THE
NOSTRA
AETATE
LECTURES
2 0 0 8 –2 011
Touching into Common Ground:
Native American Spirituality and the
Christian Experience
by Jean Molesky-Poz
Oct. 30, 2008
Buddhist-Christian-Science Dialogue
at the Boundaries
by Paul O. Ingram
March 25, 2009
Jesus the Jew and Paul the “Christian”:
Jewish Views of Christianity’s Heroes
by Claudia Setzer
March 25, 2010
Toward a Theology of the Indigenous
Peoples in Bangladesh
by Brother Jarlath D’Souza, CSC
Nov. 9, 2010
Nahua Religion and Spanish Catholicism:
Dialogue and Collaboration
by Oswald John Nira
April 12, 2011
© 2011 St. Edward’s University. All lectures reprinted with permission of the authors.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and
reviews. For information, contact St. Edward’s University, Marketing Office,
3001 South Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas 78704-6489.
2008–2011
The Nostra Aetate Lectures
Sponsored by Campus Ministry (Father Richard M. Wilkinson, CSC,
Director) and the School of Humanities (Father Louis T. Brusatti, Dean)
at St. Edward’s University.
The Nostra Aetate Committee
Richard J. Bautch, PhD
Kelley N. Coblentz Bautch, PhD
James J. Puglisi, DMin
Steven M. Rodenborn, PhD
Edward L. Shirley, PhD
Jennifer E. Veninga, PhD
Members of the Nostra Aetate committee are St. Edward’s
University faculty or senior staff. The committee was created by
Dean H. Ramsey Fowler in 2000.
Editors of The Nostra Aetate Lectures, 2008–2011
Richard J. Bautch, Kate Hahn, Jackie Logvinoff,
Kate Rosati
The Nostra Aetate lectures are inspired by Nostra
Aetate, a groundbreaking Catholic document issued more than 40 years
ago, at the close of the Second Vatican Council. The document expressed
a commitment to interreligious dialogue and an appreciation for diverse
faith traditions. It exhorted Catholics “to recognize, preserve and promote
the good things, spiritual and moral,” that abide in adherents of the world
religions. The work that the document called for continues in many
parts of the Catholic Church, and this lecture series reflects St. Edward’s
University’s commitment to foster and promote interreligious dialogue.
Nostra Aetate has a broad application that reaches beyond the world
religions mentioned explicitly in the document. While the framers of
Nostra Aetate foresaw fruitful discussion between Catholics and Jews,
Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, there are myriad other religious
systems that are in conversation with Catholicism in one way or another.
Many of the systems involve indigenous religions, and three of these
are explored in the essays of this volume. From a Catholic perspective,
Jean Molesky-Poz explores dialogue and collaboration with American
indigenous traditions, especially the Maya. Oswald John Nira studies
the encounter between the Nahua religion of Mexico and the Spanish
Catholicism that did not simply displace it but absorbed various Nahua
elements and concepts. Writing what is essentially an ethnographer’s field
report, Brother Jarlath D’Souza, CSC, offers a preliminary study of the
indigenous tribes of Bangladesh with attention to their understandings of
deities, human anthropology, morality and the afterlife.
The other two essays in this volume place Christianity in dialogue with
traditions more familiar to many of us, Judaism and Buddhism, but do so
from a unique perspective. Claudia Setzer focuses on the biblical figure of
Paul to suggest that a study of the apostle’s Jewishness can be enlightening
for Jews and Christians alike (indeed, Nostra Aetate referred to Paul
as a kinsman of the Jewish people). Paul Ingram aligns Christianity
with Buddhism but introduces a third consideration, technology and
more generally the world of science. All of the Nostra Aetate lectures are
spiritually and intellectually enriching, and we are delighted to share
them with you here.
5
Oct. 30, 2008
Touching into Common Ground: Native American
Spirituality and the Christian Experience
by Jean Molesky-Poz
Santa Clara University
“If we are invited by Native Peoples to accompany them, we enter a world
where everything seems to be the reverse of what it ought to be. Entire
peoples forced to the margins of American society. Peoples considered
unimportant, even non-existent, suddenly have great meaning and value.
Minds considered to possess little or no education contain a profound
and subtle wisdom that yields a blessing way of being in the world.
Hearts whose cries have been ignored for centuries carry a sensitivity and
caring that alone can save us. Skin color and features once considered
markers of lesser human beings turn out to be remarkably beautiful.
Ceremonies judged to be threatening and diabolical reveal a view of the
cosmos that can liberate us from our obsessive concentration on our own
individual pleasure, power, and importance. People labeled as having alien
or lesser gods teach us that attentiveness, understanding, respect, courage,
kindness and caring are attributes of the Mystery beyond our knowing
that lives within and around us. Peoples considered awkward and
unproductive by the surrounding society teach us that not everything can
be fixed, that change comes slowly, that living in good relationship and
caring for one another is of greater value and older and more powerful
than cruelty, suffering and death.” With these words, Patrick Twohy, S. J.,
opened the Mission Day Keynote Speech at Seattle University in 2007.
Jesuit Patrick Twohy’s words, spoken forty years after Nostra Aetate, reflect
his creative understanding through years of collaboration and dialogue with
indigenous peoples of the Northwest. If we inquired into each of Twohy’s
eight sentences, what would rise to the surface are realizations that there
is a great gulf between traditional Western thinking about religion and
the Indian perspective. If we give ourselves deeply and thoroughly to
this inquiry, we may find ourselves saddened, numbed, and moved to
silence at what emerges. That is, moved to a conversion, to an apology
on a grand scale, and to a humble realization that a shift toward their
worldview, a logic fastened to cosmogony which considers, investigates
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and respects the order of the universe, its accompanying attentiveness
and practice of reciprocity, is the shift to which the human community
is called. Native consciousness is what theologian Elizabeth Johnson calls
the kinship model, which “sees human beings and the earth with all its
creatures as being intrinsically related as companions in a community of
life” (34). Because we are all mutually interconnected, the flourishing or
damaging of one ultimately affects all.
What are the implications of Nostra Aetate for engaging with indigenous
peoples and their faith traditions in the 21st century? Nostra Aetate
acknowledges Hindu, Buddhist, Moslem and Jewish faith traditions,
but never overtly mentions indigenous peoples, though recognizes the
religious sensibility in all persons.
From ancient times down to the present, there is found among
various peoples a certain perception of that hidden power which
hovers over the course of things and over the events of human
history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition
of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father. This perception and
recognition penetrates their lives with a profound religious sense.
The document continues that “other religions found everywhere try to
counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner,
by proposing ‘ways,’ comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred
rites.” Nostra Aetate further states that the Catholic Church’s position
to other faith-traditions does not reject that which is “true and holy in
these religions,” but rather “regards with sincere reverence those ways
of conduct and life” as they often “reflect a ray of that Truth which
enlightens all men” (2).
While indigenous peoples’ faith and practices are not directly
acknowledged, there is within the document a spirit from which we can
approach this question. I will address three aspects: 1) Respect for truth
found in indigenous tradition; 2) Dialogue and collaboration with Native
peoples; 3) and pose the question, “What significance does my neighbor’s
faith and tradition have for my own?”
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Respect for truth found in religious traditions
By way of entry into this endeavor to respect truth found in religious
traditions, let us turn to the late Lakota and religious leader, Vine Deloria
Jr., who concurs that a great gulf exists between traditional western
thinking about religion and the Indian perspective. “It is the difference,”
he writes, “between individual conscience and commitment (Western)
and communal tradition (Indian), and these views can only be reconciled
by examining them in a much broader historical and geographical
context” (1993, 15). Deloria alerts us to the fact that western and
Native faith traditions perceive life distinctly, with differing worldviews.
Examining Native understandings paves the way for a respect for
their truths.
In communal traditions, people link spirituality with cycles of land
and sky. That is, across the Americas a wide range of religious beliefs
and practices direct Native peoples toward proper relations with their
encompassing cosmos and immediate surroundings, including its winged
and four-legged inhabitants, its rocks, trees and waters. They perceive
human existence and the cosmos as interrelated and harmonic. For
example, K’iche’-Maya of the Guatemalan highlands say, “The earth is
not ours, we are just renters here. We don’t own the land, we are just
passing through.” They understand humans as not owners, but rather
guardians of the land. From this relation has emerged the foundational
belief and practice of reciprocity with the land, with all living creatures”
(Molesky-Poz, 2006a, 97).
If we look deeper into this land-based spirituality, we see certain places
are designated as sacred sites, locations where humans have gone to
communicate and to be with higher spiritual powers. “Tradition tells
us that there are on this earth, some places of inherent sacredness, sites
that are Holy in and of themselves,” explains Vine Deloria Jr. (1994,
18). Sacred geography includes vision quest sites; geological features that
possess extraordinary and mythical significance as mountains, waterfalls,
unusual natural formations; rock art sites; burial areas and cemeteries; sites
of ceremonial structures as medicine wheels, round houses, sweat lodges,
hogans, and sun dance arbors; areas where medicinal plants, stones and
natural materials are available; places as the Black Hills from which a group
is described in creation stories to have originated (Walker 106). Some of
9
these sacred lands are places of holiness where higher powers, on their own
initiative, have revealed themselves to people. In an interview with Houston
Smith, Deloria explains, “There are, on this earth, some places of inherent
sacredness . . . human societies come and go on this earth, [yet the] holy
places are locations where human beings have always gone to communicate
with higher spiritual powers” (Smith 21). In these traditions, people have
cultivated a sensibility to the aliveness of land.
In communal traditions, birds, animals and plants compose “other peoples”
of creation. “Our relatives are not only the two-legged,” explains Winona
LaDuke, Native American environmentalist and executive director of
White Earth Land Recovery Project. “Our other relatives are four-legged;
other relatives have wings; our relatives have fins. We are alive today and
able to live our lives because of them” (Smith 43). Animals, birds and sea
animals are also teachers, and usually in origin stories participate in the
creation of humans, revealing a deep acknowledgement of kinship.
The following Kashaya Pomo origin account from northern California
reflects this understanding of proper relations with the land, the kinship
between humans, plants and animals, a human’s obligation toward all that
is living, reciprocity. Otis Parrish, Kashaya Pomo narrates in a traditional
storytelling manner of two voices: the story interspersed with explanation.
In the before world, we have plants, and we have animals, and we
have humans, all existing together. All spoke the same language, all
understood each other. During that time period, in that before world,
the Creator had made a decision to make human beings on this world,
here on this earth. But he didn’t want to leave humans here
by ourselves.
So the Coyote Creator said, “Okay! I’m going to create you people on the
earth, and I’m going to create everything else on the earth so that you
humans will be able to survive.”
So there was a large meeting, a large get-together, what we call a
“Big Time.”
The creator said, “This is what’s going to happen.”
And so after hearing the creation arrangement, the plant, the
10
huckleberry plant, said, “Wait a minute! We will give to human beings
on the earth that which we give, that which we grow, that which is a
part of us. We will be giving our lives to human beings for their food
and medicine. If we are giving our lives and giving these things to
human beings, we want something back for it.”
That’s where the Sacred of Reciprocity comes into play.
And so the Creator said, “Well, what can that be? What do you want
back from the human beings?”
The huckleberry replied, “Okay, I grow these beautiful sweet tasting
berries, and I will give them to you, humans. But I also have to give the
berries to the animals.”
The animal that they give the berries to is the bear. You see, a long time
ago before contact in our area, we had a lot of bears in that area.
And so the plant said, “Okay here’s what you are to do. Here’s what the
animals are to do. Here’s what we want the humans to do. We want the
humans to offer prayers, give us food, take care of us, give us songs, and
then give us a feast.”
That’s the Sacredness, that kind of agreement.
So the humans said, “Okay, we’ll do that. We’ll have the prayers and the
songs, all that stuff for you before we pick berries, those certain times
of the year, when the berries are ripened and when we will pick them.
Then, certain times of the year we’ll have feasts, and the feasts will be
dedicated to that plant.”
So the humans and plant people agreed to that.
And then the bear spokesperson said, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I
have something very important to say to both of you about this, too.”
And so everybody listened to the bear.
And so the bear goes on to say, “I love those berries. Oh, I just love the
berries. If the humans want to pick the berries for their own uses, and
11
the plant wants humans to give something back, then I also am asking
something from the human beings.”
And so the bear said, “From now on, when we get to the earth, the
human beings have to have a prayer, have to sing a song, and that song
is going to be my song. So as well as the plant, every time you go to pick
berries, these beautiful sweet berries, you have to sing my song.”
So that’s where the song, the ceremony, and reciprocity come from,
from this Agreement. So that is why reciprocity, that agreement for
reciprocity, is one of the most sacred practices among our people. If we
don’t do these things that were set out for us in the before world, the
old people used to say, well, we would starve, because we’re not treating
these animals and these plants the right way.
Over the centuries and geographies, Native peoples have developed
ceremonies, rituals and practices that recognize this reciprocal relationship.
These practices are distinct in name and in practice, from one another,
and from western concepts. Yet they mark gratitude for the seasons, for
life cycles; they intercede for healing, for strength, for clarity, for peace;
and in some cases, through rituals, they balance the world. In rituals
in song, story, dance and sacrifice medicine people represent the whole
web of cosmic life in the continuing search for balance and harmony.
Ritual practice is the work of the people, necessary for humanity and all
living things. “No other religion in this country speaks to the issue of the
human relationship with the rest of the universe in this manner” (Vine
Deloria, 1994, 23).
We move to the second point, which in Nostra Aetate the Church
encourages “dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other
religions” (4).
On dialogue and collaboration with indigenous traditions
At the foundational level, the aim of interreligious dialogue is to
understand. “Dialogue,” writes Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin,
“is a matter of communication between simultaneous differences.” His
notion of “dialogic imagination” holds that discourse or conversation
— the enlargement of consciousness through dialogic engagement with
alterity — provides a most appropriate model of human experience.
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When interreligious dialogue is seen against a wider and common
horizon, divergences and common perspectives appear. What issues
from dialogue, Bakhtin says, is creative understanding, which explores
the surplus of seeing, in terms of both interpersonal and intercultural
relations (Morson & Emerson, 1990, 52-56).
