their wives.

Many Roma nowadays recall the times of communist oppression as an era of relative luxury and safety. When the regime let up a bit during the 1960s, “socialism with a human face” came to allow a yet unprecedented amount of civil rights in a communist country.

The Gypsy-Romany Union then came into being. It only lasted briefly, from 1969 to 1973, but it laid the foundations of the intellectual Romany elite that would later work on the so-called Romany Enlightenment.

Gypsies demanded to be called Romanies; Romany as a language was vastly promoted, the first Romany writers emerged and a network of both Romany and Czechoslovakian activists for the Romany cause was created.

The Union was dissolved by the Communist party in 1973, but unofficially the efforts at cultivating Romany culture were carried on. Since the end of World War II, the makeup of local Romany communities has remained more or less the same.

There are five unequally represented subethnic groups here: Czech Roma, or what is left of them; Slovak Roma, ie. post-war immigrants mostly from Eastern Slovakia; Magyar (Hungarian) Roma from

23

Karolína R yvolová : The Roma in the Czech Lands: Past and Present

Romany Minority in Central Europe

the South of Slovakia; a very small group of German Roma called the Sinti; and the Vlach (Romanian) Roma, the most secluded and isolated of them all with the strictest code of behaviour.

Generally, most non-Vlach Roma tend to look up to Vlach Roma, because they have managed to retain their culture largely intact thanks to a low degree of intermarriages or contact with the majority.

The Vlach dialect of Romany has the biggest prestige among local Roma. The Vlach Roma, on the other hand, hold the other groups in low esteem, especially Slovak, or Servika Roma (originally from Serbia), whom they pejoratively call Romungre.

While most Roma nowadays do not face ostracism from their own for marrying a non-Romany person, the Vlach Roma not only avoid matches with members of the majority, but also with other Romany groups.

The former industrial regions are worst off, as the general destitution leaves Roma literally out and away from any chance of recovery.

But there are still examples of good practise, including in Pardubice, Uherské Hardiště, Staré Město or Český Krumlov.

V. From 1989 onwards

The Velvet Revolution of 1989 was marked by general enthusiasm and a massive upsurge in Romany intellectualism. The society proclaimed Roma to be equal with the majority, and at first, no need for special treatment for the community was perceived.

At the same time, heavy industry was collapsing, leaving formerly employed and thriving Romany families floating in the system of social benefits without offering alternative sources of livelihood.

The 1992 citizenship law following the break-up of Czechoslovakia discriminated against Roma and further worsened their plight. The democratic regime with its market economy challenged the whole population to attain a good education and high performance.

At the same time, competition took hold, racist moods started to be felt, resulting in a series of racially motivated crimes and even murders. This was followed by a large emigration wave, especially to Great Britain, Belgium and Canada, which were perceived as welcoming and non-racist countries offering opportunities for a new start.

As of the mid-nineties, two contrasting motions within the Romany community can be discerned: one, upwardly mobile, where Romany professionals have established businesses and careers quite in pace with the rest of the fast-developing society.

The other motion was the opposite, heading down to secondgeneration unemployment, debt, petty crime and drug-abuse in an atmosphere of utter hopelessness. New ghettoes have emerged, especially in Slovakia.

24

VI. Cˇeský Krumlov as a Case Study

It is not our aim to provide a thorough analysis of the favourable situation in Český Krumlov, but a few comments are included.

The first Romanies arriving from Slovakia in the 1950s consisted of several extensive families from one area, such as the Kotlars, the Dunkas, the Červenaks, the Rakašes and the Bílýs. This alone provided a good basis for communication with the majority.

The cohesive group had better chances for self-control in the new environment. In reverse, the cities, which received immigrants of different family origins and social standing, were to witness conflicts among the heterogeneous groups.

Secondly, where there is will, there are results. Many city councils fail to recognise the need to enter into frequent communication with their Roma, seeing to their needs and problems, seeking mutually advantageous agreements. But Český Krumlov has recognized this need early on and their current success is the best proof of this good practise.

Thirdly, the fact that Český Krumlov is by no means an industrial town accounts for the fact that Roma have always been employed in services, crafts or the tourist industry along with the rest of the Český Krumlov people.

Therefore, there was no loss of employment like there was in industrial communities (Ústí nad Labem, Ostrava, Chomutov). Romarun businesses have further enriched Český Krumlov as a multicultural city with much to offer to tourists in terms of diversity.

Last but not least, the high degree of intermarriages has also helped to establish positive links among the families concerned.

And finally, allegedly, the Český Krumlov Roma have been extremely cautious about receiving new Roma in later migration waves, making sure that they could always answer for their own people and their deeds rather than struggle with potential trouble arising in connection with newcomers.

Although this might be perceived as discrimination in its own right, it seems to be a feasible mechanism when it comes to preserving the mutually beneficial outstanding relations between the Czech and Romany communities.

25

Karolína R yvolová : The Roma in the Czech Lands: Past and Present Suggested Reading Rombase: Didactically Edited Information on Roma. http://romani.uni-graz.at/rombase.

Fraser Angus, Cikáni. Praha, 1998.

Lucassen Leo – Wim Willems, The Weakness of Well-Ordered Societies: Gypsies in Europe, the Ottoman Empire and India 1400–1914._ Wassenaar, 2001.

Navrátil Pavel et al., Romové v cˇeské spolecˇnosti. Praha, 2003.

Vermeersch Peter, The Romani Movement: Minority Politics and Ethnic Mobilization in Contemporary Central Europe. New York – Oxford, 2006.

Karolína Ryvolová (1977) is a Romany Studies PhD. student, translator and journalist. She specialises in Romany literature, has co-edited several books of Romany writers and has widely published upon this and other Roma-related topics. She currently teaches English and English literature at three different schools in Praha, Czech Republic, while collecting material for her dissertation. Her email address is karolina. ryvolova@centrum.cz.

Eva Davidová

Romanies in Český Krumlov Within the territory of the Czech Republic (as well as the former Czechoslovakia), the coexistence of Romanies (Gypsies) with other inhabitants has been the most successful in the town of Český Krumlov.

The Romany community has lived for more than twenty years in Český Krumlov without any internal or external conflicts, enjoying good social standing, which, among other things, has resulted in a high proportion of Romany–Czech marriages.

Moreover, the vast majority of Roma profess gypsyhood (romipen) and do not find their origin shameful at all, which is good and right. Český Krumlov has then set an example: the positive coexistence of the bulk of population with the minority, Romanies, is indeed possible.

What has happened during the past decades to lead to such a result and confirmation of this possibility? Why was and is it possible in this historical town and why, on the contrary, has there been a significant increase in a number of problems with Romany communities, ethnic tension and mutual relations in many other towns and villages recently?

I. History of Roma Migration

For thirty years Romanies have represented the largest minority among all ethnic groups who live in the Český Krumlov region and in the town itself, directly after the Czech majority.

In the post-war years there were radical changes in the Romany population of Czechoslovakia, including changes in internal structure, number and territorial density. In addition, there was an intensification of internal differentiation according to levels of possible adaptation within groups, leading to lifestyle and culture

26

27

Karolína R yvolová : The Roma in the Czech Lands: Past and Present Suggested Reading Rombase: Didactically Edited Information on Roma. http://romani.uni-graz.at/rombase.

Fraser Angus, Cikáni. Praha, 1998.

Lucassen Leo – Wim Willems, The Weakness of Well-Ordered Societies: Gypsies in Europe, the Ottoman Empire and India 1400–1914._ Wassenaar, 2001.

Navrátil Pavel et al., Romové v cˇeské spolecˇnosti. Praha, 2003.

Vermeersch Peter, The Romani Movement: Minority Politics and Ethnic Mobilization in Contemporary Central Europe. New York – Oxford, 2006.

Karolína Ryvolová (1977) is a Romany Studies PhD. student, translator and journalist. She specialises in Romany literature, has co-edited several books of Romany writers and has widely published upon this and other Roma-related topics. She currently teaches English and English literature at three different schools in Praha, Czech Republic, while collecting material for her dissertation. Her email address is karolina. ryvolova@centrum.cz.

Eva Davidová

Romanies in Český Krumlov Within the territory of the Czech Republic (as well as the former Czechoslovakia), the coexistence of Romanies (Gypsies) with other inhabitants has been the most successful in the town of Český Krumlov.

The Romany community has lived for more than twenty years in Český Krumlov without any internal or external conflicts, enjoying good social standing, which, among other things, has resulted in a high proportion of Romany–Czech marriages.

Moreover, the vast majority of Roma profess gypsyhood (romipen) and do not find their origin shameful at all, which is good and right. Český Krumlov has then set an example: the positive coexistence of the bulk of population with the minority, Romanies, is indeed possible.

What has happened during the past decades to lead to such a result and confirmation of this possibility? Why was and is it possible in this historical town and why, on the contrary, has there been a significant increase in a number of problems with Romany communities, ethnic tension and mutual relations in many other towns and villages recently?

I. History of Roma Migration

For thirty years Romanies have represented the largest minority among all ethnic groups who live in the Český Krumlov region and in the town itself, directly after the Czech majority.

In the post-war years there were radical changes in the Romany population of Czechoslovakia, including changes in internal structure, number and territorial density. In addition, there was an intensification of internal differentiation according to levels of possible adaptation within groups, leading to lifestyle and culture

26

27

Eva D avidová : Romanies in Cˇ eský Krumlov

adaptations that changed the character of the group when compared with the previous situation.

This does not mean, however, that members of the group were no longer Roma, though some of them ceased to identify themselves with the Romany community as a result of pressure from society.

It was particularly the environment of industrial and border towns that provoked radical and significant changes. In Český Krumlov, the current high proportion of Romanies are now of the third and forth generations.

The end of the Second World War (1945) was a historical milestone in the development, position and living conditions of the Czechoslovakian Romanies. They were coming back home: Czech, Moravian, Slovak and German Roma and Sintis returned from concentration camps, if they survived (most of them were murdered by the National Socialists; only a few dozen families remained alive).

Vlachike Roma, who until 1959 represented a migratory group, in most cases returned to their migratory or nomadic life. Part of the settled or the so-called half-settled Romanies from the Romany settlements in Slovakia had therefore left – either immediately after 1945 or in the following years – for Bohemia not only to find jobs in the industrial and urban areas, but also to settle border areas: in Southern Bohemia mainly the Český Krumlov and Kaplice regions.

The exodus of Romanies to this region was spontaneous, uncontrolled and unorganized. After the Second World War, it was a part of a great migration of Romanies from Slovakia, especially from the Eastern part, to Bohemia in order to find jobs and ensure better housing and living conditions for their families.

In Slovakia most Romanies still live in villages or colonies, so-called Romany Settlements known as Romane Gava (though this proportion decreased over the years of 1970–1990). But in Bohemia and Moravia, the vast majority of Romanies live in towns. This proportion is three times higher than in Slovakia, and continuously increases both in general and in Český Krumlov.

In the post-war years, Romany families were influenced by their original localities (in most cases Romany Settlements and other similar types), namely by their family groups (fajty) who lived there and with whom they moved (at least part of them) to Bohemia. Such an influence was evident in all Romany settlers for a long time after their arrival in the new Czech environment; in some members of the oldest generation of migrants, the impact still is evident today.

Their group or family was a wider family, providing a real home,

28

29

Eva D avidová : Romanies in Cˇ eský Krumlov

and it was the family that gave them the feeling of safety. For a long time, those who moved were not able to get used to the new environment, namely to the town and the Český Krumlov region.

This was the reason for their behaviour towards the local majority and the origin of their feeling of having no roots, which, consequently, resulted in other migrations for some of them. Only the change in this feeling – acceptance of the environment as their new home – caused the process of gradual adaptation and enabled better coexistence between the minority Romany community with the bulk of the local population.

II. Places of Settlement

This turning point began during the 1960’s, a watershed for the first generation, when intergenerational growth began. A new generation of Romanies, born in this environment, began to grow up.

The main reason and motivation for the migration of Romanies to the industrial and border towns in Bohemia was, apart from jobseeking and possibilities for better wages, especially the desire for life among the state population, where they would not be isolated and concentrated in Romany Settlements and where they expected to gain better social positions.

This reason for their largely spontaneous and voluntary migration played an even more important role than the social conditions. An important determinant of their habitation was undoubtedly the territorial lay-out, even within each town.

In addition to these reasons, through life in the new home, the Romany settlers had opportunities to establish contacts with the majority population; but, on the other hand, this type of habitation required Romanies to adapt at least limitedly to the given circumstances.

Until recently Romanies lived mainly in the historical centre of the ancient town of Český Krumlov, which was settled by mostly Romanies, new citizens, from 1945 until the beginning of the 1990’s.

The first place with the highest Roma concentration was Rybářská street, where they were allowed to reside in houses of great historic value, irrespective of levels of previous experience living in this type of habitation.

The Romany families, who came from primitive chalets without any knowledge of how to use modern sanitary installations (and who lived in the way they were used to) are not only to blame for the devastation of many of these houses during the first post-war years.

30

Romany Minority in Central Europe

The blame for that situation is to be borne mainly by representatives of the first national committee (or Settlement Authority), who rashly assigned such houses to them. On top of all this, they were not able to teach Romany families, because of many other problems, how to live in the new conditions.

A large number of Romanies also lived in small houses situated in the street called Pod kamenem next to the entrance to Český Krumlov in the direction of České Budějovice.

These dwellings, however, were demolished at the end of the 1950’s in order to enlarge the access road. Romany families who lived there were moved back to the historical core of the town: to streets Kájovská and Široká, to old Plešivec (where they live today), and to two houses in Vyšné II. above the town.

Romanies, however, have not lived here for a long time. At present only a small number of Romanies live in the historical centre, while most of them live in housing quarters in Plešivec II. During the last few years other families moved into the flats in housing quarters called Mír in Domoradice above the town.

III. Turning Point in the 1960’s

It is widely known that people begin to feel at home in the location where their children were born and grow up and where the graves of their parents and relatives are. For Romanies in the Český Krumlov region, this feeling came to a large extent at the beginning of the 1960’s.

Their identification with their own group, family or fajta and larger family has always been and still is, though in different dimensions, very strong and represents their natural environment, which is the reason for such firm ties.

During the last twenty or thirty years, when in their new home in the Český Krumlov region, the cohesion of these families as well as their interdependence gradually diminished. Romanies began to search for their own place, which was not easy to find. Český Krumlov became famous because the Romany settlers gradually stabilized; most of them have felt at home in the town for a long time. Without conflicts, they lived with other citizens of the original settler families, and this population has increased in number in the last fifty years.

At present there are three hundred and three families or, in other words, around five hundred eighty to six hundred registered Romanies who were born in Český Krumlov as children and grandchildren of

31

Eva D avidová : Romanies in Cˇ eský Krumlov

the first settlers in Kotlar, Dunka, Červeňák, Rakaš, Bílý and other families. They represent almost four percent of the total number of the town population.

Among these main families, the family groups of Kotlar and Dunka are the most stabilized and settled. They were the first families who came from the East Slovakian district of Sabinov (later the Prešov district) and Stará Ľubovňa from 1945–1948.

Until 1990 most of them lived in the historical core of the town preserve. In the Český Krumlov district there live around one thousand sixty to one thousand three hundred Romanies in total in small towns and villages; half of these, however, live in Český Krumlov. The highest relative number of Romanies live in Větřní, making up six percent of the inhabitants of this industrial area.

During the post-war years the Romany community in Český Krumlov increased in number from one hundred fifty in 1947 to two hundred twenty-six in 1967. From three hundred sixty-two Romanies in 1970, it increased to five hundred fifteen in 1983, and to five hundred sixty five in 1987 (within the district to one thousand sixty). The current population, of about six hundred Romanies within Český Krumlov, has remained at approximately the same level for the last ten years.

IV. Mixed Marriages and Integrated Families

Another characteristic feature of Český Krumlov is the increasing proportion of mixed couples, the highest within the Czech Republic in the last twenty or twenty-five years, at thirty percent in 1988 and, presently, at almost a third. Such mixed marriages or unions were common from the 1970’s on; before then, they were rather rare.

One of the partners is occasionally of Slovak or Magyar (Hungarian) nationality, in the 1970’s and 1980’s also of Polish or another nationality. The highest proportion of such marriages is in Český Krumlov.

The continuously increasing proportion of mixed marriages demonstrates stabilization and improvement in social position of the Romany community. It also reveals this ethnic groups greater openness in the environment of Český Krumlov.

Although a certain prejudice and bias, especially from the side of the Czech and other citizens against Romanies persists to a small extent, mixed marriages are proof of radical changes in public opinion and attitude towards Romanies.

Previous experience showed the difficulties of ceasing to belong to

32

Romany Minority in Central Europe

an ethnic group as an individual in so-called integrated or adapted families living in Český Krumlov. The prestige of each individual can be earned through the increase of prestige of the whole group, through advancement of the ethnic society and through the establishment of its position in relation to the majority, leading to coexistence.

The so-called Roma problem does not concern only the majority society or the Roma themselves, but is a common problem. The situation can be solved neither through artificial increase and equality of the Romanies’ socio-economic level, nor through the restraint of their specific lifestyle and culture, as the previous totalitarian Czechoslovakian society demonstrated.

On the contrary, it is necessary at this stage of development to take into account positive viable elements of the Romany community, to support their sound self-assurance resulting in ethnic integration and, therefore, without causing them to lose their ethnic conscience, to assist in positive mutual coexistence.

For most Romanies, there is a tendency and need to proceed from the present ethnic endogamy (though impaired) and through ethnic integration to aspire to equal coexistence: this has been recently proved by most of the Romany families in Český Krumlov.

The process of settlement, adaptation to new living conditions and establishment of social position of Romanies in Český Krumlov in the last fifty years was difficult and complicated, but the Roma community has been able to adapt to and with the other locals, while still retaining their Romany ethnic conscience.

V. Factors of Improvement

If we were to sum up the internal and external influences that resulted in this positive situation, among the most important factors would be the following: Firstly, the influence and impact of the former government authorities and the municipal committee from the years 1960 to 1989 gave Romanies the chance and gradually began to trust and help them. This positive influence and good mutual relations were followed by the present Český Krumlov municipal authority.

Secondly, internal influences within the Romany community helped them to adapt to the new living conditions and did not provoke conflicts or crimes; they slowly learned how to live and coexist with the majority population. Over a number of years, this

33

Eva D avidová : Romanies in Cˇ eský Krumlov

led to the increasing social prestige of Romanies and won the hearts of more and more Czech citizens, instead of setting them against themselves.

Thirdly, internal influences in the Český Krumlov Romany community looked after their acquired prestige and did not let new migrants, moving from the 1950’s to 1970’s from different places in Bohemia and Moravia, damage it. They prevented them from coming and settling in the town, where several Romany families had already settled and lived. Extended families then increased in number in the following generations.

Finally, the good position of the Romany community in Český Krumlov is also reflected by the high proportion of mixed Romany– Czech marriages, which at present reaches up to one third (at the beginning of 1980’s it was thirty percent) of all marriages. This constitutes the most convincing proof of the significant change in attitude of the Czech majority and the good public opinion of Romanies.

VI. Culture and Religion

The position of Romanies in Český Krumlov continues to improve, despite problems such as unemployment.

In past years, many successful Romanies in Český Krumlov offered jobs to unemployed members of their community, including, for example, the firm Dunka, the pub Cikánská Jizba and others.

The religious services in the Český Krumlov region are overseen by deacon and chaplain Vojtěch Vágai: a Romany, who works in the Saint Vitus Church in Český Krumlov or in the monastery and other parochial districts in Větřní, Kájov and around.

Local Romanies normally do not differ from others in housing culture, clothing or other material life styles. On the other hand, their family and social relations within their community have a distinct character, particularly as regards the preservation of their culture and folklore, music and dance.

Three bands (Cindži Renta, Mulatčag and Orient), a children choir Gilori (The Ditty) and other musicians and singers perform traditional Romany folklore, which they strive to preserve and develop. The specificity and originality of the Romany culture enriches the cultural life of the historical town of Český Krumlov.

Eva Davidová (PhDr CSc) is an ethnologist and sociologist. Throughout her life, she has worked on topics related to Roma and other minorities. Currently, she is a lecturer at the University of South Bohemia in the Faculty of Health and Social Studies in České Budějovice. She lives in Český Krumlov and her email address is eva.davidova@quick.cz.

34

Bryce Belcher

Český Krumlov and the Roma Population after 1989 Český Krumlov (in German Krum(m)au an der Moldau or Böhmisch Krum(m)au), in the Czech Republic, as part of the Sudetenland, was almost completely evacuated after the Second World War (1939–1945).

The Czechoslovakian state could not afford to leave the Sudeten areas empty, so repopulation programs were set up in order to refill the border areas. One segment of this population was Romanies (Gypsies), particularly in Český Krumlov.

I. History of the City

One must keep in mind that at that time of the repopulation of the town after World War II, Český Krumlov was more than simply the old town near the river: houses had been built around the town periphery on the hillsides in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; houses which enjoyed more sunshine, cleaner air, and a safe distance from the seasonal floods of the Vltava River.

The first re-settlers to the town were Czechs and Slovaks coming first from inland Bohemia and later from ethnic villages in the neighboring eastern countries, being invited from the State to come home to the motherland after the war. This fair-skinned population resettled the newer houses around the hillsides, while the darkerskinned folk settled into Krumlov later and moved into the old town near the river. Český Krumlov became known during the time of the socialist regime as a Romany town. But the new residents of the old town did not own their properties, as all former Sudeten properties went into the hands of the state.

They also did not have any money (or reason) to reconstruct the houses or carry out more than the most basic maintenance, such as replacing shingles or re-vamping the heating system. So most of the

35

Eva D avidová : Romanies in Cˇ eský Krumlov

led to the increasing social prestige of Romanies and won the hearts of more and more Czech citizens, instead of setting them against themselves.

Thirdly, internal influences in the Český Krumlov Romany community looked after their acquired prestige and did not let new migrants, moving from the 1950’s to 1970’s from different places in Bohemia and Moravia, damage it. They prevented them from coming and settling in the town, where several Romany families had already settled and lived. Extended families then increased in number in the following generations.

Finally, the good position of the Romany community in Český Krumlov is also reflected by the high proportion of mixed Romany– Czech marriages, which at present reaches up to one third (at the beginning of 1980’s it was thirty percent) of all marriages. This constitutes the most convincing proof of the significant change in attitude of the Czech majority and the good public opinion of Romanies.

VI. Culture and Religion

The position of Romanies in Český Krumlov continues to improve, despite problems such as unemployment.

In past years, many successful Romanies in Český Krumlov offered jobs to unemployed members of their community, including, for example, the firm Dunka, the pub Cikánská Jizba and others.

The religious services in the Český Krumlov region are overseen by deacon and chaplain Vojtěch Vágai: a Romany, who works in the Saint Vitus Church in Český Krumlov or in the monastery and other parochial districts in Větřní, Kájov and around.

Local Romanies normally do not differ from others in housing culture, clothing or other material life styles. On the other hand, their family and social relations within their community have a distinct character, particularly as regards the preservation of their culture and folklore, music and dance.

Three bands (Cindži Renta, Mulatčag and Orient), a children choir Gilori (The Ditty) and other musicians and singers perform traditional Romany folklore, which they strive to preserve and develop. The specificity and originality of the Romany culture enriches the cultural life of the historical town of Český Krumlov.

Eva Davidová (PhDr CSc) is an ethnologist and sociologist. Throughout her life, she has worked on topics related to Roma and other minorities. Currently, she is a lecturer at the University of South Bohemia in the Faculty of Health and Social Studies in České Budějovice. She lives in Český Krumlov and her email address is eva.davidova@quick.cz.

34

Bryce Belcher

Český Krumlov and the Roma Population after 1989 Český Krumlov (in German Krum(m)au an der Moldau or Böhmisch Krum(m)au), in the Czech Republic, as part of the Sudetenland, was almost completely evacuated after the Second World War (1939–1945).

The Czechoslovakian state could not afford to leave the Sudeten areas empty, so repopulation programs were set up in order to refill the border areas. One segment of this population was Romanies (Gypsies), particularly in Český Krumlov.

I. History of the City

One must keep in mind that at that time of the repopulation of the town after World War II, Český Krumlov was more than simply the old town near the river: houses had been built around the town periphery on the hillsides in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; houses which enjoyed more sunshine, cleaner air, and a safe distance from the seasonal floods of the Vltava River.

The first re-settlers to the town were Czechs and Slovaks coming first from inland Bohemia and later from ethnic villages in the neighboring eastern countries, being invited from the State to come home to the motherland after the war. This fair-skinned population resettled the newer houses around the hillsides, while the darkerskinned folk settled into Krumlov later and moved into the old town near the river. Český Krumlov became known during the time of the socialist regime as a Romany town. But the new residents of the old town did not own their properties, as all former Sudeten properties went into the hands of the state.

They also did not have any money (or reason) to reconstruct the houses or carry out more than the most basic maintenance, such as replacing shingles or re-vamping the heating system. So most of the

35

Bryce B elcher : Cˇ eský Krumlov and the Roma Population after 1989

Romany Minority in Central Europe

houses in the old town simply dilapidated throughout the almost fifty years of the regime.

In addition, before the Second World War, Český Krumlov had undergone a deep economic depression since the Schwarzenbergs had left in the middle nineteenth century, and the houses were already in bad shape to begin with.

A paper mill had been built upstream in 1867, which for many years did not use filters and, tragically, dumped its waste directly into the river. Until the Lipno Dam was built upstream in 1961, flooding was a normal occurrence in Český Krumlov: people generally lived on the first upper floor, while the ground floor was used for food storage.

Brown wood coal was used for heating, and because Český Krumlov is surrounded by hills, the old town became an instant place for thermal inversions during the winter. So if the residents were not being asphyxiated by smog from above, they were being flooded by paper mill effluent from below, or both.

This was taking place in buildings which had not experienced anything more than basic maintenance for nearly one hundred and fifty years, and one can only imagine the result: the Český Krumlov of the 1980’s was an utterly different Český Krumlov than what we see today.

The old town did have its own kind of romantic charm, of course, but it was not a very desirable place to live or to stay for very long.

The situation in Český Krumlov with the resident Romany population was then approached in an unprecedented fashion.

collecting, street sweeping, public grounds maintenance, and the like; the town would help them set up the business and provide loans for equipment.

Also, the town would sign annual contracts for their services; the town would guarantee that if a local Roma wanted to open a business in town (a shop or a restaurant, and so on), she or he would receive fair treatment from the town offices.

Further, the Roma families would provide two young men for police service. If there would be a problem in the Roma neighbourhoods, the Romany policemen would be sent to deal with it; and the heads of the families would prevent their own members from entering into stereotypical activities, such as pick-pocketing from the increasing tourist population.

The final condition was the request of the Romany families, and the key point for future relations: the town promised that it would take all possible steps to prevent members of other Romany families from coming into Český Krumlov and claiming permanent residence.

There was no restriction on the sale of private property, of course.

Given the present economic reality, when most outside Romany families would apply to the town for an apartment, there was already a long waiting list for the town’s own population.

II. Jan Vondrouš, the First Mayor

The first democratically elected Mayor, Jan Vondrouš, recognized the local Romanies as the original inhabitants of the town: the former Sudeten Germans were not entitled to restitution, and there was no real thought of them returning.

The first meeting called by the Mayor of the city to meet with the Romany families (essentially three extended families with a population of around one thousand and five hundred) resulted with the Mayor finally thanking them for coming and scheduled another meeting, in which they were to elect three representatives among themselves. The next meeting was more productive, resulting in an agreement between the Mayor and Romany families that set a precedent for years to come.

The Romanies were to form their own company for garbage

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III. The Result of the Agreement

The result of this important agreement is that, nowadays, Český Krumlov has been recognized nationally and internationally as a town that has successfully dealt with its minority population.

Much of the Romany population in Český Krumlov is employed, and can be seen maintaining the public green and cleaning the streets from five in the morning every day. Since most of the Roma population has traditionally received little education, this method guarantees that everyone has the opportunity to work.

Today the town is, for the most part, clean and well-maintained.

There are several Romany music groups active in the local pubs; there is a Romany restaurant in town (a favourite among locals and visitors), several Romany policemen, and for years there was a Romany on the town council: this in itself is exceptional in Czech towns.

Even today, most of the senior members of the Český Krumlov Romany population express their indebtedness to Jan Vondrouš and his early efforts at conciliation for their improved standard of living.

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Bryce B elcher : Cˇ eský Krumlov and the Roma Population after 1989

As for numbers, the Romany population of the Czech Republic is roughly seven percent, while in Český Krumlov it is about ten percent.

This means that either more Romanies admit to their nationality on the census forms, or that there are simply more Romanies here. Český Krumlov also has the highest rate of mixed marriages (between white Czech and Romany) of any town in the Czech Republic. Because there is no animosity on the part of the local citizens towards the Romany population, there is no fuel for a skinhead movement, and in turn no fuel for an anarchist movement either.

The result is a peaceful and developing town. One can only hope that this movement will continue, and that the work of the town’s earlier leaders, white and Roma alike, will not be overlooked by future generations.

Bryce Belcher (1966) graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville, in the United States of America (USA). He moved to Praha in the Czech Republic in 1993, and then to Český Krumlov in 1995. Upon his arrival there, he began teaching English, as well as translating and interpreting for the castle, city, county and museums. Presently he is the local contact for US universities coming to the town, and a full-time teacher of English at a state elementary school. His email address is brycebel@ckrumlov.cz.

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Further Reflections on Roma in Český Krumlov from the First Freely Elected Mayor, Jan Vondrouš At our recent CESR winter seminar, after a tour of the Old Town of Český Krumlov, participants joined in a question and answer session in a local coffee house with the first freely elected mayor, Jan Vondrouš.

The following is a reflection from this session, with information given by the mayor.

The earlier lecture and tour from Bryce Belcher and the session with the former mayor were extremely inspiring, providing a first hand witness to conference participants of successful development work, involving both the minority and majority, as well as showing how efforts, throughout history, influence integration and development today.

I. Sustainable Development 1. Past and Present

Left a ghost town after the Second World War, no significant efforts were made to rebuild the old town of Český Krumlov. Eighty percent of the town was destroyed in 1990, as no efforts of urban renewal had been made to the area during the Communist regime. After the Velvet Revolution, one of the first challenges the townspeople faced was to learn how to develop the town in the current economic situation.

Then, in retrospect, as a result of their efforts, by 1995 and 1996, eighty percent of the houses in the old town were rebuilt and the town thrived off both the tourist industry and the paper mill. Today, it is one of the most important centres for tourism in the Czech Republic, with a population of about 14.500 and with between one and two million tourists annually.

The development process did not occur randomly, but the town had a relatively good master plan that was created in 1988 and

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adapted since. In 1993, an American professor visited Jan Vondrouš in his office, saying he had a development plan and would need one hundred thousand US dollars to implement it.

The mayor said no. He came back in 1994 and asked for sixty thousand US dollars, and Jan Vondrouš said no again. Then, he came back a third time, and offered to implement the plan for free, as he now had a foundation to sponsor his strategic plan. This plan was then implemented and lasted for three years, also aiding in the renewal programme.

2. In Progress

In the renewal process, the town of Český Krumlov did not receive help from the state in the beginning. Jan Vondrouš considered this to be their greatest help at first, that the state did not get involved but allowed the town the opportunity to design the renewal process itself.

The property in the former town centre belonged to the state, under the communist system, but in the spring of 1991, this property was given away for free. In this way, the town was given ownership over its historical centre, but privatisation was made increasingly difficult as the buildings were over one hundred years old and in desperate need of repair.

UNESCO was very helpful in this process, leading the Czech government to grant subsidies for new apartments for the city. In the early nineties, in efforts to renew the town, foreign investors were not allowed in.

Instead, loans were given by the town administration to townspeople to rebuild their own homes and businesses. In this way, in addition to providing low cost loans to support residents and small businesses, the money and interest stayed within the town, creating more sustainable funds for continuous renewal projects.

The townspeople themselves benefited even farther, as they were given head starts for their businesses. Rather than having to compete with foreign franchise restaurants for business, for example, they had the opportunity to learn to run their own restaurants themselves.

Today, in the old town, one only finds businesses owned by locals, with no interruptions from multinational companies (there are no glaring yellow McDonald’s). In addition to its robust tourist industry, the paper mill, outside of the town, also provides jobs to townspeople and is another locally owned business, keeping the profit within the locality.

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Further Reflections on Roma in Cˇ eský Krumlov by Jan V ondrouš

Today, all of the proceeds from the town’s parking lots go to the Český Krumlov Development Fund, which continues to work on the sustainable renewal of the city.

II. Minority Integration: A Unique Heritage

After the Second World War, many Roma families settled in the run-down historic centre of Český Krumlov. As the town was left empty after the war, the Roma were among the founding families.

Other young Czech and Slovak families also settled there, but often on the outer edge, in the hills around the centre. In Český Krumlov, there was no “ghetto”, or separate Roma community; Roma housing was in the city centre.

For Jan Vondrouš, it was never a question of whether or not the Roma would be involved in the development of the town; he had grown up with them and they were a natural part of the community.

Other factors also helped to make the integration smoother. In the 1960s and 1970s, a couple from Praha came to work with the Romani people in the town, and this set an important precedent leading to the successful integration and development occurring in the 1990s.

In this way, the initiation of efforts for the integration of the Roma did not begin with the new town administration after the revolution, but the efforts throughout the previous twenty years helped the cooperation later.

All was not easy, however, and Jan Vondrouš did face opposition in his efforts to involve Roma in the development process, thus also insuring that the Roma would not be excluded from the social structure and community.

When he started the discussion about the town’s technical services, desiring to give the cleaning responsibility for the old town to a Roma business, he had to be firm, insisting on his role as mayor.

Others in the council at the time eventually agreed with his decision.

In the beginning of these development efforts, he met every week with community leaders from all groups, all working together to plan the development processes.

For Jan Vondrouš, with a background in sports himself (namely volleyball), it was essential that the development efforts be cooperative and that all important decisions receive support from the majority of all groups involved.

The brief summary above was reported by Rachael Weber (weberrl@gmail.com), from the information given from Jan Vondrouš in response to participants’ questions.

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Németh Márton

Folk Culture, Literature

and Nation Building Efforts in the Romantic Age of Central Europe The different nation building efforts, the ideas of Romanticism and the discovery of folk literature were all strongly interdependent in recent Central European history. It is useful and enriching to discover the position of folk culture related to the beginnings of national literature and national history, as well as to recognise the common historical and literary developments in Central Europe. This article gives a short overview of this field.

First of all, we have to admit that Central Europe was historically delayed in many areas of social development in relation to Western Europe. Also Central European literature appears to be more provincial than that of Western Europe. Urbanisation did not become an important trend at the same time as in the West, and as a result Western urban poetical styles did not appear in Central Europe.

I. Sung Poems

There were no big cities with modern forms of citoyen (civic) literature in Central Europe during the Middle Ages. In Central Europe, the traditional poetical form was for several centuries the sung poem. It was born in the mediæval period, but was still dominant in the XVIIIth century in all social classes.

The early form of the sung poem was based on exactly known folk melodies from the XVI–XVIIth centuries. There are good examples of two types of these traditional sung poems.

The first type of such poems was created by combining historical stories and ballads with widely known melodies by Tinódi Lantos Sebestyén (1510–1556) and by several anonymous Slovak songwriters.

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The other type was comprised of poems treating various topics that were combined with an appropriate melody suggested by the poet herself or himself just after the title of the poem (for example: “according to the melody of Z.”).

Poets of lasting importance in this field were the famous Magyar (Hungarian) valiant, Balassi (Balassa) Bálint (1554–1594), and two renowned Slovak poets, Ján Silván (1493–1573) and Eliaš Láni (1570–1618).

In the XVIIIth century the style of poems were light, melodic and prosodic, but without exact melody. Time was not measured and this style was based on the stress (emphasis) of sentences and syllables.

In Magyar and Slovak literature and poetry, the stress is on the first syllable, called Magyar stress style or Slovak syllable counting style. There is a huge lack of comparative research about the parallel development of the Magyar and Slovak poetic styles.

These similarities show traditionally strong cultural interdependence between early Slovak and Magyar literatures, similarities which also appear in the styles and topics of poems themselves.

II. Old Poetic Style Turned to Romanticism

Preceding Romanticism, the next phase in literary development began as poets gradually left behind the previous old style and entered a period where the imitation of folk poetry was fashionable.

The national romanticism in Central Europe was based on the development of provincial folklore in previous centuries. Some multilingual songbooks revealed the transition from the old sung poems to the modern Romantic poetry.

Notable examples of this development were the poems of Matĕj Holko (1719–1785) and Pálóczi Horváth Ádám (1760–1820).

This last phase before Romanticism appeared in the region of Central Europe and followed external, not internal, influences.

III. Foreign Romantic Inspirations

The earliest prominent inspiration for Central European literature was Johann Gottfried (von) Herder (1744–1803); he emphasized the national heroic past as a guarantee justifying the common glorious future. For Herder, folk culture was most importantly a tool for joining world culture.

The other most important German Romantic literatary influence was Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (1749–1832). In both Herder and Goethe’s writings, several countries of Central Europe appear as

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N émeth Márton: Culture in the Romantic Age of Central Europe

exotic lands with rich folk cultures, providing inspirational forces for the combination of folkloric elements with high poetry.

The second phase of Western Romanticism appeared with the Grimm brothers, Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Carl Grimm (1786–1859). They presented national folk culture originating from old roots as a unique traditional quality without any ambition of universalism.

These two developments reached Central Europe at the same time, from the early XIXth century on, because of the late development of the region. Both Kölcsey Ferenc (1790–1838) and Ľudovít Štúr (1815–1856) highlighted the unique quality of folk culture and incorporated it into a much broader context.

IV. The Definition of Folk Culture in the Period of Romanticism

When exploring the transformation of the classical academic literary style into what became known as Romanticism, it is observed that the origin of Romantic folk culture can be traced back to the Poeta Classis, those educated in colleges.

The classic style described the homeland and home culture, and many elements of folklore appeared in background. Typical examples of this literary development are the poets Berzsenyi Dániel (1776–1836) and Ján Hollý (1785–1849).

We can see classical poetic expressions in Ján Hollý’s works: one example is the motif of people from different Slovak villages coming to a fountain. They arrive with unique dresses and folk customs and receive a life-force from the water in the well, a symbol of the nation’s future. This is a classical topic with a number of Romanticist elements.

The folklore of Romanticism was characterized by paradoxes: national, international, provincial and European elements used side by side. National motifs and allegories naturally produced conflicts among the newly-born modern nations.

Pieces of folk literature, however, headed in the same direction: establishing national literatures in each respective national group.

In fact, the Central European historical figures crucial for the literary process of nation building inspired each other in manifold ways.

There were, however, regional differences concerning the literary developments of the nations in Central Europe. In Czech, Magyar

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Romany Minority in Central Europe

and Polish literature, Romanticism appears in the 1810s and 1820s; in Slovak literature it appears two to three decades later – from the 1840’s on.

V. The Results and Inconsistencies of Romanticism

One of the main elements in Romanticist Central European literature was the cult of songs. As the melody of folk songs was important in the XVI–XVIIth centuries, some poets, the Magyar Csokonai Vitéz Mihály (1773–1805), the Slovak Ján Chalupka (1791–1871) and the Serb–Magyar Михаило Витковић (Mihailo Vitković, Vitkovics Mihály, 1778–1829), also wrote in the style of folk songs in the late XVIIIth and XIXth centuries.

Following their example, scholarly research and the collection of folk literature slowly became fashionable. But many of the main efforts may have been manipulated, since it was the poets themselves who often created “original” folk culture.

These poets identified themselves with the past of their nation and people, with the aim of creating a brighter future. They sought to create dreams by producing myths based on popular folk culture, instead of focusing on historical credibility and selecting the most accurate sources of historical information.

New pseudo-folklore was born in this period, inspired by authentic poems and songs: for example, Magyar pseudo-kuruc poems by Thaly Kálmán (1839–1909), or various Slovak (and Polish) myths of Juraj Jánošik (1688–1713). The popular pseudo-heroes at times became national idols at last, forming the national historical and literary canon.

The collections of folk poems were started by the Bosnian Serb Вук Стефановић Караџић (Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, 1787–1864). His collection is a faithful overview of the original Serb folk poems and heroic songs with old traditional poetic forms and historical folk melodies.

He was one of the most important nation builders among the Serbs, and a main establisher of the modern Yugoslav languages known today. He was, however, also the first among those who collected historical and true folklore and did not focus on producing pseudomyths.

This endeavour was rather untypical in the XIXth century in the Balkans (South East Europe) and in Central Europe, since historical authenticity was not an important issue for collectors.

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N émeth Márton: Culture in the Romantic Age of Central Europe

Romany Minority in Central Europe

VI. The Role of German Language

The wide-spread German language was one of the important communication tools among the increasingly isolated folk collectors with national ambitions. We can determine three major groups in this field.

A famous poet, Siegfried Kapper (1821–1879) from Smíchov, Bohemia, became known as a translator of Czech, Moravian, Slovak and Serb folk poems into German. His work with folk literature was extremely important, as it made the best sources available in German.

