Spiritual Capacity, Spirituality and the Challenge of Freedom

Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 145 (March 2013) 5-17

The Contemporary Theological Project

Spiritual Capacity, Spirituality and the Challenge of FreedomJames R. Cochrane1

ABSTRACT

The fortieth anniversary of the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa (JTSA) offers a chance to reflect on its beginnings with a view to outlining the theological task for the present time. JTSA’s name reflects a orientation to ‘doing theology’ in the context of southern Africa—to confront the burning issues of the day through disciplined, high quality theological discourse. Over time, that intent has been challenged both by a dramatically changing context, and by several anti-intellectual currents within the wider Christian community. Where are we now, then, with regard to the theological task before us? I try to answer that question in three steps: first, by commenting on the actualities of our present time (judging them to be disturbing); second, by asking what possibilities, concealed in our actuality, provoke a hopeful theological enterprise for our time; and third, by posing a meta-analytical question, of whether spirit, and spirituality, might be the touchstones of the required theological enterprise. Here I reflect my concern to ground a broad, particular understanding of spirit that goes beyond any confessional claims, one that ties it to the notion of creative freedom.

This essay, essentially setting out some parameters for the theological task of the present, takes as its starting point the fortieth anniversary of the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa (JTSA), launched in December 1972. It is instructive to return, first, to those beginnings. The introductory issue of the Journal contained six pieces, some by now illustrious names such as Desmond Tutu, David Bosch and Hans-Ruedi Weber.2 Throughout its life, the Journal continued to publish articles by thinkers and leaders of high standing; glancing through the first ten

1 Originally written as the 40th Anniversary Lecture of the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, given at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 17 October, 2012.

2 The other contributors to the first issue were Ernlé Young, John Painter and Klaus Nürnberger.

James R. Cochrane is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Senior Research Associate in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town. <[email protected]>

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years of publication alone, one finds a rich smorgasbord of notable names: Alan Paton, Axel-Ivar Berglund, Gabriel Setiloane, Jürgen Moltmann, Simon Gqubule, Eberhard Bethge, Martin Prozesky, Charles Villa-Vicencio, Allan Boesak, Howard Clinebell, Manas Buthelezi, John Howard Yoder, Bonganjalo Goba, Orlando Costas, Wentzel van Huysteen, Robin Lovin, Sigqibo Dwane, John Hick, John Cumpsty and Simon Maimela, to name but a few. Clearly, the written record of contemporary theology in southern Africa would be unimaginably thin without the persistent presence and quality of the JTSA.

Unsurprisingly, the early context of the Journal set its tone. Gestating in the mind of John de Gruchy during his time with the South African Council of Churches, the Journal began life during one of the darkest periods of Apartheid. South Africa in 1972 was, effectively, a police state, led by Prime Minister B. J. Vorster, previously Minister of (in)Justice and Police. His brother, the Reverend Koot Vorster, was head of the white Dutch Reformed Church. That combination represented, on the one hand, the worst of theology—an intimate and unholy alliance between state and church. On the other hand, especially with very fresh memories of the role of the Confessing Church in questioning or resisting the Nazi regime in Germany,3 it also presented a challenge to the best of theology. In many ways, the journal took up that task.

During the 1970’s the world was a challenging place. Besides the deepening crisis that Apartheid represented for South African society, which was to come to a head in the 1980’s, it was the time of the Vietnam War and the height of the Cold War.4 The Civil Rights Movement was maturing in the USA.5 The Ecumenical Movement inspired and energised a new generation of young Christians,6 myself included, political and liberation theologies were capturing

3 See the pamphlet by Eberhard Bethge, biographer and brother-in-law of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on his visit to South Africa: Eberhard Bethge, A Confessing Church in South Africa? Conclusions from a Visit (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1973). See also “The Reception and Interpretation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer”, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 3 (1973), 6-17.

4 An outstanding history and analysis of the Cold War may be found in Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

5 For a clear history of the Civil Rights Movement that includes key primary documents, see Steven F. Lawson and Charles Payne, Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968 (2nd edition) (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006).

