Of God and Man E-Book

Zygmunt Bauman

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 248

Beschreibung

In this engaging dialogue, Zygmunt Bauman, sociologist and philosopher, and Stanislaw Obirek, theologian and cultural historian, explore the place of spirituality and religion in the world today and in the everyday lives of individuals. Their conversation ranges from the plight of monotheistic religions cast onto a polytheistic world stage to the nature of religious experience and its impact on human worldviews and life strategies; from Messianic and Promethean ideas of redemption and salvation to the possibility and prospects of inter-religious dialogue and the factors standing in its way. While starting from different places, Bauman and Obirek are driven by the same concern to reconcile the multiplicity of religions with the oneness of humanity, and to do so in a way that avoids the trap of adhering to a single truth, bearing witness instead to the multiplicity of human truths and the diversity of cultures and faiths. For everything creative in human existence has its roots in human diversity; it is not human diversity that turns brother against brother but the refusal of it. The fundamental condition of peace, solidarity and benevolent cooperation among human beings is a willingness to accept that there is a multiplicity of ways of being human, and a willingness to accept the model of coexistence that this multiplicity requires.

Leseprobe

Copyright page

First published in Polish as O Bogu i człowieku, © Wydawnictwo Literackie Sp.z o.o., 2014

This English edition © Polity Press, 2015

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-9568-6

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-9569-3 (pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bauman, Zygmunt, 1925-

    [O Bogu i człowieku. English]

    Of God and man / Zygmunt Bauman, Stanisław Obirek. – English edition.

            pages    cm

    Includes bibliographical references.

    ISBN 978-0-7456-9568-6 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-7456-9569-3 (pbk.)    1.  Religion–History–21st century.    2.  Spirituality.    3.  Bauman, Zygmunt, 1925-    4.  Obirek, Stanisław.    5.  Dialogue–Religious aspects.    I.  Title.

    BL98.B3813    2015

    201′.5–dc23

                2014049463

Typeset in 11 on 13 pt Sabon

by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon

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Preface

This book is a dialogue about the dialogue: mostly about the underwater reefs that make its navigation anything but easy, smooth and tranquil in our times – times that render the mastery and practice of dialogue ever more imperative and urgent, perhaps more so than at any other time in human history.

This book arose out of an exchange of letters which started a few years ago, when awareness of the ‘dialogical imperative’, nowadays quite common and still rapidly expanding and deepening, was in its inception, struggling for recognition and admission to the public agenda inside which it now occupies such a prominent place and plays a pivotal role. That awareness has recently acquired an unprecedented momentum and commanded acute public attention under the personal influence of Pope Francis,1 who – still as Jorgé Maria Bergoglio, an Argentinian bishop – warned about the dangers of breakdown of communication (between tribes, churches, political elites and hoi polloi), and presented unbiased, unprejudiced, open and cooperative (as distinct from combative) dialogue as the royal road to peaceful and mutually beneficial human co-existence. He noted in Sobre el cielo y la terra, a treatise published in 2010, that ‘in order to have dialogue, you have to lower your defences, open the doors of your home and offer human warmth’; that ‘the greatest leaders of God's tribe have been those men who have left room for doubt’ and that ‘true growth in human consciousness cannot be founded on anything other than the practice of dialogue and love’. And in his ‘Annual Message to Educational Communities' of 9 April 2003, he wrote that ‘The challenge of creative beings is to be suspicious of every discourse, thought, affirmation, or proposal that presents itself as “the only possible path”. There are always others. There is always another possibility.’2

The dialogue reproduced in this book has a quarter-century-long history: its roots lie in the decision by Stanisław Obirek – more than thirty years younger than Zygmunt Bauman, and at that time a young priest and Jesuit though already a notable theologian, historian and cultural anthropologist as well as the editor of the Catholic monthly Zycie Duchowe (Spiritual Life)3 – to invite Bauman to contribute to the series of ‘Conversations with Non-believers’ which Obirek initiated, conducted and published. In Obirek's own words, ‘the difference between the worlds in which Obirek and Bauman lived struck them as so intriguing that they decided to juxtapose them and bring about a face-to-face confrontation […] Looking back in an attempt at self-examination and of settling accounts with their respective life trajectories, both believed that there were alternatives to what is happening and did happen.’ And as Zygmunt Bauman came to realize and tried to explain twenty years later at the start of their dialogue on God and man, ‘we registered our spiritual troubles, our hopes of conquering them, and our visions of purification in different intellectual and institutional frameworks – but as to the logic of our paths, and probably also our experiences in our journeys through life – they are, I think, strikingly similar […] Starting from different points, we nonetheless ended up in the same place.’