1. Gesamtmonarchie Patriotism

4. Loss of Authenticity and Making New Myths

Austrian and German Gesamtmonarchie patriots were in favour of a unified Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This group comprised not only Austrian and German aristocrats, but also Magyar and Slovak nobles.

Important examples are Mailáth (Majláth) János (1786–1855), Mednyánszky Alajos (1784–1844) and Samuel Rožnay (1787–1815), who wrote in Slovak, translated Slovak poems into Magyar and Magyar poems into German.

2. Hungarus Identity

Citizens with a Hungarus identity were patriots committed to their homeland (Patria, Vaterland, Motherland): the Kingdom of Hungary.

The divergent nation building movements appeared as a threat to their patriotic feelings.

E. Eugen Wessely from Vinkovci (present-day Croatia) translated the best of the Serbian folk collection of Вук Стефановић Караџић (Vuk Stefanović Karadžić) into German.

The poetry of Nikolaus Lenau (Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau, 1802–1850) is considered part of Austrian and German literature, but he also wrote poems inspired by Magyar land and folk motives and by the famous Czech Hussite leader Jan Žižka z Trocnova a Kalicha (1360–1424).

3. Jewish Transnational Identity

In the region, there were also emancipated Jewish intellectuals who had a special kind of transnational identity. They were always fully loyal to the given political system that emancipated them.

At first they wrote literature in German as the main intermediary language, and they were not in favour of any kind of nation building efforts. After the Great Compromise in 1867 in Hungary, more and more Jews joined the dominant Magyar nation building movement and helped to compose Magyar pseudo-folk myths.

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German poetry in Central Europe had several positive but also many negative and controversial elements. It built bridges among national folk aspirations, which was an essential contribution in a fragmented multilingual environment.

The loss of authenticity appeared in a special form in German poetry also. The forms and styles of poems in German were usually significantly different than the originals; they were not literary translations but Nachklängen (reminiscences).

The above mentioned Siegfried Kapper is a vital example of this phenomenon: he modified the structure of rhymes according to the rule of German poetical forms and norms. These poems lost their rhythms and natural harmony.

The loss of authenticity and the creation of new and false preconceptions was a direct consequence: for example, the romantic ideal view of a Slovak village in sentimental sad songs was established.

Similarly, the notions of the Magyar puszta, betyár, gulyás and csikós simplified and idealized the view of the Magyar lands and their people, at the same time making false preconceptions concerning the nation.

VII. The End of Romanticism and Modern Urban Lifestyle

By means of social development and rapid urbanization, national realism developed from national romanticism as an answer to modern lifestyle in newly-born municipal communities, cities and metropoles.

On the other hand, as a result of the consolidation and establishment of the first major wave of nation building efforts, folklore was used less and less as a major nation building tool.

Searching for the authenticity of folk culture customs through exact scholarly research and scientific methods closed the age of national romanticism for good. As a result, at the turn of the XIX–XXth centuries, the need for authenticity in folklore became more obvious.

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N émeth Márton: Culture in the Romantic Age of Central Europe

VIII. The Birth of Folklore as Scientific Ethnography

Erdélyi János (1814–1868) did vital research on the authentic melodies of poems. He inspired Bartók Béla (1881–1945) and Kodály Zoltán (1882–1967), who collected folk music from Central European nations.

They created new research methods without any kind of social or political motivations, solely based on the aim of discovering the authenticity of folk culture from relevant sources in the countryside, far from the newly-developed urban centres.

Their works launched new methods not only in scientific research and methodology but also in poetry and music, and their efforts suscited new forms inspired by authentic folk forms and styles.

Contemporary developments do not belong to the topic of this paper, which hopes to have described in short the interrelationship of the discovery and manipulation of folk culture and its relation to nation building efforts.

Suggested Reading Fried István, A névadás lehetségessége: nemzetiség, régió, Európa (The Possibility of Giving Names: Ethnicity, Region, Europe). Bratislava–Pozsony, 2004.

Fried István, East Central European Literary Studies. Szeged, 1997.

Fried István, Ostmitteleuropäische Studien: Ungarisch–slawisch–österreichische literarische Beziehungen.

Szeged, 1994.

Sziklay László, Szomszédainkról (About our Neighbours). Budapest, 1974.

Sziklay László, Együttélés és többnyelvűség az irodalomban (Cohabitation and Multilingualism in Literature).

Budapest, 1987.

Németh Márton (1978) graduated in Library and Information Science and History with a specialization in European Politics at Szeged University in Hungary. Currently he is working as a librarian in the National Library in Budapest. He is also graduated in Ålborg, Denmark in the European Studies MA programme. His thesis is about the political and historical background of the Balkan Crisis, finding parallels and differences within Central European political developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His email address is nemethm@gmail.com.

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Peniel Jesudason Rufus Rajkumar

Being Church Today:

Paradigms of Discipleship for a Context of Transition Envisaging the Church of the future is a Herculean task. Especially when epochal changes render one’s perception of the future bleak, the task becomes even harder. Amidst this aura of uncertainty, one needs to recognise that the Church as such serves as a paradigm, which has constantly withstood the test of time.

This is not to say that the Church has remained static. Rather, the Church has evolved in relation to the exigencies of its time and contexts.

It has been iconic in the sense that it has not been annihilated in the course of history.

One has to acknowledge with humility, however, that the ways in which the Church has manifested or multiplied itself have not always been morally and ethically infallible. In this regard, ecclesiastical history has equipped us with important lessons about what the Church is ‘not to be’.

To focus on the future would mean thinking not of how the Church can ‘stay-put’ but to reflect on the theme of discipleship. Discipleship holds together the past, present and future, because it characterizes one way in which the Church has witnessed to the Gospel through the ages.

Discipleship embodies both the identity and the mission of the Church: the ‘being’ and the ‘doing’ of the Church. The Church has proved itself relevant to its milieu by virtue of its discipleship.

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Thus, crucial to the task of envisaging the Church of the future is the task of articulating patterns of relevant discipleship, which are presupposed to hold pertinence for the future. As discipleship characterizes what the Church is and means, it is precisely through relevant discipleship that the Church can actually become a ‘presymbol’ of the reign of God. To further expound the nature of Christian discipleship it would be useful to talk of the Holy Trinity and the Eucharist as guiding paradigms of discipleship.

I. Holy Trinity: Challenge of Embodied Reconfiguration

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is a configuration in the sense that it can be considered as the “outcome of a process of sustained and critical reflection on the pattern of the divine activity revealed in the Holy Scripture and continued in Christian experience.”1 Humans have configured the mystery of the divine in a Trinitarian manner. Though not without its problems, one can on a Biblical basis analyze God’s definitive and Self-revelatory actions through the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. What is important for us is that the Holy Trinity helps us to place communion and relationships as key terms in understanding God. Understood as a ‘communion’, the Holy Trinity can serve a heuristic purpose. It not only can help us to understand ‘Community’ as characterizing the very being of God, but also can enable us to understand God’s actions of creation, reconciliation and redemption from a communitarian perspective as inevitable corollaries of such Being. Understood in a Platonic sense, human communities could be seen as mere copies of a transcendental community.

But given the existential dimension of Trinitarian activity through the acts of creation, reconciliation and redemption (all of which are carried on in relation to humanity, and which have the purpose of drawing humanity to the consummation of its purpose), one can with hope, and a lot of risk, recognize that human communities are embodied reconfigurations of the Holy Trinity at work.

This analysis of human communities as embodying the Holy Trinity, not only through their diversity but through a Trinitarian God at work in them, challenges us to focus on how Christian discipleship can be carried out in postmodern societies.

1 McGrath Alister E., Christian Theology: An Introduction. Oxford, 2001. 321.

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These societies are not merely pluralistic and fragmented, but also contain identities which are realistically fluid and hybrid. Within this spectrum of diversity, how can the doctrine of the Holy Trinity be reconfigured with a missiological thrust?

1. Cultivating Dynamic Interdependence

The implications of the Trinity for Christian discipleship have increasingly been articulated using the notion of perichoresis (interpenetration). The concept of perichoresis has aided the process of referring to the interrelationship of the three persons of the Trinity.

This important idea is expressed through the image of a ‘community of being’, which, while fully allowing the individuality of the three persons, insists that each shares in the life of the other two.2 An example can be found in the way the Anglican Communion has appropriated this understanding of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity as a ‘community of three’ has given the Anglican Communion a guiding paradigm.

This paradigm is based on cherishing differences and affirming the identity of all those different representations within the Anglican Communion. The Report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, well known as the Virginia Report, which centres its study on the understanding of the Trinitarian faith, clarifies this with remarkable lucidity: “The unity of the Anglican Communion derives from the unity given in the Triune God, whose inner personal and relational nature is communion. This is our centre. This mystery of God’s life calls us to communion in visible form. This is why the Church is called again and again to review and to reform the structures of its life together, so that they nurture and enable the life of communion in God, and serve God’s mission in the world.”3 Understood in this manner, discipleship or mission emerges as a means of cultivating dynamic interdependence. It becomes a ministry of recognition, affirmation and celebration of diversity.

Rather than becoming the locus of integration, diversities unfortunately tend to become the locus of conflict. Especially in pluralistic contexts, where multifaith communities exist, this aspect of creating dynamic interdependence leads to mutual enrichment.

Christianity and Sustainable Renewal

Resolute in this practice of deepening insight and conduct, religious communities can remain unshaken by the discontinuities of experience. Serenity can be maintained and joyfulness and creativity can be nurtured.

Using the Trinitarian paradigm to affirm and cherish diversity is important in a pluralistic world. At times this may be reduced to thorough-going relativism based on an ‘anything-goes’ formula.

Nevertheless, it would be simplistic to imagine that the paradigm of the Holy Trinity is not without its challenges when dealing with the diversity between communities. It does help us to affirm and cherish differences between communities.

Nevertheless, how does it help us to understand differences within communities? How does the Holy Trinity help us to reconcile the tension between distinctive identity and communitarian vision?

2. Distinctive Identity

In a self-confessedly postmodern society, a pertinent challenge for the Church is how it can be distinctively Christian. In a legacy which can be owed to post-MacIntyre Christian ethics, one can see a tendency to “produce a theological understanding of churches as moral communities, which underestimates the ‘synchronic and diachronic plurality of Christian resources’.4 We have to consider the extremely divided (or diverse) views, which have been held within Christianity or within a single Church on issues relating to human sexuality, women’s ordination, abortion, gene therapy and just war.

The Trinitarian paradigm helps us to be perceptive to those differences within churches rather than to engage in a homogenizing enterprise ‘un-self-critically’. As Robin Gill understands it: “Postmodernity fragments, but it also challenges faith groups and their leaders to be distinctive. Perhaps the challenge is finally to articulate Christian principles, which are distinctive, but not exclusive.”5 The perichoretic dimension of the Holy Trinity challenges us to delve into our own religious sources to articulate new patterns of our distinctive identity. But at the same time, it helps us to temper these expressions in ways that are neither reduced to hostile binarism nor shallow relativism.

2 McGrath Alister E., Christian Theology: An Introduction. Oxford, 2001. 325.

4 Gill Robin, Moral Leadership in a Postmodern Age. Edinburgh, 1997. 50.

3 Virginia Report: Report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission. London, 1997.

1.11.

5 Gill Robin, Moral Leadership in a Postmodern Age. Edinburgh, 1997. 31.

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3. Beyond Self-Interest in the Handling of Differences

One pertinent challenge ahead for the Church of the future is to ponder and articulate how, on a praxiological level, interrelationship between members of different opinions and ideologies can be practiced consciously.

Discipleship as embodied reconfiguration of the Trinitarian paradigm helps us to recognise that we are part of a communion, whatever the type of the communion is, be it the Church, a church, (or) a secular community.

Understanding our embodiment in a Trinitarian manner helps us to move beyond self-interest in handling contentious issues.

The point of handling differences is no longer self-referential, but communitarian.

We open ourselves to the other, place trust in mutuality and help to be shaped by the others. Reconfiguring the notion of perichoresis implies also openness to mutual correction. It can be translated as healing and handling differences and conflicts in the realm of relationships.

Thus, in an experiential landscape of competitive expressivity we can note the interplay of group assertions, be it elite or subaltern; all phrased in terms that conflate the political with the sacred.

Nurturing a Trinitarian spirituality can thwart the clandestine motives of parochial and ghettoising forces, which thrive on antagonism and vivisection. A perichoretic vision enables interaction and relationships to happen with much mutuality and freedom.

II. Discipleship and the Eucharist: Challenge of Relevant Re-enactment 1. Discipleship as Thanksgiving and Sharing

Appropriating the Eucharist in mission brings in mind two aspects of the Eucharist: thanksgiving and sharing. First, Eucharistia, from which the sacramental communal act gets its name, means thanksgiving and signifies that at the heart of the Eucharist a thanksgiving for God’s divine grace lies.

The Eucharist reminds Christians of our identity as a remembering community, which constantly remembers God’s grace. Constant anamnesis, which is revalidated for the future with the spirit of

Christianity and Sustainable Renewal

anticipation and hope, becomes the horizon for the present in the context of the Eucharistic celebration.

The anamnesis, which takes place, is the constant remembering again and again of divine grace. Eucharist as an act of remembrance reminds us that discipleship primarily entails thanksgiving.

By premising our existence within the framework of divine grace and love, Eucharist teaches us that discipleship should take the form of gratitude. It is a pity that grace is often understood parochially in a condescending sense in reference to a ‘fallen humanity’.

Rather than using the language of gifts, language of human failure predominates human understanding of grace. The point of reference of grace is God. Biblically, God is understood as the source of our being, Whose very being permeates us to the extent that we are created in God’s Own image.

The central project of the Eucharist is gratuitous responding to knowledge, experience and confidence in God’s definitive and selfrevelatory actions in the past, present and future. This has profound implications for the mission of the Church: “The Eucharist also embraces all aspects of life. It is a representative of thanksgiving and offering on behalf of the whole world. The Eucharistic celebration demands reconciliation and sharing among those, who are sisters and brothers in the one family of God, and constantly challenges those who participate to search for appropriate relationships in social, economic and political life (Matt 5,23; 1Cor 10,16; 11,20–22; Gal 3,28). All injustice, racism, separation and denial of freedom are radically challenged, when Christians share in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Through the Eucharist, the grace of God penetrates, restores and renews human personality and dignity.”6 Thus, through the Eucharist, the concepts of thanksgiving and discipleship are connected together. Confronted with the challenge of remembering Jesus Christ, thanksgiving and discipleship no longer lead to mere passivity or pre-occupation with mere self-survival or glorification of God for one’s present gifts.

Rather, it leads to a realization of the reality of human existence in all its deprivation and disparity, and evokes a passion to incarnate or re-enact the narrative of God’s grace in a relevant manner. Only in this way does the sacrament of the Eucharist gain an incarnational thrust. Again the Virginia Report makes it a point of focus in the life of the Church: 6 Virginia Report: Report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission. London, 1997.

2.20.

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“A faithful Church signifies by its life that it is the living promise of God’s purpose in the midst of today’s history. The Church lives in the present, remembering again and again (making anamnesis) the Jesus Christ event, and receiving in hope the promise of the Kingdom. In this way, the saving events of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection and the foretaste of the Kingdom are brought into the present experience of the Church.”7 In light of this, it is important to analyse another related aspect of the Eucharist, namely sharing. As a concomitant of thanksgiving, in the context of the Eucharist sharing involves the gift of sharing in Jesus Christ’s body and blood as one family.

Also, the responsibility of sharing in the mission of the broken body of Jesus Christ involves sharing the suffering and pain of the world; a sharing in the eschatological vision of the community of the table, which has implications for the sharing of resources and responding to the challenges of economic deprivation and marginalization; a mutual recognition of diversity, through the mutual sharing of koinonal space.

Through the Eucharist, the ideas of Church and unity are brought together in an understanding of equality, in which the Gospel becomes credible, communion takes place, and human unity is restored and renewed each day through the idea of a common meal.

This fellowship meal brings out unity among the believers as they share the body of Jesus Christ. The Eucharistic sharing clearly highlights one’s own obligation of mutual love towards each other as members of one large family. It also enables mutual recognition of one another as members of faithful communities of Jesus Christ’s disciples.

On a wider level, it also involves sharing in the compassion of Jesus Christ in the agapaic sense of the term. It suggests mutual respect, equality, unconditional acceptance and the gracious sharing of resources and space.

Conscious participation in the Eucharist is a discovery of responsibility, gradually leading to a discovery of one’s identity in and through Jesus Christ. As one progresses in one’s discovery, one gets to understand the deep political-social and economic connotations of the Eucharist.

Through this process, a sharing of surplus values can remove, once and for all, economic exploitation and socio-political and

cultural asymmetries. This can most definitely lead to positive transformation.

It involves facilitating interaction and interrelationship, which should be premised on the need to facilitate a shift from the conception of selfish survival to the conception of fulfilment based on altruism and interconnectedness.

7 Virginia Report: Report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission. London, 1997.

2.14.

10 Crossan John Dominic, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. New York, 1995. 54–74.

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2. Reading the Eucharist Complementarily with the Open Commensality of Jesus Christ

The Eucharist has to be read complementarily with the open commensality of Jesus Christ, manifested in His table fellowship.

Commensality8 comes from mensa, the Latin word for table: it means the rules of tabling and eating as miniature models for the rules of association and socialization.

Understanding the eating model of Jesus Christ as commensality, John Dominic Crossan identifies the table fellowship of Jesus Christ as the embodied ethical correlate of the present or sapiential Reign of God.9 Jesus Christ brings deprivation and marginalization into a systemic focus through His aphoristic conjunction of marginalization, poverty and the Reign of God. In a context, where the table was a “miniature map of society’s vertical discriminations and lateral separations”, Jesus Christ reveals the Reign of God as the process of such open commensality, characterised by non-discrimination and radical egalitarianism.10 The open commensality of Jesus Christ represents the kind of Reign He inaugurates. The trans-spatiality of His meals are “spontaneous occasions of fellowship denoting the hospitality of God’s Kingdom.”11 Jesus Christ’s life involved rebuilding a society on the foundations of economic and religious egalitarianism. The very pattern of Jesus Christ’s ministry was a conscious and intentional conjunction of healing, miracles, table fellowship, compassion and open commensality.

This needs to be reckoned as a challenge, against not only the strictest purity regulations of Judaism or the Mediterranean’s patriarchal combination of patronage and clientage, honour and shame.

8 Crossan John Dominic, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. New York, 1995. 68.

9 Crossan John Dominic, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. New York, 1995. 54–74.

11 Hauerwas Stanley, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. London, 2003. 86–87.

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Rather, it needs recognition as a deliberate attack at civilization’s unceasing inclination to draw divisions, invoke boundaries, perpetuate hierarchies and maintain discriminations.12 It is this model of discipleship, which is required for the Church today.

The relevant re-enactment of the Eucharist calls us to a discipleship of participation in the life of Jesus Christ: a ministry of overt identification with Jesus Christ. This ministry of identification makes immense demands on the Church.

It is so, because in the present context, we need to realize that the Church’s identification with Jesus Christ automatically entails identification against divisive and exploitative forces, as well as identification with the disadvantaged and deprived sections of the community.

Identification with the disadvantaged, deprived and the despised, and thereby, against divisive forces can be carried out by pointing to Jesus Christ’ identification with the outcastes of His time.

By looking at the paradigm of Jesus Christ, we can interpret that every structure that is delimiting and discriminating is evil and sinful since it denies some people the opportunity to celebrate their own intrinsic worth.

Jesus Christ’s life as a paradigm for liberating engagement needs to be interpreted to mean engaging in resistance and emancipation.

Unless following Jesus Christ is actualized, Christian religious expressions will cease to find their true meaning and efficacy.

3. The Myth of Incongruity between Identity and Mission

The Eucharist gives Christians an incarnational identity as those who remember Jesus Christ in worship. As an embodied corporate practice, through its spatiality the Church becomes a visible community. In this concreteness, it makes anamnesis of its identity and so derives its sense of mission: “The Church is not, for that period, a vague idea, a marvellous principle, an invisible influence. It becomes something, and thus can no longer be anything, gives up being everything, and is much more than nothing. This is a sacrifice, because being able to be anything offers flexibility, to be everything offers power, and to be nothing offers anonymity and therefore safety. By becoming something, 12 Crossan John Dominic, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. Edinburgh, 1991. XII.

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somewhere, the Church locates itself in space, and is made visible.”13 It is not just the visibility factor that characterises the gathering around the table. The liturgy ‘makes present’ the memory of its identity; the gathering is made manifest as the miniature model of the Reign of God, where people participate in a meal. From these two should flow the Church’s commitment to re-enact the Eucharist relevantly. From here begins its dispersion to live out the something, which characterises its identity.

The Eucharist challenges the myth of incongruity between identity and mission, because from its sense of identity the Church derives its mission. It also poses a challenge to the Kantian tradition, which assumes a dichotomy between the immanent world of human experience and the transcendent world of religion, through appropriating the challenge of the relevant re-enactment of the Eucharist.

The Eucharist reveals that the context of worship is deeply connected with the world. One can find a correspondence in the reflections of Mother Mary Clare SLG, as she explains the existential embeddedness of prayer. She calls prayer the art of spiritual living.

She refutes the fallacious dichotomy that distinguishes prayer as being either “purely Godward or personal activity” on the one hand, or as being a “compassionate involvement with the world’s pain, insecurity and frustration”14 on the other.

She views prayer as a “union with Jesus Christ in His Own redemptive action.” It involves being drawn into the “great cosmic war against evil, which is to bring into the here and now of our daily lives the fruits of Jesus Christ’s victorious passion.”15 Eucharistic re-enactment is characterized by this faith in the ongoing intervention of God in history, which strengthens our faith to act against the prevailing asymmetries and imbalances in the distribution of resources and power.

Faith needs to be translated into an emancipatory impulse, leading to a quest to engage in justice and equality, and thus finds its verification in real life. It is on the existential level that Eucharistic re-enactment must seek for the distinctive import of its path of life.

13 Hauerwas Stanley – Wells Samuel, The Gift of the Church and the Gifts God Gives to it. In Hauerwas Stanley – Wells Samuel (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics. Oxford, 2004.

20.

14 Clare Mary Mother SLG, Encountering the Depths. London, 1981. 1.; Cited in Rowell Geoffrey – Stevenson Kenneth – Williams Rowan (eds.), Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness. Oxford, 2001. 694.

15 Clare Mary Mother SLG, Encountering the Depths. London, 1981. 694.

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III. Becoming a Community of Guests and Hosts

In the process of our reflection, we have recognized that the mission of the Church of the future is confronted with a situation that does not promise utopia. As such, the Church’s discipleship can be neither an ersatz, an outcome of lazy and insensitive privilege; nor merely cynical apotheosis. It involves a definite and immediate response to the existing reality.

The challenge ahead, for the Church in particular, is to respond to the shifting centres of social value and ethos, which pluralistic and postmodern societies embody, as well as to the ragged peripheries that define the vicious cycle of contemporary socio-political-economic reality.

This undertaking involves a definite response to the predicament of conflict over how opportunities are given to all, how human potential is identified and nurtured, and how deeply divisive patterns of living are transformed to become more enabling and facilitative.

We have reflected on the Holy Trinity and Eucharist as two models of discipleship. The challenging possibilities that these two models throw before us are the possibilities of embodied reconfiguration and relevant re-enactment.

We have seen how these models can be appropriated in our search for distinctive identity and our engagement in a quest for justice and wholeness. What these models have helped us to do is to recognize that human communities form the locus of discipleship.

Hence models of discipleship need to be communitarian models.

Only in as far as we posit ourselves as relevant communities can our discipleship be relevant. As such, the Holy Trinity and the Eucharist give us profound insights for a communitarian thrust for mission.

What these two models teach us in fact can be summed up using the language of guests and hosts.

In his epilogue to The Modern Theologians, David Ford writes that the future of Christian theology could appropriately be related to its role of being guests and hosts. This paradigm can be appropriated for Christian discipleship today as well.

Both the Holy Trinity and the Eucharist provide us with models of guests and hosts. Making hospitality the basic premise of Christian living has profound implications for the wholeness that the Church can bring to its mission, because in the words of David Ford: “It has the host’s responsibility for homemaking, the hard work of preparation, and the vulnerability of courteously offering something,

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while having little control over its reception. It also has the different responsibility of being a guest, trying to be sensitive to strange households, learning complex codes and risking new food and drink.

Ideally, habitual hospitality gives rise to trust and friendship, in which exchanges can plumb the depths of similarity, difference and suffering.”16 Suggested Reading Clare Mary Mother SLG, Encountering the Depths. London, 1981.

Crossan John Dominic, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. Edinburgh, 1991.

Crossan John Dominic, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. New York, 1995.

Ford David F. (ed.), The Modern Theologians. Oxford, 1997.

Gill Robin, Moral Leadership in a Postmodern Age. Edinburgh, 1997.

Hauerwas Stanley, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. London, 2003.

Hauerwas Stanley – Wells Samuel (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics. Oxford, 2004.

McGrath Alister E., Christian Theology: An Introduction. Oxford, 2001.

Rowell Geoffrey – Stevenson Kenneth – Williams Rowan (eds.), Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness. Oxford, 2001.

Virginia Report: Report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission. London, 1997.

Reverend Dr. Peniel Jesudason Rufus Rajkumar is a pastor in the Church of England, Anglican Communion.

He is a lecturer of Christian Social Ethics at the United Theological College in Bangalore, Karnataka, in South India. His email address is penielrufus@gmail.com.

Rozs-Nagy Szilvia

Ecumenism: The Way of

Poverty, Fidelity and Obedience The Princeton Agreement from 2003 is a prophetic call to all denominations and churches. Addressing their consciences, its aim is to awaken churches and denominations from their tranquil lives and well accustomed daily routines.

What the sixteen authors of the Agreement volunteered for is not at all an easy job. We all have experienced how difficult it is to reason with someone who does not feel ill, in order to make her or him recognise the signs of her or his body and go to a doctor.

The authors of the Agreement want to reason and argue with the churches, helping them to realise that they live in a state of sin; and until they get rid of it, all their deeds and their whole existence destroys the credit even of their most sacred message.

The crowds of faithful believers cannot excuse those evil structures, organizations and institutions of the churches, which constantly deepen the division among Christians and as a result they enlarge lovelessness and exclusion, providing ground and munitions for the survival of hatred and the growth of suffering.

Notwithstanding, the task of the Princeton Agreement has been completed. The role of a prophet is only to alert people and announce what the Lord entrusted to her or him. The effectiveness of her or his preaching is not up to her or him to worry about.

Thus, the duty of the prophet is finished. Now it is the turn of the denominations and churches to let their ears hear and repent structurally and organizationally, and so to say redesign their community life and the tracks and forms of their thinking.

This article is based on the central message of the Princeton Agreement,

16 Ford David F., Epilogue: Christian Theology at the Turn of the Millennium. In Ford David F. (ed.), The Modern Theologians. Oxford, 1997. 727.

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while having little control over its reception. It also has the different responsibility of being a guest, trying to be sensitive to strange households, learning complex codes and risking new food and drink.

Ideally, habitual hospitality gives rise to trust and friendship, in which exchanges can plumb the depths of similarity, difference and suffering.”16 Suggested Reading Clare Mary Mother SLG, Encountering the Depths. London, 1981.

Crossan John Dominic, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. Edinburgh, 1991.

Crossan John Dominic, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. New York, 1995.

Ford David F. (ed.), The Modern Theologians. Oxford, 1997.

Gill Robin, Moral Leadership in a Postmodern Age. Edinburgh, 1997.

Hauerwas Stanley, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. London, 2003.

Hauerwas Stanley – Wells Samuel (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics. Oxford, 2004.

McGrath Alister E., Christian Theology: An Introduction. Oxford, 2001.

Rowell Geoffrey – Stevenson Kenneth – Williams Rowan (eds.), Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness. Oxford, 2001.

Virginia Report: Report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission. London, 1997.

Reverend Dr. Peniel Jesudason Rufus Rajkumar is a pastor in the Church of England, Anglican Communion.

He is a lecturer of Christian Social Ethics at the United Theological College in Bangalore, Karnataka, in South India. His email address is penielrufus@gmail.com.

Rozs-Nagy Szilvia

Ecumenism: The Way of

Poverty, Fidelity and Obedience The Princeton Agreement from 2003 is a prophetic call to all denominations and churches. Addressing their consciences, its aim is to awaken churches and denominations from their tranquil lives and well accustomed daily routines.

What the sixteen authors of the Agreement volunteered for is not at all an easy job. We all have experienced how difficult it is to reason with someone who does not feel ill, in order to make her or him recognise the signs of her or his body and go to a doctor.

The authors of the Agreement want to reason and argue with the churches, helping them to realise that they live in a state of sin; and until they get rid of it, all their deeds and their whole existence destroys the credit even of their most sacred message.

The crowds of faithful believers cannot excuse those evil structures, organizations and institutions of the churches, which constantly deepen the division among Christians and as a result they enlarge lovelessness and exclusion, providing ground and munitions for the survival of hatred and the growth of suffering.

Notwithstanding, the task of the Princeton Agreement has been completed. The role of a prophet is only to alert people and announce what the Lord entrusted to her or him. The effectiveness of her or his preaching is not up to her or him to worry about.

Thus, the duty of the prophet is finished. Now it is the turn of the denominations and churches to let their ears hear and repent structurally and organizationally, and so to say redesign their community life and the tracks and forms of their thinking.

This article is based on the central message of the Princeton Agreement,

16 Ford David F., Epilogue: Christian Theology at the Turn of the Millennium. In Ford David F. (ed.), The Modern Theologians. Oxford, 1997. 727.

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seeking to challenge the recent state of the churches, leading them to rediscover and revive ancient Christian virtues.

We shall not make a thorough analysis and critique of the Agreement. Instead, we will examine and hopefully deepen the role of humbleness and self-discipline needed to renew the faith and order of the churches.

I. But it shall not be so among you

From many aspects, the organizational set-up of the Church mirrors the structures and systems of society. Jesus Christ has provided the basic principles for organizing the community life of believers, but society set the example for the institutionalization of the churches.

After experiencing several renewals and transformation, we can and shall say that the Church’s set-up needs to be renewed now and always. We still have to wait for the upcoming of the most practical and effective Church structure.

Recently the ecumenical movement is the only serious and wellgrounded endeavour that aims not only for the renewal of faith but of every aspect of the Church as far as theology, structures and daily life are concerned.

The new unity, which came into existence in Jesus Christ, has found unconditional followers neither in society nor in culture; and because of this it is substantially missing both among denominations and various social groups.

Very often, it is not easy to decide where the deepest gaps are: among denominational, or among socio-cultural stances. Let us look at our current status by observing unity from the secular side of the Church.

1. Jews and Pagans

The different cultural and religious roots and motives, which were typical features of the early Church’s membership of both Jewish and Pagan (Greek) origins, are still present in the various relations of Christian communities.

In some places it can be tracked down in peculiar liturgies, in other places in the almost total absence of a specific liturgy. Styles of dressing, feasts and celebrations can turn into dividing barriers among denominations and stay as such for years and years.

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2. Women and Men

Several denominations have already provided a proper place for finding the best way to emphasize the equal value of service of the female and male element, but very often the highest level of leadership constitutes an exception from this.

Female participation (both lay and clerical), however, in the governing bodies of the churches proves to be significant neither in theological nor practical fields. So a hidden differentiation of the value of services and methodologies still exists.

3. Slaves and Free Persons

Seemingly, the difference between slaves and free persons has already disappeared. But has it really disappeared? Nevertheless, one does not find a mention of slavery when society or the churches speak about those who must work three shifts, about struggles with work when one has many children or when one expects a child, or when one is handicapped or bound to a wheelchair.

Sunday Worship, (very often) the centre of congregational life, is usually held at ten or eleven in the morning, preventing several groups of society belonging to and practicing faith in this way.

4. Greek and Barbarian

A differentiation between Greek and Barbarian (educated and ordinary people) unfortunately still remains with us. The addressed public of sermons and Bible studies are normally educated townspeople.

Rarely are church publications designed for those who do not have a maturity exam, nor for common workers in rural and industrial fields or for highly educated intellectuals.

5. Rich and Poor

Not counting the Advent period, the churches’ presence, care and charity remain invisible in the life of the poorest, who have breadand-butter worries day after day. The messages of the churches are too often about striving for material aggrandizement, addressing not only the poor, but also those who are well off. Through this message the value of poverty, which is a Biblical and Christian norm, is lost, as is our responsibility in material fields.

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According to the moral lesson of history, the Church should make a double service in order to develop structurally and organizationally.

First, its own principles – like the new unity which came to existence in Jesus Christ – must be translated to the language of society and culture, as well as embodied into the given frame of society.

The next step then is to wait a few decades, checking and analysing the lessons of the new social system; after which they can be translated to the language and structures of the Church, realising them in its own organizational life.

II. But if not this way, then which way?

The continual re-examination of our human identity requires not only a critical eye to re-examine our whole practices thus far according to the needs of our age and of eternity, but to be able to identify ourselves with our sisters and brothers, who belong to other denominations.

While we do not understand nor feel why and how good it is to be Roman Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, we do not love the others as our neighbours. While we cannot imagine our life and our spiritual growth in another denomination, neither our love nor our faith is credible.

1. Unity of Love

The Easter Unity of the Church is revealed in agape, in the everyday realization of love. It is manifested in the way we form and build communities, where we do not discriminate on the basis of gender, denomination, religion or colour, because we know that only two or three Christians are needed for Jesus Christ to be present among them.

This is the primary Christian sign: not the unity of faith, but the unity of love, the ability to create and uphold community life.

Building a liturgical or Christian love-relationship with God is only the expansion of it, because love is preferential even to mission.

Unfortunately, often we just speak about community and suspect that it does have some value, but later we must admit secretly that we do not really know or understand what it should be.

Very often we are only a gathered congregation, individuals who come together in one place, but not really a community. How can we know then which methods exist in order to live in and practice community life?

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Our professional lives, but also our private lives are about living next to each other, and not at all about living together, building community. I wonder whether our ignorance and lost knowledge will excuse us from using all possible occasions to show and realise our love without hesitation.

Before we bravely start to preach great ideas, we should learn the dance of small steps. Its first move is to learn to love, respect and keep our sisters and brothers, who belong to different denominations, at higher esteem than ourselves.

Their characteristics are not only to be tolerated and accepted but to be admired and given thanks for, especially those characteristics of faith and witness that reveal God’s one special face, which we could not have experienced without them.

The next step is to practice this dance daily with great care and humble heart, to turn towards our neighbours with attention, gentleness and love. Then we shall start to trust more in God’s goodwill and providence than in our own clever minds.

And from time to time it is advisable to open ourselves up to feel the brutal pain of our separation from our sisters and brothers in faith, the pain of denominational exclusivity and hatred and of being cast off from the Lord’s Table. Finally, then, we can accept our grave responsibility for reducing this pain.

2. Unity of Faith

Unity of love means living and giving actual form to our goodwill, empathy and compassion. We do not even have to be Christians for this; it is enough if we are human beings. Unity of faith is a more complicated issue, which cannot be realized without the effective help of the Holy Spirit.

The various historical, theological, inner and outer, social and cultural divisions within Christianity and the Church are too deep and wide: thus, these abysses cannot be filled in by mortal and fragile human efforts.

While re-reading the priestly prayer of Jesus Christ, we can pose this question: should we follow the words of disciples and others who began to believe in Jesus Christ, even if they do not work for Christian unity but continue to carry the poisonous fruits of old divisions?

When Jesus Christ prayed that we “may be one as He and the Father are One”, he meant (and means) not simply that we must

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tolerate each other, but that we should be joined in closest spiritual community, able to accept the others’ bodily and material reality as well.

This community involves the knowledge of others and our unconditional love towards them. In Jesus Christ there are no strangers, but all of us are parts and members of the one and holy Body.

This also includes that I love the others as I love myself. We should not simply do what we think is the best for someone else, but we should do what we would like her or him to do for us: we should behave, discuss and sit at the same table with her or him in the same way that we would expect from her or him.

“That they may be made perfect in one” – prays Jesus Christ. Perfect.

In one. Love is able to make us one, but the fundamental lack of love is not. And at this point playing off love against faith is one of the biggest falsehoods and vices.

3. The Way of Ascesis

Are we really holy and saint churches? Do we really proclaim the presence of God? Even when our neighbour, who happens to belong to another denomination, stands next to us (or in front of us)? If we do not, then the situation cries out for change and calls us to repent.

The unity of the Church is not a condition created once to be upheld, but it is a way of life, which needs to be practiced and improved continuously. This is a steady practice of our spiritual lives; this is a journey on the way of asceticism. This journey traditionally has three main areas: obedience, simplicity and faithfulness.

A. Obedience

Before the renewal of obedience, we need to clarify some of the regulations of Church authorities concerning obligatory and normative teachings and common life. Humbleness should be made the highest virtue in interpersonal and denominational relationships.

For this, the acknowledgement of authorities is needed both officially and unofficially. The unofficial part largely depends on community leaders, ministers and their teachings. They are in positions to prepare community members both to accept authority as such, and to appreciate spiritual authorities from other denominations.

The Agreement suggests several steps for the development of the

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official side, including inviting theologians from other denominations into church committees responsible for teaching and formulating church declarations with the widest audience possible in mind.

Other suggestions were as follows: employing teachers, professors and scholars, who can commit themselves to the service of the whole Christian Church; coordinated occasions of mission, service and witness; the full and mutual acknowledgment of Christian leaders and their services; participation in each others’ worship services; preparation of ministers to be able to work in other denominations; unceasing prayer for other churches; acknowledgment of the effective nature of baptism in all areas of Church life; realization and acceptance of the distinguished vocation of ecumenical marriages and families.

When this becomes more than a concentration of forces on the basis of similar ideologies and develops to real cooperation, then ecumenism will be partly made real. For cooperation one needs common preparation, prayer, mutual creation and refinement of a common spirituality. Moreover, trust in each other and interdependence is needed.

Even now, the main goal should be the proclamation of the Christian message. Jesus Christ did not heal simply out of solidarity, because then he would have healed many more people than this few.

But he healed others in order to provide a sign for God’s omnipresence, a sign for God’s Kingdom among us. All cooperation must focus on the well-being and main purpose of the whole Church.

B. Simplicity

We have to learn how to be simpler for the sake of the little and the weak, and also to achieve the unity of the Church. The expression of love, which includes also the acceptance of becoming a little one, has always had a higher value than one’s clinging to discovered truth, rules or traditions.

It is important to learn how to see our service and our achievements from the point of view of Jesus Christ or the whole Church. Our belonging to a certain denomination has to represent a lesser value than our belonging to Christianity.

Our differences are meaningful only within the Body of Jesus Christ. When they are inside only then can they be useful, rational and indispensable. As long as these differences only distinguish us

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from each other, they are not more than sounding brass or tinkling cymbal.

We have to learn to accept poverty in practice as well, even if acknowledging the Christian nature and authority of leaders of other denominations weakens our status or respect and even if we shall be pushed to change the place of our service or receive smaller salary.

Accepting spiritual poverty is of great value in our work for unity in faith and truth. The letters were not written to be used to exclude people from certain communities.

The Sabbath is for human beings, and when it is realized in a contradictory way, then the Sabbath has to be broken with humbleness and with the acceptance of poverty that puts one’s trust into God’s love (and not God’s justice).

We should also be aware that there are times when even the Godgiven laws cannot be kept properly. Moreover, paradoxically enough, sometimes we keep the laws exactly when we (seemingly) break them, crossing boundaries.

Applying the principle of spiritual poverty is necessary not only in practical life, but also in theology. When God gives God’s blessing to the life of other denominations, and reveals God’s presence through their services, then who are we to question God’s decision?

Who are we to create artificial obstacles against God’s Holy Spirit?

Who are we to esteem our own fear more than our trust in God’s goodness and love?

C. Faithfulness

The purpose denominations’ prayers for each other and for Church unity are not simply to keep these topics mentioned in one sentence at certain points of the liturgies. Rather, these prayers help the denominations to stick to each other, keeping faithful intercessions and vigils for each other, asking God’s Holy Spirit, Who can change us and give us strength, so that God can work effectively among and through us as well.

The very basic cell of the Church is family, namely the familychurch. In ecumenical marriages, the unity of the Church is already realized and lived. The denominations should not allow ecumenical marriages to be burdensome; on the contrary, they should learn from them as from special experts.

It would be worthwhile to collect data on how these couples solve the various questions and which methodologies they use. They

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should be asked to help in the formation of ecumenical theologians and pastoral workers, who deal with ecumenical families in order to broaden their horizons, deepen their pain and enhance the creativity of love.

At special times God offers special vocations to some members of God’s people. A vocation can be, for example, that one accepts voluntarily to live out her or his faith among and together with sisters and brothers of another denomination.

The price of this vocation may be that she or he cannot do it openly, or she or he is excluded from some – even the most intimate – forms of faith-life, like the Eucharistic community.

