DEVOTIONAL TALK AT THE MAR THOMA SABHA PRATHINIDHI MANDALAM 2018

ഞണ്ടുകളുടെ നാട്ടിൽ

ഞണ്ടുകളുടെ നാട്ടിൽ

ഞണ്ടുകളെ അപമാനിക്കാൻ ഉദ്ദേശമില്ല എങ്കിലും മാനനഷ്ടത്തിനു ഒരു കേസ് മുന്നിൽകാണുന്നു. പുറകോട്ടു നടക്കുന്ന ഞണ്ടുകളുടെ ശീലത്തെ ഒരു സാമൂഹ്യ അടയാളമായി സ്വീകരിക്കുന്നു എന്നു മാത്രം.

കേരളവും പുറകോട്ട് സഞ്ചരിക്കുകയാണെന്ന് തോന്നുന്നു. പ്രളയാനന്തര കാലം നവകേരളം ആയിരിക്കുമെന്ന് ഭരണാധികാരികൾ പ്രഖ്യാപിച്ച് അധികം നാളായില്ല. എന്നാൽ സമകാലീന സാഹചര്യത്തിൽ അങ്ങനെ വിശ്വസിക്കുവാൻ സാധിക്കുന്നില്ല.

ചരിത്രപരമായ കോടതിവിധികൾ ആണ് അടുത്തയിടെ ഉണ്ടായത്. ലൈംഗിക സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യത്തെക്കുറിച്ച് കോടതി വിധി പ്രഖ്യാപിച്ചത് മനുഷ്യാവകാശങ്ങളുടെ നവഭൂമികയിൽ നിന്നുകൊണ്ടാണ്. ലൈംഗികത പാപമാണെന്നും അത് നിയന്ത്രിക്കപ്പെടേണ്ടതാണെന്നുമുള്ള പുരുഷകേന്ദ്രീകൃത/ പരമ്പരാഗത സമൂഹത്തിന്റെ ജീർണതയുടെ സംസ്കാരത്തിൽ നിന്നും നാം ഒട്ടും മുന്നോട്ടു പോയിട്ടില്ലായെന്ന് തെളിയിക്കുന്നതാണ് അടുത്തിടെയുണ്ടായ പ്രതികരണങ്ങൾ കാണിക്കുന്നത്.

മനുഷ്യബന്ധങ്ങളിലെ സ്വതന്ത്ര കാമനകളുടെ ഏതൊരു ശീലവും ദുരുപയോഗം ചെയ്യപ്പെടാനുള്ള തിരിച്ചറിവോടെ ബന്ധങ്ങളെ ജാഗ്രതയോടെ കാണാൻ പഠിപ്പിക്കേണ്ട മതസമൂഹങ്ങളും ഞണ്ടുകളുടെ അസോസിയേഷനുകൾ ആയിമാറി.

ശബരിമലയിലെ യുവതീ പ്രവേശനം ഒരു ജീവൻ -മരണ പ്രശ്നമായി രാഷ്ട്രീയപ്രസ്ഥാനങ്ങൾ ഏറ്റെടുത്തിരിക്കുന്നു. തങ്ങളുടെ വിശുദ്ധ - അതിവിശുദ്ധ ഇടങ്ങളിലേക്കും സ്ത്രീ പ്രവേശനം എന്ന പ്രശ്നം കടന്നു വരുമെന്നറിയാമായിരുന്ന ഇതര മതസാമൂഹങ്ങളും പ്രസ്തുത രാഷ്ട്രീയപ്രസ്ഥാനങ്ങളൊടൊപ്പമാണ് .(മുത്തലാഖ് പ്രശ്നത്തിൽ വിശ്വാസ/ആചാരപ്രശ്നം ഇവർക്കാർക്കും തോന്നിയില്ലായെന്ന് കേവലം വിരോധാഭാസം മാത്രം.)

മുമ്പോട്ട് സഞ്ചരിക്കുന്ന ഒരു ജനാധിപത്യസമൂഹത്തിന് അഭിമാനം നൽകുന്ന വിധിയല്ലേ ഇത്. ഇത് പ്രതിരോധിക്കപ്പെടുക എന്നുവെച്ചാൽ പരമ്പരാഗത/ ജീർണതയുടെ സംസ്കാരത്തിലേക്ക് തിരിച്ചുപോവുകയാണെന്നാണ്. ജീർണ്ണതയുടെ സംസ്കാരത്തെ മുറുകെ പിടിക്കുന്ന ഇത്തരം കുത്സിത നീക്കങ്ങളെ നിസ്സംഗമായി നോക്കി കാണുന്ന സമൂഹത്തിൽനിന്നും പുതുതലമുറ എന്താണ് പ്രതീക്ഷിക്കേണ്ടത്?

കന്യാസ്ത്രീകൾ നിരത്തിലിറങ്ങി സമരം ചെയ്ത സംഭവവും നമ്മളൊക്കെ ആരാണെന്ന് ബോധ്യപ്പെടുത്തുന്ന ഒന്നായിരുന്നു. ലൈംഗികബന്ധത്തിലേർപ്പെട്ട കന്യാസ്ത്രീ എങ്ങനെയാണ് കന്യാസ്ത്രീ ആകുന്നതെന്ന് ചോദിക്കുകയും അതേസമയം അതിൽ പങ്കാളിയായ ബിഷപ്പിനെ കൈമുത്തി ( ജയിലിൽ പോയി)തന്റെ പാരമ്പര്യസഭാസ്നേഹം വെളിപ്പെടുത്തിയ നിയമസഭാ സാമാജികൻ ഒരു സങ്കോചവും കൂടാതെ വിഹരിക്കുന്ന നാടാണിത്.

