Abstract
The logic of mutual heterocentrism requires two radical
changes in our traditional way of thinking. First, it requires that we accept
ourselves as gifts received. Second, it requires that we take seriously the
notion that God can and does act in history. Macmurray's Persons in
Relation provides not only an analysis of these claims, but also
metaphysical support for them.
John Macmurray, in
his major study of community, Persons in Relation, claims that the
inherent ideal of the personal is a "universal community of persons in which
each cares for all the others and no one for himself" [11, 159]. This is an
audacious and even startling claim, both because it runs counter to the
inherited wisdom of theologies of sin and secular ideologies of realism, and
because it seems to undermine the development of each person's unique gifts and
individuality. But its superficial audacity hides a deeper truth which might
well provide an essential complement to one of the more intractable issues in
the communitarian/individualism debate and to the resolution of a tension
within contemporary feminist thought.
While much of the
ink spilled in the debate between individualistic liberals and organic
communitarians has been over whether persons are essentially social or
individualistic, a deeper issue has received little attention, namely what
specific kind of community is best for persons if they are more than
private atoms in contractual relationship with others. There are many forms of
human association (one of which contractarian liberals accept), and until
communitarians become clear about which form(s) are more appropriate to the
essentially social nature of persons, the debate will remain stagnant [17,
147-169].
Within feminist
thought there is also a debate, closely paralleling the
communitarian/liberalist one, about the status women should aspire to in any
association of persons. Some feminists, suspicious of the domination men have
exercised when they had a monopoly of power, have argued for women's right to
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countervailing power, understood as that power by which women
will be able to achieve their own advancement and fulfillment, often without
support from men. Fearful of losing their recently acquired access to political
and economic power in an organic soup of indiscriminate ‘oneness’,
and distrustful of being lulled into new forms of submission by calls to merge
their lives with others in an overarching ‘community’, these
feminists are wary of any social forms which entail dependence on or equality
with the very power-wielders who have excluded them for centuries from the
benefits which power secures. When they hear the call to identify with the
needs of others before themselves, it reminds them of men's tendency to exploit
women by viewing them solely as care-givers who should spend themselves on
others (especially on children and husbands) and leave the realms of power to
men.
Nevertheless,
there are other feminists who are concerned that as women celebrate their
hard-won access to the freedom to exercise power, they may be celebrating what
is increasingly being seen as a life of meaningless and unfulfilling
competition with other power wielders. As Jean Bethke Elshtain has said, the
concept of a `community' based on the liberal freedom to compete for scarce
goods, "while celebrated, has remained mostly an empty term -- for there is no
way to create real communities out of an aggregate of ‘freely’
choosing adults" [4, 442], (just as the communitarians have claimed in their
arguments against the notion of a liberal society of atomistic individuals).
Macmurray's claim
that the fullest experience of one's personhood is found in centering one's
concern on others may well provide the metaphysical foundation for articulating
the form of a specific kind of community called for by liberal critics of
communitarian rhetoric and for a way to get around the fear which some
feminists have of submerging their newly won individuality in the congealing
quicksand of new dependencies. (This claim is a conceptual one, and, for the
purposes of this exploration, not specifically tied to actual, empirical
associations). Nevertheless, to establish that claim may require one element
not usually given credibility in the contemporary discussion -- human
interaction with a divine being.
There is, of
course, one basic assumption about human nature which has traditionally checked
any tendency to regard Macmurray's claim as anything but naive. It is the
assumption that human beings are essentially motivated by self-interest.
Theologians discuss this human characteristic under the rubric ‘sin’,
and secular theorists under the label ‘realism’. Persons may have
social impulses, but
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they will always act, as Reinhold Niebuhr put it, by
"contradicting and defying the law of love" [14, 39].
Historically two
forms of human association have emerged from this ‘negative’ view of
human nature. One is the liberal, individualistic society in which persons,
each driven primarily by self-interest, contract with each other so as best to
minimize the threat which each poses to the fundamental autonomy of the other
[9]. Adam Smith's ‘invisible hand’ sees to it that in such an
individualistic association, self-interest will work for the benefit of all.