The selfless humbleness of such people should stand as holy examples for the churches. The specialty of their knowledge, their pain, their hope, and their continual growth is a unique gift for the denominations.

Christianity and Sustainable Renewal Suggested Reading Fackre Gabriel, Jenson Robert W. – Braaten Carl E. (eds.), In One Body Through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity. The Gospel and our Culture Newsletter 2004/39.

Fabiny Tibor (ed.), Egy házban élnek-e a keresztények? Magyar reflexiók a Princetoni javaslatra (Are Christians Living in the same House? Magyar Reflections on the Princeton Proposal). Budapest, 2007.

Jenson Robert W. – Braaten Carl E. (eds.), In One Body Through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity. Grand Rapids, 2003.

Jenson Robert W. – Braaten Carl E. (eds.), The Ecumenical Future: Background Papers for “In One Body through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity”. Grand Rapids, 2004.

Nagypál Szabolcs, Restating the Ecumenical Emphases: A Grassroots Proposal from Princeton. In Rachael Weber – Peter Šajda – Nagypál Szabolcs (eds.), Roots of Vision, Routes of Change: Nationalism and Ecumenical Leadership. Ecumenical Anthology VI of the WSCF Central European Subregion. Budapest–Bratislava, 2007.

90–105. In http://www.koed.hu/nation/szabi.pdf.

Orova Csaba, Commitment: To Truth or Identity? Mozaik 2004/2. 27–29.

Riggs Ann, Jenson Robert W. – Braaten Carl E. (eds.), The Ecumenical Future: Background Papers for “In One Body through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity”. The Ecumenical Review 2004/10.

Visser’t Hooft Willem A. (ed.), The New Delhi Report: The Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC). Genève, 1961.

Rozs-Nagy Szilvia (1976) is Evangelical-Lutheran, a pastor and ecumenical theologian from Hungary. She was a member of the Executive Committee of KÖD (Magyar Ecumenical Student Christian Movement); a member of the Executive Committee (ExCo) of the Ecumenical Youth Council in Europe (EYCE); and the chairperson of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) Central European Subregion (CESR). She worked as a university chaplain in Budapest, and now works as a high school chaplain. She is writing her PhD on ecumenical liturgies. Her email address is szilvia_n@yahoo.co.uk.

III. Among you, among us, in us, through us, with us

It is hard to say whose job is easier and whose is more difficult: the lay people or the pastors’ duty. The areas are different, as well as the possibilities and responsibilities. After all, everyone should do her or his own job to realize and deepen Church unity in the field that is entrusted to her or him.

And all are expected to do this with their whole hearts. The effort to achieve the unity of the Church should penetrate all areas of Church life, including personal prayers before falling asleep as well as official Church statements.

God created us for each other. It is worthwhile to take these precious gifts thankfully and live with them responsibly. It is worthwhile to step out of immature and evil circles of accepting nice gifts and refusing difficult ones; it is up to us to start a journey on the obedient and narrow path of freedom, self-sacrifice and self-emptying (kenosis).

May God be with us!

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Ecumenical Dialogue as a

Project of Mutual Perception In the last few years there have been constant remarks regarding the ecumenical movement, complaining about its situation and proclaiming an end to the ecumenical success story. On one hand, the outcomes of many interchurch dialogues were criticised for being too ineffective or not truly genuine. This was also the case of the Common Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification between the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

On the other hand, there was also a big debate on the role and possibilities for the Orthodox churches to participate in the World Council of Churches (WCC), and the compromise and changes on ecumenical prayers and voting procedures were, at least in Germany, perceived by many as a step backwards in the ecumenical process.

I. Pace and Direction

Thus, there seems to be wide-spread frustration about the current pace and direction of the ecumenical movement, of which the examples mentioned above are only the tip of the iceberg.

There are many possible reasons for this feeling; be it the shattered hope that after the end of the East–West division in the political realm, the denominations would now more easily come together.

They could do it, although it has been a long time since the hopeful 1960s and the encouraging 1980s, which still have not yet developed a tangible overall success in the mutual recognition of the different denominations.

There is also, at least in Germany, a growing lack of understanding of the reasons why the co-operation between Roman Catholic and

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Protestant parishes is not followed by closer recognition from the official church bodies.

While these feelings, frustrations, and criticism of the pace and direction of the ecumenical movement are all real and are drawing attention to serious challenges, there is, however, an ongoing, successful and promising element within the ecumenical movement, which should be valued and cultivated.

This we would regard as one of the key elements in the ongoing story of ecumenism and the ecumenical movement. I personally worked a lot in the Europe Region of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), participated in several dialogue activities, and was in touch with others doing so.

Therefore, I would like to draw attention to ecumenical dialogue as a project of mutual perception. This is no new insight, nor a new paradigmatic approach, and it also may seem to be very insignificant.

We already have reached quite an impressive standard of theological and practical co-operation between denominations.

Still, it seems to me the crucial foundation to all the rest and also a basis, which through the years is constantly carried on and bears fruit at the same time, even though there are no papers, resolutions or the like produced.

II. Surprise, Joy, Excitement and Friendship

This approach to ecumenical encounters as a project of mutual perception is triggered by the element of surprise, joy and friendship, which I have experienced very often in conferences, meetings or visits alike.

It is the moment we realise not only how much we have in common, but also where the differences seem to be. Yet, we still cannot refrain from realising that the Other is nevertheless a sister or a brother in Jesus Christ, be she or he a friend, a partner or simply a person we enjoy talking to, working and celebrating with.

It is the moment in which we begin to feel the pain of division, maybe without even realising it at that very moment. This might seem to be a very simple element which is not really able to carry the weight of ecumenical progress.

Nevertheless, it is an expression of the excitement of mutual perception. We perceive the Other Person as a Fellow Christian and are able to stand the difficult situation of simultaneously experiencing elements of similarity and difference.

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In this way, we start to realise the challenge and value of ecumenical dialogue. While this is a personal process, it is still a very important one since it involves the same persons who are engaged in dialogue.

Unless this element of personal encounter and mutual perception— including the simultaneous experience of similarity and difference— is experienced in ecumenical dialogue, there is no chance of moving forward.

At the same time, this dialogue is a way of experimenting with new ideas and formulations regarding the way people from different traditions can come together, and might be useful for implementation on other levels.

III. The Ephesian Moment

Behind this experience lies a theological and Biblical truth that not only challenges us today but also challenged the early Christian communities. It is the element that Andrew F. Walls, the famous missiologist, calls the Ephesian Moment.

It is the moment in which Christian communities are forced to realise that while being different, while being challenged by the praxis of the others, the different communities need each other to realise the Body of Christ, which the Church is indeed supposed to be.

Reflecting on Paul’s letters to the Ephesians, where it is said: “In union with Jesus Christ, you too are being built together with all the others to a place where God lives through the Spirit” (Ephesians 2,22), Walls draws a conclusion about the differences between the Jewish and the Gentile Christians (page 78.): “Each Christian lifestyle, representing a culture converted to Jesus Christ, expressed something that the whole body needed. Hellenistic Christianity was not a Torahless soft option for benighted heathen, who could do no better, as some Jerusalem believers undoubtedly thought it.

Nor was Judaic Christianity a system of legalistic bondage for people who had never known the benefits of a cosmopolitan culture, as some Hellenistic believers may have thought it.

Nor was it the case that each was an authentic form of Christian faith complete and valid in itself, apart from the other. Each was necessary to the other, each was necessary to complete and correct the other; for each was an expression of Jesus Christ under certain specific conditions, and Christ is humanity completed.

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The understanding of Christ—knowing the ‘full stature’—thus arises from the coming together of the fragmented understandings that occur within diverse culture-specific segments of humanity, where He becomes known.”

So basic to the Ephesian Moment is the realisation of the need for other conceptions of Christian life, in order to become Christian oneself. Similarly, essential to the project of mutual perception is the realisation that in other sisters and brothers in Jesus Christ, in people of other denominations, we meet other Christians.

Thus, the challenge of the ecumenical movement lies in the beginning of dialogue, in the recognition of the other’s faith in Jesus Christ, which is also the very aim of dialogue at the end: the full recognition of the other denomination as being a right-believing and right-acting church, with which a full communion is possible.

IV. Ecumenical Hermeneutics

This is a question of perception, rather than one of knowledge, since it is often the phenomenon of awareness that comes long before the process of reflection and reasonable discourse.

At that moment we begin to be open for the other person in her or his expression of faith, we need to allow the other person to be herself or himself. More often, however, we tend to reduce other believers to being the way we like to think they are “supposed” to be.

This is not so much a question of being biased or prejudiced, but rather a question of hermeneutics, of the way we understand messages and information, the way we make sense of our experiences.

We try to link a pattern of behaviour or a way of expression that we witness to some previous knowledge or experiences. And this is of course important and useful; otherwise we could not understand new experiences.

In ecumenical encounters, however, we often feel the need to allow other persons to act only in the way we would expect them to act.

Thus it is a challenge to develop an open mind, to allow the other to be different, and at the same time still to share familiar elements.

The already-known elements are the ones that enable us to realise automatically that the other person is a Christian, just like we are.

This element, being presented to us in a completely different context than we would expect, challenges us to take a closer look, to perceive the other person’s expression of faith or being in a way formerly uncommon to us.

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By fully recognising the element of personal experience and learning as an important starting point of ecumenical work and dialogue, we are able to better appreciate the ongoing ecumenical success, which is indeed continuously experienced at different levels.

And by conceptualising ecumenical dialogue as a project of mutual perception, we realise the important role played by all ecumenical organisations, which allow opportunities for such experiences.

But this project of mutual perception needs work, and many efforts need to be invested into its development. This process is not “just happening”; it is not an automatically-acquired experience.

V. Preconditions for Challenge

To be able to learn to perceive the other person as similar, kindred and different at the same time, and to be open to the expressions and patterns of behaviour of the other person’s faith, we need certain preconditions: We need a space in which none of the participants is in the role of the outsider, the exception, the alien. Fairly balanced groups are needed. We need a space in which trust and understanding can be developed in mutuality.

Thus there is a need for learning and the willingness to be challenged.

We need the freedom not to be forced to represent more than we are, that is: we need the freedom not to be seen as “the Protestant” or “the Orthodox” or “the Roman Catholic.”

This labelling would force us to defend and justify all the other previous experiences or knowledge the others might have had with persons from our Christian background. I can only represent myself as a Protestant, and maybe find ways to explain the behaviour of other Protestants. I will never, however, be able to stand in for all persons of my denominational background.

Thus inner denominational plurality should be accepted. We need some sort of common ground or common aim, for which the developing group in the encounter is responsible, and therefore in need of working together.

Thus, there should be conferences, seminars, exchanges, work camps, team visits, etc. The common aim serves as a proper starting point for the common experience of difference and familiarity at the same time.

And, finally, we need space for reflection, in which our freshly gained

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experience can be put into the right context: the context of our own experience, which is as well the context of a wider theological map.

Therefore we are in need of a chance to “digest” our experience, and in some cases we need to avail ourselves of such theological expertise—be it by experts or by books or both—that would enable us to put our experiences in some wider and deeper perspective.

When planning and developing spaces for ecumenical encounters, we should learn again to appreciate some sort of inner-denominational time to reflect on our experiences. This is done, for example, in the German churches when they hold Youth Forums on Orthodoxy, in which participants of different Protestant–Orthodox encounters meet and reflect on their diverse experiences.

VI. Developing Dialogue

None of these suggestions are in any way new to ecumenical dialogue, nor are they the only ones. The point is rather to appreciate that we are able to experience such encounters, and that we already are able to look back at a long ongoing history of such encounters.

The ecumenical movement was only possible because of people, women and men, who were triggered by experiences of mutual perception, which opened new horizons of Christian faith, urging them to continue following this path.

Nowadays, sometimes I can discern more differences between myself and a fellow Protestant from another country, than between myself and some Roman Catholics from my own town.

In these utterly pluralistic times, the project of mutual perception allows us to find new starting points for dialogue and urges and enables us to reach different levels of ecumenical co-operation.

The history of the ecumenical movement is today so long and complex that each new generation will have difficulties in weaving its own experiences and questions into the fabric of ecumenical history.

Still, there is continuity, and there is an ongoing work for which we are very grateful. At the same time, it becomes more and more difficult to be familiar with all developments, and people feel the need to make their own ecumenical experiences and follow new and possibly different agendas.

This is the continuous challenge for the Ecumenical Movement as a movement of denominations in dialogue, a movement of different movements happening at the same time. The denominations need to set long-term agendas.

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The movements, like the WSCF, however, are needed for the formation of new ecumenists and for the development of more spontaneous and current agendas, which focus on up-to-date challenges.

The different Christian denominations need to follow the various theological dialogues in order to establish and maintain a reflected and premeditated basis and foundation for their dealings with each other.

The denominations rather tend to try to send representatives who are more familiar with the language of their own tradition, as they have to develop new understandings of their own tradition after the encounter and also need to be ambassadors of their church-bodies.

This makes their participation in the ecumenical movement quite slow, and the achievement of lasting insights and developments even slower. The movements depend on active and motivated individuals.

So, they need a very focused, very specific and up-to-date agenda, in order to open up the space for individuals to grow and reach common aims and goals that transcend local and individual needs.

Here the need for creative and open minded participants is much needed, as here is the field of experimenting – in the positive sense of the word – with new approaches and concepts for the future of Christian communities growing together.

All the parameters of our political, social and cultural lives are being drawn together by the process of globalisation. As our traditions are changing their way of functioning, they are lived out in a new and pluralistic context.

So, we need to step back and look closely at the realities of our everyday faith, as well as at our theological reflection upon our faith.

This is much easier for the movements, as they may focus on specific challenges and changes.

It is harder for the denominations that need to balance the changes and new approaches with the traditions and doctrinal heritage they carry. There are some people who are challenged by specific contextual issues. Only those very people, however, who are motivated and shaped by experiences of mutual perception and who are allowed to experiment within their traditions, will finally give a new quality to ecumenical dialogue.

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VII. Prophetic Confession

We should not be constantly frustrated by the unfulfilled aims of the ecumenical movement. We should rather recognise the time of change in our common Christian lives.

Instead of with frustration, we should view ecumenical dialogue as a project of mutual perception that allows us to come to terms with reality as it is changing, while also being a constructive part of the forces shaping these changes.

In today’s world there is a need for committed contribution from Christians. As always confessed in Christian belief, the world desperately needs a firm and valuable Christian contribution.

In many European countries, Christian denominations suffer from a feeling of neglect in public discourse or from not having the proper and desired positions that they believe they should rightly have.

Still, Christians are asked for their commitment and contribution.

This should, however, be a united Christian message—not a Protestant, next to a Roman Catholic, next to an Orthodox, contribution.

Thus, dialoguing in the way of mutual perception allows us to raise an ecumenical voice in the multitude of voices. To raise a voice is valuable, as it not only focuses on some lost past or never-reached future aspiration.

On the contrary, it is based on a serious analysis of the situation and close perception of the Christian praxis, of which we believe is beneficial and salvific. This prophetic voice is the one which needs to be raised.

Suggested Reading Banton Michael (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. London, 1966.

Geertz Clifford, The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays. New York, 1973.

Jeanrond Werner, Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance. London, 1994.

Maalouf Amin, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. Harmonswoth, 2000.

Nieman James, Attending Locally: Theologies in Congregations. International Journal of Practical Theology 2002/6.

Walls Andrew F., The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith.

Maryknoll, 2002.

Walls Andrew F., The Ephesian Moment: At the Crossroads in Christian History. In Walls Andrew F., The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith. Maryknoll, 2002. Žižek Slavoj, On Belief. London–New York, 2002.

Sören Asmus is a United Protestant from Germany. He graduated at the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE) in Dublin, and is an ordained minister in the Protestant Church of the Rhineland, now working as Assistant at the Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel (Barmen School of Theology) for the department of Ecumenism, Mission and the Science of Religion. He was on the WSCF European Regional Committee (ERC) and a member of the Programmatic Working Group. His email address is: soae@gmx.de.

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Pavel Hanes

Messianic Prophecies on the Transformation of Human Society The interpretation of prophecies is laden with historical and contemporary misapplications. Some of these are for political purposes, and others are to support a particular interpretation of Scripture, such as extreme chiliasm.

Therefore, before directing attention to the Old Testament prophetic texts, it is necessary to introduce the methodology used in this article.

Before doing this, however, I would like to point out that I do not favour any of the “travel guides to eschatology” written to support a particular political or theological bias.

The method used could be called a paradigmatic analysis. The paradigm, structure or model will be to note what God is doing – in this case in the transformation of human society.

This method comes from the reality that prophecies, without consideration of their time of fulfilment, talk about God’s values, which God expects from humans and society, and, according to the prophecies, safeguards in the end.

This is in sharp contrast to the usual method of using time as the paradigm, the main way of focusing on the prophecies, either when the prophecy was fulfilled, or when it will be fulfilled.

Using God’s work in society as the paradigm does not contravene the time limits of the prophecies or deny that the Biblical prophecies foretell the future, and in some cases deal with the past and present.

This method simply allows us to avoid misapplications and draw from them timeless practical teaching as well as eschatological teaching and encouragement.

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VII. Prophetic Confession

We should not be constantly frustrated by the unfulfilled aims of the ecumenical movement. We should rather recognise the time of change in our common Christian lives.

Instead of with frustration, we should view ecumenical dialogue as a project of mutual perception that allows us to come to terms with reality as it is changing, while also being a constructive part of the forces shaping these changes.

In today’s world there is a need for committed contribution from Christians. As always confessed in Christian belief, the world desperately needs a firm and valuable Christian contribution.

In many European countries, Christian denominations suffer from a feeling of neglect in public discourse or from not having the proper and desired positions that they believe they should rightly have.

Still, Christians are asked for their commitment and contribution.

This should, however, be a united Christian message—not a Protestant, next to a Roman Catholic, next to an Orthodox, contribution.

Thus, dialoguing in the way of mutual perception allows us to raise an ecumenical voice in the multitude of voices. To raise a voice is valuable, as it not only focuses on some lost past or never-reached future aspiration.

On the contrary, it is based on a serious analysis of the situation and close perception of the Christian praxis, of which we believe is beneficial and salvific. This prophetic voice is the one which needs to be raised.

Suggested Reading Banton Michael (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. London, 1966.

Geertz Clifford, The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays. New York, 1973.

Jeanrond Werner, Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance. London, 1994.

Maalouf Amin, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. Harmonswoth, 2000.

Nieman James, Attending Locally: Theologies in Congregations. International Journal of Practical Theology 2002/6.

Walls Andrew F., The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith.

Maryknoll, 2002.

Walls Andrew F., The Ephesian Moment: At the Crossroads in Christian History. In Walls Andrew F., The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith. Maryknoll, 2002. Žižek Slavoj, On Belief. London–New York, 2002.

Sören Asmus is a United Protestant from Germany. He graduated at the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE) in Dublin, and is an ordained minister in the Protestant Church of the Rhineland, now working as Assistant at the Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel (Barmen School of Theology) for the department of Ecumenism, Mission and the Science of Religion. He was on the WSCF European Regional Committee (ERC) and a member of the Programmatic Working Group. His email address is: soae@gmx.de.

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Pavel Hanes

Messianic Prophecies on the Transformation of Human Society The interpretation of prophecies is laden with historical and contemporary misapplications. Some of these are for political purposes, and others are to support a particular interpretation of Scripture, such as extreme chiliasm.

Therefore, before directing attention to the Old Testament prophetic texts, it is necessary to introduce the methodology used in this article.

Before doing this, however, I would like to point out that I do not favour any of the “travel guides to eschatology” written to support a particular political or theological bias.

The method used could be called a paradigmatic analysis. The paradigm, structure or model will be to note what God is doing – in this case in the transformation of human society.

This method comes from the reality that prophecies, without consideration of their time of fulfilment, talk about God’s values, which God expects from humans and society, and, according to the prophecies, safeguards in the end.

This is in sharp contrast to the usual method of using time as the paradigm, the main way of focusing on the prophecies, either when the prophecy was fulfilled, or when it will be fulfilled.

Using God’s work in society as the paradigm does not contravene the time limits of the prophecies or deny that the Biblical prophecies foretell the future, and in some cases deal with the past and present.

This method simply allows us to avoid misapplications and draw from them timeless practical teaching as well as eschatological teaching and encouragement.

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A. Two Extremes

The interpretation of the prophecies in Church history led to the start of many chiliastic movements. During general times of danger or momentous social changes, it especially became the source of fiery interpretations which in an eschatological sense coloured actual historical situations and particular historical characters. “Knowing the result influences the conditions and ways of approaching it”1: it is a statement that well represents the motives that led humankind to endeavour to know when and how the “end of the world” was coming. Discerning the time should lead to vigilance and readiness, and discerning the players should lead to a separation from the wretched and a joining up with the “right” chosen people or groups, and therefore to salvation.

This fascination with, and misinterpretation of, the prophecies and their strong link with chiliastic movements and sects led Christian theologians to endeavour to rationalize Christian teaching and to almost “leave out” eschatology.

Eschatology remains part of the Christian confession, in the same way as the canon of Scripture includes John’s Apocalypse at the end.

Leaving out eschatology might eliminate the controversies between various interpretations and also might avoid the fear that talk about the end of the world brings.

From this we can understand two extreme approaches to the prophecies. The first claims that prophecies are “newspaper reports of the future”, and we just need to find the right key to their interpretation.

The second extreme claims that prophecies cannot in any way be related to actual situations in the world; and this approach is a negative reaction to the many mistaken interpretations of the past.

B. The Reign of God according to Prophecy

In answer to the disciples’ question about the renewal of the kingdom of Israel, Jesus Christ gave a clear reply: “It is not for you to know the times and seasons” (Acts 1,7). The sending out of the disciples to preach the Gospel follows this statement.

In our present situation, the Church still somehow has the opportunity to influence state laws and this becomes part of evangelism, as the prophet Micah reminded the leaders of Israel: “Should you not know justice?” (Micah 3,1) 1 Weber Eugen, Apokalypsy. Praha, 1999. 6.

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If it was not the place of the disciples or the early Church to know eschatological times and seasons, surely the same applies to the Church today. Instead, we need to know righteousness and justice.

The study of Messianic prophecies helps bring knowledge of righteousness and justice as the Messiah desires to realize it today through the Church and later when He assumes the reins of government.

For our time, His work of the future can become a model, which can be realized in our times, at least in part by means of the Gospel. Under no circumstances, however, can this realization of righteousness and justice by the Church be an attempt to fulfil the prophecy in its full meaning.

The prophetic picture of the future gives a paradigm for what the Church is trying to do for the world within its main mission, the proclamation of the Gospel. The question of the eschatological fulfilment of all the prophecies is left open.

C. Prophecies about Present and Future

It is also necessary to observe that interpretations of the prophecies cannot focus only on the future foretold in them. Though it is not for us to know the times and seasons, Jesus Christ nevertheless expects us to be able to discern the signs of the times when they happen (Matthew 16,3; 24,33).

It is exactly in this way that the Christian Church interprets and understands the fulfilment of the prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, which they see as realized in Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

This is why prophecies that were already fulfilled in history are equally as important (if not more important) for the Church to understand who she is as prophecies about her eschatological future.

It is necessary, however, in the same breath to add that to compare the significance of these two categories of prophecies is not possible, objectively, because hope in the future is as essential for living as is the knowledge of one’s own identity.

Christianity and Sustainable Renewal

I. The Meaning of the Prophecies for the Christian Church

The New Testament considers the birth of the Church as the beginning of the end of the ages. This is why it is one-sided and unbiblical to wait for the transformation of society to happen only in the future, after the second coming of Jesus Christ on Earth. Prophecies are also fulfilled by the transformational effect of the Church in society.

1. The Prophetic Identity of Christianity

The Christian religion was born in the midst of the Old Testament faith, and explained itself from the beginning as the fulfilment of the Old Testament promises and prophecies about the coming Messiah.

Jesus Christ started His teaching by announcing that the “kingdom of Heaven is near” (Matthew 3,2), which was considered as the fulfilment of the prophecy recorded in Isaiah 52,7: “who proclaim good (…) who say to Zion: Your God reigns!”

The Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Philippians (3,3) announces that true Jews are those who serve God rightly; that is every member of the Christian Church. The early Church fought with Judaism about the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament.

The result of this theological battle was named by Jaroslav Pelikan “correction and fulfilment”2. The Church considered itself as the “new Israel” and the one to carry on the history of salvation. Theodoret wrote in the fifth century: “Gather us one by one, Thy new Israel, building up Jerusalem, and gathering together the outcasts of Israel.”

3

In the words of the theologian Jürgen Moltmann: “By its own utterance, Christian eschatology is not the Greek logos, but promise, as it was recorded by the language, hope and experience of Israel.” 4 (emphasis added) For the Church, this meant that the eschatological era had already started. It is not necessary to wait for the distant future; eschatology started to unwind in Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection, and continues in the preaching of the Church.

We can state that the “fulfilment of the age has come” (1Corinthians 10,11). This is a historical point, a so-called “replacement theology”, 2 Pelikan Jaroslav, The Christian Tradition I. Chicago – London, 1971. 15.

3 NPNF. Second Series III. 330.

4 Moltmann Jürgen, Theologie der Hoffnung. München, 1966. 34.

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according to which the Church totally replaced Israel in God’s plan of salvation.5 This interpretation of the Old Testament prophecies points to the presence of the Church, and it means the confirmation of the eschatological identity of the Church as God’s foretold work in the history of humankind.

2. Prophecies and Hope for the Future

Apart from the confirmation of the prophetic word, fulfilled prophecies are a source of hope for the Church (2Peter 1,19). In history, hope was valued in various ways; from Aristotle’s “dreams of a vigilant man”, to the philosophical integration of hope forming the true being of humans (Ernst Bloch).

Thucydides’ cynical mockery made him write the following: “It is a habit of humankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.”

6

The loss of hope is the height of suffering for humans, which the poet Dante Alighieri poetically expressed in his Divina Comédia (Divine Comedy) with a sign above the gates of hell reading: “Abandon all hope, you, who enter here.”

Modern research has shown the significance of hope for mental health, and has uncovered the link between suicide and hopelessness: “In our studies we found that suicidal wishes had a higher correlation with hopelessness than with any other symptom of depression.”7 Generally, human wisdom expresses the significance of hope with the phrase “hope is the last to die”.

We can say that Christianity is a religion of hope. In the words of Wolfhart Pannenberg: “The eschatological salvation at which Christian hope is directed fulfils the deepest longing of humans and all creation, even if there is not always a full awareness of the object of this longing.”8 People without faith are described as being “without hope” (Ephesians 2,12). In the New Testament, God is the “God of hope” (Romans 15,13), and hope pointing to a living God is the very motivation for Christian work (1Timothy 4,10).

5 This is a very sensitive question in current relations of the Church with the state of Israel but it is beyond the purpose of this article to discuss it.

6 Thucydides, Dejiny peloponézskej vojny. Bratislava, 1985. Chapter XIV. 7 Beck Aaron Temkin, Depression: Causes and Treatment. In Benner David G. (ed.), Baker Encyclopædia of Psychology. Grand Rapids, 1993. 528.

Christianity and Sustainable Renewal

Hope is directly linked with the person of Jesus Christ (Colossians 1,27), and hope is similar to faith as a means of reaching salvation (Hebrews 3,6; 6,18–19). Jürgen Moltmann states that “Christianity is totally and consistently, not only in its addendum (Anhang), eschatology; it is hope, pointing and looking ahead, and this is why at the same time it is a reversal (Aufbruch) and change (Wandlung) of the present.”9 Faith in the form of hope awaits the resolving of contradictions, which at present exist between the message of Jesus Christ as ruler, and the reality that he was refused and crucified. “Eschatological existence is existence certain of its future liberation from this contradiction.”10 Jean Calvin says: “Promised to us is eternal life, but it is promised to the dead; we are assured of a happy resurrection, but we are as yet involved in corruption; we are pronounced just, as yet sin dwells in us; we hear that we are happy, but we are as yet in the midst of many miseries; an abundance of all good things is promised to us, but still we often hunger and thirst; God proclaims that God will come quickly, but God seems deaf when we cry to God. What would become of us were we not supported by hope, and did not our minds emerge out of the midst of darkness above the world through the light of God’s Word and of God’s Spirit? Faith, then, is rightly said to be the subsistence or substance of things, which are as yet the objects of hope and the evidence of things not seen.” 11 The theology of the XXth century took a very contradictory stand on the problem of eschatological hope. Albert Schweitzer commented that “instead of realizing eschatology, (Jesus Christ) destroyed it.”12 According to Albert Schweitzer then, eschatology has been overcome and there is nothing left for Christianity but to give up its hopeful eschatological expectations. Karl Barth, on the other hand, stressed that it is irreplaceable: “Christianity, which is not entirely, totally, and without odds eschatology, has nothing entirely, totally, and without odds, to do with Jesus Christ.”13 Jürgen Moltmann’s central theme of theology became eschatology 9 Moltmann Jürgen, Theologie der Hoffnung. München, 1966. 12.

10 Brunner Emil, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith and the Consummation. Philadelphia, 1962. 343.

11 Calvin Jean, Hebrews Commentary. In AGES Digital Library. Albany, 1996. 11,1.

12 � Schweitzer Albert, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. Berlin, 1906. 367. Quoted in Moltmann Jürgen, Theologie der Hoffnung. München, 1966. 33.

13 Barth Karl, Römerbrief. Zürich, 1989. 325.

8 Pannenberg Wolfhart, Systematic Theology III. Grand Rapids, 1993. 527.

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(a theology of hope), when he replaced the talk of a transcendental God with the concept of a futuristic God, One Who is coming.

Contradictory evaluations on eschatology perfectly solve Ľudovít Fazekaš’ claims that “there is always tension between the present beginning and the future finishing, which the New Testament witnesses did not allow to be discarded. Jesus Christ is Lord and yet Jesus Christ is coming.”14 All of these enlisted evaluations can be summarised and drawn together in Wolfhart Pannenberg’s statement that “eschatology (…) determines the perspective of Christian teaching as a whole.”15

3. The Interpretation of Prophecies in History

A consequence of what has been written is that prophecies, as a source of self-understanding for the Church and as a source of eschatological hope, are important subjects for exegesis and historical study.

It is no wonder that in history so many great events happened around the prophesies; many important people in history conducted their lives by their own understanding of the prophecies, as they found the prophesies to relate to the time in which they were living.

It is easily understandable that the Christian Church as a whole agrees on the interpretations of the prophecies as they relate to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The differences in the prophetic schemas come out in the attempts to foretell the future using the prophecies.

These interpretations about future events usually divide up according to the Millennium (the thousand year reign of Jesus Christ, Revelations 20) into (1) amillennialism, (2) postmillennialism, (3) classical premillennialism and (4) dispensational premillennialism.16

A. The Church Fathers

“Premillennialism was probably the dominant millennial view during the early period of the Church.”17 It was a chiliastic opinion, according to which at the end of the present era the suffering of the Church comes to a catastrophic breaking point, after which Jesus Christ’s Reign will be installed.

14 Fazekaš Ľudovít, Ježiš Pán. Zrod a rast Kristovho panstva v Novej zmluve. Banská Bystrica, 2001.

10.

15 Pannenberg Wolfhart, Systematic Theology III. Grand Rapids, 1993. 531.

16 Grudem Wayne, Systematic Theology. Leicester, 1994. 1109–1114.

In the fifth century, Augustine opposed this opinion with the doctrine that the Millennium is the age of the Church and proclaiming the Gospel; therefore the Reign of God is on Earth. This opinion is sometimes named as amillennial, and was generally accepted during the whole of the middle ages.

B. The Reformation

C. Revivalism

D. Dispensationalism

The main theme of the Reformation era was soteriology, and eschatological notes were restricted mainly to the refusal of the chiliastic sects, which came out of criticism of the Roman Catholic Church.

For example, the Confessio Augustana condemns “others also, who now scatter Jewish opinions, that, before the resurrection of the dead, the godly shall occupy the kingdom of the world, the wicked being everywhere suppressed. The saints alone, the pious, shall have a worldly kingdom, and shall exterminate all the godless.”18

Daniel Whitby, an Anglican theologian (1638–1726), is linked with the doctrines of postmillennialism. According to this, although the Millennium is of the future, it will be reached by a series of events, by which the principles of the Reign of God will be brought about in the life of society.

Postmillennialism corresponded with the optimistic expectations of the golden age. It was on the side of the advancement of enlightenment philosophy, and on the side of triumphal revivalism.

The return to the premillenial interpretations of the prophecies after the Reformation can claim such names as Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752) and the physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton (1643–1727).

A new element in the development of thinking after the Reformation was the birth of dispensational premillennialism, linked with the name John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), which was made popular by means of the Scofield Bible.

The term dispensation is the translation of the Greek word (oikonomia). For dispensationalism, this word expresses the variety 18 The Augsburg Confession. Art. XVII. In Schaff philip (ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. II. Vol. 3. (Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches). Peabody, 1994. 18.

17 Erickson Millard. J., Christian Theology. Grand Rapids, 1994. 1209.

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of God’s works in different eras in the history of salvation (for example, the age of law or the age of grace).

The most striking attributes of this system of interpretation are the literal interpretations of the prophecies, the futuristic and literal understanding of the Millennium: that the Church will be caught up (1Thessalonians 4,17) before the age of great suffering (lasting seven years), and the differentiation between the Church and Israel in the history of salvation.

Supporters of this interpretation were well known names such as Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899), Reuben Archer Torrey (1856–1928), and Billy Graham (1918–). One of the critics of dispensationalism states that it was “if not the backbone, at least much of the bony structure of American theological conservatism for the past hundred years.”19 “The number of American premillenarians may be conservatively estimated at eight million. Of the over twelve million Southern Baptists more than half may be counted as premillenarians, and the largest entirely premillenarian denomination, the Assemblies of God, lists over a million followers.”20 In the second half of the twentieth century, this “prophetic schema” was propagated by such popular books as The Late Great Planet Earth

by Hal Lindsey. This book sold over twenty million copies, and the author was named the best-selling author of the 1970’s by the New York Times (NYT).

Other popular book titles include the following examples: What the World is Coming to21 by Chuck Smith; or the book Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis22 by John Walvoord.

Amongst Slovak evangelicals this interpretation of the future (with the rapture of the Church, the seven year suffering of the Jews, the Antichrist in the newly built temple, and the Millennium at the end of the seven years of suffering) was made popular through books and Biblical schemas (Biblical Panorama), and today, through films about the rapture.

Total denial of this interpretation is equally as irresponsible as to accept it without criticism and spread it around. A student of prophecies should surely first recognize the weaknesses of dispensationalism, before he declares it as unavoidable Biblical truth.

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II. Journey to the Transformation of Society 1. The Prophetic Role of the Messiah

The dispensationalist, Dwight Pentecost, presents fifty-nine Old Testament texts, which, according to the dispensational interpretation, speak about the future theocratic (Millennial) kingdom.23 As this interpretation is controversial, we shall go through a rather short paradigmatical analysis of those prophecies, according to which the Messiah changes human society. We will start from the prophetic role of the Messiah as the Servant of the Lord (according to the songs about the Servant of the Lord) and King of Israel (according to the Kingship Psalms).

It is necessary to stress that the individual attributes of the Messiah’s approach cannot be separated. In spite of this, we can see that the task of the Messiah as the Servant of the Lord says more about His work of salvation in the present, while His role as King of Israel expresses the righteous rule of the coming Anointed King.

Messianic prophecies about the Servant of the Lord are found in the so-called “songs of the Servant of the Lord”. Karol Nandrásky presents the following places: Isaiah 42,1–4; 49,1–6; 50,4–9; 52,13–53,12; 61,1–3.24 The Royal (Kingship) Psalms25 are these: 2; 18; 20; 21; 72; 101; 110; 132; 144,1–11. These texts could be supplemented by others, because the academic discussion is still not closed. Restricted attention to these texts could help to find the widest evangelical consensus.

An exegesis of these mentioned texts would take up more room than allowed here. The result of a thematic analysis according to the most important themes of the above texts is as follows:

19 Gerstner John H., Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth. Morgan, 2000. 36.

20 Wilson Dwight, Armageddon Now. Tyler, 1991. 12.

23 Pentecost Dwight, Things to Come. Grand Rapids, 1977. 442.

21 � Weber Eugen, Apokalypsy. Praha, 1999. 204.

24 Nandrásky Karol, Ebed Jahve. Bratislava, 1995. 5–6.

22 Printed in 1974, the author revised it and the new edition is 1990. Wilson Dwight, Armageddon Now. Tyler, 1991. x.

25 Hempel Johannes, The Book of Psalms. In Buttrick G. A. (ed.), Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary III. Nashville, 1985. 947.

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Theme

The Kingship Psalms

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Songs of the Servant of the Lord

Spirit of the Lord

42,1; 61,1

Proclamation, speech, word

49,2; 50,4; 52,15; 61,1

Suffering, substitutional death

50,6; 53

Salvation

20,6; 21,2–8; 72,12–14; 144,10

49,6

Justice

72,1–2; 101,1

42,3–4

God’s wrath

2,5; 18,8

Victory over the ungodly, and punishment

2,9; 18,15; 21,9–13; 72,4; 101,8; 110,1–5; 132,18

Peace

72,7

B. Justice

The Messianic transformation of society might start with the poor, but under no circumstances does it mean bringing force against the rich. The poor, who are reliant on the help of others, are humble and godly and are therefore obedient to the Torah.

They are not rebels prepared to seize the possessions of the rich, and the Messiah is not the leader of an angry proletariat. Justice in the Messiah’s transformed society is the same for all. Impartial judgment is one of the basic signs of the Messianic society.

By joining together compassion and righteousness, the Messianic transformation becomes a paradigm for our attempts to achieve a prosperous and just society. Long explanations are not needed for it to be clear that these two values do not easily merge in one transformation process, and if they are to come together, we first need to change that human attitude, which the Bible calls the heart of man.

3. The Messiah’s Approach to the Transformation of Society 2. The Main Elements of the Transformation of Society

We can see from this short analysis of the texts that the aim of the Messiah’s works in human society is salvation and justice, joint themes for the psalms and songs. These two concepts can be considered as the central idea behind the Messianic transformation.

A. Salvation

Salvation is the manifestation of the Messiah’s help to the weak, poor and oppressed. We know that above all it is God showing God’s love to people in distress. An important reality is that the Messianic transformation of society starts with those who are reliant on the help of others.

In this way the ideal goal is not individual prosperity and abundance, but compassion, fellowship of humans with God, and solidarity amongst people. People who are successful and economically strong are led by the Messiah’s example not to oppress the poor, but to take a serious interest in the problems of the weak. They should see their possessions as an opportunity to fulfil the Messiah’s calling to compassion.

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A. Word and Spirit

From the analysis of texts we can see that the Servant of the Lord achieves the transformation of society by the power of the Spirit of God and by God’s Word (Isaiah 50,4). God’s Word concentrates on salvation and justice by means of proclamation (Isaiah 61,1).

If this proclamation is to be really effective, it requires most of all faith and a willing obedience from the receivers. As this only occurs in part, the servant of the Lord suffers from rejection (Isaiah 50,6).

But, in spite of this, God’s Word becomes salvation for people in the whole world (Isaiah 49,6), and the result of the suffering of God’s Word is the justification of sinners (Isaiah 53,11) and the joy of the righteous from salvation (Isaiah 61,3).

From these findings we see that the work of the Servant of the Lord leads to a transformation of inner attitudes and to a righteousness based on the forgiveness of sins. Liberation is aimed above all at the problem of disobedience towards God: sin. The extent of the transformation of society is, therefore, dependent on the number of followers of the Messiah and their influence on society.

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B. Conflict and Punishment

The anointed Messianic King achieves the transformation of society by victory over God’s enemy (Psalms 2,9) and by installing Messianic peace (Psalm 72,3.7). His work does not lie in proclaiming and sacrifice, as with the Servant of the Lord, but in the powerful abolition of injustice (Psalm 101:8).

The Messiah-King rules from Zion (Psalm 2,6; 20,3; 110,2) over foreign nations also (Psalm 18,44, Psalm 72,11), and the Lord’s enemies are destroyed (Psalm 21,11). Messianic peace will bring with it joy and abundance (Psalm 72,16). It is obvious that the Messiah’s actions, in this way, are still in the future.

4. Messianic Prophecies and the Activity of the Church

The realization of these roles of the Messiah is also based on the New Testament view of the Church as the Body of Christ, in which the Messiah at the same time realizes His work in the world. In this sense, then, what can we really expect about the activity of the Church in society?

First of all, it is imperative to stress that the kingdom role of the Messiah is also a subject of eschatological expectation and voluntary following. In history, when the Church had sufficient influence and opportunity, she quite often gave in to the temptation to use power to install righteousness.

Efforts to make following Jesus Christ compulsory by means of state laws always failed miserably and tragically compromised the Church.

This way of government must remain a subject of eschatological faith for the second coming of Jesus Christ. The Church, therefore, as a Servant of the Lord, should give the kind of service in which the only power used is of the Holy Spirit and the Gospel.