അവകാശ നിഷേധങ്ങളുടെ പശ്ചാത്തലത്തിൽ തെരുവിലിറങ്ങിയ കന്യാസ്ത്രീകൾക്ക് പിന്നിൽ അരാജക വാദികളാണന്നു പറഞ്ഞ നേതാവിനോട് നമുക്ക് ക്ഷമിക്കാം. കാരണം മുത്തങ്ങാ സമരവും ചെങ്ങറ ഭൂസമരവും സാമൂഹ്യവിരുദ്ധരുടെ സമരമാണെന്ന് പറഞ്ഞ വിപ്ലവ പ്രസ്ഥാനത്തിൻറെ ആളാണ് അദ്ദേഹം. എന്നാൽ എല്ലാ രാഷ്ട്രീയപ്രസ്ഥാനങ്ങളും മതസമൂഹങ്ങളും കേരളത്തെ പിറകോട്ട് വലിക്കുമ്പോൾ എന്തു നവകേരളം??

എല്ലാ ഞണ്ടുകൾക്കും നല്ല നമസ്കാരം!!!!

Reclaiming the poeticality of theology                                                                                    Denying the idolatry of methodology[1]

The language of theology cannot be, and should not attempt to be,                                                  clear and precise, since such technical language                                                                             always misses a part of that which it attempts to disclose.                                                            Raimon Panikkar

                                                                                                                                            

Raimon Panikkar alludes to a poetic language of theology. For Panikkar, theology is not a systematic, scientific, methodological treatise; rather it is aesthetical, liturgical and imaginative.[2] However, the theologians like Karl Barth who define theology as dogmatics and a ‘guild discipline’ provide theology a systematic methodological framework. As Panikkar denotes, theology as a scientific, methodological and technical language loses its spontaneity and poeticality. The over emphasize on methodology in recent times, delimits theological engagement to a scientific program and thereby theology becomes a ‘closed discipline’ of the ‘ghettoized communities’—the seminaries and divinity schools.  Theology has to be liberated from the idolatry of methodology and the fixity of its dogmatics. Its esthetical, liturgical and imaginative style of language is to be retained and reclaimed in order to make it more public and social. This essay offers a discussion on the poetic language of theology as it tries to re-locate itself in the post-foundational epistemological context.

It was the Enlightenment epistemology in the modern period that demanded Christian theology to have a systematic foundation of knowledge and methodology of articulation. The problem with this methodological sensitivity is that theology becomes yet another scientific discipline and thereby it loses its creative and imaginative content. Another important criticism aroused against the methodological ‘disciplinization’ of theology was that the modern Christian theology had never been the language of the non-European life-worlds. Thus, Christian theology or theologies in the post-Enlightenment / post-Western context has to be post-foundationalist and post-colonial in content. It needs to de-dogmatize itself and re-place itself with the aesthetical articulations of the suffering people in the postcolonial world. In order to re-define theology as a creative, critical and imaginative poetical engagement in the post-foundationalist/ postcolonial context, this essay initiates some discussions on the contemporary methodological contentions and theological significations.

1.  Theology as Theopoiesis

To locate theology in a post-foundational epistemological context, the antidogmatic contemporary theologians who follow the panentheistic tradition such as Roland Faber, Catherine Keller, Luke B. Higgins, Sharon D. Welch and so on define theology as theopoiesis. The Greek word poiesis which originally means ‘to create’ or ‘to make’ signifies ‘an action that transforms and continues the world’. The theologians who follow the theopoetic tradition locate theology in two foci: poetry and multiplicity. Here, theology becomes independent and polyphonic. It is well explained in the following sentence:

The rediscovery of Continental roots of the philosophical criticism of theological language and its new embrace, respectively became another source of the claim of theology to be essentially not a dogmatic system of certain knowledge of God or ultimate reality and the human response to it, but either a response of infinite variability in face of the divine mystery or, in a different adaptation of postmodern stances, a bulwark against a nihilism with the rediscovery of old knowledges of the divine enshrined in the divers traditions of religious communities and their written witnesses.[3]

Theology in this theopoetic sense becomes more creative (spontaneous, organic and aesthetical), critical (encounter, interrogation and prophetic), and imaginative (alluric, enigmatic and apocalyptic). Theopoiesis is a process of being and becoming to be a part of the social ontology of salvation. Thus doing theology in this theopoetic tradition is ontological in content as it invokes us to be part of the common ontology of redemption which is inherent within. The salvific experience is defined here as common, multiple and potential within.   

In theopoiesis, God is named as poet by which it is refrained from defining God as a person, a force, a substance, a cosmic law or not even as a fixed concept. On the other hand, God is considered as a creative process of becoming of the creation from within. God is understood here as the ultimate novelty of creation or as the organic potentiality of creativity.  According to this tradition, theologians are participants of the creative process of becoming and belonging. For them, theological is always epistemological and ontological. Thus, Sharon D. Welch exhorts theologians: “Let us be artisans, artisans of hope, artisans of wonder, working with human longing for generosity, courage, forgiveness, and resilience. As artisans, let us craft together flourishing communities of honesty, inclusion, justice, self-critique and hope.” 

2. Theology as Theopolitic

     Mark Lewis Taylor, in his well-read book The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World’ distinguishes between ‘Theology’ and ‘theological.’  For Taylor, ‘Theology’ is a ‘guild discipline,’ ‘a credentialed profession in the ‘Christian West’ that typically reflects on doctrines of a religious tradition and fosters an ethos of transcendence.’[4]   Taylor defines ‘Theology’ as a strict discipline in terms of its dogmatic rigidity and doctrinal fixity.   The ‘theological,’ on the other hand, is a “spectral haunting Theology, which is already unsettling it, perhaps dissolving it, disseminating it anew among other languages and other disciplinary discourses—on the way to revealing something much more significant than Theology’s doctrinally structured ethos of transcendence.”[5]

    Taylor proposes ‘theological,’ in contrast to ‘Theology,’ as a dimension of agonistic political thought and practice.    Unlike the dominant ethos of Theology, which is transcendental and dogmatic, Taylor’s theological finds its fullest expression in the ‘prodigious force of artful signs deployed in spectral practice, and it is born of the struggle of those bearing, resisting, and finding life under “the weight of the world,” particularly that weight as shifted, or concentrated, in structures of imposed social suffering.’[6]   Taylor argues that the projection of a transcendent outside as a sustaining precondition, ‘Theology’ always shows its “imperio-colonial sense.”[7]  He locates his political theorization of the theological in the political philosophies of immanent transcendence such as that of Spivak, Zizek, Badiou, Ranciere and Nancy. 