6 The full history of this movement is contained in three volumes: Ruth Rouse, Stephen Neill, and Harold Edward Fey, eds., A History of the Ecumenical Movement: 1517-1948 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1993); Harold Edward Fey, The Ecumenical Advance: A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Volume Two 1948-1968 (London: SPCK, 1978); John Briggs, Mercy A. Oduyoye, George Tsetsis, eds., A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Vol. 3: 1968-2000,” (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2004).

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the imagination of many,7 while the World Council of Churches provocatively launched the Programme to Combat Racism in Geneva,8 later headed by Barney Pityana, another South African stalwart. In South Africa itself, the Christian Institute,9 led by people of the calibre of Beyers Naudé, Mashwabada Mayatula and Theo Kotze and ultimately banned by the state on October 19, 1977, took a lead, among other things, in challenging the heresy of Christian Nationalism,10 exposing torture in detention,11 encouraging Black Consciousness and Black Theology,12 questioning military conscription, interrogating the Apartheid state’s policies encouraging white immigration,13 and beginning to question the political foundations of a headstrong capitalism.14

None of this escaped the pages of the JTSA. Over time, the content of the Journal consciously mirrored, and deeply probed, the context in which it was written. It provided a platform to enable the vibrant theological production that

7 Some of the key European political theologians, such as Johannes Verkuyl from the Netherlands, who wrote The Message of Liberation Today (Johannesburg: The Christian Institute, 1971), and Jürgen Moltmann from Germany, visited South Africa during this period.

8 For full details, see http://www.idc.nl/faid/448faidb.html, IDC Publishers Guide to the Microform Publication, Programme to Combat Racism, 1939-1996, accessed 19.10.2012.

9 See Peter Walshe, Church Versus State in South Africa: The Case of the Christian Institute (London; Maryknoll, New York: C. Hurst; Orbis, 1983); James R. Cochrane, “Agapé: The Cape Office of the Christian Institute”, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 118 (2004).

10 See Theo Sundermeier, ed., Church and Nationalism in South Africa (Johannesburg: Raven Press, 1975).

11 A document on torture was compiled by the Christian Institute, based on information that could be found in newspapers and other reliable sources; though the state acted quickly to ban it, it had been already rapidly circulated to all parliamentarians, religious leaders and international embassies and other groups.

12 So, for example, SPRO-CAS II (Special Programme of Christian Action in Society), closely associated with the Christian Institute, included the Black Community Programmes, headed by Ben Khoapa who was assisted by Steve Biko, under whom it later became a wholly independent body. The predecessor, SPRO-CAS I, was a Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society made up of several commissions that issued a range of publications aimed at imagining a different kind of South Africa in all the main policy arenas, including the Church.

13 The Christian Institute’s Viewpoint on White Immigration to South Africa (Johannesburg: Zenith Printers, 1974).

14 An influential book of the time was written under Christian Institute auspices on a Christian ethic of capitalism by Rick Turner, The Eye of the Needle: Towards Participatory Democracy in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1972). An excellent introduction to a full online edition of Turner’s book by Merrill Proudfoot and Ronald Christenson details this background (see http://www.scribd.com/doc/55744023/The-Eye-of-the-Needle-by-Richard-Turner, accessed 03.01.2012). Turner himself was assassinated at his home while under a banning order. See also the study-guide by Roelf Meyer, Poverty in Abundance or Abundance in Poverty (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1973).

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South Africans, increasingly, became known for around the world. It captured the ethos of the day, and it expressed the riches of the faith.15

Where do we stand in that regard now? What has happened to theology in South Africa in more recent times? For that first issue of the Journal forty years ago, Klaus Nürnberger, capturing the spirit of a significant conference held in Mapumulo, wrote a commentary on ‘A relevant theology for Africa’. If we were to imagine the Journal being launched now, what kind of commentary could we expect?