And so the book they offer their readers is an exercise in both theory and practice of dialogue: of the form of human togetherness probably as rich in its benefits as in risks and traps, but most certainly likely to deliver on its promise. It may not promise a life more comfortable, but it does promise a life more self-aware and self-controlled, as well as one benefiting from a better self-understanding.

Notes

1

  Asked at the Vatican press conference of 16 March 2013 why he selected ‘Francis’ as his papal name, he explained that St Francis was ‘a poor man who wanted a poor Church’.

2

  All the above quotations are from

Pope Francis in His Own Words

, by Julie Schwietert Collazo and Lisa Rogak. William Collins: 2013.

3

  In an interview given to Katarzyna Bielas of the Polish daily

Gazeta Wyborcza

and published on 17 December 2013, Obirek confessed: ‘Joining the [Jesuit] order and taking holy orders, I was convinced of doing the best thing in my life. I felt the same way when leaving the order and resigning my ministry.’

IPreliminary Measures

Stanisław Obirek    Our paths to agnosticism have been different. For years I persevered in the system, though I perceived its limitations. I had faith that it could be changed from within. Until I lost that faith. I now stand outside religion, but observe with great interest what is happening inside, particularly how it functions in the public sphere. Your biographical and intellectual adventures with religion emerge from a different background. Nonetheless, what you write, and how you write, about religion is extraordinarily fascinating. I would like Zygmunt Bauman to say more about religion, and in a more systematic way, maybe situating it more in your intellectual biography. Could we begin our conversation with a general sketch of this kind?

Zygmunt Bauman    Have our paths to agnosticism really been so different? Probably they have, in that the religions and churches whose limitations we perceived, but which we nonetheless believed ‘could be changed from within’, were different. But I suspect that the differences in our paths are limited to that…We registered our spiritual troubles, our hopes of conquering them, and our visions of purification in different intellectual and institutional frameworks – but as to the logic of our paths, and probably also our experiences in our journeys through life – they are, I think, strikingly similar.

Moreover – and the moreover is important here – starting from different points, we nonetheless ended up in the same place. I have the sense that we understand each other from the first, and both of us consider the other's writings to be ‘intriguing’, maybe precisely because our spiritual paths have been marked by similar fears, similar conflicts, similar yearnings, often somewhat – or even fully – subconscious ones, and sometimes even completely unconscious…And these were paths from monologue to dialogue or polylogue, from the blind arrogance of the possessor of a single truth to the restraint of a witness to multiple human truths, from monotheism to…yes, exactly: polytheism. As I explain it to myself now, looking back: the ‘limitations' you refer to stemmed from people from both churches entrenching themselves in fortresses of their own truths and slamming the door on any other truths and on anything that came into conflict with their beliefs, and on anyone who wasn't convinced of the infallibility and moral rightness of them – and then consenting to refuse the dissenters their right of resisting, and despising, banishing and ultimately annihilating those holding to different ideas or beliefs. Over those slammed doors an assertion was carved: if there is no God, every­thing is permitted. Though true to the fact, it should have said: if there is one God, then the people who are convinced of it are allowed to treat in any manner whatsoever those who lack or reject that conviction.

In brief, agnosticism (the kind that I, and I suspect also you, adhere to) is not the antithesis of religion or even of the Church. It is the antithesis of monotheism and a closed Church.

SO    Well, now we have the first question and the first answer behind us. That was the most difficult, at least for me – as the first sentence of Wisława Szymborska's charming Nobel acceptance speech was for her. After that, it may be easier. I will not conceal the fact that it gives me great joy that you perceive these significant convergences in our life circumstances. We will probably return to them more than once. I really like your way of framing our common, though very different, monotheism. I would speak less of polytheism, than of polyphony. Because after all, agnosticism, and in this case, restraint, demonstrates that we don't know whether we are dealing with one god or many. It is hard to say if they even exist at all. Leaving aside these unanswerable questions, I would like to ask you to expand on the noteworthy aphorism that you concluded your last response with: ‘If there is one God, then the people who are convinced of it are allowed to treat in any manner whatsoever those who lack or reject that conviction.’ Is this actually how you see the relentless progress of monotheism (leaving aside the question of whether it is a religious or secular monotheism)? In that case, what would be the slogan for the evolving chronicle of the desire to discover the truth, the joys of discovering it, and the acute need to persuade others of it?

