Anatheism

Discussion

KEARNEY’S HERMENEUTIC ANATHEISM

John O'Neill:

"Richard Kearney asks the question whether it is possible to return to God after leaving God . Anatheism allows for both the possibility of returning to God after God and also its impossibility, depending on what we mean by God His narrative hermeneutic stance is nourished by the modern theories of phenomenology and existentialism and by post-modern ideas of poststructuralism and deconstruction, very much in dialogue with Derrida, Levinas and Paul Ricoeur, as well as art, literature and religion (Kearney, XV). His book is a philosophical story about the existential stories of our primary encounters with the Other, the Stranger, the Guest – encounters which call for recurring wagers and responses (Kearney, .XVII) He aims to show how the anatheistic response to the stranger may be witnessed in primary experience, poetic re-experience and a doubly renewed experience of ethical and spiritual praxis. Kearney proposes the possibility of a third way beyond the extremes of dogmatic theism and militant atheism. He calls this third option , a wager of faith beyond faith , Anatheism, God after God. It is a word for another way of seeking and sounding the things we call sacred but can never fully fathom or prove, of receiving back what we’ve given up as if we were encountering it for the first time. It is a “ way of returning to a God beyond or beneath the God we thought we had possessed” (Kearney, 3). Kearney asks what happens in the decisive instant when the sacred stranger appears: do we respond with hostility or hospitality, fear or trust, or both. He gives three examples from the Abrahamic religions of someone replying to an uninvited visitor - Abraham’s encounter with desert strangers, interpreted in Trinitarian terms in Rublev’s icon, Mary at the Annunciation, Muhammad in his cave. He also has openings to some Eastern religious traditions eg with analogies to Buddhist notions of emptiness. These raise the question as to how do religions respond to this coming of alterity in the midst of the human, by war or peace, caring for the orphan, the widow and the stranger or by attacking one’s enemies. He returns to the anatheistic wager between these two opposed responses to the stranger. He delineates five main movements in this anatheistic wager: imagination, humour, commitment, discernment, and hospitality. He discusses its implications for interreligious dialogue and for a new hermeneutics of the “ powerless power’ of God (Kearney, 4).He questions whether, when we speak of God, we are speaking of Master or Servant, Sovereign or Stranger, Emperor or Guest. He explores here the possibility of faith without religion, especially after the horrors of World War 11, including the death camps of the Holocaust, with a number of 20th century writers such as the philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Kearney writes that Ricoeur accepted the critiques of religion, the” hermeneutics of suspicion” of the likes of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. He saw these as announcing the death of the God of ontotheology, of a Supreme Being abstracted from life, a deity of accusation and condemnation. However, Kearney saw that this negation on its own, ‘ may fail to return to a reaffirmation of life, to a recognition that most things in our secular universe are already sacred”. (Kearney, 74) Here, Kearney brings in the option of Anatheism as an option for the possibility of belief after atheism. For Ricoeur, “ the philosopher as responsible thinker remains suspended between the secular and the sacred”. (Kearney, 74).

“This critical hermeneutic could open up a space for the recovery of a liberated faith within the resources of the great religious traditions ”.(Kearney, 74).

Kearney discusses Ricoeur’s reading of the Eucharist as Christ’s gesture of kenotic emptying, to give life to others in service and sacrament. (Kearney, 77). Kearney discusses how in Ricoeur’s final testament, he speaks of a “capable God”, of enabling service , willing to efface his own being to give more being, more capacity to his beloved creatures. God then becomes a God beyond religion, aGod who no longer is but who may be again in the form of renewed life, making us capable of sacred life. He continues, with a sacramental experience of the everyday in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Julia Kristeva, which can lead to a new appreciation of incarnate existence , as “sacred word made flesh.” ( Kearney, 4)

Kearney speaks approvingly of Panikkar’s concept of “sacred secularity”, that “allows us to re-interpret the secular in such a way that faith becomes a commitment not to some transcendental other world but a deep temporality in which the divine dwells as a seed of possibility calling to be made more incarnate in the human and natural world,” ( Kearney, 141-2), Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism.

For Kearney the secular calls for ‘a radical reorienting of our attention away from the old God of death and fear towards the God of life, at the heart of our incarnate temporal existence”, a “re-configuring of the secular- sacred “ (Kearney, 142) with both interconnected but not the same. He develops a hermeneutics of political action covering recent controversies on the role of theism and atheism, in regard to war and peace,, democracy and violence, compassion and intolerance . He brings out the radical difference between a God who brings life and one who brings death. Kearney sees that the anatheistic moment of not-knowing is available to anyone, believers or unbelievers, in experiences of deeper disorientation and doubt when we are no longer sure exactly who we are and where we are going. It is felt by any human being who is deeply bewildered by what existence means. It is experienced in our moods, senses and emotions before they are theoretically interrogated by our minds and cognitions. He focuses mainly on the Abrahamic , western historical and philosophical traditions although with an opening to some Eastern religious traditions eg with analogies to Buddhist notions of emptiness. Anatheism is about repetition and return, although forwards rather than backwards. It marks a re-opening of that space where we are free to choose between faith and non-faith, about the option of retrieved belief. It operates before and after the division between theism and atheism and makes both possible. It is a new name for something very old, which has constantly recurred throughout human history, culture and of each life. It is found in moments of creative “unknowing” and suspension of old habits of thoughts and assumptions which allows for the new and the strange to break in. He traces this through the history of western philosophy, scriptural traditions and literature, when moments of non-knowing, disorientation and suspension of old habits of thoughts and assumptions allow for reorientation and openness to think and understand differently and to seek and recognise truth anew, over and over again.