(For a popular and influential development of the deleterious effects of this
view on American self-understanding, see [1]).
The other form of
association to emerge from self-interest is what I have called the
organic/functional [9]. It is based on the claim that the nature of persons is
to be profoundly interdependent, as organs related to each other and to the
whole organism of which they are a part. The worth of each person is determined
by his or her functionality within and for the whole. But even this
interdependent view, in one sense the polar opposite of the independence
extolled by the atomistic/contractarian position, ironically winds up
reflecting the latter's belief that the chief end of relationship is primarily
to advance one's own self-interest. It simply regards organic interdependence
and cooperation as a more effective (and thus more ‘natural’) means
for doing so. Karl Marx, one of the most eloquent representatives of the
organic/functional view, even when he is extolling the virtues of sociality
rather than individualism, still speaks positively of the
‘appropriation’ of others by the self for its own interests. My
association with others, he claims, is "an organ for expressing my own
life." Other persons become my "objects", who confirm and realize my
being [12, 140]. Self-realization thus seems as much a primary goal in Marxian
cooperative community as it does in Hobbesian atomistic society. Both assume
the interests of others must be calculated in terms of how they will serve the
interests of the self. They differ primarily in how they make that calculation,
i.e., through the enforcement of a contract or through the fraternity of
cooperation. If the only alternative to a liberal society is a vague concept of
‘community’, no movement in the debate can occur.
A specific form of
community which has the potential for moving the debate forward is that of a
mutual relationship between persons in which their union is for the sake of
their love for, enjoyment of, and delight in each other. A view of community as
a mutuality of communion seems to find virtually no place in the
atomistic/contractarian view because mutuality is almost literally irrational.
It also finds little place in the organic/functional view because even
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cooperation is seen as a means to the real end of
relationship -- namely self-realization. Cooperation, however, is clearly not
the same as love: it is a way of working together for a common end, whereas
love is a form of being together as an end in itself. And
interdependence is not the same as mutuality: the former is a given, whereas
the latter must be continually intended by the persons in relation. Too often
contemporary writers have been so attracted to any cooperative alternative to
the individualism of atomistic forms of association, and in particular to the
organic/functional imagery of cooperation, that they have failed to discern the
differences between cooperation and love.
This is sometimes
the case with some feminist writers who have rightly rejected the
individualistic models of relationship associated historically with male
domination. Some writers are attracted to the organic view just because it
seems to overturn hierarchy for organic interdependence. But within the organic
model, we often hear calls for "forms of collective life in which each member
is empowered to actuate their [sic] potentialities to the mutual benefit
of self and community keeping hierarchy always in service to the empowerment
and development of all participants in a collectivity" [8, 22, 24]. As
Christine Hinze has noted, however, this appeal only makes sense within a
traditionally ‘liberal’ individualistic view "which focuses on the
rights of individuals to pursue their divergent interests, [and] views liberty
in terms of maximum freedom from constraint" [8, 32].
Feminists are
right, however, in raising the question of whether, in our search for a
genuinely loving community, as Jean Baker Miller puts it, we can "create a way
of life that includes serving others without being subservient" [13, 44].
Miller's work parallels that of Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, both of whom
suggest that for women the ‘moral problem’ is essentially one of
caring-for others rather than being primarily one of rights and rules. It is a
morality grounded in relationality rather than rational justice, as such.
Nevertheless, Gilligan is not about to sacrifice some deep sense of
individuality at the altar of relationality. She does not want to define
caring, for example, as nothing more than self-sacrifice. What I am suggesting
is that Macmurray's notion of community provides the metaphysical foundation
for the full development of morality as ‘caring-for’ in relation
which also enhances and celebrates the individuality of each person in
relation. See Carol Gilligan [5] and [6, 237- 252] and Nel Noddings [15].
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We need a view of
the person-in-relation which neither submerges the person under the domination
of others in an individualistic free-for-all, nor dissolves personal identity
in an organic pool in which all individual gifts and traits are washed away,
nor defines one primarily in terms of one's ‘role’ or function within
a subsuming organic whole. We need a model of personal relationships in which
the unique gifts of each person are celebrated and nurtured, and in which the
celebration and nurturing of others are the primary intentions of all the
members.
