This is the second in a three part series in which the author explores how the transmission of the Christian tradition has lost its self-evidence in Europe. His thesis is that the theological category of ‘interruption’ developed by the German theologian Johann Baptist Metz is at the heart of Christian faith. Lieven Boeve is professor of fundamental and dogmatic theology and head of department in the Faculty of Theology at the Catholic University at Leuven. In addition he is co-ordinator of the research group, Theology in a Post-modern Context (http://www.theo.kuleuven.ac.be/ogtpc/).

2. Diversity, identity and the interruption of the encounter with the other
All the great ideologies, which for several years seemed to shape the social debate, today appear to share the same fate as the Christian narrative and equally have problems in transmitting that for which they stand. In a so-called post-modern frame of thought one refers to this as the end of the ‘grand narratives’.

These ‘grand narratives’ stand for the attempts on the part of the human being – since the Enlightenment – to bring nature and society under its complete control and shape it according to its wishes. According to Jean-François Lyotard we can differentiate two sorts of narratives. On the one hand there are the grand narratives of knowledge which seek through reason and technology to understand, rule and adapt the world to human needs. On the other we have the grand narratives of emancipation that are especially intent on the reform of society – examples of this are liberalism, socialism, communism, etc.1 Ideas basic to both are always: (1) an enormous confidence in human potentiality (especially human reason), coupled with a huge awareness of responsibility, and (2) a belief that reality – nature and society – is malleable, thus with human intervention it can be made to fit human needs.

The belief in progress resulting from all this nonetheless received a severe blow in the last century, especially the decades towards the end. The grand narratives not only could not carry out their promises, they very often lapsed into their antitheses. As a result, they had to contend with an irreversible loss of confidence. The most telling examples of this are Marxism’s failed social project and the disastrous ecological consequences of the unrestrained will to rule the world through science and technology. In both cases the urge to control conjured up, as it were, the uncontrollable. The absolute, all-embracing, self-satisfied hunger for power that uttered itself in the grand narratives has proven to be both counter-productive and the cause of many victims. The credibility of their pretensions and promises is shattered. This is the paradox of our post-modern time: precisely in a context exploding with knowledge and capability its boundaries have become all but too evident.

Post-modern thinkers have pointed out that the grand narratives did not pay attention to these boundaries, to the uncontrollable that escapes all attempts at controlling it. Said differently and more technically, they point out to us – and this is the key to postmodern critical consciousness – that the ‘other’ always and again forms the boundary to the ‘one’. Furthermore, only the ‘one’ that reckons with the ‘other’ at its boundary, who knows how to relate to it one way or another, who allows itself to be challenged by it – only that one can escape the pitfall of the grand narratives. After all, these narratives proved themselves especially to be ‘closed’ narratives, without openness or sensitivity for the other.

All grand narratives developed strategies so as not to reckon with the other either by including it on the one hand (reducing it to ‘more of the same’) or excluding it on the other. For Marxism as grand narrative the other was included as proletarian and thus revolutionary, or immediately excluded as bourgeois and thus counter-revolutionary. The ‘other’, the ‘others’ have become victims of the dictatorship of the proletariat, with the ‘gulag archipelago’ of Stalinism as its outgrowth. Another example is the positivism that science has made an absolute norm of: the ‘other’ is then only legitimate if it obeys scientific laws or – to the extent that – it can become the object of scientific research. In all other cases it is by definition irrational, untrustworthy, nonsense, out of date, superstition.

Post-modernly we have thus learnt that we are no masters of reality, or of our society, not even of our own identity. Our narratives are time and again confronted with an other-than-ourselves. They are in fact nothing more than specific attempts at dealing with life, co-existence and reality and can never be absolutised into becoming the narrative. They are historically grown, contextually embedded, the fruit too of many coincidences. It is because of this that we have today become more sensitive towards the diversity of narratives. I already referred in my first paragraph to the increased awareness of the diversity of fundamental life options, and the confrontation that this carries with it for the identity of Christians – but equally for every other identity.

I now wish to put forward my reflection. It is precisely in diversity itself that today the other, other to oneself and thus its boundary, is to be seen. Because there are also other forms of parenting and education for instance, one’s own choices – one’s narrative, the way in which one makes sense of one’s choices and life – are both placed into perspective and questioned: one’s own narrative could also in principle have been different – and there is no one to pass an ultimate judgment on this. This awareness of diversity and otherness is at the same time also linked to a sharpened appreciation for that which is specific to oneself ­– in other words: the particularity of one’s own narrative. We are what we are precisely because of this specificity that distinguishes us from other narratives. Put this way, the recognition of diversity and the insurmountable character thereof does not necessarily lead to relativism. We are all players on the field of fundamental life options; no single position can elevate itself beyond this jostling with diversity as if it were not immediately already involved in it. We can, after all, never make an abstraction from our own position, in that, it always remains different to that of the other’s, because it remains our own. We cannot at the same time take in the other positions (a mix of positions would mean it is a new position). Relativism is merely one option among others and not an overarching perspective.