In what follows, I articulate my own response to that question, a fugue in three movements. First is an exposition of the actualities with which we are currently confronted—call them echoes of our time, the sounds of which are somewhat atonal and clashing, disturbing rather than pleasing. The second movement is a counter-exposition, moving in the opposite direction, to ask: what possibilities, concealed in our actuality, provoke a hopeful theological enterprise for our time? To deal with this I pose a meta-analytical question: might spirit, and spirituality, be the touchstones of the required theological enterprise? Lest anyone expects that this is a turn towards a particular kind of Charismatic Christianity, let me say straight away that I will be proposing a broader, particular understanding of spirit to which we all can relate. To explain that, I shall end with a coda that restates the matter in a new key: through a notion of freedom, and, on that note, we shall conclude.

Actuality: Echoes of our TimeThese are not times of glorious celebration, either of a world that one hoped might have grown in wisdom or kindness, or of a country that famously broke free of its oppressive past in the 1990’s. Those joyful, snaking lines of voters of 1994, captured in rapturous photos that sped around the globe that lit up our society as a beacon of what was then called a ‘negotiated revolution,’16 produced expectations that have since dissipated, if not disappeared. As we recently watched on TV the

15 A good example is Volume 99 of the Journal, its extended 25th Anniversary edition, published in November, 1997, in which fifteen articles were published aimed at assessing the state of theology at the time, and mapping pathways forward. It included pieces focusing on African Christian theologies, Coptic Christianity, South African contextual theology, indigenization and liberation, Afrocentrism, ‘desert’ theology, feminist and African women’s theology, historiography, African biblical studies, theological hermeneutics, and theology in the public sphere.

16 See Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, The Negotiated Revolution: Society and Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1993).

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disturbing pictures of police shooting striking workers at Marikana,17 in awful reverberations of what happened in Sharpeville in 1960 and Soweto in 1976, our sensibilities were rocked to the core as we realized we are not the society we promised to become.

Yet, to tell the truth, our sensibilities were already severely tasked: first by the trauma of HIV and AIDS, just when we thought we had gained some breathing space in a struggle for well-being; then by the enduring and intolerable refusal of too many of the privileged white elites of the past to grasp the hand of reconciliation and offer something substantial in return; by the spread, from its earlier roots in the Apartheid brotherhoods and Bantustan elites, of the poison of corruption throughout the fabric of our society—not yet a ‘new normal’ but in danger of becoming one; by the use, misuse and waste of money and resources that has gone along with cadre deployment and political patronage, accompanied by a subsequent erosion of confidence in the capacity of government to deliver what it had promised; by the incursion of legal, semi-legal and illegal syndicates into our economy to rob our society of its wealth, sequester its resources, buy out its police, or drug its citizens into oblivion; by inordinately high levels of violence against women and children, and the even larger scale of violence that men do to other men; by the fear, on our streets and in our homes, in townships even more than suburbs, engendered by crime and the cheapness of life; and, perhaps most insidiously, by the unbearable gap between rich and poor, the extraordinarily high level of inequality18 that is deeply toxic to the health of our society and, in the long run, potentially terminal.

Simply to list those ills is raw enough, yet not detailed enough to illustrate the human cost of it all. Let us then consider an ‘echo our time’ in the form of a

17 The ‘Marikana massacre,’ in which 34 striking mine workers were killed by police action (following on earlier violence by some of these workers), occurred on 16th August, 2012, and represents in the view of a large number of commentators a turning point (of what kind, remains to be seen) in post-Apartheid South Africa.

18 The level of inequality in South Africa, as measured by the Gini coefficient, is contested, with government leaders arguing that it is often overstated. A recent assessment that includes the effect, for example, of social grants in reducing the high, income-related Gini coefficient calculated by the World Bank (among the highest in the world at around 0.7), still ends up with a Gini coefficient of 0.59 (Adél Bosch, Jannie Rossouw, Tian Claassens and Bertie du Plessis, “A Second Look at Measuring Inequality in South Africa: A Modified Gini Coefficient”, School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Working Paper 58, September 2010). Comparatively, by any measure, the inequality gap in South Africa is extraordinarily high and not declining, as appears to be the case, for example, in Brazil (Murray Leibbrandt and Arden Finn, “Inequality in South Africa and Brazil: Can We Trust the Numbers?” (Johannesburg: Centre for Development and Enterprise, 2012).