If we look more
closely at Macmurray's concept of ‘heterocentrism’ (the placing of
the self's interests primarily in the other rather than in itself), it
may seem paradoxical, and therefore inconsistent, to claim that fulfillment
comes from placing the interests of others ahead of one's own. Isn't my
fulfillment essentially a manifestation of my deepest self- interest? Doesn't
the self want to be fulfilled and therefore tries to find what will fulfill it?
And if it happens to discover that heterocentrism is an effective means for
doing so, isn't other-regarding action simply a useful device in securing the
self's own interests? Isn't the prior and basic motivation to seek my own
self-fulfillment, and isn't cooperation, therefore, simply a means to that end?
There is much
truth in these observations. Persons obviously wish for their own fulfillment.
We might say that persons are always motivated by the desire for
self-fulfillment. That is, they desire self-fulfillment. But what is desired is
not always what we primarily intend by any particular action or series of
actions. One may intend one thing as the immediate focus of one's
actions hoping all the while that something else (not inconsistent with what
one intends) will also occur. One's intention may subsume one's
motivation without contradicting it. As Macmurray reminds us, motives are not
intentions. Motives are felt, not thought, and are often unconscious. A motive
determines movement or orientation at some basic, underlying level, whereas an
intention ‘takes control’ of that movement and consciously directs it
toward an end chosen by the agent [10, 193-95]. Thus what one intends may or
may not complement what one is motivated to desire. One may be motivated by or
desire the fulfillment of what one takes to be one's self-interest and intend
the interest of others first and foremost. And one may find that what one is
motivated toward arrives as a gift precisely because one is not intending it in
the first instance. We may be enjoined to love our neighbors as ourselves, but
this could be taken to mean that we are motivated to love ourselves as a matter
of fact, and that we should intend actions which direct that love
primarily toward others. This intention does not run counter to one's
motivation
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or desire, but it does surpass, override, or subsume it, and,
paradoxically, ultimately fulfills it precisely because it does not
primarily intend it.
An individual can
suffer from high blood pressure and be motivated (and desire a way) to reduce
it. However, acting on a primary and overriding intention to reduce it may well
have the unintended side-effect of actually elevating it, especially since
fussing and fretting about changes in life-style may bring on such anxiety that
the problem is not only not relieved but aggravated. On the other hand,
intending something entirely different (without negating the underlying
motivation to lower the pressure), such as devoting more time to one's family
or hobbies, may result in what one desires (the lowering of the pressure)
without actually intending it as the primary focus of one's immediate actions.
In that case, we have not, strictly speaking, achieved a lowering of the
pressure, but it has come to us nonetheless. We have not denied our
self-interest (it remains active throughout as a motivation), but it has been
made secondary to the primary intention of loving others first. (It seems to be
the case, according to anecdotal evidence, that an actual lowering of one's
blood pressure often does result from focusing one's intentions away from
oneself and toward the enjoyment of others, thereby lowering one's stress level
and, consequently, one's blood pressure).
There is enough in
this analogy to suggest that one might hope for self-fulfillment while
primarily intending the fulfillment of others. It is certainly logically
conceivable that one could devote oneself fully to the nurture of others and,
as a result and without it having been one's overriding intention, find oneself
fulfilled as well. In this conception, the nurturer does not deny the desire
for personal fulfillment (as some versions of self-abnegation would urge), but
neither does one act primarily on an intention shaped by that desire.
This leads, of
course, to the question of why self- fulfillment would occur when a person is
primarily intending the fulfillment of others. And the logical answer can only
be if the others are primarily intending the person's fulfillment. In
other words, only within a community of mutuality, marked by the heterocentric
intentions of each member toward all the others, can the fulfillment of all
occur even though each member is not primarily intending his or her own
fulfillment in the first instance.