Does this mean that the Church must not to take any part in social and political life, and not even take an interest in righteous legislation?

In the past there have been, on principle, negative answers to this question given, for example, by the Anabaptists.

But historical research shows that if the Church stops taking an interest in political and social problems and stops expressing its views on them, than it easily stops being society’s conscience. Its message is thus directed at a different world and stops being relevant in the present world.

Avoiding the driving forces of world power (politicians, the army, the police) should not mean that the Church does not speak about

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these problems. But, actually, the Church should concentrate on what results from an analysis of the Messiah’s works.

Namely, she must concentrate on stressing universal help to the weak and impartial justice leading to a peaceful life. Messianic power in the Spirit, in principle, does not stand against worldly power, but it complements it and even transforms it.

Suggested Reading Barth Karl, Römerbrief. Zürich, 1989.

Benner David G. (ed.), Baker Encyclopædia of Psychology. Grand Rapids, 1993.

Brunner Emil, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith and the Consummation. Philadelphia, 1962.

Buttrick G. A. (ed.), Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary. Nashville, 1985.

Calvin Jean, Hebrews Commentary. In AGES Digital Library. Albany, 1996.

Erickson Millard J., Christian Theology. Grand Rapids, 1994.

Fazekaš Ľudovít, Ježiš Pán. Zrod a rast Kristovho panstva v Novej zmluve. Banská Bystrica, 2001.

Gerstner John H., Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth. Morgan, 2000.

Grudem Wayne, Systematic Theology. Leicester, 1994.

Moltmann Jürgen, Theologie der Hoffnung. München, 1966.

Nandrásky Karol, Ebed Jahve. Bratislava, 1995.

Pannenberg Wolfhart, Systematic Theology III. Grand Rapids, 1993.

Pelikan Jaroslav, The Christian Tradition I. Chicago – London, 1971.

Pentecost Dwight, Things to Come. Grand Rapids, 1977.

Schaff philip (ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Peabody, 1994.

Schweitzer Albert, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. Berlin, 1906.

Weber Eugen, Apokalypsy. Praha, 1999.

Wilson Dwight, Armageddon Now. Tyler, 1991.

Pavel Hanes has been a teacher at the Department of Evangelical Theology and Mission, Faculty of Education, University of Matej Bel in Banská Bystrica in Slovakia since 1993. Between 1982 and 1993 he was a Baptist pastor in Vavrišovo, a village under the High Tatras. The focus of his present PhD studies and academic work is on Christian Philosophy, Marxism Residuals in Post-Communist Countries and Old Testament subjects.

His most important books are History of Christianity, Revivalism and Social Ethics, Interactive Introduction into Philosophy for Theologians, Biblical Greek and Biblical Hebrew. He is active in preaching and teaching in the Baptist church in Banská Bystrica. Pavel and his wife Dana have two children, both studying theology and preparing themselves for church ministry. His email address is phanes@pdf.umb.sk.

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John George Huber

An Ecumenical Reflection on Fundamentalism by an Evangelical Catholic from Missouri This essay about the phenomenon of fundamentalism is an effort to think together with all the members of a community that is committed to the quest for Christian unity. That is the “ecumenical” dimension of the title selected.

When referring to myself as an “evangelical catholic”, I mean that I regard myself as part of the one, holy, catholic (universal) and apostolic Church confessed in the Nicene Creed, and I am also in continuity with those Christians who are evangelical, that is, committed to the proclamation of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Although my confessional affiliation is Evangelical-Lutheran, I am using the term, “evangelical”, a designation preferred by Martin Luther. When I refer to Missouri as my place of origin, I am not contradicting the geographical reality of my birth and lifelong residence in California, in the United States of America (USA).

Missouri refers to my membership in an ecumenically conservative and partly isolated denomination in the United States of America (USA) known as the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod.

Prior to his affiliation with the larger Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Missouri Synod was also the church of Martin E. Marty, who has pioneered the Fundamentalism Project.

In Volume I. of Fundamentalisms Observed, the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod is identified as experiencing “fundamentalist victories” in the sixties and seventies, similar to those of the Southern Baptist Convention. One small part of this essay suggests dropping 100

the fundamentalist category to describe the theological position of the Missouri Synod.

What follows is an effort to summarize some of the definitions of fundamentalism that appear in the volume edited by Martin E. Marty and also in some other readings. Critical reflections will be offered.

The concluding section will propose the categories of David J. Bosch for understanding fundamentalism in an ecumenical context.

I. Fundamentalisms Observed

The table of contents of the first volume indicates the breadth of scope of the Fundamentalism Project. A sample of the topics include: North American Protestant Fundamentalism, Roman Catholic Traditionalism, Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism, Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia, Organized Hinduisms, Fundamentalistic Movements in Theravada Buddhism, and Fundamentalism in Japan: Religious and Political.

Additional themes of the six-volume series deal with the effects of fundamentalism around the world, an account of the surprising rise of modern religious fundamentalisms, common features among fundamentalisms, and finally, public policy implications.

In the introduction to the first volume, the editors identify at least three dimensions of modern culture that are uncongenial to fundamentalists: a preference for secular relativity; the adoption of religious tolerance with accompanying tendencies toward relativism; and individualism.

Of special interest to us is the first chapter on North American Protestant Fundamentalism, authored by Nancy T. Ammerman.

She points out that fundamentalism re-emerged in the United States of America (USA) in the late twentieth century. The “Moral Majority” captured its public image and agenda. “In 1979 independent Baptist Pastor Jerry Falwell declared that people who were concerned about the moral decline of America were waiting to be mobilized.”

There was a cordial relationship between religious conservatives and President Ronald Reagan, and later, President George Bush.

“By 1981, Jerry Falwell could declare that his mission was accomplished.”

This effort to engage in politics and work for social change was not the original approach of fundamentalism, and some contemporary members of the fundamentalist camp are not inclined to include the political and social agenda as part of their mission.

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Some expected the Rapture in 1988. Others lobbied in the White House. All were defending beliefs that they regarded as “fundamental”. This chapter provides a helpful historical evaluation of the development of fundamentalism in the United States of America (USA).

What later became known as the “Fundamentals” was based on a series of essays issued between 1910 and 1915. Nancy T. Ammerman makes an important distinction between fundamentalist and conservative Christians, noting that this term, “conservative”, is a larger category, and fundamentalism is a subset.

She claims that both terms describe Christians who support “traditional” interpretations of such doctrines as the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the reality of miracles (including the resurrection), and the eventual return of Jesus Christ to reign over the Earth. It is her additional reference to an “evangelical” category that prompts me to offer another set of categories under that overarching title.

II. What is Fundamentalism? Theological Perspectives

Martin E. Marty offers a critical appraisal of fundamentalism by identifying the “fundamental theological feature of modern fundamentalisms” as oppositionalism. Fundamentalists perceive that a foe from outside or a compromiser or traitor from within is fighting them, and they fight back.

Martin E. Marty says that their agenda is set by what they feel demands their resistance, by what they must contend against. Typical of this spiritual warfare is a battle against evolution, the denial of a verbally inspired Bible, and modernity.

Martin E. Marty’s coining of the term oppositionalism to define the essence of fundamentalism is very typical of his journalistic style. It is instructive to compare Martin E. Marty’s oppositionalism with an insight of Terrence W. Tilley in Postmodern Theologies: The Challenge of Religious Diversity.

Terrence W. Tilley draws upon an argument of Wesley Kort, who said that the meanings of theological discourses are best understood oppositionally, that is, “each theology defines itself by distinguishing itself from others”.

Even “postmodern theologies”, Terrence W. Tilley says, “explicitly define themselves in opposition to modernity and to other postmodern theologies.” Could we also see evidence of a kind of oppositionalism in the Reformation experience?

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In the first article of the Augsburg Confession on the doctrine of God, there is not only an affirmation of what is unanimously held and taught, but the opponents like Manichaeans, Arians, Eunomians and Mohammedans (Muslims) are explicitly identified, following these words of opposition: “Therefore all the heresies which are contrary to this article are rejected.”

Furthermore, after Philip Melanchthon wrote the first twenty-one articles of this confessional document in an irenical spirit in order to build a bridge between Wittenberg and Rome, he concludes with a more polemical section.

It is entitled: Articles about Matters in Dispute in which an Account is Given of the Abuses which have been Corrected, and then it names the beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic church, which are opposed by those who sought reform.

III. Ecumenicals and Evangelicals: A Growing Relationship?

In the concluding chapter of Fundamentalisms Observed, Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby concur that it is possible to use the inclusive word fundamentalism without “sufficient nuancing of that term”.

It is the article by David J. Bosch that offers some helpful nuancing by placing the category of fundamentalists within one of seven different strands of evangelicalism. Here is how he defines the various evangelicals:

1. Confessional evangelicals, as heirs of the Reformation,

emphasize sola gratia, sola fide, and sola Scriptura. This is where we can place the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, since this denomination subscribes not only to the EvangelicalLutheran Confessions, but also the Ecumenical Creeds, and has been a participant in various bilateral dialogues with other Christians.

2. Pietist Evangelicals are heirs of the Protestant protest

against the “dead orthodoxy” of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

3. Fundamentalists, such as Carl McIntyre and his supporters, picket meetings of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and even evangelical meetings.

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4. Pentecostals, perhaps the fastest growing Christian group in the world.

5. Conservative Evangelicals, represented by Fuller Theological

Seminary, the World Evangelical Fellowship, and the Lausanne Covenant of 1974.

6. Ecumenical Evangelicals adhere to evangelical principles,

while staying within churches that are members of the WCC or cooperate with it.

7. Radical Evangelicals, including peace churches such as the

Mennonites, focus on issues like peace, justice and justpeace.

A concluding word by Hans Küng and Jürgen Moltmann: “Individuals, groups and peoples will not be able to live in peace if those who have commandeered the “fundamentals” for themselves believe that they can deny others the right to exist, or if non-fundamentalists do all they can to exclude fundamentalists or in intellectual arrogance simply pass them by. There will be no peace without a readiness for understanding on both sides.”

IV. Fundamentalism and Society

Some may assume that a fundamentalist could not possibly have a higher level of education, but James Barr points out that fundamentalism is “certainly not a preserve for the uneducated”. He indicates that a number of doctors, lawyers and experimental scientists are in this conservative camp, together with many students.

A most fascinating comment in this article is that, from a secular viewpoint, “all Christianity is absurd” and “more or less fundamentalistic in character”. This is an alarming judgment on the struggle by the various churches today to fulfill their mission mandate.

It raises this ecumenical and missiological question: What can the separated churches do and say together that would offer a persuasive apologetic to a skeptical world that regards our belief in Jesus Christ absurd and fundamentalistic?

The section of the article which contrasts a conservative Protestant perspective and a Roman Catholic approach to Biblical authority is helpful, but it is difficult to imagine writing about these issues without a reference to the classical Faith and Order Commission study on Scripture, Tradition and Traditions (Montreal, 1963).

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Another relevant illustration is the ability of Roman Catholic biblical scholarship to remain conservatively faithful to its historic tradition, while its biblical theologians embrace the best of contemporary biblical scholarship. The late Raymond Brown is an example of this.

One of the most intriguing statements is this: “it will be significant later when we consider why fundamentalists are so hostile to ecumenical movements and endeavors”. But this idea is not elaborated upon later.

The critique of ecumenism by fundamentalists is reminiscent of a parallel development within Eastern Orthodoxy. The Bulgarian and Georgian Orthodox churches, for example, have withdrawn their membership from the World Council of Churches (WCC).

Other Orthodox communions, especially those related to the Moscow Patriarchate, have expressed such serious criticism of the WCC that a joint Orthodox–WCC commission was formed during the Harare Assembly in 1998, in order to attempt to resolve the areas of difference.

Does this theological critique of WCC’s style of worship, for example, suggest that Eastern Orthodoxy be labeled fundamentalist?

Does arranging a joint commission for resolving these kinds of tensions suggest that a similar arrangement could be made with fundamentalists? But, to paraphrase a familiar question: what if someone announced an ecumenical party, and no one came?

Suggested Reading Ammerman Nancy T., North American Protestant Fundamentalism. In Marty Martin E. –Appleby R. Scott (eds.), Fundamentalisms Observed: A Study Conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Chicago – London, 1991.

Barr James, Fundamentalism. London, 1977.

Bosch David J., Ecumenicals and Evangelicals: A Growing Relationship? Ecumenical Review 1988/3–4.

458–472.

Faith and Order Commission, Scripture, Tradition and Traditions. Montreal, 1963.

Küng Hans – Moltmann Jürgen (eds.), Fundamentalism as an Ecumenical Challenge. Concilium 1992/1.

Marty Martin E. – R. Scott Appleby (eds.), Fundamentalisms Observed: A Study Conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Chicago – London, 1991.

Tilley Terrence W., Postmodern Theologies: The Challenge of Religious Diversity. Maryknoll, 1995.

John George Huber is a retired pastor of the Lutheran Church − Missouri Synod, who chairs the Faith, Order and Witness Committee of the Ecumenical Council of San Diego County, and is a former board member of the North American Academy of Ecumenists. His email address is john.huber@ecunet.org.

Henrik Lindberg Hansen

Faith to Faith Relations in a World of Plurality 1. Jesus Christ showed us God and Himself as the Son of God. He

spoke through parables and symbols. Inspired by Greek philosophy in the Hellenistic setting in which Christianity spread, theologians attempted to define what Jesus Christ had shown. They were children of a time where definitions were thought possible and therefore necessary.

This is in itself not a problem; the problem arises when we move from one episteme or paradigm1 to another, as for example now, when we are moving away from the rationalistic foundationalistic approach to life. Then defining becomes an illusion, and we have to reinvent the process of explanation.

Although some would contest the idea that a philosophy of religion can be built on Ludwig Wittgenstein, it is at least possible to examine faith through his insights.

His terminology and methodology give an effective picture to sustain us in a plurality2 matrix of thought, where it is possible to approach the realm of the other religious3 without trying to determine it.

This then becomes an attempt to adapt Wittgenstein’s reckoning with the foundationalism of the philosophy of logic and knowledge into the realm of the religious and give some clue as to how this sets us free to engage in open dialogue with the other religious.

Our examples primarily are from or seen from the context of the Danish Christian matrix of thought, so our self-criticism should not be seen as aggressive nor our positive examples as self-glorifying.

1 As described by Foucault. 1994.

2 The term plurality is preferred from both pluralism and pluralist, as the latter are negatively loaded terms that indicate the realisation of the plurality of reality as an ideology. An ideology (or an ism) indicates a choice, which is not present when realising reality as plural.

3 By the other religious is meant the other person of another religious conviction. The emphasis is primarily on the person, who is of another background also religiously.

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Another relevant illustration is the ability of Roman Catholic biblical scholarship to remain conservatively faithful to its historic tradition, while its biblical theologians embrace the best of contemporary biblical scholarship. The late Raymond Brown is an example of this.

One of the most intriguing statements is this: “it will be significant later when we consider why fundamentalists are so hostile to ecumenical movements and endeavors”. But this idea is not elaborated upon later.

The critique of ecumenism by fundamentalists is reminiscent of a parallel development within Eastern Orthodoxy. The Bulgarian and Georgian Orthodox churches, for example, have withdrawn their membership from the World Council of Churches (WCC).

Other Orthodox communions, especially those related to the Moscow Patriarchate, have expressed such serious criticism of the WCC that a joint Orthodox–WCC commission was formed during the Harare Assembly in 1998, in order to attempt to resolve the areas of difference.

Does this theological critique of WCC’s style of worship, for example, suggest that Eastern Orthodoxy be labeled fundamentalist?

Does arranging a joint commission for resolving these kinds of tensions suggest that a similar arrangement could be made with fundamentalists? But, to paraphrase a familiar question: what if someone announced an ecumenical party, and no one came?

Suggested Reading Ammerman Nancy T., North American Protestant Fundamentalism. In Marty Martin E. –Appleby R. Scott (eds.), Fundamentalisms Observed: A Study Conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Chicago – London, 1991.

Barr James, Fundamentalism. London, 1977.

Bosch David J., Ecumenicals and Evangelicals: A Growing Relationship? Ecumenical Review 1988/3–4.

458–472.

Faith and Order Commission, Scripture, Tradition and Traditions. Montreal, 1963.

Küng Hans – Moltmann Jürgen (eds.), Fundamentalism as an Ecumenical Challenge. Concilium 1992/1.

Marty Martin E. – R. Scott Appleby (eds.), Fundamentalisms Observed: A Study Conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Chicago – London, 1991.

Tilley Terrence W., Postmodern Theologies: The Challenge of Religious Diversity. Maryknoll, 1995.

John George Huber is a retired pastor of the Lutheran Church − Missouri Synod, who chairs the Faith, Order and Witness Committee of the Ecumenical Council of San Diego County, and is a former board member of the North American Academy of Ecumenists. His email address is john.huber@ecunet.org.

Henrik Lindberg Hansen

Faith to Faith Relations in a World of Plurality 1. Jesus Christ showed us God and Himself as the Son of God. He

spoke through parables and symbols. Inspired by Greek philosophy in the Hellenistic setting in which Christianity spread, theologians attempted to define what Jesus Christ had shown. They were children of a time where definitions were thought possible and therefore necessary.

This is in itself not a problem; the problem arises when we move from one episteme or paradigm1 to another, as for example now, when we are moving away from the rationalistic foundationalistic approach to life. Then defining becomes an illusion, and we have to reinvent the process of explanation.

Although some would contest the idea that a philosophy of religion can be built on Ludwig Wittgenstein, it is at least possible to examine faith through his insights.

His terminology and methodology give an effective picture to sustain us in a plurality2 matrix of thought, where it is possible to approach the realm of the other religious3 without trying to determine it.

This then becomes an attempt to adapt Wittgenstein’s reckoning with the foundationalism of the philosophy of logic and knowledge into the realm of the religious and give some clue as to how this sets us free to engage in open dialogue with the other religious.

Our examples primarily are from or seen from the context of the Danish Christian matrix of thought, so our self-criticism should not be seen as aggressive nor our positive examples as self-glorifying.

1 As described by Foucault. 1994.

2 The term plurality is preferred from both pluralism and pluralist, as the latter are negatively loaded terms that indicate the realisation of the plurality of reality as an ideology. An ideology (or an ism) indicates a choice, which is not present when realising reality as plural.

3 By the other religious is meant the other person of another religious conviction. The emphasis is primarily on the person, who is of another background also religiously.

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2. The postmodern is the realization that we live in a plural and

ever-changing world. On the backdrop of this realization, recent thinkers offer us some clues which enable us to live in a world, where we are part of its dynamics.

We must further an understanding that gives enough certainty to act and live without becoming static. Our understanding itself has to be as dynamic as the world we live in.

This entails letting go of beliefs that are rigid, but it does not entail letting go of faith as it is as certain and real as everything else we experience; maybe even more so, as faith for the religious is the conditio sine qua non4 of life.

Postmodern thinkers are abandoning what some term foundationalism. It is the belief that human faculties can grasp the essential, objective or absolute, and think from this as a foundation.

The primary foundationalism in modern thought is a rationality grounded in a subject, which is seen as corresponding somehow with the essence of the world.5 Rationality is then able to get exact knowledge about the essence of the world we live in, because it partakes in it.

Rationality became the imago Dei6 of modern thought.

Foundationalism is then the term that has been used in the postmodern as the primary signifier of modern thought, and the downfall of foundationalism is the insight that we cannot gain any absolute knowledge of the world we live in.

Eventually it became obvious to many that we do not hold any such absolute rationality, but that we learn about life by living it.

Through living and experiencing life we more or less consciously build structures (matrices of thought, or life forms) to give our lives meaning within our communities: to make sense of it all.7 This goes for all areas of life, whether it is science, ethics or æsthetics.8 Nor in religion do we have such foundation: the experience of God is an experience and not absolute knowledge. What we know about God is something that is built in the interplay between God and people.

4 A term first used in legal matters, but is now used generally; it means roughly: a condition without which nothing is.

5 Foucault. 1994. 340–343.

6 A theological term that means: the Image of God. When God created humans, God did so in God’s Own image. This gives humans a special position in Creation interpreted differently through history.

7 Foucault. 1994. 208.

8 Read Lyotard, La Condition Postmoderne for a description of the paradigm change. He distinguishes between different areas of life, but these are approached differently.

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This should not be anything new for Christianity, as we have always known and built our faith on the belief that God is basically unknowable; but it does seem that many have forgotten this mystical core of Christianity: at least when relating to other religions.

We are not just living in a world which we conform to without interpretation or will. We assess the world; we make sense of life through living in it as social beings, and this develops a matrix of understanding through life.

This matrix expresses itself in our language. Looking at language can then give us clues about how we live in and understand the world.

This has profound impact on how we engage in dialogue. We realize that God has indeed created the world with its plurality, because God loves diversity. In a creation, which is genuinely diverse, God must communicate Godself differently to different people to make sense in the lives of these different people.

This gives us the advantage that we are able to approach other religions with curiosity. We do not have to assume that they are wrong and we do not have to judge them from the way we live in the world, as both God and God’s creation are greater than anything we will ever fathom.

But it also gives clues as to how we can engage in dialogue. It is not only the words of the language which are different but also the use of language and thought. We cannot compare our languages directly and then think to gain knowledge of the other.

We have to find out how language is used in the life of the other, and we do this by looking at our practices expressed in language and life. Some parts of these practices and the meaning they bring to life are similar, while others are completely different.

We still might not be able to actually see through the eyes of the other as the differences are genuine differences, but we might be able to get close enough to see the meaning of the practices of the other. We need to be shown the meaning of the other’s life through her or his life.

3. We deal with the methodology of Wittgenstein in an attempt to

underline some of his main terms. The most central terms for this article are family resemblance, language games and life forms.

We also apply these terms to Christianity, recognizing the plurality of the world. Finally, we look at the suggestions found in the methodology of Wittgenstein for dialogue. Here intermediate cases and starting from frame questions of life are in the fore.

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I. Ludwig Wittgenstein 4. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concern is wider than his philosophy of

language. Many of his aphorisms show him as a passionate person who laments the age he is born in, where the magic and passion of life seems ridiculed and driven out of the language games in use.

Wondering is seen as a primitive form of what now has become science, guaranteeing a concise picture of the world. What is really important seems to Wittgenstein to be driven out of human life.

Everything is about production and precision: “People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them: that does not occur to them.”9 With his language games he shows that there is a multitude of expressions (for example, rites) that have no goal besides just marvelling over the world we live in. He is supposed to have said: “I am not a religious man, but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.” This has been interpreted very differently by commentators, and certainly can be.

Wittgenstein may lament living in an age where he is determined by a general life form that dictates a scientific approach to life and does not leave much space for awe and the mysterious, including religiosity. At the same time, it can be an expression of Wittgenstein’s general project: to nourish a life form where marvelling is allowed and passion is able to enter into life again.10

5. In

Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein dismantles the foundationalistic rationalistic approach to the surrounding world.

Our understanding stems from our engagement with the world rather than through contemplating it from an assumed rationalistic foundation.

To avoid using the foundationalistic rationalistic approach in dismantling it, he shows his point through our use of everyday language. Earlier we used an inadequate picture in imagining a perfect language reachable through philosophical investigation, and we tried to force language into this constructed matrix or picture.

Instead, philosophy needs to investigate language as it is situated and used in life: in all its diversity and ‘inaccurateness’. Everyday language is functional and does not need philosophy to fix it; quite 9 Wittgenstein. 1980. 36.

10 �Clack. 1999. 173.

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the contrary, we can solve whatever philosophical difficulties we might have by learning from its use.11 The task of philosophy is to dissolve problems by looking carefully at the language we use. Wittgenstein makes a distinction between surface and depth grammar.12 While surface grammar looks at the form of words, depth grammar looks at the use made of the form of words.13 “A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words. Our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity. A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding, which consists in ‘seeing connexions’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases. The concept of perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things.”

“A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I do not know my way about.’ (…) Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. (…) Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.

Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain.”

“The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (…) We want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use of language: an order with a particular end in view; one out of many possible orders; not the order.”14 Wittgenstein used his language games15 as a tool to dig into our language to find the depth grammar of the language. He did not use the language games to explain the essence of language itself; they are merely a tool to make order in language so that we are no longer confused by the surface grammar.16

11 � Schrag. 1992. 58.; and Wittgenstein. 1989. §433.

12 Chomsky Noam distinguishes also in Language and Mind between surface and depth structures of language. He sees great importance in the neglected depth structures of language, where the creativity of language is to be found. The aim of Chomsky is different though, as he is discussing the use of linguistics in psychology on a positivistic foundation.

13 � Clack. 1999. 56.

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6. Wittgenstein talks of language games as simple uses of language,

which, when we examine them, can teach us about how language is used. Language games can be one word or a cluster of words encompassing some practice or use of language.

Each language game exists by rules, which we learn to adapt in our own lives through experience with the game.17 The rules enable the language game to have a function. The rules are not determined by human intellect but learnt by practice.

The rules show the difference between the uses of different language games, and the set of rules applied is understood from the context.

These rules can encompass the use of voice or gestures too.

In this way language games involve not only words but also actions and the situation and order in which the language is used. We may even imagine a language game completely without the use of words, but simply pointing to an object.

It becomes clear that language is intimately connected to life and how it is lived. A word does not point to the essence (ontos) of things, but it makes sense against the backdrop of experiences in which the word is used and experienced.

7. “Our language may be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little

streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.”18 Language is ever changing. Each language game develops and changes and new games are added: some spontaneous in everyday life, others at the desks of scientists, some crooked, others straight.

There are similarities between some language games and other similarities between other language games; there is no common denominator or single grammar between all language games.

They have a family resemblance but have no common essence that can constitute a general form of language. They are as different as tools in a toolbox, useable in different situations. As situations change, the language games develop and change in use, some disappear and others appear for the language to cover a particular worldview.19

15 The term language game should not in any way be understood as demeaning. Is does not mean that religious people in dialogue are playing games of no greater importance, but it is merely a term Wittgenstein uses as it is illuminating when describing how understanding arises.

17 Chomsky criticises the idea that language is merely something learned by living, but rather that it follows a dynamic grammar. In this he maintains the level of dynamics that Wittgenstein has (as the grammar of Chomsky can take infinite forms), but relates it not only to experience but also to the structure of the mind. The structure of the mind determines dynamically the language or a frame within which language can develop. Chomsky. 1974: 105–106.

16 � Wittgenstein. 1980. §433.

18 �Wittgenstein. 2001. §18.

14 � Wittgenstein. 2001. §122–132.; see also Wittgenstein. 1979. 8–9.

19 �Wittgenstein. 1989. §351.

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8. All language games are part of or constitute life forms. A life form

is a matrix of language games.20 The mastery of a language or life form is through experience with the language games and their use in different situations. These life forms are not monolithic blocks, but matrices as dynamic as the language games themselves.21

9. The rationalistic foundationalistic approach to the world aims to

define it, with the conviction that everything holds an essence that we have access to and are able to convey. This is also the approach Wittgenstein has in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, where language is seen as a proposition or picture of reality all in all. The world consists of facts, and the sum of all facts is reality; language, if it is exact, can convey these facts. This means that the more exact the language, the more exactly we know reality.22 In Philosophical Investigations we are not to make the language more exact, but to examine how language is used.

In Wittgenstein’s two publications the focus changes from defining reality to analysing things as they show themselves to us as we engage in life.23 According to Philosophical Investigations we use pictures to ‘make sense’ of our lives; pictures are used to see things afresh. A picture is then a particular view of the world.

10. Language constitutes our understanding in each of our communities.

We are taught to relate to the world through communication with others, through conventions or language games, and in this way our understanding of things is determined by how it is talked about.

Language is the medium of thought; without developing language there is no development of thought. This does not mean that nothing is behind the language; it just means that we cannot relate without linguistic access to it.

We cannot reach beyond what we can talk about, because language is our act of reaching. The question is then if we can speak of language games in religiosity and how these develop in a specific religious setting.

20 Lyotard writes about stories, which have some similarities to the life forms of Wittgenstein in the sense that our understanding is built on narratives that constitute our picture of the world.

Lyotard. 2001. 43–49.

21 �Foucault. 1994. xv–xviii.

22 �Foucault. 1994. 296–299.

23 �Monk. 2005. 41.; 64–65.; and Wittgenstein. 1989. §475.

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II. The Christian Life Form 11. Language is not merely the activity of labelling items around us.

Language is part and parcel of the life that develops it. In this way, saying God only makes sense religiously if it is connected to some experience of God in our lives.

But the meaning of the word God is equally established by the situation it is used in and the person it is used by, as are the other language games connected to faith. Our understanding is limited by our experience. Certainly, experiencing God influences every other experience and language game in life, but it is an experience that makes sense only between other experiences.24 Saying grace before eating only makes sense if one has experienced a situation oneself or through others where food is scarce and essential for survival. Thankfulness for the food comes from experience, while the need to express thankfulness comes from the experience of God. It is obvious that saying grace loses rationality if belief in God is lost; but if food is trivial, thankfulness becomes obsolete also, as does saying grace as a religious language game.

But then is saying grace explicitly connected to an experience of hunger? Can it hold no other meaning? If it is the time of the day when the family is gathered, could it not be an expression of gratitude for this? Could it not just be a general act of gratitude?

A meditative act? It can, but then it is another language game of gratitude or meditation.

“One of the most important methods I use is to imagine a historical development for our ideas different from what actually occurred. If we do this, we see the problem from a completely new angle.”25 Wittgenstein does not dismiss historical explanation, but he does stress that it is helpful to seek alternate explanations. This helps broaden our horizons and makes the horizons of others accessible. It can help give sense to the religious expression of others also.

Religion, culture, social setting and personality are inseparable, as the meaning given by religion to life has to engage all other language games because they are in play together. The different life forms are intimately embedded in even more complex life forms, ultimately forming an overall life form. It is not possible to say this is culture and this is religion as the one does not make sense without the other. We are in this sense dictated by the lives we live.26 24 �Wittgenstein. 1980. 31–32.; 35.; 82.; 85–86; and Wittgenstein. 1970. 69.

25 �Wittgenstein. 1980. 37.; see also Clack 1999. 141–142.; and Wittgenstein. 1979. 8.

26 �Wittgenstein. 1980. 80.

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12. “Unshakable faith (eg. in a promise). Is it any less certain than

being convinced of a mathematical truth? But does that make the language games any more alike!”27 I have no doubt that God exists as I have no doubt that the chair I am sitting on exists. I have no doubt that my salvation is in Jesus Christ, as I have no doubt the desk in front of me sustains my notebook.

I am not confined to solipsism because of my trust in God, as Descartes was not confined to solipsism for the same reason. My reason for perception and understanding is not in my own reasoning, but in my trust in a loving God and the perception God has given me in life.

My perception of the chair and the desk and the fact that I trust in their existence enough to use them is of course not the same as my perception of God. Whereas the chair and the desk only have limited possibilities, which are potentially within the scope of my imagination, God’s being and the possibilities of God are beyond my imagination.28 “It strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it is belief, it is really a way of living, or a way of asserting life. It is passionately seizing hold of this interpretation.”29 This description of faith is strikingly similar to Wittgenstein’s later general approach to life and perception. It seems he had this insight about religion before it became a general insight for him. He often speaks of courage as a centrepiece of any assertion in Culture and Value.

But there is a fundamental difference in religious assertions and 27 � Wittgenstein. 1980. 73.

28 This example can be misunderstood, as it considers Descartes, who by many is seen as the father of modernism. Descartes’ I think; therefore I am (the cogito) is based on scepticism stemming from foundationalistic rationality, on the idea that only the thought exists in any real sense. As the rational thought is the starting point and tool of this scepticism, the result of the scepticism becomes of course thought itself; it is a circular argument. (Lyotard. 2001. 60.; 76.; and Foucault. 1994.

73.). In a non-foundationalistic postmodern setting we would have to say: I think, act, eat, walk, talk, feel, sleep, believe; therefore I am. Or in short: I exist; therefore I am. The thinking, eating, acting, etc. then constitutes the person without the consciousness having any idealistic self-knowledge.

Wittgenstein puts it in this way: “It is humiliating to have to appear like an empty tube, which is inflated by a mind.” (Wittgenstein. 1980. 11.) Ricoeur Paul stipulates that I am before I think.

This does not exclude the possibility of scepticism and solipsism though, as we still feel depression or despair in every part of our being. As Descartes was left to something other than himself to be able to trust the world we live in, so are we: at least from the viewpoint of the believer. It should be obvious that the postmodern argument is as circular as the one of Descartes, but this is exactly what postmodernity has come to terms with in excluding the possibility of referring to some foundation. Any trail of thought is enclosed to a certain extent in its own system of thought. The insight of postmodernity is then that it does not artificially glorify one aspect of life, like rationality, to be decisive for everything else. (Foucault. 1972. 186.)

29 � Wittgenstein. 1980. 64.; see also 32–33; 35; 46; 53; 72; 85–86.

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other more factual assertions: while it is obviously possible to doubt the existence of an object, doubt is different in relation to religious beliefs – even though these beliefs can colour the entire outlook of a person. What we normally call evidence is useless in religious belief.30 Wittgenstein speaks also about the passion of faith connected to rituals: “Everything ritualistic (everything that, as it were, smacks of the high priest) must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten.” 31“Of course a kiss is a ritual too, and it is not rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss.”

13. Wittgenstein’s use of the term dogma is connected to dogmatism,

which is seen as a hindrance for the expression of authentic thought.

People think what they think, and believe what they believe, but it has to be twisted to fit the schemata of current dogma. This is so in philosophy, but no less in religion.

“I am not thinking of these dogmas as determining one’s opinions, but rather as completely controlling the expression of all opinions.

People will live under an absolute, palpable tyranny, though without being able to say they are not free. (…) For dogma is expressed in the form of an assertion, and is unshakeable, but at the same time any practical opinion can be made to harmonize with it; (…) it is almost as though someone were to attach a weight to your foot to restrict your freedom of movement.”32 Though Wittgenstein can be said to have a rather bleak view on dogma, his thoughts can also be read to see a positive use of dogmas: “The only way for us to guard our assertions against distortion, or avoid vacuity in our assertions, is to have a clear view in our reflections of what the ideal is, namely an object of comparison – a yardstick, as it were –, instead of making a prejudice of it to which everything has to conform. For this is what produces the dogmatism into which philosophy so easily degenerates. (…) The ideal does not lose any of its dignity if it is presented as the principle determining the form of one’s reflection. A sound measure.”33 Dogmas are not language games like other language games; they function rather as the standard metre in Paris34: as yard sticks. Each 30 �Wittgenstein. 1970. 54–56.

31 �Wittgenstein. 1980. 8.

32 �Wittgenstein. 1980. 28.; 83.

33 �Wittgenstein. 1980. 27.

34 The standard metre is used to measure length, but for it to be effective we have to have some level of consensus of exactly how long a metre is. In 1795 a platinum rod was placed in Paris, and

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community has standards that help members enter its other language games; these standards help participants understand the rules of the language games generally used within the particular life form.

The dogmas help point to God and Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, Who is active in the community. This is done for example during the service, where the creed is recited by the community experiencing God in their midst.

Dogmas are dynamic entities stating basics of a particular faith.

They are not theories, but pictures of faith with which the community dynamically relates its religious experience as an inextricable reciprocal act. If dogmas are not to become rigid, they have to be rooted in the religious experience.

“Predestination: it is only permissible to write like this out of the most dreadful suffering; and then it means something quite different.

But for the same reason it is not permissible for someone to assert it as a truth, unless one oneself says it in torment. It is not a theory. Or, to put it another way: if this is truth, it is not the truth that seems at first sight to be expressed by these words. It is less a theory than a sigh, or a cry.”35 We will look at the dogma of the Holy Trinity as an example. The early Church was faced with the fact of the Jewish God, and yet they experienced that Jesus Christ is God in His ascension to Heaven and, in addition, they experienced God actively as a part of them in the Holy Spirit.

They could only show this experience as a Holy Trinity of God. In history the Trinity became dogma and is seen as knowledge, something we have to accept as Christians to be Christians. But in the beginning the Trinity was not knowledge, it was a picture showing what was experienced.

The problem with viewing the Trinity as a piece of philosophical theology is that we then have to define it with more theology, and we cannot do that. All we can do is point to the fact that God is God, Jesus Christ is God and the Holy Spirit is God, or we can show it with a picture that gives better access to it as a fact of Christian experience.

All we have about God is shown or given; it is not ours to define or control. As humans, theologians and philosophers play mind games to reach understanding of the essence (ontos) of God; God simply is.

Dogma was made for humans (and not humans for dogma) in order to express their religious experience; humans were not made to it was agreed that this rod was exactly one metre at 0°C. 35 � Wittgenstein. 1980. 29–30.; see also 64.

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venerate dogma. Could we say that dogma functions as a focus point for reaching insight to the Divine through meditative experience?

The Holy Trinity is then the line that Christians follow to make sense of their religious experience within their community. It is a picture inspired by the experience of God that helps form the experience within the Christian community. Dogmas need some level of mastery of language games within the community though, as “they only make sense within their religious framework”.36 If dogmas cannot be followed, the community becomes diverse within itself. Of course, the Christian society did not become diversified only because of dogma. It was as part of a diverse society that needed differentiation politically and culturally. Again, religion must be seen as part of everything else, even in its dogmatic development.37

14. Wittgenstein points out that private language is not possible; it

has to be developed in community. In Christianity, this community is often the Church38, and here the Christian life form is developed into a convention that makes it possible to speak about faith and the experience of God. What is shown by God to the members of the Church is given language in the community of the Church.39 But it is also the community in which the Christian life form is developed between its members; the society where its members learn mastery of their shared life form. This is where Christians grow as Christians together in dialogue with the Divine.

Some people have a non-elaborate notion of the Divine, and they are unable to communicate anything more specific. Through the general Christian culture these people still can act religiously in their lives on the basis of their religious experience. It does not make them qualitatively less religious; it just makes them less articulate of their religious experience.40

15. Wittgenstein also points out that there is no private language.

Our language is the instrument or vehicle of our thought. This means that it is not possible to have a notion of something, even in thought, 36 �Wittgenstein. 1980. 32.

37 �Foucault. 1994. 75.

38 ‘Church’ is seen very differently within Christianity, varying from a particular institution to the community of believers to anyone somehow enlightened by God. The documents of the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council show a very inclusive approach. Here it should also be understood very inclusively. As the religious language games are in play in life in general, they are also developed outside the institutional Church, but the Church as an institution is focused on this. Some language games, like dogma, are often only useful within a more exclusive understanding of Church.

39 �Schrag. 1997. 93.

40 Wittgenstein. 1980. 32.

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without being able to express it within our common language. And our common language is tied up in our society or community. This goes of course also for religion and this affects our understanding of how religion is expressed as well.

We often separate between religion and religiosity, where religion is some consensus of society and religiosity is some personal notion of the Divine, which is more or less private. These classifications can be enlightening, as when dividing between religion as institution and religion as the free expression of religiosity within any concrete setting. But it has also spawned the myth of some religious notion, which can be broadly seen as pre-religious or independent.

There might be some religious feeling which seemingly defies any words we try to describe it with, as the mystics claim. But this religious feeling will always be related to the religious corpus of thought to the same degree as it is sought to be described.

Religiosity as a myth is the idea that we build our religion on religious feelings, which can be separated from religion. This idea is often followed by the notion that religiosity is uncontaminated by religion (which is often religious institutions or official religiosity).

But there is no private notion of religiosity: everything we think, we think in a language formed by the society we live in. The religions and religious thoughts of our society shape our religious language and thus the religious experience; we cannot get around this language. It is as much a myth to speak about a private religiosity as it is to talk about a private language.

Of course, we have religion and religious language because we experience God, but we do not hold this experience in any raw, embryonic way. Rather, we experience it within a specific setting that is not passive.

Our setting shapes not only our language but also our thought and the experience itself. It is possible that God might tear down or reform this matrix of thought through our experience of God as it is not static, but basically we think and feel within a language.

But if each of us is living, acting, thinking and believing within these seemingly monolithic structures, how can we then engage in dialogue between these different communities of faith or life forms?

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III. Speaking and Knowing the Faith of the Other 16. In describing Christianity using the methodology of

Ludwig Wittgenstein, we try to lay out into the open what it means to be Christian. We relate the Christian life form to ourselves for it to give meaning in our lives; and we can only do this by living it out.

If we want to relate to other religions, this is important to understand.

There is a chasm between us and other religious, as our language games are already formed within our own life form, and it can be difficult to cross this without the faith of the other religious being distorted by our own life form, our own lives.

It is much easier to discard the faith of the other religious, as it often seems contrary to what we believe – to that which gives meaning to us, than it is to cross the chasm and see things from the other side.

17. But we do not need other religions to find chasms in belief. In

Orthodoxy, the expression of faith is often very physical: touching the pictures of saints transfers power to the believer, adding to her or his own person the power to act in the way of the saint.

Merely entering holy places gives strength to address life with all its difficulties. The priests carry this power in a special way and are able to transfer it to forgiveness and empowerment. This very physical approach is to show respect and relation, but it also transfers blessing.

