Interreligious dialogue has been a frequent and popular endeavor over the recent decades, though not as much now as it was in the 1960s and ‘70s. Understandably enough people from different traditions were seeking to get free of the isolation from and hostility toward “the other tradition.” This was especially true of Christian versus non-Christian traditions. People were seeking common ground and to clarify our differences in a friendly, accepting atmosphere. I won’t go into all the positives and negatives of these endeavors, suffice it to say there developed many. Here I want to look at a very different kind of dialogue. The interlocutors are not just from different traditions but from radically different ages and very different modes of engagement. I present three examples.
- The first interlocutors will be Karl Rahner and Ma Yuan. Rahner was the best and most famous Catholic theologian of the 20th century. In 1974 Rahner came to a gathering at the University of Chicago where he delivered a paper entitled, “Thomas Aquinas on the Incomprehensibility of God.” A masterful presentation of a very deep subject, which is fundamental and foundational for an authentic faith life. (Unfortunately the paper is not online, so I can’t provide a link.)
This “incomprehensibility” is not one due to some lack in us that somehow can be overcome….like Einstein “solving” the problem of understanding gravity. For most of us gravity remains an “incomprehensible.” Such an “incomprehensibility” is only a kind of imperfection in us that can be remedied. But you might think, the reality of God is a kind of “puzzle” that somehow will become clear and “solved” after death when we are “in heaven.” Scripture at times seem to be saying something like that….like when Paul says that “now we see only partially” but then “we will see Him as He is, face to face.” For Aquinas, as Rahner shows, NO is the answer. But it is paradoxically not a negative no if you will. What is actually unveiled after death, what we “see face to face” is the absolutely unfathomable Mystery of God, the absolute, infinite, eternal Reality. In other words, this incomprehensibility is not just some quality or characteristic of God, something added to the person, somethng that simply describes some aspect of the Divine Reality. No, it is actually his very being if you will.
And there is more, but then Rahner turns to a modern appropriation of this teaching. Rahner points out that modern human beings search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. Modern man does not know who he is, Rahner says, nor what is the purpose of life. None of the sciences nor all of the sciences together can provide such answers. Seeing this clearly, Bertrand Russell, a sincere atheist, one of the 20th century’s famous philosophers, presents this striking conclusion:
“Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins–all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
No one can really live on such a foundation. Many modern artists, writers, existentialist philosophers proclaimed against this void that human beings now must create their meaning, their identity, their purpose, etc. Rahner points out that none of this is ultimately satisfying; we cannot create out of nothing a meaning that will render our lives meaningful, that will go far enough, deep enough to answer our deepest questions. As Rahner puts it, ultimately man is a question to himself, and all answers that he can reach and express become immediately inadequate. In other words the human being is a mystery to himself. And what Aquinas is really saying to us is that our identity, our meaning, our purpose is all lost in the Mystery of God. God’s incomprehensibility is not just some fact out there among all the other facts…like the San Andreas fault running through California. No, the deepest realities of our existence are directly and immediately related to the Mystery of God….after all we are made “in the image and likeness…”! Precisely because of this the questions, “who am I,” “what is the meaning of my life,” cannot be explicated by science or philosophy or art, but only encountered by a total surrender in love and hope to the Mystery of God (Jesus on the Cross!) in all our daily experiences and finally at the moment of death. To surrender to that darkness requires the deepest faith, hope and love; but we are then invited into an unspeakably blissful eternity of ever deepening but never exhausting comprehension of this One Mystery, the incomprehensible God and the incomprehensible “me.”
Rahner’s interlocutor here will be Ma Yuan, Chinese artist who lived about 1200 CE, in the Song Dynasty. Actually the real interlocutor will simply be one painting by Ma, which is below. Take a good look:
The title of the painting is “Walking on a Mountain Path.” A lone figure, perhaps a Taoist sage, a scholar, in a natural setting. He seems to be intently gazing, looking up, perhaps at the lone bird, which in its solitude reflects the solitude of the sage. The bird is seen against a vast empty sky, and its being there accentuates the vastness and seeming emptiness which contains them both. In fact every detail in the painting accentuates the vastness and emptiness and refrains from shouting at us, “here I am.” Everything, the wispy branches, the ghostly bird, the distant wisp of mountains, the hidden cliffs, it all seems to be hinting at something else. The real subject, the true focus of the painting is the vastness and emptiness which pervades the canvas. And isn’t it really saying that it too is but a hint at something nameless and undepictable? The painting puts before our eyes the opening verses of the Tao Te Ching:
“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.”
