(Source: Inter Minores, March 2007)
Albert Nolan, Jesus Today: A Spirituality of Radical Freedom, Orbis Books, Usa/Juta, Cape Town, 2006
Fr Albert Nolan is a
very influential South African theologian. His new book Jesus Today is bound to attract as much interest as his others. The
first 8 chapters make for stimulating reading. He touches on the hunger for
spirituality today, rightly seeing in some aspects of the New Age Movement
(NAM) a desire for the transcendent.
Chapter 2 on The crisis of Individualism is very good
especially on the great Western ideal of self fulfillment and on how Western
individualism is spreading throughout the world. He states on page 18 "If
people who have been socially liberated are not also liberated from their own
egos, their personal selfishness, they are in danger of repeating - in another
form - the very oppression and cruelty against which they have fought".
Wise words indeed for the new South Africa coming from a man who was part of
that liberation struggle.
In another chapter he
touches on the military victories and conquests of the great colonial powers
and rightly remarks on how these victories gloss over the horrific human
suffering that accompanied all these events. This is true also of "the
expansion of the mighty American Empire" as he calls the U.S.A. with its
armies spread around the globe - 745 bases in 120 countries! (p.31) For the
Empire the highest priority at all times is 'American interests'. (p.32)
The next 3 chapters
on Jesus' spirituality contain interesting points.' He believes, as he states
earlier. "much that is written about spirituality tends to marginalize
Jesus or even reject him as irrelevant" (p.xviii). There are some great
insights into Jesus here, e.g. Jesus re ‘hating’ family, table fellowship
(p.58), Jesus as victim not Victor (p.60). On Jesus the action man he states
that 'what we do not always notice is that behind, and in support of, all these
activities was a life of constant prayer, of profound contemplation '. (p.67)
Those passionate for
justice and freedom often thought that resorting to prayer and mysticism as
escapist individualism (p.72). But all the world's great geniuses and truly
wise men and women benefited from lengthy periods of silence. (p.93)
But when we come to
chapter 9 we seem to enter another world – the terminology seems to me to be
unfamiliar - almost New Age. The chapter begins with a quote from the Gnostic
Gospel of Thomas edited by Elaine Pagels. This obviously is not canonical but
Fr Nolan takes it seriously and refers to its 'powerful statement ' on page 101
and refers to it again on page 121. He seems to relativise the Canonical
gospels and canonize the Gnostic ones (cf. p.199. notes 6 & 12). For
example re Jesus' words from the cross
‘Father, forgive them ', he says, "even if Jesus did not actually utter
these words" and further down he says that "the judgement stories in
the gospels...are not to be taken literally" and "this kind of
punishment was probably part of the moralizing editing of the gospel writers.
Taken literally, these verses would contradict ail that Jesus ever said about
God's love”. Or would they?
Commenting on Sirach
16:12-15. Theo Kniefel rightly says that 'God's tender love cannot be
understood apart from [his] terrible wrath." Is God's terrible judgement
only a pedagogical metaphor?' "ls God's love then also a metaphor?"
he asks. (Grace & Truth 1980/2, p.70)
Niebuhr believed that
this dismissing of God's wrath was a mark of liberalism. He once famously described
the liberal's God as a "God without wrath, who brings men without sin into
a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a
Cross"!
As Catholics we can't
pick and choose our New Testament Texts re their canonicity or lack of it.
Albert Nolan's Dominican confrere, Edward Schlllebeeck, has confessed his
frustration with New Testament
commentators in
finding not a single text in the New Testament on which all theologians
completely agreed.
As regards Niebuhr's
'men without sin '. Fr Nolan believes that the world's problems seem to be due,
not to sin, but to 'the ego and all its works' (p.102). As in N.A.M. literature
sin is never mentioned - or hardly ever. Now since Fr Nolan praises the
Enneagram, it is quite obvious that he himself is greatly influenced by this
N.A.M. product, born and bred in the U.S.A.
As a master of
suspicion, Fr Nolan is so intent on watching the right fist of American
imperialism that he forgets its left jab: American spirituality imperialism
especially that emanating from California's Esalen Institute where the Enneagram
was first honed. Caridnal Daneels believed that the N.A.M. originated in
California". Californication of the world? Even though the Church warns
about the danger of the Enneagram. Fr Nolan obviously disagrees. The Jesuit
professor at Loyola University, Mitch Pacwa, says the Enneagram 'is theological
nonsense suffused with Gnostic ideas. For instance. the nine points of the
Enneagrarn are called the 'nine faces of God ' which become nine demons turned
upside down"! Secondly he says that it is a "psychological system
that hasn't been tested by professional psychologists, so it is irresponsible
to pass it off as true". (Southern Cross. 30/8/92, p.lO). Whatever it is,
it certainly is not Biblical spirituality.
