Chapter 1
Violence, desire and creation
The Genesis story in the Hebrew Bible, with its account of a beautiful garden forfeited by a descent into sin and violence, is often taken as the paradigmatic narrative of creation for Christendom. It is not the only biblical account of creation, nor the only one in which we find the ambiguities of violence and beauty. The prophet Isaiah, for example, describes a vision of a new creation, made by God to replace the present world of trouble, destruction and pain. He declares the proclamation of God:
- For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create;
For behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy âŚ
There follows a description of a Utopian Jerusalem â so different from that conflict-ridden city in Isaiahâs time or in ours â in which there is no more distress or violence. It is a beautiful city where people live together in peace and harmony. Even the wolf and the lamb are at peace. All flourish together. Violence has no place, for:
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord.
(Isaiah 65.17â25)
Similar accounts of a ânew heaven and a new earthâ also occur elsewhere in the Bible, notably in the book of Revelation, where the writer describes âthe holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husbandâ (Revelation 21.2). All Godâs enemies have been defeated and shut out, and the people of God live with him in unimaginable beauty and splendour. The city has âthe glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystalâ.
The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass.
The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every jewel âŚ
And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.
(Revelation 21.18â21)
Through the city flows a âriver of the water of life, bright as crystalâ, beside which grows âthe tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit ⌠and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nationsâ (Revelation 22.1â2).
These visions of a heavenly Jerusalem of peace and beauty stand as parallels to the Genesis story of the first paradise. But whereas the Genesis story represents the beginning of all things, this new creation represents the end. It will not be a scene of sin, disaster and expulsion as was the Garden of Eden; nor will God exert his own violence upon it as he did in the flood that followed the sinfulness of early humanity. Rather, the new paradise will go on forever, with no more sin, pain, or violence, whether inflicted by God or by people. The newness of the new Jerusalem is a cancellation or forgetting of what has gone before: the violence and anguish of the past no longer come to mind, as âGod himself ⌠will wipe away every tear from their eyes ⌠for the former things have passed awayâ (Revelation 21.4).
Nevertheless, it is obvious that the writers of each of these accounts have violence very much on their minds as they write. The ambiguity of the Genesis stories is paralleled by the ambiguities of these new accounts of creation, in which peace and beauty prevails only because of the expulsion of those who would wreak havoc. Isaiah represents the enemies of Godâs people as utterly crushed; the writer of the Apocalypse has all the opponents of the true believers cast into hell with Satan forever. Just as in the case of the flood, violence and beauty appear in tension: a tension that becomes unbearable if we put ourselves into the position of those who are outside rather than those whom God has favoured.
In the rest of this book I want to explore some of the specific forms which that tension between violence and beauty, necrophilia and natality, took in the Hebrew Bible and in early Christianity, continuing the genealogy of death which I began in Volume I, and showing some of the places of resistance. Before I do so, however, I propose in this chapter to explore some influential theoretical accounts of the relationship between religion and violence, keeping in mind the tension with beauty that keeps reappearing in biblical texts. What is the relationship between creativity and violence? Can there be creation without violence, or is any creative act always already violent? Obviously creativity and beauty are not the same; but if, as seems the case, creativity is needed to bring forth beauty, then must we say that beauty also is necessarily linked to violence? How does newness enter the world, the newness that is needed if there is to be constructive change to the violence of the present world order? Does God bring it about, or do we? Implicit in all these questions are the nagging issues of who is this God and who is this âweâ? What is the gender, race and cultural context that is presupposed, and how might things change if these presuppositions were destabilized? None of the thinkers whose ideas of violence I shall consider has much to say about beauty or creativity. However, I shall argue that although beauty is ignored in their work, and indeed is also pushed to the margins in the Bible and in the theology of Christendom, it still offers a place of resistance from which violence can be challenged. In the final section of this chapter I shall begin an exploration of what that entails.
The violence of creation?
Is creativity itself violent? Could there be creation without violence? At first sight it would seem that creativity is the very opposite of destruction, and therefore is contrary to violence; yet as we saw in the Introduction, the ambiguities are already present in the biblical text. It might be thought, therefore, when influential scholars have defined violence in ways that render creativity itself violent they are in fact closer to the uncomfortable tensions of the Bible than they themselves realize. However, I believe that that is not the case. I propose to begin, therefore, by examining these definitions. I shall argue, in the first place, that they are incorrect or harmful as definitions; and shall show later how creativity is essential if we are to develop alternatives to violence; and that while no human activity is unambiguous, violence is not inherent in creativity itself. What I want to get at is how beauty has been displaced or stood in ambiguous tension with violence; and what are the forms which creativity has taken and perhaps can take again to bring newness into the world?
Everything is violent
I begin with a definition of violence offered by Hent de Vries (2002); but before I address his account directly, I want to pay tribute to the significance and timeliness of his work. Clearly it is enormously important at the beginning of this third millennium, in which God is called upon with increasing regularity to justify or condemn acts of violence that escalate in scope and in cruelty, that we look closely, as de Vries has done, at the relationships between religion and violence.
