Sacrifice at the altar of Love

“For God so loved the world, that he gave …” (John 3:16) in this familiar verse we come across two imperatives loved and gave. These two actions then of loving and giving become essentially tied to Christian understanding of incarnation and crucifixion. These two are so deeply intermingled that separation of either one would simply render the whole aspect of Christian redemptive story void.

Now to a more serious question of how God actually “Loved”? Or what role does Love play in God in giving himself. Primarily this Love can be understand through kenosis as a self-emptying or self-giving of God. Moreover a serious reflection on the nature of Love in the act of God is warranted. In order to understand this we could turn to Ludwig Feuerbach a fierce critique of Christianity. Who in his famous book Essence of Christianity, brings out his all familiar thesis that God is just a projection of human psyche. Given the atheistic route of Feuerbachian thesis, here is an attempt to turn on its head his analysis of “God as Love” and to help us understand the role and function of Love in the act of self-giving God. The reason to use a critique or an atheist in a theological conversation could be answered in a Zizekian sense: Reverse Strategy that is, “fully endorsing what one is accused of.”[1] However, even if we don’t consider Feuerbach’s thesis as an accusation it is as Karl Barth has noted in his foreword on Essence of Christianity as ‘thorn in the flesh’ and that no theologian can ignore it.

Although in a critical mode, Feuerbach’s thought runs similar to us in this context where he questions: “God and love. God is love: but what does that mean? Is God something besides love? a being distinct from love? Is it as if I said of an affectionate human being, he is love itself?”[2] and moreover he writes, “God out of love sent his only-begotten Son. Here love recedes and sinks into insignificance in the dark background – God.”[3] And this exactly is where we could reverse Feuerbach, and affirm that, it is not Love that recedes into the background of God but it is love that emerges from the dark background. His critique continues as “Love determined God to the renunciation of his divinity … Love conquers God. It was love to which God sacrificed his divine majesty … As God has renounced himself out of love, so we, out of love, should renounce God; for if we do not sacrifice God to love, we sacrifice love to God, and, in spite of the predicate of love, we have the God – the evil being – of religious fanaticism.”[4] The above critique is pure genius of Feuerbach which directly connects us to kenosis and theological understanding of dynamics of love in crucifixion. Feuerbach even in his critical mode delivers an insightful observation that is: God being sacrificed to love. This analysis is kenotic theology in purest.

This critique could be reversed and complemented through Frank Seeburger’s The Trauma of God, wherein he talks about kenosis as ‘self-limitation’ of God. He explains, self-limitation “is literally God making room for that other to be and then keeping that room open thereafter, by keeping God’s self out of it, respecting and preserving the other.”[5] This view of kenosis is what turns Feuerbach’s critique into a theological lesson, that is, the Love of God is not a love that preserves God rather that which erases God from within, this erasure is the self-giving, or in Seeburger’s words “self-limiting” of God. It is through this we understand the role of Love in God, as in Paul’s word Love emerges as “greatest” of all (1 Cor 13:13). Therefore Love in God is not a self-pleasing act of giving in order to receive this is a perverse understanding of God’s love. God loved because Love is the “greatest” of all one can give. And because God is love (1 John 4:8) he can do nothing but give himself in totality. This love is not an empty giving away but rather a kenotic giving away, that is, giving his-self away to make space for the world (cosmos).

This helps us to understand Love as supreme driving force, that is, the power of the Holy Spirit which constantly fills in us the love of God that is, by constantly emptying himself into us. But if we hold on to a fundamentalist understanding of Christianity we are in danger of ‘sacrificing love to God.’ In understanding Kenotic Love of God, we should be able to make space for the cosmos within the body of Christ. That is why as a sign of continuing space the resurrected Christs body still carried open wounds. These open wounds remind us that God sacrificed himself at the altar of Love for the sake of redeeming cosmos not from without but from within, not by receiving but giving, a giving which would result in participation of death and suffering.

Kenotic theology does not end only at the point of God giving himself to the altar of Love. If we stop there Feuerbach’s thesis is not reversed yet. In order to reverse it ultimately we should add that God sacrificed God-ness to the altar of Love and laid no claim to it (Phil 2:6, refer New English Bible (NEB)). This kenotic God is the God of Christianity, who constantly pours of Love and Love supreme for the cosmos to be redeemed. Feuerbach rightly asks “What, then, is it that I love in God? Love: love to man."[6] This exactly is the question that is to be answered by every Christian when asking what exactly did God love? The answer is Love, and Love at what costs, at the cost of himself, and for whom, for Human Beings and the entire Cosmos.