I have found that entering into conversations, participating in
ceremonies, and fieldwork with indigenous people has been deeply
transformative and generative. As Bakhtin writes, sympathetic
understanding “recreates the whole inner person in aesthetically loving
categories for a new existence in a new dimension of the world” (103).
From my experience, this is a mutual experience.
In dialogue with indigenous peoples, western people will uncover policies
and processes from the colonial encounters in the Americas in which
an entire people were forced to the margins of society, as Twohy states.
Whether it be with the Protestant English colonists on the Atlantic
coast, the French Catholic colonists and traders in the Great Lakes area,
the Russian Orthodox colonists in northern California, the Spanish
Catholic colonists in South America, or the southwest and western
regions of North America, the attitude of “father knows best” prevailed.
This attitude established Native peoples in some cases as slaves, baptized
so they could become part of the Spanish encomienda system in South
America, or in North America, baptized so they could be property of the
mission systems, or more generally in the United States, as “wards of the
federal government.” This relation has been the basis of all U.S. federal
policy, as well as of most of the projects of Christian missionaries.
As we enter this dialogue, Father Twohy says we will uncover that of
our history that has been silenced and made invisible regarding Native
peoples. The list is long: in the early colonial periods, massive deaths due
to illnesses, displacements, hunger, murder; in the 1830s, the Forced
Trail of Tears when whole communities were marched for weeks from
the Southeast, with 25 percent of them dying along the way; beginning
in the 1850s, the establishment of the Reservation Program where land
was taken from Native peoples and they became dependent upon the
federal government for food, shelter, and education, run by Christian
organizations whose duty it was to “acculturate and Christianize” them;
in the 1880s, federal laws forbid Native ceremonies, singing or dancing
13
with the threat of imprisonment for anyone younger than 55; in the
same period, children were taken from their parents and sent to boarding
schools, run by Christians. State and federal policies disenfranchised
people; in the early 1850s, the California state legislature allocated 1.1
million dollars to pay individuals for the murder of Native peoples; the
Dawes Act in 1887, which forced Native peoples into private property;
the 1950s Relocation Program, which moved people from reservations to
urban areas, so that under Eisenhower, the government could “get out of
the Indian business.” It wasn’t until 1987, the American Indian Religious
Freedom Act, that the traditional religious rights and cultural practices
of American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians were
recognized and legally protected. These rights include, but are
not limited to, access of sacred sites, freedom to worship through
ceremonial and traditional rights and use and possession of objects
considered sacred. The Act required policies of all governmental agencies
to eliminate interference with the free exercise of Native religion, based
on the First Amendment.
The shift to dialogue and collaborate with indigenous peoples requires
a conversion of mind and heart, open apology which ushers space for
dialogic and collaborative work. From my experience, reconciliation and
collaboration begins in the local. Let me give two examples.
On December 15, 2007, at a mass to commemorate the 190th
anniversary of the founding of Mission San Rafael Archangel in northern
California, retired Bishop Francis A. Quinn apologized to the Miwok
for the church’s mistreatment two centuries ago. He said the church
authorities “took the Indian out of the Indian,” destroying traditional
spiritual practices and “imposing a European Catholicism upon the
Natives.” He conceded that mission soldiers and priests had sexual
relations with Indian women and inflicted cruel punishments — caning,
whipping, imprisonment — on those who disobeyed mission laws.
Greg Sarris, who headed the Miwok tribal council, said the apology
was historic. “I have not heard of this happening anywhere else in this
country,” he said. He was not only astounded at the apology, but “it was
huge.” It was the first time that they had heard of a bishop’s appreciation
of the culture. After the Mass, Sarris said to Bishop Quinn, “With the
permission of my people, I accept your apology.”
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The second example is in the Guatemala highlands. I was in Santa Maria
Chiquimula speaking with Father Victoriano Castillo González, S. J.,
who had served in the parish since 1987. He explained that in 1990
the parish administered a census; not one Maya admitted to following
ancestral practices. He continued.
It all began in 1992 on the 500th anniversary of the invasion of
Columbus in the Americas. Before October 12th, I had asked,
“Well, what are we going to do here in Santa Maria Chiquimula?”
Out of it came an act of reconciliation between the catechists and
the people of costumbre. The catechists went door-to-door calling on
each of the Chuchqajaw saying that on October 12th they wanted
to have an act of reconciliation.
On October 12, 1992, during the ceremony, we recounted the
story of conflicts of Catholics with people of costumbre. People
even of opposite sides, like a son whose parents had been very
active in Catholic Action in the parish, asked pardon from the
Chuchqajaw for all Catholics for their actions and attitudes. During
the ceremony, people hugged and reconciled. They rediscovered and
reaffirmed traditional values.
Before 1992, the theme of costumbre was taboo. Now, the people
of costumbre have a cofradia in the parish. In the 2000 census, more
than 50 percent of the people in the village stated that they practice
costumbre (Molesky-Poz, 2006a).
In each of these cases, we see reconciliation as the fruit of dialogue, a
process of conversion and apology. Yet, the next example reflects the
Church’s need to take up the movement toward dialogue embedded in
Nostra Aetate.
On Sunday, May 13, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the bishops of
Latin America and the Caribbean at the Fifth General Conference of the
Bishops of Latin America in Aparecida, Brazil. His words aroused strong
reactions and for reason.
Pope Benedict’s opening words, “Faith in God has animated the life and
culture of these nations for more than five centuries,” took many aback.
He was referring to his position that faith in God in Latin America began
15
five hundred years ago, with the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries.
This Eurocentric view does not recognize nor understand that indigenous
worldviews, their cosmologies, ceremonies and life ways, their sense of
being human before the Mystery, though named and expressed distinctly,
has been rooted in faith in the Creator for millennium. Nor did it reflect
the Church’s position in Nostra Aetate that “From ancient times down to
the present, there is found among various peoples a certain perception
of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over
the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the
recognition of a Supreme Being.”
Pope Benedict’s second statement that “The evangelization of the
Americas was not the imposition of a foreign culture,” which he slightly
corrected the following Sunday, shocked most. Our times need historical
accuracy, not amnesia, when we work to convey a truth. In the same
way that we cannot deny that the holocaust happened, we cannot deny
the destruction of indigenous peoples in the settling of the Americas:
the theft of land, slavery, massive displacement of peoples, genocide and
marginalization which accompanied European encounters, invasions,
in the colonization of the Americas. Testimonies of Dominican priest
Bartolomé de las Casas in the 1500s to the work of the late Bishop
Samuel Ruiz of San Cristobal de las Casa in Chiapas witness the servitude
and discrimination of the indigenous over 500 years in the Americas.
“The Utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbian
religions,” continued Pope Benedict, “separating them from Christ and
from the universal Church, would not be a step forward; indeed, it would
be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history
anchored in the past.” This third statement highlights the importance
of understanding that this historical moment is not a going back to
pre-Columbian religions, but rather a new historical existence. “For the
first time, indigenous are speaking for themselves about themselves,”
Demetrio Cojtí Cuxil states. “It is not that someone is speaking on our
behalf, defending us, but that we ourselves are developing visions of
our own identity and questioning everything, from a colonist church
to our relationship with the state.” Not a Utopia of going back, but
a renaissance, a resurgence of pre-conquest numbers, of reclaiming
traditional law, of resistance for human and environmental rights. Native
16
peoples are openly engaging in questions of identity, of traditional
cosmology and relations with the land, of environmentalism, and of
linguistic and religious practices. In the last 20 years within Catholic
communities in both North and South America, Native priests, religious
and lay people have met to construct native theologies inclusive of
ancestral worldviews. Nostra Aetate wisely recommends the Church to
“recognize, preserve and promote the good things, the moral, spiritual
and cultural insights of the other traditions” (4).
Nostra Aetate reflects a movement or dynamic in history toward
recognizing tribal peoples, but not as equal dialogic partners. As I
pointed out earlier, Nostra Aetate specifically names Buddhist, Hindu,
Moslem and Jewish faith traditions; however, there is but subtle reference
to peoples of Africa and to the indigenous of the world. The document
replicates a position rooted in the Eurocentric worldview of superiority.
Indigenous and tribal religions, unnamed, are rendered invisible, thus not
recognized nor valued as other religions. To make this point, a footnote
in Nostra Aetate makes it clear that although a number of Bishops from
Africa asked that mention be made of a number of African religions,
it was decided to keep to the traditional idea of the “great religions of
the world.”
The document recognizes that all peoples search for answers to their
questions of their existence, its meaning and goal, but goes further
to say, “Religions, however, that are bound up with an advanced
culture have struggled to answer the same questions by means of more
refined concepts and a more developed language.” Embedded here
are assumptions about tribal peoples, their languages and worldviews,
yet unexamined. It insinuates Native concepts and languages are “less
developed,” not as important, and infers the Church need not engage
theologically as seriously with Original Peoples as with people of other
faith traditions.
Yet, if western Catholics pull up a seat at the table with Native and tribal
peoples, we may find ourselves astonished at the refined concepts, the wisdom
and worldviews, the ethics that have sustained people for millennium.
Let me give an example. In ancient and contemporary indigenous
ceremonies or stories, one finds that “faith in God, in the Creator” has
17
animated lives and cultures of peoples in the Americas for thousands of
years. If you turn to the ancient Popol Wuj, the K’iche’ Maya creation
account, in oral forms or written text, human uniqueness and human
relation with the Maker and Designer, Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth, is
clear. Humans were to be givers of praise, givers of respect, providers, and
nurturers (Tedlock, 1985, 79). In this account, it was not until humans
had hearts, had minds, until they could talk, keep the calendar and
remember their Maker, that the Maker and Designer considered their
creation human. When humans first looked around and saw everything
under the sky, they felt gratitude and gave “double thanks, triple thanks”
that they had been formed, that they knew the great and the small. The
story goes on to say that “they were reverent; they were givers of praise,
givers of respect, lifting their faces to the sky when they made requests
for their daughters and sons. Surely, this exemplifies a Maya articulation
of transcendence, of their relationship with the Other, though distinctly
named and imaged.
Contemporary practitioners of Maya traditional spirituality point to
the religious dimension in humanity. “Spirituality is found within the
interior of each person. It is a particular energy, which moves a person
to define and express one’s sentiments,” they write in God and Man:
An Indestructible Relation. “It establishes the need to feel and to be in
intimate contact with the presence of a superior force. This intimate
contact provides a deeply felt meaning to one’s actions, magnifying them
with a particular significance.”
They continue, emphasizing the dynamic of intuitive understanding.
As humans, we are in a position of encountering all the interactions
of the dynamic forces of the universe. We need to see the world
with eyes of reason, with the eyes of the body, and with the eyes of
intuition. Intuition is more than language and reason. It is precisely
the intuitive understanding that gives birth to wisdom
and spirituality. With this vision emerges a renovating love for
nature and for each person, a comprehension of the spiritual unity
of the universe.
Refined concepts, ancient and contemporary, expressed in
developed languages.
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I have taught Native Spiritual Traditions at The University of California
at Berkeley and at Santa Clara University. In both institutions students
come with little contact with Native peoples and no formal education on
the Original Peoples of the Americas. In the spirit of Nostra Aetate, there
are tasks that the Catholic university can take up to prepare students
to engage in dialogue and collaboration with diverse communities, and
in this case, with Native people. The Humanities can take up Native
oral stories and performance, literature and art to examine worldviews
and ethics. The Social Sciences can investigate and uncover ways Native
peoples have organized their collective lives as well as the post-conquest
history that has been hidden regarding policies toward indigenous
peoples in the Americas, usually driven by Christian ideologies. The
Natural Sciences can offer opportunities to examine Native relations with
land and sky through Geography and Environmental Studies, through
Astronomy, Ethnoastronomy, and Architecture. Religious Studies and
Theology can consider the religious dimension of humanity from Native
perspectives, revealing a view of the cosmos, which liberates us from an
anthropocentric perspective and shifts our attention to the attributes
of the Mystery beyond our knowing that lives within and around us.
The approaches in each of these disciplines must be diligent to know
the sources, to be self-critical of romanticizing, and to engage with local
Native communities.
In these studies, clashes of Western individualism and traditional
communal worldviews emerge. For example, Native peoples struggle
today to protect their sacred sites: The Lodge of the Bear (Devil’s Tower)
in Wyoming; Mt. Graham, where the Vatican and University of Arizona
have constructed a large observatory despite the voice of the Apache who
recognize it as a sacred mountain; Mt. Shasta in northern California; the
many sites along the Colorado River, where the federal government wants
to dump uranium pilings (In the Light of Reverence). These discussions can
become opportunities for students to examine differing worldviews and
to engage applied ethics.
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“What significance does my neighbor’s faith and tradition have for
my own?”
Returning to the spirit of respect for truth in indigenous traditions and of
dialogue and collaboration with Native peoples, I close with the words of
a K’iche’ Maya young man and a Jesuit from Mexico. Each comes from
a distinct culture, geography and religious tradition, yet in the town of
Santa Maria Chiquimula, they have sought to understand and reconcile
Catholic and traditional K’iche’ Maya faith traditions. What has emerged
from projects of dialogue and collaboration is a creative understanding
expressed in gratitude, an affirmation of identity, and a space for the
experience of the Mystery of God.
We are thankful for the arrival and commitment of the Jesuits
who have motivated and encouraged evangelization from the
relation of our K’iche’ Maya culture in Santa Maria Chiquimula,
Totonicapán. They have taught us to investigate our traditions and
have illuminated our ways so that we have encountered that which
is the most sacred of our grandparents: “to live as indigenous men
and women.”
Eduardo León Chic
I want to give thanks to the people of Tz’oljche’ (Santa Maria
Chiquimula) for all they have taught me. I want to thank them
because they have taught me the true face of God, Mother-Father.
I want to thank them for teaching me to speak their language. But
most of all, I want to thank them because at the same time they
have taught me to speak their language, they have taught to speak
to God, Heart of the Sky, Heart of the Earth.
Victoriano Castillo González, S. J.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Deloria Jr., V. (1973). God is Red. New York: Gross & Dunlap.
