… in which she reveals herself to be a one-time feminist and probably loses half her readers.
I think that it should be clear by now that I have become quite a fan of this book.* I wasn’t intending to spend so much time on it, but it has become clear to me that it is worth digesting as thoroughly as possible – although I do intend finishing these write ups fairly soon and then putting it aside as there are also other things to read! I mentioned before that it may well be one of the most important books that I have ever read, and I’m inclined to say that that suspicion has been confirmed. I remain puzzled as to why I never came across it before, and why it has not received more attention. And I have wondered what influence it would have had on me had I encountered it ten to fifteen years ago.
For, if the truth be told, the theme of tradition is a theme that has pursued me for a long time, and which I focussed on in both my Masters and doctoral theses. My own concerns, however, were with whether and how the Church’s tradition could be understood as revelatory given its patriarchal nature and implication in relations of power. They were, therefore, influenced both by feminist criticism and by ideology criticism more generally, but sought to respond to the challenge of what we are to do after the critique. Now, I don’t particularly want to get into academic discussions of this now, as it is becoming a rather distant memory anyway, and I was never really entirely satisfied with what I produced, and in the end wanted to get it out of the way in order to get on with other things, becoming convinced that such dilemmas can be better resolved by living them than by theorising.
But I mention this now, as, for someone schooled in a hermeneutic of suspicion, Father Louth’s discussion, especially in his discussion of human tradition, seems to lack an awareness of the factors of interest and power that are also operative in human society. And of course the question can be raised of to what extent these sinful factors (to use a theological term) influenced the Church. This is not to disagree with the fundamental thrust of his argument concerning the positive evaluation of human tradition and culture, and I find the contrast with Gnosticism illuminating and perhaps also helpful for clarifying some contemporary realities, but I would have appreciated a rather more nuanced analysis of it.
I’m aware of course that to speak of a hermeneutic of suspicion is like a red rag to a bull in some circles, and I really am doing my best to avoid internet polemics! While this is part of a broader theme that I may come back to, I’m inclined to think that the fundamental problem in much contemporary theology associated themes of power and liberation is not that it is critical of structures of power, but rather, firstly, that it fails to put such discussions in a much broader ecclesial and theological perspective (and a reason why this book should be required reading for anyone doing theology today), and, secondly, that it is actually not critical enough, and needs to acknowledge that the “will to power” is deeply rooted in the human heart. But I would still like to see such critiques taken seriously.
* For the uninitiated, the book in question is, Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) – to order the new edition, which I would highly recommend doing, go here.
A vow of conversation 
July 13, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Sr. Macrina,
I’ve been waiting to start on Fr. Louth’s book (obtained at your recommendation) before I engaged this series of posts, but want to let you know for now that I think your assessment, especially that in the last paragraph, is entirely on the mark.
I am more familiar with the hermeneutic of suspicion as applied to the field of biblical studies, since it is one of the dominant shaping forces in the so-called historical-critical method. From my experience, advocates of the method seem to be suspicious just about everything and everyone except themselves, and, together with their critics, continue to ignore the structures of power that might be at play in their own lives and in their work.
My own openness to feminist and liberation critiques probably has something to do with the fact that I grew up in a post-colonial environment and am now back living in it. And the fact that one of my theological mentors once told me to take as my patrons Freud, Nietzsche and Marx. I’ll be reading.
W.H.
July 14, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Wei-Hsien,
Thanks for your comment. I’ll be interested to hear your response to the book when you get to it.
This is an area where I’m still trying to work out my response – which is in a sense part of a lifetime’s work – so I’m hesitant to say too much online without careful reflection. But I hope to come back to it sometime. And, like you, I know that the historical context in which I grew up also contributed to how I react to such things.
July 15, 2008 at 12:58 am
Hmm. By its very nature, however, Tradition is partly the abandonment of the hermeneutic of suspicion, isn’t it? That is, Tradition by its very nature connotes a not merely implicit rejection of suspicion, in faith. A life fully lived in Tradition is one lived in faith (and The Faith) without suspicion, without the concerns of jockeying for power and glory, and so on. Granted this is the ideal, but so is the Kingdom of Heaven! We may stumble a bit, but that doesn’t make our face-planting tumbles part of the ideal any more than perfection (whether in process or achieved!) is received as part of the opposing tradition of suspicion: perfection, grace, sacrament, beauty, truth, all these things are not accessible to that worldview at all. They are not so much apples and oranges, as apples and blue — susceptible to intellectual comprehension, but not compatibile in their natures themselves.