One important
dimension of such a community of mutuality is that the members have various
‘gifts’ to offer to the others (e.g., of sensitivity, skill at
ordering things, insight, leadership, and so forth). But quite often the
exercise of these gifts is most effective when the employer of them is not
focusing on the
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pleasure of possessing the gift but on its use in service to
the others instead. If one discovers a gift for singing, one wants to exercise
it and usually receives greater satisfaction when one sings for the enjoyment
of others than when one sings alone. Particularly important in community is the
gift which some people are said to have of ‘being there’ for others,
i.e., of being especially sensitive and attentive to their needs. And it is a
trait of this kind of gift that it works best in those situations in which the
one with the gift is not consciously focusing upon it, precisely because one is
focusing upon the others by means of the gift. This gift is one which seems to
flow from the very center even as the person seems so inattentive to it by
being attentive to the one who is the recipient of the gift. And the more we
exercise our gifts, the more we often want to exercise them and the more
fulfilled we are in exercising them. Fulfillment, in short, can come from the
use of something which has been received as a gift (putting aside for the
moment the issue of who is the gift-giver), not from the possession of
something which has been achieved as the result of one's labors directed at
securing one's self-interest.
Now if we put this
logical conception in the context of Christian theology we might get something
like the following. Assuming the desire or motivation of all persons is to be
fulfilled, it might be the case that the conditions for fulfillment have been
established (by a divine power) in such a way that this desire can be realized
only in and through a community of heterocentric mutuality. Given the
theological insistence on sin, however, how can a sinful self (namely one
driven primarily by egocentrism) begin to intend and act heterocentrically? If
a mutual community presupposes that each member is sufficiently fulfilled such
that it can override its sinful egocentrism enough to intend the
fulfillment of others before its own, how is such (minimally) sufficient
fulfillment possible?
The answer can
only be through a gift of what we might call sufficient or minimal fulfillment
from an Other who is so maximally fulfilled that it can intend the fulfillment
of others before its own. A self which is totally egocentric simply cannot act
for others, except as a calculated means to its own fulfillment. (This is the
truth in the philosophy of individualism). But there is no reason why
fulfillment cannot be a process which passes through various stages of
completeness. Thus a self might move from minimal fulfillment toward greater
and greater degrees of fulfillment.
But can a self
move by itself from a complete lack of fulfillment (assuming that is what sin
entails) to minimal fulfillment by its own efforts? The Christian tradition has
clearly heard many voices on this issue, even though the
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Augustine-Luther-Calvin-Niebuhr camp has generally determined
the orthodox position which holds that only by God's grace (gift) can the power
to act lovingly toward others be given or restored to the sinful self.
Nevertheless, it is at least conceivable that one could hold that God has, as a
kind of initial cosmic gift, (one implanted in the very structures of the
cosmos as such, and therefore as distinct from individual gifts to particular
persons), implanted in the structures of reality, including the constitution of
sinful selves, the ontological possibility of initiating heterocentric
intentions. But in either case, the development of the self's fulfillment would
require its membership in a community of mutuality, intending the fulfillment
of others and receiving fulfillment from them as their gifts to him or her.
Through God's gift
(structural or individual) of initial fulfillment, the self is empowered to
love others primarily for their sakes, and not for its own. Now if other selves
have been similarly ‘gifted’ or empowered by the same divine Creator,
then those selves can (and desire to) enter into relationships with others in
which each cares primarily for the other and not for oneself. These
relationships become reciprocal and mutually reinforcing. The more one cares
for others the more one feels fulfilled since one is exercising a gift which
the conditions of reality support and empower. And if others are exercising
their gifts of caring, reinforcement from the conditions of reality proceeds
apace. The self begins to discover that it enjoys others for their sakes and
that it is being enjoyed for its own sake by them. Fulfillment is a completely
reciprocal, mutual occurrence. It is, in short, the result of mutual
heterocentrism: the manifestation of the mutual receipt and exercise of
gifts in which all are fulfilled precisely because all are givers and receivers
at the same time, though in different respects. If all give to others in the
context of a mutual community, then necessarily all receive from others. There
is no achievement of fulfillment by individual selves, but rather their
mutual receipt of fulfillment through heterocentric action. No one gives love
who has not initially received it from God and from other persons, and yet the
receipt of love is not the primary intention (despite its being the underlying
hope) of those who are loving others on the basis of their receipt of the gift
of love. The Gordian knot which ties ‘realism’ to the primacy of
self-interest is cleanly sliced by the claim that the basic interest
(motivation) of the self is realized for the self by others who have taken the
self as their primary interest, just as it has taken them for its primary
interest.
