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Christian Spirituality and Social Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Matthew L. Lamb
Matthew L. Lamb*
Affiliation:
Marquette University
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Extract

The nuclear arms race and increasing possibility of nuclear destruction demands a fundamental recovery of the Christian spirituality of social justice. After discussing common misconceptions of this spirituality, as well as the dead end offered by atheism insofar as it undialectically negates God consciousness, I will show how recovery of the Christian spirituality of social justice offers the possibility of converting the human drama of history away from death and toward life. Such spirituality unites the Mystery of God with the mystery of human personhood and reveals the redemptive solidarity of God with the poor and oppressed victims of history.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 1983 , pp. 32 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1983

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References

1 On the dialectic of master and slave, see Hegel, G. W. F., The Phenomenology of Mind, tr. Baillie, J. B. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 118–40.Google Scholar On the relationship of this dialectic to the universal victimhood implicit in the nuclear arms race, see Thompson, E. P. and Smith, Dan, eds., Protest and Survive (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Schell, Jonathan, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Knopf, 1982).Google Scholar One of the only condemnations leveled by the Second Vatican Council was directed at any and all manifestations of total war, see Gaudium et Spes, par. 80.

2 Admiral Rickover testified that if things go the way they have been, the Soviet Union and the United States would probably end up destroying one another. Then he added, “What difference does it make? Some new species will come along. They may be wiser” (The New York Review of Books 29 [March 18, 1982], 12-14). At least Admiral Rickover had no illusions about the probability of a nuclear holocaust.

3 Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic, 1977).Google Scholar Walzer fails to appreciate the idealistic presuppositions of his support—however hesitant—for the ambiguous morality of deterrents. On the variety of Catholic attitudes in this regard, see Shannon, Thomas S., ed., War or Peace? The Search for New Answers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982)Google Scholar, especially the articles by J. Bryan Hehir and Gordon C. Zahn.

4 See Geffre, C. and Guttierez, G., eds., The Mystical and Political Dimension of the Christian Faith (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972)Google Scholar; Metz, J. B., Followers of Christ (London: Burns & Oates, 1978)Google Scholar; Galilea, Segundo, Espiritualidad de la liberacion (Santiago: Ed. ISPLAJ, 1973).Google Scholar

5 See MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Metz, J. B., Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (New York: Seabury, 1980).Google Scholar

6 See MacPherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Oxford University, 1973).Google Scholar

7 See McMurtry, John, The Structure of Marx's World-View (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Starski, Stanislaw, Class Struggle in Classless Poland (Boston: South End Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Weschler, Lawrence, Solidarity: Poland in the Season of its Passion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982)Google Scholar; Bahro, Rudolf, The Alternative in Eastern Europe, tr. Fernbach, David (London: NLB, 1978).Google Scholar

8 See Horkheimer, Max, Critical Theory (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972)Google Scholar; Raskin, Marcus G., Being and Doing (Boston: Beacon, 1971).Google Scholar Raskin provides an alternative analysis to the colonialization of culture which has remarkable similarities with that provided by the Frankfurt School; see Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), pp. 173–218.Google Scholar

9 See Metz, , Faith in History and Society, pp. 3–47, 169–80Google Scholar; Lamb, Matthew L., Solidarity With Victims (New York: Crossroad, 1982), ch. 1.Google Scholar

10 See Lonergan, Bernard, Grace and Freedom (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), pp. 93-116, 139–45.Google Scholar The metaphors of the engineer and the imperial bureaucrat are my way of illustrating the divergent Banezian and Molinist counter positions.

11 See MacIntyre, pp. 76-102 for the consequences of the bureaucratic character in modernity. Regarding the technocratic or “engineer” metaphor, see Ellul, Jacques, The Technological System, Tr. Neugroschel, Joachim (New York: Continuum, 1980).Google Scholar

12 It was the analogy of free, conscious, and personal acts generating other free, conscious, and personal acts which underlay the efforts of classical Christian theologies, from Augustine to Aquinas, to articulate a psychological analogy for understanding the mystery of the Trinity; see Lonergan, Bernard, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), pp. 97–220Google Scholar; Crowe, Frederick E., Theology of the Christian Word (New York: Paulist, 1978), pp. 43–57, 80–149.Google Scholar

13 See Marx, Karl, On Religion, ed. and tr. Padover, Saul K. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1974)Google Scholar; Post, Werner, Kritik der Religion bei Karl Marx (Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1969)Google Scholar; Van Herik, Judith, Freud on Femininity and Faith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 143–200.Google Scholar

14 See Woods, Richard, Understanding Mysticism (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 1-14, 19-109, 469–563.Google Scholar There is still much work to be done in relating the stages of mysticism to the concrete concerns of those involved in historical and political analyses; see Segundo Galilea, “Liberation as an Encounter With Politics and Contemplation,” ibid., pp. 529-40; Matthew Fox, “Meister Eckhart and Karl Marx: The Mystic as Political Theologian,” ibid., pp. 541-63.