Deloria Jr., V. (1994). “Sacred Lands and Religious Freedom.” In American
Indian Religions: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1(1): 73-83, Winter.
20
Deloria Jr., V. (1999). For This Land: Writings on Religion in America.
New York: Routledge.
Johnson, E. (1993). Woman, Earth, and Creator Spirit. New York:
Paulist Press.
Molesky-Poz, J. (2006a). Contemporary Maya Spirituality: The Ancient
Ways Are Not Lost. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Molesky-Poz, J. (2006b). “The Dawning of Something Ancient Yet New:
Reconciliation and Inculturation in Highland Guatemala.” In Christianity
and Native Culture: Perspectives from Different Regions of the World,
General Editor. Cyriac K Pullapilly. Notre Dame, IN: Cross Cultural
Publications, 519-535.
Morson, G. S. & C. Emerson, (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a
Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Nostra Aetate (1966). In The Documents of Vatican II. Ed. Walter M.
Abbott. New York: Guild, 660-669.
Smith, H. (2006). A Seat at the Table: Huston Smith in Conversation
with Native Americans on Religious Freedom. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Theodoratus, D. J. & F. La Peña, (1992). “Wintu Sacred Geography.” In
California Indian Shamanism. Edited by Lowell John Bean. Menlo Park,
Calif.: Ballena Press, Anthropological Papers n. 39.
Twohy, P, S. J. (2008). Jesuit Education in a Broken World: A Spirituality
of Encounter, Relationship, Solidarity and Freedom. Mission Day Keynote
Speech, Seattle University.
Walker, D. E., Jr. (1993). “Protection of American Indian Sacred
Geography.” In Handbook of American Indian Religious Freedom, Editor
Christopher Vecsey. New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company,
100-116.
In the Light of Reverence. DVD (2002). Sacred Land Film Project of Earth
Island Institute.
21
March 25, 2009
Buddhist-Christian-Science Dialogue at the Boundaries
by Paul O. Ingram
Pacific Lutheran University
Much of the discussion in current science-religion dialogue focuses
on “limit” or “boundary” questions. In the natural sciences, boundary
questions are questions that arise in scientific research that cannot
be answered by scientific methods. Boundary questions arise because
of (1) the intentional limit of scientific methods of investigation to
extremely narrow bits of physical processes while ignoring wider bodies
of experience, as well as (2) the resulting incompetence of scientific
methods when applied to aesthetic, moral, and religious experiences.
Furthermore, scientific theoretical constructions are intentionally
falsifiable. Often, scientific theories themselves require further theoretical
explanation. For example, Isaac Newton proposed a theory of gravity as a
general explanation of the motion of terrestrial objects — such as falling
objects like apples — and of the orbits of planets in the solar system.
But Newton was unable to offer an explanatory theory of gravity itself
and was deeply troubled by the notion of “action at a distance,” which
he believed was intrinsically impossible. Albert Einstein’s general theory
of relativity, while maintaining Newton’s three laws of motion, fills in
this gap in Newton’s theory by explaining gravity as the warping of space
occupied by objects such as falling apples, planets, stars, and galaxies
rather than action at a distance.
In other words, boundary questions create methodological and
conceptual constraints that often lead to deeper knowledge of the
universe’s physical structures. At the same time, boundary questions also
tend to engender metaphysical questions along with scientific questions.
For example, the standard Big Bang theory about the origins of the
universe imposes a temporal boundary that constrains what cosmologists
can know about the universe. Why is there a universe at all? The standard
response is that cosmologists can describe how the universe originated
with a high degree of probability, but are ignorant, or at least agnostic,
about why the universe exists. Here, a boundary question generated
by the application of scientific methods in cosmology generates a
23
metaphysical question cosmology is incapable of answering. Whenever
this happens, an opening is created for science-religion dialogue in
general, and a science-Buddhist-Christian “trilogue” in particular.
But boundary questions are not limited to the natural sciences. Religious
questions incapable of solution through the application of theological
or philosophical methods arise at the boundaries engendered by what
Joseph Campbell called “the universals of human experience,” meaning
experiences all human beings undergo no matter what their cultural or
religious environments might be. For example, the experience of suffering
raises the theodicy problem for classical Christian theism. How can a
loving, omnipotent creator of the universe permit unmerited suffering?
Here, the assertion of God’s creative power and love creates a boundary
question that cannot be resolved apart from rethinking the nature of
God, as in process theology.
Anxiety and confrontation with death, as well as experiences of beauty,
joy, hunger, fear, hope, anger, and the need for community are also
examples of universals of human experience. Buddhists and Christians
theoretically interpret the meaning of such experiences according to
their particular texts, doctrinal formulations, and practice traditions.
Similarly, the work done by scientists is influenced by their cultural
contexts, although on a shorter-term basis than is the case with religions.
As in the natural sciences, religious constructs are also theory laden,
so that neither Christian theology nor Buddhist philosophy can claim
complete knowledge. What, exactly, is the nature of God? What, exactly,
is Awakening? The standard Christian and Buddhist responses are that
God or Awakening are ultimately beyond human thought because both
transcend anything human beings can imagine them to be, or not to be.
Still, boundary constraints do not imply that significant and reliable
knowledge is impossible in the sciences or in Buddhist or Christian
thought. To conclude that scientists, Buddhists, or Christians cannot
achieve complete knowledge via scientific method, the practice of
Buddhist philosophy, or the practice of Christian theological reflection
because of boundary constraints does not imply that the sciences have
not amassed an incredible body of reliable knowledge about physical
reality, or that Buddhists and Christians have not accumulated large
bodies of reliable knowledge about the structures of human existence. It
24
is this fact that leads me to the following thesis: the boundary constraints
confronting working scientists and practicing Buddhists and Christians
constitute a reliable foundation for a “trilogue” between the natural
sciences, Buddhism, and Christianity.
All scientists mix observation, theory, and inference to arrive at the best
explanations of physical realities. But there are nuances in the work of
physicists, evolutionary biologists, engineers, social scientists, and others.
As noted above, scientists never “prove” anything. They make falsifiable
hypotheses that can be tested with data generated by mathematical
algorithms, passive observation, active experimental apparatus, and/or
other methods depending on the scientific discipline involved.
In general, however, scientific explanations arise out of physical
facts followed by deduction back down to further levels of empirical
expectations. Those are then related back to observations to confirm
or disconfirm a theory or to generate a revised theory, from which new
conclusions are drawn, after which the empirical “facts” are again consulted.
In other words, scientific inquiry has a developmental history. Its “facts”
are contextual truths, just as they are in Buddhist philosophy and Christian
theology. Attempting to isolate fact from theory is to believe in what
Holmes Rolston called “the dogma of immaculate perception.”
That scientific explanations generate boundary constraints can be
illustrated in physics and biology. In physics, three fundamental constants
are used to measure the scale of physical phenomena: (1) the Planck
constant, which measures the scale of quantum events, (2) the speed of
light, which sets the scale of the effects of relativity, and (3) Newton’s
constant, which is a measure of the strength of gravitational effects. Max
Planck at the beginning of the 20th century showed that these constants
may be combined to produce the fundamental units of length, time,
and mass known as: (1) Planck length, approximately 10-33 centimeters
after the Big Bang, (2) Planck time, approximately 10-45 seconds after the
Big Bang, and (3) Planck mass, approximately 10-5 grams. In quantum
theory, Planck’s constants set limits to our knowledge of microphysical
quantum realities. In relativity theory, the speed of light sets limits to
our knowledge of large-scale physical phenomena. Even Albert Einstein
— although he disliked the indeterminacies of quantum theory —
25
acknowledged there is an indeterminacy, which involves the impossibility
of getting information across great distances because nothing is faster
than the speed of light. For example, scientists can never observe anything
as it is, but only as it was. We cannot observe the sun as it is, but as it was
eight minutes ago. Astronomers cannot observe the center of the Milky
Way Galaxy as it is, but as it was two million years ago. The nearest galaxy
cluster cannot be observed as it is, but as it was two billion years ago.
So, as quantum theory leads to the incorporation of an observer into
the observation of the very small, in relativity theory the constancy of
the speed of light inseparably relates observers to any astrophysical or
microphysical world scientists can observe. This means that physicists
approximate as non-anthropomorphically as possible what is the case in
nature, even as the physical constants simultaneously prevent them from
knowing these realities independently of the knowing mind, which is one
of the epistemological implications of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
In other words, between the very large and the very small, scientific
knowledge is statistical, which does not imply that scientific knowledge
is unreliable.
Similar boundary constraints affect evolutionary biology. What drives
evolution is natural selection, and what drives natural selection is genetic
mutation. In its simplest version, natural selection states that only the
fittest survive, the “fittest” defined as “those who survive.” Note that even
though natural selection helps biologists understand the origins of life
forms, the theory is circular. Charles Darwin thought of natural selection
as a hypothesis in need of observational confirmation, but it turns out on
close inspection that the theory of natural selection is a tautology because
the theory’s premise is also the theory’s conclusion, which illustrates the
methodological differences between scientific method in physics and
scientific method in biology.
Even so, natural selection is true in that on average the less fit do not
survive. But natural selection does not go far enough because many,
perhaps most, of the interesting developments of evolutionary theory
have little to do with natural selection. For example, nothing in
evolutionary theory allows biologists to predict a long-term increase in
complexity. Natural selection only asserts the survival of the fittest. But
evolution takes place whenever there is any change in gene frequency and
26
has nothing to do with increasing the complexity of life forms. There can
be, and are, wanderings up and down the ranges of life’s complexity.
A scientific theory is often tested at the extremes, and its boundaries may
reveal its partial scope and often suggest a larger theory. The extremes of
evolution by natural selection are (1) the genesis of life, and (2) the genesis
of mind. Was there some sort of natural selection already at work at the
start-up of life from non-life? Here, biologists are as limited as cosmologists
in being unable to describe the Big Bang at t=0, that is, prior to Planck
time. Simply stated, the historical pathways from non-biological matter
to self-replicating DNA molecules are not known by biologists. Yet there
is wide agreement that life seems destined to be an important part of the
narrative story of the universe, even though the exact routes life will take are
open and subject to historical contingencies. The hiccup is that none of this
is explained by natural selection in its usual hard-nosed accounts couched
in the language of metaphysical materialism.
Boundary constraints are experienced by religious persons as well. To a
degree not experienced by other sentient beings on Planet Earth, human
beings are capable of stepping back from their experiences and thinking
about them even if they do not at a given moment directly experience
what they are thinking about. What religious human beings think about
are mostly meanings of experience that have little to do with mere
physical survival of the fittest, which is the source of the worldviews
through which persons search for meaning. Perhaps a metaphor I
sometimes used in my history of religions courses will clarify what I
mean. One can think of the religious traditions of human beings as a set
of spectacles through which communities of people look at the world and
reflect on the universals of human experience in their quest for meaning
within specific cultural contexts. Looking at the world through a pair of
Buddhist spectacles — that is, through the pluralism of Buddhist history,
practice traditions, and doctrines — Buddhists accurately apprehend
what there is to be apprehended, but never completely. Place a pair of
Christian spectacles over one’s eyes, one apprehends a similar world
of meanings even as these spectacles block out distinctively Buddhists
meanings and interpretations.
Of course, all metaphors break down when pushed too far. But Buddhism
and Christianity are hard wired to specific, defining worldview spectacles.
27
All schools of Buddhism, in their own way, are theoretical interpretations
of a core worldview, namely, that all existence is implicated in suffering
and impermanence; that we cause our own suffering and the suffering
of other sentient beings by clinging to permanent selfhood; release from
suffering is possible through ethical discipline based on the practice of
compassion toward all sentient beings and the achievement of Awakening
through meditation. These doctrines are presupposed in every aspect of
Buddhist teaching and practice even as they are nuanced differently in the
various schools of Buddhism. Applied to human beings, for example, the
doctrine of nonself means that we are not embodiments of an unchanging
self-entity that remains self-identical through time. Permanent selfhood
is an illusion. What we “are” is a system of interdependent relationships
— physical, psychological, historical, cultural, spiritual — that, in
interdependence with everything else undergoing change in the universe,
continuously create “who” we are from moment to moment throughout
our lifetimes. We are not permanent selves that have these interdependent
relationships; we are these interdependent relationships as we undergo
them. Because these relationships are not permanent, neither we nor
anything else in the universe is permanent.
Buddhist conceptual dialogue with Christian tradition and the natural
sciences is grounded in this worldview. A predominant conclusion
Buddhists draw in dialogue with the sciences is that physics, cosmology,
and evolutionary biology pose few challenges to Buddhist faith and
practice because of Buddhism’s non-theistic character. While Buddhism
does not necessarily deny the existence of God or gods, the worship of
God or gods is typically described as a form of clinging to permanence,
the result of which is suffering.
Many Buddhists are also particularly interested in the neurosciences
because of the central role played by meditation in Buddhist practice, and
in ecology because of Buddhism’s doctrine of interdependence and the
resulting ethical demand to live in nonviolent harmony with all sentient
beings. For example, David Galin, a psychiatrist associated with the
Tibetan lineage of Buddhism, argues that the chaotic state of Western
accounts of the human self, particularly those in the neurosciences,
are inadequate from the standpoint of Buddhist doctrine and practice.
Reframing the concepts of self and person through the filter of Buddhist
28
philosophy can, he claims, resolve these paradoxes because what
Buddhists experience through the practice of meditation bears some
correlation with the experimental results of neuroscientific studies of the
relation between mind and brain. B. Alan Wallace agrees. He argues that
the discoveries of mind/brain correlations via scientific brain imaging
technology are third person observations based on scientific methods.
But a more coherent understanding of the brain, mind, and human
subjectivity needs to be formulated by combining scientific third person
descriptions of neuroscientific data with the first person accounts of the
subjective experiences of Buddhists skilled in the practice of meditation.