Crosses can avert evil happenings and secure life.

This religious life form carries less meaning for many average Protestants, as it is strange to them. They might believe in the same basic dogma, but it is lived out in such different ways, that an outsider might not think they are of the same faith.

Who is right? Is this a matter of mere cultural differences? If it is, and these do not influence belief or salvation, are all these religious rites mere curiosities or oddities with no real impact as they are so fundamentally different?

Is it possible that we both can be right in spite of these fundamental differences?41 We need intermediate cases to bridge the distance 41 The Protestant life form is inspired by programmes of demythologization, as by Rudolf Bultmann or Paul Ricoeur, which is more or less the attempt to find the existentials in the religious texts to make the texts accessible. This language game of interpretation has momentum and rightly so within its life form. In approaching a physical expression of faith, some would also demythologize their life form to make it understandable in a Western life form. This might legitimize this physical expression of faith for a Western life form, but it will no longer be the same expression of faith as it is interpreted by Western language games. This religious expression is truthful as it is: without any Western interpretation. We are dealing with genuinely different ways of living and understanding life. If we start the dialogue from the understanding that one (which would usually be one self) is in

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between different religious language games. We need to be shown the meaning in and through the life of the other.

18. If the chasm is there within one religion, it will definitely not

be narrower when trying to relate to another. If we are to cross this chasm, we have to find access to the other side. As the chasm is dug by our own inability to see any meaning on the other side because we function by different language games, we do seem incapable on our own when making the attempt.

People on both sides of the chasm need to reach out to cross it. We need to see the other side of the chasm through the other; they can be the bridge we need, and we can be theirs. Dialogue is successful when the chasm is crossed by multiple relations on all levels, because these are the aspects of which human lives consist.

If we are to succeed religiously to bridge the chasm, we need to engage with the other religious on an intimate level. We need to know the other so intimately that we can relate to their life form.42 We have to find or invent intermediate cases together to bridge the chasms between cultures and religions.43

19. Although the word is the same, the use of it might be different.

When we say Holy Scripture in Christianity and Islam, it is part of very different language games. Al-Qur’an al-karim in Islam is revelation transferred to the world by the prophet Muhammad (peace be on him); the Holy Bible in Christianity is the story about the revelation, which is Jesus Christ, transferred to Christians through the Holy Spirit in reading the Holy Bible.

If we want to compare our language games, we have to compare the prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) with our Holy Bible and al-Qur’an al-karim with Jesus Christ through the mutual language game revelation.

So here we have found the language game revelation44 that as an intermediate case enables us as Christians to access better the

a privileged situation to interpret the other, then we are sure to misunderstand the other. The other has to be approached on the premises of the other. (Wittgenstein. 1989. §608–612.) Demythologization as a language game is useful in a dialogue between Christians, but only in the case where both are already applying it within their own life forms before entering the dialogue, as the use of the language game then is mutual. One life form is of course as complex as the other.

42 � Clack. 1999. 99–103.

43 � Clack. 1999. 73–78.

44 The language game revelation differs itself between Christianity and Islam, but the sense given

by God is very similar.

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understanding of the use of the concept of Holy Scripture in Islam.

Having an intermediate case, we can find the family resemblances in the use of this intermediate case. This is important as comparing al-Qur’an al-karim directly with the Holy Bible does not give the same sense. If we are in a situation where we are not able to find an intermediate case, we will have to invent one.45

20. We cannot access directly the value of the other religion, because

we are not able to see it, but we can access the values of the other religious preliminarily by experiencing the value of the religion for the other religious. Then we have a platform to access the life form that is establishing her or his values, and the other religious becomes an intermediate case herself or himself.46

21. All people, no matter their religion, toil with different positive

and negative issues set by life. A negative example is death, a positive is love. These are facts that usually make an impression on human beings by raising questions.

These questions determine a frame for the answers, which might be particular to the specific religion and its setting. These issues can be the stepping stones for dialogue.47

22. Dogma needs some acquaintance with the life form it is used

in, as the meaning of the religious is built around it. This is also why dogma in dialogue often only results in quarrels or flat relativism and can leave people disillusioned about dialogue.

One must push behind the dogma to see how it plays out in the lives of the other religious. There are other mutual issues in life that can show us how the dogma of the other is important in her or his life as a human being.

45 �Wittgenstein. 1980. 74.; and Wittgenstein. 1979. 8–10.; 13.

46 This example should not be misunderstood in the direction that religious truth can be likened to æsthetic truth in general. Æsthetics and religion are two different life forms, functioning in different ways. As in foundationalism, in plurality we can still distinguish between the culture-spheres of æsthetics, religion, science and ethics. The difference is that now even mathematics is recognized to be humans relating to some regularity we believe to find in the world; it is not humans partaking in the logos of the world. This does not lessen the necessity of mathematical thought, as we are still in need of the mathematic system to relate to the world we live in, but it does make it more obvious to address the viewpoint of other domains curiously, as they are equally important in living in the world. Science has no elevated position from which it can discern the other approaches to life.

Another benefit is that in the postmodern any one culture-sphere can enlighten the others, as they are no longer all surveyed by rationality, but playing together in life. See also Schrag. 1992. 146.; Lyotard. 2001. 41–57.; and Wittgenstein. 1989. §341–344.

47 �Wittgenstein. 1979. 6.; see also Clack. 1999. 156–166.

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23. These language games of dialogue are only obvious to those

who want to know the other from the perspective of the other. This attitude is not something we can take for granted. There are different modes of approaching another religion or the other religious.

One mode is of indifference or ‘superficial curiosity’, similar to indifference and occurring when there is not really any drive to dig further into the belief of the other. Issues are left untouched, and there is no real understanding. The interesting modes of approach are the ones that truly desire to relate to the other religion. But this can also be done differently; it can be done curiously or through closed dialogue.

24. Living in a plural society does not guarantee that one accepts

the plurality of the society. A religious or cultural minority can shield itself from the surrounding world that it finds intimidating.

This will often lead to the formation of cultural or religious language games in opposition to the other intimidating culture or religion. Being the majority does not guarantee a curious approach: often minorities become scapegoats. This is especially the case if the minorities themselves feel or are apart from society. This may then start a vicious circle.

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understand why the other religious is another religiously; to dive into the beauty of the other religion and learn from it. The curious approach presupposes that the religion of the other does make sense.

The concept of love is different in Christianity and Islam, but the curious Christian will try to experience the similar language game of love in Islam, for example through the compassionate God, and then access the family resemblances between these two life forms in the different language games. In this way, the curious Christian can become intimate with the other religious and learn from the differences.48 The curious approach presupposes similarity, but not identity. It presupposes that the other religious has her or his needs covered as believers in their own religion in a way as adequate as they are covered in Christianity.49 Presupposing this already reduces the chasm between religions to a river, which, though challenging, can be crossed by using, for example, the stepping stones mentioned above.

25. A person engaging with the other religious in a closed way tries

to point out why she or he is not the other, rather than trying to understand why the other religious is another religiously.

The closed approach presupposes only that its own life form ultimately makes sense. The other religion will then only make sense if it corresponds directly with one’s own religion. If the approach is closed, it is not likely that the other religion will ultimately make sense.

Some closed Christians suggest that Islam does not have any real concept of a loving God, that the love of God is foreign to Muslims.

This statement is based on the Christian language game of love based on Christian dogma, which of course is different from the Muslim one. In this way, the closed Christian understands the other religious through the Christian language games and judges her or him by it.

But it does not really say anything about how adequate the Muslim language games are in their own life form, only that they are different.

The closed approach demands other life forms to conform to one’s own language games because it is closed within itself.

26. Engaging 124

48 �Wittgenstein. 1980. 14.

49 We build meaning in our lives through our assessments. It is therefore obvious that the assessments of the other religious do hold meaning, otherwise they would not be functional; and if they were not functional, they would not be used. This does not tell whether one assessment is basically wrong or which assessment is more functional (meaningful) than the other, or if the different assessments are equally functional (meaningful). Presupposing meaning in the other religion is not a normative assessment. It is merely needed to enter into the religious life of the other. When we are there, normative assessments are as needed as anywhere else. Dialogue is about life and we cannot escape approaching life normatively: it is how we live it.

curiously with another religion is an attempt to

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Suggested Reading Aasi Ghulam Haider, Muslim Understanding of other Religions. New Delhi, 2004.

Austin John L., Ord der Virker (How to Do Things with Words) (transl.: Andersen John E.). København, 1997.

Charlesworth Max, Philosophy and Religion: From Plato to Postmodernism. Oxford, 2006.

Chomsky Noam, Sprog og Bevidsthed (Language and Mind) (transl.: Ege Niels). Haslev, 1974.

Clack Brian R., Wittgenstein, Frazer and Religion. London, 1999.

Foucault Michel, The Archæology of Knowledge. The Discourse on Language. New York, 1972.

Foucault Michel, The Order of Things: An Archæology of the Human Sciences. New York, 1994.

Griffin David Ray (ed.), Deep Religious Pluralism. Louisville, 2005.

Gutting Gary (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Cambridge, 2005.

Knitter Paul F., Introducing Theologies of Religions. New York, 2003.

Lindbeck George Arthur, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. London, 1984.

Lyotard Jean-François, Viden og det Postmoderne Samfund (La Condition Postmoderne) (trans.: Frandsen Finn). København, 2001.

Monk Ray, How to Read Wittgenstein. London, 2005.

Murphy Nancy, Anglo-American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion, and Ethics.

Oxford, 1997.

Race Allan, Interfaith Encounter: The Twin Tracks of Theology and Dialogue. London, 2001.

Rescher Nicholas, Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford, 1993.

Schrag Calvin O., The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge. Indianapolis, 1992.

Schrag Calvin O., The Self after Postmodernity. Yale, 1997.

Searle John R., The Construction of Social Reality. London, 1996.

Wittgenstein Ludwig, Lectures and Conversations on Æsthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Oxford, 1970.

Wittgenstein Ludwig, Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. Retford, 1979.

Wittgenstein Ludwig, Culture and Value. Oxford, 1980.

Wittgenstein Ludwig, Om Vished (On Certainty) (trans.: Husted Jørgen). Århus, 1989.

Wittgenstein Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations. Oxford, 2001.

Henrik Lindberg Hansen was born in Denmark in 1974, and ordained a pastor in the Danish EvangelicalLutheran Church to function as a liaison officer in Cairo from 2004 until 2010. Here, he develops his knowledge on Islam and dialogue. The dialogue carries its own meaning, but it is also directing him to be able to function as a resource in this field in Denmark. See more details at www.faithtofaith.dk. His email address is lindberghansen@gmail.com.

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Risks and Means of Interreligious Dialogue in Community There is certainly a dialogical paradigm shift taking place in Christianity, in the era of oikumené (which is of course still going on), so it could also be rightly called the era of dialogue. In a radically secularised world, we are seriously challenged to evaluate and rethink our prejudicial picture of our real ‘enemy’ or of our main threat.

The person who is not against us might well be with us. We should not neglect the enormous impact that interreligious dialogue will have and has already had on our understanding of ourselves as Christians.

We can no longer speak as if the others were not listening.

I. Importance: What is at Stake?

Christian theology has profited greatly from the various secular theories on dialogue, but at the same time the theory of dialogue developed in the ecumenical movement has reached a unique effectiveness, which can also be meaningful for other fields of human thought.

Strangely enough, it seems that the methodology of interreligious dialogue is much more elaborated than that of ecumenical (interdenominational) dialogue; scientific literature deals much deeper with the theory of interreligious dialogue than ecumenical dialogue.

One of the reasons for this can be that although ecumenical dialogue started much earlier, it was not operating under the name dialogue.

In the beginning it did not use the method of dialogue either, but rather of comparison: the early ecumenical movement concentrated

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on comparative studies of different theories and theologies. And when the reflection on dialogue itself began, the term gradually became used primarily for interreligious encounter, while reflection on the method of the ecumenical thought was going on under other terms.

Here we deal with the interreligious (or, as some call it, interfaith) area of theology, concentrating especially on dialogues that take place in or originate from the circles of Genève and Rome (the World Council of Churches (WCC) and Vatican), especially as it has been cultivated in the sub-unit on dialogue in the World Council of Churches (since 1971) and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID, since 1964, previously called Secretariat for non-Christians). We do not try here to focus on actual or current results and developments of bilateral or multilateral dialogues, but on methods and background theories used in present dialogues.

We build heavily and seriously on the contribution of different “third world” theologians (as they call themselves), especially of Asian origin, from India and Sri Lanka, most of all Stanley J. Samartha and Wesley S. Ariarajah. The reason for this is that most of the people of other living faiths live in Asia (including the Middle East); so the Christian Church in Asia is inevitably called to be the leading force in interreligious dialogue. Indeed, for example India as a country has a long record of religious tolerance unparalleled in human history.1 And certainly, “a person who knows only one’s own religion knows no religion.”2 Our Christian theology concerning people of other living faiths needs to be reread, revised and re-evaluated. Our fundamental experience in this respect was that the very same persons, who are already dialogical in their method of ecumenical thinking, could not fail to be dialogical in the interreligious field. Hence the term wider ecumenism3 was created. Some speak about ecumenism ad intra (towards ourselves) and ecumenism ad extra (towards the others)4, 1 Samartha Stanley J. quotes this insight from Menenzes George in Samartha Stanley J., Partners in Community: Some Reflections on Hindu–Christian Relations Today. In Samartha Stanley J., Courage for Dialogue: Ecumenical Issues in Interreligious Relationships. Genève, 1981. 130.; and Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research 1980/2.; and Voices from the Third World 1985/4. 47.

2 Ariarajah S. Wesley quotes the statement of Weber Max, in an interview made with him by Kaldawi-Killingback Muna, Searching for Interfaith Dialogue: An Interview with Reverend S. Wesley Ariarajah. Common Concern, 1997/6. www.worldywca-org.ac.psiweb.com/common_concern/ june1997/int_dialogue.html.

3 Ariarajah S. Wesley stands for the term to be used in Ariarajah S. Wesley, Wider Ecumenism: A Threat or a Promise? The Ecumenical Review 1998/3. 321–328.

4 Küng Hans is one of the authors who have evaluated the development of the ecumenical movement and also of the journal Concilium in the previous twenty years: Küng Hans, Twenty Years of

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or about planetary ecumenism5. But if we started to use these terms for wider purposes, we would not have a term for the ecumenical movement itself. It could also water down the specific and unique purposes of ecumenical dialogue.

As far as we are concerned, we do not use these mentioned terms, because we see in the ecumenical endeavour above all the movement for the visible unity and integrity of the Church of Jesus Christ. Thus, we suggest using the common term dialogue for both ecumenical and interreligious fields. This term encompasses both of these territories; it underlines well their commonalties, but leaves sufficient ground to emphasize their differences as well.

As far as interreligious dialogue is concerned, this field of theologising is rather unknown for most Christian thinkers, or at least many of us already have our good old theories to handle the other belief systems. At the threshold of the third millennium, some say that we have to realise that the world will never be totally Christian, and Christianity will always remain a relative minority, only one – even though maybe the largest – parcel in the religious scene of the Globe.

This honest admission would not mean giving up our Christian hope, but it would be the humble and at the same time realistic acceptance of a fact of our life and world. And then we have to rethink the nature of our mission to bring the Good News to the whole inhabited Earth.

II. Dynamics, For and Against 1. Aims and Levels of Encounter

Pope Paul VI’s major encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam (ES, issued in 1964) sees dialogue as the way (spirit or method) to exercise the entire mission of the Church of Jesus Christ in today’s world. Dialogue permeates and characterizes all the different forms of ecclesial activity: presence, evangelism, inculturation and witness.6 Ecumenical Theology: What for? In Brand Paul – Schillebeeckx OP Edward – Weiler Anton (eds.), Twenty Years of Concilium: Retrospect and Prospect. Concilium 1983/10. 52.

5 This term, planetary ecumenism, by Geffré Claude might be too wide, but nevertheless in its dimensions it is certainly the largest we have ever met in the scientific literature in Geffré Claude, Toward a Hermeneutics of Interreligious Dialogue. In Jeanrond Werner G. – Rike Jennifer L., Radical Pluralism and Truth: David Tracy and the Hermeneutics of Religion. New York, 1991. 263.

6 These four main ecclesial activities are evaluated in Zago Marcello, The Spirituality of Dialogue.

Pro Dialogo 1999/2. 233.

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The plurality of religions can be seen as a consequence of the richness of creation and the manifold grace of God.7 Based on this assumption, we can enlist many models as aims for interreligious dialogue. For example, the unity of the human family, the harmony among the religions, or the spirituality of dialogue.8 Integration (as opposed to syncretism) is the interaction of diverse traditions or identities living in harmony, where the different traditions enrich each other without really losing their identity.9 These models function on at least three levels. First, on the existential level of coexistence, the basic purpose of interreligious dialogue is most of all to eliminate all religious prejudices and religious intolerance, as well as to remove misunderstandings. Second, on the more theoretical level of convivence, the aim of interreligious dialogue is especially the convergence, even fusion of (transcendental) horizons, mutual understanding as well as the appreciation of each other. Convivence happens through open exchange of witness, of experience, through cross-questioning and listening to each other. When it leads to mutual understanding, respect and cooperation,10 then we witness together to faith, love and hope. Third, on the practical level of cooperation, the goal focuses on working together, locating and serving common tasks for the sake of humanity as a whole, as well as for the fullness of the environment and creation.

The final goal and purpose of interreligious dialogue is of course reflection and reception, which leads to an enduring, productively shaped and reconciled difference, to a kind of new self-understanding.

We are called to discover as many values, experiences and dimensions of the divine mystery as possible, some of which may be better developed in other religions for cultural, historical or providential reasons.11 Our aim is to accumulate spiritual values and to serve our neighbours 7 Kuttianimattathil SDB Jose quotes the Guidelines for Interreligious Dialogue (1989) in Kuttianimattathil SDB Jose, Practice and Theology of Interreligious Dialogue: A Critical Study of the Indian Christian Attempts since the Second Vatican Council. Bangalore, 1995. 158.

8 These six main modes and ways of interreligious dialogue are enlisted in Gonçalves Teresa Osório, Interreligious Encounter: Dialogue and the Search for Unity. Pro Dialogo 1997/3. 387–393.; and The Ecumenical Review 2000/4. 466–470.

9 Devananda Yohan defines syncretism in this way, and deals with syncretism in opposition to the notion and understanding of integration in Devananda Yohan, Understanding Conversion in the Context of Dialogue. The Ecumenical Review, 1992/4. 433.

10 Zabolotsky Nicholas A. enlists the five marks in Zabolotsky Nicholas A., Dialogue in Community: Initial Points and Conditions. In Samartha Stanley J., Faith in the Midst of Faiths: Reflections on Dialogue in Community. Genève, 1977. 59–73.

11 Kuttianimattathil SDB Jose quotes the Theses on Interreligious Dialogue in Kuttianimattathil SDB Jose, Practice and Theology of Interreligious Dialogue: A Critical Study of the Indian Christian Attempts since the Second Vatican Council. Bangalore, 1995. 590.

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in strengthening the good and fighting against sin, contributing to solutions, cooperating in the promotion of consciousness and perfection. 12

2. Risks in our Endeavour

By taking a closer look at the history of Christian thinking, concentrating on the topic of interreligious dialogue, we can distinguish between three eminent dangers, which have been often cited by persons opposing or questioning the process or theory of dialogue. These three important and very influential dangers may be called the three classical fears.

A. Three Classical Fears (and some others)

The first one of the three classical fears is the real danger of compromising the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in the plan of salvation of all humanity. The second fear is syncretism, and we will deal with it in a separate sub-chapter. The third danger or fear is not so much a doctrinal or dogmatic one, as are the previous two. This fear rather has some very practical consequences: when engaging in any kind of dialogue, Christian women and men usually lose the urgency of missionary mandate or vocation.13 We may add two more minor dangers to the enlisted three classical fears: first, the fear of absorption; and second, the danger of losing our sense of the universal Church of Jesus Christ.

We may compare this system of the three classical fears with, for example, that from the Muslim world and culture, where there may be at least four main objections to dialogue with Christianity.14 Some may think that interreligious dialogue is highly inappropriate for Muslim believers, since it only covers uneven power relations and hides non-avowed purposes, hidden tasks and agendas. Second, others may object to this kind of dialogue, because it revives dormant or caduceus controversies. Third, there may be people who see in dialogue a compromise or betrayal of truth. Fourth and finally, some 12 As a special case, for the (Two-)Third(s) World, interreligious dialogue contributes significantly to the building up of a genuine Third World-awareness and culture. Pieris SJ Aloysius approaches the phenomenon of interreligious dialogue from this angle in Pieris SJ Aloysius, Interreligious Dialogue and Theology of Religions: An Asian Paradigm. In A Rainbow in an Unjust World: Voices from the Third World. 1992/2. 176–188.

13 Ariarajah S. Wesley enlists these three main classical fears in Ariarajah S. Wesley, Dialogue or Mission: Can the Tension Be Resolved? In Ariarajah S. Wesley, Not without my Neighbour: Issues in Interfaith Relations. Genève, 1999. 102.

14 Mitri Tarek speaks about these objections in Mitri Tarek, Reflections on Confrontation and Dialogue. Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 1999/1. 83.

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may see in interreligious dialogue only a more sophisticated form of mission and evangelisation. That is why the transparency of motives is so important in dialogue.15 There are two classical forms of religious hatred and intolerance.16 The Semitic (Judeo-Christian-Muslim) form claims that differences must either be converted, or totally destroyed and eliminated. The Hindu form, on the other hand, claims that all differences and varieties are simply accidents of history, culture and geography; the true eternal religion embraces and absorbs all of them.

B. Eclectic Mixture or too Narrow Frame

Let us concentrate now on the second of the classical fears, syncretism, which is a way of handling religious ideas. It may appear in many forms, constituting a specific obstacle to interreligious dialogue. It is usually defined as a peculiar form of eclecticism, consisting of the uncritical and non-discerning mixture of elements from different religions without a centre, focal point or integrating principle.17 Or let us see another definition, roughly in the same line: “Syncretism is conscious or unconscious human attempt to create a new religion, composed of elements taken from different religions.”18 Syncretism may also be described in another way: as the deliberate addition to one’s own creed of whatever is regarded as valuable and profound from the doctrines of other contemporary creeds.19 In other words, syncretism is a mixture of various elements, which tend to remain apart and which conflict or pull in different directions, resulting many times in domination, disharmony and confusion.

Thus the transcendent unity of religions, the unification under the label of a new religion, the meta-religion or global spirituality would be dubious aims for interreligious dialogue.

The two extremes of harmony-thinking and conflict-thinking are 15 Kuttianimattathil SDB Jose speaks about this transparency in Kuttianimattathil SDB Jose, Practice and Theology of Interreligious Dialogue: A Critical Study of the Indian Christian Attempts since the Second Vatican Council. Bangalore, 1995. 108–109.

16 Niles D. Preman informs us about the two forms of religious intolerance in Niles D. Preman, How Ecumenical must the Ecumenical Movement be? The Challenge of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (JPIC) to the Ecumenical Movement. The Ecumenical Review 1991/4. 457.

17 Samartha Stanley J. quotes the well-known definition in Samartha Stanley J., The Holy Spirit and People of Other Faiths. The Ecumenical Review 1990/3–4. 255.

18 The definition is from the booklet Guidelines on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies. Genève, 1979.

19 Devanandan Paul David sets up this definition in Devanandan Paul David, The Christian Attitude and Approach to non-Christian Religions. International Review of Missions 1952/2. 178.

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syncretism and fundamentalism. In both of these cases the human mind tries to cope somehow with cultural pluralism, while refusing in principle the mental effort of exploring the value of converging perspectives or common elements. Fundamentalism in a pre-modern way harshly simplifies the interpretation of texts and facts, and judges negatively everything that does not enter into one’s own narrow frame of set values and ideas; thus it is at the same time apologetic and aggressive.

Syncretism, on the other hand, in a late modern or postmodern way throws the frame away, thus freeing itself from discerning, evaluating and judging: it remains resting in a plurality of ideas which have no relation whatsoever to one another. Syncretism is therefore closely connected to relativism as well, which may be defined as the uncritical and non-discerning acceptance of several absolutes, without recognising any criterion to judge between them.20 In general, the rhetorical forms of accusations towards interreligious dialogue, but aimed rather at syncretism are usually accompanied by the use of pejorative terms: by such expressions as assimilation, absorption, betrayal, or simply compromise. But after all, religions are not at all merely fortresses or purely castles to be defended when they are attacked. Religious traditions are rather fresh wellsprings for the nourishment of all human life.

Syncretism, synthesis and symbiosis are three mutually interconnected terms. The first, syncretism, as we have seen already in the previous paragraphs, is a haphazard and risky mixing of religions. Meanwhile, synthesis, on the other hand, is the creation of a tertium quid (a third party) out of two or more source religions, and in this process the destruction of the identity and integrity of each component religion occurs. Symbiosis, finally, is a conversion and metanoia in basic interreligious human communities, to the common heritage of all religions (the Golden Rule and the Beatitudes) and to the specificity of one’s own religion at the same time.21 In any case, we are not larger than our traditions. We can transform and reread our traditions, but we are not able to rule or overcome them, as we cannot overcome the need for breathing either. Believers who think or practice in a syncretistic way pretend that they are above 20 Roest Crollius SJ Ary A. deals with the two contrasting concepts of thinking in Roest Crollius SJ Ary A., Harmony and Conflict. Bulletin (Pro Dialogo) 1992/3. 376.

21 In a quite inventive way, Pieris SJ Aloysius has found these three terms to cope with in Pieris SJ Aloysius, Interreligious Dialogue and Theology of Religions: An Asian Paradigm. In A Rainbow in an Unjust World: Voices from the Third World. 1992/2. 188.

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or outside their traditions. But they are mistaken: in fact, mixing is largely misunderstanding and misjudgement.

The Jesuit priest, Mariasusai Dhavamony SJ, enlists five important syncretistic types in history,22 and he proves that not all of them are to be rejected. Of these five basic forms probably the last one is the most dangerous. First of all, there is the process from polydemonism to polytheism in many parts of the world. Second, there is also the mutual and natural interaction between cultures and religions, when they meet and coexist. Third, we find different tendencies to subordinate the various gods and goddesses to One Supreme God, as well as to order the different divine myths, tales and legends under one main group of myths.

Fourth and probably most importantly, the previous history of each religion and tradition may well be an amalgam of diverse forms and modes, all of which it tried to approximate to its own form. Finally, the kind of syncretism which is considered inadmissible by most Christians is that which implies a systematic attempt to combine, blend and reconcile harmonious or even conflicting religious elements in a new synthesis. This last option, though, would almost certainly lead to religious and ideological relativism, indicating a rather misleading implication, according to which all religions would be equally valid and profound.

A kind of positive understanding of “syncretism” in scientific literature is when a religious tradition is enriched by the influence of another tradition. But in this case there is an integrating principle that makes a real difference. D. C. Mulder enlists four main syncretistic waves in the Judeo-Christian world in history.23 The first one of these syncretistic waves happened in the last century before the Exile of Israel. The second one was the powerful Roman Empire itself, whose wave culminated in the reign of Iulianus Apostata – the apostate, who denounced and left his own Christian religion for the sake of paganism.

The third syncretistic wave broke over the whole of Europe around the middle of the eighteenth century. This wave was grounded and then prepared by the Renaissance, as well as the Enlightenment. The fourth wave is the one in which most of us live nowadays. This wave is nourished by the science of comparative religion, among other 22 His very valuable article is the following: Dhavamony SJ Mariasusai, Towards a Theology of Dialogue in Interreligious Ritual Participation. Bulletin (Pro Dialogo) 1990/3. 302.

23 His article is the following: Mulder D. C., “No other Gods” – “No other Name”. The Ecumenical Review 1986/2. 209–215.

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factors. The result of these four syncretistic waves is that Christianity in a way can be called a syncretistic religion. Or as Raimundo Pannikar summarised it: “Christianity is, sociologically speaking, certainly one religion: it is ancient paganism, or (…) the complex Hebrew, Hellenic, Græco-Latin, Celtic, Gothic and modern religion converted to Jesus Christ with more or less success.”24 This raises the important question of whether we are content and happy if some of our doctrines, spiritualities, ethical and moral principles interpenetrate other religions, or whether we are ready to condemn these phenomena as syncretism as well. The answer to this question can disclose our possible inequal attitudes and approaches towards the others. Incompleteness and insecurity will certainly remain true characteristics of any authentic dialogue, where we indeed take risks in our endeavour, for example between legitimate openness and illegitimate syncretism.25

III. Various Means 1. Seeking and Serving the Truth

It is often not the ontological but the existential or personal truth that urges and compels us to seriously engage in interreligious dialogue. We may discover the face and faith of God in others when we encounter face-to-face their spirituality, way of thinking, morality and quality of life. To approach the epistemological truth (that which can be clearly shown to be not false to the satisfaction of all concerned) is not exactly a direct aim of dialogue, although indirectly it may and should be always present.

The way of dialogue is intrinsic to many religions, especially in Asia, because of some common features. In the Asian part of the world, the wholeness of life and the well-being of a person are intimately related to the well-being of all. Truth is understood as a mystery, transcending all that humans can grasp. Since there is practically no end to what can be learned, there can be no meaningful claim to the exclusive possession of truth.26 24 Samartha Stanley J. quotes Pannikar Raimundo in the following chapter: Samartha Stanley J., Religious Pluralism and the Quest for Human Community. In Samartha Stanley J., Courage for Dialogue: Ecumenical Issues in Interreligious Relationships. Genève, 1981. 28.; and in Nelson J. Robert – Brill E. J. (eds.), The Unity of Humankind in the Perspective of Christian Faith: Essays in Honour of Willem Adolf Visser’t Hooft on his Seventieth Birthday. Leiden, 1971.

25 Ott Heinrich speaks about these limits and borders of dialogue in Ott Heinrich, The Horizons of Understanding and Interpretative Possibilities. In Samartha Stanley J. (ed.), Faith in the midst of Faiths: Reflections on Dialogue in Community. Genève, 1977. 85–89.

26 Ariarajah S. Wesley enlists these common characteristics in Ariarajah S. Wesley, Pluralism

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Stanley J. Samartha phrased beautifully his insight on exclusivity: “An exclusive claim is like a bit of rock in a handful of peanuts: it may break a few teeth, but will never provide nourishment to the body.”27 Although interreligious polemics is a “heuristic tool of very great power”,28 religion is above all a way of life, and not an argumentative system. Attitudes and conduct in this respect are more important than beliefs.

True religion or religious truth should be defined in terms of compassion, nonviolence, self-giving, universal love and the rejection of material acquisition,29 since peace in the inner self and peace in the universe are closely interrelated goals. The greatest and ultimate expressions and manifestations of spirituality and God-relatedness in most of the Asian religious traditions are the virtues of detachment, renunciation and selflessness.30 The fundamental paradox of a commitment or identity comes from the fact that most of the human ways of thinking are usually not able to cope with the psychological problem of absoluteness and relativity. The question is that if we experienced a truth as absolute or absolutely right for us, how can we be faithful to this truth by claiming its relative significance: “If all religions are ‘true’, dialogue is hardly necessary. If only one religion is ‘true’, dialogue is impossible.”31 The relative absoluteness already existing in the vocabulary of theology seems nonsense for many believers, or a betrayal of the faith. On the other hand, the various claimers of relative absoluteness feel the absolute, and hence the rather exclusive claims a kind of idolatry or blasphemy. In any case, we absolutely do not possess the truth, but the Truth possesses us. Our perspectivic (and as such, culturally conditioned), parabolic (interpretative) and provisional (self-corrective) theology needs to be recognised as such in our midst.32 and Harmony. Current Dialogue 1993/25. 17–18.

27 One of the extraordinary abilities of Samartha Stanley J. is that he usually finds the most expressive symbols for what he wants to say: Samartha Stanley J., Mission in a Religiously Plural World: Looking beyond Tambaram (1938). International Review of Mission 1988/3. 320.

28 Griffiths Paul J. makes this important remark concerning interreligious dialogues in his article: Griffiths Paul J., Why we need Interreligious Polemics. First Things 1994/6–7. 35.; and www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9406/articles/griffith.html.

29 Ariarajah S. Wesley enlists the requirements of a true religion in Ariarajah S. Wesley, Hindu Spirituality: An Invitation to Dialogue? The Ecumenical Review 1986/1. 77.

30 Ariarajah S. Wesley uses especially Hindu spirituality in India as a pars pro toto (a part instead of the whole) example to introduce the whole Asian spirituality in Ariarajah S. Wesley, Hindu Spirituality: An Invitation to Dialogue? The Ecumenical Review 1986/1. 77.

31 This wise insight is from Samartha Stanley J., Living Faiths and Ultimate Goals: Introducing a Discussion. The Ecumenical Review 1973/2. 140.

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Our vocabularies and language games bind us to our many times rigid and petrified ways of thinking. In dialogue, we are strongly challenged to be responsible for our language, especially for our absolute claims. The Truth can be imagined as absolute, but a truthclaim should never be imagined as such. In dialogue, we should play the real rules of the game, and we should not dream about another game or just pretend to play the same game. Fortunately enough, persons who do have a sense of situations will never use the same sentences in face-to-face encounters with their neighbours as they would use, for example, in the text of a treaty or legal statement.

There is only one ultimate reality, and nothing in the world is of absolute nature, not even our ideas and concepts of God: therefore, we are challenged to use rather than misuse the very name of God in our dialogue.33

2. Language and Communication

Among the most significant obstacles to authentic dialogue is the problem of language.34 We are damned and cursed to feel and carry the special burden of the Babel event: the wide field of misunderstandings created simply by the variety of languages and their dialects. But the Pentecostal event and experience has elevated and changed this curse once and for all, and has given it another significant meaning. As a consequence of it, the message of God has found its way to every people.

Similarly, as a result of the ideals of the Reformation, the Holy Bible has now been translated into almost all written vernacular languages.

The curse of Babel remains always a challenge: a task and purpose to find and express God in our language, our mother tongue as well; and at the same time, to regard the different national and religious languages as sources of inexhaustible mutual enrichment. After all, the language of the Bible is not intended to be monological at all, and the Holy Scripture calls for our existential answer.

We can no longer understand God’s Self-revelation as totally indubitable, plenary and whose interpretation is fully infallible, three terms in his article: Lipner Julius, Maurice Wiles: Christian Theology and Interreligious Dialogue. The Ecumenical Review 1993/2. 238–239.

33 We intend to use a text of fundamental importance as a basis and guideline for our dealing with this issue. This is a masterpiece of its kind, and we built heavily on this article of Basset Jean-Claude, Decalogue of Dialogue. Current Dialogue 1992/23. 35–39.

34 A special aspect of the language and communication problem, namely the difficulty of evangelism, is dealt with in Smart James D.’s article on conversion: Smart James D., The Language Problem in Evangelism. The Ecumenical Review 1969/3. 238–244.

32 In his review on Wiles Maurice’s book on interreligious dialogue, Lipner Julius quotes these

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but rather as one which is ineffable, apophatic and fundamentally infinite. Some understand religions as dialects of the same language, with the important difference of course that in real life religions do not have the equivalent of a shared and standard language.35 In the Christian realm, however, the ecumenical movement can be seen as an attempt to join to create and recognise a language understandable to all.

The important change in our religious vocabulary is detectable for example in the numerous Roman Catholic official documents concerning the topic of interreligious dialogue with people of other faiths. Nostra Ætate (NÆ, published in 1964) used “non-Christian religions”, while The Attitude of the Church toward the Followers of Other Religions (published in 1984) addressed, as it is in the title, the “followers of other religions”. Later, Redemptoris Missio (RM, published in 1991) conferred to “sisters and brothers of other religions”. The oppositional use of we and they will be immediately broken in the presence of God, before Whom we all stand. This paradigm shift appearing in our attitude towards the other living faiths and religions proved to be somehow the crossing of a theological Rubicon – so much so that some may call it a liberation theology of religions.

We should be aware of the fact that religions are far closer to arts, especially literature, than to (natural) sciences. If we tried to bind religions to the truth-expectations of natural sciences, the religions would loose their poetic, metaphoric and symbolic dimension, which is probably their most important one. The question at this point is whether any kind of literary work can be right and true. Literary works indeed may be responsible for the symbolic reality they try to depict and describe, as well as create.

And, not least, literature can be testified to, since the role of literature is, for example according to the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), to call us to change our lives; thus reaching a kind of conversion experience or metanoia through it. Both literary works and religions are (human or divine) narratives, which in a way are responsible for the reader. They call us to receive and accept their various truths, esteeming them by their relation to the symbolic reality, and by their authentic testimonies and witnesses. Those who are unable to enjoy the experience of catharsis, the feeling of being cleansed by a narrative, rob themselves in a certain sense. What God has cleansed forever, we must not call common.

35 Iisaka Yoshiaki uses dialect as one of the parallels for dialogue in Iisaka Yoshiaki, Dialogue, Dialect, Dialectic and Diakonia. Bulletin (Pro Dialogo) 1992/2. 187–188.

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IV. Dialogue Leads to Community

Finally, we may refer to five aspects of the notion of an interreligious (or multireligious) community: these are our common humanity, our increasing contemporary human interrelatedness, the just interdependence of free people, the communion of saints, and the Reign of God. But there are at least six impediments that block us from seeking this community: these are naivety concerning our historical situation, theological naivety, lack of sense for transcendence, the triumphalist witness, the divided religions themselves and the fear of controversy inside the religions.36 The important points to consider here are the self-understanding of the religions or traditions, and the self-understanding of the people of living faiths. The identity of a religion is the sum of various historical, doctrinal, geographical, cultural, spiritual, legal, sociological and psychological dimensions.37 The components in the identity of a given religion are mostly the institutional territory, the intellectual dimension, and the life of piety, liturgy and spirituality.38 We need to be aware also of the plurality of each other’s self-understanding, not regarding the other religions as monolithic and uniform blocs.39 There are at least two kinds of exclusiveness in the religious realm.

The exclusiveness of commitment belongs to the centre of any faith; the exclusiveness of possession, however, petrifies revelation and tries to monopolize truth.40

36 Deschner John talks about these five different dimensions of community in one of his important articles: Deschner John, Aspects of Community as Christians could Understand it in Dialogue with People of other Faiths and Ideologies. In Samartha Stanley J. (ed.), Faith in the midst of Faiths: Reflections on Dialogue in Community. Genève, 1977. 39–47.

37 Birmelé André enlists and analyses these different dimensions and factors, which contribute to a certain denominations’ identity in his article dealing especially with the Roman Catholic self-understanding: Birmelé André, Roman Catholic Identity as Seen by a Partner in the Ecumenical Dialogue.

In Provost James – Walf Knut (eds.), Roman Catholic Identity. Concilium 1994/5. 118.

38 The opinions of Newman John Henry and of Hügel Friedrich von are quoted and analyzed in Tracy David, Roman Catholic Identity amidst the Ecumenical Dialogues. In Provost James – Walf Knut (eds.), Roman Catholic Identity. Concilium 1994/5. 109.

39 Mitri Tarek warns us of this danger in Mitri Tarek, Reflections on Christian–Muslim Dialogue.

Unpublished lecture from 1999.

40 This twofold classification of exclusiveness, i.e. committed and possessive, is the idea and invention of Samartha Stanley J., The Lordship of Jesus Christ and Religious Pluralism. In Samartha Stanley J., Courage for Dialogue: Ecumenical Issues in Interreligious Relationships. Genève, 1981.

96.; and in Anderson Gerald – Stransky Thomas (eds.), Consultation on Jesus Christ’s Lordship and Religious Pluralism: Richmond, Virginia, October 24–27, 1979. New York, 1980.

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Religious Integrity in a World of Plurality

If we look at the identities of people involved in a given religion, we may trace an uneasy history of alliance between uncertainty and commitment. It seems that in the current situation of religious pluralism, personal commitment now has to learn to live with a certain awareness of uncertainty. Otherwise it could be the absoluteness and intransigence of our beliefs rather than their truth that will be the main “spiritual” attraction.

In these situations, safety slowly becomes a substitute to adventure.

“Commitment has no limiting boundaries: it has only roots. The deeper the roots the more the freedom to spread and to grow without being blown over.” The interplay between openness and religious commitment or absolute and definitive fidelity may rightly be described also as a creative tension between the virtues of dialogability and steadfastness.

These are some of the basic dialectical methodological principles of dialogue. The religious attitude and spirituality that these create is the one of holy dissatisfaction, harmoniously balanced with active patience.

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41 Sandys-Wunsch John dedicates a whole treaty to the dialectical game of the two opposing, but at the same time complementary terms in Sandys-Wunsch John, The Uneasy Alliance between Uncertainty and Commitment. Theology 1997/4. 334–340.

Suggested Reading Anderson Gerald – Stransky Thomas (eds.), Consultation on Jesus Christ’s Lordship and Religious Pluralism: Richmond, Virginia, October 24–27, 1979. New York, 1980.

Ariarajah S. Wesley, Not without my Neighbour: Issues in Interfaith Relations. Genève, 1999.

