I
Whenever Christians speak about “salvation”, God comes into play. At least, that is what the ecclesiastical tradition maintains. In the quasi‐magisterial Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche(3rd Edition, ed. Walter Kasper) we read:
“Salvation in its Christian meaning is the ultimate fulfilment of being human through the taking‐in of the person into God's life, whereby the creature receives a participation in the everlasting divine fullness of life”.Footnote 2
Described in a more exact theological way: the question about human salvation is intimately related to the doctrine of God's creation. In his early days – in his lectures at the house of studies of the Dominicans in Louvain (1947–57)– and repeatedly thereafter, Edward Schillebeeckx called attention to the connection between creation and salvation, between the Creator‐God and the Deus salutaris.Footnote 3 In his book, Mensen als verhaal van God, published in 1989, he writes:
“Creation is an act of God, which, on the one hand, sets us absolutely in our finite, non‐divine, human peculiarity, destined for true humanity, and, on the other hand, within that, at the same time expresses itself in selfless love as our God: our salvation and bliss – the most noble content of true and good humanity. God creates humankind of his free will for salvation and for bliss, but, in the same action, he himself wants to be the deepest meaning, the greatest salvation and bliss of human life, just as sovereignly free”.Footnote 4
From what has been said I conclude: the world and history, into which and in which God accomplishes salvation, are the basis and the place where we find all the reality of salvation. Salvation is accomplished in the middle of the historically composed world – or it is denied. Having said this, it is no longer possible to monopolise the coming salvation for particular places of salvation: neither for the religions nor for the churches! In this context, Edward Schillebeeckx stated: “There is no salvation outside the world of humankind”Footnote 5–“Extra mundum nulla salus”Footnote 6. To this mundus, in which the salus is realised or betrayed, the political and cultural greatness of Europa undoubtedly also belongs.
In the sense referred to, religions and churches are only sacraments of divine salvation in this world. They are not, therefore, themselves salvation, but merely mediating signs of this salvation, which God is accomplishing in his created world through people in a quite specific socio‐historical context. Religions and churches belong to the sphere of “signs”, as far as their statements (which are always statements “of the second order”!) are out to raise the subject of salvation; in other words: to designate. “Churches are the places where salvation‐from‐God is made the theme and turned into words, expressly confessed, prophetically preached and liturgically celebrated.”Footnote 7
II
The multifarious experiences of the opposite of salvation –disaster– which permeate human history – which have their final consequence in the extreme disaster of Nazi death camps – radically call into question the theological thesis of the salvation of God in the middle of this world.
One of the main disasters today – even in Europe (!)– is poverty, both outside and inside the borders of the European Union. As a consequence of the geopolitical system changes in 1989 and afterwards, and promoted by the process of globalisation, at the present time between 61 and 65 million people in Europe (including the European parts of the former Soviet Union) are living in relative or absolute poverty. Particularly affected by this are children, the unemployed, immigrants, the mentally ill and old people. In all these categories, females are proportionately overrepresented.Footnote 8 As far as this is concerned, Europe must be understood as a “revelation of disaster”.
Like Edward Schillebeeckx, I interpret the disaster which so many (too many!) people in Europe are experiencing in the form of their being (or being made) poor theologically as a negative contrast experience.Footnote 9 Experiences of suffering, oppression, not being free and, here also, of poverty are basic human experiences; they bring people to protest about this world as it is. “This refusal of people to come to terms with such a situation creates an illuminating perspective. It unveils an openness towards another situation”Footnote 10. This protest is based on the feeling of outrage. Out of this, prophetic protest and resistance grows up against the causes of the disaster and, therefore, provides a basis for acting in solidarity. “In that way, a negative contrast experience becomes effective against that which should not be [disaster], on the basis of hope for that which should be [salvation].”Footnote 11
The figure of the negative contrast experience comes close to what Johann Baptist Metz calls negative universalism; this opposite of universalism of power is based on the generality of suffering as a malum commune. And what Schillebeeckx called the moment of outrage recurs in Metz's writings as the English‐language term of compassion.Footnote 12(Hereinafter I shall use the Latin form compassio.)
Both categories –outrage as well as compassio– belong first of all to the field of affection. They are an expression of sympathy towards another, which arises from the universal human memory of suffering. Because of this, outrage/compassio precede any ethics. In his book Ethik der Erinnerung, the Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit describes a triangular relationship: “One side of the triangle links memory with sympathy, the second sympathy with ethics; only after that can you localise the relationship between memory and ethics.”Footnote 13 So sympathy comes first.
The Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino asserts something similar: “In the face of a suffering world, the first answer is sympathy [in the original: compassion; Ulrich Engel], which urges us to remedy this suffering. Like all other human and Christian actions, theology also participates in this first answer, but in its own unique way. That is why theology becomes an intellectus amoris, a perception through love, which takes on historical forms when it is confronted with a suffering people (love as justice). (…) Put into contemporary terms, sympathy becomes liberation. I reaffirm, therefore, that there is something ultimate, pre‐theological and even pre‐religious in such sympathy, just as this is to be seen in the suffering of the world today.”Footnote 14
III
It remains to be asked how we can reconcile sympathy, which is based on the level of feeling, (outrage, compassio) with the universal claim of the message of the Gospel?
Let us note the following: globalisation is constitutionally suited to pluralism. The multifarious experiences of salvation and disaster of people in Europe belong here as well, in a particular way. In the face of this situation, the question must be raised (according to Metz)“how theology, with its ‘face turned towards the world’(…) deals offensively with this pluralism, without thereby dodging the question of truth and the question of authority, and without abandoning the conviction that Christianity also, and especially in terms of this constitutional pluralism, has something to say to all people.”Footnote 15
There is a danger that such sympathy will be exhausted by affective self‐pity and thereby instrumentalise the suffering of the sufferers in a perfidious way. To prevent this, we need the category of justice. Thomas Aquinas already recognised that sympathy only becomes a virtue when it converges with justice.Footnote 16 Formulated more exactly (and going further than Thomas): sympathy and justice are to be found on two different levels of responsibility, which, however, require each other.
Compassio– to be found on the affective level– underlines the asymmetrical responsibility principle. “It relates to an individual person, against whom only the I who is spoken to has a duty. The distinguishing marks of this [asymmetrically constructed] responsibility are unpredictability, infinity, rebelliousness, strangeness and a heteronomous state. That is how a moral sense is able to arise in the first place.”Footnote 17
Justice– at home on the cognitive level– underlines the symmetrical responsibility principle. It names – I cite here the Münster theologian Jürgen Manemann –“the rights and duties (…) which I have towards all other people. The other person encounters [me] here in the role of the generalised other and shares the same duty, which one seeks over and over again to affirm in a procedural way. The distinguishing marks of this [symmetrically constructed] responsibility are the ability to balance out, action in accordance with the statutes, and predictability”Footnote 18; we could speak, along with Jacques Derrida, of a “system of regular, registered, codified regulations”.Footnote 19
A form of justice which arises out of compassio has its beginnings in an asymmetry. That is valid in so far as sympathy recognises “the asymmetry between those who are suffering and those who are not suffering”Footnote 20. The consequence of this is an inequality with reference to the distribution of duties and rights. Compassio perceives subjects behind the global structures of disaster. These appear in our vision as others, indeed as concrete others.
Justice, on the other hand, is based on the universal equality of all moral subjects. Accordingly, justice perceives “the other person by way of the normative equality that is so understood, and, therefore, as ‘a generalised other person’”.Footnote 21 Let me summarise that in the words of the ethics teacher Hille Haker, who works in Tübingen:
“Sympathy is (…) a function, a specific dimension of justice itself, it is, so we could say, the ‘other person of justice’ who appears in justice itself.”Footnote 22
IV
It is in this sense that I read the gospel pericope of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10,30b–35):
‘A man was once on his way down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of bandits; they stripped him, beat him and then made off, leaving him half dead. Now a priest happened to be travelling down the same road, but when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite who came to the place saw him, and passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan traveller who came on him was moved with compassion when he saw him. He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. He then lifted him onto his own mount and took him to an inn and looked after him. Next day, he took out two denarii and handed them to the innkeeper and said, “Look after him, and on my way back I will make good any extra expense you have.”’Footnote 23
The dialogue between the lawyer and Jesus, which frames this pericope, ends, as we well know, as follows (Luke 10,36–37):
‘Which of these three, do you think, proved himself a neighbour to the man who fell into the bandits’ hands?’ He replied, ‘The one who showed pity towards him.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go, and do the same yourself.’
We are doubly challenged, as Christians, to the necessary reflection on the gift of salvation‐from‐God in this world (orthodoxy) on the one hand and to the committed action of the just in a world full of outrageous disaster (orthopraxy) on the other hand. The theologies, which we are pursuing in Europe (moulded by different cultural and political contexts and sometimes even linked with opposed ecclesiastical traditions), must be present, in the words of Pierre Claverie, the bishop and Dominican who was murdered in Algeria: “at the points of fracture which crucify the body and the unity of humanity. Jesus is dead, torn two ways between heaven and earth, his arms stretched out to gather together God's children who have been scattered through sin, which divides and isolates, incenses the one against the other, even against God. He [Jesus] has taken up residence in these dividing lines which have arisen through sin”.Footnote 24
That is the right place for Dominican preaching and theology. Only there can our theology become an intellectus amoris, a perception of truth out of love, which is justice. If we want to bring Gaudium et spes to the world, salvation, then we must be present in these places of luctus et angor, of disaster.Footnote 25 There, where, in Europe and elsewhere, people are living in sorrow and pain, are our genuine loci theologici!