ZB    Maciej Zięba OP uses the concept of a ‘verital society’ to describe this form of human co-existence, in which ‘the entirety of individual life, from the cradle to the grave, as well as collective life’ are organized ‘around a universally acknowledged transcendental truth’.1 And to make it clear what kind of form he has in mind, Zięba hastens to add that ‘this does not only apply to Aztecs or the Maasai’ (and, as he previously explained, also to Alkuin's project of Christianitas), ‘but also to followers of Marx, Mao Zedong, or uncritical quasi-religious believers in physics or genetics’. And, I would add, the quasi-religious believers in the GDP, commerce or computer science. In each of these cases, God is one; this common feature marginalizes the differences dividing them and the various names and the images of origins or well-springs of the ‘universally acknowledged transcendental truth[s]’. Every ‘verital society’ testifies to a war against diverse ways of life and their authorities; they all clamour for a monopoly on drawing the line between good and evil, virtue and vice, merit and guilt, orthodoxy and heresy, faith and paganism, truth and untruth. Zięba cites Karol Modzelewski's study Barbarzyńska Europa (‘Barbaric Europe’): that which, in encounters with Christian missionaries, ‘filled the barbarians with terror, was not merely a strange god, so much as the demands of monotheism. There is no lack of evidence that the pagans were willing to add Christ to their pantheon, they did not question his existence or his power…Mere baptism did not terrify. What terrified them was that the acceptance of the new faith was accompanied by the destruction of the old cult.’2 On the other hand, according to chronicles and their interpretations by historians, Roman emperors with their politics of adding the gods of recently conquered places into the Roman pantheon, had no particular difficulties in assuring themselves of the obedience of newly conquered peoples. The only exception to that rule was, as we know, Judea – the one hatchery of unceasing rebellion and opposition – because it was also the only refuge of the idea of ‘the one true God’ on the territory of the Roman Empire; its people could not stand to have their God placed among others, who by virtue of their otherness alone could only be false pretenders to the divine throne.

Call it polyphony, if you prefer, or polytheism – a phenomenon that was well known long before polyphony was created; whatever you call it, the idea was associated with the peaceful co-existence of different modes of being human, whereas monotheism is coupled with the fratricidal struggle of these modes – a struggle to exhaustion or extermination. And in the idea of ‘truth’, regardless of whether it is attached to the word ‘one’ or lacking it, there is already a hard-to-remove suggestion of ‘singularity’, or at least its stipulation (I would even be inclined to say that the term ‘one truth’ is, like ‘buttery butter’, a pleonasm). ‘Truth’ is an idea that is, in its origins and its inalienable nature, agonistic – a concept that could only emerge from the encounter with its opposite: at a moment when a certain conviction ceased to be obvious (speaking more strictly, was pulled out from the haze of the unnoticeable by its clash with an alternative or a competitor). In Heidegger's words, once a previously inarticulate conviction (why would you articulate the unchallenged obviousness?) was pushed from the sphere of zuhanden (‘given to hand’) to the sphere of vorhanden: by virtue of being questioned, becoming a focus of attention, prompting thereby research and action. The concept of ‘truth’ wouldn't make any sense without polyphony or multiplicity of beliefs and perspectives, and so also a temptation to compete and a fight for dominance among contenders. The need for such a concept emerges at the moment when the claim ‘It is how it is’ has to be supplemented with the proviso that ‘It isn't how others (whoever they may be) think it is.’ ‘Truth’ feels at home in a lexicon of monotheism – and, in the final tally, of monologue.

From Holy Scripture we know that only God, precisely by virtue of his singularity, could introduce himself to Moses with the words, ‘I am who I am.’ All other contenders for a divine status were called, as common people are, by proper names; in other words, their differentia specifica assumed/signalled a semantic family containing more than one member. The namelessness of the God of Moses is the Bible's sole exception – and the only conceivable exception. One wouldn't need a proper name were one, as long as one remained, the sole being. The idea of ‘truth’ is a sort of Malleus Maleficarum – a hammer, yet, unlike the 1487 Heinrich Kramer treatise, targeted not at witches, but at unbelievers and doubters. It is only the missionaries and apologists of the Biblical God who – once fallen into religiously pluralist surroundings – were forced to argue for His truth (read: for the untruth/falsity of all His contenders). Perhaps religious wars stemmed from a search for truth; it is certain, however, that their proclaimed objective was to provide proof for one's challenged truth and to refute its challenges.