Until relatively recently, religious scholars, like many others, tended to assume that the world was, for good or ill, becoming increasingly secular, at least in its public face, and that such religious belief and experience as there still is belongs in the private sphere. Religion, it was thought, is not (or should not be) involved in scientific experiments or the stock exchange or the master discourses and disciplines of modernity. But with the violent destruction of the Twin Towers in the name of Allah, and the violent military campaigns against Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of âGod Bless Americaâ, a new era erupted in which it became clear â as it should have been all along â that religion is a potent force in legitimizing violence. Many religious scholars were caught napping, with very little in the way of conceptual resources either to understand the eruption of violence in the name of religion or to see how religion could act as a counterforce. de Vries was one of the few scholars who had seriously focused on the relationship of violence and religion, and was therefore in a position to comment intelligently on what is going on.
Nevertheless, when it comes specifically to de Vriesâ definition of violence, I have a problem. de Vries says,
Violence, in both the widest possible and the most elementary senses of the word, entails any cause, any justified or illegitimate force, that is exerted â physically or otherwise â by one thing (event or instance, group or person, and, perhaps, word and object) on another. Violence thus defined finds its prime model â its source, force, and counterforce â in key elements of the tradition called the religious. It can be seen as the very element of religion.
(de Vries 2002:1)
I do not find this definition helpful. If, as he says, violence is involved in every exertion of force, even when it is justified and even when it is non-physical; and if moreover this exertion is not restricted to the intentional exertion of force by persons but includes also events and even words, then nothing is left out. Everything is violent. Creation is violent; so is destruction. Religion is violent; but religion is also the âcounterforceâ to violence.
Now, although it is important to be aware of ambiguities, it also seems to me that it is vitally important to have tools for discrimination between violence and non-violence, between those exertions of force, physical or not, which are destructive and those which are creative. If we say that every exertion of force is violent, then the effect is to evacuate the term âviolenceâ of all specific meaning, and with it all possibility of moral evaluation. So for example the force of persuasion that a dog-owner exerts in training, all her praise and puppy treats, could not be differentiated from the force she would exert if she were to beat up the puppy instead. The force of an argument and the force of a bomb would be the same, in quality if not in quantity. Since religion, even when it operates only by moral persuasion, exerts a moral force, all religious acts and beliefs are violent. So, obviously, therefore, is any act of creation.
I suggest that if violence is defined so broadly, then rather than being helpful, the definition becomes useless as a way of understanding the function of violence in the paths that religion is taking in the world today. de Vries draws on the work of Levinas and Derrida, among others, to connect the ideas of violence and religion and to explore how repressed violence can be disguised as friendship, and hidden hostilities can distort the face which should be the face of love. Much of what he has to say in his book is profoundly important: I shall return to Levinas and Derrida below. But the definition of violence with which de Vries begins is, I suggest, so wide as to include everything; and thereby becomes unhelpful as a tool to understand the ways in which religion fosters or colludes in the escalating violence of the world, and also the ways in which religion can make for peace. This is not insightful ambiguity; it is rather a matter of tarring everything with the same brush.
Violence as boundary
An alternative definition of violence, which again I find problematic, is given by Regina Schwartz in her recent book The Curse of Cain (Schwartz 1997). Again, this is an immensely important book: I shall draw on its insights in a later chapter. However, when Schwartz asserts that âviolence is the very construction of the Otherâ, so that âimagining identity as an act of distinguishing and separating from others, of boundary making and line drawing, is the most frequent and fundamental act of violence we commitâ (5), she thereby defines the term âviolenceâ in such a way that it indicates every kind of demarcation or exclusion. In her account, even to define a term is already a violent act because it excludes some things from the meaning of the term while including others. Now, if this were correct, then the only path to non-violence would be by collapsing everything into a Sameness, so that all of reality is a thick soup so fully blended that nothing can be distinguished from anything else.
By contrast, I would suggest that it is not the act of distinguishing and separating into self and others which is violent in and of itself; indeed such separation is essential if we are ever to experience the richness which respectful mutual interaction with others who are genuinely different from ourselves can bring. Violence enters, I would argue, not when difference is defined but when difference is perceived as dangerous, so that hierarchies are imposed and force is exerted to keep the hierarchies in place. Schwartzâs important insights on perceived scarcity and competition for resources rather than mutuality and generosity which she explores in the rest of her book can be preserved, I suggest, without holding to her view that the construction of the other is itself violent. In fact, elsewhere in her book she redefines the concept of violence in a more nuanced way, which specifically repudiates her earlier definition (though she does not acknowledge this). She says,
Violence is not ⌠a consequence of defining identity as either particular or universal. Violence stems from any conception of identity forged negatively against the Other, an invention of identity that parasitically depends upon the invention of some Other to be reviled.