    Catherine Keller, the prominent postcolonial theologian, in a similar way of thought, defines contemporary theological engagement as theopolic since it is aesthetical and eschatological rather than doctrinal and dogmatic. According to Keller, theology in the contemporary context would uphold a “rhizomatic radicality” which is founded on a “polydoxic” philosophical/ theoretical inheritance. Keller contends that “such rhizomatic radicality is not about uprooting our traditions but about exposing them to our confounding togetherness—as species, peoples, genders, sexualities, races, religions, even—Lord help us—our Christianities.”[8]   The Christianity, not only theology, is invited here to validate the multiplicity of its being, becoming, and belonging in this planet earth.   For John D. Caputo, theological is an act of theopolitic as it re-examines our theological presuppositions.[9]   For Caputo, theopolitic is nothing but thinking theology differently, which means to think about God otherwise, to reimagine God as a de-ontological de-Other.   In short, the theopolitical tradition de-dogmatize and de-doctrinize theology and evokes us to look at the artistic imaginations of the tortured people as they envision theology on the weight of the world.

3. Contemporary Methodological Significations 

   The contemporary epistemological context demands certain methodological focuses that are so significant not only for theological researches but also for all the social researches.                              

3.1 Postcoloniality

Testimony 1

The African human expereince constantly appears in the discourse of our times as an experience that can only be understood through a ‘negative interpretation.’  Africa is never seen as possesing things and attributes properly part of “human nature.” Or, when it is, its things and attributes are generally of lesser value, little importance, and poor qulity. It is this elementariness and primitiveness that makes Africa the world par excellence of all that is incomplete, mutilated, and unfinished, its history reduced to a series of setbacks of nature in its quest for humankind.[10]                           

In his ground breaking work On the Postcolony, Achille Mbembe, the African theoretician, problematizes the power involved in the construction of the African subjectivity. He argues that the colonial interpretation of Africa has always been negative. He writes: “Africa is never seen as possessing things and attributes properly part of human nature.”[11] Mbembe brings out the crucial inadequacy of the Western methodological imaginary to accept the idea of a common human nature, a humanity shared with others. In this crucial epistemological juncture, Mbembe demands a methodological shift in social researches—the postcolonial turn—in order to de-other the other and to de-self the self.  Mbembe contends that the flesh and blood of the ‘African other’ is not just a ‘thing’ as it was conceived by the Western colonial thinking; rather it is ‘something’ that interrogates both the Western colonial imagination and its politics of death (necropolitics).  Here, Mbembe interrogates the settled conviction about the epistemological normativity of the researcher. Researcher has to de-self him/her self and de-other the other. This process of ‘de-essentialization’ (Roland Faber) is termed by Mbembe as postcoloniality. Postcoloniality, for Mbembe, is not just a counter space of cultural re-imagination of de-othering of the colonized other; rather it is something political on the flesh and blood of the tortured other that envision a common human ontology. Here, the research methodology meets epistemology and ontology and research becomes a process of becoming and belonging in the planet earth.   

3.2 Planetarity

Testimony 2

Kallel Pokudan, a dalit activist, explains how he has become an eco-political activist. Kallel Pokkudan says it was his search for a de-casteist identity that led to him to a planetary agency. He had three specific options before him to reject his caste identity: one is to embrace communism and to become a Pulaya-communist. Later he came to the understanding that communist party can never understand the life of a dalit.  Second option was to embrace Christianity and to become a Pulaya-Christian. Accepting the fact that a Pulayan can never be an integral part of the church in Kerala, he rejected that possibility. The third option was to become an activist for his Pulaya-community. But he realized that at that time Pulaya community was not capable enough to accommodate a self reflexive-communist activist. He writes: “For a long time I didn’t do anything. Then I slowly started to preserve the kandal [mangrove plants] nearby my house. It is how I become kandal Pokkudan.”[12]

(Kandal pokkudan is not just a name; rather it is his life, politics, and becoming/ belonging himself—of course a political ontology of planetarity).

Planetarity is a methodological contention offered by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. With planetarity, Spivak envisions a de-othered space that invokes us to see ourselves through the eyes of the others. It is an invitation to live in an enigmatic relationship with the other, God and the earth.   It is not one of romantic imagination but one that reflects the ethical practice of human beings as planetary subjects.   Planetarity informs us about the interconnectivity between humanity and non-humanity. It is to re-imagine our identity and agency as a multiple site of the process of our becoming and belonging. While constructing a materialist political ontology, Jane Bennett contends that “human agency is always an assemblage of microbes, animals, plants, metals, chemicals, word-sounds, and the like—indeed, that is an agentic assemblage.” Planetary reminds us our intersubjectivity, biohistorical agency, and political ontology of becoming. Planetarity takes us beyond the binary thinking and the idolatry of identity.  Theological research is not just a scientific program to prove something for the academia; rather to become something. It is to affirm our common belonging in this planet earth and to reassure our biohistorical agency.   Becoming planetary agents is to deny the binary thinking and fixity of identity. Here, identity becomes fluid, relational and eschatological which can never be the same—the original.

3.3 Polydoxy

Testimony 3

Christian tradition does not refer to a singular lineage, nor do Christians speak with one voice even when they attend to the same line of scripture. In this sense, the Christian tradition is always polydox; it is irreducible to any one voice or lineage that may claim exhaustively to represent Christian faith, thought, and practice. This characteristic complexity is wrought of interweaving cultures and stories, of shifting agonisms and political pressures, of myriad communal practices, artistic media, and philosophical schools. Thus multiplicity becomes a source of richness and revelatory possibility for supple theologies that remain open to the ongoing participation of divinity in the world.[13]                                                                                                                            

Polydoxy is a methodological position offered by Catherine Keller and Laurel C. Schneider to address the reductive or overarching tendencies of Christian Theology and to suggest the multiple forms of right belief (orthodoxy) in the contemporary multi-religious context. It is intended to locate Christian Theology in the post-Christendom era in its inherent multiplicity and relationality over against its epistemological enclosure.  According to Keller and Schneider, Christian theology has to retain its polydoxical inheritances in order to re-imagine it in the post-Western era. Methodologically speaking, polydoxy offers a radical methodology of doing theology of religion in the contemporary post-religion/ post-secular context. It helps Christian Theology to go beyond the imagined dichotomies of theism and atheism; monotheism and polytheism; sacred and secular; spirituality and materiality, and religion and politics. Polydoxy demands Christian Theology to nullify its ‘transcendental ethos’—the legitimizing point outside that renders Christianity as the epitome of religion and to re-locate itself in a theological framework of the crucified God/ religiosity.   