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[1] Slavoj Žižek, The fragile absolute or, Why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for?, Pbk. ed, Wo es war (London, New York: Verso, 2001), 2.

[2] Ludwig Feuerbach, The essence of Christianity, Great books in philosophy (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1989), 19.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 19-20.

[5] Frank Seeburger, "The Trauma of God," theotherjournal.com (2015), http://theotherjournal.com/2015/04/06/the-trauma-of-god/ (accessed June 19, 2015).

[6] Feuerbach, The essence of Christianity., 23.

Resurrecting Hell

If resurrection precedes a descent into hell, then it was Job who prefigured a raising of the hell before his rejuvenation of life. Job in an almost conceding voice to his wife’s advice of “curse God, and die,” (Job 2:9) starts his laments his with series of curses (Job 3). He begins by cursing the day of his birth and praises the Hades where the dead are in peaceful repose and finally brings curse on his present moment, that is on his life itself.

Job’s language of curses are in some ways evokes “anti-creation”[1], wherein he invokes darkness instead of light and unleashing of “leviathan” (chaos) disrupting serenity. In some sense Job is raising hell or creating his own hell which would represent an inverted reality, which his language suggests. Therefore in some ways it is in and through his language of curses does Job descend or raise hell before God.

From psychoanalyst perspective[2], Carl Jung views Christ descent into hell as a process of individuation wherein it is in the descent into hell does Christ unite with his shadow. If Christ descent into hell retrieves the missing piece of his persona, this then could also be translated into theological language as well. Thus it could be said theologically, as Christ descended into hell (underworld) to preach to the lost souls, among them is the first fallen Adam. In this way, the second Adam redeems the shadow by uniting himself with the lost Adam, thus restoring his persona which culminates in Christian aspect of salvation.

In the same way, it is by raising hell does Job find his life in fullness. However if observed closely both Christ and Job embrace hell in a wholly euphoric way. Christ calls it “paradise” and for Job it is something to “rejoice exceedingly.” It is not the death, chaos and hell they are afraid of, because for them living itself has become hell. The present moment which we call life had become hell for them. It is in this moment both resort to hell for peace and paradise. Job invokes it, Christ descends into it. Each of them resurrects into a new persona, after descent Christ ascends into heaven, while Job integrates himself to a new knowledge saying, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5).

Thus Job and Christ descend into hell when life itself has become like hell. In this way even the hell is not wholly an alienated place, rather a place to descend to find one’s own missing pieces of persona and become united with it. Therefore, it was Job who created his own hell and it was Christ who cleared a path to descend into hell before salvation, which every hellish life demands.

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[1] Cf. Carol A. Newsom, The book of Job: A contest of moral imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 94.

[2] See for discussionon descent into hell, Sonu Shamdasani and John Beebe, "Jung Becomes Jung: A Dialogue on Liber Novus (The Red Book)," Psychological Perspectives 53, no. 4 (2010): 410–36.

Naked Subversions: Christ and Serpent

“Every eye will see him, even those who pierced him” (Rev. 1:7), this is a triumphant call, an invitation for the gaze, which will pierce the other as well. Gazing at the body of the other is one of the mechanics of domination and subjection of the other,[1] whereas in the book of Revelation as well in the pinnacle of salvation history (Golgotha), gazing becomes means of victory, salvation and subversion of all powers of domination. How does Christian salvation through cross, which is the gazing of body, become an explosive act of subversion, thereby, defeating the dominant system.

Friedrich Nietzsche remarked “The crucified Christ is the most sublime of all symbols – even at present.” One could add subversion to the sublimity of the symbol. Gospel of John exposes us to the strange subversiveness of the symbol. Christ discusses the symbolism of the salvation as a gaze, for which, the OT event of serpent in the wilderness is invoked. To Nicodemus he says, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14). The symbol of the serpent and the gaze of it, effects upon the victim, salvation (Num 21:8-9). Why choose the symbol of a serpent to allude to Christ and his salvation, becomes a troubling question. This symbol if not considered subversive then the danger falling into ophism[2] becomes immanent. The act of gazing at the serpent as the act of gazing onto the body of crucified Christ needs to be understood subversive in all its sublimity.

