CHAPTER XI

RADICAL FREEDOM AND THE PRIMORDIAL STORY OF ABRAHAM AND SARAI: Response to George McLean

JOSEPH G. DONDERS

Washington Theological Union

            Asked to respond to McLean’s paper from within my Christian conviction, I will address mainly the part that intrigues me most in his paper, viz. the third part: Primordial Solidarities.

            In his interpretation of freedom McLean tells us that the most radical freedom is the freedom of self-determination, i.e. unfolding "the endless possibilities for human expression" -- a self-affirma-tion in terms of our full self-realization, in a "holy" way by those who live the life of their culture to perfection, and who are called saints.

            Let us put this statement in the context of the primordial story the three traditions in question have in common, namely the story of the call, vocation, or mission of Abram and Sarai. They heard in their Chaldean environment a divine voice telling them to leave their ethnic group, to become a new beginning. A move that would not only be a blessing for them, but for the whole of humanity. They were asked in their particular case to take into account a call that would have a universal significance for them, for the others, and for them and the others together. The call itself -- either heard from within or from without -- is reported as coming from the one we call in English "God," a word we all can use because it is really no name, but an acclamation, the acknowledgment of "something" that transcends us.1

            In the story of Abram and Sarai we touch upon the mystery of the way we not only "are," but "exist." Though created and conse-quently limited, we are relating to the Transcendent, and according to the Bible story about our origin, charged with the divine breath. We find here our primordial solidarity. But we find it as a treasure that has still to be unearthed, as fish in the water that has still to be caught, as a yeast that has still make itself felt all through the dough, as a seed that has still to unfold, as a bud that has still to open, but also as the bread that should be broken and the wine that is to be shared.

            A number of hermeneutic issues pose themselves in this context, such as how we can know the whole before knowing its parts, the parts before we know the whole, or the question of how to find the value of all. A factor that should not be overlooked is the material side of our existence. Sartre once noted that any philo-sophy or theology that does not take into account the scarcity of words is no help.

            Another issue in a story like the one of Abram and Sarai is whether those who feel and know themselves called in this way should consider themselves as the part that is loved more, or even exclusively, by the one who is calling them and at the same time loves all. It is the temptation of considering oneself a "privileged group," the temptation of "fascism." The now apparently overhauled official South African state ideology rested on the fascist idea of a God who preferred some to others. This is an idea, or perhaps better said, a temptation that is understandable and may even be unavoidable, but one that is not faithful to the truth. It is a lie, while can also be expressed in a "social order" that makes profit for some at the cost of others.

            A lie is the denial of something that one knows to be the truth. Do we know that we are all one? In one of his last prayers Jesus prayed, "That they all may be one" (John 17:21). Isaiah spoke about what Abram and Sarai began to experience as a mountain of the Lord’s temple to which all nations would stream (Isa. 2:2). This experience of our primordial "oneness" is not strange to the con-temporary scene.

            The thing that strikes one about the psychology of religion is not the differences in dogma (over which so much blood has been spilled pointlessly) but the commonality of insight; namely, simply that all men and women are brothers and sisters and that we should treat others as we treat ourselves. Thus Christianity: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so unto them" (Matthew 7:12); Judaism: "What is hurtful to yourself do not do to your fellow man" (Talmud); Hinduism: "Do nought to others which if done to thee would cause thee pain" (Mahabaharata 5.15.17); Buddhism: "Hurt not others with that which pains yourself" (Udadavarga 5.18) The unity of insight encoded in these sayings is all the more remarkable because they seem, for the most part, to have evolved independently, in different parts of the world under the influence of different cultural traditions at different times during history. The feeling that each of us is capable of loving the worlds is a common human intuition. Most of us, when supremely happy, are able to affirm, "I’m in love with all mankind." However, to let the matter rest there is to miss the message. What these sayings tell us is not merely that we should use a common code of conduct in our dealings with our fellow creatures, but rather that, at the tap-root level, we are our fellow humans, that the distinctions which divide us are functions of ego and of differing phases of growth.

            I am too young to have any memories of the Second World War, but I have a vividly etched memory of a photo I saw of the cam-paign in the Western desert, where my father fought. It showed a soldier naked form the waist up, hung over the edge of a gutted tank. He looked so pathetically young and beautiful that it was hard to realize that what I was looking at was death. I mention that image because it always brings to mind the saying of the Greek philo-sopher Sophocles: "Who is the slayer and who the victim? Speak.", and over two centuries later, the words of the German soldier poet Heinrich Lersch: "My eyes deceive me but my heart cannot: each corpse has my brother’s face." What these lines tell us is that, in those moments of compassion that reach beyond teaisrs, the boundary between self and other breaks down. We are our victims; each act of degradation perpetrated on the body or mind of another is an act of violence against ourselves. Bertrand Russell captured another element of the same intuition when he said he who watches a crime in silence commits it.2

            There are many examples of this "unfolding" or our original "oneness" from within what McLean calls "the nature of one’s own finiteness." Examples would be Thomas Merton (and his univer-salized "Wisdom" experience), Etty Hillesum, Simone Weil, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, to mention only some that come immediately to mind.