15 See Grene, Marjorie, Sartre (New York: New Viewpoints, 1973), pp. 109-36, 218–22Google Scholar; Aronson, Ronald, Jean-Paul Sartre: Philosophy in the World (London: NLB and Verso, 1980), pp. 287-92, 295–354.Google Scholar For the perspective in which I am discussing both Sartre and Nietzsche, see MacIntyre, pp. 103-13, 238-45. Without a profound and genuine consciousness of God, the universe, as Martin Buber correctly perceived, becomes an ultimate reality only as a cold and totally impersonal “It”; see Buber, Martin, I and Thou (New York: Scribner's, 1970Google Scholar).

16 See F. Nietzsche, Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft, par. 125, “Der tolle Mensch” Werke (Stuttgart: Europaischer Buchklub, 1966), 2:126–28.Google Scholar Where Nietzsche painfully realized the death of anything or anyone genuinely capable of being called God in modernity, we are now faced with the tragic consequences of this atheism in terms of the death of anything or anyone genuinely capable of being called human; see Perez-Esclarin, Antonio, Atheism and Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1974).Google Scholar

17 On narrative as essential to praxis, see MacIntyre, pp. 190-209; also Metz, , Faith in History and Society, pp. 205–28.Google Scholar On the metaphor of God as storyteller, see Shea, John, Stories of God (Chicago: Thomas More, 1977).Google Scholar On faith as a knowledge born of love, see Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 101–24, esp. 115–18.Google Scholar The distinction I make between person questions and natute questions is analogous to the classical Christological distinction between nature and person in Christ. In regard to person questions, our inability to understand fully and completely who we are is related ontologically to our own createdness as totally gifted by the Divine Mystery. Thus I would argue for an analogy between Aquinas' analysis of how we know God and an analysis of how we know ourselves as human persons. This will be further developed in a book I am now writing, Community Against Empire: The Foundations of Religious Theory and Praxis.

18 See Schlossman, Sigmund, Persona und Prosopon im Recht und im Christlichen Dogma (2nd ed.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968).Google Scholar On a doxological understanding of the Christian mystery, see Wainwright, Geoffrey, Doxology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

19 See Lonergan, Bernard, Insight (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), pp. 115–39.Google Scholar While emergent probability provides the context within which we know ourselves, both as natures and persons, person-questions orient our knowledge more directly towards the transcendent teleology of emergent probability.

20 See Lamb, , Solidarity With Victims, pp. 1–27.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., pp. 28-60.

22 See Baum, Gregory, The Social Imperative (New York: Paulist, 1979), pp. 70–202Google Scholar; also Gremillion, Joseph, ed., The Gospel of Peace and Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1976), pp. 1–138Google Scholar; Wojtyla, Karol (John Paul II), Toward a Philosophy of Praxis, ed. Bloch, Alfred and Czuczka, George T. (New York: Crossroad, 1981), pp. 11–56, 117–52.Google Scholar

23 See references in notes 4 and 14.

24 See Cormie, Lee, “The Hermeneutical Privilege of the Oppressed: Liberation Theologies, Biblical Faith, and Marxist Sociology of Knowledge,” Catholic Theological Society of America Proceedings 33 (1978), 155–81.Google Scholar

25 See von Rad, Gerhard, The Message of the Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 15–99.Google Scholar For a thorough study of the social critical import of early Israel, see Gottwald, Norman K., The Tribes of Yahweh (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979).Google Scholar Also see McEvenue, Sean, “The Rise of David Story and the Search for a Story to Live By” in Lamb, M. L., ed., Creativity and Method: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1981), pp. 185–95.Google Scholar

26 See Meyer, Ben F., The Aims of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1979), pp. 129–222Google Scholar: Cassidy, Richard J., Jesus, Politics and Society: A Study of Luke's Gospel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1978).Google Scholar

27 See Crosby, Michael H., Spirituality of the Beatitudes: Matthew's Challenge for First World Christians (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1981)Google Scholar; Ruether, Rosemary, To Change the World: Christology and Cultural Criticism (New York: Crossroad, 1981)Google ScholarHaughey, John C., ed., The Faith that Does Justice (New York: Paulist, 1977).Google Scholar

28 Haughton, Rosemary, The Passionate God (New York: Paulist, 1981).Google Scholar

29 Metz, J. B., The Emergent Church: The Future of Christianity in a Postbourgeois World (New York: Crossroad, 1981)Google Scholar; Hodges, Donald C., The Bureaucratization of Socialism (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981).Google Scholar

30 Marx, Karl, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, tr. O'Malley, Joseph (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 137.Google Scholar Also see the unpublished article by Joseph O'Malley, “Karl Marx and the Thomistic Concept of Justice.”

31 Marx, Karl, Early Texts, tr. and ed. McLellan, D. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 127–28.Google Scholar For a summary overview of the divergent interpretations regarding the sources of Marx's understanding of the proletariat, see McLellan, David, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 62–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 See Torres, Sergio and Eagleson, John, eds., The Challenge of Basic Christian Communities (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1981)Google Scholar; Lamb, , Solidarity, pp. 21–23, 61–152.Google Scholar