Yet in spite of the fact that Buddhists do not often experience the
natural sciences as a challenge to Buddhist doctrine and practice,
Buddhist dialogue with the natural sciences has engendered a number
of boundary questions because physical cosmology and the biological
notion that all living things have evolved through accidental forces of
random mutation and natural selection in the struggle for existence seem
to raise as many questions regarding fundamental Buddhist doctrines
as they do for Christian theology. Is the teaching that since all sentient
beings are interdependent, we should experience the suffering of others
as our suffering and act to relieve suffering by non-violent expedient
means based on an illusion? In a universe where the Second Law of
Thermodynamics seems to demand suffering and death as the price for
life itself, does it make any sense to say that we cause our own suffering
by clinging to impermanence and that we can free ourselves of suffering
by training ourselves through meditation not to cling to impermanence?
Does universal suffering have anything to do with “clinging”? If the
materialists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins are right about
the universe being “pointless” and “without value,” can Awakening
mean anything more than becoming experientially aware of universal
pointlessness? If the universe is valueless, what is the value of Awakening?
Are compassion and non-violence merely fantasies? In a scientifically
pointless and valueless universe, in what and for what can one reasonably
hope? What is the connection between Buddhism’s defining teachings and
what the sciences are discovering about the physical processes of nature?
The worldview that supports Christian faith and practice is monotheism,
but Christian monotheism is not identical with Jewish or Islamic
29
monotheism. The distinctive feature of Christian monotheism is its
focus on the life, death, and resurrection of a Jewish peasant who lived
two thousand years ago on the fringes of the Roman Empire. The central
claim of Christianity — the Incarnation — is that in the life, death,
and resurrection of this man, human beings met God, certainly not all
that God is, but nevertheless God. Furthermore, the doctrine of the
Incarnation claims that human beings still encounter God incarnated
in Jesus after his death through the Holy Spirit. This encounter, past,
present, and continuing into the future, is what lures all things and events
into a future reality called the Kingdom of God. Figuring out
the meaning of the Incarnation has been, and still is, the central problem
for Christian theological reflection. The two-thousand-year history of
this reflection illustrates that there have always existed multiple ways of
skinning out the meaning of the Incarnation, which also illustrates that
apart from the Incarnation, Christian theological reflection ceases to
be “Christian.”
Some forms of Christian thought and practice are quite narrowly focused
on the Incarnation. An example is the Christian Right in America and in
other parts of the world whose interpretations of the Incarnation do not
allow them to apprehend the truth of not only non-Christian religions,
but also forms of Christian faith and practice other than their own. Many
evangelical Christians are also theologically exclusivist. On the other
hand, the theological lenses of liberal Christians tend to be more open to
the diversity of religious pluralism as valid avenues of truth about God so
that theological liberals are more willing to engage in dialogue with
non-Christians and tend to be more open to dialogue with the natural
sciences as well.
But the traditional openness of theological liberalism also runs the risk of
uncritically diluting the distinctiveness of the Incarnation. The theological
issues are complex for all Christians because the object of the various
theological interpretations of the Incarnation is not only immanent
within the rough and tumble of historical events, but also transcendent.
God, as Christian mystical theology never tires of pointing out, is beyond
words, symbols, institutional control, and theological speculation. That is,
in confessing the Incarnation of God in the historical Jesus as the Christ,
Christians do not know what God “is” in any absolute sense because the
Incarnation does not exhaust what God “is.” Christians can only know
30
God approximately within the historical contexts of their lives. Yet as in
the sciences and Buddhism, to say that Christians cannot claim complete
knowledge about God does not imply that Christians know nothing
about God. But there are always boundary questions that constrain what
Christians can know, which is why dialogue with non-Christians and the
natural sciences is, I believe, the most important theological enterprise for
contemporary thinking Christians. My guess is that dialogue with nonBuddhists and the natural sciences is of equal importance for Buddhists
as well.
Now, for a concluding postscript in process. As Buddhists generally
conclude that the sciences pose few challenges to Buddhist teaching
and practice, many Christian theologians realistically acknowledge
the challenges the sciences pose to Christian thought and practice,
particularly to Christian understanding of creation and divine action. In
its most general terms, what Christian dialogue with the natural sciences
has clarified is that if God is anywhere to be known, it will be as God
“comes through” in the space-time physical realities relative to our local
existence, since according to the Prologue to the Gospel of John, God is
incarnate locally. This means that God is in relationships because God
and nature seem to share this much in common: each must somehow
exist with real, objective attributes. But we have no direct access to either
God’s or nature’s attributes except relatively as each is translated into
local terms we can understand that can be stretched to grasp something
more ultimate than we find in ordinary experience. Certainly the atheistic
convictions of scientific materialists that only nature, not God, exists may
be correct. But the boundary questions and resulting epistemological
problems are the same for atheists, Christian theists, Buddhist nontheists, and scientists: that of knowing something that transcends our
experience and understanding. That the sciences have understood nature,
however partially, should be encouragement that Christian theology can
deepen its understanding of God and God’s interaction with the universe
locally, however partial this understanding might be.
Like many theological conclusions, many scientific conclusions are not
observer dependent. Scientific conclusions and laws are invariant and do
not depend upon a reference frame, even as detailed observations vary
from reference frame to reference frame. Some of the physical constants
of nature — the speed of light, the charge of an electron, the number of
31
atomic shells, the periodic table, chemical reactions, and so on — will be
the same for all observers everywhere, as far as anyone at present knows.
Although measurements of space and time are relative to observers, many
space-time measurements, which fuse the particulars of space and time in
local places, are invariant between observers. There also exists considerable
unity in the sciences: mass is unified with energy, space with time, and
gravity with acceleration. The very relativity of these interrelationships
unifies them, and objectively so. These features of nature remain quite
real as phenomena even though they are interdependent with other
phenomena. They do not exist intrinsically, but only interdependently
— a point that is in harmony with Buddhism’s worldview and with
Christian process theology.
This is why Christians who are engaged in dialogue with the natural
sciences usually conclude that Christian theological reflection can be
harmonized with scientific conclusions about physical processes. Physics
and biology have removed nature from the phenomenal level of what
human beings experience to a transphenomenal level, where nature is
not visible, but only detectable. Nature is not unambiguously available
to the imaginations of either scientists or theologians or Buddhist
philosophers. Nature is rooted in a realm out of immediate reach and
only half-translated in our phenomenal experience, a region into which
we gain access by groping out of our familiar experience. But since
nature is already transphenomenal, why should it be judged incoherent
when Christian theologians speak of God in a supraphenomenal way?
Scientists, Buddhists, and Christians can stipulate only that they work
back from relevant experiences on the phenomenal level, and then ask
what hypothetical reality might constructively explain these experiences.
This is the practice of critical realism as inference to the best explanation.
For scientific, Buddhist, and Christian accounts of reality, what can be
clearly apprehended stretches away to what we dimly apprehend to what
cannot be pictured at all.
Now it is time to ask, so what? I have suggested that a fundamentally
important question energizing Buddhist-Christian dialogue and
Buddhist-Christian dialogue with the natural sciences is: what is reality,
the real, the way things really are as opposed to the way we might want
things to be? Buddhist-Christian conceptual dialogue and its dialogue
32
with the natural sciences have an epistemological agenda that also informs
socially engaged dialogue on economic and justice issues and interior
dialogue focused on practice traditions. Merely reflecting on formalistic
statements about how Christian faith and practice can be creatively
transformed through the appropriation of insights from Buddhism,
or how Buddhist traditions of social engagement have been positively
influenced by Christian social justice traditions, or how Buddhist and
Christian meditational disciplines engender similar experiences of
reality named differently in each tradition, are important concerns. But
focusing only on these concerns runs the risk of comparative triviality.
What is needed is a Science-Buddhist-Christian “trilogue” focused on
fundamental epistemological issues that cut across science, Buddhism,
and Christianity. The question is, what are the boundary constraints
of the sciences, Buddhism, and Christianity, and how do the sciences,
Buddhism, and Christianity explore the boundaries between the known
and the unknown? How do they participate in the human quest for
knowledge? What do they conceive as unknowable?
In other words, authentic science and Buddhist and Christian faith
are lived at conceptual and experiential boundaries. To cite one
example, think of how Christian theological reflection and Buddhist
doctrinal reflection can be creatively transformed by a “trilogue” with
the neurosciences. When taken non-reductively, the neurosciences
offer explanations of patterns of both religious thought and behavior
in terms of the interactions between cognitive processes occurring in
the brain contextualized by environmental factors. This is so because
neuroscientific accounts of religious experience and behavior inform
us that just as culture does not hover above cognition, cognition is not
somehow isolated from culture. Certain conditions of our social and
physical environments are broadly similar in all human populations
and throughout much of human history, and activate and tune the
physical processes generating cognition in similar ways cross-culturally.
The similarities of teachings and experiences that occur in humanity’s
religious traditions may be in part explained in terms of the activation
and tuning of species-typical cognitive capacities by regular features of the
environment. The considerable differences between humanity’s religious
traditions — the localized features peculiar to all religious traditions —
are potentially explainable in the same way.
33
By investigating the myriad, complex, and variable interactions among
brain, mind, body, and environment, the neurosciences offer testable
hypotheses concerning particular forms of beliefs in God, non-theism,
meditative practices, rituals, complex theologies, and doctrinal traditions
across cultures and religious traditions. These testable hypotheses offer
opportunities for deepening Buddhist doctrinal reflection and experience
and Christian theological reflection and experience. But neither Buddhist
nor Christian experiences and ways of knowing can be “reduced” to the
neuroscientific conclusions about brain states. There are always boundaries.
Dialogue in all three of its forms (conceptual, socially engaged, and
interior) will unleash new directions of mutual creative transformation
never before imagined by Buddhists and Christians in dialogue. It is
“dialogue at the boundaries” that is the source of Buddhist-Christian
mutual transformation, and if the sciences are included as a third
partner, the creative transformation of the sciences as well. The reason
this is so is that boundaries point to that which “transcends” what
we can conceptually say and understand. This is, of course, the most
important lesson we learn from the interior dialogue between Christian
apophatic mystical experience and what our Buddhist brothers and
sisters tell us about the experience of Awakening and the emptiness of
all conceptual discourse about Awakening, even Buddhist discourse. As
Tom Christenson, who teaches philosophy at Capital University and
who contributed an essay to The Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism,
Christianity, and Science, writes: “Some people suppose that talk about
transcendence is talk about the super-natural. This is not the way I want
to use the term. Something is transcendent if it goes beyond ourselves, for
example if it calls us or demands something from us, or lures us on to a
new level of seeing, understanding, or being.”1
Then, Christenson cites one of my favorite hymns in the Lutheran
liturgical tradition that is based on the 23rd Psalm: “Shepherd me, O
God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life.” He notes
that it is easy to understand a prayer to fulfill our wants or to avoid our
fears. But how can we pray to move beyond our wants and beyond our
fears? This is transcendence, when something that does not originate from
our wants and fears captures us and stretches us beyond our wants and
fears, perhaps even beyond our imagining. “Such an encounter can be the
34
occasion of my growth, my conversion, my death and rebirth, my arrival
as a new person.”
As Christenson notes, a story can do this. So too can insights into the
physical process at play in the universe do this. Dialogically encountering
another person can do this. Christian experience of God’s presence
through centering prayer can do this. Buddhist experience of Awakening
can do this. Engaging in Buddhist-Christian conceptual, socially engaged,
and interior dialogue can do this. Engaging in a Buddhist-Christianscience trilogue can do this. The experience of transcendence has multiple
particular forms, but each throws us, sometimes kicking and screaming,
out of the conventional limits of our knowledge and linguistic constructs,
into boundary constraints that expand our experiences into new
possibilities never previously imagined or encountered.
So given the boundary constraints of human knowledge, can anything
really be said? In an important sense, the answer is “yes,” because a great
deal has been said and written by scientists, Buddhists, and Christians.
Indeed, everything I have written in this essay is an attempt to contribute
to what has been said and what may be said. But can things be said
about ultimate transcendence clearly and unequivocally? The lesson of
the natural sciences and Buddhist-Christian interior dialogue is, “no.”
This is why, as a Lutheran Christian engaged with process theology, I
have come to understand that conceptual, socially engaged, interior, and
science-religion dialogues are the proper forms of meaningful theological
reflection in a culturally and religiously plural world that is always
undergoing process.
So should Buddhists and Christians remain conceptually silent? Perhaps
the best answer is, “Probably more than we do.” When scientists,
Buddhists, and Christians do engage in dialogical conversation, we
should speak and write mindfully, as Buddhist and Christian meditative
experience informs us, aware of the temptations involved in trying not
to speak or in speaking too much. Again, following the instruction of
Buddhist and Christian contemplatives, in speaking about things that
reflect transcendence we need to speak and write in an intentionally
impaired language by using words that cannot be uttered, in language
with a deliberately warped grammar of unsaying, words that always carry
a warning: The words we speak or write are not final words.
35
NOTES
Tom Christenson, “The Oddest Word: Paradoxes of Theological
Discourse,” in The Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism, Christianity, and
Science, 179.
1
2
Ibid., 180.
36
March 25, 2010
Jesus the Jew and Paul the “Christian”: Jewish Views of
Christianity’s Heroes
by Claudia Setzer
Manhattan College
One idiosyncrasy of American Jews is that we love to point out famous
people who are Jewish — and the more attractive or successful they are,
the better. Ruth Bader Ginzberg is a source of pride, as is the designer
Diane von Furstenburg. Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg are the only
Jews in the baseball Hall of Fame.
Another Jew whom many Jews since the Enlightenment have been quite
proud to claim as one of their own is Jesus of Nazareth, calling him a
“son of the synagogue,” a popularizer of Jewish ethics, and simply, “our
brother.” The fellow Jew they often loved to hate was Paul of Tarsus. If
they looked at Jesus and saw themselves, when they looked at Paul, they
saw the Other, the Stranger. Few Jews, until recently, wanted to claim
him. Instead, they often turned him into a Christian, a word he never
used. Paul, of course, was no more a Christian than Jesus, so please note
the quotation marks around the word in my title.
Why this bifurcated response? To sum up my talk in one sentence, when
Jews talk and write about Jesus, they are worrying about acceptance in
society — belonging. When they talk about Paul, they are often worrying
about boundaries — explaining difference. Jews want full acceptance
and safety in the larger society, but they do not want to be completely
absorbed and bleached out by it. I am speaking about the modern period,
from the 19th century to the present, and also want to think briefly about
the implications for contemporary relations. In the ancient and medieval
periods, things were quite different. The very few Talmudic references deal
with Jesus by not referring to him, using the term “that man” or calling him
a sorcerer or a “misleader,” someone who drew people away from Judaism.