But have we
avoided the problem of the organic subsumption of all within a tepid soup from
which all differentiating individuality has been removed? Yes, if we understand
that a primary intention to love others for their
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sakes entails necessarily a concern to help them develop what
is unique to each one of them. Love for another means affirming, nurturing, and
celebrating those things about the other which deepen that other's uniqueness.
A genuine community of mutuality would be one in which a diversity of gifts and
talents manifested in the particularities and peculiarities of individual
persons is celebrated and empowered. Gifts, as Paul Camenisch has pointed out,
have a unique capacity for calling forth from their recipients "untapped
potential, and new challenges for growth and enrichment" [2, 17-18]. How
else could real love be shown for another except through a desire that the
fulness of the other's character be expressed? This means, at least in part,
that individuals can enjoy the fruits of their labor (their
achievements) provided that those achievements are the primary intention of the
others, not of oneself. If my speech to the loving group is well-received, the
group has, in effect, acknowledged my achievement and through that
acknowledgement given me the essential reason, as it were, to enjoy and take
deep satisfaction in what I have done. In addition, I will be extremely happy
that my work has found fruit in the enjoyment and development of others. But
without the receipt of my work by the community, it remains barren and
unfulfilling. In this way we avoid the potentially drab organic pool in which
diversity is washed away or in which each person's unique traits are made
merely functional for some higher organic purpose. A community of mutual
heterocentrism results in the full development of each individual but, unlike a
society of atoms, it does so through intending the development of others first
and receiving the full development of oneself as gift from those
others.
This receipt of
the gifts of others leads to what Enda McDonagh has called the "highest moral
response," namely the "mutual celebration of the presence of others as gift"
[2, 15]. Morality in this context is based not on obligation but on trust --
the trust that those who are gifted will desire to "share things as well as
themselves with one another, the desire to enrich one another's life, to bring
them joy and pleasure, to express their affection for one another" [2, 19].
Trust is the essential condition on which the moral relation of a loving
community is established.
Trust, however,
only makes sense in a context in which persons genuinely intend to care for
others and to believe that such care is justified morally as well as
ontologically (that is, by the structures of reality as such). Trust in an
association of self-interested individuals is essentially an expectation that
others will be deterred from acts that are harmful to one because they are
afraid of the negative consequences of violating the laws regulating human
interaction. Trust in a loving community is based on one's conviction that
others are generally trust-
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worthy, and, even when they are not, that the structures of
reality will ultimately support and reward trusting behavior.
That such trust is
warranted is the conviction which underlies Laurence Thomas's recent argument
that altruism, which he defines as an unconditional love for others, is a more
basic source of moral behavior than self-interest. Thomas's claims support the
argument of this paper even though they fly in the face of the inherited wisdom
of recent moral philosophy. Thomas holds that there "has to be more altruism in
our bones. . . than contemporary moral philosophers have allowed" [16, viii].
He goes on to argue that our capacity for altruism is in part a biological
heritage or a natural talent [16, 72]. His use of socio-biology is at least
consistent with my earlier claim that God may have ‘wired into’
reality the conditions that would support heterocentrism. But like a talent, or
gift, Thomas points out, the capacity for altruism needs to be nourished by our
social environment or it grows stale. While Thomas makes no use of the notion
of a graceful God, his observation coheres with my other claim that God may act
upon individuals (either directly or through the supportive structures of a
loving community) to provide the gift of initial or minimal fulfillment such
that they can begin acting heterocentrically.
Thomas makes a
convincing case that in a community of love (especially that represented by the
parent-child relationship), a person experiences a basic psychological security
that one is loved regardless of how one performs [16, 61]. The person is, in
our terms, the object of an unqualified heterocentric love which empowers
him/her to love him/herself (because he/she is loved) and thus to love others
for their own sakes (and not because they serve one's self-interest). Thomas
argues that fear need not be a primary motivation for the child if the parental
or communal support is genuinely loving toward him/her. The child may love the
parents simply because he/she respects them and wants to help them flourish
just as and because he/she has been respected and helped to flourish by them.