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telling narrative that adds that dimension.19 Dr Siva Pillay is the Superintendent General of the Eastern Cape Health Department, a man with impeccable anti-Apartheid struggle credentials and more recent experience in governance. He has become known as ‘Dr Clean-up’. Since his appointment a couple of years ago, this medical doctor, who has battled microbiological viruses throughout his career, has been trying to root out another kind of virus, that of fraud and corruption in the Department, the effects of which are desperate. Consider rural Madwaleni Hospital, some hour and a half east of Mthatha. It is a 180-bed facility that not so long ago was regarded, not only in the province but internationally, as an exemplary health care institution. It is a victim of what amounts to a moratorium on the filling of critical posts, largely as a result of the problems in the Department of Health. Madwaleni at the time of writing had one (German) doctor instead of the fourteen it should have, no clinical manager, a deputy nursing manager as acting head of the hospital, and no head of administration. Its x-ray machines were either condemned or broken. Emergency and trauma cases, including complex pregnancies, were subjected to long waits for an ambulance which transports them to Mthatha Hospital, 100km away. The maternity section should have had 42 nurses but had ten instead. Dr Pillay, reported as close to giving up, simply said, ‘Everything is going haywire. Thieves have hijacked the process. All the gains we made are slowly being reversed. We are bleeding everywhere’. Pillay, also alluding to resistance from the highest levels to his investigations, has had three attempts on his life to date. Asked whether he was not afraid of dying, he responded: ‘I am a Buddhist, I am not afraid of dying.’

This story should be enough to have people who lead, or deeply follow, a redemptive religious faith jumping from their pulpits, pews and other places of rest, actively supporting those who have to carry the kind of burden Dr Pillay carried, with no reference to whether or not they share his Buddhist faith, and with deep determination to stand up for those who suffer the unacceptable effects of this kind of social reality.

To be clear, we are dealing here not only with contemporary problems in governance. Anyone who had properly analysed the nature of the Apartheid state in its heyday, and the looming challenge of governing a new state thereafter, would not now be entirely surprised by some of these realities. It was never going to be easy. Nonetheless, while there have been many truly positive developments in the post-Apartheid era, as a whole we face a sobering accounting of where we have arrived. Are we not all accountable for the actuality? Properly grasped, moreover,

19 See Anso Thom, “Battle to Stop the Eastern Cape Rot”, http://www.health-e.org.za/news/ article.php?uid=20033786, 28.09.2012; story provided by Andy Gray, Senior Lecturer, Division of Pharmacology, School of Health Sciences, and Consultant Pharmacist, Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), University of KwaZulu-Natal.

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we should recognize in this tale not just the story of South Africa, but a narrative that can be repeated in various forms in many parts of the world.

If indeed such echoes of our time are characteristic of our world and not just temporary aberrations that one could imagine putting in quarantine, then one might well wonder what has happened to the human spirit and why. In a recent conversation with a renowned psychologist and clinical investigator, about how peace among and between human beings might be achieved, he poignantly remarked that in his work he was increasingly encountering a disturbing trend: an expanding fixation on ‘me, me, mine, mine’.20

The permanence of human self-interest is not in dispute; rather, its growing emphasis is what worryingly reflects our time. Are we so intrinsically selfish that this characteristic of our humanity must be taken for granted as determining practice and policy, as contemporary market and social theories based on the idea of rational choice frequently assume or propagate? My conversation companion, knowledgeable about developments in genetics, is clear that this is only one side of the story and perhaps not the most important one at all. Leaving aside other indicators in child development and human history, accumulating genetic evidence also points to the biological grounds in the human being for empathy, attachment and affiliation, to the point where one may claim that the human being is wired as much as anything else for relationship, not just as a matter of preservation but as a mark of flourishing.21 Why, then, the narcissistic trend of our time?

