Death and The Presence of God - Part 1

Encountering God (theophany) is depicted as an experience that guarantees death. For instance the two episodes of Gideon (Judges 6:22-23) and Manoah (Judges 13:22), in both cases subjects fear for their lives, "you are not going to die," or "we shall surely die, for we have seen God." What is interesting to observe is both Gideon (Judges 6:17-18) and Manoah (13:17;22) wishes a repeat audience with the visitor even though already in the first encounter they sense the unearthly nature of their guest. And it is only after the second encounter they voice out their fear of death. This attempt to come back, to retain the presence (numinous) and the resulting anxiety of death is very interesting to note.

There is a danger in reading these texts and decidedly fall into a trap of paradox about the nature of God, as to whether his presence gives life or death? Initial reading might give an impression that the subjects were crying out of fear of death. But, let us consider it from another angle, what if the cry is out of ecstasy, a release and moment of pure love which longs for death. Dissecting the encounter into two parts such as the longing to repeat the experience and the latter as fear of death as result of the experience.

The former aspect, to repeat the experience, can be studied initially through R. Otto's Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans  from his book The idea of the Holy. The latin phrase could be translated loosely as "Awesome divine mystery." More clearly the phrase indicates a kind of drive within the homo religiosus whenever he encounters the holy. Meaning the drive is to get a peek into the mysterium yet at the same time filled with fear or filled with "element of overpoweringness" (tremendum) and still holds an "unutterable" ecstasy (fascinans). This gives us a clear view on how the urge to repeat the experience holds sway within the subjects. The experience is terrifyingly ecstatic, hence the drive to repeat. For instance, the peek into the ark of God (1 Sam 6:19) and the resultant death of seventy men and also the death of Uzzah when he touched the ark was instantly killed (2 Sam 6:6), here the point to demonstrate the urge of peeking behind the curtain or inside the box as an act of Mysterium Tremendum Fascinans. Another variant of the repeat audience is Moses' request (Exodus 33:18;20), which was curtly denied "for man shall not see me and live."

Secondly, this fear of death at the presence of God can be looked through Freud's One Love and Death Drive. Begins firstly as a realisation of the mortality in the conscious, as Freud suggests, "In the unconscious everyone of us in convinced of his own immortality." Secondly, as he also suggests that the death-drive's aim "is to reduce living things to an inorganic state." This inorganic state or 'undoing the connections' with organic, could be a very vital insight. Bringing together these two, one can interpret, that the fear of death at the presence of God, primarily brings to our consciousness the finitude in the presence of plenitude and to the total unhinging of the self to the elements of the world (organic) towards true annihilation (inorganic) wherein the self longs to be disintegrated in this presence and wishes the non-material existence of the other.

But we could further than Otto in affirming that the fascinans happens not only affects the subject but also the numinous. For example, Moses' encounter of the un-burning bush. We see encountering God always lingers in the liminal. The beckoning from the un-burning bush is always resisted by the insistence of leaving something behind. Come closer, but not too close, the transaction and the mobility in the presence is filled with tension of how close is close and how close can one carry oneself into the other. This impossiblity in the proximity without affecting the subject ultimately fails the transaction abruptly. This is only one part of the episode the other part is the affect from the numinous itself. In the other part of the episode the numinous pursues the subject. This episode where, "the Lord met him [Moses] and sought to put him to death" (Exodus 4:24) is truly enigmatic. This enigmatic episode could be looked at as the affect of the numinous to take over the subject. It is here we can go beyond Otto saying that the it is here the numinous itself is drawn to the other, the fascinans is what makes Lord to put Moses to death, that is, numinous wishes to take over the subject once the subject touches the numinous deeply, the love and the experience touches both. 'No one can see me and live' are the words of love from the numinous and not words of terror and violence.

If "Holy" is a feeling of Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans that is, a feeling of repulsive attraction, I feeling of want and fear of death not only in the subject but also on the side of the numinous as we looked earlier. But this moment as "Holy" becomes "set apart" from the other events in time. This moment when the holy is encountered the holy is the "whole" (etymology) and the fullness of the  life encountered. That numinous feeling is the sacred moment and a whole moment of life and is completely set apart. This moment becomes saturated with life and brings a conscious of death as a satisfactory release and ecstasy. This moment is so holy that if life continues the sacredness of the life is tainted by the profanity and the moment is lost, in order to preserve the moment, release is the only way. Every theophany resulted in cry for death, Isaiah's cry of "Undone" (Isa 6:5), Ezekiel and John.

Only in Jesus the effect of theophany clearly unfolds. The cry from the cross "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46) is the cry of death as the result of encountering "God." Thomas Altizer rightly points out that in all the gospels only here Jesus address his Father as God. It is here Jesus encounters in total otherness the presence of God. And this encounter is so fearful that he "cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit" (Matthew 27:50). This is a true encounter of the holy and there is no survival after that. Jesus died because his encounter with the divine was truly fulfilling experience. It was not because of the wrath of God that death in Jesus occurred but because of the torrent of Love that filled Jesus in encountering the presence of God. It was in love and ecstasy that Jesus died after encountering God and not because of sin and wrath.

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.