What then are the consequences for the identity of Christians? To summarise, the flip side of the loss in credibility of the ‘grand narratives’ is a renewed and heightened sensitivity for diversity and otherness. Our culture has apparently learned that according a basic respect for whoever holds a diverging opinion need not be in conflict with one’s own views. This is, for example, the reason why Roman Catholics would no longer call Protestants and adherents of other religions simply heretics or heathens. This sensitivity has not been easily achieved in our society – the agitation surrounding asylum seekers and the rise of the extreme right demonstrates as much. Yet, all the same, what is different no longer immediately provokes a purely defensive reaction, but can now also challenge, even fascinate.

This sensitivity for diversity and otherness has also the inverse effect that Christians are conscious more strongly than before of their own position as Christians. They not only see now more clearly that other religions and fundamental life options can also contain worthy and authentic ways of living; they have, moreover, learned that their way of life is but one among many others. They are equal players on the field of many religions and fundamental life options with their own narratives, customs, traditions and communities. Following after Jesus Christ is their specific way of giving meaning to and organising their life. They also know that had they been born elsewhere, they may very well have belonged to another religion.

This does not mean that religions are simply exchangeable with one another, as though it no longer matters if one is a Christian, Buddhist or atheist. The difference between the Christian faith and Buddhism or atheism is precisely that the Christian faith is the faith of Christians, and that this will always be their point of departure in viewing reality, in this case, the diversity of religions. One’s own position cannot simply be placed within brackets. As with members of other fundamental life options, Christians too cannot retreat to a non-involved observer position. All are already participants; Christians know themselves because of their own fundamental life option that has been placed amidst the diversity thereof and it is because they are already Christians that the other religions and fundamental life options appear to them as different/other.

Just as people who ascribe to different fundamental life options and religions may have certain matters in common, it is often what they have in common with other fundamental life options that precisely constitutes the difference between them: Christian fasting is not simply a variant of Ramadan; the Buddhist mystical contemplation of nothingness is not the same as the Christian mysticism of love. The Old Testament to Christians is not the Bible of the Jews even though they share that tradition. The encounter with other religions and fundamental life options thus teaches Christians something about themselves first, about their position on the religious playing field, about how to stand in the world and view it.

Otherness, however, also carries with it questioning, confrontation, sometimes even conflict, and it invites Christians to create an openness within their engagement with the Christian faith. They will thus increasingly have to learn to both hold on to the value and truth of their own faith position as well as make room for a necessary openness that allows for the encounter with the other.

In short, this is the opportunity that our current culture of diversity in fundamental life options offers to the Christian faith after secularisation. Even though the Christian tradition and identity have been interrupted, there is no reason to simply give in to cultural pessimism. In a time where belief is no longer evident and an explicit choice is demanded from the believer, Christians after all become more conscious of their own specific identity. As a faith community they stand in the footsteps of Jesus whom they confess as the Christ. Moreover, they stand charged with viewing their own way of life from the perspective of a diversity and otherness in fundamental life options. They have a double task: (a) to take their own narrative seriously (no relativism) and (b) to respect other religious positions (no fundamentalism). For the encounter with diversity and otherness interrupts our own faith narrative continuously, certainly when it has the tendency to close itself off and in this way make victims – the very first victim being the God in whom they profess to believe. On this last point ‘interruption’ becomes a theological category.

Crossing over
The dialogue with the current culture of diversity thus contains its opportunities. This seems to be the lesson too from practical experience, as a radio interview on 14 January 1999 for the Radio 1 morning show, Voor de dag, demonstrates.

A woman tells of an encounter the evening before. She is involved with Kerkwerk multicultureel samenleven (Church work on behalf of multicultural living) and was invited by a Moroccan community in Molenbeek to celebrate the ‘breaking of the fast’ with them. This community had the practice of always holding an open house every evening of Ramadan at sundown. The woman recounted that the conversation at table soon took on a profound sense of meaningfulness, certainly when religious themes such as the importance of ‘fasting’ and the relations between Muslims and Christians were being discussed. It struck this woman then that in these conversations, for example on fasting, it was precisely in the similarities between Islam and Christianity that the differences could be noticed at the same time. The outcome of this event was certainly not a relativising ‘it actually all boils down to the same thing in the end,’ but instead a respectful recognition of difference and self-worth. What is more, this woman then went on to describe how the Christians began to question themselves about the seriousness of their own faith: did they, for example, experience their own fasting authentically enough? Definitely an unexpected wake-up call, she concluded.

Respect for the irreducible identity of one’s own Christian narrative and for the otherness of the different religions and fundamental life options can thus go together – what is more, the encounter made this woman consider her own identity and its importance precisely through its relation to another religion.

But can the Christian narrative enter into these opportunities? Can it allow itself to be interrupted by otherness, specifically other religions, fundamental life options, people and communities? Can it be an open narrative, a narrative that has learned to remain open for that which is other and thereby be challenged by it? Is not Jesus proclaimed as ‘the way, the truth and the life’? Are not Christians ultimately convinced of their truth claim because of their being called by God? Should they not be chiefly concerned with setting right those who think differently from them? Yet, if they have the truth, does this mean that others cannot have the truth? But, if everyone has the truth, is this not as good as saying that no truth exists?