Finally, Thomas
argues, as one discovers how much one is loved by others, one discovers the
worth of oneself. In this sense, self-love is the result, not the source, of
love for and by others. Because one is loved for oneself, one comes to desire
the realization of one's talents and gifts. And despite this concern for one's
own self-realization, as Thomas puts it: [16, 193-194]
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. . . neither the desire to realize one's talents nor the
desire to be treated equitably entails always preferring one's interests,
however small, to the interests of others. On the contrary, both desires are
compatible with taking considerable delight in the flourishing of others.
Indeed, the love that persons have for others is at its best when persons
realize both dimensions of self-love in their lives. For then their attachment
to their loved ones is not born of insecurities, the need for praise, and the
like. . . . I take love to be more basic than self-love because it is love that
gives rise to self-love.
Thomas does not
rely upon any religious arguments in his defense of altruism. But his developed
position is fully consistent with my conception of a mutual community of love
whose ‘realism’ is grounded in the structures of reality and, at
least in some instances, the action of God in the lives of persons and
communities. If Thomas is correct, we may need to revise our earlier concession
to ‘realism’ that our primary motivation is self-interest. But my
argument does not depend on having to give up that concession. His
understanding of the conditions of fulfillment corresponds to the Christian
claim that divine grace empowers its recipients to love one another as Christ
loves them. Scripture is replete with references to the empowering grace of
God, the renewal and transformation of hearts and minds, through which
communities of agape or koinonia are created and sustained.
Scripture simply does not talk about the ‘achievement’ of the ability
to love or about loving as a means employed by the self-interested individual
for securing happiness. Love is always a heterocentric act, primordially the
act of God toward God's creation, which empowers the beloved precisely because
the lover regards the beloved as primary. And those who have been empowered by
divine love are then (literally) ‘inspired’ to use their new-found
power to empower others. As Camenisch puts it, the gratitude that follows upon
the receipt of the gift of self will produce a community living: [2, 25]
. . . with a joyful sense of the interrelatedness of things
whereby life is enriched by the generosity of persons or powers outside of
themselves. Their lives will reflect the conviction that the goodness of life
is not grounded primarily in themselves, [but rather] in the uncoerced,
undeserved bounty of other agencies well-disposed towards them.
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And so we are back
to the realism or naïveté of Macmurray's claim that genuine
community is one in which each cares for the other and no one for oneself. The
claim can be understood as realistic if and only if mutual heterocentrism is
possible. And, as we have argued, it is possible if and only if the capacity
for it is received as a gift, not achieved solely by individual effort.
Therefore, the realism of Macmurray's claim boils down to the question: is
there a being of sufficient power, whose nature is sufficiently whole and
healthy, who has the intention to love others for their own sakes, who has the
capacity to act upon those others in order to carry out his or her intention,
and who has, in fact, so acted and still acts despite recalcitrance and
obstruction from those whom he or she is seeking to love? And the answer to
that question, clearly, lies at the heart of Biblical theology. Christians
obviously believe there is such a being -- namely the God of Abraham, Isaac,
Rachel, Jacob, and Jesus. And they believe that this God is the basis for
affirming the realism of Macmurray's claims about human love and mutual
community. The only thing at stake, therefore, is the reality of God as so
described. (The description of God's acts is not committed to the view that
God's enactment of love took place solely in the creation of the ontological
conditions necessary for community, but neither does it stand or fall on
whether or not God performs additional, specific acts of empowerment for
individuals and communities since the creation). This means that Christian
theology has a right to demand that its claims about God's relation to
community be taken with the same seriousness as one takes purely secular claims
about what constitutes human associations.
Theology's claims
about God are not to be confused with perfectionism or with the notion that sin
is gradually disappearing under the onslaught of education or the maturation of
the moral sentiments. Theology does not assume that persons, once gifted with
the capacity to begin loving others heterocentrically, will always and in every
instance act solely on the basis of agape love. Sin is real and so is
our freedom to manifest it. The claims about mutual heterocentrism rest on a
different foundation. They are based on a theo-logic of relationship which
requires only that the primary affirmation of others be possible
provided that the affirmer has already been affirmed by the ground of being
(and through that affirmation, empowered to affirm others). It may well be true
that the vast majority of human beings either refuse the divine affirmation or
choose to misuse it. The freedom to misappropriate the gift is never taken away
by the donor. But just because sin may be universal, does not make the logic of
mutual heterocentrism impossible.