Basset Jean-Claude, Decalogue of Dialogue. Current Dialogue 1992/23. 35–39.

Devananda Yohan, Understanding Conversion in the Context of Dialogue. The Ecumenical Review 1992/4.

433–441.

Devanandan Paul David, The Christian Attitude and Approach to non-Christian Religions. International Review of Missions 1952/2. 177–184.

Dhavamony SJ Mariasusai, Towards a Theology of Dialogue in Interreligious Ritual Participation. Bulletin (Pro Dialogo) 1990/3. 290–303.

Gonçalves Teresa Osório, Interreligious Encounter: Dialogue and the Search for Unity. Pro Dialogo 1997/3.

387–393.; and The Ecumenical Review 2000/4. 466–470.

Iisaka Yoshiaki, Dialogue, Dialect, Dialectic and Diakonia. Bulletin (Pro Dialogo) 1992/2. 186–189.

Jeanrond Werner G. – Rike Jennifer L., Radical Pluralism and Truth: David Tracy and the Hermeneutics of Religion. New York, 1991.

Jenkins David, Commitment and Openness: A Theological Reflection. International Review of Mission 1970/4.

404–413.

Kuttianimattathil SDB Jose, Practice and Theology of Interreligious Dialogue: A Critical Study of the Indian Christian Attempts since the Second Vatican Council. Bangalore, 1995.

Mitri Tarek, Reflections on Confrontation and Dialogue. Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 1999/1. 76–86.

Mulder D. C., “None other Gods” – “No other Name”. The Ecumenical Review 1986/2. 209–215.

Nelson J. Robert – Brill E. J. (eds.), The Unity of Humankind in the Perspective of Christian Faith: Essays in Honour of Willem Adolf Visser’t Hooft on his Seventieth Birthday. Leiden, 1971.

Niles D. Preman, How Ecumenical must the Ecumenical Movement be? The Challenge of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (JPIC) to the Ecumenical Movement. The Ecumenical Review 1991/4. 451–458.

Pieris SJ Aloysius, Interreligious Dialogue and Theology of Religions: An Asian Paradigm. In A Rainbow in an Unjust World: Voices from the Third World. 1992/2. 176–188.

Roest Crollius SJ Ary A., Harmony and Conflict. Bulletin (Pro Dialogo) 1992/3. 360–377.

Samartha Stanley J., Faith in the Midst of Faiths: Reflections on Dialogue in Community. Genève, 1977.

Samartha Stanley J., Courage for Dialogue: Ecumenical Issues in Interreligious Relationships. Genève, 1981.

Sandys-Wunsch John, The Uneasy Alliance between Uncertainty and Commitment. Theology 1997/4.

334–340.

Wiles Maurice, Belief, Openness and Religious Commitment. Theology 1998/3. 163–171.

Zago Marcello, The Spirituality of Dialogue. Pro Dialogo 1999/2. 233−246.

Nagypál Szabolcs (1974) is a graduate in ecumenical theology, law and literature. He is a researcher and theologian in the Benedictine Békés Gellért Ecumenical Institute (BGÖI) in Pannonhalma, Hungary; and an assistant professor of philosophy of religion in ELTE University, Budapest. He was chairperson of KÖD (Magyar SCM) and CESR; and a member of ERC and ExCo. He is the vice-president of the International Ecumenical Fellowship (IEF), and the moderator of its Theology Commission (ThC). He is the editor-inchief of the Central European Ecumenical Anthologies, and was that of Student World and Mozaik. His email address is nagypalszabi@yahoo.com.

42 Samartha Stanley J. warns us of these kinds of dangers present in a blind commitment in Samartha Stanley J., A Pause for Reflection. In Samartha Stanley J. (ed.), Faith in the midst of Faiths: Reflections on Dialogue in Community. Genève, 1977. 13.

43 Ariarajah S. Wesley has surely found the proper and apt symbol to depict and show the true and profound nature of commitment in his article: Ariarajah S. Wesley, The Understanding and Practice of Dialogue: Its Nature, Purpose and Variations. In Samartha Stanley J. (ed.), Faith in the midst of Faiths: Reflections on Dialogue in Community. Genève, 1977. 56.

44 Wiles Maurice includes these terms even in the title of one of his articles: Wiles Maurice, Belief, Openness and Religious Commitment. Theology 1998/3. 163–171.

45 Jenkins David deals with the problem of their complementarity almost thirty years earlier, but also even in his title: Jenkins David, Commitment and Openness: A Theological Reflection. International Review of Mission 1970/4. 404–413.

46 The Jesuit monk, Dhavamony SJ Mariasusai summarizes Rossano Pietro’s theological thoughts on interreligious dialogue in Dhavamony SJ Mariasusai, Monsignore Pietro Rossano’s Contribution to the Theology of Religions. Bulletin (Pro Dialogo) 1991/3. 365–370.

47 Küng Hans was the one, who provided these two terms with this opposition and complementarity in the title of one of his articles: Küng Hans, Dialogability and Steadfastness: On two Complementary Virtues. In Jeanrond Werner G. – Rike Jennifer L., Radical Pluralism and Truth: David Tracy and the Hermeneutics of Religion. New York, 1991. 237–249.

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Religion in American Politics and the Civil Rights Movement as a Unifying Element I mentioned to a friend at the Library at the US Embassy that I would be writing an article on religion and democracy as sources for unity or confrontation, and that I would focus on the unifying aspects of religion in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.

My friend’s immediate response was something like: “Oh, so you are going to be talking about Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.”

His response made me smile, because he captured in a single sentence a terribly important truth about the matter of religion and democracy: from an American perspective, it really depends on how religion is being used and which religion we are talking about.

I. Two Leaders, Variant Visions

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Louis Farrakhan, a student of Elijah Mohammed (1897–1975) and member of the Black Muslim Nation of Islam, were two icons of the American civil rights movement of the 1960’s.

One, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) sought for change in society and larger unity through religious appeal to a common dream and vision of justice for all people based upon shared values from the Declaration of Independence and Southern Black Gospel preaching and worship.

The other, Louis Farrakhan (1933–) sought black identity and empowerment through separation and the explicit rejection of the faith traditions of most Americans.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. characterized the separatist movement of the Nation of Islam: “I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of somebodiness that they have adjusted to segregation, and, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security, and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses.

The other force is one of bitterness, and hatred comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement.

This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incurable devil.

I have tried to stand between these two forces saying that we need not follow the do-nothingism of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. There is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest.

I am grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood.

And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as rabble rousers and outside agitators those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare.”

II. A Present Reality

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Louise Farrakhan play out in microcosm the complexity of the situation between religion and democracy: are they sources of unity or confrontation?

The answer, of course, is yes, religion is a source of both both, de-

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pending on the nature of the religion and the relationship, agendas and priorities embraced by the religious and political leaders involved.

Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam raise topics of identity politics, where the goal of the confrontation is political power and identity by means of separation and division.

But Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrates that confrontation can also be used as a tactic and methodology to highlight an underlying problem with the goal of transformation, seeking a greater and larger unity. His use of religion in American politics in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s was a unifying element in American democracy.

This is very relevant to the democratic political process in the United States of America, where religion and politics are officially and institutionally separated by law (the First Amendment of the US Constitution), but where they intersect much of the time in reality.

One has only to look at the current election cycle and the discussions and questions raised around Presidential Candidate Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his former congregation in Chicago to realize that religion and politics are deeply connected in democracy as practiced in the US. The US is a deeply religious nation. Statistics from the Gallup Polls indicate that Americans have one of the largest individual participation rates in organized religion: for Christians at Church, for Jews at Synagogue, for Muslims at Mosque, of any country in the world.

According to polls, around 76–78% of Americans identify themselves as practicing Christians. According to more recent statistics, Americans are becoming more and more religiously diverse all of the time.

And of course, since September 11 in 2001 and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington, D. C., Americans have been forced to expand their understanding of both traditional forms of Islam and the extremists, who have used faith as a pretext for conducting war on Western democracy both in the United States, in Europe, in Bali and in the Middle East.

III. A Unifying Force?

From an American perspective, religion and democracy can be both sources for unity or confrontation, depending on their use. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a strong advocate for unity in democracy, but as a leader he did not embrace unity for unity’s sake.

As he put it: “Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for

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consensus, but a moulder of consensus.” (Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution, an address at the Episcopal National Cathedral, Washington D. C., 31 March 1968).

The names and the personalities of major religious leaders who were involved in the civil rights movement are larger than life: Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrew Jackson Young (1932–), Rosa Louise Parks (1913–2005), President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973), Bill Donald Moyers (1934–), and Elijah Mohammed, Malcolm X (1925–1965), and Louis Farrakhan and the National of Islam.

Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s methodology of non-violent resistance to unjust and discriminatory laws and practices resulted in many confrontations with civil authorities.

The resistance of state governors, law enforcement, and local political leaders in the South and the violence that Martin Luther King, Jr. and his followers faced certainly reveals that there was a great deal of opposition.

IV. Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s justification for civil disobedience in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963 was a response to complaints from white moderate religious leaders, who were concerned about his actions: “You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws.

One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.

To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

All segregation statutes are unjust, because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false

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sense of superiority, and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an I–it relationship for an I-thou relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.

So segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.”

V. Dreaming Ahead

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s intent, both from the Jail in Birmingham, but especially in the 1963 March on Washington D. C., was not simply confrontation as an end in itself or as a means to the end of further separation.

Its aim was rather to draw attention to the injustices of segregation and marginalization that were being practiced and enforced by law and to call for a larger agenda and a larger audience to form a consensus around the basic issues of equal rights under the law regardless of race or religion.

Consider the words that Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial about his dream: “I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state, sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation, where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation, where little black

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boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South.

With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning: ‘My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.’

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”

VI. Future Consensus?

One could argue that this was merely a rhetorical device at the climax of a sermon, but the last paragraph of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech can also be seen as a very real attempt to reach out for a larger consensus across racial and religious divides from his own religious tradition.

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Blacks and whites, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics were to join hands and sing a black spiritual. A consensus was in formation around the agenda of equality under the law, mutual respect and gratitude: gratitude to God for the gift of freedom.

One sad historical note, the Nation of Islam of Elijah Mohammed and Louis Farrakhan were not invited to participate in the March on Washington. There were definite practical limits to the dream of inclusion that Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed so eloquently. His dream of freedom, equality under the law and mutual respect for individuals regardless of race or religion has not been fully realized since then.

The speech that he delivered at the March on Washington has since been characterized as one of the greatest in American history, on par with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Martin Luther King, Jr. is venerated as an enduring icon of the American civil rights movement, marked by the establishment of a national holiday on his birthday and especially with the recent discussion and current construction of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in the Mall in Washington D. C. Thus it is clear that to a great extent Martin Luther King, Jr. did form the larger consensus around his dream for freedom and equality for all people. And the tools that he used were both religious and civic. They drew on both Judaism and Christianity; they drew on the Declaration of Independence and Mahatma Ghandi’s principles of non-violent confrontation to achieve transformation of society.

How successful we have been in following through on achieving the goals of this consensus remains to be seen. Presently, the very fact that a black person is a candidate for president of the United States of America, regardless whether he is actually elected or not, is a significant step towards the fulfilment of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream.

Reverend Robert S. Jones of the Grand Canyon Synod of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) has his undergraduate degree as a Bachelor of Social Science in Linguistics from the University of Arizona; his Master of Divinity was from Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He served Evangelical-Lutheran Congregations in South Dakota and Arizona in the United States of America (USA) and briefly in 2005 at the English Language Service Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Old City of Jerusalem. From 2006 to 2008 he was also on the clergy roster of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Lithuania: served at the International Church of Vilnius. His email address is: rsj4me@yahoo.com.

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Outlines of

Viktor Emil Frankl’s Religious Philosophy Religion is not about ensuring the accomplishment of a relaxed life conduct, or the lack of conflict or some other psycho-hygienic objective.

Religion offers more to human being than psychotherapy; and indeed expects more from her or him.

Viktor Emil Frankl

In the following paper we shall analyze the religious philosophy of Austrian doctor and philosopher Viktor Emil Frankl (1905–1997).

Scientific literature in this field refers to logotherapy and existential analysis, the disciplines founded by Frankl as the third Wiener school of psychotherapy, next to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Alfred Adler’s individual psychology.1 Frankl, however, only partially continues the inheritance of the other two schools, as the names of these new disciplines also show. Logotherapy and existential analysis are rooted in a different philosophical dimension, to such an extent that Frankl’s work can be interpreted independently from a psychological history of reception.2 This is especially valid for fragments in which Frankl discusses religious phenomena and their philosophical and psychological connections. In this respect, psychoanalysis still has a great importance for Frankl as a counter-example of the theory and methodology of psychotherapy, which, while performing its tasks, strives for the rehumanization of medical science and psychotherapy by the emphasis of their particularly human characteristics.

1 Logotherapy means curing by reason. Existential analysis means the analysis of existence as a particular human reality emphasized by existentialist philosophers. As a psychotherapy, existential analysis is a method that maps the existential possibilities of the concrete human being, focusing on the individual’s possibilities of rational accomplishment and responsibility in connection to the factors determining the given situation.

It is not farfetched to say that, contrary to the antitheism of psychoanalysis, logotherapy and existential analysis favours a treatment of methodological atheism. In a scientific sense, Frankl perceives either pole of the debate of materialism versus idealism not as a starting point but as a question for decision.

From the point of view of science theory, the position of the problem mixes the viewpoints of the fifties and the sixties, but this situation does not make its message unimportant for contemporary psychology and philosophy. It is even more so in places where some years ago materialism was regarded as a compulsory “intellectual” approach of all scientific research due to pseudo-scientific dogmatism and the political pressure accompanying it.

Thus, it is not merely the objectivity of the research that gets damaged, but also the intellectual freedom of the individual conducting the research. The question characteristic for the period of ideological struggles, but mistaken from the point of view of the referred discipline, is often asked even today: according to logotherapy, was it the matter or the spirit, which was first? In his book, translated into Magyar (Hungarian), Irvin D. Yalom formulates the characteristics of the concept of Frankl’s logotherapy as follows: “Logotherapy does not belong to the psychoanalytical schools, nor formal psychiatry, nor religious teachings, nor theoretical behavioural psychology, and not even to the ‘light’ trends of personality development. What is more, in scholarly circles Frankl’s method is considered outrageous by many. His argumentation is often pretentious; he exhorts, he makes peremptory declarations, he often repeats himself, and he is uproarious. In addition, although he claims that his approach to reason is of a secular nature (…), it is clear that Frankl’s approach is a religious one. (…) The works of his followers are definitely inexpressive, and mainly consist of the repetition of the master’s statements and his personal glorification.”3 In spite of all this, Yalom considers Frankl’s work notable; what is more, he formulates his existential psychotherapy in the spirit of logotherapy. His attitude is exemplary, as it is meaningless to judge the value of Frankl’s doctrine on the basis of his presumed or actual personality and the deplorable ideas of some of his followers; that would also be a typical example of darkest psychologism.

There is an essential contradiction, however, to be noted in the quotation; namely the fact that when speaking about the difficulties of categorizing the discipline of logotherapy, Yalom states that 3 Yalom. 1980. 346.

2 Cf. Sárkány. 2004.

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S árkány Péter: Outlines of Viktor Emil Frankl’s Religious Philosophy

Frankl’s approach is not a religious one, and several lines later, when formulating the general prejudices against his theory, we read that “Frankl’s approach is a fundamentally religious one”. Well now, is logotherapy religious or not?

Yalom does not deal with this problem, but it is important from the point of view of this study, as it points to the particularity of logotherapy: it is not religious, that is, it is not connected directly to any form of confession. At the same time, it can be regarded as partly religious, because the theory and practice of logotherapy does not stop at the level of existential psychotherapy, namely the humanistic turn, but continues the questioning. One of Frankl’s programmatic fragments is worth quoting: “Our attempt to exceed nihilism only succeeded by revealing the existentiality of human life. Well, humanism can only be successfully prolonged, if we reveal the transcendence of human existence. By proving that vital and social forces and powers do not expressly define the human being, (…) we have regained the existence of the human being. Now, by adding transcendence to the essential study of the human being, we strive to re-establish an image of the human being which orientates itself by the true nature of the human being, inasmuch as it claims that this image contains the essential traces of transcendence. An image of the human being true to the essence blows up the frameworks of both facticity and immanence. The image of the human being cannot be accomplished within the limits of immanence. The human being perceives itself as the image of God – or else becomes its own distorted image.”4 The quotation makes it clear that Frankl’s theory and therapy of personality is trans-personal, that is, it draws from a dimension exceeding the all-time individual. It should be emphasized that, although it draws from this dimension, its conception is nevertheless radically personalist.

Radically, that is, in accordance with the original meaning of the word ‘radical’, it is a conception which reveals the roots of personality, and which, accordingly, treats the dimension of transpersonality as self-evident. Moreover, Frankl does not apply any kind of spectacular psychological theories or oriental techniques, seemingly “transcendent” to our culture, and therefore ideologically neutral.

Instead, as apparent in the quotation above, he prefers the terminology of Western philosophy and theology. His concept of 4 Frankl. 1996, 220–230.

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religion is also articulated on the basis of his philosophical presuppositions, which can be summarized in three points: the person is a self-transcendent being; there are (objective) meaningful signs (tasks) in the world; the person answers to, and accomplishes these objective and meaningful signs.

Consequently, the trans-personal manifestations and confessional religions in logotherapy are based on the one hand on the person’s self-transcendence, and on the other hand on the (objective) meaningful reality of these phenomena.

In the following, while presenting and explaining the concept of religion of logotherapy, we shall present the anthropology of existential analysis in comparison to a psychoanalytical approach. Finally, we shall discuss the theological affinity of Frankl’s conception.

I. Religion as an Existential (Intellectual) Phenomenon

Frankl clearly defines the task of logotherapy in what is considered to be his major work, his book entitled Medical Psychotherapy: “Just as in the history of philosophy psychologism has been surmounted, something must surmount it in psychotherapy as well, and we would like to term this something logotherapy. This logotherapy – as a “psychotherapy of an intellectual approach” – will have the task to complete psychotherapy in the narrowest sense, and fill the gap that we first try to theoretically deduce, and then justify by psychotherapeutic practice.”5 Logotherapy is thus primarily meant to eliminate the psychologism appearing in the theory and practice of psychotherapy. Psychologism is a flawed scientific method by which all scholarly, artistic, or even religious accomplishments are interpreted as psychological phenomena, referring to the psychological profile of the subject connected to these accomplishments, in accordance with the pattern of “nothing else than”.

According to this approach, it is the task of empirical psychology, which examines the psychological laws of perception, attention and thinking, to answer the basic questions of thinking, religion and art.

The most frequently used counter-argument of psychologism points to the contradictory nature of this method. An inductive psychophysical science cannot form the basis of, for instance, pure logic, which analyzes the laws of thinking, because in the course of its application it already presupposes the existence of the principles of logic (for example, the law of contradiction).6 5 Frankl. 1997. 33.

6 For an in-depth analysis of the criticism of psychologism, see: Husserl. 1992.

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Logotherapy is meant for the practical application of this argument; its primary task is to expose the methodological psychologism of assistance professions. Its starting point is the “intellectual approach”, meaning that Frankl separates the intellectual dimension of the human being from psychological phenomena on the basis of classical Greek and Christian “stratified anthropology” (body, soul and intellect) and the development of contemporary philosophy (phenomenology and existential philosophy).

According to this, specifically human phenomena are not embodied by psychological laws, but by anthropological and ethical concepts like freedom and responsibility. The person – as Frankl emphasizes over and over – is capable of detaching herself or himself from the direct influence of her or his environment on account of her or his freedom and responsible being. By placing oneself in the service of a certain business even against one’s own psychological nature, one is capable therefore to exceed oneself, in Frankl’s terms, in the direction of reason of an individual task revealing itself in a concrete situation.7 It directly derives from this that Frankl considers religion not an exclusively psychological but also an “intellectual” phenomenon, in which the person’s transcendence of herself or himself (selftranscendence) is eminently expressed. Doubtlessly, Frankl’s objection to the psycho-dynamic reduction of religion and his claim for the noodynamic aspect of human phenomenon are serious offences against the method of psychologism.8 It is a question, however, whether the existential analytical revelation of the intellect as an independent sphere of human existence can indeed definitively eliminate the psychologism connected to religion.

In a first approach it can, since logotherapy and existential analysis do not project religion onto the level of psychological life, but posit it as an intellectual phenomenon, which belongs to typically human phenomena.

Nevertheless, at a closer look, it seems that the problem of psychologism appears again, although on a higher level: religion is articulated not through a psychological, but an intellectual reduction.

From the point of view of the history of religion, Frankl also defines religion by the method of “nothing else than” in the following way: 7 Self-transcendence and the “defying power of the intellect” are closely connected anthropological phenomena for Frankl. Cf. Frankl. 2006. 59–70.

8 Noodynamics is nothing else than the tension between being (Sein) and must (Sollen).

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religion is nothing else than an intellectual phenomenon, that is, a reality given together with the existence of the person.

Thus Frankl treats the reality of religion not as a restricted psychological but as a more comprehensive anthropological concept.

Therefore, from the point of view of typology of the systematic history of religion, Mezei Balázs’ attempt to present Frankl’s concept of religion as a reductive religious historical endeavour seems justified, although he admits that Frankl “achieves the least reductive form of religious psychology”.9 And indeed, the reductive approach to existential analysis is moderated by at least two aspects: on the one hand by Frankl’s repeated emphasis that religion is much more than it is made apparent by the particularly human categories (existentiales) of individual decision and responsibility10; and, on the other hand, at least according to the interpretive reading of existential analysis, by the differentiation between the terms of religion and religiousness.11 On the basis of this, it becomes evident that it is not the psychology and anthropology of religion, but of religiousness, that he speaks about. Naturally, the reductive concept of religion is also assisted by the terminology in use, inasmuch as the terms religious pedagogy or religious psychology for instance suggest that these disciplines do not research the pedagogy or psychology of religiousness, but of religion itself.12 Therefore, one must differentiate between the various approaches to religion based on one’s attempt to a philosophical treatment of the problem, namely the notional description of the completeness of religion; or a psychological treatment, namely the analysis of the phenomenon of religiousness.

II. Meta-psychology versus Meta-anthropology

If we conceive psychology as an objective science of subjectivity, then Freud’s and Frankl’s first reduction connected to religion is plausible.

Religion, this comprehensive and very complex phenomenon, is projected onto the sphere of subjectivity. The difference between the two authors lies first of all in the different interpretation of the 9 Mezei. 1995. 13.

10 See the motto of the article.

11 Frankl uses the terms Religion and Religiosität, but does not define their meanings as terms.

These two words denote phenomenologically different incidents.

12 Cf. Angel. 2002. 86.

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nature of subjectivity. In Freud’s case, religion reaches to the limits of the science he terms meta-psychology. The pertaining programmatic fragment is worth quoting: “I believe that the mythological ideology reaching deeply into the most modern of religions is nothing else for its most part than a psychology projected to the external world. (…) It is the task of science to transform this reality beyond perception back to the psychology of the unconscious. We could undertake the task to dissolve thus the myths of the Garden of Eden, the original sin, God, good and evil, immortality, etc., and transform metaphysics into meta-psychology.”13 Meta-psychology is the anthropological model of psychoanalysis, having a fairly simple philosophical program: by analogy to paranoia, the dissolution of the metaphysical world imagined over or beyond “reality” into the Freudian concepts meant to describe reality. The concepts of the “psyche apparatus”, described by psychoanalysis and complying with the rules of mechanics are the primal id (Es), the rational ego (Ich) and the super-I (Überich).

Based on these, cultural achievements for Freud are the particular representations of a self-preservation instinct and even more so of libido, the principal tasks of which are to “defend the person against nature”.14 Freud never ceases to emphasize that religion has an outstanding role among cultural achievements, as it attributes every action to the intention of a reason beyond us, and thus protects us from the threatening forces of nature.

Thus Freud places religion in the world of imagination and investigates the problem of “what these ideas are in the mirror of psychology”.15 Psychology understood as psychoanalysis concludes that “the I is not lord in its own house”, that is, religion must also be interpreted in connection to the effects of processes outside the field of the I (mind and will).

Religion, just like culture as a whole, is an illusion: as Freud formulates the ultimate concept of his reduction. Illusions, similar to psychiatric delusions, can be traced back to human desires.16 The psychologism of Freud’s concept stands clear before us even following this short summarizing analysis.

In connection to this, and in order to present the contradictory

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14 Freud. 1991. 21.

methodology of psychologism in psychotherapy, Frankl speaks about the psychogenesis of psychologism.17 According to this, psychologism within the field of psychotherapy can be unmasked by applying its own methods to its own self, and thus finding the motifs underlying the arguments of psychologism.

Psychoanalysis sees masks everywhere; for example, religion and art are nothing else in a psychoanalytic perception than the primitive person’s attempt to escape. According to this pattern, Frankl stresses, psychoanalysis itself is a mask, an escape from tasks of cognition and decision; in other words, an escape from reality and responsibility.

For Frankl the various types of isms (naturalism, biologism, sociologism) are results of a false perception of science, which orientate themselves on the basis of a previously accepted deterministic principle, offending by this the very territory which is most specific to a human being: her or his freedom, or in anthropological terms, her or his intellectual dimension.

As apparent from those said above, Frankl distinguishes the intellectual dimension from psycho-physical manifestations, as the philosophical concept which, beside the specific rules of the latter, expresses human freedom and the ability of decision. It is important to emphasize that Frankl perceives this distinction exclusively heuristically. The introduction of the differentiated terms of soul and intellect are actually meant to show the aspects of an indissoluble unity.18 Therefore, religiousness involves the human being’s entire existence.

In his book dedicated to the relationship of psychotherapy and religion, Frankl summarizes the results of the research of existential analysis in three points. As the starting point of the research, he marks the “ancient phenomenological state of human existence as a conscious and responsible existence”.

Following this, logotherapy has attached the intellectual dimension to the spiritual dimension, revealing the unconscious spirituality of the person, which manifests itself phenomenologically by existential decisions. In the third stage of development Frankl’s existential analysis revealed the unconscious religiousness within the unconscious spirituality of the person: the reference to an unconscious God. It displayed the transcendent “You” behind an immanent “I”.

This way Frankl gets to the definition of the “unconscious God”, which however does not refer to God’s unconscious nature, but to the

15 Freud. 1991. 26.

17 Frankl. 1997. 43.

16 Freud. 1991. 38.

18 Frankl. 1997. 34.

13 Freud. 1990. 202–203.

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fact that our relationship with God can sometimes be unconscious or even suppressed.19 Likewise, Frankl also draws attention on the fact that these statements do not leave the ground of empiricism, and so they do not refer to a “short-circuited” metaphysics or a “dilettante theology”; instead, they are based on the methods of free association and dream interpretation elaborated exactly by psychoanalysis.20 From a methodological point of view, however, existential analysis handles facts as “phenomenological facts”, that is, it does not reformulate them for sake of a previous dogmatic concept of science. Religiousness, Frankl claims, does not have the character of instinct, but rather of decision: “Religiousness is either existential or inexistent.”21 Therefore, the psycho-hygienic significance of religiousness increases in logotherapy, not without meaning, however, that religion is something utterly different than psychotherapy or logotherapy.22 It derives from all this that the subjective psychological and anthropological aspects of religion stand in the forefront of the investigations of existential analysis, similarly to psychoanalysis. And still, in accordance with his phenomenological approach, Frankl arrives to completely different results than Freud.

From this perspective, it is not religion that is unmasked as an illusion, but any kind of seemingly scientific pseudo-metaphysical theory, which displays religion and the phenomenon of religiousness as the impediment of humanity and science, neglecting several other dimensions of religious reality: “Existential analysis has not been standing where psychoanalysis had been for a long time now; we are not concerned with the future of an illusion any more, but with the eternity of a reality. With eternity, with the present, the presentness of a reality, which has revealed for us the religiousness of the human being: with a reality understood in a strictly empirical sense. A reality, which may remain unconscious, and which can be suppressed.”23 Therefore religion in Frankl’s eyes is not an illusory manifestation of the human soul, but a reality which could also be distorted by a religiousness extradited to authoritative reason.24 If we perceive the

reality of religion as “dynamic totality”,25 then, in this comprehensive horizon of meaning, religion interpreted in an existential analytical way always appears as the concrete religiousness of a concrete individual, as the true possibility of her or his freedom, decision, and responsibility.

Religion is thus an independent phenomenological fact to which the human being relates one way or another by her or his decisions.

In Frankl’s concept, religion is not the person who asks the question related to the meaning of life, but life itself, and everybody answers it with their own lives.26 In Frankl’s understanding this means that the human being is first and foremost a responsibility-being. Deriving from this, the question of religion is answered in each individual person by their responsibility-beings. Whether the individual person experiences this particular question as the voice of their consciousness or the word of a personal God is insignificant from the point of view of logotherapy.

It can be stated, on the basis of the above, that logotherapy and existential analysis radically break with the Freudian program of meta-psychology, which is problematic not only from a scientific but also from a philosophical point of view.27 Instead, Frankl overtly speaks about a metaphysically nuanced concept of person and therapy,28 which we, employing Scheler’s term, understand as a meta-anthropological viewpoint.

Meta-anthropology points to the relationship of “the most formal ideal of an endless and absolute otherworld existence”29 and the unity of the person. That is, Frankl’s logotherapy and existential analysis create a concept of anthropology that recognises the existence of a dimension beyond the person, but only realises it in the phenomenon of self-transcendence.

19 Cf. Frankl. 2002. 50–59.

20 Frankl. 2002. 53.

25 In Mezei’s approach the unity of reality and the “meaning of reality” is achieved in religion. Cf. Mezei. 2004.

21 Frankl. 2002. 53.

26 Cf. Frankl. 1993. 16.

22 See again the motto of the article.

27 For a detailed analysis of Freudian meta-psychology, see: Nyíri. 1993.

23 Frankl. 2002. 56.

28 Cf. Frankl. 1996. 70.

24 This line of thought is in harmony with the arguments of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict

29 Scheler. 1995. 107.

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XVI.). Cf. Habermas–Ratzinger. 2005.

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III. Logotherapy as Individual Mystagogy

Religion for Freud appears in connection to the principle of joy (Wille zur Lust). Frankl, however, implies a more basic phenomenon of will: if the person knows why, then she or he can bear almost any kind of ‘how’-s.30 From the point of view of motivation theory, existential analysis points to the will striving for meaning (Wille zum Sinn) as a basically human phenomenon and hails the unconditioned meaning of life.

But what is the source of this unconditioned meaning? Frankl stops at this point, considering that the positive answer to this question can only be given by faith. Existential analysis draws attention to the concrete unity of the person, happening here and now, while it detaches the intentional content pointing beyond the formal elements of absolute otherworld existence to the sphere of faith.

In Frankl’s view, the human being is not capable of achieving meaning beyond immediate tasks or concrete individual tasks.

The ultimate meaning, which penetrates the universe, is given as an effect and not as a task to be achieved: “it accomplishes itself independently of my action and will, whether or not I add to it, or cooperate with it.”31 Accordingly, he terms the comprehensive meaning of life or the world by the category of “beyond meaning”. Frankl consistently differentiates thus between personal meaning and the kind of meaning that the human being searches for in particular approaches (philosophy or theology). Despite this, theologians have always eagerly referred to Frankl’s work, as the importance of logotherapy in religious pedagogy and pastoral psychology is significant.

Naturally, these references always aim at the widening of Frankl’s perspective and the completion of logotherapy. They lack the fact that logotherapy ceases to question further in relation to the problem of meaning; while recognizing the unconditioned meaning of life, it stops at a here-and-now meaning and does not question its lively source.32 Philosophical theology, however, in accordance with its task, steps further in the name of that lively experience, which Paul the Apostle describes in his oration to the Greeks on the Areopagos: “Yet God is actually not far from any one of us: for in God we live and move, and have our being” (Acts 17,27–28).

30 In relation to this, Frankl always quotes Nietzsche. For example: Frankl. 1997. 257.

31 Frankl. 1996. 278.

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According to Frankl, it is only faith, and not any kind of knowledge, that makes possible the transition to a higher dimension. And faith, just like love, cannot be willed. “As intentional activities, they only come into being if an adequate content and object emerges.”1 Because of emphasis on the existential character of religiousness, Frankl’s philosophy of religion can be related first of all to the ideas of theologians who also think in a similar philosophical horizon. Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner are among them.

Tillich explains the difference between philosophy and theology by the different character of the philosopher’s and the theologian’s disposition. The philosopher, in harmony with her or his mode of questioning and the requirement of objectivity, tries to preserve some distance in the course of the contemplation of existence.

In opposition to this, the theologian cannot preserve any distance from the object of her or his research; she or he always relates to her or his object in an existential way: she or he “has to look to where the thing which ultimately defines him manifests itself. (...) The source of his knowledge is not the universal logos, but the incarnated Logos.”2 The two fields, however, are closely connected because, Tillich emphasizes, both the philosopher and the theologian partake in existence, and they can both account for this by the ontological categories they create. Such a common category (existentiale) can be, for example, responsibility, which also involves a theologically based care of the soul.

In this respect the question is not merely to determine the philosophical and theological affinity of logotherapy and existential analysis, but to see how they can be applied in outlining an individual religiousness and faith. Karl Rahner considers logotherapy very important in revealing the existential references of the transcendental knowledge of God: “This mystagogy would only be possible in individual conversations, in individual logo-therapy, which would warn the individual person to really experience transcendence, even if perhaps not calling it so, by turning directly to the concrete world.”3 According to Frankl, logotherapy is a medical and not a theological psychotherapy. Therefore the question of, and the search for, divinity is not a primary goal of logotherapy, only a side-effect. It is a fact, 1 Frankl. 1996a. 76a.

2 Tillich. 1996. 38.

3 Rahner. 1998. 61. For the comparison of Rahner’s and Frankl’s ideas, see: Zaiser. 2004.

32 Cf. Németh. 1993.

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however, that every theory and practice centred on the logos must face such a “side-effect”, even if this would surpass any original perspective of psychotherapy.

But whoever wishes to apply logo-therapy as a medical, and not as a theological psychotherapy in accordance with its original intention, may follow Frankl’s note written about his book The Suffering Man: The Anthropological Foundations of Psychotherapy: “Although (...) several of the arguments exceed the «anthropological foundations of psychotherapy» in the direction of the liminal questions of theology: I hardly have anything to withdraw even after a quarter of a century. Still, it must be kept in mind that the ideas and arguments (...) referring to the borderline between anthropology and theology can by no means be regarded as elements of logotherapy.”4 Suggested Reading Frankl Viktor Emil, Theorie und Therapie der Neurosen: Einführung in die Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse.

München, 1993.

Frankl Viktor Emil, Der leidende Mensch: Anthropologische Grundlagen der Psychotherapie. Bern, 1995 Frankl Viktor Emil, Orvosi lélekgondozás: A logoterápia és egzisztenciaanalízis alapjai (Medical Psychotherapy: The Foundations of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis) (transl. Jakabbffy Imre – Jakabbffy Éva).

Budapest, 1997.

Frankl Viktor Emil, A tudattalan Isten: Pszichoterápia és vallás (The Unconscious God: Psychotherapy and Religion) (transl. Varga Judit – Bircsák Anikó – Varga Zsófia). Budapest, 2002.

Frankl Viktor Emil, Értelem és egzisztencia: Előadások és tanulmányok (Reason and Existence: Lectures and Studies) (transl. Csiki Huba – Sárkány Péter). Budapest, 2006.

Freud Siegmund, A mindennapi élet pszichopatológiája (The Psychopathology of Everyday Life) (transl.

Gergely Erzsébet – Lukács Katalin). Budapest, 1990.

Freud Siegmund, Egy illúzió jövője (Future of an Illusion) (transl. Schönberger István). Budapest, 1991.

Habermas Jürgen – Ratzinger Joseph, Dialektik der Säkularisierung: Über Vernunft und Religion. Freiburg im Breisgau, 2005.

Husserl Edmund, Logische Untersuchungen: Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Hamburg, 1992.

Mezei Balázs, Kortárs vallásfilozófia: Szisztematikus vázlat (Contemporary Philosophy or Religion: A Systematic Outline). In Nyíri Kristóf (ed.), Vallásfilozófia Magyarországon (Philosophy of Religion in Hungary). Budapest, 1995. 9–21.

Mezei Balázs, Vallásbölcselet: A vallás valósága I–II. (Philosophy of Religion: The Reality of Religion).

Máriabesenyő–Gödöllő, 2004.

Németh Dávid, Isten munkája és az ember lehetőségei a lelkigondozásban (The Work of God and the Possibilities of Human in Care of the Soul). Budapest, 1993.

Nyíri Tamás, Mélylélektan és ateizmus: Siegmund Freud kultúraelmélete (Psychoanalysis and Atheism: Siegmund Freud’s Theory of Culture). Budapest, 1993.

Rahner Karl, A hit alapjai: Bevezetés a kereszténység fogalmába (Foundations of Faith: Introduction to the Concept of Christianity) (transl. Endreffy Zoltán). Szeged, 1998.

Yalom Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy. New York, 1980.

Sárkány Péter (PhD) is a senior lecturer in the Apor Vilmos Catholic College, Institute for Romology and Applied Social Sciences. His fields of research are phenomenology, philosophical anthropology and psychology, applied philosophy and ethics, theoretical and ethical foundations of social work, logotherapy and existential analysis. His email address is sarkany.p@gmail.com.

4 Frankl. 1996. 219.

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The Central European Imaginary: Four-dimensional Borderlands in Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies

describes the dialectic of globalization as the constant production and dissolution of locality, where the imagination is inextricably bound up with the social: image as social fact, imagined communities, imagined worlds. He notes that the exercise of the imagination was long a privilege of the elite classes, of artists and visionaries; but now, with the advent of the mass media, anyone can imagine anything.

But, contrary to what one might expect, the imagination is hardly a benign force. Rather, Appadurai argues, imagination is an extremely potent force responsible for much of the dynamics of the world today. In contrast to fantasy, imagination is a social force that carries with it an inherent potential for expression, for action. Groups, communities, nations, cultures imagine themselves – and inevitably they imagine themselves in opposition to an Other. Thus the forces of identity construction act in direct opposition to the nature of the reality that most, if not all, people presently find themselves in.

Taken in the context of the former socialist countries of Central Europe, these two theories are intriguing: not only a physical borderland between East and West, trying hard to redefine itself as Center, the ‘countries in transition’ found (or perhaps still find) themselves also caught in a temporal borderland between the old socialist or communist system and the new still-evolving democracy.

As the enforced uniformity of international socialism crumbles, those caught in the middle are forced to confront the mythical Other, along with all the chaos and uncertainty that inhere within such confrontation.

Sadly, this challenge from the ‘outside’ all too often evokes an extreme reaction in the form of nationalism or xenophobia as people struggle to hold on to (or create) some sort of fixed identity. In some cases, as in parts of the former Yugoslavia, this struggle takes a tragically violent form; but even when no actual blood is shed, violence is done to the human spirit.

Magyar (Hungarian) director Tarr Béla’s 2000 film Werckmeister Harmonies (Werckmeister harmóniák) beautifully explores these aspects of Otherness, violence and humanity in the context of a typical Magyar community; the film, however, is shot in such a way as to give it a unique ‘timeless’ and ‘placeless’ feel, leading one to easily apply it to the wider region as a whole. The director notoriously refuses to discuss the possible deeper meanings of his films, insisting that they stand alone outside the symbolic level. While this may be 2

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Globalization by definition involves the shattering of boundaries, the transcendence – or transgression – of neat encapsulated unities in favor of the undifferentiated stuff of post-modernity. While it is theoretically quite possible and convenient to draw neat lines around nations and states and color them in on maps of the world, on the ground it is clear that there are always some messy edges on the borders between cultures and communities.

In their 1992 article Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference, Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson put forth a concept of the borderland in the context of contemporary globalized culture: “The term does not indicate a fixed topographical site between two other fixed locales (nations, societies, cultures), but an interstitial zone of displacement and deterritorialization that shapes the identity of the hybridized subject.”

They further argue that these borderlands, far from being insignificant, are increasingly the ‘normal’ locale of the postmodern subject. In other words, living in the gray area between black and white is a key feature of the life of contemporary humans, and coming to terms with a shifting and uncertain identity is thus a key project of humankind.

Gupta and Ferguson base their argument in part on the seminal 1992 work of Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large. Appadurai 1

1 Gupta Akhil – Ferguson James, Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.

Cultural Anthropology 1992/1. 18.

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2 Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996. 3–7.

3 Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996. 7–8.

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true, there is certainly ample material in his evocative imagery to be explored on the symbolic level as well.

Thus, starting from the theoretical framework outlined above, this paper will explore notions of identity and the imaginary in postsocialist transitional Central Europe and the neighboring South East Europe (Balkans), as presented in the film Werckmeister Harmonies.

Visual evocations of place and the creation and dissolution of communities will be analyzed as the characters in the film try to come to terms with the Other and with themselves, ultimately leading to an understanding of the underlying forces that shape the contemporary reality of this complex, beautiful and sometimes explosive part of the world.

