The Passion Narratives

A message from a fellow-scholastic of mine at De Nobili College:

Dear Friends,

From the 22nd to the 28th of March 2010, I am giving a course of the "Passion Narratives" as found in the four Gospels to a group of lay people at St. Britto's High School, Mapusa. It is given in the hope that we can bridge the gap between Catholic ignorance of the Bible and the lastest scholarly research being done in this field. But more than that, it’s purpose is pastoral, in offering fresh insights into the life of Jesus of Nazareth so as to increase our faith and help us share in the eternal life which he promised. The timing is scheduled that this course may be an appropriate preparation for the Holy Week and the sacred Tridum.

I am aware that much of this material will also be interesting to people who have asked such difficult questions about the bible, and have never got any answers. It is for this reason, that to make it available to a much wider audience, I am putting the lectures up on the net, as we go on during this course in this week, so that people from all parts of the world who can't be physically present - can also benefit from the lectures on the "passion narratives" of Jesus.

The lectures are available at http://passionnarratives.wordpress.com

Feel free to pass this message around to all your contact, whoever may be interested!

Thanks,

Richard D'Souza SJ

Transcendence

I've finally finished my B.Ph. Hooray!

This is a journey I started over five years ago - before I'd entered the Society, before I'd even considered entering the Society - when I started my Ph.B. at the Maryvale Institute, Birmingham. But now it's over. At this morning's oral comprehensive examination, I was asked to speak for four minutes on 'Transcendence', followed by a five-minute viva voce by each of the two examining professors. This, more or less, is what I said:

Arguing from a phenomenological perspective, Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas showed that all living beings demonstrate the propensity to transcend themselves. In plants and animals, this is manifested in the search for food, water, shelter, mates etc. In human beings, this is manifested in the search for an Ultimate Sacred Reality or God.

The notion of the Ultimate or God is a universal human concept, manifested in all cultures in all times. It can be seen as an archetype of the collective unconscious in the Jungian sense. To borrow a term from hermeneutics, this can be called the phase of our pre-understanding of God. Atheistic materialism is easily the exception in human society and history.

Continuing the hermeneutics analogy, pre-understanding becomes understanding in our reflection on God's existence and essence; i.e. natural theology. Normally called 'proofs' of God's existence, they nevertheless serve to consolidate existing belief in God's existence and serve to further our understanding of the nature of God. So, for instance, we have Thomas Aquinas's Third Way (Argument from Contingent Beings) which helps us understand God as the Necessary Being; the Nyayayika-s' Causal Proof helps us understand God as Creator (in the Indian sense). Reflection on the essence and existence of the Ultimate Being (which Aquinas considered identical) usually requires preliminary reflection on Being itself; hence metaphysics develops.

A quantum leap in understanding God occurs in the third phase of revelation: here I include both revelation in the traditional sense in the Abrahamic religions as well as special revelation in the form of mystical or yogic experiences. Natural theology becomes positive theology.

Since humans are social animals, this search for the Transcendent assumes a social dimension – religion. Religion is a complex of code, cult and creed. According to Max Weber, religion usually starts with a charismatic individual who is able to gather a following before evolving into a traditional patriarchal and finally a legal-rational institution. Religion unifies our deepest yearning for God with our desire to be with each other while simultaneously providing the community an identity and sense of purpose or mission.

Religious communities enable individuals to perform great acts of charity, produce great works of art and even philosophical treatises. Nevertheless, it is also true that religious communities also enable some individuals to commit acts of violence and terrorism. Institutional religious leadership can become corrupt and self-serving. Much opposition to God and religion have their direct or indirect roots in such corruption. Karl Marx, for instance, sees religion as a mechanism used by the bourgeoisie to perpetuate the oppression of the working classes (the working classes themselves use religion as an escape route from suffering).

It's not exactly Plato, but I think it did the trick.

Comprehensive Examinations

The first stage (written, worth 60% of the Comprehensives grade and 20% of the aggregate) went off without too many hitches this morning. It's a three-hour paper covering all the basic courses B.Ph. students have done here over the last two years. Some sample questions from this year's paper:

Western Philosophy

• Analyse categories (Scholastic) with sufficient examples and show how they are relevant in your personal and communitarian life.
• Explain how the different theories of values and norms lead to the debate between consequentialism and non-consequentialism.

Indian Studies

• Clarify the notion of padartha ('category' in classical Indian philosophy). How many categories are there in Indian philosophy. Critically evaluate dravya (substance) and abhava (non-existence) as categories.
• Explain the role of Guru Gobind Singh in founding the Khalsa (Sikh) community, and the importance of the five K's for its members.

Social Sciences

• Explain the social functions of religion according to Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx. Compare the two theories and highlight similarities and differences.

The oral examinations start in six days' time. We have been given seven broad inter-disciplinary (i.e. spanning Western Philosophy, Indian Philosophy and the Social Sciences) themes:

1. Soul and Self
2. Society and Ethics
3. God and Transcendence
4. Reality and the Universe
5. Meaning-making and Epistemology
6. Feedom and Destiny
7. Philosophy as Praxis

Worship

In Reason and Religious Belief (Oxford: OUP, 2003) Peterson et. al. argue that God is, above all, a being who is the object of, and worthy of, worship. What does 'worship' mean? It means total devotion, placing ourselves at God's disposal completely and without reservation, with no attempt at “bargaining” with God, no mental reservation to “keep our options open”. In other words, absolute commitment and deference.

The Jesuit constitutions summarise the particular Jesuit mode of worship in it's self description: “The end of this Society is to devote itself with God's grace not only to the salvation and perfection of the members' own souls, but also with that same grace to labour strenuously in giving aid toward the salvation and perfection of the souls of their neighbours” (General Examen [3]).

Here at De Nobili College, the second-year philosophers have slowly been receiving news of their regency placements once the academic year ends in a few weeks. Most are heading to Jesuits schools across India; many are going to parishes (particularly mission stations in remote areas). Two (possibly three) are headed to Afghanistan to lecture at one of the universities there while one is headed to China. What takes Jesuits to the far-flung reaches of the globe in frontier, potentially dangerous, situations? A sense of adventure? Undoubtedly. A desire to serve the Church? Of course. Because that's where they've been asked to go by their superiors? Naturally.

But, deeper than all that, a sense that this is how they are called to worship God.

I've often wondered what the word 'worship' denotes today in parts of the world that are largely secularised. The RE Online website (an online resource site for Religious Education in the UK) for instance, appears to use 'worship' synonymously with the specific rites and rituals used to enact it. But what about the internal attitude signified by 'worship'? What of the recognition of God as a being that is infinitely and absolutely greater than ourselves?

And yet, perhaps it is not that nothing is actually worshipped. If complete deference and unconditional commitment are the constituents of worship, then is there something else that people do, in fact, worship in their lives (even if they may not recognise it as 'worship')?