But the primary way that the Rabbis of the Talmud dealt with Jesus was
with silence. In the early and medieval periods that Jews had experience
with Christianity, the religion in his name was generally negative and
associated with massacres, forced baptisms, and the Inquisition.
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In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Enlightenment opened some doors
to science, to critical thought, and to reason. And many Jews walked
through those open doors. Napoleon granted the right of citizenship
to Jews, the ghetto walls fell, and Jews had opportunities to become
middle-class shopkeepers, business people, and professionals. But this
meant grappling with modernity, figuring out a way to fit into the larger
society. The three largest movements in American Judaism that we have
today — Orthodoxy, Conservative, and Reform — emerged from this
struggle with the question of tradition and belonging in Western Europe
in the 19th century. Belonging meant coming to terms with a society
that was still, more or less, Christian. Joining society meant developing
a positive approach to the dominant culture and religion. Jews also
needed to explain the relative lack of numerical success of Judaism versus
Christianity’s unquestionably large numbers.
At that same time, biblical studies were turning more historical and
critical and using the tools of reason to investigate biblical texts. The
late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the first of three quests for the
historical Jesus. Attempts were made to peel away layers of church
tradition, and even the biases of the gospels themselves, to discover the
“real” Jesus, the flesh and blood person who walked the roads of ancient
Galilee and Judea, and was executed by the Romans. An early attempt is
D. F. Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu, the Life of Jesus, which completely strips
away the supernatural. An even earlier attempt was made by Thomas
Jefferson, who, while in the White House, cut and pasted from the New
Testament to come up with his version of Jesus, minus the miracles,
minus the angels announcing his birth, and minus the resurrection.
Jefferson was a true example of an Enlightenment rationalist, and his
Jesus was a human teacher of philosophy and morals.
Strauss and Jefferson were not Jews, obviously, but Jews also embraced the
project. For Jewish thinkers, the success of Christianity and the question
of “what happened to the pure Jewish religion of Jesus?” required an
explanation. Jesus was not the problem; he was one of us. Who then
was the troublemaker? Paul was seen as the one who both invented
Christianity as a separate religion, and at the same time ruined it by
severing it from its Jewish roots. Kaufmann Kohler, an early president
of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, writing at the end of the 19th
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century, saw Jesus as “one of the best and truest sons of the synagogue,”
“a unique exponent of the principle of redeeming love.” Paul, by
comparison, was “an irritable, ghost-seeing fanatic,” “an infuriated zealot”
who “poured forth all the wrath of his hot temper against the Jews.”
In his article, “Saul of Tarsus,” in the Jewish Encyclopedia (online)
published in 1905, the first line reads: “the actual founder of the
Christian Church as opposed to Judaism,” and that is certainly not a
compliment. His long article compares Paul’s supposedly gloomy outlook
on the world with a radical dualism of good and evil to the rabbi’s more
this-worldly, homespun positive outlook, and he declares Paul as too
Greek and not very Jewish. Kohler gives Paul credit for helping bring
monotheism to the world, but Paul is also the father of anti-Semitism, for
his negative statements about the Law and the Jewish people. Language
is extreme: “in place of the love greatly extolled in the panegyric in 1 Cor
12 … Paul instilled into the church, by his words of condemnation of the
Jews as ‘vessels of wrath fitted for destruction’ (Rom 11:22; 2 Cor 3:9,
4:3) the venom of hatred which rendered the earth unbearable for God’s
priestly people. Probably Paul is not responsible for these outbursts of
fanaticism — but Paulinism is. Protestantism revived Pauline views and
notions; and with these, a biased opinion of Judaism and its Law took
possession of these writers, and prevails even to the present” (JE 1905).
This is his last line. Kohler’s mistake is that he equates Christianity with
Paul’s teaching and Judaism with the rabbis. But he is really comparing
Paul’s fiery apocalyptic Judaism with the latter, more domesticated
rabbinic Judaism. Naturally the latter would seem more sensible, suited to
life in the world.
But let us think a little about what is going on when Kohler is writing.
European Jews are not just confronting modernity, but also antiSemitism. The Dreyfus trial in France, in 1894–95, proved the hardiness
of anti-Semitism, even for assimilated Jews in the cradle of emancipation.
Great waves of European Jewish immigrants, most fleeing persecution,
were flocking to America and Palestine. The first Zionist congress met
in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897; Herzl and others were convinced by the
Dreyfus affair that Jews would never be totally at home in a
Christian Europe.
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So Kohler wrote at a time of change, of despair at Christian society, but
hoped for redemption in new places. When Jews were trying to negotiate
their own sense of identity and belonging, and their place in a changing
non-Jewish world, Jesus and Paul functioned as symbols. Jesus, an icon,
is separable from religion in his name. He is gladly claimed by Jews as a
carrier and popularizer of Jewish morality and ethics. He becomes part of
the historical playing out of redemption, where Israel acts as a “light unto
the nations,” and one day will bring all nations to declare God’s oneness
(as we still say in the Aleinu prayer: “on that day He will be One and His
name shall be One”).
But if Jesus’ stock went up, Paul’s went down in inverse proportion.
Wordy, hard to read, given to extreme statements, he became the
problem, the source of anti-Judaism, the lightning rod for Jewish anger
and criticism of Christianity. According to common wisdom until quite
recently, Paul spoke against the Torah and its commandments, abandoned
Judaism himself, brought Gentiles into the church without requiring
circumcision or conversion to Judaism, and further taught that the Jews
were rejected by God and replaced by Gentiles, thus very quickly turning
Christianity into a Gentile religion. To insert E. P. Sanders’ famous quip,
Jews thought, “What’s wrong with Christianity is that it is not Judaism
— and the fault is Paul’s.” And to be honest, he is a safer target. No one
thinks he is the son of God.
The most important Jew to reconstruct Jesus was Joseph Klausner, a
Lithuanian Jew, who moved to Palestine in 1929 and was part of the
faculty at Hebrew University. A great Humanist, Klausner wrote the first
book on Jesus in Hebrew, Yeshu ha Notzri, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life,
Times, and Teaching ([1922] trans. 1925), and later, From Jesus to Paul
(1939). Jesus, he said, was a Jew, a Pharisee, teaching nothing more than
what later became normative or garden-variety Judaism. His teaching was
classic, first century Judaism. What went wrong, according to Klausner,
was the radical morality, like “turn the other cheek” to someone who
strikes you, or “if someone wants to sue you and take your coat, give
your cloak as well” (Matt 5:39–40). Such morality makes for a lofty
ideal, he said, but no society can live that way. To create a society that
can function, he said, would be to dip back in to this same Judaism that
Jesus came from, and in renewed form, build a new society. Christianity
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and Islam translated to the Gentile world the teaching of Judaism, its
morality, its monotheism, and its Scriptures. It was good for the world
and good for Judaism. Without Christianity’s transmission of Jesus’
teaching, which is Jewish to the core, Judaism would not have survived in
the Diaspora, but would have steadily wasted away or “vegetated” without
revelatory or creative power (From Jesus to Paul, 606). But now that it has
been accomplished, Klausner awaits a renewal of humanistic Judaisms in
its own land, Israel. David Sandmel suggests that for Klausner, it is now
the crucified people, the Jews, who will be resurrected.
Klausner’s teaching of Jesus the Jew and Christianity’s Jewish core seem
a little obvious to us, but we should appreciate that he comes along at a
time when the dominant scholarship on the New Testament was German
and Protestant. Much of it seemed nearly unaware that Jesus was a Jew
at all. Judaism was often painted as the dark, legalistic, soul-destroying
background from which Jesus freed people. Equally anti-Jewish and
anti-Catholic, such scholars complained about deterioration of the
true message of Jesus and Paul as a descent into “early Catholicism”
[FrűhKatholismus]. An extreme version of such thinking was the professor
Walter Grundmann (U of Jena), who established in 1939 “The Institute
for the Study of Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious
Life,” a group of scholars who argued that Galileans were genetically
Gentile, and therefore, Jesus was not biologically Jewish. This troubling
and fascinating story of the transformation of Jesus into a non-Jew is told
in Susannah Heschel’s book, The Aryan Jesus (Princeton). Klausner is up
against such thinking.
One person inspired by Klausner was Stephen Wise, a leader in American
Reform Judaism, who gave a speech entitled “A Jew’s View of Jesus” at
Carnegie Hall the week before Christmas in 1925. It drew 3,000 people
and not a little controversy. Wise, a chairman of the United Palestine
Appeal, and later, one of the first to confront the growing evidence of
Hitler’s Final Solution, echoed Kohler and Klausner by saying, “Jesus the
Jew was of the very fibre of our Jewish heritage,” “not only a Jew, but the
Jew, the Jew of Jews.”
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The Search for the Historical Jesus and the Historical Paul
Jews who write about Jesus today are part of the third quest for the
historical Jesus. (I am skipping the second one, of the 1950s and ‘60s,
which is largely German and theological.) They show the same impulse
as earlier Jewish writers like Klausner and Kohler: to reclaim the Jewish
Jesus. However, they are much less critical of Christianity and not always
different from non-Jewish scholars in their methods and conclusions,
perhaps reflecting their own level of comfort in America today. I should
mention the importance of a scholar of the previous generation, Samuel
Sandmel, in creating a high standard for Jewish scholarship on Jesus and
Paul and ending what he called the “splendid isolation” from Christian
scholarship in which many Jews had done their writing. I would still
recommend his We Jews and Jesus as one of the best books on Jesus the
Jew. Today, scholars like Paula Fredricksen and Amy-Jill Levine join
non-Jewish scholars in drawing a bold line between Jesus the Jew and
Christianity’s picture of him — Levine calling him The Misunderstood
Jew, just as John Meier, a Catholic scholar, called him A Marginal Jew.
As Jewish and Christian scholars hone their ideas in the third quest,
certain features dominate the emerging picture of the historical Jesus.
A longer version of these points appears in my article “The Historical
Jesus,” in Tikkun, reprinted under the program “From Jesus to Christ”
(www.pbs.org).
• Jesus preached the kingdom of God, not himself. In some
way, God would act in history (or is now acting) to affect a
change in society as they knew it. Jesus preached God’s power to
affect a reversal of values and the emergence of a just society —
economically and politically.
• Jesus was a Jew, and this early “kingdom movement” was not the
founding of a religion called Christianity, but a thoroughly Jewish
phenomenon that used Jewish categories and terms.
• The historical Jesus and the Jesus of the later church are not
identical. The flesh-and-blood Jesus of the late 20s of the first
century became the reconstructed and interpreted Jesus of the
gospels in the 70s and 80s and was succeeded by the “Christ of
faith” of the later church.
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• The church’s emphasis on Jesus’ divinity has often eclipsed his
humanity, as church controversies have circled around questions of
Jesus’ relation to the Father and the like. Yet the human Jesus left hints
of being very human indeed: a colorful sort, more given to feasting
than fasting, and hanging around with disreputable types of people.
• John the Baptist exerted tremendous influence over Jesus and his
message, his fiery apocalyptic theology carrying over into Jesus’
own ministry.
• Whether Jesus saw himself as Messiah or not is debatable; there
is little evidence that he saw himself as divine. A traditional Messiah
in the Hebrew Bible was anointed, or chosen, by God to save the
people, but was not himself God. That element seems to have
developed after his death among his followers and reached its full
expression in the gospel of John.
• Believers and non-believers like the Jewish historian Josephus and
Roman historian Tacitus recalled him as a miracle-worker, exorcist,
and healer. Interestingly, his detractors in the gospel did not call him
a fraud, but instead attributed his power to Satan or demons.
• Except for a few of the women, the bulk of Jesus’ followers
abandoned him at his death. Nor does his family seem to have
supported him during his ministry.
• Jesus’ death did not mark the end of the movement. His
followers continued to believe in his message of God’s rapidly
approaching kingdom, and based on their belief in his resurrection,
they and his family did a rapid about-face, which became a vital
movement that eventually swept through the Mediterranean world.
What about Paul? The Jewish reclamation of Paul has been much more of
a revolution in scholarship. Sandmel wrote sympathetically in the 1950s
that Paul saw himself as preaching something both totally novel but
also totally Jewish. But the approach can be best credited to a Lutheran
bishop, Krister Stendahl, who taught at Harvard and Brandeis, and was a
major figure in early Jewish-Christian relations. In his writings, he swept
away the image of Paul as a former legalistic Pharisee, who was tortured
with guilt at his inability to overcome sin and ready to abandon Judaism
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and the Law. He notes that Paul had a pretty healthy self-image, a “robust
conscience,” which included a fair amount of bragging about his Jewish
identity. Paul claimed to be “a Hebrew born of Hebrews, as to the Law a
Pharisee, [as to zeal a persecutor of the church] as to righteousness under
the Law, blameless” (Phil 3:5–6). Or as Paul described a confrontation
with Peter, Paul said, “we ourselves are Jews by birth, and not Gentile
sinners” (Gal 2:15). Today, quite a few scholars, many of them Jews, see
Paul as a reflection of some Jewish trends of his time. Alan Segal sees
Paul as a Jewish mystic, linking Paul’s description of his vision of the
resurrected Jesus to other ecstatic Jewish writings of the time. Daniel
Boyarin sees Paul as amplifying the universalistic strain in early Judaism
that Israel is to be a “light unto the nations.” Most exciting is a group
of scholars who understand Paul’s mission to the Gentiles as part of his
Jewish belief in the election of Israel. What are some of their emphases?
1) Paul did not convert from one religion to another. Something
fairly remarkable happened to him. Although he never met the
earthly Jesus, and was not one of the inner circle, he reports that
Jesus appeared to him: “You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier
(not former) life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church
of God and trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond
many among my own people of the same age, for I was far more
zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had
set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was
pleased to reveal his son to me, so that I might proclaim him among
the ethné (gentile or nations), I did not confer with any human
being…” (Gal 1:13–17). Note the language. He is called by God,
set apart before birth to preach to the ethné (translated: Gentiles
or nations). Now, listen to God speaking to the prophet Jeremiah:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were
born I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations”
(1:5). Jeremiah was certainly not converting to a new religion. He
was called by God to preach to the nations, identical to Paul’s claim.