(Schwartz 1997:88)
In this passage Schwartz is in effect moving from an attempt at a definition of the essence of violence to an analysis of its function, an analysis which she carries through with specific reference to the biblical narratives of ancient Israel; I shall revisit it in a later chapter.
Her earlier definition of violence as differentiation continues, however, to percolate through her book. This definition has a direct bearing on questions of creation. If all forms of differentiation or separation were violent, then to create would be the paradigmatic act of violence. Newness can only arise if it is different from what preceded it: if it were not different it would not be new. So if difference itself indicates violence, then creating anything, making anything new, is a violent act. When we consider the biblical stories of creation, whether the Genesis myth of origins or Isaiahâs vision of ânew heavens and a new earthâ, these are stories of the emergence of newness, where things that are made are separated both from their creator and from anything that had gone before; an ordered cosmos replaces chaos; a world of peace and harmony replaces a world of conflict and destruction. Even if one holds (as I do, see Jantzen 1998:270) to a very strong sense of divine immanence in the world, so that all things in some sense participate in the divine, it is still the case that the stars and flowers and birds and mountains are not an undifferentiated soup, a ânight in which all cats are greyâ; rather, they are glorious in their vibrant particularity. In their identity, each different from the other, is their beauty; and in their interaction they can flourish.
Thus, so far from this difference indicating violence, it should be understood as the very opposite. Creativity, and with it the beauty of particularity, is an antidote to destruction, not its enactment. Creativity invites harmony and flourishing, where the flourishing of one is interdependent with the flourishing of all. Although that which has been created can fall all too quickly into violent and destructive behaviour, the violence is not in the creative act itself, the act from which newness and beauty arises. Rather, violence arises when the mutuality of creation is denied, when difference is perceived as threatening rather than enriching, and force is exerted to dominate or stifle the potential of others.
I have not yet mentioned gender, but it is easy to see how the same analysis applies. In the original creation story, God creates Eve out of Adam, giving her a separate identity. Now, suppose one were to hold that the very definition of difference is violent. On such a view, it would follow that violence between the sexes would be built into this creation of male and female. I would argue the opposite: namely that it is precisely because Eve is a person in her own right, separate from Adam, that the two can enter into mutually fulfilling interaction. It is not in their distinctness that violence lies; on the contrary, their distinctness is what makes their relationship possible. Violence arises, rather, when their distinctness is taken as threatening, and made a pretext for the domination of one by the other. To generalize, I would argue (contrary to the implications of Regina Schwartzâs definition of violence) that gender difference, like race or class difference, or difference of all other sorts, is not itself violent nor the cause of violence. Violence in gender relations, as in all other relations, arises when difference is treated as a danger rather than as a resource, so that hostility rather than mutuality characterizes the interaction. Creativity is not violent in itself; newness can enter the world in a way that enhances peace and flourishing. Indeed I would argue that creativity and the beauty that can emerge from it is precisely what can stand against violence and destruction. Violence is ugly.
Violence and the face
Both de Vriesâ definition of violence which gives it universal scope and Schwartzâsdefinition of violence as differentiation can be understood in relation to the work of Levinas and Derrida, since it is in their work that the concept of violence is given a broad remit. Levinas writes self-consciously and deliberately in the shadow of the Holocaust, in which many of his family and millions of his people perished. It has been persuasively argued that the Holocaust was not an aberration of modernity or a reversion to primitive barbarism, but rather was an expression of the âprogressâ of modernity and its efficient, bureaucratic rationality; it was, to borrow Zygmunt Baumanâs telling image, not like a picture on the wall of normality, neatly framed and separate from the rest of life, but rather a window through which one must view modernity in a much less complacent light (Bauman 1989:viiâviii). How was it, then, that the rationality of modernity could allow for â or even lead to â the horrors of Auschwitz? How must the relationship between rationality and violence be understood? The question had particular poignancy for Levinas because of the unsavoury complicity of Heidegger with Nazism. Heidegger had been Levinasâ friend and mentor, his guide into philosophical thinking. If such thinking could lead to, or at least comply with, the Holocaust, how must it be re-evaluated?
Heidegger had contended in his philosophy for the primacy of Being, and for the relation of beings to Being. It would follow, therefore, that to come to a rational understanding of beings one could do so only by seeing them in relation to Being. As Levinas says,
To comprehend the particular being is already to place oneself beyond the particular. To comprehend is to be related to the particular that only exists through knowledge, which is always knowledge of the universal.
(Levinas 1996:5)
But this will not do when the particular being is a person, an other with whom we come face to face. Our primary task and invitation is not then conceptualization but sympathy and love. If, in encounter with the other, all one does is name them, grasp them in the order of being, then although rationality may be satisfied, Levinas argues that the being of the other has been violated.
That which escapes comprehension in the other is him [sic], a being. I cannot negate him partially, in violence, in grasping him within the horizon of being in general and possessing him ⌠When I have grasped the other in the opening of being in general, as an element of the world where I stand, where I have seen him o...