July 15, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Kevin,
I think that you correctly identify at least part of the tension involved, that faith and suspicion appear to be rather mutually exclusive. Faith has to do with surrender, as Father Louth writes: “For the truth that lies at the heart of theology is not something there to be discovered, but something, or rather someone, to whom we must surrender. The mystery of faith is not ultimately something that invites our questioning, but something that questions us.” (95)
However, Father Louth argues, following Saint Augustine, for a continuity between human culture and Christian paideia. I agree with him on this, for I acknowledge the importance of historicity and do not like the idea of being a gnostic! But human culture and human history is also a somewhat mixed bag – sinful humanity and all that – and so the question that arises for me is one of discernment and purification, in which concepts such as bildung and paideia function in a rather ascetical way, unmasking all that is not true.
Of course this tends to highlight the contrast between tradition a human phenomenon and the Tradition as a theological reality, and the relationship between these. I would have been interested to see Father Louth discussing this.
July 15, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Yes, but even tradition as paideia in its truly classical form was essentially aiming in making the students the best and most beautiful through the inculcation of the best and most beautiful of their forebears. It was an attempt not to provide a “liberal education” such as one might suffer through today, but a formative immersion in all that was considered the best of the culture, and explicitly meant to avoid encouraging the baser drives, such as they were understood. There’s a very close link in that regard between paideia and Christian Tradition, but also from a simple fact of Christian appropriation of the form, from the second century onward until the modern period, after which point Christian education (and all other education for that matter) underwent a seachange into something poor and strange.
So, what we have in both Louth and Augustine is still aiming at that: education (“raising up the child”) in the best and most beautiful, the kalos as a sea in which the student is taught to swim. The land defining and supporting that sea is Christian Tradition itself, so that what is contained in the education has already been filtered and approved through Tradition, which itself is the best and most beautiful of human achievements in association with revelation, and is therefore best able to recognize and determine what is truly beautiful, truly touched by intimations of inspiration, within those elements outside of the narthex, so to speak. Tradition doesn’t admit things like suspicion, and we needn’t expect it to be present to any degree in a truly Christian paideia. What purpose would it serve? If it is not beautiful nor leads to the beautiful, then it is worthless, mere intellectual games, sophistry. These two things, suspicion for its own sake, and the attribution of basest motives to all humans all the time, are anathema to the Church, where faith and repentance both transform the Christian into something that doesn’t fit with those views of humanity. And, of course, such viewpoints vehemently reject the Church as a spiritual-physical entity in any case, considering it merely another human institution, like a Department of English, or somesuch.
Or so it seems to me!
July 16, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Hmm… maybe part of the problem is with the word suspicion – I’m so used to the phrase “hermeneutic of suspicion” that I tend to trot it out without thinking. And the fact that you don’t like how many critical traditions function (neither do I for that matter, although we would probably disagree on the extent of this) doesn’t invalidate my suggestion that we need some sort of a tool for unmasking the interests and power at work in human society – and in the human heart. It’s not, for me, simply about contrasting an ideal and base motives, but rather about recognising our own capacity for self-deception.
At least, that’s my take on it for now, although as I said above, I still need to formulate some of this more clearly for myself!
July 17, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Doesn’t Revelation itself present a “hermeneutic of suspicion” in the first commandment, so that we are commanded to struggle with “unmasking the interests and powers at work in human society-and in the human heart”? Isn’t this at the heart of Tradition?
July 17, 2008 at 9:16 pm
I think that it all comes down to this: an “hermeneutic of suspicion” is innately un-Christian in motivation. It is the imputation of sin to another. As such, it’s innactely negative and incapable of recognizing both the image of God in another human (which such hermeneutics universally deny in any case) and the transformative work of God in another as well (again, this is denied, as God is explained as simply a myth in the hands of powerbrokers). Even the psychological value of a positive, cooperative view of one’s fellow man is rejected in the assumption that all humans are no better than the worst of them, incapable of truly altruistic acts, for all are as selfish and powerhungry as the authors of the theories were and are (as they, being small-minded creatures, could not comprehend that anyone might be truly different from their own selves!). It goes without saying that there is no possibility in such an hermeneutic (or in any of the critical traditions we now suffer with in the academy) to recognize holiness. As with anything else that does not fit their worldview, when it is not ignored, it is ridiculed.
The heart of Tradition is love: love of God and fellow man. Such a love does not impugn impure motivations of another.
July 18, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Kevin,
I agree that the heart of Tradition is Love. Love seeks to distinguish between what is true and what is not.