It does not take genome science to grasp that the human spirit is affected by how our society constructs its views of the self and the other, of the aims and purposes of life, of the ordering and meaning of life together, and of the way these are embedded and embodied in material reality. The story of Madwaleni hospital dramatically demonstrates two sides of the human spirit: one folded in on itself and inconsiderate or hostile to anyone else, the other determined to hold itself accountable for what we do to hurt and destroy the mind, body and spirit of others. The challenges named in discussing ‘echoes of our time’ are not about natural disasters or the unavoidable results of human limits and limitations. None

20 In political life, especially in the USA and those influenced by its libertarians, Ayn Rand stands as a key figure who has in recent times gained increasingly popular resonance as a philosopher and novelist who represents this ethos. Rand promoted the idea that the highest moral goal we can attain to is the achievement of our own happiness, and that this required a radical egoism (see Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: New American Library, 1964).

21 See, as one example, Corey L. M. Keyes and Jonathan Haidt, Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived (American Psychological Association, 2003). A genetic approach to the matter must be balanced by other considerations, of course, including environmental ones (especially as epigenetic factors are often environmentally determined anyway). The foundations of empathy, attachment and affiliation, among other relational marks of the human being, are clearly non-linear in origin, and the extent to which any one person will exhibit these marks will be determined by a complex array of factors. The point about the relational character of human being remains, however.

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are anything other than the product of conscious human action or inaction. This is true even if we simultaneously acknowledge that any action always includes unpredictable and unintended outcomes. To imagine anything else—to argue, for example, that fate, nature, God, an unseen spirit, or anything analogous, is responsible for what results from our action or inaction—is to abrogate that which lies at the core of human dignity: precisely, all inclinations, instincts, interests and ideologies notwithstanding, that profound capacity we all have to apply our mind and to do so in a way that impacts upon how and why we act (or do not act) in a certain way. We are responsible, and we should be held accountable for being responsible.

If, then, the ‘echoes of our time’ may be regarded, at least in part, as reverberations of actions taken and not taken, in what way is theology taking any responsibility? Put differently, what kind of theological production might the JTSA depend upon now to fill its pages and enlighten or inspire its readers? What is the actual state of theological reflection in South Africa today?

Here I tread in tricky waters, and probably on many toes. Still, let me offer at least an impressionistic view. While this judgement about theology in South Africa at present is entirely my own and limited by my relative distance at this point in time from theological education and ecclesial courts, it may reflect a broader unease. What do I read or see? I see lots of evidence of sloppy, over-generalised, superficial, repetitious or clichéd thinking, often expressed through the use of well-worn mantras, claims that are not adequately (or at all) interrogated,22 sometimes evident in statements that make readily refutable claims,23 and occasionally driven by strong passions that are overly sweeping.24 What I see too little evidence of,

22 To mention some common terms that often get this kind of treatment, I would include ‘globalization,’ ‘neo-liberal,’ ‘Africa,’ ‘the West,’ ‘the Enlightenment,’ ‘solidarity,’ ‘the people,’ ‘the Church,’ ‘Pentecostal,’ and ‘prophetic.’ The point is not that these are illegitimate terms, or that their use cannot be defended on argumentative grounds, but rather that they often stand in for, and replace, nuanced critical and self-critical thought and reflection, acting as generalisations that supposedly have one meaning when none of them do.

23 A classic example is the oft-repeated claim in some theological circles that ‘poverty is growing.’ It seems self-evident that the existence of poverty is a disgrace in our society, particularly in the light of the Gospel when it is understood as expressing a ‘preferential option for the poor,’ and a theological enterprise that takes this seriously is one thing. It is another thing, however, to assert a claim such as this when the evidence from data of many kinds shows that the trend is towards less absolute poverty globally, and since 2000, in Africa as a continent too; see David E. Sahn and David C. Stifel, “Poverty Comparisons Over Time and Across Countries in Africa”, World Development 28, no. 12 (2000), 2123-55. The point is not that the current order is good (there are many profound reasons to be deeply concerned about it, in fact), but that the arguments we make should be rigorous if we want them taken seriously—and we should want that.