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I. Music of the Spheres

Weighing in at two and a half hours, there is far too much material in Werckmeister Harmonies to begin to analyze it all here. The film, based on the novel Az ellenállás melankóliája (The Melancholy of Resistance, 1989) by Krasznahorkai László, does not lend itself to a typical plot summary. While it does have a narrative form, it is constructed and ideally viewed as a series of individual scenes, each one of which can be analyzed as a discrete entity, and likewise as a part of the whole. Tarr’s characteristic style, shooting each scene in one complete take (some of which last five or six minutes), emphasizes this integrity of the individual scene. It can be conceived almost as a series of images or frames, like a photo essay. Let me begin, then, by describing some of the key scenes of the film, and with them some of the symbolic figures which will be central to my analysis.

The film opens in a nondescript pub in a nondescript Magyar provincial town filled with the usual collection of nondescript drunks.

Into this world steps János, the film’s protagonist. At the urging of the patrons, he undertakes to explain to them a curious natural phenomenon they expect to experience shortly: a total eclipse of the sun. As he describes the phenomenon, János pulls the drunks into a living demonstration of the mechanics of the eclipse. One man stands in the center, the Sun; a second slowly rotates and revolves around him, mimicking the motion of the Earth. Finally a third man joins in, also simultaneously rotating and revolving, but around the second man – this third man is the Moon. After a bit of bumbling and stumbling, the play-acting begins to take on the nature of a dance.

4 Tarr Béla (dir.), Werckmeister harmóniák. Marseille, 2000.

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But then, at the precise moment of alignment, János freezes the actors in place: the Moon has come between the Earth and Sun, and its body completely blocks the Sun’s face. A shadow falls over the Earth. The men remain in such position for a few minutes that seem like an eternity; then János finishes his explanation and sets the in motion again. The Earth emerges from its shadow back into the light of the Sun. In the next scene János goes to visit an elderly friend, György bácsi. György bácsi is a musician, perhaps a bit of an eccentric.

When János arrives, he is in the midst of declaiming against the musical tuning system devised in the XVIIth century by the German Andreas Werckmeister. The scale devised by Werckmeister puts forth a system of equal temperament, which has formed the basis of Western music for the past two hundred years. Its origin lies in an attempt to solve an age-old musical problem: in tuning a scale based on a given harmonic relationship between notes, say thirds or fifths, due to a mathematical anomaly the note at the end of the scale does not perfectly match up with the note that should be one octave below it – middle C and high C are not exactly in tune.

Therefore, some compromise is always necessary in tuning. Prior to the introduction of equal temperament, instruments were tuned in such a way that the most important chords were perfectly in tune, less important harmonies were slightly compromised, and one or two notes, called the ‘wolf’, were so far off that they were unplayable. In equal temperament, though, the pure octave is divided into twelve equally spaced tones, thus allowing music to be transposed up and down the scale, written and played in any key. All the harmonies are compromised to exactly the same degree, which is mathematically determined – thus all notes are playable, but none of them is perfect.

János has to interrupt György bácsi’s tirade against this musical outrage to bring him some bad news: he has a letter from György bácsi’s ex-wife, Tünde néni, notifying him that she requires his help for a special project. A circus has come to town, and with it, many “undesirable” types are beginning to congregate in the town square.

An undercurrent of restlessness can be felt. Tünde néni wants to cleanse the town of these vermin and restore it to its rightful order, full of decent, law-abiding, upstanding citizens. Tünde néni herself, however, does not have the necessary moral authority to carry this 5

5 Bicknell Stephen. Temperament: A Beginner’s Guide. http://www.albany.edu/piporg-l/tmprment. html.

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off; and even with the help of the chief of police, she is unable to impose her will on the townsfolk. Thus Tünde néni appeals to her exhusband, who is well respected in the community, to make a round of the town, gathering signatures of the residents to support her cause.

Her ‘request’ cloaks a barely veiled threat: if György bácsi fails to gather all the required signatures by 4 o’clock that afternoon, Tünde néni will move back in with him. György bácsi is fiercely opposed to the idea and flatly refuses to cooperate, but János argues and finally manages to convince him that it is better to do this relatively harmless deed to appease Tünde néni, rather than having her come back and disrupt all their lives again.

The circus that is bringing all these undesirable types is in itself a great mystery – one day posters appear around the town announcing its arrival, and then in the middle of the night it pulls into town, such as it is. The circus features only two attractions: a colossal blue whale, fully preserved, and the inscrutable ‘Prince’, about whom nothing concretely is known, but many things are surmised. Rumor has it that he is a dwarf with a mysterious power over people to incite them to riot – violence had broken out in all the previous stops on the circus’ tour, and the townsfolk are simultaneously curious and apprehensive.

János himself is much more interested in the Whale than the Prince; he is fascinated by its size and perfection, an awe-inspiring example of God’s natural order. After enthusiastically proclaiming its marvels to György bácsi and all his other friends, János returns to the square to have another look at the Whale. He finds that the circus has closed for the day, but he manages to find an unsecured opening in the container and sneaks inside for a peek. While there, he overhears an argument between the owner of the circus and the Prince – the owner insisting that he cannot tolerate any more violence, and the Prince vehemently proclaiming his right to speak to the townspeople.

In the end, the owner concedes, and the Prince is given free reign.

The final key scene presents the inevitable: a riot breaks out among the townspeople gathered in the square, who then rampage through the town, burning and destroying everything in their path. They head for the local hospital. Once there, they embark on a swift, silent and brutal attack on the hospital’s inmates, all defenseless elderly people.

Beds are overturned. Windows are broken. Old women are beaten mercilessly. Everything that can be smashed, broken or destroyed is laid waste. And through it all János watches silently, wide-eyed.

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Finally the mob comes to a room with a shower in it. They tear away the curtain to find a terrified old man, half-starved, trembling in the bath. He looks at them silently, resigned. The mob stares back in silence. Then, after a bit, they turn and quietly slink away, one by one. Humanity returns. And only the shattered windows, the broken doors and the bodies lying in the street speak to the madness that has transpired.

II. Imaginary Borderlands

Having laid out the key scenes and characters, let us now move on to the key terms of our discussion: ‘borderland’ and ‘imaginary’. These terms were interrogated by Gupta and Ferguson, and Appadurai, respectively, with the former drawing heavily on the latter. As noted earlier, Gupta and Ferguson do not conceive of a borderland in the strict geographical sense of the term, ie. the ‘edge’ of a particular fixed unity, where it comes into contact with another particular fixed unity. Instead, they define it as a zone of ‘displacement’ – the wrong place – or ‘deterritorialization’ – no place.

It is interesting to try to lay out the dimensions of the borderland.

While the first two dimensions, length and width, are easy to see on any map, identifying the third dimension – depth – at first causes a bit of a stretch. As the Bulgarian artist Luchezar Boyadijev has noted, however, it is only by applying the idea of depth that the reality of identity in post-Socialist Central and South East Europe can be understood. With dozens of identities – national, ethnic, religious and otherwise – overlapping on a single territory, cultures become sedimented, eternally shifting, sometimes even colliding.

This in turn brings us to the fourth dimension – time –, which, as history, serves as the medium in which these identities come to overlap. “What does it mean, at the end of the twentieth century, to speak (…) of a ‘native land’? What processes rather than essences are involved in present experiences of cultural identity?” ask Gupta and Ferguson. With this question, they hit upon the crux of the matter – the fact that contemporary identity is based more on a dynamic process changing over time, than on a static, fixed essence, as traditional philosophy and psychology would decree.

Taken out of its literal context, it becomes easy to see multiple 6

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6 Kluitenberg Eric, The Politics of Cultural Memory. http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9907/msg00083.html.

7 Gupta Akhil – Ferguson James, Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.

Cultural Anthropology 1992/1. 9.

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examples of borderlands, both of time and identity, even in a film such as Werckmeister Harmonies, where the action takes place in a single town, and almost in a single locale in the town square. On the most basic level, the two key characters of the Whale and the Prince serve as embodied borderlands. Their significance in this way is perhaps a bit obscured by their superficial appearance, which places them at the extremes of the spectrum – the gargantuan Whale and the dwarf Prince – rather than in the middle where we might expect a ‘borderland’ to lie.

Symbolically, however, they represent two unique examples of creatures on the borderline between humans and our lower kin in the animal kingdom. If we heark back to the olden days of traveling circuses, we can find many examples of ‘freak shows’, in which dwarves and other persons with the misfortune to be born misshapen or disfigured were shown off as curiosities. Their disfigurements were also considered to reflect upon their moral character – a shrunken body was a sign of a shrunken conscience, whereby they deserved to be classed with the beasts, given that humankind’s capacity for moral reason was established with the Enlightenment as elevating us above the rest of the animal world.

The whale, too, functioned as a link between the human and animal kingdoms: as an aquatic it lived in the sea and swam with other fishes, but as a mammal it breathed air, fed its young with milk, and exhibited structural characteristics surprisingly similar to the human skeleton. In fact, the decision to classify the whale as a mammal instead of a fish was greatly controversial at the turn of the XIXth century, since it challenged conventional wisdom (not to mention religious belief) about humanity as distinct from the rest of nature and placed us a little too close for comfort to the world of the beasts.

Moving on from physical to temporal borderlands, the most obvious example is the eclipse described in the opening scene, where day and night seem to merge and overlap. Like the whale and dwarf, this borderland also has a symbolic moral significance: day and night, light and dark, good and evil. In fact, Tarr’s use of black-andwhite cinematography emphasizes the importance of light and dark in the film, giving it a leading role of its own. When János trudges along the street in one of the opening scenes, we see him passing from dark to shadow to light and back again in the glow of the 8

8 Najafi Sina, Cutting the World at its Joints: An Interview with D. Graham Burnett. Cabinet 2007–2008/4. 81–88.

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streetlights, symbolically mirroring the passage of the Earth in the Moon’s shadow and the human soul’s descent into darkness and reemergence therefrom.

And, although it is not explicitly mentioned in the narrative, the film itself is situated within a temporal borderland at the meta-level.

The aptly named transitional period in Hungary, following the fall of communism, during which the market economy and civil society should be developed, also represents an inherently chronological process rather than a fixed event, a clean break between the totalitarian past and the democratic future. This borderland between “was” and “will be” is the ephemeral present, in which the film is set – a present that is hard to pin down, that exists more in the minds of the people than in any concrete indicators on the ground.

Appadurai notes that “one of the most problematic legacies of grand Western social science (…) is that it has steadily reinforced the sense of some single moment – call it the modern moment – that by its appearance creates a dramatic and unprecedented break between past and present.” He goes on to say that “the global is to space what the modern is to time. For many societies, modernity is an elsewhere, just as the global is a temporal wave that must be encountered in their present.” Thus the temporal borderland of the ambiguous present calls the very idea of modernity itself into question, at least insofar as a particular society or community is concerned.

This quote also highlights the subtle, but inextricable link between globalization and modernity; thus transitional societies are facing not only a temporal, but also a spatial transition, making their modernity critically dependent on today’s vast flows of people and ideas, a radically different state of affairs from what such countries experienced during Soviet-dominated state socialism.

Appadurai argues that it is precisely these flows of people and ideas – in the form of mass migration and the media – that together make up “the work of the imagination as a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity.” For him, the imagination is the driving force of contemporary identity (and identity politics), fed by “diasporas of hope, diasporas of terror, and diasporas of despair.” The modern imaginary differs from past imagination in three crucial ways: one, it is no longer the exclusive realm of artists and shamans, but has 9

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9 Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996. 3.

10 Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996. 9.

11 Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996. 3.

12 Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996. 6.

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entered the everyday life of the average human; two, it is a dynamic force towards action, not an escapist fantasy; and three, thanks especially to the mass media, it is a collective force, a “community of sentiment”, rather than the property of a single individual. Taken together, these three characteristics of the contemporary imagination have grave import for societies in transformation.

In Werckmeister Harmonies, the work of the collective imagination in forming identity can be seen most clearly in Tünde néni’s efforts to cleanse the town of undesirables. Where before there had been simply townspeople, suddenly categories were introduced: ‘Us’ and ‘Them’.

Significantly, this break occurs simultaneously with the introduction of a foreign element into this hitherto homogenous town: the circus.

The circus represents both of Appadurai’s elements for feeding the imagination, namely migration or the movement of persons, in the form of the Prince, the Whale and a few other circus personnel; and the media or the movement of ideas, in the potential of these persons to speak to a broad audience at a single locale, as when the crowd gathers in the square to take in the spectacle. It is interesting to note that the circus is perhaps the original form of mass media, given its origin as entertainment for the masses in ancient Rome.

Tünde néni and the Prince effectively set up two competing conceptions for the townspeople to identify with: Tünde néni on the side of tradition, law and order, and the Prince on the side of chaos, change and the unknown. The Prince’s identity as an outsider is reinforced by the fact that he speaks a foreign language, Slovak; this fact in itself places him into a singular borderland of ‘neighborother’, as Magyars and Slovaks co-existed in one country for a thousand years, always, however, fiercely maintaining their distinct identities. But Tünde néni herself is also an outsider of sorts, having been divorced from her husband and living away from the town for a long period of time.

Along with their competing ideologies, the two demagogues also employ competing methods of communication: Tünde néni relies on traditional methods of personal contact, which are based more on relationships between people, while the Prince employs the modern mass media approach of speeches to large crowds, which abstracts information from the person communicating it. Thus the unsuspecting townspeople find themselves suddenly called upon to decide which side they are on, the old or the new, the already known 13

13 Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996. 5–8.

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or the possible, order or chaos. Caught in the middle between the two sides, most of them identifying neither with one nor the other, the townspeople live in a margin of uncertainty ripe for exploitation and violence.

III. The Clash of Civilizations

Homi K. Bhabha speaks about the ‘uncanny’ of cultural difference, when difference itself is called into question. This take on borders centers on the notion that no matter how threatening or unsettling a given borderland is, the lack of a border is even more unsettling.

“It is as the strangeness of the familiar that it becomes more problematic, both politically and conceptually (…) when the problem of cultural difference is ourselves-as-others, others-as-ourselves, that borderline.”

In fact, this is beautifully illustrated in Werckmeister Harmonies, where the borderline between “Us” and “Them” is also the border between civilization and barbarism. The riot scene in the hospital has been described as the “crisis of European civilization”; many people read it as a parallel to the events surrounding World War II and the Jewish Shoah (Holocaust), in which ordinary people proved themselves capable of committing tremendous atrocities. Certainly it can be read at this level.

The director, however, has said that the film is partially a response to the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, and this offers equally rich potential for interpretation. As in the Shoah, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina pitted neighbor against neighbor, with different nationalities who had lived together for hundreds of years finding their differences now so vital that they were willing to kill to preserve their own identity. Onlookers in Western Europe and the United States watched in horror and wondered how such ugly acts as ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ could be taking place at the end of the XXth century in Europe, the cradle of Christianity, Enlightenment values and human rights.

The easiest answer to this dilemma, and the one most onlookers opted for, was to decide that Serbs and Croats and Bosniaks and ethnic Albanians were somehow different from all of us – that they retained some kind of primitive tribalism, barbarism, that civilization has somehow passed them by. Thus a ‘Balkan ghetto’ is created.

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14 Bhabha Homi K., Location, Intervention, Incommensurability: A Conversation with Homi K. Bhabha. Emergences 1989/1. 63–88. Quoted in Gupta Akhil – Ferguson James, Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology 1992/1. 18.

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Appadurai terms this approach ‘primordialism’: the idea that “all group sentiments that involve a strong sense of group identity, of we-ness, draw on those attachments that bind small, intimate collectivities, usually those based on kinship or its extensions.”

He notes that this fallacy involves the illegitimate association of two opposing poles of irrationality: one involving group violence, genocide and terror, and the other “any form of behavior that appears antimodern, whether it involves sluggish participation in elections, corruption in bureaucracy, resistance to modern educational techniques, or refusal to comply with modern state policies, ranging from birth control to monolingualism.” Appadurai further argues that, while primordialist terminology has typically been applied by Westerners to the non-Western world, it has also been adopted, especially by the press, in relation to the explosion of ethnic violence in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. Thus “the old language of modernization has been replaced by new talk of the obstacles to civil society and sustainable democracy”, and all of Central and Eastern Europe is thereby suspect because of its ‘lack of civilization’.

The advantage of this primordialist thesis for the Western theoretician is obvious – it allows us to continue to sit comfortably at home, safe in the knowledge that our political institutions, philosophies, cultures and values have been developed over centuries to ensure that we will never descend into such atrocities. Clearly this approach is based implicitly or explicitly on the ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ that Gupta and Ferguson warned us about. These in turn are based on imaginary notions of communities at the local, national and global levels, generously helped along by the particular dynamics of communist and post-communist politics of place.

As Gupta notes, one hallmark of XXth century revolutions is the “difficulty of formulating large-scale political movements without reference to national homelands”. Thus, paradoxically enough, it is precisely the internationalist aims of the proletarian movement that fostered an undercurrent of nationalism, ultimately leading to meltdowns along ethnic or national lines in the post-Soviet period.

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15 Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996. 140.

16 Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996. 140.

17 Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996. 141.

18 Gupta Akhil – Ferguson James, Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.

Cultural Anthropology 1992/1. 12.

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In Gupta’s words, “Class-based internationalism’s tendencies to nationalism (as in the history of the Second International, or that of the USSR), and to utopianism imagined in local rather than universal terms (…) show clearly the importance of attaching causes to places and the ubiquity of place making in collective political mobilization.”

He also notes that the fourth dimension – time – packs a potent force, as “the association of place with memory, loss, and nostalgia plays directly into the hands of reactionary popular movements.”

Thus the newly liberated countries of Central and South East Europe are a prime setting for all kinds of line-drawing by many interested parties, both inside the region and out. This is the setting in which Tarr created the Werckmeister Harmonies, and it is to this particular problem of the shades of gray between black and white, the borders between Here and There, Us and Them, that the film speaks most eloquently.

Going back to Tarr’s comments about the film being a reflection on the experiences of South East Europe (Balkans) in the early 1990s, on one level this film can be read as the negation of the border between Central Europe on the one hand, and Eastern and South East Europe on the other – a division that Magyars and Slovenes, among others, have fiercely maintained, at least in words. Merely collapsing this distinction, however, does not automatically negate the primordialist thesis – indeed, the film could still be viewed with self-righteousness by a Western European or North American, serving to reinforce our previous divisions into East and West along the Iron Curtain and exposing as a fraud the efforts of Central Europe to redefine itself as different and distinct from its neighbors to the East and South.

But, starting from the assumption that Magyars regard themselves as an integral part of Western civilization, heirs to the glory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Europe’s greatest legacies, it seems to me unlikely that Tarr was trying to assert only the similarities between Central and South East Europeans, the same nationalistic forces at work with the same potential for violence. Rather, I think the film should be read more generally, as a reflection on European (and North American) civilization as a whole, and by extension all humankind – that we all have within us the potential for violence, that no political system or standard of living can be said to ensure that we treat our neighbors with dignity and respect.

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It is particularly interesting that it is never clear in the film precisely to which extent János takes part in the violence – clearly he was a witness to it, following it avidly; but it is equally possible that he was not just a passive witness, but an active participant – after all, he was certainly there at the scene. This ambiguity in the protagonist, with whom we subliminally identify, places us solidly in the borderland between Us and Them, reinforcing the idea that the distinction does not truly exist – it is merely a product of our collective imagination.

Taken this way, the film can have distinctly religious overtones: “For all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God,” as the Bible says in Romans 3,23. The inherently sinful nature of all men and women provides fertile soil for the growth of hatred and violence, and prevents us from being able to recognize our fellow human beings as sisters and brothers, more alike than different from us. We all have inside of us the capacity for evil; it does not discriminate between East and West, rich and poor, capitalist and communist.

In fact, there is some evidence in the film to support the religious interpretation: the figure of the old man in the hospital scene has a form distinctly Christ-like, or at least martyr-like – suffering, emaciated, bathed in a halo of light. And it is only after this image that the townspeople, the ordinary human folk, come to their senses and feel shame for what they have done. Thus, by implication, it is only the recognition of ourselves as mortals, with our own frailties and imperfections, that leads us to recognize our common humanity with those we otherwise might scorn, and paradoxically to be able then to seek redemption for us all.

IV. Searching for Harmony

The one scene from this film that defies nearly all reviewers in their attempts to weave it into the story line is the scene about musical temperament from which the film takes its name. I believe that analyzing this film in the light of globalization offers potential to riddle out this enigma. ‘Temperament’ exploits its double meaning, as personality and as balance, powerfully expressing the notion of identity. In the musical analogy, by a quirk of math, just like a quirk of DNA, the identity of keys, like the identity of countries and regions, are arranged on the keyboard (map) and seem to have the potential to coexist.

19 Gupta Akhil – Ferguson James, Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.

Cultural Anthropology 1992/1. 13.

20 Gupta Akhil – Ferguson James, Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.

Cultural Anthropology 1992/1. 13.

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The film ends with György bácsi going to visit János in the hospital, where he has been since his escape attempt from the town failed.

János is now mute, symbolically reverting to an animal-like state after witnessing – or participating in – the brutal raid on what might well have been the very same hospital. György bácsi tells János that he has re-tuned the piano to equal temperament, sacrificing the purity of the harmonies for the sake of the octaves. He says this with a hint of sadness, perhaps resignation, but no bitterness; the world is changing, and equal temperament is here to stay.

Perhaps the same might be said of globalization as well – our world is organized now in ever-larger groupings, in octaves instead of chords. As these various communities come into contact with each other, we can no longer avoid the ‘wolf’, the unplayable combination, the violent clash of sounds and peoples. Our only hope, at least as Tarr Béla would have it, is to sacrifice a bit of our notion of purity – whether that be political, ethnic or otherwise – in favor of fitting better into the grand scheme of things. In other words, we have to learn to inhabit the borderlands.

Suggested Reading Appadurai Arjun, Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, 1996.

Bhabha Homi K., Location, Intervention, Incommensurability: A Conversation with Homi K. Bhabha. Emergences 1989/1. 63–88. Quoted in Gupta Akhil – Ferguson James, Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology 1992/1. 6–23.

Bicknell Stephen. Temperament: A Beginner’s Guide. http://www.albany.edu/piporg-l/tmprment.html.

Gupta Akhil – Ferguson James, Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology 1992/1. 6–23.

Kluitenberg Eric, The Politics of Cultural Memory. http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9907/ msg00083.html.

Krasznahorkai László, Az ellenállás melankóliája (The Melancholy of Resistance). Budapest, 1989.

Najafi Sina, Cutting the World at its Joints: An Interview with D. Graham Burnett. Cabinet 2007–2008/4.

81–88.

Tarr Béla (dir.), Werckmeister harmóniák. Marseille, 2000.

Rebecca Blocksome is finishing her master's degree in philosophy and theory of visual culture at the University of Primorska Faculty of Humanities in Koper, Slovenia. She previously lived and worked in Budapest, Hungary as the coordinator of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) Central European Subregion (CESR) and as the publications intern for the Europe Region. Prior to that, she served for two years in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a volunteer for the Church of the Brethren Volunteer Service (BVS). She studied art and journalism in her native Kansas, USA; she is American Baptist. Her email address is rblocksome@yahoo.com.

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Earth Wisdom: Not Plato’s Preformed Forms up in the Sky I. Drama and Reflexive Change

My friend Andy Harmon took over my class on models of therapy today, and talked about Carl Gustav Jung’s notion of the Shadow.

Andy did not follow Jung all that closely, because his interest is in the meta-order undergirding drama. What makes any story, play, novel, ‘dramatic’? This is the question Andy has been exploring, out of his experience as a theatre director, and latterly out of his experience using the insights of drama to help leaders facilitate change in organisations. Andy has noticed that the process of change a leader tries to instigate in a moribund organisation can be represented by the dramatic story line of the hero or heroine’s journey of change.

Andy has drawn on Jung’s follower Joseph Campbell, and Aristotle, but has gone in an existential direction that makes his account of drama close to what I call the ‘Dæmonic’. The Dæmonic works dramatically; and as Andy stresses, drama is not just about clashes, or protagonist–antagonist battling, but is really concerned with the clashing of forces that brings about change. This is the whole thrust of the Dæmonic: to bring about change.

If Eros is about ‘natural’ growth, unfolding, development, flowering, all of which fall under Saint Anthony’s famous dictum: “Become what you [already, latently] are”, then the Dæmonic works through conflict to bring about dramatic and world-shaking change, the ultimate of which is the redemption of the entire world process, from start to finish. The Dæmonic is full of tension, pressure, edginess. It is like the storm that builds energy, and then explodes. But at the end of the storm, says Black Elk, is released the healing rain.

The paradox of the Dæmonic, and this holds for drama as Andy nuances Jung and Aristotle into a more existential direction, is twofold: confrontation with the External brings about internal change; confrontation with the Internal brings about external change.

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Always these two, in dramatic stories about the journey of change, happen at once. We can restate these two as follows: the pressure of the world changes you, so you can put pressure on the world to change it.

Or put it like this: the pressure exerted by the Dæmonic breaks and remakes you, but in doing this it actually empowers you with its terrible power, so you can change the world.

The storm attacks you, to rid you of your Lie. This grounds the storm in you, so that with its revelation, its power, its truth, you can rid the world of its Lie. I wrote of this paradox in speaking of the warrior: the warrior must fight and overcome himself if he is to fight and overcome the world.

But I added the other point of the paradox in my second statement on Flamenco: when you fight the Dæmonic on the rim, even if it destroys you, in this fight you assimilate the properties and energy of the Dæmonic, and therefore your resurrection is to become like what you fought.

Or: what you fight as Dæmonic becomes your power as a fighter.

He who is wounded by the Dæmonic is raised from that wounding as Dæmonic.

Do you understand this paradox? It is make or break for those who live the way of the Dæmonic. It is the secret of the drama that existentially blesses and curses, but dynamises, their lives, their deeds, on the ground, in this world.

II. Wisdom’s Presence and Form

But in Andy’s presentation, which was lively and highly participant, I was suddenly given to understand the presence of a more feminine wisdom that accompanies the Dæmonic. This realisation is to do with the mystery I think Jung was trying to articulate, but failed. I can barely find words for what I saw clearly, suddenly. The example that conjured it up had to do with the acceptance of our Shadow. But other cases could illustrate the same point. What hit me, out of the blue, was something like this.

Accepting the Shadow is not simply a choice we make, to do it or not do it. The way it came to me was: accepting the Shadow is not arbitrary, but accords with some inner necessity that is deeply lodged.

This then became: a wisdom latent in life guides our ‘necessary’ developmental steps, if we will cooperate with it. Something knows better than our conscious mind or conscious will that we need to

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accept the Shadow, or we will not grow, not move on to the next stage of the journey. What is this mysterious something? I call it ‘wisdom’. I think Jung called it by a plethora of names, because it has no name really: sometimes he called it the ‘Unconscious’, sometimes he called it the ‘Psyche’, sometimes he called it the ‘Self’ (my least favourite name for it). This mysteriousness is not literally our self, our psyche, our unconscious, because it is not ‘our’ anything. It is ‘other’ to us, feels uncanny as it draws nearer to us, and retains a certain alien quality of something not reducible to us, yet working through us. ‘Wisdom’ is my name for it, and my other name is ‘providence’. It is not ours, but it is rather a gift offered to us, and in some sense it does indeed approach us from the inside, not from the outside. The Dæmonic always hits us from the External; it is the Radically Other, and it is always like this whether coming at us as the Dæmonic God pure and unadulterated, or working through events in the world.

Friedrich Nietzsche was speaking in Dæmonic voice when he said: “the world is deep.”

But the wisdom I am trying to invoke here is different. It retains an ‘interiorness’, whether it works deep within one person’s psyche in that psyche’s deepest unconscious and rises to consciousness from that hidden cave far down in the Earth or works between several persons as something they share in culture, like a story. This wisdom I am trying to evoke is like the women spinning and weaving at the loom, ravelling and unravelling and re-ravelling the threads of our fate, in so far as this fate guides the soul in the steps she takes to let go of much and go through much in order to step into new terrain.

There is a natural and organic necessity in certain promptings from the soul, and this too is illustrated in story and narrative, both that told by the campfire in the tipi during long winter nights, and that which is lived and gets built into the fabric of our lives.

As with the wisdom that lies behind the ‘necessity’ for facing our Shadow, so in further developmental steps beyond the Shadow, that necessity guides if we will listen to it, respect it, and in every manner possible, cooperate with it. If we deny this inbuilt wisdom that seems to know things the conscious mind and conscious will, the whole conscious ego structure, cannot know or ever find out, then we remain high and dry in that wasteland of the ego. But if we simply give in to the otherness and alienness of the wisdom, reifying it as an impersonal force to which we bow down like a superstitious ‘god’ – and this was Jung’s own personal reaction, which led him to many mistakes in understanding and formulation – then we drown in its deep waters, becoming psychotic, mad as a hatter, crazy as a

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coot: a raving lunatic. There is, as Jung argued, an in-between point, where the soul has one foot deep down in the water and another foot up on dry land, and thus can ‘use’ the water to nourish the famished deserts of existence. A part of this nourishing effect is the ‘weaving things for good’ that this wisdom does via the soul’s receptivity to wisdom’s promptings.

Wisdom does not want to take us over, bully us, direct us like puppets on a string. Wisdom does not want to play ‘god’. Jung overplayed this wisdom I am describing with his somewhat Platonic, and certainly pompous, theory of ‘archetypes’. The wisdom I am alluding to here is more elusive and allusive than that. Concealed and revealed at once. Subtle. In shadows, in dark corners, in caves, in pools, in lakes, in the deep dark sea. She has no desire to be worshipped, reified, overdramatized, or anything of that pretentious Germanic-metaphysical nature. Wisdom is retiring, wisdom is a helper, a friend, a mentor, a good companion. The uncanny feeling you have when alone that you are not alone comes from Wisdom being there, with you. She is the ‘being with’, not just the ‘within’.

Even when within you, she is in fact with you, which is why her fruits prompt you and move you to share her life-energy with other people, creatures, things. She is hidden, because she is humble, not grandiose. Of all the misdescriptions of her in the world, the Platonic and the Germanic-metaphysical are the very worst. Plato makes her too heavenly, a woman without breasts, without vagina and womb, without feet and hands; a pale star in the sky, an ethereal perfection, from which everything that happens on the ground is but a falling away, an imperfect copy, a merest faint reflection, or poor echo. This could not be more wrong as an account of wisdom. Or the Germanicmetaphysical bent, from which Jung suffers, is to make wisdom a tin pot dictator, an overblown, pompous and pretentious god. In fact, Jung’s Gnostic god, the self as god and the unconscious as the god’s temple, is precisely a false development of wisdom into delusive, mad and deadly territory. The lone genius, in his tower by the lake: a more false representation of wisdom is hard to find. Jung was so close and so far away. Jung could not finish what he began. He lost the plot. He lost his way. He did not listen to and cooperate with the wisdom whispering in his soul, as she does in every human soul.

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III. Wisdom within and without

Two things, all too briefly described, on which to end. First, the nourishing of our more superficial psychology from the deeper places where wisdom hides and lives helps us respond to wisdom’s sense of inner necessity, or inner prompting, so we can be guided – not dictated to or drowned in a wave – towards new terrain of the soul, new steps on the journey, in which soul and heart go through existence on the ground, together. What are archetypes? I think the heart makes the steps. But the soul supplies something vital to this: the soul’s wisdom points those steps in a ‘wise’ direction, along a ‘wise’ path, even into tangles and complications, which can get rough and be ugly, that are ‘necessary’ for our growth in the journey on the road. What Jung termed archetypes are figures and constellations of meaning we meet in our soul growth on this road. They fill out the story. Indeed, I see this wisdom that is a providence going with the world on its vast track, like a caravan crossing a wilderness, as not only the weaver, but also the storyteller. Certain characters and certain constellations between them, certain situations are ‘archetypal’, because they are met with whenever and wherever the soul is led by her mentor, her guide, her helping companion, wisdom. The soul is a fountainhead of stories, and archetypes are simply hard-wired and recurring patterns of meaning in the stream or river of meaning that constitutes the story of our life in total. The heart cannot be taken over by, and live out, these archetypal elements in the soul’s story-telling; that is not how it works. The stories do not take over and dictate like gods inflating our poor human flesh, with all its fallibility, fragility, vulnerability.

Jung never found the medium place in the soul between water and land; but equally, he never realised how stories work, as they are told to the heart. Stories do not dictate, they encourage; they tell us we are on the right track. Yes, they do prompt steps we actually take – but these steps are often inner, and thus more to do with clearing the inner vessel, making it a better receptacle to mediate wisdom; they are not the existential steps the heart takes in the arena of the Dæmonic. But stories are like the Biblical description of a real wife: the good friend, the support and help, the ‘enabler’, as E. Graham Howe, my mentor, called the soul’s wisdom. Stories facilitate, enrich and add something vital to the steps that are most existential and of the heart. Such stories cannot take the place of our actual steps, but in encouraging us that we are on track, they afford a mysterious blessing. And naturally, they benefit us with much wisdom. And perhaps even in the throes of the life and death battle on the rim, in

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the arena of the Dæmonic, the beautiful dark woman, who is wisdom is there, whispering some helpful encouragement.

Whether we take this help is up to us, and so it does not absolve us of personal responsibility, either in the soul or in the heart. The notion that the heart simply ‘lives out’ an archetypal story is the fallacy behind speaking of, for example, the ‘inner warrior’ as an archetype. The warrior appears in the stories of the soul because he is so crucial to the destiny of the world; but only the heart, by carrying a weight and bearing a pain, can perform the existential action of a warrior.

So, archetypes are not the little Aryan gods that Jung made them out to be. For him they replaced his relationship, as person and as heart, with the Dæmonic God radically Other to him, as to all of Creation.

Jung fled the father, and by doing that, turned the mysterious soul friend, wise, healing, philanthropic (a lover of humanity), into some ghastly ‘great mother’. Wisdom is more humble, fey, retiring, than that monstrous nonsense to which Jung more and more subscribed.

The wisdom I am trying to clear a space for here is Taoism’s ‘spirit of the valley’, the dark feminine that always lies low, and never pushes itself up, or pushes itself forward. Plato denies this wisdom its true ‘life’ on Earth, while the Germanic-metaphysical tradition denies wisdom her real power, which is ability to be the ‘low laying’ mystery, by absurdly blowing up her power in the wrong way, like a balloon that needs to be popped.

Second, the wisdom woman, who dwells in, and will come forth from, our soul is earthy, not heavenly. She is of the Earth, even if she came from the sky. This is the final point about her nature I want to make. I need to circle round this, until the core is reached.

Though there is a sort of archetypal meta-structure that wisdom always weaves, which appears in her stories whenever and wherever she tells them, this meta-structure is not a reflection here below of some heavenly preformed set of patterns in the sky. Those Platonic patterns are too rigid, too fixed, for all eternity. Moreover, they cast what happens ‘below’ in a purely negative light, regarding matter and time as ‘degenerations’ from the ‘spiritual perfection’ of form that exists forever only above. But I see wisdom as all about matter and time. Her dynamic is on the ground, committed to the ground, and thus she tacitly values below more than above. She is the helper and companion, the facilitator and enabler, in the journey through time, on the ground. She is the little mother of what is coming to birth through our soul, and thus she is pushing us in our journey, not wanting us to be cut-off from that journey – as happens to people of the ego.

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But this has a stunning implication. Thus, the meta-structure in wisdom, though it has certain constants in it, is not defined essentially by those constants; its essence is caught in a word that came to me, as the accompaniment of ‘necessity’: ‘suppleness’. In short, wisdom does not simply impose constants, top-down, from above on the below. Rather, dwelling deep down in the below, being by nature its ‘lowliness’ (no grandiosity or omnipotence of a narcissistic kind), wisdom is supple and adapts constantly to changes in circumstance, in situation, in context. You could say of this – and I know it sounds paradoxical – wisdom is so latent it does not even exist until it is constellated in the particular, in the complex, in the changing, on the ground. Wisdom only comes into real existence, only becomes crystallised, in the concrete, the here and now, the ambiguous and messy specificity of this person, this group, this culture, this stage in the journey – not any other. Wisdom is mainly, in her dynamic, supple, adaptable, different in different settings. She must not be a boss and a dictator. It was part of Jung’s pathology that he saw in wisdom only the constants, not the suppleness always changing, always different, always meeting the new with the new. Yes, the constants exist, and if it helps you to call them ‘archetypes’, fine; but wisdom is not mainly archetypal, in either the Platonic or the Germanic-metaphysical sense. Wisdom is fluid. Wisdom is about the particular, the complex, the messy, the changing. Wisdom is the water in mud that grows the lotus, or the rose. Yes, of course, wisdom’s weaving of story is always the old themes, but always in genuinely multiple and new embodiments.

But this leads to the most surprising conclusion. Wisdom is herself on a journey, wisdom herself is changing.

The water in the valley is what I have here tried, all too imperfectly, to point to, not box in.

The Celtic goddesses of sex and fertility, of war, of death and rebirth, the ‘dark feminine’, this is the wisdom I respect, and am not afraid to honour with my inadequate words.

Jamie Moran was born in the United States of America (USA), of Red Indian and Celtic descent, but he married and now works in England. At 22, he converted from Tibetan Buddhism to Russian Orthodox Christianity; he works as a therapist and senior lecturer on counselling and psychology at a university in London. He is writing a novel on the conflict between settlers and indigenous peoples in the American West of the XIXth century, and he is a sub-chief in the Cante Tinze (Brave Hearts) Warrior Society of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) at Pine Ridge, South Dakota. His email address is J.Moran@roehampton.ac.uk.

Jennifer Stiles

United together in Praise (Psalm 148)

Psalm 148 is an imperative hymn seeking to unite Heaven and Earth in praising the name of the Lord. Its two-part structure reinforces the psalm’s message of unity: all creation, heavenly and earthly, is called to praise the Lord. Psalm 148 does not conform to an anthropocentric worldview. Instead, it unites Creation in a common task, joining together in a harmony of praise for its exalted Creator. (v1) Hallelujah!

Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the heights. (v2) Praise Him, all His angels, praise Him, all His hosts. (v3) Praise Him, sun and moon, praise Him, all the stars of light. (v4) Praise Him, heavens of heavens, and waters that are above the heavens.

1

2

3

4

5

1 This phrase – composed of a Piel, Imperative, 2nd, masculine, plural verb ‫ ללה‬and proper noun – can be translated into English as “praise ye Yah” (Brown Francis – Driver S. R. – Briggs Charles.

219. 238). Here it stands as “Hallelujah”, a term familiar to the prescribed audience. The Hebrew verb-root ‫ ללה‬carries the meaning of “shine, be boastful, praise,” though in the Piel form and within the formula of worship, “praise” is the thrust of the meaning. (Brown Francis – Driver S. R. – Briggs Charles. 237–238.)

2 The personal name of God [ ‫ ] הוהי‬or “the proper name of the God of Israel” (Brown Francis – Driver S. R. – Briggs Charles. 217).

3 The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Hebrew text contains a note on this verse. Likewise, Allen writes, “The plural in 103,21 supports Q” (Allen Leslie C. 312). In light of the textual note and cross-referencing Psalm 103, ‫ ואבצ‬is here translated “hosts”.

4 The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Hebrew text contains a note on this verse. This expression is a hapax legomenon (appearing only once in the Bible), which the LXX interprets as indicating “stars and light” (Allen Leslie C. 353).

5 The phrase “heavens of heavens” indicates an upper, raised region of the World associated with the divine realm (Seybold Klaus – Dunphy R. Graeme, Introducing the Psalms. Edinburgh, 1990.

182.).

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But this has a stunning implication. Thus, the meta-structure in wisdom, though it has certain constants in it, is not defined essentially by those constants; its essence is caught in a word that came to me, as the accompaniment of ‘necessity’: ‘suppleness’. In short, wisdom does not simply impose constants, top-down, from above on the below. Rather, dwelling deep down in the below, being by nature its ‘lowliness’ (no grandiosity or omnipotence of a narcissistic kind), wisdom is supple and adapts constantly to changes in circumstance, in situation, in context. You could say of this – and I know it sounds paradoxical – wisdom is so latent it does not even exist until it is constellated in the particular, in the complex, in the changing, on the ground. Wisdom only comes into real existence, only becomes crystallised, in the concrete, the here and now, the ambiguous and messy specificity of this person, this group, this culture, this stage in the journey – not any other. Wisdom is mainly, in her dynamic, supple, adaptable, different in different settings. She must not be a boss and a dictator. It was part of Jung’s pathology that he saw in wisdom only the constants, not the suppleness always changing, always different, always meeting the new with the new. Yes, the constants exist, and if it helps you to call them ‘archetypes’, fine; but wisdom is not mainly archetypal, in either the Platonic or the Germanic-metaphysical sense. Wisdom is fluid. Wisdom is about the particular, the complex, the messy, the changing. Wisdom is the water in mud that grows the lotus, or the rose. Yes, of course, wisdom’s weaving of story is always the old themes, but always in genuinely multiple and new embodiments.