Two key figures in
the spread of the Enneagram are George Gurdjieff and Oscar lchazo, both of whom
received guidance from the spirit entity the ‘Green Qu'tub’. lchazo also
received instructions from the spirit entity called Megatron, the prince of the
archangels'. With lchazo Fr Nolan seems to believe that the ego is the satan in
one's life. (p.69). Perhaps Hans Kong's critique of Eugene Drewerman could also
apply to Fr Nolan - he attempts to commandeer the gospel texts and persons for
psychology, reducing matters to mere esoteric -- symbolic self-discovery
(TABLET 5/6/93)
But l-would like to
return to Fr Nolan's chapter on Science
after Einstein. He favourably quotes the spiritual Marist Fritjof Capra. Spiritualist
monism says that the only thing that exists is one impersonal spirit. It makes
the absolute the source of evil renounces all basis for ethics and social
action and makes science impossible because it denies the reality of the world
(Cf: R. Varghese. The Wonder of the
World: A journey from modern Science to the mind of God, Fyr Publishing,
AZ. USA, p.89)
The atheist scientist
Joseph Levin of M,I.T. says of spiritual monism: “This view doesn't deny simply
our ability to know the truth about the world but the very existence of the
world. And it's by no means just a philosophy whose time has come and gone.
It's back in circulation, in a scientific context no less, in such popular
books as Fritjof Capra's The Tao of
physics (Varghese, 345)
Varghese goes on to
quote Frederick Copleston SJ, who shows that the idea of the unity of the world
[so stressed by Fr Nolan] really springs from Eastern thought and not
mysticism, as Capra suggests (p.358). Capra's books are published by the
leading New Age publisher Shambala and two of them are listed as NAM books by
the Vatican's New Age: A Christian Reflection,
but Fr Nolan would perhaps disagree. It seems strange that the very socially minded Fr Nolan should
espouse such a fuga mundi attitude as
Capra’s.
This points to a
worrying feature of the whole book - its ecclesiology or lack of it. The
Church, its leaders, sacraments etc. seem of no relevance to the world at all -
there is no Catholic Church take on the world's problems or solutions. She
seems irrelevant. Though he quotes Teilhard de Chardin favourably, he ignores
his famous remark that showed him a loyal son of the Church. Teilhard's friend
wanted Christ without the Church, but answered Teilhard "without the
Church, Christ evaporates, or crumbles or disappears!!” So a spirituality
without the Church seems a truncated one.
The virtual omission
of the Church and its spiritual leaders seems a bit strange when so many
elements in society acknowledge the great influence the Church plays in the
modern world. Though Fr Nolan has devoted significant space to the body in his
book, he ignores or is ignorant of the tremendous insight of Pope John Paul's
'theology of the body' in this regard. The book issued by the Churches together
in Britain and Ireland acknowledge their great indebtedness to Catholic social
teaching from Leo Xlll to John Paul ll (Catholic Herald 4/3/05).
This is not pie in
the sky doctrine but can put steak on the plate as the highly successful
Catholic Mondragon Coop in Spain shows. The normally anti Catholic Guardian newspaper hailed it as "an
unparalleled social and economic experiment which has transformed the region.
It provides one of the most exciting examples of what can be done when the
classic conflict of capitalist society, between capital and labour, has been
superseded”. (The Guardian 28/1
0/77).
Fr Nolan says that
the youth today are no longer interested in doctrines and dogmas. But the
unprecedented youth gatherings initiated by John Paul ll got fair amount of
doctrine and dogma and they kept coming back again and again for more.
Generalisation? Of all this Fr Nolan seems unaware.
Unaware too of the
South African Ronald Segal's Islam's
Black Slaves, outlining Islam's slavery record in Africa and elsewhere and
genocide in India “unparalleled in history...more extensive than the slaughter
of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and
Portuguese” (S.
Trifkovic, The Sword and the Prophet, p.113) Fr
Nolan seems unaware of this too in Chapter 3 of his book
“Unlearn Catholicism
and you become Protestant, Unitarian, Deist, Pantheist, Skeptic. In a dreadful
but infallible succession, only not infallible”.
(Newman)