24 The most common ways in which this becomes visible is when an opponent or opposing idea is crudely and indefensibly represented (the ‘straw figure’ syndrome) in order to make one’s own (then

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is the combination of passion, insight, authority and intellectual rigour that the echoes of our time enumerated above would seem to require.

This is not an attack on individuals or particular institutions—there surely are exceptions in many places—nor is it a sweeping rejection of the nitty-gritty work that good theologians, biblical scholars, church historians and the like are producing, where they are doing so. Perhaps, too, my view simply reflects something that has always been the case: truly profound theological work has always been rare. It might even be regarded as the nostalgia of an aging man (gender being an element in the picture) who looks back at a supposedly golden era of South African theology,25 while my concern for rigour could be seen merely as a reflection of an academic bias that fails in the face of the passion that is required to minister and practice one’s faith in the demanding grind and multiple agonies or hopes of daily life.26

All of that considered, it nonetheless seems to me that we are in a far worse situation than we should be when it comes to theological reflection and production. Maybe that reflects a sense of loss from a time when knowing what was at stake and who was responsible or accountable was somewhat easier.27 Yet it also reflects a cry for courage, conviction and clarity of the kind that marked the pages of the JTSA during the 1970s and 1980s that seems sparse now, for the challenges are no less important and no less urgent. What makes such a judgement even trickier is that I myself might be regarded as among those who have failed the task, as someone who thus might well be a reflection of the problem. Still, that does not deny that the problem exists.

Ultimately, it is a problem not of any particular scholar, thinker or leader, but a problem of Christian witness and presence in the world for the sake of the world, for that is and should be the driving engine of theology.

That claim then leads me to turn away from what is worrying about the actual situation we are in, towards that which calls forth a different kind of actuality.

questionable) argument, or when some standard, deprecating label is applied without further ado as a means of disqualifying the person or the idea.

25 No doubt there is some truth in this, for that kind of vitality is missing now, for whatever reasons, though it would be a mistake to imagine that there was not a lot of poor, even bad theology in earlier times too.

26 Again, practical experience and engagement is important and a lack of engagement is likely to shield one’s thinking from crucial dimensions of the real, yet here too, the criticism should not be turned into a denial of the importance of rigour both for practice and for serious reflection on the real.

27 Apartheid, of course, was very clearly defined in South African law and practice, and widely rejected internationally on the back of post-Holocaust concerns, decolonizing movements and the rise of human rights discourses

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Possibility: Spirit of the FutureHuman experience is not just about the actual, though we are easily trapped by its constraints. It is also about the concealed possibilities that inform all experience and understanding, and without which nothing we respect of the human spirit would make any sense.28 Possibility in the sense meant here is real, not just speculative.

To make that clear, consider this example. In Afrikaans, that rich if ambiguous South African language, I grew up with the phrase, ‘’n Boer maak ’n plan!’—literally, a farmer makes a plan. The meaning of the phrase is clear to those who know it: one comes across an obstacle or a problem that appears to have no obvious or standard solution; one simply ignores this actuality; instead, one thinks long and hard, looking around for anything that might be brought to bear on the obstacle or problem, until a solution—up until that point hidden or unavailable to one, a ‘mere’ possibility—emerges. Result?: problem solved. In short, the actuality with which one began was already filled with unseen possibilities that are just as real as the actuality, though no one possibility is realized until the human imagination comes into play, recognizing in the concealed possibility another outcome, upon which one can act practically.

This seemingly trivial example profoundly illustrates the link between the actual and the possible, and their equivalent status as defining the real. There is no necessity here to claim an unlimited or infinite number of possibilities as being real, and it is not a contradiction to accept that, because actuality constrains possibility, that only some possibilities could be realised, while others could not. The point remains: possibilities are real, and it pays to open oneself up to them, to probe them. This places before us, as human beings, a responsibility not just for what is, but also for what could be.