Maciej Kalarus, an exceptionally astute scholar of our polyphonic world and a tireless and fearless observer of its nooks and crannies that are rarely visited by reporters or professional researchers, demands that the word ‘truth’, similarly to words like ‘scissors’, ‘goggles’ or ‘trousers’, should only be used in the plural (demanding by the same token also a Lebenswelt – the lived world, the world of experience – of a kind that would allow for such a usage). Indeed, using the word ‘truth’ in the singular in a polyphonic world is like trying to clap with one hand…With one hand you can give someone a rap on the head, but not clap. With a single truth you can hit (and for hitting the adversaries it was invented), but you cannot use it to launch an investigation into the human condition (an investigation that in its very nature must be conducted only through dialogue, or in the explicit or tacitly presumed – but always axiomatic – assumption of alternatives). Odo Marquard, a German philosopher of the neo-sceptical school, half jokingly – but half in earnest – derives the German word for doubt (Zweifel) from the number two (Zwei in German) and says the following:

When, in relation to the sacred text, two interpreters assert, in controversy, ‘I am right; my understanding of the text is the truth, and in fact – and this is necessary for salvation – in this way and not otherwise’, this may lead to a brawl and tussle […] Could this text not be understood, after all, in still another way, and – if that is not sufficient – still another way, and again and again in other ways?3

A ‘pluralizing hermeneutics’, for which Marquard calls for a change, replaces a relationship dependent on ‘the stubborn clinging to one's own truth’ with an ‘interpretive relationship’. This means, according to Marquard, with whom I am inclined to agree, replacing a ‘being toward killing’ (das Sein zum Totschlagen) with being toward the text…That step won't leave room for the invocation recalled by Zięba, and attributed variously to Arnaud Amaury or Simone de Montfort: ‘Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius’ (Kill them! For the Lord knows those who are his).

SO    Well then, let us talk about pluralism in religion. You mentioned the ‘pluralizing hermenutics’ that Odo Marquard calls for when approaching sacred texts, or those considered sacred. This appeal is very close to my heart, and in the last few years I have been (pleasantly) surprised to notice it in the works of exegesis on these texts. In fact, arguably, even so-called ‘monotheistic’ religions never really forgot their pluralistic foundations; rather, they were voiced in different ways. I think especially in Christianity, particularly in its Orthodox and Catholic variants. Because the Protestant Church, as it resisted what it saw as the blurring of the purity of monotheism, fought against cults of saints, sacred images and other such returns to a lost pluralism, or even polytheism. Is it not a fact that certain local saints have historically been more important than God or Jesus? And developed versions of the Marian cult have long managed to evade the strictures of monotheistic purity. In particular, the ‘legalization’ of Marian sanctuaries and effigies is, to me, more an expression of resignation than of the development of the Christian religion. But let us return to the texts.

I will begin with the Hebrew Bible, because in some ways it does seem that, as you say, it is Judaism that bears the primary responsibility for ushering divinity towards singularity. But the situation is not quite so clear. Thus, for instance, Yochanan Muffs, the author of a remarkable book that is devoted to nothing more or less than the ‘personhood’ of God (The Personhood of God: Biblical Theology, Human Faith and the Divine Image) gestures to the complexity of the Divine Being. The author shows us that the God of the Hebrew Bible is not only not Aristotle's unmoved mover, but shines forth on every page of the Jewish Holy Book as a living Absolute, endowed with tenderness. In brief, the image of God that emerges from Muffs' analysis, while shocking, is based not only on a precise analysis of Biblical text, but also on the religious context that it is embedded in. Muffs' position is not an isolated one, as I had previously thought. In it one can discern the voice of contemporary Judaism rooted in Talmudic interpretation. It is precisely through this kind of searching and laborious reading of the Hebrew Bible that the tragic face of God is illuminated. It is worth recalling the observation, gleaned from his studies, that Muffs shares with his readers: ‘As Saul Liebermann […] taught us, the truly tragic figure in the Bible is not Jacob or Saul or even Job, but God Himself, who is constantly torn between his love for Israel and his profound exasperation with them.’4

This is, in and of itself, a strange concept of God, both for religious people and for atheists. The former is puzzled to learn that the foundation of his faith could be seen in such a way, and for the latter the proposition is completely unfounded. If anything, the human condition can be described as dramatic, regardless of whether we are referring to a Transcendental Being or are content with temporal explanations. To me, the opinion of this brilliant scholar of Near Eastern religions is one of the most accurate claims about God that I have ever heard. It becomes comprehensible if we accept the idea that, in the Bible, it is not only man who is created in God's image, but also God – the creator of man – whose creation depends, for its success, upon the actions of man. As Muffs says:

while the God of agape is human in His concern for mankind, He is not human in His independence. The law-giving God, on the other hand, is most human – too human – in His desire for the realization of the law, His frustration and anger over its nonfulfillment, and His willingness to allow mortals to control His anger so as to avoid destroying the world.5

This reminds me of the well-known Cabbalistic or Hassidic belief that the world's existence depends upon the existence of thirty-six righteous people. In this way, both God and humans determine the future of the world.