Conclusion

Christian Theology has to be liberated from the idolatry of methodology. Doing theology is to participate in the process of transforming the world. It is to participate in the act of theopoiesis which is organic, spontaneous and creative within. Methodology of theology, thus, is epistemological and ontological in the process of becoming an act of love and life in this planet earth. Here, the act of doing theology becomes embodied, enmattered and immanent.  The contemporary theological methodology envisages a polydoxical ground through which it overcomes the binaries of secular/ sacred, religion/ politics, theism/ atheism, spirit and matter, God and the world. The methodological contentions offered by the postcolonial life-worlds invoke Christian Theology to be a planetary theology as it overcomes the binary thinking and the idolatry of identity. Planetarity helps Christian theology to de-other the other and to deconstruct the textuality of the con-text. The contemporary methodological contentions demand Indian Christian Theology to take a new turn, a radical turn, of course, a postcolonial turn where nothing is absolute, fixed, and the original; but everything is fluid, relational, polydoxical and eschatological.

     

Article published in SATHRI JOURNAL Vol.XI No.1 April 2017

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[1] Lecture given at the methodological seminar organized by South Asia Theological Research Institute (SATHRI) at United Theological College, Bangalore on 3^rd June 2016.

[2] Raimon Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being: The Gifford Lectures (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbs Books, 2009), 200.

[3] Roland Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal, “The Manifold of Theopoetics” Introduction, Theopoetic Folds: Philosophizing Multifariousness (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 3.

[4] Mark Lewis Taylor, The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), xi.

[5] Ibid.

[6]Ibid., xii.

[7]Ibid., 49.

[8] John D. Caputo and Catherine Keller, Crosscurrents, Winter 2007, 105-11 at 108.

[9]Ibid., 106.

[10] Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2001), 1.

[11] Ibid, 2.

[12] Pokkudan, Kandalkadukalkidayil Ente Jeevitham (My Life among Kandal plants)(Kottayam: DC Books, 2002),65.

[13] Catherine Keller and Laurel C. Schneider, Introduction in Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation, Catherine Keller and Laurel C. Schneider, eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 2.  

Making the Multitude for Binding the Empire                                                          Mark: 3: 27
(Sermon preached at the Dharma Jyoti Chapel on 24th January, 2017)

When democracy becomes aristocracy and the trumpet for the reign of the Empire, what do the common people sing? When the judiciary and the legislature become the proponents of the Imperial nationalism that distinguishes patriots and terrorists, where do the citizens go for their rights and self-respect? When the media sings the music of neo-capitalism and its liturgy of market, whom do the Aam Admi trust to safe guard their commonwealth like natural resources, art, sport, and culture? According to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, in the emerging situation of the global Empire, the common man has only one way out, that is, to make themselves multitude.

Multitude is a not just a crowd. It is the political subject with radical social consciousness that has the power to shape its destiny and change the world. Multitude is not a cadre political organization. It is not based on a specific political ideology. Multitude is a multiplicity which happens spontaneously in the fields, streets, campuses, and sea shores. It appears and disappears. It is a process of resistance and celebration. It dismantles the distinction between public and private; ideology and art; politics and aesthetics. The postcolonial theologians like Jeorg Rieger and Kwok Pui-lan affirm that “the multitude in many parts of the world has risen up again and again to call attention to exploitation by transnational corporations, unequal trade agreements, unfair labor conditions, destruction of the livelihood of small farmers and poor people, governments that work for the highest bidder, a lack of democratic decision-making, and suppression of political dissent.”[i] Multitude appeared as the Muthanga Land struggle of Adivasis and Dalits in Kerala few years before, the Wall-Street Occupy movement in US, Pembila Orumai (unity of women) women struggle in the Munnar tea plantations in Kerala, Una struggle of Dalits and subalterns in Gujarat last year, University students’ protests in various university campuses against the state sponsored terrorism in India and at last in the form of the Jelikattu stir in Tamil Nadu. The people’s organization against the ban on Jelikattu became the common platform for the students, women, farmers, the fisher people and the others who raise various concerns of economy, culture, and politics; but the rallying point is the demand to respect the Tamil sub-nationality which has denied in the emerging context of uniform civil code and cultural code by Sangha Parivar forces. Multitude as we see in the Marina Jelikattu stir is a radical political resistance of the ‘governed’—the citizens of this country as it encounters the Empire in all its walks of life.

Biblically speaking, the multitude is the movement from demos to laos or ochlos. Demos refers the assembly of the privileged citizens in Greco-Roman world, out of which the word democracy comes. In the imperial period, democracy was aristocracy—the assembly of the privileged. The laos or ochlos means the common people, the scattered, the under privileged within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Becoming multitude is to become a radical political subject that denies the biopolitics of the logic of Roman imperialism. The gospel according to Mark particularly shows a rhetorical solidarity to the multitude who try to redefine themselves in the Roman imperial context. Markan Jesus is an ardent ideologue of the multitude. In Mk 6: 34 we read: And Jesus came forth and saw a great multitude, and he had compassion on them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd; and began to teach them many things.     Jesus sat with the multitude, for the most part outside the established institutions, in fields, on mountains and by the sea shores. Multitude is not just a crowd; rather a political process of resistances. As the Wall Street protesters said: “it is not a protest. This is a process.” Multitude is the process of exorcising the Empire from human bodies, political bodies and social imaginations and envisages a new democratic habitation—the messianic kingdom.

