Categoria: Idiomas

From the solitude of a One to the communion of the Three

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

We previously wrote that God is mystery in Itself and to Itself. For Christians, it is about the mystery of communion, not solitude. It is the Most Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Orthodoxy affirms: there are three Persons and only one God. Is that possible? Would it not be absurd, 3=1? Here we touch on what Christians understand when they say “God.” It is different from the absolute Jewish and Moslem monotheism. Without abandoning monotheism, we should clarify this Trinity.

The Three is certainly a number. But not as a result of 1+1+1=3. If we think that way, mathematically, then God is not three but one and unique. The number three functions as a symbol. indicating that under the name God there is communion rather than solitude, distinctions that are not exclusive but inclusive, that are not opposed but are composed. The number three would be like the halo we symbolically place around the head of saintly persons. It is not that these persons go around with their halos, but that to us it is the symbol that indicates that we are before saintly figures. The same occurs with the number three.

By the number three, we indicate that in God there are distinctions. If there were no distinctions, the solitude of the one would reign. The word Trinity (three) stands for love, communion, and inter-retro-relations. Trinity means exactly this: distinctions in God that permit the inter-exchange and the mutual offering of Father, Son and Spirit.

In truth, as the genius of Saint Augustine understood, it should not be referred to as three persons. Each divine Person is unique and the uniques are not added up because unique is not a number. If I say one as a number, then there is no way to stop: two, thee, four and to infinity would follow. Immanuel Kant erroneously understood it that way and for that reason, he rejected the idea of the Trinity. Consequently, the number three has a symbolic value, rather than a mathematical one. What does three symbolize?

C. G. Jung comes to our help. He wrote an extensive essay about the archetypical-symbolic meaning of the Christian Trinity. The three expresses the intimate and infinite relationship among distinct Persons that unify themselves, this is, make themselves one, an only God.

But if they are three Uniques, would it not result in triteism, this to say, three Gods instead of one; monotheism? That would follow if mathematical logic controlled. If I add one coat + one coat + one coat, I have three coats. But it is not like that with the Trinity, because we are faced with a different logic, the logic of interpersonal relationships. According to this logic, relationships are not added; they are interwoven and inclusive, forming a unity. Thus, father, mother and children constitute a unique set of relationships, forming a unique family. The family results from the inclusive relationships among the members who comprise it. There is no father and mother without a child; neither there is a child without a father and mother. The three are unified, are one, a unique family. Three different beings but one single family, the human trinity.

When we speak of God-Trinity, it is the logic of inter-personal relationships that is in play, not the logic of numbers. In other words, the intimate nature of God is not solitude but communion.

If there were but one single God, absolute solitude truly would reign. If there were two, one facing the other, there would be distinction, and both separation and exclusion (the one is not the other), and mutual contemplation. Would that not be double egoism? With three, the one and the two turn towards the three, overcoming separation and finding each other in the three. A circular communion, and inclusion of the ones in the others, by the others and with the others; in a word: the Trinity.

What exists first is the simultaneous nature of the Unique three. None is before or after. They emerge together, always communicating in a reciprocal and endless manner. This is why we say that at the beginning there is communion. As a consequence of this infinite communion, there is the union and the unity in God. Thus: three Persons and only one God-communion.

Are not modern cosmologists telling us exactly that? The universe is made up of relationships, and nothing exists outside those relationships. The universe is the great metaphor of the Trinity, all is relation of all with all: a uni-verse. And we are part of it.

See my book Holy Trinity: perfect Community. Orbis Books, NY 2000.

God, that known unknown

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

On October 5th and 6th. in Assisi, Italy, there was another edition of «The Atrium of the Gentiles», an initiative of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council of Culture, devoted to the question of God. The President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, and cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Council and famed Biblical exegete, had a thought-provoking dialogue about «God, that unknown».

With «The Atrium of the Gentiles», an effort is being made to initiate dialogues between believers and non-believers. The Atrium was the space around the temple of Jerusalem that was accessible to the gentiles (pagans), who otherwise never could have entered the temple. Now there is an effort to erase all prohibitions, so that all may have access to the temple.