            It is in our "finiteness" that we meet the personal, ethnic, cultural and "historic" context of this "enlightenment." Thomas Mer-ton described this continuous call for self actualization in the "exclusive language of his time:

the full discovery of who he himself is . . . the ful-fillment of his own God-given powers . . . (And) the discovery that he himself cannot find himself in himself alone, but that he must find himself in and through others.3

This condition is true of every human being, and consequently at the same time of every human community, whether defined in ethnic, national, or religious terms. As Edward Schillebeeckx dis-covered:

For even Jesus not only reveals God but also con-ceals him, since he appeared among us in non-godlike, creaturely humanity. As man he is a his-torical, contingent being who in no way can repre-sent the full riches of God . . . unless one denies the reality of his real humanity (and than runs contrary to the consensus of the church). So the gospel itself forbids us to speak of a Christian imperialism and exclusivism. Isaiah’s prophetic complaint also applies to Jesus: ‘Truly, you are a God who hides yourself’ (Is 45: 15), and the gospels make him say this on the cross. On the other hand, anyone who does not take into account the specific and dis-tinctive religious relationship of Jesus to his hidden God seeks to understand Jesus either on the basis of preexisting metaphysical concepts or within preexisting social and political framework of in-terpretation, both of which are alien to the gospel. In both cases the contingent, historical figure of Jesus is distorted.4

            Strangers become unexpected messengers who can embody or mirror what is as yet un-enfolded in USA. They are consequently welcome as they lead us to self-discovery, and at the same time a kind of "scandal" as they reveal our own finiteness. The "ques-tioning" mentioned by McLean is often far from easy. We frequently are envious of our own relations and answers, and jealous of those of others. Jesus welcomes the religious insights and attitudes in the "strangers" around him (e.g. in his meetings with the Roman Cen-turion, the Syro-Phoenician and Samaritan women, his own fol-lowers and even children). He himself has frequently proved to be far from welcome in the lives of others.5

            It is only recently that we began to "meet" each other in our different religious approaches -- I would count modern secularism as one of those others! It is interesting to gauge, as derived from Geertz’s description of religion -- quoted by McLean, -- the dif-ficulties we will meet:

(1) A system of (set) symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of actuality that (5) moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.6

Those different ‘approaches’ are experienced by each of us as ex-pressing ‘reality’ itself!

            To conclude this response I would like to point at the development of the dialogue in the community I myself belong to. The "Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration, Nostra Aetate, No. 4" published by the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews (Rome 1975), states:

that the history of Judaism did not end with the destruction of Jerusalem, but rather went on to de-velop a religious tradition. In 1982, Pope John Paul II drew the following conclusion: Our common spiritual heritage is considerable. Help in better understanding certain aspects of the Church’s life can be gained by taking an inventory of that he-ritage, but also by taking into account the faith and religious life of the Jewish people as professed and lived now as well.7

Introducing the text of the 1985 document of the "Committee for Religious Relations with the Jews. Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Cathechesis in the Roman Catholic Church," the Committee Secretary, Msgr. Jorge Mejia, stated:

There is the affirmation about Christ and his saving event as central to the economy of salvation . . . this does not mean that the Jews as a people cannot and should not draw salvific gifts from their own traditions. Of course they can and should do so.8

Notwithstanding the sometimes rather awkward formulations these seem to be interesting pointers to what might happen in the future.

            Coming back to Jesus’ prayer, that "they all may be one," I would like to add what follows those words. In John’s text he adds "May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you" (John 17:21). This saying seems to indicate that our oneness, our primordial solidarity, is an existing reality to be discovered and unfolded in relationships, as we have been doing in this dialogue.

NOTES

            1. Cf. The Compact English Dictionary (Second Edition; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 639-642; John Ayto, Dic-tionary of Word Origins (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1991), p. 258.

            2. Darryl Reanney, The Death of Forever (Melbourne: Long-man Cheshire, 1991), pp. 240-241.

            3. No Man is an Island (New York: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich, 1955), p. xv.

            4. Jesus in Our Western Culture, Mysticism, Ethics and Politics (London: SCM Press, 1987), pp. 2-3.

            5. Cf. Anthony J. Gittins, Gifts and Strangers (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989).

            6. George McLean, above; Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (London: Hutchinson, 1973), p. 90.

            7. Cf. Eugene Fisher, "Interpreting Nostra Aetate Through Post-conciliar Teaching." International Bulletin of Mission Re-search, vol. 9, No.4 (Oct. 1985), 162.