1.  Discipleship as Making the Multitude

In Mark 3:1-35, Jesus is portrayed as the messiah of the multitude. The messianic consciousness of Jesus is emerged in the collective imagination of the multitude. It is expressed as the healing of the diseased, the exorcism of the affected and resurrection of the dead. It is re-imagined as the coming of the kingdom over against the imperial establishment of death. The appointment of the disciples legitimizes Jesus’ goal of being with him in the process of exorcising the Empire from the all the fields of human life. The success of the Empire is set in the process of enslaving human bodies and social imaginations. In the contemporary context, this is done by the judiciary, legislature, the executive and the media—the four pillars of our democracy and the global market—the fifth pillar in the present neo-liberal context. The social life of the common man becomes abandoned and rejected and their anxieties are rallying against the Empire in various layers of civil life.

For Jesus, invitation to discipleship is nothing but the invitation to enter into the process of resisting the Empire and celebrating life of freedom and justice. It is to live in a counter imagination of civility. Discipleship is a process of becoming multitude by fostering the anti-imperialist imaginations in minds and bodies. Discipleship, for Jesus, is to become a wider political subjectivity. This has been clearly explained by Jesus when he responded to the question ‘who is my mother and brothers.’ For Jesus, it is those who ‘do the will of God’ will be called his mother and brothers (31-35). Church as the crucified body of Jesus Christ who in-operated the biopolitics of the Roman imperialism on the cross and thereby envisaged a ‘radical assembly of multitude to come’—the coming community demands an introspection from the part of the church today to be/become an anti-imperial community of the messiah.

2.  Discipleship as Binding the Empire

In Vs 22-35, Jesus is alleged by the High priests and Pharisees that he is possessed with Beelzebub—the ruler of the demons. Jesus told them that an Empire cannot be destabilized by another Empire. Because, Empire itself is a de-stabilized system. It is a system of lawlessness within. It is a violent system of torture and torment. It is an unethical system that violates the rights of the weak. When democracy becomes the liturgy of the Empire, how can it be an establishment of hope. Here Jesus tells us that we need to bind the strongman. Only through binding the Empire, there will be new ways of reformulating the polity (Oikos-God’s house). De-imperializing social body is the task of the multitude that envisages a radical democracy of multiplicity and alterity. The discipleship that makes itself multitude envisages a paradigm shift from democracy to multitude which cannot be enslaved by the biopolitics of the Empire. Discipleship is envisaged here as the process of binding the strong man—the Empire.   

The allegiance to the neo-capitalist economy, the war mongering military agendas, the anti-Dalit/ women/minority/student fascist propaganda and the Hindu-colonial reiteration of nationalist sentiments over against the people of this country adorn Narendra Damodar Dass Modi as the contemporary face of Empire in India today. The common people, the multitude are forced to rush to the streets to safe guard their rights and civil liberties. Universities, streets, the sea shores, and the temples become the platforms of blossoming multitude. Jelikattu, as a festival of farmers reverberates an agrarian social imagination (which of course need to be modified and re-constituted as a participatory cultural act in the contemporary context) where people find their meaning in social existence. For Modi and his Sangha Parvars, all cultures are to be unified and nationalized which excludes all the diversified sub-nationalities like Tamil-Dravida nationality—a revolutionary nationality in the history of the Indian subcontinent.   

In the era of Modi, the ministry of the Christian communities is to invite people to make themselves multitude to de-imperialize themselves and their life-worlds. As Arundhati Roy tells us “our strategy should be not only to confront empire but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories.” [ii] As Eduardo Galeano once said;”the Empire cannot take away my music.”   Let us enter into the process of discipleship the poiesis of making ourselves multitude in our local living spaces whether it is class rooms or sea shores; public spaces or private spaces; temples or factories and thereby become true disciples of our messiah—the crucified Christ.  

Y.T. Vinayaraj                                 

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[i] Joerg Rieger and Kwok Pui-lan, Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude (New York and UK: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2012), 32.

[ii] Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person’s guide to empire (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006), 86.

A Political Theology of the Crucified God: M. M. Thomas and the Contemporary Political Thought

(published in "The Life, Legacy and Theology of M.M. Thomas," Jesudas Athyal, George Zachariah and Monica Melanchthon, eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp 195-203) 

Pre-script:

It is an honor and privilege for me to be part of this M.M. Thomas’ centenary volume. M.M. Thomas as a theologian and ecumenist offered new trends in Indian Christian theology and Indian social thought. Commemorating his life and witness in the contemporary context demands a re-reading of his theological/ social thought which would be an appropriate tribute to M.M. Thomas. As a student of theology and a pastor in the Mar Thoma church, I admire M. M. Thomas as a veteran Bible teacher who used to interact with us children and as a social reformer who inspired us to stand in solidarity with the poor and the marginalized in India. In my student days, as an active member of the Student Christian Movement of India (SCMI), I had the privilege to be in touch with M. M. Thomas whose life and thoughts influenced me in deep and motivated me to consider church ministry as my vocation. Along with the new generation theologians in India I salute to the ever green memory of M.M. Thomas whom Indian Christian church and theological academia can never forget.        

Introduction

David Tracy, in his book On Naming the Present: God, Hermeneutics, and Church, refers to three factors that constitute the contemporary: modernity, anti-modernity, and postmodernity.[1]  For modernists, according to Tracy, the Western enlightenment notions of politics and theology are foundational for all other knowledges.  For anti-modernists, the present is the time to retreat to a past which is not at all contaminated by the modernity. Postmodernists attends to the ‘gaps’ unfilled by the project of modernity and problematizes the marginal spaces created by Eurocentrism and totalitarianism.  Alluding to the postcolonial theories Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak would add one more dimension to the category—contemporary: postcoloniality.[2] Postcoloniality, on the other hand, exposes the totalitarian tendencies of the modern Western thought and pays attention to the recuperation of the colonized bodies, cultures, and spaces. Nevertheless, the present—the contemporary—is complex, ambiguous, and fragmented and demands theology to have effective methodologies to attend the ‘multifariousness of contemporary life.’