To this end, I engage in a reflection that has been with me my entire life as a theologian: thinking of God beyond the religious objectifications (metaphysics) and trying to interpret God as Mystery, always unknown and simultaneously, always known. Why this path? Einstein gives us a hint: «the one whose eyes are not open to Mystery will go through life seeing nothing».

In effect, wherever we direct our sight, towards the largest and the smallest, outwards and inwardly, to the high and the low, in every direction, we find the Mystery. Mystery is not the unknown; it is the known that fascinates us and impels us to know it more and more. And, at the same time, it causes estrangement and reverence in us. Because it is always there, it constantly offers itself to our knowledge, and when we attempt to know it, we realize that our thirst and hunger to know it is never satisfied. Just as we capture it, it escapes us and heads towards the unknown. We pursue it ceaselessly, and it nonetheless continues being a Mystery in all knowledge, creating in us an endless attraction, fear, and an undeniable reverence. Mystery is.

My basic thesis is this: In the beginning there was Mystery. The Mystery was God. God was the Mystery. God is Mystery for us, and for God.

It is Mystery for us to the extent that we never stop fathoming It, either through reason or intelligence. Each encounter leaves a void that leads us to another encounter. Each knowledge opens another window to a new knowledge. The Mystery of God is not the limit of knowledge, but unlimited knowledge. It is the love that knows no rest. Mystery does not fit into any scheme, nor is it captured by any doctrine. Mystery is always there to be known.

Mystery is an absent Presence. And also a present Absence. Mystery is manifested in our absolute dissatisfaction, that seeks satisfaction, tirelessly and in vain. The human being, tragic and happy, whole but unfinished, is realized in this transit from Presence to Absence.

God is mystery in Itself and to Itself. God is mystery in Itself because the Divine nature is Mystery. Therefore, God as Mystery knows Itself, and still, the Divine self knowledge never ends. God reveals Itself to Itself and retracts from Itself. The knowledge of Its nature as Mystery is ever more whole and plentiful, and, at the same time, always open to a new plenitude, remaining always Mystery, eternal and infinite to God Itself. If it were not so, it would not be what It is: Mystery. Thus, it is a boundless, absolute, Dynamism.

God is Mystery to Itself, this is, no matter how much God knows Itself, Its self knowledge is never exhausted. God is open to a future that is truly a future. Consequently, God is open to something that has not happened yet, but that could happen and be new to God Itself. With the incarnation, God began to be that which God was not before. Thus, there is in God a process of evolution, a self making.

But the Mystery, through an intrinsic dynamism, permanently reveals and self communicates. It goes out of Itself and knows and loves the new that is manifested through Itself. What will be revealed is not a reproduction, but is always different and new, also to God. Contrary to an enigma, that once known, disappears, the more Mystery is known, the more It appears as unknown, this is to say, as Mystery, that invites more knowledge and more love.

To say God-Mystery is to express a dynamism without residue, a life without entropy, an appearance without loss, an evolving without interruption, an eternal coming to be that is always being, and a beauty that is always new and different, and that never withers away. Mystery is Mystery, now and always, from all eternity to all eternity.

Words drown before Mystery, images weaken and references die. What behooves us is silence, reverence, adoration and contemplation. These are the appropriate attitudes before Mystery.

With that understanding, all walls will fall. There will no longer be an Atrium of the Gentiles, nor will there exist a temple, because God does not have a religion. God simply is the Mystery that links and re-links every thing, every person, and the entire universe. Mystery penetrates us and we are submerged in Mystery.

Forty years of Liberation Theology and of “Jesus Christ Liberator”

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

The 40th anniversary of the birth of the Theology of Liberation was celebrated from the 7th to the 11th of October in the Humanitas Institute of the Unisinos University of the Jesuits, in São Leopoldo, Brazil. The principal representatives of Latin America, especially, its first formulator, Peruvian Gustavo Gutierrez, were present. Curiously, in that same year, 1971, unaware of each other, Gutierrez in Peru, Hugo Assman in Bolivia, Juan Luis Segundo in Uruguay, and I in Brazil, considered the founders of this type of theology, published our writings. Was it not the presence of the Spirit that inspired our Continent, marked by so much oppression?

