In the pluralism of religious and cultural worlds: notes toward a theological and political program.

Might the authority of those who suffer bring diverse religious and cultural worlds together?

The new political theology is the attempt to talk about the times, more precisely, to discuss the prevailing historical, social, and cultural situation so that the memory of God found in the biblical traditions might have a future. Therefore, one consistently finds in this theology the general markings ("signatures") of its starting point in the so-called "discussions of the times." One speaks, for example, of "the time of a crisis of God," of "the age of cultural amnesia," and, in the light of these, of "the time of a fundamental pluralism" - all attempts to formulate theologically relevant labels for "the spiritual situation of the times" (Karl Jaspers).

I

We live in a time of fundamental pluralism- of cultures, of religions, of worldviews. Every attempt to question this pluralism is suspect. Universalism is regarded as latent imperialism and universal obligation as a deceptive intellectual and moral trap. The perception and safeguarding of difference and otherness is demanded and sought after- grounded in the ("postmodern") sensitivity to the dangers lurking in universal concepts and their denigration of plurality and difference.

This crisis of traditional universal approaches in no way signals an end to questions about the relationship of "universalism and pluralism." In my view the most important question might be formulated in this way: Given the undeniable diversity of cultural and religious worlds, is there still a universally binding and thus plausible criterion for understanding? Or is everything now at the whim of the "postmodern" market? The era of "postmodern" fragmentation contains an ethical aporia: we live in a time in which the ethical problems of our scientific, technological, and economic civilization increasingly lie beyond the reach of the individual. Such problems can only be dealt with, if at all, under the rubric of politics and political ethics. Never before in the history of humankind has there been so broad and long-term a moral challenge. As never before, ethical concern is about the courage of "an ethics for the future" (Hans Jonas). At the same time, in our era of so-called globalization, any ethical universalism in behavior or action is suspected of being an anti-pluralistic moral totalitarianism.

Is there still such a thing as a moral universe that can be ethically described? How are the universalism of human rights and the notion of the inalienable and intrinsic cultural differences of humankind tied to one another? Must these two repeatedly relativize each other in a non-relational, which is to say "non-committal," diversity which leads again and again to new conflicts and eruptions of violence? Is there any criterion which can help us determine where the legitimate plurality of inculturated ethical approaches finds its limits? One can see the total inconsistency of the situation in Samuel Huntington's bestseller The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.(1)

Huntington warns of universalizing, as he puts it, "Western values." But at the same time he also argues for something like a universal moral standard which, in the case of systematic abuse, might even require intervention. What is that about? What are the criteria and characteristics of such a universality?

We live, one might say, in a world of undeniable plurality. Tolerance, dialogue, and discourse are demanded. Certainly. But is this the entire answer? Are there not limits to tolerance and criteria for dialogue? And are there not also situations in which the formal, purely procedural rationality of discourse fails? Pluralism is not simply the answer, but first of all the question and the problem. To solve this problem doesn't mean to dissolve pluralism. The point is to develop a way of dealing with it that is open and reasonable to all, avoiding cultural relativism without simply relativizing and trivializing the cultures themselves.

What, however, would these "commonalties," these common goods, as they were once called, be? Today this commonality is largely denied and the few people who dare discuss universals in our radically pluralistic world are limited to a purely formal, purely procedural, supposedly context-free, universalism. Is there then no enculturated ethic that can be universalized without violence, an ethic which doesn't destroy but protects the pluralism of our cultural life-worlds? Are there no guidelines for living and acting that spring from an historical tradition and could be regarded as universal or universalizable? Is this possible without being imperial or totalitarian, without ignoring the new sensitivity for plurality and indifference, for the otherness of the other, for their dignity and their claim?

The traditions and contexts of our religious and cultural worlds should be questioned and tested. I can only discuss this very briefly here. Today many people- especially in our western cultural circles - favor a religion without God. Doesn't this appear to be a much "softer" and more tolerant religious paradigm for our age of radical pluralism? Isn't such a religion more compatible with pluralism and more appropriate than remembering the biblical God who, after all, has come down to us as the God of history and law? Nevertheless, my suggestion for reconciliation between a definite universality and an authentic plurality focuses on these very traditions. It concerns our memory of the God of the biblical traditions, a God whose memory comes to expression in the memory of human suffering. Further, it concerns our memory of the Christ of Christians as expressed in the historical memory of suffering, the memoria passionis. The cultic memory of the resurrection (the memoria resurrectionis) has been tied to our historical experience, preventing its being celebrated only as a myth far removed from history and responsibility. At first the suggestion to ground moral universalism in religious contexts sounds rather cryptic and tedious, especially if one wants to justify this suggestion not primarily religiously and politically, but - in the style of the new political theology - strictly theologically. What does this entail?

