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Grace beyond binary enmity
Two
definitive positions cast in opposition inevitably arrests the capacity to go
beyond partisan conflict or the binary logic of only two possibilities. Binary
logic depends on making another person or position the definitive wrong or ill
to be countered. Expressions
of the social good are frequently cast as contrary binary values. This gives the
convenience of interpreting everything as nearer or further from an assumed benchmark
of the good. To nominate the good is to be able to define variegated expressions
either toward or away from the good. Yet such binary perspective is a misunderstanding
of human possibilities for the social good. It is too easily assumed that the
definitive good can be nominated from within phenomena and that having nominated
it, the good can be fulfilled. Two distinct approaches to binary differences occur
in the modern era with significant effects. v In
a Newtonian universe with its immutable laws of the cosmos that function like
clockwork (17th–18th C), the world is a stable system of
possibilities with any imbalance being apparent not real within an implicit equilibrium.
The whole consists in the sum of its various parts—no more, no less. It is a world
of determined possibilities and resources, which, with prescribed human effort,
the immutable equilibrium of all things will distribute appropriately in its time.
Binary oppositions will eventually equalise to give the good. Another
view emerges during the nineteenth century in which the horizon of progress is
unlimited but the critical factor in society relates to who possesses and distributes
its material benefits. New social dynamics emerge as competing classes are locked
in a pendulum of sudden and necessary reversals. In various guises, such ideological conflict
over the control of social progress is still present today as “the left” and “the
right.” These
two modern images are contested by Christian faith with its unexpected image of
loss and generation in which—to die is to give life beyond the previous sum of
possibilities; to lose is to gain; to be diminished is to be made apparent beyond
previous measure. The
unique redemptive testimony to such self-relinquishment cannot be arrived at within
the social value of equality. All nature seeks balance or equilibrium, either
gently or violently. Love does not equalise; it goes further. In the passion,
God in Christ shows the character of self-giving
as eternal “Thou” of every “I” in going to the depths of human existence, without
allegiance to partisan and competing ideals in order to be the source of love
amid our painfully compromised and fragmented expressions of love. This
redemptive movement is triune—initiated in love, exemplified as kenotic or self-relinquishing in the Son
and resourced by the Spirit of love from the social reality of God. God as triune is dynamic self-giving in a passion
that encompasses all humanity, while allowing humans to be creature and other,
even in God, in whom our sibling and other, Christ, has invited humanity into
the eternal communion from which he came. The
source of all things continues to be the giver of all things. Humans are not affirmed
within speculative prescriptions that promise to ameliorate social imbalance;
nor do they exist for inexorable progress toward an ideal through inherently violent
reversals of power. God in Christ, in the humiliation of the cross, the silence
of a tomb and the mystery of its negation, is humanity’s source of renewal and
participation in the enduring good. We
are called constantly to learn in our very being, the dynamic warp and weft of
divine love and its definitive expression in the world. How are we to interpret
this? What does it look like in reality? It is seemingly absurd and impossible
apart from grace. Faith working through love exceeds the
binary enmity of social and political posturing at any given time—its modus operandi
being death, not of another or another’s reputation but of oneself after the divine
example of non-grasping. There is no prescription for this nor is the voice of
protest stirred to thinly veiled enmity a source of reliable or durable transformation.
Binary
enmity creates blind spots as what is excluded as opposed may not be entirely
wrong nor is our advocacy for a position entirely without dysfunction. In the
short term and to brief perusal, a position may appear incontrovertible, yet another
time and context may show that it was deeply flawed. v Theology
that is expressed in binary oppositions is doomed to reflect the same competing
enmities found in society; enmeshed in the mortal anxieties of humans, society
is unable to be extricated from such partisan enmities. Society is so inscribed
in binary enmities that the media is able to amplify the simplest difference to
a semblance of bitter conflict. Theology
can be implicated in this deadly game. Inasmuch as the focus of theology goes
beyond partisan conflict, it is relevant to every conceivable issue of human life.
The quest for theological relevance through partisan expressions of society, apart
from its explicit testimony to Christ, will cease to be relevant to enduring human
needs as it becomes factional according to the inevitable distribution of contrary
opinions about human needs within society at any one time. It will cease to be
redemptive. To
play the game of partisan opposition is to relinquish the possibility of transcending
enmity in creative word and deed in redemptive love. Partisan alignment leads
to the alienation of many we are also called to serve. Peace on earth and goodwill among all people
occur otherwise than by the partisan clamour to define these possibilities and
the quest to determine their presumed correct expressions. In
every generation, humans compromise honesty, goodness, beauty and wisdom. Such
compromise can compound with devastating incursions into the next generation.
The quest to disentangle this perennial knot is always flawed, often aggressive
in assertion, further aggravating the open wound of human compromise, which has
its worst expressions in violence. The confession that “Christ crucified
is risen” announces a new creation. This cannot be correlated with conflicted
progress toward one of competing human ideals. The possibility of a new
trajectory within humanity, resourced solely by love, is given beyond human initiative
and therefore the limits inherent within either human idealism or pragmatism,
even if these have a religious guise. Grace
does not figure in ideological claims and counter-claims that attempt to unravel
what cannot be unravelled—what Christian testimony refers to as human sinfulness.
Grace exceeds contemporary appeals to relevance in its testimony to a word otherwise than endless partisan
enmities over the good. The word of grace does not have its origin within human
initiative; it cannot be accounted for among competing human ideals, even if idealists
cast about the terms “good” and “evil” with disturbing self-assurance. Long
after a hunger for the triumph of being right would be starved and after the need
that calls forth the cost has diminished any boast in human achievement, there
is strength for the good that can only come from God. This courage and strength
is a true but pale reflection of the depth of triune love that continues to be
redemptive beyond human solutions to perennial dilemmas. Selected
sources: Marion Prolegomena to Charity; von Balthasar Love Alone is Credible; Weil Oppression and |