2) Paul was not a Christian. Writing in the 50s, some 20 years
after Jesus’ death, he had no concept of Christianity as a separate
religion. He used the term ekklesia, usually translated as “church,”
but it also means “assembly,” used for citizen assemblies in
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Greco-Roman cities. He referred to his fellow-believers as the saints,
brothers and sisters, the body of Christ, but not as people who
belong to a religion called Christianity. Religion was not a separate
thing anyway, a box to check on a form, but was rather a subset
of ethnicity. A new book by Jewish scholar Pamela Eisenbaum
is entitled Paul Was Not a Christian. Like Jesus, Paul was an
apocalyptic Jew who expected the imminent end of the world as he
knew it. God would soon break into history and transform society
— “the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:31).
3) The fate of the Gentiles was the content of Paul’s mission. But
he struggled with this issue as a Jew. How can Gentiles be included
in the people of God? For him, the answer was through Christ, but
the question came from his Jewishness. Jewish speculation about
the end-time included the idea that somehow all peoples would
participate in the messianic age at the end of days. Paul visualized
Jews and non-Jews all coming into one community, “the people of
God” (Gal 6:16). In Rom 11:26, he saw Gentiles as being brought
into relation with the God of Israel, and then Israel herself would
be saved. Both would be under the same umbrella.
4) Belonging to the people of Israel was still a primary category
of identity for Paul. The expression of identity varies with
circumstance. As Caroline Johnson Hodge has argued, every person
possesses a set of identities that nest inside each other. For example,
I’m a Minnesotan, now a New Yorker, a Manhattan College Jasper,
a mother, a Jew, and an American. The mother and the Jewish part
are pretty dominant. But the identities slide up and down and are
amplified or muted according to circumstances. When I watched
the NCAA basketball finals some years back and my Manhattan
College Jasper students were winning, I was temporarily all Jasper.
For Paul, there were three significant identities: a Jew, a believer
in Jesus, and a preacher to the Gentiles. These identities slide
around in relation to one another. But embracing one doesn’t mean
shedding the other any more than my being a Jasper means giving
up being a Minnesotan. Being a preacher of Jesus to the Gentiles
doesn’t mean ceasing to be part of Israel. A universalist strain in
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early Judaism assumed that one day the whole world, Jew and
Gentile, will come under the wings of the God of Israel.
5) Paul’s audience was primarily Gentiles who had been baptized
into the community of believers in Jesus. The emphasis on Gentile
audience has been the way out for many scholars to explain
Paul’s seemingly anti-Torah, anti-Judaism statements. Especially
Galatians, where Paul used the language of curse and slavery,
one may say “he’s talking to Gentiles,” discouraging them from
taking on circumcision or other commandments. Since Christ,
Gentiles enter the people of God through baptism. Because of the
apocalyptic emergency, they may and should bypass the Torah’s laws
on circumcision, food, and the like.
6) Paul was an apocalyptic thinker. The time is at hand. God’s war
of liberation has begun against the demonic powers of the universe,
sin, disease, death, but also the Roman empire that killed Jesus
and continues to oppress most of Mediterranean society. Paul saw
himself living in the nexus of “the present evil age” and the “new
creation” (Gal 6:15), which dawned with Jesus’ death.
To sum up, Paul was an apocalyptic Jew who believed God was breaking
into history, and that through Christ, God had inaugurated a period of
salvation for all peoples, Jew and Gentile, but retained the privileges of
the Jews under the umbrella of the God of Israel. This is a far cry from
the earlier Protestant images of Paul as the guilt-wracked Pharisee, or the
earlier and strangely similar Jewish images of the fanatical founder of a new
religion. It is also a far cry from any kind of Jew that we know today, but
we should wonder if we came up with a Paul who was too much like us.
Paul did not have everything figured out. I part company with many of
these scholars here, who make everything fit. At the end of Romans 9-11,
his meditation on the place of Jews and Judaism, Paul calls it a mystery:
“Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How
unsearchable his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” In other
words, he threw his hands up. “God has a plan for Israel,” he seems to say,
“but I cannot figure it all out.”
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Doing Theology with Each Other
What does all of this reclamation have to do with us today? Does it
matter in the way we live our lives? I think it must. We are at a special
moment in history, at least here in America, where diversity is part of
the flow of the moment, and denominationalism is less important to
younger people. For Jews and Christians, this means that we can indulge
ourselves in a bit of “holy envy,” Krister Stendahl’s term for enjoyment
and even a bit of envy toward the religion of our neighbors. It is easier
for Christians to enjoy and appreciate Judaism because its Scriptures and
most of its values are foundational to Christianity. Not all Christians have
gone this direction, but the kinship is easy to see. It has been harder for
Jews because of the negative historical associations with Christianity. But
Jewish holy envy can flow out of an interest in the historical Jesus and
the historical Paul, and it requires that we appreciate their uniqueness.
This means giving up the idea that Jesus and Paul were “nothing more
than” the typical Jews of their times. Jews they were, but extremely
charismatic and radical with remarkable visions of human possibility
and God’s actions in history. This is why they are called Marginal, or
Misunderstood. If either the historical Jesus or the historical Paul showed
up today, I doubt any of us would know how to deal with them.
We have been through periods of Jewish-Christian “dialogue,” much of
them consisting of, in the words of one professor, “getting us Christians
to clean up our mess.” Catholic and Protestant scholars went through
a period of soul-searching and repentance in the aftermath of the
Holocaust, where they came to grips with what Jules Isaac called “the
teaching of contempt.” This is the negative imagery of Jews and Judaism
and the separation of Jesus from his Judaism that had characterized the
teaching of Christianity in Europe and, many argue, made Europe a
fertile breeding ground for anti-Semitism.
I have certainly engaged in a number of meetings and sessions that
considered this problem. All of these efforts have been explored
beautifully in a book by Mary Boys called Has God Only One Blessing?
All of this was essential. It was a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want
to live there. Such dialogue was really a one-way street. While we need to
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continue to be careful when we teach and preach about the other, many
are turning to something more.
We need to do our own theology in the presence of the other. Tzvi
Marx, director of a Talmudic institute in the Netherlands, talks about
Paul van Buren and David Hartman, a Christian and a Jew, who model
this approach (“The Corner of My Cloak,” Tikkun 19 [2004] 46).
To paraphrase Marx, he says van Buren wants to do his theology as a
Christian in the presence of Jews, not seeking Jewish agreement or even
approval, but making sure his faith does not depend on a denigration
or canceling out of his Jewish partners. David Hartman, who founded
an institute in Israel, invokes the traditional category of learning. In
light of the state of Israel as a modern country and Jewish exit from the
ghetto, Jews must see themselves relative to other cultures and religions.
He wants to learn about Christianity from a Christian, perhaps in the
traditional Jewish way of a hevruta, a learning pair, who argue and study
their way to an answer.
When Christians and Jews (and Muslims and others) think through issues
of peoplehood, liturgy, or spiritual practice together, this is Tikkun Olam,
repair of the world. They cannot come to the same conclusions. They do
not have to. As Marx says, in life “there is not enough time to try on every
mantle of spirituality. There is barely enough time to wear our own.” We
do not need to be the other. We can be ourselves in each other’s presence,
and through thinking about the strange and wonderful ancient Jewish
teachers, Jesus and Paul, enjoy a bit of holy envy and each other.
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Nov. 9, 2010
Toward a Theology of the Indigenous Peoples of Bangladesh
by Brother Jarlath D’Souza, CSC
Bangladesh Inter-Religious Council for Peace and Justice
The following represents a summary outline of Brother Jarlath’s lecture.
Context is helpful when we begin to discuss theologically the thoughts
and beliefs of the indigenous peoples in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a
small country sandwiched between India and Myanmar (Burma) with
a population of about 200 million. According to current estimates, in
Bangladesh there are roughly 160 million Muslims, 10 million Hindus,
one million Buddhists, one million people who identify with their tribe,
and about 250,000 Christians. With regard to the indigenous tribal
groups, there are about 25-35 tribes scattered over the country, but they
are located mostly in the hilly areas, largely in Chittagong. Many of these
people could be described as animists. In short, Bangladesh is by and
large a Muslim land.
My paper tonight draws upon a study that was completed earlier in 2010
and since then has circulated under the title “Marang Baru” (“The Great
God”). “Marang Baru” is the name of the main deity of the Santal tribal
people.1 The study provides an inventory of the theological elements and
spiritualities found among the indigenous peoples of Bangladesh (also
know as adivasis). In the study there are five categories: God, creation
story, anthropology, morality, and the afterlife. There is a focus on the
rites of passage – birth, marriage, death – as these are woven deep into the
fabric of beliefs and practices of the groups of Bangladesh. Some of the
practices on these occasions have a symbolic significance, somewhat like
the actions during the Christian liturgy, such as at Easter and Christmas.
A prominent figure in the study is the tribal priest or shaman. The image
suggests that there is a confluence of religious influences in the practices
and beliefs of many of the indigenous people of Bangladesh. There is an
under-current of Hinduism (“Sonaton Dharma,” the eternal religion,
as they term it), in the worship forms and practices of most of the
indigenous tribal people of Bangladesh. However, the Rakhines and the
Marmas are very strongly Buddhism-oriented tribes, while Christianity
49
holds sway among the Bawms and the Garos. A notable event is the
observance of the Bangla calender new year in mid-April of the Roman
calendar; the new year is very much an animistic affair, and it is observed
by all the tribes with much gaiety. This particular festival has now become
part of the national culture of Bangladesh.
I. GOD
Many of the tribes have a more or less common understanding of the
god and/or the divine spirits. Many think of their god as either male or
female, or both, and it is usually given a human form. Quite often there
is a “mother god,” such as “Sanimonthi,” the Mother-Goddess of the
Manipuri. The Tripura tribe has two benevolent Mother deities, Mailungma, the goddess of the paddy fields, and Khailung-ma, the goddess of the
cotton trees. God is generally from the forests and from the rivers and
other water bodies. The coming of god is often linked with the turn of
the seasons.
Indigenous tribals also believe strongly in evil spirits, which usually have a
feminine form, e.g. Dakini, Jogini, and Magini the Daini of the Tripura
tribe, who is very malevolent. Consequently, there are “spirit–healers”
known as ojhas; they have elaborate exorcism rites and sacrifices.
Sacrifice is an essential part of the tribes’ worship. There are sacrificial
killings of birds and animals, and only one tribe, the Bawms, is known to
have human sacrifices. Sexual acts are generally not part of worship, but
are tolerated as part of festivities. The Tripura, a Hindu-oriented tribe,
have phallic worship. Altars to an eclectic deity Satya-pir are found in the
tribal areas of the Chittagong Hilltracts. A small wooden toy horse on
wheels is the symbol of Satya-pir; this toy is found in all the village fairs
of Bangladesh and is reminiscent of the trojan horses of the Greeks.
1
The Santal are a major tribal group, not only for Bangladesh (in terms of numbers),
but also for the entire Indian sub-continent. The Santal have very rich cultural
traditions. In all there are about 25-30 indigenous tribal groups in Bangladesh. They are
distributed geographically with the Chittagong Hill Tracts region serving as home to
the Chakma, the Tanchangya, the Tripura, the Marma, the Bawm, the Phankhua, the
Lushai, the Khumi, the Khyang, the Mru (also Mro), and the Chak (also the Sak). In
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the North Bengal one finds the Santal, the Oraon, the Paharia, the Munda, the Rajbansi,
and the Koch. In the North East there are the Nanipuri, the Khasia, and the Lyngam.
In the South East are the Rakhine and the Marma, and there are additionally very small
groups of a hundred or fewer members, such as the Mahali, the Kuki, the Riang, the
Assam and the Buno.
II. CREATION STORY
The Chakma tribe believes that there are forces that created everything,
and these are essentially earth forces. The Manipuri, the Khasia, and
others believe that humankind was founded by seven founder families.
The Kumi tribe believes that humankind descended from a dog, which
was the first creation of god. In contrast, the Khasi tribe claims descent
from an ancient mother, as their name attests (kha = born of, si = ancient
mother). The Khasi are a very strongly matrilineal tribe.
Jit-Bahan Thakur is the unconquered god of the Mahale tribe. According
to their legend, God comes to earth in the form of a mendicant beggar
and impregnates a beautiful virgin girl by feeding her spinach-type leaves.
The child who is born is named Jit-Bahan, the unconquerable one.
III. ANTHROPOLOGY
The Murung tribe believes that all humans are of two equal parts, male
and female. Across the tribes there is virtually no evidence of male
chauvinism; the general practice is to give females equal position in the
tribe and its structure. Many tribes give special power and position to
women healers, e.g the Santal and the Tiprah.
In the Chakma wedding ceremony, the essential act is the eating
ceremony — bride and groom eating from the same plate. For the Oraon
tribe, there is ceremonial bathing, with the bride and groom together in
the same pond.
IV. MORAL CODE
The Murung live semi-nude, but have very strict sanctions against sexual
misconduct. The Kuki allow premarital sex of the couple getting married;
51
the Santals have dormitories for pubescent males and females together;
on the other hand, there is compulsory time in a monastery for males in
Buddhism-dominated tribes like the Marma and Rakhines. The Khassi,
a female-dominant society, allow the marriage of two sisters to one man;
the elder sister is the head.
In terms of their sacred books, the Chakma have seventeen sacred books.
The Murung have no sacred book or scriptures, and so have no written
moral code.There are no known instances of revenge killings among
Bangladeshi tribes.
V. AFTERLIFE
Most tribes believe in an afterlife; examples would include the Chakma
and the Tiprah. But there are exceptions such as the Murung, who do
not believe in life after death. There are other variations of belief in the
afterlife, such as the Riang who believe that sleep is a temporary departure
from life, and that death is the permanent departure. The Bawm hold
that after death, a person goes to “the land of the dead” and from there
may be reborn.