The term “hermeneutic of suspicion” may be co-opted by those who do exactly what you describe, but is it not the case that they are insufficiently aware of what Sr. Macrina calls “the interests and powers at work in human society-and in the human heart”? I think you are quite right, however, to point out that there is a deeper power at work, the “transformative work of God in another”. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic (insufficiently suspicious?) but I think this is at work even in our overly relativistic, anti-authority culture (which ironically turns out to be, as you so rightly see, totalitarian in its rejection of anything that doesn’t resemble itself). So,isn’t the reason “Such a love does not impugn impure motivations of another” is because we are called to be suspicious of our own tendency to fall into the same error of arrogance and idolatry, so that we may in fact recognize what is truly Holy, what always surprises us from outside the parameters of our expectations? That is what Love demands of us and it is that very Love which is at the heart of Tradition.
July 18, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Jack, Thank you. I agree and appreciate what you say above. But of course, discernment remains an ongoing challenge …
Kevin, I think that we are partly speaking past each other, perhaps because the phrase “hermeneutic of suspicion” raises various associations. The phrase is not important for me, but I find it difficult to understand why the need for some sort of self-examination (both personal and communal and in terms of how we come to know) is innately un-Christian. I would have thought that the Christian tradition is well aware of the capacity of the human heart for self-deception. I have no desire to deny God’s work in another and the human potential for truth, beauty and love (including – hopefully – in some rather problematic corners of academia) but the struggle against the passions – which include my own illusions about my motivations – remains “a struggle to the last breath” as I think one of the Desert Fathers put it, although I can’t remember who it was.
July 18, 2008 at 6:10 pm
P.S. I’m aware that I’ve been talking rather abstractly here, which may make things more difficult. I’ve deliberately avoided getting involved in concrete examples, both because I want to avoid polemics and because my own thinking is somewhat in flux.
July 18, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Kevin,
I am new at this blogging thing and did not realize that you have your own blog Biblicalia, which I just visited and ,by the way, think is very well done. I will continue to visit it and see what good work you are up to. I love the quote you put up by Blake.In light of our discussion on the hermeneutics of suspicion, it strikes me that the difference between Socrates and Melitus, between Christ and Caiaphas, is that the latter two turn the authority of Tradition into something it is not because they are challenged by the exposure of the truth of their own emptiness. Perhaps the word “suspicion” is a bad word because of the negative implications, but I do think that linked to love, better, seeing it as an element of love, helps us to see the difference between Christ, the crucified criminal who is condemned for blaspheming, and Caiaphas, the condemning authority who is in fact blaspheming.
Sr. Macrina,
I first found your blog because I am interested in reading Zizioulas, book Being as Communion and am very interested in what you have to say. I have just recently read some articles posted online at Communio by Ratzinger and Balthasar on the concept and nature of “person” and have been fascinated by the implications for this with regard to Being. I can’t help but think that this rediscovery of “relationship” as the primary ontological category has tremendous implications for ecclesiology. This really brings a whole new understanding between soteriology and ecclesiology.(not to mention the implications for dialogue between Christianity with Buddhism -person as pure relationality with no-self, as Balthasar states at the end of his essay) If you have not read these essays already, I suggest you might find them very interesting. You can find them here:
http://www.communio-icr.com/person.htm
I would love to hear what you have to say in comparison to Zizioulas.
July 18, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Sr Macrina, there is perhaps a bit of semantic creep going on here. For myself, “hermeneutic of suspicion” is not something I would ever associate with self-examination or the healthy discernment of one’s failures, shortcomings, and sins. Rather, I especially associate the phrase (and my shorthand, “suspicion”) with the academic viewpoint perhaps best described an exegesis of cultures and their texts, the entire (fraudulent, I think) intellectual movement of Sartre and his ilk, brilliant writers and speakers, but mediocre thinkers. As far as that “hermeneutic of suspicion” goes, it has no controls, and everything is its target. For a Christian, on the other hand, yes, there is self-examination, but there is not to be an imputation of sin to another. Self-examination is good, but imputation of something ill to another is strictly off-limits, as we find repeatedly throughout the Desert Fathers. Yet that is precisely the core of the hermeneutic of suspicion: that all interactions are based in power and advantage. It is deeply anti-Christian at that level, and anti-human as well. This is not, of course, to say that there are people who operate amorally within such power-based relationships. But to be truly human is to be something else.
July 19, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Jack,
Thanks for the link to the articles. I don’t know them but will look them up soon. I’m afraid that I’ve rather neglected Zizioulas lately as I’ve been trying to do too much at the same time, but I’ll get back to him before too long.
Kevin,
I can appreciate that this may seem like a semantic creep, but in a certain sense that is deliberate as I have wanted to hold together the questions of power and interest in society with those of the human heart, and to view these as part of a continuum. I don’t see that this involves imputing sin to others for we are all part of the whole, and all caught up in the workings of the principalities and powers in ways that we are often not aware of, not because we are wilfully blind but simply because we find ourselves in a broken, sinful world.