II

The biblical traditions know a particular type of universal responsibility. Certainly it must be carefully noted that the universalism of this responsibility is not primarily directed toward the universalism of sin and failure, but rather toward the universalism of suffering in the world. Jesus didn't look first to the sin of others but to the suffering of others. To him sin was above all a refusal to participate in the suffering of others, a refusal to see beyond one's own history of suffering. Sin was, as Augustine put it, turning the heart inward, surrendering to the furtive narcissism of the creature. And so Christianity began as a community of memory and narrative in imitation of Jesus, a community of those who looked first to the suffering of others.

This sensitivity to another's suffering, this taking into consideration the suffering of others, including that of enemies, in one's actions is the center of that "new way of life" tied to Jesus. It is, in my opinion, the most persuasive expression of that love which Jesus presumed and expected of us when- in accordance with his Jewish heritage- he called for the unity of love of God and love of neighbor.

The parables of Jesus have captured the human memory in a special way. Foremost among these parables is that of the "Good Samaritan" with which Jesus answers the question, "Who is my neighbor?" In our context, this is the question: For whom am I responsible? For whom am I to care? One thing becomes clear from this parable, told in images of an archaic provincial community: it is not up to us to define clearly and delimit in advance the range of this responsibility, the breadth of this caring. The "neighbor" and thus partner in our caring is never only the one whom we ourselves regard and accept as such. The range of this caring, the breadth of this responsibility is, in principle, unlimited. The criterion for its degree and scope is and remains the suffering of the other, as we see in Jesus' story about a man who falls in with robbers and whom the Priest and Levite pass by "out of a higher interest." People who use "God" the way Jesus does accept the violation of their own personal preconceived certainties by the misfortune of others. To speak of this God means to speak of the suffering of the stranger and to lament responsibility neglected and solidarity denied.

The appeal to a sensitivity to suffering in the biblical message, just as in the memoria passionis connected with it, is in no way marked by resignation or evasion. This appeal has nothing to do with a religiously motivated narcissism. After all, this memoria passionis is a memory of suffering which always takes into account the suffering of others, of strangers, and - according to the Bible - even the suffering of enemies. And this is not to be forgotten in our assessment of our personal history of suffering. This remembering the suffering of the other lies at the forefront of the political, social, and cultural conflicts of today's world. In the face of the widening gap between the rich and the poor and of the promising exchange between cultural and religious worlds, voicing the suffering of others is the absolute prerequisite for any future politics of peace, for any new forms of social solidarity.

In the former Yugoslavia the memory of suffering became a shroud for a whole nation and a stranglehold on any attempt at interethnic rapprochement. Here a particular people have remembered only their own suffering, and so this purely self-regarding memoria passionis became not an organ of understanding and peace, but a source of hostility, hatred, and violence. The present situation between Israel and the Palestinians is, one still hopes, different. There remains for me the unforgettable moment in which the Israeli Rabin and the Palestinian Arafat shake hands and assure one another that in the future they want to look not only at their own suffering, but also to remember the suffering of others, the suffering of their former enemies, and that they want to take this into consideration in their own actions. This really is the politics of peace from the biblical memoria passionis! I know that agreement on this basis is extremely fragile, that it demanded and will demand great sacrifice. Doesn't this model a shared responsibility not driven by any totalitarianism of rights?

Doesn't such a vision of peace ex memoria passionis, from remembering others' suffering, also hold for other bloody conflicts today, for example, the civil wars based on cultural and religious conflicts in Lebanon and Ireland? And besides, only if there grows among us a political culture inspired by remembering others' suffering, will there also be a chance that Europe will be a blooming multicultural landscape and not a burning multicultural landscape, a landscape of peace and not a landscape of imploding violence - that is to say, not a landscape of escalating civil wars.

III

In the current discussion about a "global ethic" (Hans Kung) there is talk about a moral universalism which should emerge on the basis of a so-called minimal or basic consensus - "as the necessary minimum of common human values, criteria and basic attitudes."(2) But from a strictly theological and not just from a religious and political perspective, moral universalism is not a product of consensus. It is rooted in the acknowledgment of an authority which can now also be called upon in all great religions and cultures: the acknowledgment of the authority of those who suffer. Their authority refutes what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says about conscience, namely, that it demands "obedience without proof that the command should be obeyed; conscience can neither convince nor coerce. . . . By the standards which support the modern world, conscience is weak."(3) Bauman's claim, however, does not apply to the authority of those who suffer. Their authority can no longer be shaped by hermeneutic or made safe by discussion. On the contrary, when obedience to discourse and communication has primacy over the authority of those who suffer, then the basis of all morality is lost.