Theologizing the politicality of life is the fundamental task of political theology. However, has theology ever been apolitical? Or has politics ever been atheological?  The distinction between theology and politics is a matter of debate today. Are they distinct, interchangeable, alternative, parallel, polar, complimentary or supplementary? Political thinkers have already exposed the integral connection between political thinking and the history of the West and hence with the Christendom. As we all know, the omnipotent—sovereign God is a pre-condition for the Hobbesian political theory of modern state, democracy, and politics which is foundational for the modern Western political theology. On the other hand, the contemporary postmodern/ postcolonial theological imaginations interrogate Christian Theology’s “imperio-colonial sense” and demand the deconstruction of Christianity and its logic of sovereign God.[3]  They signify the theology of the crucified God by which they try to nullify the claim for the legitimacy of the sovereign state and problematize the state of exception—the marginal space—which is legally substantiated within.  Here, the inadequacy of the modern political theologies to interrogate the logic of Empire is exposed and the imperative of the reconstitution of a radical political theology is affirmed.    

M. M. Thomas was one of the post-independent Indian Christian theologians who found significance in the theology of the crucified God to expose the failure of the Absolutist political power of the state in India. Thomas’ theology, in the process of formulating radical political theology in India offered a political logic of forgiveness founded on his theology of the crucified God.  It was an exhortation to the secular state to imagine its post-secular identity and to the religions to think about a secular Koinonia. However, the inadequacy to address the postcolonial aspects of post-independent Indian politics and their implications on contemporary theology necessitate a re-reading or critical engagement with his theological imaginations. This paper tries to re-read Thomas’ understanding of state, democracy, and politics by highlighting his theology of the crucified God in dialogue with the postmodern political thinkers—Gianni Vattimo and Giorgio Agamben.  The list of postmodern/ postcolonial thinkers who make use of the Biblical resources to formulate their political theories is very vast. The selection of Vattimo and Agamben is based on their close affinity with the Christian theological heritage and their critique of the dogmatic Christian faith from within.  Despite the epistemological divergences between the postmodern/ postcolonial political thinkers and M. M. Thomas, it is interested to see some of the converging points in the theology of cross especially in terms of their consensus to formulate a materialist foundation for Christian theology.    

   

Defining Political Theology

The concept of ‘political theology’ connotes, As Jan Assmann suggests, the ‘ever changing relationships between political community and religious order, in short, between power [or authority: Herrschaft] and salvation [Heil].’[4] Political theology addresses the questions such as, the relationship between theology and politics; the relationship between church and state; the role of religion in public life; and to what extend religious belief should shape our political discourses. Historically, the term political theology dates to Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC) who speaks of the stoic tripartition of theology, in which a political theology is juxtaposed with mythical and cosmological theologies.  In the City of God, Augustine contrasts the City of God with an earthly city and refuses to sacralize the Roman Empire. In the mediaeval period this dialectics continued and this was evident in the conflict between papacy and secular rules. Martin Luther in the reformation period signifies two kingdoms.   It was the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) marked the collapse of Christendom and gave secular authorities the power to determine matters of religion in their own state. When it comes to the enlightenment period, religion was relegated to a private space which is totally opposite to the political realm.

Postmodernity as it demands the return of the religion envisions a post-secular and post-religion context.  Post-religion signifies Christianity after Christendom and God after the death of God. In this new context, Christianity is provoked to be deconstructed in order to listen to the other religions, ideologies, and cultures.   God in this context is a weak God as we seen in the life of Jesus Christ on the cross.   Cross as it poses itself as the political space of crucifixion and resurrection, becomes a sign and symbol of the contemporary political theology. Unlike the atonement theories in antiquity by which the cross has been interpreted as the site of divine sacrifice and love towards the human kind who had gone astray from the divine, and the Hobbesian political theologies that are founded on the notions of sovereignty and transcendence, the contemporary political thought finds the location of crucifixion as the death of all unitary, hegemonic, absolutist metaphysics and ontology.  Following the Spinozian theologico-politico epistemological tradition and denying the ‘hyper transcendentalist’ western tradition, the contemporary political thinkers offer a radical political ontology and a materialist theology of the “common”—the Multitude.                      

Crucified God: Taking Stock of Contemporary Political Thought

i.                   Weak Ontology: Gianni Vattimo

Gianni Vattimo is a prominent social democratic politician and a distinguished Italian philosopher. Postmodernism, according to Vattimo, is an epoch of transformation of ontology (the notion of being).   Modernity developed the notion—“forgetting of being.” For modernity, the constitution of being is an innocent activity—nothing official about it—because it is the European, white, male being which is at the center of all discourses of politics, philosophy, and theology.  Postmodernity dismantles this certainty of modern ontology and metaphysics and opens up a new sphere of multiple interpretations of being. Following the Nietzsche’s “death of God theology” and Heideggerian “ontology of Dasein,” Vattimo offers a political theory of ‘weak ontology’ which means that the meaning of being is embodied in manifold interpretations.[5] Vattimo finds the theological foundation of this ‘weak ontology’ in the theology of cross where the sovereignty of God is denied and the violence of the modern metaphysics is rejected. 

According to Vattimo, “the weak ontology” or “the ontology of the weakening of (the western) Being” supplies philosophical reasons for preferring a liberal, tolerant, and democratic society rather than an authoritarian and totalitarian one. It stands for the emancipatory politics as it attends to the cry of the victims in this world. It signifies a post-metaphysical epoch where the identities are understood in terms of our relationality, mutuality and multiplicity. The (Western) logic of development at the coast of the non-Western communities and cultures are to be revoked on the basis of this ‘weak ontology’ and metaphysics. The capitalist logic of economy has to be revoked in order to understand the struggles of the marginalized people in the colonized worlds. On the whole, ‘the weak ontology’ signifies a post-Western/ colonial philosophy, science, economics, culture, and politics.