To outwit the organs of control and repression of the military, I published an article titled: Jesus Christ the Liberator, (Jesucristo el Liberador), every month of 1971 in Sponsa Christi (The Spouse of Christ), a magazine for women religious. On March of 1972 I gathered those articles and dared publish them as a book. I had to go into hiding for two weeks, because the political police were searching for me. The words, «liberation» and «liberator», had been banned, and could not be used publicly. Editora Voz’s lawyer had a hard time convincing the vigilant agents that it was a book of theology, with many footnotes to German literature, and that it was not a threat to the National Security of the State.

Why is the book (now in its 21st edition) so unique? Founded on a rigorous exegesis of the Gospels, it presented Jesus of Nazareth as liberator of the many human oppressions. He had to directly confront two of them: the religious in the pharisaical form of the strict observance of religious laws. The other, political one, was the Roman occupation that implied recognizing the Roman emperor as «god» and witnessing the penetration of pagan Hellenistic culture in Israel.

Against religious oppression, Jesus posits a major «law»: unconditional love of God and thy neighbor. The neighbor is to Jesus every person with whom one comes into contact, especially the poor and the invisible, those who do not count socially.

To the political he posited, instead of submission to the empire of the Caesars, announcing of the Kingdom of God, a crime of lese majesty. This Kingdom implied an absolute revolution of the cosmos, of society, of each person, and a redefinition of the meaning of life in the light of God, called Abba, namely, loving father full of mercy, that would make everyone feel like His sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters of each other.

Jesus acted with the authority and conviction of one sent by the Father to liberate a creation wounded by injustice. He displayed the power to placate tempests, cure the sick, resurrect the dead and fill all people with hope. Something truly revolutionary was going to happen: the emergence of the Kingdom that is of God and also, through His commitment, of humans.

The conflict Jesus created on these two fronts led Him to the cross. He did not die in His bed surrounded by His disciples, but was executed on the cross, as a result of His message and practice. Everything indicated that His utopia had been frustrated. But something unheard of happened: the grass did not grow on His grave. Some women announced to the apostles that He had been resurrected. The resurrection must not be identified with the reanimation of a corpse, as in Lazarus, but as the appearance of a new being, no longer subject either to time-space, or to the natural entropy of life. This is why He could go through walls. He would appear and disappear. His utopia of the Kingdom as a transfiguration of all things, not being realized globally, became concrete in His person through the resurrection. It is the Kingdom of God concretized in Him.

The resurrection is the main event without which Christianity cannot be sustained. Without that blessed event, Jesus would be just one of the many prophets sacrificed by the systems of oppression. The resurrection means the great liberation and also an insurrection against this type of world. The one who was resurrected was not a Caesar or a High Priest, but one who had been crucified. The resurrection gives meaning to all those crucified throughout history for justice and love. The resurrection assures us that the executioner does not triumph over the victim. It means the realization of the hidden potentialities in each of us: the appearance of the new man.

How do we understand that person? The disciples called Him by every title; Son of Man, Prophet, Messiah, and others. In the end they concluded: a human such as Jesus can only be God. And they began to call Him, Son of God.

To announce Jesus Christ as liberator in the context of the oppression that existed and still persists in Brazil and in Latin America was and is dangerous. Not only for the dominant society but also for the type of Church that discriminates against women and the laity. This is why His dream will always be retaken by those who refuse to accept the world as it exists now. Perhaps this is the secret meaning of a book written 40 years ago.

Leonardo Boff

Prosperity: with or without Growth?

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

The socio-ecological crisis encompassing all the countries of the world forces us to rethink growth and development, as occurred in Rio+20. There we empirically experienced the limits of the Earth. The prevailing models are unsustainable.