Let the dialogue begin.
- The next interlocutors will be Abhishiktananda and Ivan Karamazov. To be more precise, it is Dostoyevsky of The Brothers Karamazov.
Toward the end of his life, in one of his many letters, Abhishiktananda says, “I don’t believe anymore in evil or suffering.”
A provocative statement indeed. Not sure what exactly he means, but we will take it as it is. I am not going to argue against it; I am not going to defend it. The interlocutor is Ivan Karamazov (Dostoyevsky). I don’t think Ivan would take kindly to Abhishiktananda’s view, and I wonder how Abhishiktananda would respond. Lets listen to Ivan as he explains at length his position to his younger brother, Alyosha, a would-be monk:
“There was in those days a general of aristocratic connections, the owner of great estates, one of those men — somewhat exceptional, I believe, even then — who, retiring from the service into a life of leisure, are convinced that they’ve earned absolute power over the lives of their subjects. There were such men then. So our general, settled on his property of two thousand souls, lives in pomp, and domineers over his poor neighbors as though they were dependents and buffoons. He has kennels of hundreds of hounds and nearly a hundred dog-boys — all mounted, and in uniform. One day a serf-boy, a little child of eight, threw a stone in play and hurt the paw of the general’s favourite hound. ‘Why is my favourite dog lame?’ He is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog’s paw. ‘So you did it.’ The general looked the child up and down. ‘Take him.’ He was taken — taken from his mother and kept shut up all night. Early that morning the general comes out on horseback, with the hounds, his dependents, dog-boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in full hunting parade. The servants are summoned for their edification, and in front of them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought from the lock-up. It’s a gloomy, cold, foggy, autumn day, a capital day for hunting. The general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked. He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry…. ‘Make him run,’ commands the general. ‘Run! run!’ shout the dog-boys. The boy runs…. ‘At him!’ yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother’s eyes!….
“Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its center, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I am a bug, and I recognize in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level — but that’s only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it?
I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer.
But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That’s a question I can’t answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I’ve only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old.
Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child’s torturer, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ but I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for.
They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.
I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”
And this is only a small portion of Ivan’s position; today Ivan’s argument would be emphatically underelined by the children of Gaza and the Sudan among many, many others. Dostoyevsky poured his whole mind and heart into this novel as it tackles what the Russian theologian, Alexander Schmemann, called “ultimate questions.” I am not sure a dialogue is here possible unless we bring in two other characters in the novel, two other voices of Dostoyevsky: Father Zosima and Alyosha. Zosima’s response might be the only proper response to both Ivan and Abhishiktananda, but we will listen to that at another time. Suffice it to say that Alyosha responds to Ivan’s impassioned speech by not saying anything, kissing him on the cheek, and departing in silence.
- The final interlocutors are a photograph and a medieval Byzantine icon! (I did say this is not the usual dialogue stuff!)
The photograph is of a young Native American woman and her first child. It is a very old photograph. The young woman exhibits nobility, strength and pride in her child. There is also a hint of apprehension. Both mother and child are wrapped in garments against a seeming cold environment. The external world does not seem welcoming; in fact, the shadows of the background seem almost menacing. This child is going to have a rough go here, yet she is “total mother,” exuding care and protection for the child with the totality of her presence and whatever means she has.
The other interlocutor is one of the most famous and most holy Russian icons, Our Lady of Vladimir, painted in the 12th century.
Here we see a mother also, and she is embracing her child with utmost tenderness. But there is also a hint of apprehension/sadness in her gaze as she is pondering what portends for this child’s life. She cannot shield this child from his fate. But note the rich golden light surrounding them both. It is the Divine Presence embracing them both with that same tenderness.
Let the dialogue begin.
Postscript:
A Hasidic story to conclude any and all dialogues, whether harmonious or contentious:
Two neighbors were arguing over a financial dispute. They couldn’t reach an agreement, so they took their case to the local rabbi. The rabbi heard the first litigant’s case, nodded his head and said, “You’re right.”
The second litigant then stated his case. The rabbi heard him out, nodded again and said, “You’re also right.”
The rabbi’s attendant, who had been standing by this whole time, was justifiably confused. “But, rebbe,” he exclaimed, “they both can’t be right.”
The rav thought about this for a moment before responding, “You’re right, too!”
“Human beings had two basic orientations: HAVING and BEING
HAVING: seeks to acquire, posses things even people
BEING: focuses on the experience; exchanging, engaging, sharing with other people”
.