But this leads to the most surprising conclusion. Wisdom is herself on a journey, wisdom herself is changing.

The water in the valley is what I have here tried, all too imperfectly, to point to, not box in.

The Celtic goddesses of sex and fertility, of war, of death and rebirth, the ‘dark feminine’, this is the wisdom I respect, and am not afraid to honour with my inadequate words.

Jamie Moran was born in the United States of America (USA), of Red Indian and Celtic descent, but he married and now works in England. At 22, he converted from Tibetan Buddhism to Russian Orthodox Christianity; he works as a therapist and senior lecturer on counselling and psychology at a university in London. He is writing a novel on the conflict between settlers and indigenous peoples in the American West of the XIXth century, and he is a sub-chief in the Cante Tinze (Brave Hearts) Warrior Society of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) at Pine Ridge, South Dakota. His email address is J.Moran@roehampton.ac.uk.

Jennifer Stiles

United together in Praise (Psalm 148)

Psalm 148 is an imperative hymn seeking to unite Heaven and Earth in praising the name of the Lord. Its two-part structure reinforces the psalm’s message of unity: all creation, heavenly and earthly, is called to praise the Lord. Psalm 148 does not conform to an anthropocentric worldview. Instead, it unites Creation in a common task, joining together in a harmony of praise for its exalted Creator. (v1) Hallelujah!

Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the heights. (v2) Praise Him, all His angels, praise Him, all His hosts. (v3) Praise Him, sun and moon, praise Him, all the stars of light. (v4) Praise Him, heavens of heavens, and waters that are above the heavens.

1

2

3

4

5

1 This phrase – composed of a Piel, Imperative, 2nd, masculine, plural verb ‫ ללה‬and proper noun – can be translated into English as “praise ye Yah” (Brown Francis – Driver S. R. – Briggs Charles.

219. 238). Here it stands as “Hallelujah”, a term familiar to the prescribed audience. The Hebrew verb-root ‫ ללה‬carries the meaning of “shine, be boastful, praise,” though in the Piel form and within the formula of worship, “praise” is the thrust of the meaning. (Brown Francis – Driver S. R. – Briggs Charles. 237–238.)

2 The personal name of God [ ‫ ] הוהי‬or “the proper name of the God of Israel” (Brown Francis – Driver S. R. – Briggs Charles. 217).

3 The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Hebrew text contains a note on this verse. Likewise, Allen writes, “The plural in 103,21 supports Q” (Allen Leslie C. 312). In light of the textual note and cross-referencing Psalm 103, ‫ ואבצ‬is here translated “hosts”.

4 The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Hebrew text contains a note on this verse. This expression is a hapax legomenon (appearing only once in the Bible), which the LXX interprets as indicating “stars and light” (Allen Leslie C. 353).

5 The phrase “heavens of heavens” indicates an upper, raised region of the World associated with the divine realm (Seybold Klaus – Dunphy R. Graeme, Introducing the Psalms. Edinburgh, 1990.

182.).

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(v5) Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created. (v6) Then He established them forever and ever, He fixed their boundaries, and they did not pass over it. (v7) Praise the Lord from the Earth, sea monsters and all depths, (v8) Fire and hail, snow and thunderclouds , stormy winds fulfilling his word, (v9) Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, (v10) Wild and domestic animals, creeping things and flying birds, (v11) Kings of the Earth and all people, princes and all judges of the Earth, (v12) Young men and maidens together, old men and young. (v13) Let them praise the name of the Lord, for His name is exalted, His glory alone is above the Earth and Heaven. (v14) He has raised up a horn for His people, a praise for all His pious ones, for the people of Israel, who are near to Him. Hallelujah!

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

6 Here the verb ‫ ללה‬appears in the imperfect form and breaks the imperative pattern of the previous verses. Lambdin writes: “The imperfect, with or without slight modifications, may be used in an indirect imperative sense in all persons.” (Lambdin Thomas O. 118.) Here the verb is translated expressing the jussive.

7 Here the verb ‫ רבע‬is in the Qal, imperative, 3rd person, masculine, singular form. It is translated in the plural to make the English verb agree with the plural subject (“them”).

8 From the root ‫ רטק‬meaning “thick smoke”, this term is translated “thunderclouds” in light of the suggestion that this could be a figurative expression for “clouds in thunderstorm”. (Brown Francis – Driver S. R. – Briggs Charles. 882.)

9 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Literally “beasts and all cattle”, translated in this way to highlight the inclusive meaning intended by the contrast of wild and domestic animals.

10 Here ���������������������������������������������������� the verb is translated expressing the jussive.

11 ����� The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Hebrew text contains a note on this verse indicating that the text probably reads: “ ‫ ” ויברק‬or “(the people of) those close to Him”, translated here “who are near to Him” (Allen Leslie C. 313, referencing Gunkel Hermann).

12 See ������������ note 1.

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Jennifer S tiles : United together in Praise (Psalm 148)

Literary Design and Character

Placed near the close of the Psalter, Psalm 148 is part of the crescendo of praise that concludes the book. Third in a group of five closing “Hallelujah Psalms”13, Psalm 148 is unique in the breadth of its inclusion as it calls all of creation to praise. John H. Hayes writes: “Psalm 148 is by far the most inclusive in its enumeration of those who should offer praise: angels, Sun and Moon, shining stars and highest heavens, sea monsters and the deep, mountains and hills, fruit trees and cedars, creeping things and flying birds, kings and princes, men and maidens, old and young. The psalmist here envisions the whole of the Universe as one massive chorus offering to God His rightful praise.”14 Augustus Tholuck eloquently elaborates on the placement of Psalm 148 at the conclusion of the Psalter: “as if it were intended that their perpetually recurring, ‘Praise ye,’ should form a many-voiced echo of the praise, which fills every preceding psalm.”15 Its position at the end of the Psalter, coupled with its dramatically inclusive call to action, leaves the reader humming a note of unity with a sense of community of cosmic proportions.

Psalm 148 is surely a hymn of praise. Its many calls to praise (vv. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 13, 14) concretely assert the thrust of the psalmist’s call to action. In defining those psalms that make up the genre “hymns”, Klaus Seybold and R. Graeme Dunphy describe a group of hymnic texts that “combine song, profession of faith, and prayer, and which had their fixed place in the public worship of both the first and second temple.”16 Artur Weiser adds specificity to the placement of Psalm 148 into this category: “In form [Psalm 148] is an extended hymnic introduction, which we may think of as sung by the priest (choir) at a cultic ceremony, which according to v. 14 was based on the establishment of salvation for the Israelite cult community.”17 This particular hymn was used in public worship to call those congregated to participate in song, praising the Lord as part of a choir of universal magnitude. As a song of praise addressing the entirety of

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Creation, Psalm 148 includes a profession of faith, proclaiming Who the Lord is in relation to all created things.

Interestingly, there is a sub-group of “imperative hymns” within this genre, whose characteristic features include the exhortation and ensuing recitation of praise.18 With its ten expressions of the imperative call to “praise” (vv. 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 14), Psalm 148 surely lives within the subgroup of imperative hymns.

Leslie C. Allen identifies the psalm as an imperatival hymn in form, “marked by development of the call to praise in the naming of those summoned.”19 These imperative hymns are described as serving a “liturgical-dramaturgical purpose”, functioning to introduce songs for worship, cries of joy, and musical productions.20 Through the very dramatic use of the imperative, coupled with the roll-call enumeration of created things called to praise the Lord, Psalm 148 certainly serves a liturgical-dramaturgical purpose.

While the classification of Psalm 148 as a hymn of praise may have a significant degree of consensus, its structure is debated. In his Treasury of David, Charles H. Spurgeon writes, “The song begins in the heavens, sweeps downward to all depths and all deeps, and then ascends again, till the people near unto Jehovah take up the praise.”21 Spurgeon seems to identify three movements: the first in the heavens, the next in the depths, and the final on Earth. Likewise, Mitchell Dahood SJ identifies Psalm 148 as having a tripartite structure, which he sees as mirroring the “three categories of beings”: celestial beings, creatures of the nether world, and terrestrial creatures.22 Spurgeon and Dahood assert a three-tiered structure as supporting Psalm 148.

On the other hand, there are those who would disagree, arguing for a bipartite structure within Psalm 148. Allen considers verses 1a and 7a as parallel calls, each marking one of the psalm’s two parts.23 He directly attacks Dahood’s tripartite classification: “Dahood has divided the psalm into three parts. (…) Hillers is surely correct in dubbing this division ‘very unbalanced’ and its author ‘misled by a desire to translate ‫ ץרא‬as ‘underworld.’”24 18 �Seybold Klaus – Dunphy R. Graeme. 114. (Referencing Crüsemann F.)

13 � Mays 147.

19 �Allen Leslie C. 313.

14 � Hayes 23.

20 �Seybold Klaus. 114.

15 � Tholuck Augustus. 494.

21 �Spurgeon Charles H. 421.

16 � Seybold Klaus – Dunphy R. Graeme. 113–114.

22 �Dahood Mitchell SJ. 352.

17 � Weiser Artur. 837.

23 �Allen Leslie C. 313.

24 �Allen Leslie C. 313.

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Jennifer S tiles : United together in Praise (Psalm 148)

Hans-Joachim Kraus agrees, identifying Psalm 148’s structure as “clearly discernible and transparent.”25 He identifies two main parts (vv. 1–6 and vv. 7–14), both containing addresses and calls to praise and glorify the Lord.26 While there are arguments on both sides of the structural debate, the bipartite structure of Psalm 148 is as follows: I. Call to the heavens (vv. 1–6) a. Imperative call to praise (vv. 1–4) b. Jussive refrain emphasizing harmony and unity (vv. 5–6) II. Call to the Earth (vv. 7–14) c. Imperative call to praise (vv. 7–12) d. Jussive refrain emphasizing harmony and unity (vv. 13–14) i. Statement of faith speaking to the immediate context of human worship (vv. 13–14) The dual calls to “Praise the Lord from…” (vv. 1, 7) and the dual jussive refrains, “let them praise” (vv. 5, 13), create a parallel structure for each of the psalm’s two parts. Heaven (‫ )םימש‬and Earth (‫ )ץרא‬are traditionally paired in both poetry and prose; here they make parallel sections of the psalm.27 The opening and closing “Hallelujah” (vv. 1, 14) imperatives, calling the community to join in praise, form an inclusio (inclusion) around the bipartite structure of the Psalm. The structure of the hymn, a dual call to heavens and Earth, is indicative of the Psalm’s larger meaning.

Culture, Contemplation and Meditation

25 � Kraus Hans-Joachim. 563.

This theme is essentially linked to the psalm’s core theology, which asserts that the Lord alone is exalted and all Creation is called to respond by praising the Lord. Only through the unity of all created voices can Creation attempt to reflect the Lord’s majesty back in praise.30 The Lord alone is exalted; no other hierarchy is established in this psalm. James Luther Mays articulates: “We [human beings] are in our obligation to praise no different from and no more than all the rest. Everything and everyone is identical in being addressed by the psalm. We human beings are one with all being in our relation to One, Whose name alone is exalted and whose majesty is above Earth and Heaven.”31 Psalm 148 describes a chorus of praise, not a human solo of adoration. It does not identify a leader among the chorus members, but rather focuses its attention on the supremacy of the object of praise, exalted above Heaven and Earth and all Creation.

Those hearing this psalm in the post-exilic era would identify aspects of the Genesis creation narratives within the lyrics of the hymn. Hans-Joachim Kraus points to the “sea monsters” (v. 7), “fruit trees” (v. 9), “creeping things” and “flying birds” (v. 10), as specific echoes of Genesis (Gen. 1,21; 2,17 and 1,21, respectively) in Psalm 148.32 In this way the psalm taps into the shared memories of the worshipping community, all of which point to the Lord as the Creator, Who speaks the world into existence, establishes its order, and maintains divinely apportioned boundaries. By lifting up the Lord as Creator and Establisher, Psalm 148 communicates the Lord’s supremacy and majesty.

In this psalm the name of the Lord is specifically exalted as worthy of praise (vv. 5, 13). The unified chorus of Creation has the “name of the Lord” as its object of praise. This name’s (‫ )שׁם‬theology – which focuses attention on the specific, personal name of God – affirms the Lord’s supremacy over the Universe.

Kraus writes: “In His name Yahweh has proclaimed Himself as Creator and King of the Universe.”33 The call to praise the “name of the Lord” would strike a powerful chord in the hearts and minds of members of the post-exilic community, a community surely familiar with the gods and religious convictions of neighboring traditions.

Dahood asserts: “The psalmist rejects the tenets of neighboring

26 � Kraus Hans-Joachim. 561.

30 �Allen Leslie C. 316.

27 � Allen Leslie C. 313–314.

31 �Mays James Luther. 445.

28 � Mays James Luther. 444.

32 �Kraus Hans-Joachim. 563.

29 � Tholuck Augustus. 494.

33 �Kraus Hans-Joachim. 564.

Exposition

The structure of Psalm 148 reflects the psalm’s theme and theology.

The two-part structure – represented by “heavens” (v. 1) and “Earth” (v. 7) – communicates the central theme of all creation praising God in a unified chorus of praise.28 Everything in Heaven is alike in being created and set in place by the Lord (vv. 5–6). Everything on Earth shares a common position under the majesty and supremacy of the name of the Lord (v. 13).

The unity expressed in this hymn is inclusive, “everything is invited to praise: nothing is too high, nothing too low.”29 The psalm repeatedly calls all Creation to sing the praise of the majesty of the Creator.

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religions concerning the origin of the Universe.”34 Psalm 148 calls all Creation to praise the name of the Lord – the Creator of the Universe – in a unified voice.

As mentioned above, the purpose of this psalm is not to proscribe a position of prominence for human beings within an earthly hierarchy.

Likewise, Psalm 148 does not seek to establish a heavenly hierarchy of gods.

Only one name – the name of the Lord – is even considered within the theology of this psalm. Mays writes: “The royal majesty of the Lord is ‘above Earth and Heaven’ (v. 13), and only the praise of all in both realms can respond and correspond to the Lord’s exalted name.”35 Psalm 148 seeks to describe a setting where all Creation praises God in unity.

Artur Weiser writes: “The glorification of the Creator and Preserver of the World fulfills the ultimate depth of meaning, which unites the inanimate created things and the living creatures in a mutual relationship; to praise the sole majesty of God is the final goal, which unites the whole Universe in a communion of God’s service.”36 The psalmist extols God as deserving of praise, a praise that the entire Universe – not just human beings – must join in singing.

This raises interesting questions. How does the Universe praise the name of the Lord? What is the role of humanity within the universal chorus of praise? Responding to the psalmist’s idiom of an upraised horn (v. 14), Mays explains that the Lord gives praise to the faithful as their dignity and power and – receiving this praise – the faithful then voice the unspoken praise of all of Creation.37 “In the praise of the people of the Lord, the name that is the truth about the entire universe is spoken on behalf of all the rest of creation.”38 The psalmist presents a picture of all of Creation praising through being who they were created to be. Humanity is distinct within that picture: the uniquely voiced member of a universal choir.

Though this idea of humanity as uniquely gifted to raise an audible expression of praise to God seems to enjoy a mainstream following, it might be wise to include a note of caution in this discussion.

While humanity is uniquely gifted, so are all other created elements described in the psalm. Psalm 148 risks distortion, if read through

Culture, Contemplation and Meditation

36 � Weiser Artur. 837.

anthropocentric lenses. Augustus Tholuck illustrates this in the following way: “Man is chiefly invited to praise the Lord. It devolves upon him, as the priest of nature, above every other creature: every rank, every age, and every generation, have abundant cause for engaging in this praise.”39 While Tholuck is inclusive in his identification of every rank, age, and generation as called to praise, his assessment of humans as somehow more invited to praise the Lord than the rest of Creation is an overstatement of the role of humanity within the chorus described in Psalm 148. This perspective of humanity as above the rest of Creation can lead to an imbalance of universal proportions.

It is interesting to note that, if indeed the psalmist is identifying humanity in the role of priest of the Universe, the psalmist does not seem to make such liturgical designations within the text of the psalm.

Humanity, just one part of the entirety of Creation called upon “from the Earth” (v. 7), is not addressed until the end of the psalm (vv. 11–12). At that point, humanity is given no special designation as playing a leadership role.

In fact, rather than being described in the psalm as helpers of Creation, Psalm 148 identifies humanity as the object of special divine assistance (v. 14). Indeed, it is the Lord, Who is described as raising up the horn and song of praise for the people (v. 14), not the people lifting up a song for the rest of Creation.

Kraus reads Psalm 148 as a “double choir” with Heaven and Earth “situated over and against each other.”40 That may be the case, but it is also possible that the Psalmist is describing a single choir united in a harmony of praise that arises from diversity and a multitude of voices. Opening and closing with “Hallelujah!” (vv. 1, 14), the structure of the psalm seems to indicate a single choir, a single musical movement.

In everyday interactions and in theological thought, contemporary audiences tend to picture human beings at the top of the food chain, imagining humanity at the pinnacle of some sort of earthly – and at times universal – hierarchy.

This psalm challenges that worldview. By identifying humanity as part of a universal choir singing a hymn of praise far more resounding and powerful than humanity alone could muster, Psalm 148 flies in the face of an anthropocentric worldview.

37 � Mays James Luther. 445.

39 �Tholuck Augustus. 495.

38 � Mays James Luther. 445.

40 �Kraus Hans-Joachim. 564.

34 � Dahood Mitchell SJ. 353.

35 � Mays James Luther. 444–445.

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Allen explains Psalm 148 as expressing the praiseworthiness of Yahweh, while underlining the reality that God’s people need helpers in offering their own praise.41 Humanity’s loudest praise cannot match the worth and status of the Lord.42 The Lord is the main focus of the praise that comprises the central theme of the whole Psalm 148; and humanity is only one voice in the diversity of Creation called upon to join this very hymn of praise.

One further point needs now to be made in addressing the intelligibility and understanding of this psalm. The closing verse seems to place a special designation upon the heads of all the Lord’s people, singling them out from among the universal choir as the objects of a very special divine attention (v. 14).

Leslie C. Allen writes: “A more intimate source for praise is found in [the Lord’s] bestowal of exaltation upon His covenant people, so that they enjoy renown. The re-establishment of the community of Judah after the exile most probably underlies the reference to Yahweh’s historical activity on their behalf.”43 It is important to remember two things when considering this concluding verse (v. 14) and any statement it might be seen as making about humanity, specifically in relation to the rest of the created Universe.

First, Psalm 148 is situated within a human context. It was likely sung at a cultic ceremony within the Israelite cult community.44 The concluding verse, therefore, can be read as an extra step in connecting the human audience with the broad scope of creation as addressed by this psalm.

Secondly, the concluding verse describes an action – the raising of a horn and a singing of a song of praise, interpreted as exaltation upon the covenant people45 – done at the discretion of the Lord.

It is not a result of the work of the people. The praiseworthiness of the Lord remains the central feature of this psalm. Psalm 148 in no way makes a statement establishing humanity as somehow in control of or in a position or dominion over the rest of Creation. Humanity is one of many voices called upon to respond to the Lord’s splendor and majesty.

Culture, Contemplation and Meditation

Psalm 148 is an imperative hymn calling the entirety of Creation to praise its Creator and Lord. Through semantics and structure, it establishes the Lord alone as exalted above Heaven and Earth and as the sole object of the praise of the entire created Universe.

As part of the concluding psalms of the Psalter, Psalm 148 depicts a universal choir of enormous inclusivity: the entirety of Creation is responding to the universal call to praise the Lord, our Maker.

This psalm informs a contemporary audience by offering a special worldview that places humanity alongside of – and not ahead of or above – all of Creation in a chorus of praise to the Creator.

Suggested Reading Allen Leslie C., Psalms 101–150. In Allen Leslie C., Word Biblical Commentary XXI. Waco, 1983.

Brown Francis – Driver S. R. – Briggs Charles (eds.), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament.

Oxford, 1907.

Dahood Mitchell SJ, Psalms III: 101–150. In The Anchor Bible. New York, 1970.

Elliger Karl et al. (eds.), Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Stuttgart, 1967–1977.

Hayes John H., Understanding the Psalms. Valley Forge, 1976.

Kraus Hans-Joachim, Psalms 60–150: A Commentary (transl.: Oswald Hilton C.). Minneapolis, 1989.

Lambdin Thomas O., Introduction to Biblical Hebrew. London, 1976.

Mays James Luther, Psalms. In Mays James Luther, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville, 1994.

Seybold Klaus – Dunphy R. Graeme, Introducing the Psalms. Edinburgh, 1990.

Spurgeon Charles H., The Treasury of David. Volume VII. New York, 1886.

Tholuck Augustus, A Translation and Commentary of the Book of Psalms for the Use of the Ministry and Laity of the Christian Church (transl.: Mombert J. Isidor). Philadelphia, 1858.

Weiser Artur, The Psalms: A Commentary (transl.: Hartwell Herbert). In Weiser Artur, Old Testament Library. Philadelphia, 1962.

Jennifer Stiles (maiden name: Mueller) got married in October 2006. She now lives in Virginia, United States of America (USA). She is a Master of Divinity student at the Union–PSCE seminary in Richmond, Virginia. She was a former copy editor of Mozaik and a former intern in the WSCF Europe office. Her email address is lost_in_schweiz@yahoo.com.

41 � Allen Leslie C. 316.

42 � Allen Leslie C. 316.

43 � Allen Leslie C. 317.

44 � Weiser Artur. 837.

45 � Allen Leslie C. 317.

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Luca M. Negro

Meditation on the Sibiu Icon (John 1,5–14; 3,25–30)

The Light of Christ Shines upon All: Hope for Renewal and Unity in Europe: this was the theme of the Third European Ecumenical Assembly (EEA3), which was held in Sibiu, Romania, from 4 to 9 September 2007.

More than two thousand Christians from all over Europe participated in the Assembly, which was jointly convened by the Conference of European Churches (CEC) and by the (Roman Catholic) Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE).

The Assembly theme was clearly inspired by the Gospel of John. The theme of light is present already in the prologue of the fourth Gospel, as we heard: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

The light is Jesus Christ Himself; and in order to avoid confusion, the Gospel specifies that John the Baptist, though a “man sent from God”, “he himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light”, the “true light which enlightens everyone”.

To testify to the light, to witness to the true light that enlightens everyone, this was the mission of John the Baptist, Jesus Christ’s forerunner; but is it not also the mission of the Church, of the disciples of Jesus Christ? Actually, the fourth Gospel influenced the Sibiu theme not only through the reference to light, but also through John’s theological reflection on witness.

This theology of witness was made visible in Sibiu through the Assembly icon. Painted on glass by the monks of the Orthodox Monastery of Sambata de Sus, not far from Sibiu, it is a special version of a very common icon, the so-called Deisis Icon (the Greek word deisis meaning prayer and supplication).

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This icon is present in every Orthodox Church, but this icon is special for two reasons: first of all, because in the original version of this Sambata de Sus icon there is a different phrase written on the Gospel, which Jesus Christ holds in His left hand.

The original has “I am the door, the resurrection and the life”, a combination of John 10,7 and John 11,25, while the Assembly icon has another verse from John, which was more directly connected to the Assembly theme: “Eu sunt lumina lumii”, “I am the light of the world” (John 8,12).

The second detail is that, in the original, all the four angels hold a long sword in their hands. After a discussion in the EEA3 Worship Committee, and in the spirit of the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV), which challenges us to purify our spirituality from all forms of violence, we asked and were allowed to have four “non-violent” angels: as you can see, they are now carrying thuribles instead of swords.

But it is time to look more closely at the other characters in the icon.

The main figure, of course, is Jesus Christ on His throne. But who are the two persons behind him? I made a test, asking several Western European Christians, and the constant answer was: well, of course, they are Saint Mary and Saint Joseph.

This is, of course, wrong, or at least half wrong. Indeed, the person on the left is Mary, but Mary’s counterpart is not Joseph, but John the Baptist. Why this rather unusual combination?

Because – I was told by my Orthodox sisters and brothers – Mary and John the Baptist are at the same time the precursors and the witnesses of Jesus Christ. They are the last prophets, and at the same time the first representatives of the Church.

For a Protestant like me, it was interesting to discover that Mary can be seen as a forerunner and a witness of Jesus Christ. She is indeed a precursor, in that she bore Him for nine months in her body.

And she is a witness; during the wedding at Cana (the first miracle of Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John), Mary is already acting as a witness of Jesus Christ when she invites the servants to confidently follow Christ’s instructions: “Do whatever He tells you.” (2,5) It is interesting to note the exact position and attitude of these two witnesses in the icon. First of all, they are not at the forefront but behind Jesus Christ, and they are much smaller then Him. Their look is fixed on Jesus Christ, and with their hands they point to Him: this is at the same time the attitude of prayer. They are not announcing themselves, they are witnessing to the true light.

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Luca M. N egro : Meditation on the Sibiu Icon (John 1,5–14; 3,25–30)

Does this not remind us of John the Baptist’s attitude, pointing disciples to Jesus Christ, saying: “Behold, the Lamb of God” (John 1,29)? And: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (3,30).

And: “He, who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie” (John 1,27). Indeed, there is a clear reference to this last verse in the icon, because Jesus Christ is portrayed wearing sandals.

What does it mean, today, to be witnesses of the light of Jesus Christ? It means to learn from Mary and John: they are not in the foreground, and their role is basically to point towards Jesus Christ, whom they themselves are contemplating.

The Assembly in Sibiu clearly suffered from the difficult ecumenical climate of recent years. The Sibiu icon was there, in the Assembly tent, to remind us of the right attitude, of the humility of witnesses.

It was and remains a challenge for all of us to take a step back, whichever church we belong to, to decrease so that Jesus Christ, the true light, will increase and His light will reach all human beings.

Luca M. Negro is a pastor of the Baptist and Waldensian Churches in Italy. He currently works at the Conference of European Churches (CEC) as their communications officer. His email address is LMN@ceckek.org. This sermon on John 1,5–14; 3,25–30 was preached by him as a meditation on the Sibiu Icon from the Third European Ecumenical Assembly, which took place in Sibiu in Romania in 2007.

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Daniel Pastircˇ ák

A Story about Love Imagine, if you will, a sandy plain, shards of mirror in the sand, and fragments of a face in the bits of mirror. You see before you the soul of the man of this story. Days were the sand, whirled up and dropped down by the wind. Fragments of thoughts were the mirror; thoughts that the man cannot collect and in their mosaic he is unable to see his own face.

Largest, however, was the space, the vast emptiness above the sand and the splinters. The space was the loneliness of the man. It stretched up and away and filled everything. “I want to know real love,” said the man. “I want someone just for myself.”

The One-above-Him, who had created the man, placed him on the land, and knew and loved him, said: “Come and I will teach you.”

So the man went, in order to learn and know. Thus, he came to a poor village beneath a poor church, and, finally, the poorest house in the village. Out of an earthen yard, onto a road between decayed fences, people were carrying a timber coffin.

In the dismal, gray light of morning, the church bells knelled the death. The father lay in the coffin, and the daughter walked behind.

This burial was, for her, a burial of everything, since the toothless gravedigger had claimed her entire family.

“Love her,” said the One-above-Him. “Both of you will die of starvation,” thundered the shadow that had been following him from the beginning.

“Love her,” repeated the One-above-Him. “The toothless gravedigger will guffaw in a leaden morning, and the bells will ring as today, but they will be ringing for your funeral,” whispered the shadow.

“I want to love her,” said the man.

As the solemn group returned, he offered the girl his arm. A curtain of tears and a veil of pain isolated her from the road on which she was walking, as well as from the man’s arm on which she was leaning.

Thus, she remained distant and unaffected. Her face, resembling a

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Luca M. N egro : Meditation on the Sibiu Icon (John 1,5–14; 3,25–30)

Does this not remind us of John the Baptist’s attitude, pointing disciples to Jesus Christ, saying: “Behold, the Lamb of God” (John 1,29)? And: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (3,30).

And: “He, who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie” (John 1,27). Indeed, there is a clear reference to this last verse in the icon, because Jesus Christ is portrayed wearing sandals.

What does it mean, today, to be witnesses of the light of Jesus Christ? It means to learn from Mary and John: they are not in the foreground, and their role is basically to point towards Jesus Christ, whom they themselves are contemplating.

The Assembly in Sibiu clearly suffered from the difficult ecumenical climate of recent years. The Sibiu icon was there, in the Assembly tent, to remind us of the right attitude, of the humility of witnesses.

It was and remains a challenge for all of us to take a step back, whichever church we belong to, to decrease so that Jesus Christ, the true light, will increase and His light will reach all human beings.

Luca M. Negro is a pastor of the Baptist and Waldensian Churches in Italy. He currently works at the Conference of European Churches (CEC) as their communications officer. His email address is LMN@ceckek.org. This sermon on John 1,5–14; 3,25–30 was preached by him as a meditation on the Sibiu Icon from the Third European Ecumenical Assembly, which took place in Sibiu in Romania in 2007.

216

Daniel Pastircˇ ák

A Story about Love Imagine, if you will, a sandy plain, shards of mirror in the sand, and fragments of a face in the bits of mirror. You see before you the soul of the man of this story. Days were the sand, whirled up and dropped down by the wind. Fragments of thoughts were the mirror; thoughts that the man cannot collect and in their mosaic he is unable to see his own face.

Largest, however, was the space, the vast emptiness above the sand and the splinters. The space was the loneliness of the man. It stretched up and away and filled everything. “I want to know real love,” said the man. “I want someone just for myself.”

The One-above-Him, who had created the man, placed him on the land, and knew and loved him, said: “Come and I will teach you.”

So the man went, in order to learn and know. Thus, he came to a poor village beneath a poor church, and, finally, the poorest house in the village. Out of an earthen yard, onto a road between decayed fences, people were carrying a timber coffin.

In the dismal, gray light of morning, the church bells knelled the death. The father lay in the coffin, and the daughter walked behind.

This burial was, for her, a burial of everything, since the toothless gravedigger had claimed her entire family.

“Love her,” said the One-above-Him. “Both of you will die of starvation,” thundered the shadow that had been following him from the beginning.

“Love her,” repeated the One-above-Him. “The toothless gravedigger will guffaw in a leaden morning, and the bells will ring as today, but they will be ringing for your funeral,” whispered the shadow.

“I want to love her,” said the man.

As the solemn group returned, he offered the girl his arm. A curtain of tears and a veil of pain isolated her from the road on which she was walking, as well as from the man’s arm on which she was leaning.

Thus, she remained distant and unaffected. Her face, resembling a

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Daniel P astircˇ ák : A Story about Love

peach flower’s petal in the midst of a night of ebony hair, was as inaccessible as the white, slumbering moon.

“Be my wife,” he uttered as the fire flared up in the earthen chest of the stove, and he joined her for a cup of linden tea. She gazed as if in a trance. “Be my wife,” he repeated.

“I will be,” she consented absentmindedly, “but wait until my grief ceases.”

So, he waited. He worked, cutting down timber for the landlord in the nearby forest. He squared the timber that the landlord had granted him, and in his hands the little hovel was transformed into a house of joy.

“The fire burning inside me: that must be love,” he thought.

“You love her because she is beautiful,” grinned the shadow at him one evening.

His wife was already quietly sleeping. The man, however, was awake, watching wild bodies of flames battling with each other in the cavern behind the stove’s grate. “I will love her even if her beauty fades away.”

In the morning, a moan woke him. His beautiful wife was writhing with cramps, and her open eyes glowed, bright with fever. Following the villager’s advice, the man brought an old monk to his wife’s bedside.

“Only God can save her,” muttered the old man.

“Let her live!” cried out the man to the One-above-Him. “I will love her no matter what happens. I will stand by her until my death. I want to learn from you.”

The days passed through him, rusted carriages full of flames. In this fire, he was losing her; in this fire, he was losing himself. Slowly, the carriages, full of raving, and the carts, full of moaning and fever, rolled away and left her ruined like a desert or a land burned by war.

Her complexion, once soft, smooth and fresh, was now sallow and the peach flower transformed into gray paraffin.

“I will love her in her misery,” said the man.

The days passed. The love of the woman, like a mirror, reflected the man’s faithfulness.

“I want to be your slave,” she would say to him. She would squat at his feet and, with scrutiny, watch for the mere flash of a wish in his eyes.

“It is easy to love a devoted slave,” the shadow whispered when the man was standing alone in the summer garden, the sky full of stars.

“Even if she does not serve me, or even if she dishonours me, I will

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love her. The One-above-Me gave me a sign: a star, shining equally on everyone, the healthy and the sick, the beautiful and the hideous, the devoted and the unfaithful.”

In the stone room, beneath the candlelight, the man found the loyal body afflicted by a stroke, motionless and helpless.

“Lord, give me strength to persevere,” he cried out to the Oneabove-Him. The sickness spread as a bush grows to the river. Behind the gates of months, everything that made her human abandoned her. Her lips, paralyzed, mouthed soundless moans; her fingers froze in statuesque gestures; and her lifeless eyes gazed out into nowhere. She could not speak, see, hear, or move, yet was alive. Now, he became the slave.

He served her body, though it barely held any signs of life.

“This is love. This is faithfulness,” people murmured.

“This is not love. This is pride,” the shadow caught him one autumn day in the alley that sloped downhill from the church.

The man’s head was wreathed in wet tatters of mist. “What is love?” he implored and raised his eyes to the slate silence of the clouds as if he could see the One-who-is-above-everything. “I do not know… I do not understand…”

“You will be invisible,” he heard in response. “You will serve and no one will be able to see you; you will suffer and no one will feel sorry for you; you will give up your life and no one will say: Thank you.”

So, he returned home, but no footprints on the road revealed his passing. He washed her. The water coursed down the numb body, but no visible hands drew the water. He worked, cooked, and cleaned.

The house was clean, filled with warmth and the smell of fresh food, but no one could be seen in the yard, or in the stable, or on the roof, or in the attic, or in the room.

“A miracle!” people exclaimed. “The Almighty, Himself, takes care of her since her unfaithful husband has abandoned her.”

Another miracle happened as well. The woman recovered from her illness. As the spring grass pushes up through the wet crust of the past summers and renews the appearance of faded life, so too, did the face of the girl radiate with her old beauty.

“She is beautiful,” people said, “but has nothing.”

The woman thought about that also. In the marketplace one can buy sweet strawberries, juicy apples, or fruit from the countryside gardens. The beauty of a woman can also be exchanged for money.

Therefore, she smiled at, embraced, or kissed the wealthy men, who spent long weeks in a hunting lodge near the village. Her house

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was soon furnished with chests and the cabinets overflowed with jewellery; silk; brocade; delicate, lace-trimmed dresses; scarlet scarves; and cashmere blouses.

“I can endure no more,” lamented the man. “It is easier to push the boulder of solitude up an endless mountain than to love a traitor.”

Disappearing among the straw bonnets of the houses, he passed earthen walls, decayed fences embroidered with ivy, and his beloved’s house. The One-above-Him found him and stopped his flight with one simple question.

“Where are you going?”

“I have done everything. She does not need me anymore. Love is beyond my strength. I am leaving in order to forget.”

“You are leaving, now, after you have neared the truth for the first time? Wait for another moment and hear my case. Listen. There was a man, at first only in my mind, created by my idea. I kneaded him from the dust and the barren earth. From the bone-white milk I blew a fragile bubble in which I hid the whole world. I wrote a book and placed it in the bubble, and into it I breathed the breeze that turned the pages in the man’s head. I wanted him to resemble me as a son resembles his father. I thought that when the time was ripe and the years reached their fullness, he would know me and know my love. He was looking for love, however, that could be owned, not anticipating that love can only be given. So, I reached my hand towards him in order to lead him. I taught him patiently and waited for him to one day understand. I saved him from starvation when he chose a poor girl. I carried him for many years, whilst despair, like a flood, deluged his whole universe. He wanted to own her and, therefore, he lost her; she dissolved like a mirage under his hand’s touch. Have you seen the wind sweeping rustling leaves from the November sky? Have you seen the rain, its bronze arrows nailing these leaves to the chilly ground into the stony jaws that grind them up, while the fragrance of decay permeates frosty air, the burial song of the leaves? Such was his life and such was his love. I was with him throughout all of this and felt the pain of his suffering. During that time, he only remembered me when he needed help. Tell me, what should I do with this man?”

“Go away and leave him.”

“You are sending me away, and, yet, you do not even recognize that you are this man. However, I will not leave. I will not forsake you.

I will stay with you until the last moment, because unfaithfulness is overcome by love.”

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As the words faded away, one could have heard the crystal flutes in the forest palace. The wind drove invisible wheels downhill.

These were summer’s carriages, gathering withered flowers into the valley of ice, while the clowns of autumn set Bengal fires all around, announcing a new act in the continuous performance of life.

The Sun departs, and the Sun returns. The leaves fall, unite with the earth, and are born again. The earth maintains its regular breath, because in all its metamorphosis the One-Who-Stands-above-It never deserts it.

Thus, the man came back, because one cannot escape from love.

Love has touched him, and one who is touched is also changed.

Therefore, although he was returning to the One-Who-no-LongerCared-for-Him, the man walked calmly. Now, no more invisible, but still the same as years ago, he reached the wealthy house flooded with the shadows of the fall garden.

“You did not leave!” cried his beloved. It was not clear whether amazement, joy, or consternation was reflected in her beautiful, agate-like eyes.

“I am bringing you a gift,” he replied. “I have a treasure that I have owed you all of these years.”

The man began talking. In the twilight, over the flames of the silver candlestick, he drew the story of his love. The woman saw the long, wearying days labouring like exhausted horses struggling across a wasteland.

She saw the man’s heart, and she saw her own: light and darkness, love and silence, love and unfaithfulness. In fact, the man was revealing the story of the One-above-All, since love has only one source in one heart above all hearts. She laughed, drowning out her own thoughts.

“Do whatever you want,” she said curtly, “but you are not going to stay in this house. Dirty hands do not belong to fine china nor dusty feet under freshly laundered blankets.”

She knew she was harsh; however, it is hard to turn back from a path that has been taken for a long time.

When love cannot get into a house, it makes a bed in front of the door. Neither did the man leave. He built a log cabin at the edge of the forest. Cold, autumnal winds covered it with a coat of oak leaves and then with the silver of white frost.

The winter was white and taciturn. In the morning, the village was swathed in a veil of mist and, during the day, in the smoke of chimneys. In the evening, it was cloaked in the coat of twilight.

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There was ringing everywhere: the glass of ice, the crystal of snow, and the hollow, old, urgent sound of the stone church’s tower bell under the first stars. The spring flew down from the hillside, and the little boy of summer ran out to the meadows. He tossed the little yellow balls of dandelions into the sunny valleys, the earth, and the foliage was full of shadows.

“Come with us,” the moustached squires shouted, poking their heads out of their carriages.

“Come with us,” they called the woman the next summer.

The man waited. His love was now in the One-above-All, and so he remained calm.

“Take me with you,” she cried to the squires after years had gone by, but the carriages passed as if she were a stranger.

One day what we have lived for years becomes imprinted in our faces. So too, did the face of the woman change. It was now the face of a proud queen instead of the face of an ordinary girl. As a result, the squires spurred the horses on while passing.

“Every cup has its bottom,” one shouted at her, and the nobles sang songs, emboldened by the golden mead.

When the man brought her firewood in the fall, she was changed.

Her lips were trembling and her eyes glistened with tears.

She stammered, “Forgive me…”, overwrought, she began to sob uncontrollably.

He put his rough palm on her burning forehead.

“I am awful! After all these years, my heart has turned into a lifeless stone. I want to live! I want to live again. Rekindle the old fire of love inside me,” she implored.

“Love is in the One-above-All,” said the man.

This time the woman understood. Therefore, he saw her standing alone in the garden, where autumn wove its colourful tapestries.

Therefore, he heard her crying in the night, in a corner leaning over the smoky lamp.

The past never disappears completely. One day it appears out of oblivion, and we are indicted as at the Last Judgment: witnesses against ourselves. The sea laps against the rocks for thousands of years, laving them with a swift current, and millennia change the rock into sand.

Every tear that springs from sincere repentance is stronger than the sea, and more powerful than thousands of years. Thus, her tears broke down her stony heart, and in its sand they lit the fire of new love.

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She gave away the wealth of the house. She traded gold for a glimpse of joy in the children’s eyes, and jewellery for a smile in the wrinkles of an old woman. The lips with which she kissed the man were fresh like a young girl’s again.

Can you imagine a desert transformed into an oasis by springs of water? Can you imagine a garden full of mirrors reflecting beloved faces? If you can, then you see the soul of the man at the end of our story, because it is here that our story ends.

Daniel Pastirčák (1959) is a poet, prose-writer and essayist. He graduated with a degree in Protestant theology in Bratislava, Slovakia. He works as a preacher of the Free Evangelical church (Bratská cirkev). His book Damian’s River (1993) was listed on the List of Honour of the International Board of Books for Youth. His other books are Tehilim and Cintet; Christ in Brussels. Cintet was honoured as the best Slovak book of the year for youth. He is also engaged in art and has exhibited in galleries in Slovakia and abroad. His email address is pastirco@isternet.sk.

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