For this reason, many analysts assert that the developed countries must get over their fetish of sustainable development/growth at all costs. They no longer need it, because they have accumulated practically everything necessary for a decent life, free from need. Consequently, instead of growth/development, a socio/ecological vision must prevail: prosperity without growth (improving the quality of life, education; the intangible goods). It is the poor and emerging countries that need prosperity with growth. For them, it is urgent to satisfy the needs of their impoverished populations (80% of humanity).

It no longer makes sense to pursue the central purpose of economic industrialist/consumerist/capitalist thought, that used to pose the question: how can we earn more?, and that presupposed dominating nature for economic benefit.

Now that conditions have changed, the question is different: how can we produce and live in harmony with nature, with all living beings, with human beings and with the Transcendent?

The response to this question will determine if there is to be prosperity without growth for the developed countries, and properity with growth for the poor and emerging countries.

To better understand this equation, we should distinguish four types of capital: natural, material, human and spiritual. Whether prosperity is with or without growth is determined by the manner that these four forms are developed. Natural capital consists of the goods and services that nature offers gratuitously. Material capital is produced by human labor. And here we must consider the conditions of human exploitation and the degradation of nature by means of which this material capital has been built. Human capital consists of culture, arts, world vision, and cooperation: properties that pertain to the essence of human life. Here, it is important to recognize that material capital has distorted human capital, because it has turned cultural goods into merchandise. As David Yanomami, shaman and cacique, recently denounced in a book published in France, and titled The Fall of Heaven, (La caída del cielo): «you, the Whites, are the people of merchandise, those who do not listen to nature because your only interest lies in economic benefits» (desinformemonos.org).

The same must be said of spiritual capital. It also pertains to the nature of the human being, who wonders about the meaning of life and the universe, what to expect after death, the values of excellence such as love, friendship, compassion and openness to the Transcendent. But given the predominance of the material, the spiritual is anemic, and still cannot realize its capacity for transformation, and for creating equilibrium and sustainability of human life, society and nature.

The challenge now is how to move from material capital to human and spiritual capital. Logically, the human and spiritual do not exclude material capital. We need some material growth in order to assure, sufficiently and decently, the material sustainability of life.

However, we cannot limit ourselves to growth with prosperity, because this is not an end in itself. The integrated development of the human being is required.

Recently, Amartya Sen, from India, 1998 Nobel laureate for economics, helped us to better understand what kind of human development can be sustainable and bring prosperity. The title of his book defines its central thesis: Development as Freedom, (Desarrollo como libertad, Companhia das Letras, 2001). The author grounds himself in the heart of human capital, when he defines development as «the process of expanding the substantive liberties of the people» (p. 336).

Brazilian Marcos Arruda, economist and educator, also suggested a means of transforming education, starting from the practical, and the democratic exercise of all liberties, (Education for an economy of love: education for a practical and solidarian economy, Idéias e Letras, 2009).

It is not just a question of addressing nourishment and health, basic conditions for any prosperity. What is decisive is the transformation of the human being. To Amarthya Sen and to Arruda, education and participatory democracy are fundamental. Education is not to be transformed into an article of merchandise (professionalization), but must be the means of revealing and developing the potentialities and capabilities of the human being, whose «ontological and historical vocation is to be more… which implies to excel, to go beyond oneself, to activate the latent potentialities in the human being» (Arruda, Educación para una economía del amor, pag.103).

Thus the growth/development that prosperity seeks presupposes broadening the opportunities to determine life’s path, and define one’s destiny. The human being discovers himself as a utopic being, that is, a being always under construction, possessed of infinite potential. To create the conditions for this potential to be revealed, and implemented, is the purpose of human development as prosperity.

It is about humanizing the human. In service of this end are the ethical-spiritual values, the sciences, technologies and our modes of production. Besides education, the best political way of facilitating a prosperous and sustainable human development is, according to Sen and Arruda, participatory democracy. Everyone must feel included in, and united for, building the common good.

The more it is used, the more human and spiritual capital grows, contrary to material capital, that decreases as it is used. Perhaps this is the great legacy of the present crisis.