This motif of a mutual interdependence between Creator and Creations was always present in Jewish theological thought, visible in the earliest writings, such as the so-called ‘Ethics of the Fathers’ (Pirkei Avot), which concern mankind first and foremost. So as to avoid making unfounded claims, I will refer to a few – actually the most famous – sentences attributed to Hillel the Elder, who may have been one of the spiritual teachers of Jesus of Nazareth. Hillel said, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow’, and added, ‘be […] a lover of peace, a pursuer of peace, one who loves the creatures and draws them close to Torah’. If these are the most important commandments of Judaism, where do the accusations that Jewish monotheism is the source of alienation, fundamentalism, hostility towards others come from? I am far from not seeing the symptoms of this religiosity in the Israel of today, but, after all, in them we can find not so much a measure of fidelity to tradition, as the degree of its falsification. I'm expressing myself in such strong terms because I am emboldened to it by a thinker whose ideas I hold close: Abraham J. Hesche, who based his entire theological system on the idea of ‘God in search of Man’.6 Regardless of how paradoxical the idea of God needing humans sounds, the basic premise of the Biblical covenant illustrates it. To again rely on Muffs: ‘God's involvement manifests itself in His making a covenant with Israel. To some degree, man is copartner with God in establishing a moral world.’7 One would like to add that this was not always obvious to God. It was only their mutual history that illuminated the true character of humanity to God – as a weak creature, but nonetheless necessary to the creation of the world. It is difficult, in such a framework, to discern the edifying character of religion or faith in God. It is rather a form of encounter and dialogue, in which the participants learn from each other, and above all respect their own limitations and differences. God does not feel morally superior to humans; rather, he is inclined towards greater leniency, which in the language of the Bible is generally called mercy. Or so says Muffs, in one final reference:

Possibly God realized that if He is fallible in expecting the impossible from man and then punishing him, He better have more sympathy for human mistakes. […] I am willing to suffer man's sinfulness, God says, to leave room for his humanity, for I cannot have my cake and eat it too: I cannot have a being free from sin who is also human. Rather a sinful human than no human at all.8

All well and good; one might think that this is a beautiful, but rather isolated (which is not to say false), interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. But another scholar of Biblical texts comes to Muffs' rescue: Israel Knohl, from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in his book about ‘the Divine symphony’, subtitled ‘the Bible's many voices’ (The Divine Symphony: the Bible's Many Voices). He is of the opinion that ‘The editors of the Torah were the first composers of the divine symphony, which is embodied in the Bible and in Judaism as a whole. By transmitting to us the full scale and range of the different – and at times contradictory – choices, they have enabled us to listen to the divine revelation with all its fullness and richness.’9 A particularly intriguing voice is heard at the moment that the name of God is revealed to Moses. I admit that Knohl's interpretation seems somewhat enigmatic, and is in any case at odds with a rather widely accepted view of the essence of the Jewish religion. We have been accustomed to associating it with a conviction of the uniqueness of the bond linking God and his chosen nation. Meanwhile, the

revelation of the name ‘YHWH’ results in a theological Copernican revolution. Moses, and Israel with him, learns to recognize the essence of divine nature, which is unrelated to Creation or to humanity and its needs […] Humans beings, when faced with the holy, no longer see themselves as the center of the universe, nor do they evaluate God from the narrow point of view of their own needs and desires.10

And, if this is the case, then who is God really, and why believe in such a God if there is no way to include Him in my life? This is the kind of question that could be asked by a person such as myself, who is outside of Judaism; but if I do actually believe, as I think I do, in the presence of God in the world, then maybe my religious agnosticism is not groundless? Maybe I am correct to view institutionalized forms of religion, which allude to Biblical revelation, with scepticism? Knohl, evoking one of the oldest traditions of Judaism, asserts that God gave humans their freedom, and carefully restrains Himself from intervening in human affairs: ‘The School of Hillel represents a tendency – it may be called rationalistic – that seeks an autonomous existence for man on earth. “The Heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He gave over to man” (ps. 115:16). The heavens cannot intervene in what happens on earth.’11 I have to say that this very much appeals to me.

I fear, however, that in responding to you I've gone off in an unanticipated direction. But then again, we don't have to solve anything; rather, we are contemplating how to understand the world better. Maybe God, as He is understood by Biblical authors and Jewish commentators, doesn't interfere with that understanding. Or maybe he even helps? Am I mistaken?

ZB