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That logic rests,
finally, on a claim about God's power to act graciously in the present on
individuals. The structures within which individuals live, especially those
based on a belief in the primacy of selfishness obviously act as a barrier to
the development of alternative structures built on a different assumption about
our intentions with respect to other persons. It is at least conceivable that
alternative social structures, such as those associated with intentional
Christian communities, might mitigate some of the worst forms of selfish
behavior as well as open up possibilities for heterocentric behavior not
dreamed of in the prevailing forms of social relationships. The hegemony of
social structures based on ‘realism’ (political realpolitik)
has the effect, as Vernard Eller has said, in commenting on Reinhold Niebuhr's
view of God, of closing off to consideration "possibilities which simply are
not calculable by sinful man as being options under history's conditions of
sin" [3, 87].
In this regard,
the theo-logic of mutual heterocentrism dovetails nicely with recent
theological reflections on the meaning of ‘utopianism’. Gustavo
Guttiérez has said that utopia "necessarily means a denunciation of the
existing order" and an annunciation of "what is not yet, but will be; it is the
forecast of a different order of things, a new society" [7, 23]. And as Paul
Ricoeur has noted, the denunciation involved in utopian thinking must be
concretely allied with specific commitments to live out a new consciousness and
new relationships [7, 23]. This in turn requires a leap of imagination, a break
in traditional ways of thinking, a refusal to remain complicit with the
prevailing wisdom of what is possible in and through human relationships. The
moral consequence of thinking from the point of view of life and self as gift
will lead, as Camenisch puts it, to a "distinctive mode of life in which the
giftedness of our total existence comes to color our entire outlook" [2, 24,
23], one which is not reducible to traditional moral relationships based on
contractual obligation and duty alone. Christian hope underlies utopian
thinking, a hope for a divine kingdom in which agape will prevail.
But the logic of
mutual heterocentrism does demand two radical changes in our traditional way of
thinking: one, it requires that we accept ourselves (and the power through
which we can act heterocentrically) as gifts received, not accomplishments
achieved. Without that change, we will have no alternatives but those which
atomism and organicism offer us. We will remain stuck in the debate between
those who assert the necessity for the self to be free from any dependent or
interdependent bonds with others and those who argue for a resubmersion of the
self into a larger cooperative organic whole. Neither feminists who want to
wrest power from those who exploited them nor communitarians who want a
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viable alternative to liberal individualism can make much
progress without some notion of a specific form of community in which
interdependence does not mean either subservience or the use of others for
private ends.
But a second
radical change requires that we take seriously, and not simply metaphorically,
the claim that God can (and does) act in history and that God will continue to
act upon individuals in order to bestow the enabling gift of love. I believe
that much of liberal theology's reluctance to believe in the power of
other-affirmation and the realism of heterocentrism is ultimately due to its
failure of nerve in affirming the reality of God's gift of love in the human
heart. God has become for much of modern theology either an austere,
semi-remote, quasi-Deistic being or an ineffable ground of being to whom homage
can be due for God's creation and maintenance of the general order of the
universe or to whom feelings of mystery and awe can be directed.
But belief in
God's ability to act concretely in the world has virtually disappeared. Such
belief has, I believe, metaphysical support. But only if we can come to believe
in God's capacity and willingness to act, and God's performance of real acts of
empowerment to love, will we have discovered the truth about reality, namely
the metaphysical basis on which to defend the realism of heterocentrism and
break the stranglehold of the ‘realism’ of the primacy of
self-interest. If Christians truly believe that God is real and has acted with
power in the world, then they should be willing to introduce that belief into
the debate over community which presently remains stuck within purely secular
parameters. Until those parameters are broken to allow the divine reality to be
a living force in human life, there will be no way to sustain genuine mutual
heterocentrism and viable new ways of being in relationship.
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