Why does that symbol become subversive? It could be said that it was serpent in the garden of bliss subjected humans in order to gaze at their nakedness, this act of deception and power by the serpent, in order to dominate and gaze into the nakedness. This gazing of the nakedness symbolizes humiliating powerlessness and subjection. This act of humiliating and subjecting the bodies of the powerless by the powerful is perpetuated through many forms throughout history by the dominant and the powerful. Within this, the gaze of the powerful upon the powerless and humiliated body has to be reversed or has to be subverted wherein, the very gaze becomes humiliating defeat for the powerful and the nudity becomes an explosive symbol of victory by subverting the domination.

In order to understand this reversal of the gaze and nudity as explosive subversions we could look at Bathsheba and Samson. David, the “powerful” king gazes upon the naked body of Bathsheba[3] (2Sam 11:2), this gaze humiliates and dehumanizes Bathsheba as a person, to a commodity, which the powerful David could acquire by mere domination. Bathsheba becomes the nude victim of the gaze and become subjected to the domination. However, the story does end in triumphal note wherein the nude victim overtakes the king and the kingdom (1King 1:28-31). The same fate would befall the Philistines when in arrogant victory call for Samson to “entertain” (Judges 16: 23-31). The gaze upon blind Samson by the dominant in their galleries would be collapsed by this blind judge, and forever would bring those gazing from above to the floor and crushing death. Within these two instances the victims were able to subvert their dominant masters but still remained within the system. However, with Christ the subversion is all the more sublime and severe would crush the head of the serpent forever.

The urge to crush the serpent’s head by the defeated and humiliated bodies were given to them as a curse to the serpent, “he will strike your head” (Gen 3:15). Thereby Christ symbolizes his death on the cross as the lifting up of the serpent on the wilderness. The subversion of the bronze serpent in the wilderness is: the one who is bitten by these “poisonous” serpents will be saved from death if they were able to see the death of the serpent on the pole. Here the subversion works at its purest; the death is made death and has to be believed to be dead by the one who is dying thereby delivering oneself from the death of that certain death. In the same way, Christ wishes to symbolize his death on the cross as the gaze reversed on those who gaze, where the one who is gazes is the one who hangs on the cross, just as the serpent on the pole. This powerful subversion is possible only through the exchange of the symbols; the dominant gaze becomes its own object of gaze. Christ the humiliated body has to become the serpent of the dominant gaze. At the cross the gaze and the one who gaze are forever transfixed upon itself in an endless self-gazing humiliation of the dominant. The liberation comes from the “belief” that the one who is object of gaze (the Christ) is actually the one who wishes to gaze (the serpent), only when this is understood the nude body of Christ becomes liberative symbol against the humiliation of the dominant gazers. 

It is in this way the nude protests all around the world are a highly subversive practice, which is at once repulsive to the dominant, because the secret gaze is made public and is nullified of its power to humiliate. Nude protests are not a novelty; Isaiah the prophet becomes a symbol through prophesying in his naked body (Isa 20:3). Moreover, it could be said Jesus himself seem to advocate it as a subversive practice as a non-violent violence.[4] For instance, “if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well,” (Mt 5:40) this action would leave the one sued totally naked in front of the one who sues thereby forcing the one who sues to gaze upon the naked body of the sued in the public thereby not shaming oneself, but shaming the other, the powerful, by reducing him to the gaze, forcefully. Here violence of the dominant through the mechanics of humiliating bodies is subverted on the dominant themselves by going nude publicly depriving the powerful of their power to humiliate through subjection.

It is here the invitation of the book of Revelation becomes starkly clear as voice of victory, because all those who gazed upon will be seen themselves in humiliation because of the deprivation of their power to humiliate. The serpent once gazed on the nudity, wherein the nudity became an act of subjection towards the powerless to humiliate them through shame and guilt. It is through the cross of Christ that the serpent is crushed on its head, or blinded, which doubly deprives it of its power to neither humiliate nor gaze on the naked body, which is the nakedness of itself, the public display of them: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it” (Col 2:15).

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[1] See “Docile Bodies,” in Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, 2nd Vintage Books ed (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).

[2] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Ophism

[3] For a very good analysis of Rembrandt’s painting of Bathsheba in terms of body, domination and humiliation, see, Hélène Cixous, Stigmata: Escaping texts, Routledge classics (London: Routledge, 2005).

[4] See Walter Wink for the analysis of Jesus’ teaching of non-violent violence or as he terms “third way,” in Walter Wink, Jesus and nonviolence: A third way, Facets (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2003). For excerpts see, https://www.ualberta.ca/~cbidwell/DCAS/third.htm.