Alluding to Rene Girard, Vattimo argues that natural religions are founded upon the need to create victims to keep order in society.   There is a metaphysics that connects sacred with violence.   A sacrificial scapegoat is killed to prevent the society’s destruction. Bible reveals this victim based mechanism.  For Vattimo, Jesus was not sacrificing himself for his father; rather he was trying to expose this victim-based mechanism.  Cross, by exposing the violence connected to the sacred, becomes an act of emancipation.[6]   Jesus on the cross abolishes the nexus between violence and the sacred. Cross exemplifies the divine act of kenosis.   Kenosis is the message of the weakening of God.  Imitating God is listening to the message of weakening as principle.  It is this message enables us to weaken the sovereign political structures that create victims.  For Vattimo, faith in Christ is nothing but a faith in the weakening of strong structures (metaphysical, political, and religious) that restricted multiple interpretation of ontology.  Weakening or nihilism, for Vattimo, is not a negative/ pessimistic location; rather it is the ‘sole opportunity’ for emancipation from the violence of metaphysics. Vattimo, by rejecting the metaphysical foundation of the act of politics argues for a political ontology of actuality that finds meaning in all local argumentative political practice.[7]         

ii.                 Ontology of inoperativity: Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben is the professor of philosophy and Aesthetics at the University of Verona in Italy.  Agamben’s political thought begins with his distinction between political life (bios) and bare life (zoe) or non-political life.  For Agamben as citizens of the state, we become juridical subjects.   We all are born to a political system and thereby we are denied of our bare life—life we have simply as human beings.  Thus the stateless—the slaves, the unborn, the refugees, the inhabitants of the camps are non-humans.  Here Agamben reveals his thesis that the marginality of those people are legally legitimized and sanctioned within.   The notion of the sovereign state legitimizes this ‘state of exception’—the state of ‘excluded in’ and ‘included out.’ [8]

Re-reading the Pauline theology of cross, Agamben argues that crucifixion is the point of revocation of our subjectivity.   Christian vocation is a call (kletos) to revoke all our vocations.  All other vocations like slave/ master; woman/ man; Jew/ gentle etc. are constituted juridically. Call to be part of ekklesia is to crucify the juridical subjectivity and to reconstitute new subjectivity in Jesus Christ.   The vocation’s revocation involves death—crucifixion.  The resurrection is the revocation of the vocation on behalf of the church—‘the coming community’ and thereby becomes the Christian political agent.  Agamben argues that the revoked and crucified vocation of the Christian political agent should be evident in their ‘quietist political action.’  The Pauline usage of the Greek word katargeo which means deactivation or de-energizes or emptying out connected to the concept of crucifixion explains the quietest political action of the Christian agent.   It is nothing but the act of inoperativity of the juridical subjectivity and to become part of a collective subjectivity—‘the coming community.’ To be a new creation in Christ is not exactly or simply to take a new identity; it is to empty one’s already-in-place identity of juridical significance without thereby removing it.[9] Christian political agent, a citizen with vocation revoked, is a member of the remnant who acts in the Kairos of the messianic now. In Agamben’s view the Christian agent is supposed to crucify her political interest and thereby do politics without law through quietism, skepticism, hope and lament.

The Messianic call is to deactivate the juridical subjectivity and thus become bare life-the life which is not bounded by the law.   It is nothing but the sphere of the church—the body of the crucified Christ.   Those who live in the ekklesia are in a sphere of weakness which alone makes possible the use of their emptied but still present vocations.  The church, in this sense, is community without the law; it is what Agamben likes to call the coming community, the community that occupies the time that remains, the community which is outside of the law.  It is the location of bare life—the crucified body of the victims of the world. Ecclesiology in Agamben’s political thought is a political ontology which embodies a cruciform ontology. Agamben’s political theory based on cross does not make us inactive; rather asks us to be ontologically different and actively participated in the contemporary political programme of reconfiguring the social positions and subjectivities.   

Crucified God: Political Theology of M. M. Thomas

M.M. Thomas’ political thought is founded in the interstice between ideology and faith.  Prophetic faith, according to Thomas is “the spiritual opening of our hearts to the cries of the victims in response to the passion of God.  Political theology translates it in terms of understanding the situation of the victims and formulating the ends and means to be pursued to effect a transformation of the situation.   In that way faith needs ideology in the struggle for justice.”[10] Though his teleological anthropology and its dialectical materialist relationship positions him in the Hegelian/ Marxist epistemological framework, Thomas overcomes its inherent limitation by opening the Hegelian closed ontology with the Christian faith that keeps the internal potentiality of human bodies and social bodies vibrantly.  The hermeneutability of human subjectivity is well explained by his theology of humanization.  Church as the body of the crucified God, for Thomas, is the embodiment of this potentiality and vibrancy as it reconstitutes its ontology in solidarity with the victims of this world.        

Responding to the declaration of emergency in 1975, Dr. Thomas interrogated the totalitarianism and the authoritarianism of the sovereign state in India.  Thomas wrote: “The price we pay for the peace of a police raj is that it will put large sections of the people, just beginning to awaken to their rights in the emerging society, back to sleep….Without some revolts and conflicts resulting from people’s efforts to throw of their slavery and exploitative structures, poverty will remain with us forever. It is these revolts which have now been halted.”[11]  For Thomas, state is a protector human rights and it legitimizes peoples’ desire for emancipation. His distinction between “conquering kingship” and “suffering servant hood” is very much helpful to understand his theology of state.