The Garo speak of Mongro-Songram, a temporary resting place for the
deceased. The Khasi believe that the dead person can be retained, almost
forever, in stone monoliths. The Lyngram retain one bone of the dead
person to keep links with him or her. Among the tribes of Bangladesh,
there is no known instance of “mummification.” Certain tribes such as
the Kuki and the Samtal bury implements, weapons, etc. with the dead
because they might need them “there.” The Murung bury the leftover
bones after cremation.
Incidentally, dance is part of the death rituals for the Tripuras, Khasi, etc.
The Dhalus have an intriguing “end-of-the-world” story, known as the
Learning Tower on the Hills!
52
VI. CONCLUDING COMMENTS
It is difficult to say whether among the indigenous tribes of Bangladesh
there is a common mythology. At the least, there are common practices
and underlying beliefs that are theological in nature. For the members of
the various tribes, worship is an act of joy, and dance is accepted as a form
of prayer. One might recall that King David danced before the ark of the
covenant (1 Sam 6:14).
Dancing also aligns with the symbolism of Radha Krishna in Hinduism.
A Hindu deity, Radha Krishna is the beloved of Krishna, and it is thought
that at one point Krishna left the circle of the rasa dance to seek out
Radha.
God can be found in noise and din, and therefore worship can be a noisy
act. But in nature, God is also silence. At the Bihu festival of the new
year, the Chakma and other tribes take part in the worship of the deity
in nature. Water is also held as sacred; the water festival of Rakhine is an
example of this practice.
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April 12, 2011
Nahua Religion and Spanish Catholicism: Dialogue
and Collaboration
by Oswald John Nira
Our Lady of the Lake University
Throughout the day and into the evening, family and friends gather,
bringing flowers — zempasuchitl — bright in color with a pungent
odor, to set around the place of burial. Bunches of flowers are placed
in vases, some are strewn around the area, while many petals are torn
off their stems and used to create a pathway, culminating in a cross or
even an arrow, to point to the burial mound. Food is brought as well
and laid within baskets all around the burial area — fruits, candies, any
enticing item that is attractive to the eye, nose and palate. Pan de muerto
is brought in abundance, representing a man, woman, or child, or simply
representing bones. This bread, with a slightly sweet taste, will bring
sustenance to all those who share it. Light laughter fills the air, as stories
are told of the individuals who have passed on into another journey, and
their pictures are placed around the burial, or attached to arches built
for this celebration. Copal scents the air, adding to the pungent aroma of
the zempasuchitl. These smells warm and heal the body. This is Dia de los
Muertos, a celebration recognizing the cyclic nature of life wherein death
and life are inexorably linked together, as beauty-pungency are linked
within the zempasuchitl (marigolds), and healing-bitterness are found
within copal (incense).
For several weeks, an entire community prepares for a performance that
will incarnate within them a redemptive, suffering narrative. Clothes
will be sewn, sandals fitted, and the drama rehearsed. The principal role
will be taken by an individual who will undertake weeks of preparation
— prayer, fasting, and self-denial — as well as commitment to memory
the core account. Men, women and children will be asked to assume
roles that they otherwise in other occasions and at other times would
readily reject; for this occasion, however, they lustily play the role of
accusers, shouting jeers and curses. For this occasion, they are moved
into stunned silence, shedding cries and tears at the sight of a man beaten
into submission, clothes torn off his bloodied body. He is prodded
55
through the city, as hundreds follow along his path, some laughing at
the spectacle, others bothered by the inconvenience of swelled streets.
This is Camino de la Cruz, a celebration drawing the community into an
experience of pain, suffering, injustice and emptiness. It ends when a man
is hoisted onto a cross and cries out in fear and pain, as the people watch
and wait.
I am here this evening to offer reflections on some particular religious
systems in light of Vatican Council II’s proclamation, Nostra Aetate, a
document proclaimed almost half a century ago in the spirit of Pope
John XXIII’s aggiornamento — updating the church. My thanks goes to
the Nostra Aetate selection committee, the St. Edward’s Religious and
Theological Studies Department and the entire St. Edward’s University
community for this singular opportunity — my theological and
philosophical teeth were cut at this institution, and I am thrilled to again
visit this campus and share some reflections on the important topic of
inter-religious dialogue.
It is cliché now to state, “It’s a small world.” Today, this cliché is a real,
lived experience. When you think about it, aggiornamento has never
been so easy! I know I must have heard this adage (“It’s a small world”)
dozens of times as I sat in classrooms in Holy Cross Hall and Moody Hall
over thirty years ago. Faculty at St. Edward’s did their best to prepare us
for the complexities of life that we would soon experience. Yet, I think
I heard that adage through a naïve filter. I know that time of the late
1970s and early 1980s was so much simpler. At that time, I could in no
way fathom — and this is no exaggeration — the revolutionary impact
of social networking media. Back in my day on this campus, shared
thoughts, sometimes rants, and more rarely, plans-of-action usually stayed
within the confines of the Ratskeller. Never did these jell into a force that
affected so quickly a revolutionary change and radical movement, as we
have seen recently across the global community. Never could the thoughts
of distressed individuals of natural calamities or social unrest be heard so
precisely and quickly as they have been in recent months. In our time,
“updating” and “dialogue” has been made so easy, phenomena I do not
think that Vatican Council II anticipated.
56
In my first semester at St. Edward’s as a freshman in Bro. Jim Hanson’s
course “Cosmic Paths,” I was introduced to a wondrous array of primary
sources that dizzied me with novel ways of conceiving reality (ultimate
and otherwise), the divine, and the human person. I did not understand
that these “cosmic paths” — what I understood to be “foreign” traditions
and practices — would one day reside near me as co-workers and
neighbors. For example, when I began teaching at Our Lady of the Lake
University ten years ago, there was one Buddhist meditation center and
one Islamic mosque in the city of San Antonio. There are now eight
mosques scattered about the city and five Buddhist centers representing
different Buddhist traditions. It is a small world, and I have learned that
this “smallness” has a profundity and gravity we are continuing to grapple
with, so I am very grateful for the foundation that the sensitive faculty of
St. Edward’s University laid for me those years ago.
Nostra Aetate conveys a message from the Catholic Church that helps us
manage an increasingly smaller world. The message of Nostra Aetate, that
all of humanity is one, as all of humanity has one source, one creator,
and one goal, was not heard often up to the day of its proclamation by
Pope Paul VI over 45 years ago. And so the challenge declared to the
Catholic Church was to consider what it shares in common with other
religions. Indeed, the language used by this document is strong — sons
and daughters of the church are exhorted to “through dialogue and
collaboration with followers with other religions ... recognize, preserve
and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the sociocultural values.”2 This is an exhortation.
And so given this opportunity, I will take up this charge and direct it to
an area perhaps unforeseen by the Council fathers. Whereas Pope Paul
VI and the Council fathers specifically had in mind particular religions
known as the great religions of the world listed in that document —
Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism — my reflections this evening
will focus on two religious systems, perhaps not readily recognized as
religious systems at all by the writers of that document — Nahua religion
and Spanish Catholicism. These religious systems became research
interests to me as I pursued doctoral work at the Catholic University of
America, focusing particularly on Hispanic/Latino theology and their
57
nascent reflections on history, culture and gender, to mention just a
few of their objects of theological reflection. I am indebted to Orlando
Espín, Holy Cross Father Dr. John Ford at Catholic University, as well as
Virgilio Elizondo and Peter Phan for their guidance, as they enabled me
to focus my interests in these rich sources of theological reflection. These
religious systems, Nahua religion and Spanish Catholicism, distinctive
and vital in their time, conveyed unique religious concepts — “good
things” — that warrant study and reflection for us today.
Nahua religion and Spanish Catholicism first encountered one another
during the great clash of civilizations in what is now called the Valley
of Mexico in the 15th century. There have been myriad reflections
concerning this clash, popular and scholarly3, some lionizing the power
and evangelical zeal of the Spanish empire, others shaming the bald rape
of the indigenous Nahua people by the European Spaniards. The purpose
of this presentation is not to assign moral value to this clash, but to
recognize the attributes of these differing religious systems and to trace
the lines of communication between them. Some sharing of religious
practice and concepts enabled these two disparate peoples to begin to
engage one another and forge a path together.
In this presentation, I intend to develop first an understanding of a time
past wherein Nahua religion and Spanish Catholicism flourished, and
second, to study several religious practices that have their roots in the
two aforementioned religious systems — specifically the Danza AztecaChichimeca, el Dia de los Muertos, and Camino de la Cruz. Finally, I will
offer some reflections on the declaration Nostra Aetate has given
to Catholics.
Nahua Religion
I think we can all accept the unique problems that a study of Nahua
religion entails. One problem is the subject matter itself. Though there are
present members of this religious system in Mexico to learn from
2
Nostra Aetate, 2.
58
(formerly known as Aztec, Mixtec, Toltec and others), they are not in
great abundance, and they do not control entire societies and build from
their Nahua religious experience entire societies. Though there are present
observances and rituals that we can observe or perhaps even participate
in, it is disconnected from larger societal systems, and so remains on
the periphery of Mexican society. The Nahua religious system is largely
removed from the main core of central institutions and systems, along
with the entire societal structure that supported it and gave it life. When
we think back to the year 1965 when Nostra Aetate was written, we can
interpret it as a charge to learn from other religious adherents as a fullhearted effort to strengthen the mutual understanding across cultures
and societies now, in this time, for our present need of a stronger global
community. However, if we are to take this endeavor to heart, it would
seem that there is no such opportunity, as the numbers of Nahua people
are not in abundance (according to a 2000 Mexican census, there are
about one million native Nahuatl speakers living in Mexico today), and
so the possibility of drawing into greater societal communion is not
great. Moreover, even if we were to accept this charge as applying to a
people and religious system that commands no great numbers, an even
graver problem arises — there are scant few, if any, sources through
which to study and perhaps corroborate. There are no Nahua sacred
texts that can be consulted; there is no historical event that has been
recorded by a Nahua written language or practiced ritual. Indeed, the
Nahua tongue, Nahuatl, did not become a written language until the
16th–17th centuries, when Spanish missionaries introduced Latin to
people of the valley of Mexico through their own religious observances.
Nahua religion is nonliterate, absent of texts or practice that can give us
some knowledge and appreciation of their world and soul, thereby giving
us the opportunity to take strides and make connections, as any shared
experience is wont to do.
Yet, when we do cast an analytical eye toward this system, Nahua religion
fits into that category known as indigenous religion, also called oral,
3
David A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarch, Creole Patriots and the
Liberal State, 1492-1867. Cambridge University Press, 1993 is a rich survey of this
time period.
59
primal, native or ethnic. All of these terms convey a type of religion that
is less structured than those guided by a tradition formed by sacred texts,
an ordered priesthood, or historical event. Some contemporary examples
of these religions are Yoruba found in Western Africa and Nigeria, Peyote
Way found in Native American religious practice, and kami no michi, or
Shinto, found in Japan. A distinctive feature of indigenous religions is the
“here and now,” and maintaining a harmonious balance with the present,
drawing from it whatever the needs of the community are, whether these
be rain for crops, healing for sicknesses, or life in the form of newborns
for the community. Balance is key here, maintaining this balance with
the powers that manage and sustain the world. For example, in the
Yoruba understanding, all individuals possess a fate to be one with their
ultimate divinity, and it is through a series of trial and error, incarnations
and reincarnations, that an individual hopes to achieve union with the
ultimate divine. Within kami no michi, the key is to find balance with
the gods who created a divine presence of beauty in this world and so live
according to this way of divine beauty and presence.
A brief look at Nahua religion reveals that it shares with other indigenous
religions a concept of the divine. In the case of Nahua religion, the
divine is not set in opposition to an evil principle or god — it is less
dualistic than the categories of good and evil found in the Western
monotheistic religions. There are some excellent studies4 on Nahua
culture that reveal its basic religious sensibilities. Nahua culture existed
prior to its most famous bearer, the Aztecs, and included culturally rich
civilizations that had existed in Meso-America prior to the Aztec — the
Olmec, the Teotihuacano, the Toltec, and the Maya. These cultures had
a similar cosmology centered on a concept of the divine similar to Daoist
conceptions of reality. Some archeological and anthropological research
reveals that the Aztecs were a people who had traveled great distances
through the western part of the western and southern regions of what we
now call the North American continent. They were considered a fierce
migratory group, and as they moved, they exerted control over the various
4
Miguel Leon-Portilla, Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind
(U. of Oklahoma Press, 1990); Laurette Sejourne, Burning Water: Thought and Religion
in Ancient Mexico (Shambhala, 1976).
60
groups they encountered. Eventually, they settled in what is now called
the Valley of Mexico in the middle part of the 15th century,
incorporating the various gods they encountered in conquered peoples
into their own.
As their conception of the high god developed, it was absent of an eternal
dualistic battle, where good was pitted against evil throughout time until
in one final cosmic battle, the good god asserted dominance over evil
and placed that evil and those who decided to practice its cause into a
separate, punitive realm. Rather, the high god in this religious system —
Ometeotl, the Cosmic Principle of Duality — stressed the harmonizing
of differing principles, sensitive to the diverse, complex realities found in
nature. “The Cosmic Principle of Duality is the reality that one thing can
be its opposite at the same time: far is near, light is darkness, joy is sorrow,
life is death.” 5
This was the only reality, all else being illusion. The great creator deity,
Ometeotl, was both male and female. His/her name means Dual Divinity.
The female aspect of this deity was the Goddess of Life, death and
creation, Coatlicue. He/She dwelled in the highest realm of a thirteenlayer heaven and ruled over lesser gods such as the Sun God Tonatiuh,
the Moon Goddess Tonantzin, and the Rain God Tlaloc. The antithesis
to Ometeotl was the terrible Mictecacihuatl, Lord and Lady of the
Dead, who ruled over the nine regions of the netherworld called Mictlan
Opochcalocan. Yet, all co-existed together, balanced and harmonized by
the dual-principled god.