The example in fact points to something further too: that one is able to see more in present actuality than exists, that one can imagine a new possibility and bring it into being—make it actual—is an enormously powerful capacity. To what extent it is a capacity of other sentient beings we cannot be sure, but it most certainly is a capacity held by human beings, and it is one of enormous consequence. We are dealing here, in the ability to project new possibilities that have never existed before, not primarily with a material capacity but with a spiritual capacity, and this is so irrespective of the degree to which one can link this capacity to any particular bio-genetic structures or neurological complexes. To be sure, we never escape

28 Indeed, as Douglas McGaughey points out in Christianity for the Third Millennium, Martin Heidegger argues in Being and Time (62-63) that possibility is ‘higher’ than actuality; see Douglas R. McGaughey, Christianity for the Third Millennium: Faith in an Age of Fundamentalism and Skepticism (San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1998), 157. I depend, with gratitude, at various points below, on insights derived from McGaughey’s work.

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bodily or material reality, which always constrains or limits what is possible. We must conclude, then, that the integral interplay of the material and the spiritual is the nature of the real, and that it is illusory to insist on the priority of the one over the other (Christian theology, at least, could never doubt this if it wishes to claim any validity for the notion of incarnation). Nonetheless, the key insight is the insight into our spiritual capacity, something we may perhaps link to the Biblical claim that we are created in the image of God, with godlike powers.29

This brings me to a further point about the notion of spiritual capacity: its link to the creative act. The profound capacity as human creatures to bring into being something that previously did not exist is truly an extraordinary capacity. It is most obviously visible in our creative interaction with nature. We see, present in the things of nature, something that can never be given to us by nature, and acting on what we see, we make something new. Think of the ancient and still present use of fire to smelt metals and turn them into tools, the taking of a log and turning it into a bowl, a bed, a cart, a chalice, or the domesticating of animals to convert a hoe into a plough. Even more dramatically, we build tools that peer more deeply than our senses ever can into the structure of matter itself and the nature of energy, coming to the astonishing insight that we can convert matter into energy and back again, with sufficient control to blow up our planet if we wish. We make huge chunks of metal fly, and small chunks of metal undertake billions of calculations per second for us. We accelerate particles that are unfathomably small almost to the speed of light. More recently we have figured out how to manufacture single molecules to switch one or off a part of our human genome, or take one undifferentiated cell and force it grow into complex organs.

Let me now add, as in a fugue where the same note reappears in another voice, a further implication that is central to what I want to argue overall: what we are able to do with the things of nature rests on precisely the same capacity that enables us to shape the things of our life together. We are capable of transforming not just the things of nature, but also the relational level of our existence as human beings too. We make new societies and we create new living arrangements to order our own lives and our life with one another. This kind of making or creating, however, is not governed by the laws of nature, even if phenomena we might link to nature—such as brute survival, demography, climate, geography or epigenetic factors—might constrain what we can do in any one place and time. What, then, does or should govern our creative capacity to order the way we live with each other?

29 Of course, many Christians and some forms of Christian theologies do indeed give priority to the spirit, to the point of denying the material body and, ipso facto, the world or cosmos as such; but that these ideas exist does not mean that they are sustainable, either in the theological tradition per se, or in daily life.

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Freedom and ResponsibilityWhether one articulates it philosophically as spiritual capacity, or biblically as the imago Dei, what we are identifying in the power of creative freedom is the source of human dignity. This dignity is definitive of whom we are as persons. It is a mark of being human, of being a creature that does not have to act only from instinct, habituation or biological needs. This dignity, because it is definitive of what we are as human beings, is violated only at the cost of stripping one’s, or another’s, humanity. The first cry of a conscious child against any unfair treatment, as parents anywhere can testify, arises from a sense of violation of that child’s dignity. It is a protest against something experienced as unjust, as a restraint on one’s creative freedom that cannot be explained or defended. Similarly, the cry of communities or peoples for justice emanates from the same fundamental source. It lies at the heart of what we mean when we speak of liberation. Yet, that cry can never be made for oneself with any expectation that it be upheld without simultaneously granting to the other the same dignity and freedom.