In our technological and scientific world civilization, every ethics that doesn't want finally to become just an "ethics of accommodation," an ethics of acceptance or justification, falls under this obedience. Such an ethics of accommodation no longer defines the goals and limits of human action but rather seeks to reconcile human action with everchanging "practical circumstances." For example, where in such an ethic is there any objection to the looming form of biotechnology within which "the human being" is seen as a residue, a bit of nature in an unfinished experiment?

One shouldn't see this obedience as a welcome tool for the Church in her own demands for obedience. The Church itself stands not above this obedience, but under it. This obedience cannot therefore be glossed over by the Church. Actually, it can become a basis for a profound critique of Church action itself. Hasn't the Church's proclamation of God almost forgotten that the biblical word of God is spelled out in the memory of others' suffering, that remembering the God of dogma must not be divorced from remembering the cries of a suffering humanity? Doesn't the crisis of God, which stands in the background of today's often-mentioned crisis of the Church, spring from an ecclesial praxis in which God was and is preached with our backs to the history of human suffering? Does the proclamation of God by the Church seem perhaps prone to fundamentalism because in it the authority of God is separated from the authority of the those who suffer - even though Jesus himself has, in his well-known Parable of the Last Judgment (Matt. 25:31-46), put the entire history of humanity under the authority of those who suffer?

For me, therefore, this authority alone manifests the authority of the judging God in the world for all humanity. The moral conscience is formed by obedience to this authority, and what we call the voice of conscience is our reaction when the suffering of the other strikes home. We certainly need to be more precise about all this, more exact in defining those who suffer as innocent, as suffering unjustly. I have discussed this question often in one way or another, and have pointed out that the struggle for justice can generate a universal horizon only by its "negative mediation," only by resisting unjust suffering.

Isn't it resistance to unjust suffering, largely inspired by respect for the authority of those who suffer, which brings humankind together from quite diverse religious and cultural worlds? They do not really follow a theory or ideology of justice, but rather their convictions, convictions rooted in that obedience mentioned before to which, according to Paul (Rom. 2:14), all people, even pagans, are subject because of their human dignity. Here I see the opportunity and task for an ecumenism of religions that takes the form of an indirect ecumenism of religions - in accord with the thinking of the new political theology. This ecumenism is not a coming together and comparing of religions, but the praxis of a common response, a common resistance to the sources of unjust suffering in the world: racism, xenophobia, and nationalistic or purely ethnic religiosity with its civil war ambitions. But it is also a resistance to the cold alternative of a global community in which increasingly the "human being" vanishes amid self-serving systems of economics, technology, and their culture and communications industries; of a global community in which world politics increasingly loses its primacy to a world economics whose laws of the market were long ago abstracted from "human beings" themselves. "The world may be moving inexorably toward one of those tragic moments that will lead future historians to ask, why was nothing done in time? Were the economic and policy elites unaware of the profound disruption that economic and technological change were causing working men and women? What prevented them from taking the steps necessary to prevent a global social crisis?"

Who would call such sentences careless alarmism?(4) Where would one find those powers who could reclaim and defend in time the humane foundations of politics against the accelerating, pervasive, and autonomous laws of economics and technology? Is a new political subculture of civil society - now free to engage in a risky individualism - sufficient? Or is a global politics through such renowned institutional subgroups as Amnesty International, Terre des hommes, or Greenpeace sufficient? Aren't we dealing here with a situation in which worldwide, religiously based institutions should be more political than

"normal" society? Isn't this the hour in which the world's religions, in the form of that indirect ecumenism outlined above, should intervene in politics, not in order to speak out for a dreamy liberal politics or even less for a fundamentalist religious politics, but rather to support a conscientious world politics in this hour of great danger? They will of course succeed only if they do not look to their own institutional interest in survival but to a fundamental interest in the suffering of others.

IV

Certainly this biblical religion of sensitivity to suffering speaks not primarily of a morality, but of a hope; its talk of God is not grounded in an ethics, but in an eschatology. It is true of both the world of religion and the world of morality that neither can tolerate the indifferent voyeur. One is not introduced to the world of religion by religious studies nor to the world of morality by ethics. Before one can develop a self-conscious relationship to them, one has to practice, one has to become, so to speak, biographically engaged. Morality and religion which deserve their names are grounded in communities of memory. And this goes also for those positions which place themselves in opposition to religion in the name of morality.

The fundamental connection of religion and morality with community and tradition does not dispense with the question of how and according to which criteria particular communities of memory should act toward one another in our one world, how they might avoid falling into an isolating relativism or a relativism checked only by force. This question, now being addressed to all so-called "communitarian" approaches, I have tried to answer throughout my recent book(5) where I put forth the notion of a memoria passionis which is at the same time both universalizable and particular: the memory of others' suffering. I develop this basic theological-political category in resistance to the cultural amnesia of our time.