Thomas’ theology of state is founded on his theology of cross. According to Thomas, the cross is the self-manifestation of the self-forgetting and self-sacrificing God. This crucified God in Jesus was giving new direction to the Davidic kingdom which is established on sovereign power. Crucified one is the negation of the totalitarian exercise of power over humans. The state is to serve the people, not to rule over the people. Thomas cites St. Mathew to clarify his theology of state: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but however would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man come not to be served but to serve; and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt. 20: 25-28). Thomas comments that the throne of David has been replaced by the kingdom community through the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.[12]

Thomas argues that on the cross, Jesus Christ disarmed the rulers and the authorities of the world. The empire is defeated and nullified. Cross signifies the end of the totalitarian power and the beginning of a new community—kingdom community—a universal community where there is no dichotomies. In the new community, “there is no longer any distinction between gentles and Jews, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarians, savages, slaves, and free” (Col.3:11). The new human community is constituted as a single body—the body of the crucified God in history. The crucified body of God is not a new thing; rather it is the body of the slain lamb from the creation of the world and it continues to be slain till the end of the world fighting against the totalitarian forces of powers. The mark of crucifixion continues to be the sign of the suffering struggle of God against the principalities and powers till the end of the world.  It is a radical reconstitution of the political subjectivity through which the imperialist biopolitics is crucified and initiated a new ontology of solidarity and multiplicity.  According to Thomas, the mission of the church today is to embody this mark of crucifixion and thereby reconstitute its own ontology by baptizing it in the cries of the political victims in India today.

According to Thomas, church is entrusted with a prophetic diakonia to discharge its duty based on the servant hood exemplified by the crucified God. Thomas writes: “The church in India is called to proclaim the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ as the source of redemption of all spiritualties underlying religion as well as ideologies, and to demonstrate the Koinonia in Christ around the Eucharist as the nucleus of a movement of the larger Koinonia in Christ uniting peoples of diverse religions, ideologies and cultures—as well as the cosmos with its bio-diversity.”[13]   Based on his theology of cross, M. M. Thomas explains the features of the mission of the church in India: (1) the calling of the church is to resist the idolatry of power and wealth and other gods of death in India’s collective life, (2) to be in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed in their struggle for justice, and (3)the mission of the church to give up communal self-interest and self-identity for the sake of creating in India a secular national community in the midst of India’s religious and ideological pluralism through manifesting a fellowship in Christ, transcending class, caste, ethnic and religious communal divisions.[14]  

However, what is lacking in the political theology of M.M. Thomas is that he was not attentive to the metamorphosis happening to the sovereign state as it was becoming the Empire.   In the context of Empire democracy assumes the global stature and the national citizens become trans-national subjects which demand new analytical tools to assess the metamorphosis happening to post-globalized state and democracy.   Empire assumes new cultural-religious-economic logics and manifestations that legitimize a multifaceted sovereign political power which has no single point of performance. The biopolitics of the Empire assumes multiple origins and micro-formations.  Here political becomes cultural and social and their ramifications in the micro-spaces of common living are even extended to the human bodies.    According to Antonio Negri politics is not the reaction-response of people against the state, rather; human life itself is political.   Alluding to the Spinozian tradition, Negri makes us to think about a human body and social body which is prior to the biopolitical impact of the state on human life. In the Spinozian tradition, life has its own inherent potentiality to challenge the hegemonic practices and that politics of ‘bare-life’ is to be upheld for a radical political engagement. Negri calls it the politics of multitude.[15] The political theory of multitude signifies a social living of ‘common’ which is capable enough to take on the global form of Empire in its multiplicity and universality.                                       

Conclusion

Denying the notion of the Sovereign God—the unitary foundation of our politics, philosophy, and theology, the contemporary political theology signifies the theology of multitude.  The political theology of multitude signifies the God of multiplicity, alterity and fluidity based on the theology of the crucified God.   Ontology is given the possibility to have multiple interpretations. According to the theology of multitude, life is embedded with divine potentiality and it is always endowed with bio-power to transform itself.    The crucified body of Christ does not demand a transcendental God who comes from beyond to offer his gracious act of salvation, rather; it is in the agonies of the tortured bodies we find a tortured God. Here, God is not a transcendent omnipotent reality, rather; it is the inherent potentiality of life to deny the biopolitics of Empire even in its micro-spaces of both human and social body.   Contemporary political theology, differentiating itself from the medieval atonement theories and even from the modern political theologies locates itself in a social logic of salvation embodied in the cruciform existence of the countless victims in the world. Hence, it becomes a theology of embodiment and materialism.   Political theology in India today signifies the theology of multitude, of course even going beyond the theology of M.M. Thomas in order to find meaning in the micro-politics of human life which is not at all obliged to have a teleological point of convergence like class struggle or any other unilateral struggle against the state; rather promotes an ontology of actuality and multiplicity to find life in “common” in the context of Empire.     

Y. T. Vinayaraj    

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[1] David Tracy, On Naming the Present: God, Hermeneutics, and Church (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1994), 3.

[2] Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).

[3] Jean-Luc Nancy, Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity, trans. Bettina Bergo, Gabreil Malenfant, and Michael B. Smith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).

[4] Jan Assmann, Authority and Salvation: Political Theology in Ancient Egypt, Israel, and Egypt (Munich: Carl Hanser, 2000), 15 cited by Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan, eds., Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-secular World (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006), 32.

[5] Gianni Vattimo, Nihilism & Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, and Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 91-92.

[6] Gianni Vattimo, Nihilism & Emancipation, 109.

[7]Gianni Vattimo, Nihilism & Emancipation, 88.

[8] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 11  

[9] Paul J. Griffiths, “The Cross as the Fulcrum of Politics: Expropriating Agamben on Paul,” in Paul and the Philosophers, ed. Ward Blanton & Hent de Vries (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013),179-197.  

[10] M. M. Thomas, Faith and Ideology in the Struggle for Justice, p. 30, cited by Bastiaan Wielenga, “Faith, Ideology & Politics: A Contextual Interpretation of the Social Philosophy of Dr. M.M. Thomas,” in Koottayamayilekulla Valarch (Mal.) ed. M. J. Joseph (Tiruvalla: CSS, 1996), 113.

[11] M. M. Thomas, Responses to Tyranny (Tiruvalla: CSS, 2000), 17.

[12] M.M. Thomas, The Throne of David (Tiruvalla: CSS, 2006), 41.

[13] M.M. Thomas, A Diaconal Approach to Indian Ecclesiology (Rome & Tiruvalla: CIIS & CSS, 1995), 82.

[14] M.M. Thomas, “The Church in India—Witness to the Meaning of the Cross Today,” in Future of the Church in India, ed., Aruna Gnanadason (Nagpur: NCCI, 1990), 11.

[15] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004).