For the indigenous people of Meso-America, death was a regular,
commonplace occurrence. It was not an event that typically or necessarily
occurred at the end of a long life, nor was it planned at the end of several
stages of one’s journey — after an education or formation under the
guidance of elders, followed by marriage and care for the family. Rather,
death was common, “like birth.” Like birth, death was understood to be
5
Magda Chellet and Ramon Vasquez y Sanchez, Dia de los Muertos: 3000 Years of
Tradition. Our Lady of the Lake University, unpublished essay.
61
part of a cyclic process that everyone engaged in and no one was
exempted. I dare say that this process was “good,” in that it integrated
into the Nahua belief the entire process of life.
Stephen Prothero, professor of religion at Boston University, recently
published a popular book on the religions of the world, entitled God is
Not One, wherein a major theme within it is to reject the notion that all
religions are “basically the same,” and so belief in one is just as good as
belief in another — they will all eventually get you to where you want
to go if you just stay true to some of the core principles and practices.
Rather, the different religions reveal real differences in meaning and
purpose; sensitivity and knowledge of those differences benefits all of us,
for it begins to connect us to the particular rationales of individuals and
communities in how they engage other people, their own communities,
and the environment. Within this text, he sketches a simple yet effective
method to understand religions. This method is effective because it
connects the religion to the pragmatic concerns of its adherents; namely,
how does the religion understand the problem of life, what is the
solution, how does one move from the problem to the solution, and who
are some exemplars who have traversed this movement?
In the case of Nahua religion, these questions can be answered in this
manner: the problem is maintaining the continual balance of the world.
In the Nahua cosmological narrative, the cosmos have gone through
several different eras; the present era had a definitive beginning and will
have a definitive end, but life in the middle — between that beginning
and end — is a sweet and joyous experience. The problem within this
religion is understood as maintaining this age and its balance through
the continued threat of change and of the ultimate end of the age. The
solution to this problem is found in a variety of rituals and observances
that participate in the cycle, best exemplified in celebrations like Dia de
los Muertos and the Danza Azteca-Chichimeca.
The Danza traces its origin to pre-Columbian ages. Nahua would perform
dances in order to keep the balance of the cosmos throughout its cycle,
as well as maintain the harmony between the natural needs for food and
animal companionship. Dances were performed to keep the warmth of
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the sun, the cleansing and nurturing waters of the rain, and the growth of
corn within their community. Animals for hunting, birds for music, and
babies for new life were constant needs and became intimate parts of the
goals of the dance.
What was long ago analyzed as a type of sympathetic “magic” is now
largely dismissed by contemporary scholars of religion. For example,
within the dancing motions and rhythmic beats, the constant cycle of the
cosmos would be mimicked, and so maintained. Even as this explanation
is rejected today as a simplistic connection between practitioner and
desired effect, the interpretation of the dance acts as a symbol rich in
meaning as it maintains not only the communities’ self-understanding of
reality, but also gives individuals within that community a self-knowledge
of place and purpose. The final piece of Prothero’s tool is the exemplar,
and here we can find no singular example as is typically understood. In
the Nahua tradition, no one individual is understood to be a unique
exemplar inculcating the solution to the problem of the cosmos. Rather,
the entire community, in the practice of the Danza, exemplifies the
articulation and the solution to its perceived challenge — maintaining
balance and harmony.
Prothero’s analytical tool can be applied to Dia de los Muertos as well,
with similar results. The “problem” is maintaining the cyclic nature
of life, wherein life and death reside side-by-side with a world that is
undergoing constant change. The “solution” that Dia de los Muertos
provides is participation in this cycle by reverencing those who have gone
beyond to a journey, and during special moments of the year, they return
close to this world. They need assistance in returning to us — assistance
that we can provide, through our preparations of food, beloved objects,
food, fire, and incense. Water is even provided for thirsty travelers as they
return. And, as in the case of the Danza, there is no one exemplar of this
practice; the entire community models the “solution” to maintaining and
restoring the balance of life.
And so, Dia de los Muertos recognizes death as a normal occurrence
— another rite of passage. Death marked a period of separation from
its former existence, a time of transition into a new existence, and the
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acquiring of a new status; in this case, a spirit-guide through dreams and
an enforcer of good behavior through signs and apparitions.
Similar to other indigenous religious systems, Nahua religion has no
concept of heaven or hell as a reward or punishment for behavior during
life. They believed, rather, that the way a person died determined his or
her destination in the next life. As Magda Chellet and Ramon Vasquez
y Chavez write, “…children went to the Arbol Nodriza, the nursing tree
that dripped milk for the children while they played on and under its
branches for eternity; Warriors killed in battle went to the East where
they became hummingbirds and butterflies and flew around the Sun God
Tonantiuh to help him rise every morning and guide him to the center of
the sky; Women who died in childbirth became night spirits in the West,
their mission being to help the moon goddess Tonantzin meet Tonantiuh
at noon and help guide him to his rest every night; drowned victims and
other water-related casualties, including lightning, dropsy, and gout, went
to the north, to Tlalocan, the paradise of eternal spring ruled by the rain
god Tlaloc and his consort the rain goddess Chalchiucuitle. All others
went south to Mictlan, where they had to cross the nine regions of the
underworld, including a wide river, until they reached the last level
where the benevolent aspect of Mictecacihuatl would finally grant them
eternal rest by dissolving them into nothingness and back into the cosmic
realm of rebirth. These are the souls for which the offerings or ofrendas
were made.” 6
All of these groups are called upon during the Dia de los Muertos ritual by
calling them from the four corners of the earth and inviting them to visit
their prepared site to join in the celebration with loved ones.
Reverence for the dead through ritual, practice and song; participation
in the harmonious balance of the world through dance; recognizing and
reverencing the natural world and the necessity of its offerings for human
life and sustenance — these are features of Nahua religious practice and
observance. These features comprise a structure that shapes their world
and vision, and gives meaning to their place in it.
6
Magda Chellet and Ramon Vasquez y Sanchez, Dia de los Muertos: 3000 Years of
Tradition. Our Lady of the Lake University, unpublished essay.
64
Spanish Catholicism
Spanish Catholicism represents a type of Catholicism particular to a
place and location, and while vestiges of it certainly are evident today,
particularly here in central Texas where we have Guadalupe Street
running through the heart of one of the largest public universities in the
south, it is rooted to that time and place: 13th–18th centuries in Spain,
both in the peninsula and in the New World.
My following reflections owe a great deal to Orlando Espín, professor of
theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego, and his text,
The Faith of the People. Within this text, he surveys the substantial impact
that Spanish Catholicism had on the New World as it was advanced by
the conquistadores and missionaries of the 16th–18th centuries. Some of
the features of Spanish Catholicism:
• Grace is available to all individuals who yield to sacramental
participation — principally the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist
— and continued participation in the church. Maintenance of this
grace is achieved through continued presence in the church through
participation in the sacraments.
• The natural world mediates the divine, and it is through
participation of rituals and pilgrimages that an individual can
participate in this divine experience. This incarnational faith enabled
one to participate in the blessings of God through approved practices
and rituals, even “acting out” divine dramas, thereby bringing about
blessings upon themselves and enabling them to participate in a life
of grace.
• Narrative substantiates Spanish Catholicism’s religious experience,
from the birth of the Christ Child to the passion of Christ.
Scriptural stories embody and convey the faith, and allow for
adherents to participate in those stories through re-enactment and
re-telling. Such participation allows for stronger integration and
understanding of the essential messages, and begins a tradition of
regular recitation, becoming a source for meaning and strength.
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Besides the posadas (the re-enactment of the Maria and José searching for
an inn to rest and the night of Jesus’ birth), and the Camino de la Cruz,
other popular religious practices are: the piñata, a lesson in morality,
where a vessel, depicting a demon, is filled with candy and fruits and
then strung high out of ready reach of excited children. They are then
instructed to “beat on the devil,” and with persistence, good things will
happen: the showering of sweets. The practice of making the sign of the
cross when by-passing a church; Las Mañanitas — morning songs sung
to La Virgencita on the morning of December 12; devotions to San Judas,
San José, San Martín de Porres, and many others; la quinceañera — the
blessings and prayers given to a young girl upon reaching her fifteenth
year; pilgrimages to San Juan de los Lagos, the basilica of Nuestra Señora
de Guadalupe for graces bestowed, or the desire to express a need.
Throughout the life of the individual and community, there are occasions
for recognition of and participation with the sacred.
Applying Prothero’s simple analytical tool to Spanish Catholicism, we ask,
“What is the problem?” Very clearly, the problem is sin in the world, and
the prevalence of the devil in our midst. The solution, of course, is found
in baptism — preferably infant — and continued maintenance of those
graces received through continual participation in the Catholic Church.
Exemplars abound in the saints, and they populate churches, homes, and
pilgrimage sites as constant reminders of the means to overcome sin and
live in God’s abundant grace.
Nahua Religion and Spanish Catholicism
When the Nahua religious system encountered the religion of the
Spanish conquistadores in the 15th century, it made for an interesting
combination. The strong evangelical and missionary fervor through
which the Spanish conquistadores operated came into stark contrast to
the welcoming and hospitable Aztec rulers. Indeed, their interpretation
of the tall, fair-complected Europeans was that they were the gods they
had been waiting for, and were destined to come according to their own
calendar. And so their willingness to accept these people, as well as follow
their directives regarding the management of their kingdom, had some
dire consequences, as we all know.
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However, the religion and practice of the Spanish missionary
accompanied the sword, whose faith consisted of an incarnational
understanding of the divine and an integration of this understanding
into the regular practices of seasonal, even hourly celebrations. This
type of religion7 prepared the religious sensibilities of those missionaries
who traversed the oceans and began to bring the Catholic faith to the
indigenous people of Meso-America in the 15th century and beyond.
And what sensibilities they were — religious practices that re-enacted
Joseph’s and Mary’s travail of finding lodging on the night Mary was to
give birth to the Christ Child; children and adults given a stick to wail
on the visage of the devil to such an extent that blessings and goodness
would flow from such a diligent practice; re-tracing the footsteps of
Jesus on his way to the cross, complete with scourging, taunts and the
consolation of women along the way. These re-enactments served not
only as a pedagogical tool to the Nahua people, but also made real for
them through their experience of the presence of the divine. God was in
their midst, particularly through the suffering Jesus and the promise of
his resurrection.
Some scholars criticize the incarnational nature of Spanish Catholicism.
Payne writes, “The great criticism of Spanish Catholicism . . . is that its
religiosity has been highly ‘baroque,’ external, extravagant, given to form,
display and convention, but lacking in personal religious experience
or commitment, internal spirituality, or sober, sustained inquiry. This
conventional criticism is correct as the description of a general tendency,
but it is also to some extent a caricature, since it obviously does not
constitute the whole truth . . . It is nonetheless a mistake to dismiss
Spanish Catholicism as a traditional community or national cult without
deep spiritual forces or creative power. The expression of such spiritual
force may be seen in all the manifold expressions of Spanish Catholicism,
intellectual as well as spiritual, during that era. The redevelopment of the
Christian missions during the late Middle Ages was a part of this, just as
the subsequent massive effort to evangelize the empire and certain
7
Stephen Payne, Spanish Catholicism: A Historical Overview, U. of Wisconsin Press,
1984; Orlando Espín, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular
Catholicism, Orbis, 1997.
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other parts of the outer world represented a religious enterprise of unique
proportions and scant precedence.”8
Dialogue and Collaboration
In summation, perhaps it is unfair to consider these two different
religious systems, Nahua religion and Spanish Catholicism, as part of the
intent of Nostra Aetate’s declaration. Nostra Aetate certainly was meant to
be applied, but apparently that intention was directed at living, breathing
individuals of faith and practice, not religions largely of a bygone era.
What I have suggested for these past several minutes is a stretching of
that application to apply to systems and adherents not conventionally
identified nor largely recognized to be part of any identifiable religious
practice, but certainly existing at the margins of societal and religious life.
Application to these religions is both fair and necessary, for these reasons:
• It helps us recover how religions were encountered in the past and
note the attributes — both life affirming and life denying — from
that encounter. Although we can all recall from our study of MesoAmerican history the horrors of the clash of cultures in the 15th–
16th centuries, an incarnational faith (Spanish Catholicism) was a
productive dialogue partner (at a real level) with Nahua religion,
as present practice continues to indicate. Continued reverence
for and devotion to Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is testament to
this “good.” Recognizing the harmonious balance of the earth as
necessary to the well-being of individuals and communities was a
“good” that could be embraced and exemplified today. Continued
celebration of the harmony and balance of nature, reflected in the
Danza Azteca-Chichimeca is another testament to this “good.”
• Although those religious systems are largely of a bygone
era, practitioners of both Nahua religion and popular Catholic
observances abound; recognition of the goods of those practices will
extend to the good of the practitioners themselves.
8
Payne, pgs. xi-xii
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• Recognition of the good will also open up a dialogue with
what we consider sacred within our own traditions. All too often
we relegate the sacred to those individuals or practices that are
extraordinary, but Nahua religion and Spanish Catholicism are
quite ordinary, yet sacred practices. We are well aware of the
spiritual insights of Francis of Assisi, Therese of Lisieux and others
who found the sacred and ordinary in the mundane, but we often
relegate even those individuals as “unique” or “special,” removed
from our experience. Nahua religious practices and Spanish Popular
Catholicism infuse the sacred into daily life, and make available to
its ordinary adherents a religious experience absent of the strong
demarcation between sacred and profane.
• Recognizing the good in Nahua religion and Spanish Popular
Catholicism moves us away from conceptual or textual comparisons
with other religions and instead focuses on the faith and/or practice
of the people. In my understanding of the declaration of Nostra
Aetate, it derives its inspiration from Gaudium et Spes, the pastoral
constitution concerned with ad extra issues — how the church
is to engage with the outside world. As a pastoral constitution,
it is focused not on defining doctrine but engaging with others,
ministering to them and strengthening the bonds that exist between
people. Directing our attention toward the actions and practices
of the people allows us to find bonds of common practice and
celebration and recognize the common bonds within all of our
experiences. It is my contention that these common bonds and
experiences can be found not only in religions spoken in a different
tongue, but also in systems literally in our own backyard, and
celebrated in our language and within our culture. In our time, as
we continue to discover in new ways the reality of a world grown
smaller, the good of differing religions may be even more readily
available to us.
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