A second point follows, for which there can be no proof, only a statement of faith. It is linked to the earlier point about being wired for attachment to and affiliation with other human beings, indeed even with other creatures. The human spirit is not an isolated entity; it is intrinsically relational. With Paul Ricoeur,30 we can say that while there may be an ego (a point, without depth, always the same, what Ricoeur calls idem-identity), there is no self that is not already constituted by another or, over time, by many others (the ipse-identity). Even a cursory acquaintance with the development of the young human child makes that crystal clear, however much the intrusion of the ego may in later life, under particular conditions, grow stronger and perhaps even dominant. In the simplest terms, in other words, there is no dignity or freedom of an individual that does not simultaneously, and in principle, imply the same dignity and freedom for the other, in relationship with the other.

In sum, we are the bearers of a profound spiritual capacity that gives us enormous power to act in the world in ways that bring into being new possibilities. That, if you like, is our glory, at the heart of our dignity. It is a freedom that creatures who do not possess this capacity, who are largely or wholly constrained to act instinctively or habitually, cannot know. It allows us to shape nature as we will, and to shape our life together, our families, communities and societies as we think best.

It is thus, ipso facto, a relational capacity too. The consequences of our actions have ramifications, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, for those around us and for our environment. Our creative freedom is powerful enough

30 Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

17Spiritual Capacity, Spirituality and the Challenge of Freedom

that those consequences may be devastating, both for others and for life and the earth itself. The human spirit thus faces us with being responsible for our actions, being accountable for what we do or do not do. Because this deep accountability inherently extends outwards beyond particular individuals, communities, or societies to other creatures and to the earth itself and beyond, we could use theological language here, to say that we are ultimately accountable to God.

This powerful moral demand, arising directly from our spiritual capacity, and expressed as it always must be in particular spiritualities or religious convictions,31 calls forth not a proof of anything, but a faith that holds high the claims of creative freedom and human dignity as the ground of our being and the basis of justice. Because it invokes not freedom of choice, but freedom of being, it carries with it a responsibility to live and act accordingly. We can choose otherwise, of course. But that’s exactly the point. We can choose. The life of faith seeks not to constrain, limit, restrict, damage or hurt the other’s humanity, but to expand it, to defend it wherever necessary, and to entrench it wherever possible. That, if you like, is true religion, and, contrary to those who wish to see in religion something that has betrayed the spirit, it is not separate from grounded spirituality.

What does this all boil down to as far as I am concerned? This: that the task of theology and theological production is only well met, truly met, when it addresses the new possibilities in the midst of the actualities that echo our times, and when it does so for the sake of all, for the sake of the world, for the sake of the future, with the passion, the courage, the rigour, the seriousness and the hope that our spiritual capacity allows us to hold and live out of.

31 It is not the point of this paper to deal with the distinction between religion and spirituality, or to ask what spirituality might be. Still, it is worth noting in brief that it carries in its argument about spiritual capacity a linked set of claims in this regard, that: a) the spiritual capacity I have highlighted as intrinsic to human beings—every human being—is not particular but general; b) it is experienced and exercised in relationship with other human beings in particular ways, always as shaped by specific times, places and cultures, and thus finds expression in different kinds of spirituality; c) it is necessarily embodied in corporate languages, patterns of behavior, modes of action and orderings of relationships that we readily may identify as religions of one kind or another. Reformulated, we can say that spirituality rests on the transcendent human capacity for creative freedom and the responsibility (for good or evil) that comes with it, while religion is the contingent embodiment of spirit, reflecting the way in which persons live and act in relation to each other, through material, relational, ritual and symbolic means, as an attempt to embody those comprehensive ends or purposes that are taken to be desirable for oneself and for others. Entirely to separate spirituality and religion is thus a mistake. Entirely to insist that one particular religion trumps any and all others, by analogous reasoning, is the first ground of an injustice toward the other.