Religion is essentially resistance to this cultural amnesia. This is especially so for Christianity. The Church as an institution is above all a collection of recollections, a long-term memory, an "elephant's memory" in which much, all too much, is stored: liberation and oppression, light and darkness. Theology does not stand apathetically outside or above this memory. It shows its critical competence when it questions the official, canonical memory of the Church. Theology asks whether and to what extent this memory has become in practice the memory of others' suffering; whether and to what extent the Church's memory of God and the dogmatic picture of Christ haven't long ago distanced themselves from the memory of human suffering, from the everyday memoria passionis.

Theology also puts this critical question to other monotheistic religions: Do they perhaps often seem so fundamentalist only because their memory of God long ago moved away from the memory of others' suffering? The new political theology insists that the dialogue of religions and cultures so rightly demanded today stand under the criterion of a memoria passionis, of a memory of others' suffering. The criterion for truth in this dialogue is bringing the suffering of others to expression. The "weak" memory of others' suffering and the narratives it forms can prove their power for inter-religious and inter-cultural communication by bringing to expression the diverse histories of suffering in the world, as for example in the encounter of biblical religion with the ethics of compassion found in Asian religions.

How these two classical mysticisms of suffering deal with the suffering of others will be crucial. If I may use metaphorical abbreviation, in biblical religion it is primarily a matter of relating to the other, of a mysticism of suffering with the eyes open; in Buddhism it is primarily a matter of relating to the sell of a mysticism of suffering with the eyes closed. These two will be able to learn from each other only if they do not lose sight of their differing roots.

Of course the new political theology also turns its basic criterion to "profane" models and theories of social and cultural life. It critically inquires whether our post-traditional communities of discourse - having renounced the a priori of a (cultural) memory of suffering - really go beyond the anonymous power of the market, of exchange and competition; whether these communities still know about the responsibility of one for the other prior to any relationship of exchange or competition. This new political theology tries critically to break the spell of cultural amnesia, of the mindless presence of those virtual worlds created by our culture and communications technology. And it does this not for the sake of theology, but for the sake of humanity itself.

V

Finally, after all these abstract reflections I need to share one more persistent and troubling question. Does anyone at all want to hear about a Christianity with a heightened sensitivity to the suffering of others? Shouldn't religion shelter us from the pain of negativity? If anything, doesn't religion promote the triumph of the "positive?" Why else would it be called "good" news? And finally: Is not this sensitivity to suffering especially difficult for young people to accept? Can it even be made acceptable to them? I can only answer these and similar questions with a counter question: Whom should one see as able to attend to the suffering of others, as capable of this attitude of empathy and excess? From whom should one expect the strange notion of caring for others without getting something in return? Is there anyone at all to whom one might offer this "alternative way of life?" To whom shall we offer this, I ask, if not to these same young people? Have we totally and completely forgotten that Christianity first began as a youth revolt within the Jewish world?

Notes

1. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). Although the question mark has now disappeared, the thesis was originally formulated in his "Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs 72 (1993): 22-49. For a recent critique of this "new global politics," see William Pfaff, "Huntington's Irrtum" in Lettre International (Summer 1997): 12-14.

2. Hans Kung, A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 92; German edition 1997.

3. Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995), 249.

4. In fact this comes from Ethan Kapstein, Director of the Washington Council of Foreign Relations, as cited in Hans-Peter Martin and Harold Schumann, The Global Trap: Globalization and the Assault on Democracy and Prosperity (London and New York: Zed Books, 1997), 240.

5. Zum Begriff der neuen Politischen Theologie 1967-1997 (Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald-Verlag, 1997), from which this article is drawn. This book represents a selection of the most important articles in the development of political theology. Many of the topics mentioned in this article are treated in more detail in the other chapters.

JOHANN BAPTIST METZ is Professor Emeritus on the Catholic Theological faculty of the University of Munster and University Professor at the Institute for Philosophy at the University of Vienna. He is a founding editor of Concilium and the author of many books and articles. This essay was first published as "Ira Pluralismus der Religions- und Kulturwelten. Anmerkungen zu einem theologisch-politischen Weltprogramm," in his Zum Begriff der neuen Politischen Theologie 1967-1997, Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald-Verlag, 1997, pp. 197-206.

JOHN K. DOWNEY is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash. HEIKO WIGGERS is a graduate student in the Department of Germanics, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash. Love's Strategy: The Political Theology of Johann Baptist Metz, edited with an introduction by John K. Downey, is available from Trinity Press International.