The Trinitarian Self

The Key to the Puzzle of Violence

Charles K. Bellinger

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781556352324, 9781498249386
• eBook ISBN: 9781630878382
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

The Trinitarian Self argues that the insights of three key authors--Soren Kierkegaard, Eric Voegelin, and Rene Girard--can be synthesized to produce a Trinitarian theological anthropology. Their reflections on the deep roots of human behavior illuminate three structural dimensions of human existence: the temporal trajectory of selfhood, the vertical axis (God and nature), and the horizontal plane of cultural formation. An understanding of these dimensions and how they interrelate proves very fruitful in making sense of a wide variety of pathological forms of behavior that human beings have engaged in during the modern era. This work links together in thought-provoking ways various realms of thought, such as Trinitarian theology, a plea for a "New Copernican Revolution" that will result in a broadly held psychological understanding of violence, the ethics of war and peace, atonement theologies, and critical commentaries on terrorism and the war on terror. The interplay between these topics will likely prove very stimulating to a wide variety of readers.

part one

Scientists of the Spirit

The similarity between his life and mine occurred to me today. Just as he lives over there in Brazil, lost to the world, absorbed in excavating antediluvian fossils, so I live as if outside the world, absorbed in excavating Christian concepts—alas, and yet I am living in Christendom, where Christianity flourishes, stands in luxuriant growth with 1,000 clergymen, and where we are all Christians.

—Søren Kierkegaard [commenting on his cousin, the naturalist Wilhelm Lund], JP, 6:6652

Through my writings I hope to achieve the following: to leave behind me so accurate a characterization of Christianity and its relationships in the world that an enthusiastic, noble-minded young person will be able to find in it a map of relationships as accurate as any topographical map from the most famous institutes. I have not had the help of such an author. The old Church Fathers lacked one aspect, they did not know the world.

—Søren Kierkegaard, JP, 6:6283

If we are truly to learn to love our neighbors, we might start by simply trying to understand them.

—Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, What’s Right with Islam, 266

The invention of science is not the reason that there are no longer witch-hunts, but the fact that there are no longer witch-hunts is the reason that science has been invented. The scientific spirit, like the spirit of enterprise in an economy, is a by-product of the profound action of the Gospel text.

—René Girard, The Scapegoat, 204–5

Humanity cannot be explained in terms of itself.

—Olivier Clément, On Human Being, 10

For in a sense, the divine element in us moves everything. The starting point of reasoning is not reasoning, but something greater. What, then, could be greater even than knowledge and intellect but god?

—Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1248a26–29

Q. Haven’t you written a little something about language theory?

A. Yes.

Q. Could you summarize your thoughts on the subject?

A. No

Q. Why not?

A. It is not worth the trouble. What is involved in a theory of language is a theory of man, and people are not interested. Despite the catastrophes of this century and man’s total failure to understand himself and deal with himself, people still labor under the illusion that a theory of man exists. It doesn’t. As bad and confused as things are, they have to get even worse before people realize they don’t have the faintest idea what sort of creature man is. Then they might want to know. Until then, one is wasting one’s time.

—Walker Percy, Signposts in a Strange Land, 420.

1

Introduction

There are three dimensions of reality as it is experienced by human beings: the vertical axis, the horizontal plane, and the temporal trajectory. Along the vertical axis God is above and nature is below; the neighbor is found on the horizontal plane; and we exist as individual selves within the temporal trajectory.

The vertical axis has traditionally been called the hierarchy of being, the great chain of being, or in Latin the scala naturae. Matter and energy are at the bottom. Above that fundamental level we find the plants, then the non-sentient animals, the sentient animals, human beings, with God at the top. The natural sciences study what lies beneath human beings on this vertical axis. The upper part of the axis is the realm of theology, though theology is also concerned with nature as God’s creation. Books on “the relationship between religion and science” are elucidating the questions that arise out of this vertical dimension of being. Key thinkers whose thought inhabits the vertical axis include Thomas Aquinas, whose masterful interpretation of the hierarchy of being and the ends of the human soul is the high point of medieval thought; Karl Barth, whose reassertion of the verticality of God’s revelation was framed as a critique of modern thought’s tendency to ignore or domesticate the transcendent dimension (in favor of the other two dimensions—selfhood and society); and Eric Voegelin, whose philosophy orients the human soul toward the divine source of life through an acceptance of its place in between God and nature, the transcendent and the immanent.1

The horizontal dimension of reality points to our inescapable sociality as human beings. “One is a self only among other selves,” as Charles Taylor argues.2 When we consider the relationship between “church and state” or when we talk about culture, the family, or social ethics, we are aware of this dimension. In the modern university, the horizontal plane is studied by disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, law, political science, and economics. Karl Marx is a notable nineteenth-century proponent of this aspect of reality. In hindsight, we can see serious moral and philosophical flaws in his interpretation of human life; this has left the field open for much more perceptive treatments of the horizontal dimension, such as we have received from René Girard.

When I speak of the temporal dimension, I am pointing toward selfhood. There is a book by Phillip Cary, for example, that is called Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self. This title points effectively to the essence of this dimension. Charles Taylor’s major work The Sources of the Self addresses this aspect of reality as a key historical development within what we call modernity. This temporal dimension stresses the idea that we live as individual selves in time, enacting our identities in the present moment between our personal and social past and the future we are moving into. Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud are key modern commentators on this dimension, which is often the focus of study in psychology, philosophy, and literature departments. Within the realm of Christian thought, Kierkegaard’s reflections on what he called “the category of the single individual” and “inwardness” are among the most profound illuminations of this dimension.

These are the three primary dimensions of reality as it is experienced by human beings. Visually presented:

These three dimensions of reality are the milieu, the framework, in which we live as human beings. We do not make a choice about that; we live in these dimensions whether we want to or not. The question is not if we will inhabit the dimensions, but how.

Placing “God” at the top of the vertical axis can lead to a misunderstanding that I need to head off. It is not the case that “God” is located in one “place.” God is the transcendent Creator who is everywhere within creation without being identified with it. This means that God also inhabits the temporal trajectory and the horizontal plane, without being limited in any way by them. I will amplify this line of thought later in the book.

u

Another perspective on the dimensions comes into view with these three statements: (1) there are some ways I am like everyone else, (2) there are some ways I am unique, and (3) there are some ways I am like some people and unlike other people.3 (1) I am like all other human beings in terms of our basic physicality; we all need to breathe oxygen to survive; we have bones, muscles, skin, a brain, etc., that are expressions of our human DNA. This aspect constitutes the lower part of the vertical axis. The upper part of the vertical axis is expressed in theological language: we are all spiritual beings created in the image of God (Gen 1:26). (2) I am unique as an individual; I have my own memories, thoughts, emotions, plans, etc. Even if I had an identical twin, I would still be unique in this sense. (3) On the horizontal, social plane, I am like some people and unlike others when I consider factors such as gender, ethnicity, nati...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations for Books by Kierkegaard, Voegelin, and Girard
• Part One: Scientists of the Spirit
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Askesis: Introduction to Søren Kierkegaard
• Chapter 3: Anamnesis: Introduction to Eric Voegelin
• Chapter 4: Mimesis: Introduction to René Girard
• Part Two: Perichoresis
• Chapter 5: Theses on Trinitarian Anthropology and Violence
• Part Three: Rhetoric
• Chapter 6: Kierkegaard’s Critique of the 9/11 Hijackers
• Chapter 7: A Speech Not Given on Sept. 20, 2001
• Chapter 8: Hypocrisy Is the Human Condition
• Chapter 9: Conclusion
• Bibliography