He mentions the apophatic breakthroughs and mystical experiences such as “ the dark night of the soul” of John of the cross. Such anatheistic experiences allow for a return to a second kind of faith, a faith beyond faith in a God beyond God. He sees both the Western philosophical and scriptural traditions as being both guests and hosts to each other, of extending hospitality to each other in fertile and imaginative ways, as the familiar and the foreign encounter each other. Kearney also speaks of anatheistic moments in Western art and literature , including drama and poetry. The moment of poetic faith does not necessarily entail a “second faith” in some divine Other , although it may serve as a prelude to such faith. An aesthetic openness to the gracious and the strange may remind us that religious hermeneutics needs art such as human images, , names, stories, and symbols. It reminds us that religions are imaginary works even if they witness to the transcendent and true. Anatheism differs from atheism in that it resists absolutist positions against the divine, as well as absolutist positions for the divine. It refuses all absolute talk about the absolute, negative or positive, as the absolute can never be understood absolutely by any single person or religion. It also acknowledges the emancipatory force of critical atheism as an integral part of theism, understood as a second faith beyond faith (Kearney,16).He calls anatheism a wager, in that after letting go of the God we thought we knew, there is no guarantee that God will come back or the God who returns may surprise us. Anatheism for Kearney tries to introduce hermeneutic considerations into the theist-atheist debate. It admits the horrors committed in the name of religion, the atheistic critique. It then offers an opportunity to reinterpret religion, with its gifts of faith, hope and love, looking at Jewish, Muslim. Christian, Buddhist and Hindu retrievals(Kearney, 171).

Kearney quotes the hermeneutic maxim that “ the shortest route from self to self is through the other”. He goes on, “ the discovery of the wisdom of the stranger presupposes that the self knows itself as different from the stranger. Thus, certain messages in one’s own faith may find confirmation in the teaching of another tradition and ma need that exposure. “ ( Kearney,178)

Kearney’s Anatheism appreciates not just the religions but also the atheism of others. He sees the importance of recognising what differentiates us, the otherness of each other, which brings a surplus of meaning which exceeds our previous beliefs. This embraces complexity, diversity and ambiguity, seeking the universal through singular others. This translates others into ourselves and ourselves into others .(Kearney, 179). He sees an answer to religious conflict through going to the silent, unspoken roots of each religion. He quotes Ricoeur as saying that in the depths “ we touch on something unsaid, ,a mystical ground of what is fundamental in each

religion and what is not easily translatable into language but rather borders on a

common profound silence.” (Kearney, 179). Franke would recognise this as anapophatic insight. Kearney goes further , to see resources for peace between religions in going down to the source of each religion., which it does not initiate, control or master, beyond, within and beneath oneself (Kearney, 178 ) Kearney sees the antidote to religious violence in attending to the “ deep ground” of each religion, which implies a conversion of heart. It involves self-critique and an openness to strange Gods, and to a surplus that allows the stranger to be always, at least partly, strange to us. He claims that anatheistic religion can bring a deep mystical appreciation of something Other than our own finite human being: some other we can welcome as a stranger if we can overcome our fears and traumas. This brings to the reconciliation process the extra element of the surprise of the stranger ,the gracious surplus of faith, hope and love. Kearney concludes his book by advocating an attitude of hospitality between different faiths and non-faiths, as important for world peace. His anatheism is open to the Stranger and the Gods of other traditions at the risk of losing our own God. This wager of anatheism carries the risk that in surrendering our own God to a stranger one , no God or one that surprises us may come back (Kearney, 181).In his epilogue, Kearney answers the question as to why the stranger needs to be a divine other. He responds that seeing something more in the stranger than the human acknowledges a dimension of transcendence in the immanent other that exceeds the finite presence of the person. It is important that this divine stranger enhances one’s humanity, bringing a fuller, more just, loving and creative way ofbeing.182.He shows how this plays out in the lives of social end ethical reformers such as Jean Vanier, Mohandas Gandhi and Dorothy Day.

He sees that atheists can gain from anatheism” possibilities of retrieving a rich grammar, vocabulary and imaginary of hospitality”(Kearney,186 ), from religious traditions. He sees anatheism as a matter of f hope, love and wonder, leading to ethical acts of “ transfiguring our world by caring for the stranger as the world becomes sacred” (Kearney,185)."

(https://www.academia.edu/27518275/TOWARDS_A_FULLER_COSMOTHEANDRIC_VISION)