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A Phenomenology of Jesus Forsaken

It is not difficult to find reasons to justify a phenomenological approach to the events narrated in the Gospels. The Greek etymology of the word phenomenon – phainomenon: “that which appears or is seen” already suggests that phenomenology is concerned with how things show themselves to us through their appearance, through their disclosure. And what are the Gospels if not a revealing, an uncovering of “the mystery hidden for ages and generations” (Col. 1,26) and now made manifest in the coming of Jesus into the world? The Gospels are filled with encounters between Jesus manifesting himself and those to whom he manifests himself: The Samaritan woman at the well, Peter, James and John at the Transfiguration, Jesus and his disciples at Caesarea Philippi, the centurion at the foot of the cross, Mary Magdalene at the tomb. Even the concrete actions narrated in the miracles function as events that reveal one or other aspect of the person of Jesus. When Jesus encounters the man who had an unclean spirit narrated in chapter four of Luke’s Gospel, his identity is first revealed by the demon: “I know who you are – the Holy One of God!” (Lk, 4,34). When the demon is cast out, the crowd are “amazed” at what has been manifested before their eyes: “What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out” (Lk, 4,36). At the heart of the Gospel message is the revealing of the relationship between Jesus and the Father: “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10,30), as well as the action of the Spirit: “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me” (Jn. 15,26). And in the gospel of Luke we read:

“At that very moment he rejoiced (in) the holy Spirit and said, ‘I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him'” (Lk. 10: 21-22).

The more we look at the Gospels from the perspective of them being shot through with episodes of something being revealed, the more we can appreciate just how this forms not just a major theme of the Gospels, but perhaps the theme of the Gospels. While there can be a theology of what has been revealed expressed in affirmations such as, “the Son is consubstantial with the Father”, phenomenology can give us a privileged access to the act of revealing itself. Not only, but it can help us to avoid the danger of reducing the effort to engage intellectually with the Gospels to either the commonly accepted form of scriptural exegesis or a propositional form of theology. This is not at all to see phenomenology in competition with exegesis or theology, but simply to draw attention to the particular type of access to the Gospels which can be attained through the phenomenological method.

The relationship between phenomenology and theology can be clarified by examining a text of St. Augustine from his De Trinitate. Here is the text:

“They who have said that our Lord Jesus Christ is not God, or not very God, or not with the Father the One and only God, or not truly immortal because changeable, are proved wrong by the most plain and unanimous voice of divine testimonies; as, for instance, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ For it is plain that we are to take the Word of God to be the only Son of God, of whom it is afterwards said, ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,’ on account of that birth of His incarnation, which was wrought in time of the Virgin. But herein is declared, not only that He is God, but also that He is of the same substance with the Father; because, after saying, ‘And the Word was God,’ it is said also, ‘The same was in the beginning with God: all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made.’ Not simply ‘all things;’ but only all things that were made, that is; the whole creature. From which it appears clearly, that He Himself was not made, by whom all things were made. And if He was not made, then He is not a creature; but if He is not a creature, then He is of the same substance with the Father. For all substance that is not God is creature; and all that is not creature is God. And if the Son is not of the same substance with the Father, then He is a substance that was made: and if He is a substance that was made, then all things were not made by Him; but ‘all things were made by Him,’ therefore He is of one and the same substance with the Father. And so He is not only God, but also very God. And the same John most expressly affirms this in his epistle: ‘For we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding, that we may know the true God, and that we may be in His true Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.” (Bk 1,9).

The starting point of Augustine’s reasoning is the “voice of divine testimonies.” That is exactly what John’s Gospel is: a testimony, a witnessing to what has been seen and what has been heard. Jesus’ disciples did not encounter a theological argument, they encountered a person who manifested himself through his words, his deeds, and especially through his death and resurrection. In all of this some saw the figure of a rabble rouser, a blasphemer, a false prophet, a transgressor of the law. But others saw something else: the Samaritan woman at the well, the blind Bartimaeus, the Canaanite woman,  the centurion beneath the cross, Peter at Caesarea Philippi who declares: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16,16). In particular, the Gospel of John gives the testimony of Jesus himself concerning his relationship with the Father: “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10,30). Augustine’s theological reasoning is founded on his faith in these “divine testimonies.” His whole aim in writing the De Trinitate is to refute the arguments of those who presume to reason about divine things without faith in the testimonies of those who are witnesses to those divine things. He writes:

“The following dissertation concerning the Trinity, as the reader ought to be informed, has been written in order to guard against the sophistries of those who disdain to begin with faith, and are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason. Now one class of such men endeavour to transfer to things incorporeal and spiritual the ideas they have formed, whether through experience of the bodily senses, or by natural human wit and diligent quickness, or by the aid of art, from things corporeal; so as to seek to measure and conceive of the former by the latter. Others, again, frame whatever sentiments they may have concerning God according to the nature or affections of the human mind; and through this error they govern their discourse, in disputing concerning God, by distorted and fallacious rules. While yet a third class strive indeed to transcend the whole creation, which doubtless is changeable, in order to raise their thought to the unchangeable substance, which is God; but being weighed down by the burden of mortality, while they both would seem to know what they do not, and cannot know what they would, preclude themselves from entering the very path of understanding, by an over-bold affirmation of their own presumptuous judgments; choosing rather not to correct their own opinion when it is perverse, than to change that which they have once defended.” (Bk. 1,1)

It is on the basis of his faith in the “divine testimonies” that he begins to use rational arguments –  for example, the principle of non-contradiction (“if He is not a creature, then He is of the same substance with the Father”) –  to try to explain that in which he already believes. There are clearly two parts in Augustine’s method which form a unity but which are also distinct: His faith in the “divine testimonies” that are given in sacred scripture, and his use of the powers of reason to attempt to  clarify the mystery of the relationship between the Father and the Son which he has encountered in the “divine testimonies.”  Now, a testimony is giving witness to a reality which has been encountered. In a court of law a witness is asked: “What did you see, what did you hear?”. A witness is someone who was present at an event where something happened, where something manifested itself in the presence of the witness. The witness is not asked to give an interpretation of what happened, but simply to recount what actually happened. This is precisely where we enter the terrain of phenomenology. It’s the method that comes into play when there is an encounter between a phenomenon which manifests itself and a person who gives witness to what has been manifested. Jesus’ cry on the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Mk. 15,34; Mt. 27,46) was a manifestation, an event to which there were witnesses. It is for this reason that it lends itself to be explored through the method of phenomenology.

Phenomenology and Jean Luc Marion

To make use of the method of  phenomenology means first of all to situate oneself within a tradition. In the wider sense that means taking account of the Western philosophical tradition stretching back before Aristotle and Plato to the Pre-Socratics. Yet, phenomenology as it is currently understood really begins with Edmund Husserl and from there it was taken up by thinkers like Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Marion, to name but a few. However, I will not attempt to present the particular direction phenomenology has taken in such key figures within the tradition as this falls beyond the scope of this essay.[1] But, I will work within the particular line of thought that is to be found in the French phenomenologist, Jean Luc Marion. In this way, to a certain extent, I am in fact taking account of key developments in phenomenological method since Marion’s thought has emerged through a constant conversation with thinkers like Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and even as far back as Descartes and Augustine.

In his understanding and application of phenomenology Jean Luc Marion stays faithful to its originating concepts and well as breaking new ground. He constantly echoes Husserl’s appeal: “back to the things themselves”[2], as well as the practice of the “epoché” or “bracketing” of the natural everyday subject-object relationship. He is in agreement with Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology as “to let that-which-shows-itself-be-seen-from-itself-in the very way in which it shows-itself-from itself”.[3] Marion puts in this way: “To show implies letting appearances appear in such a way that they accomplish their own apparition, so as to be received exactly as they give themselves.”[4]

However, he argues that Husserl, Heidegger and others within the tradition were not radical enough in allowing reality to manifest itself on its own terms.[5] For Marion, this requires a complete abdication of the ego in its role of constituting the world. This affirmation is linked to his view that the fundamental reality of everything that exists is not to be spoken of in terms of  “objects” or “entities,” or not even in terms of Being (as Heidegger conceives Being) but in “givenness.” If the subsistent ground of reality is conceived as “givenness” then our most basic relationship with reality must be one of “receiving.” Just as a glass must be empty to receive water, so the subject must be empty to receive reality.[6] Writing from within the phenomenological tradition, and in obvious agreement with Marion, Klaus Hemmerle affirms:

“If the thing which shows itself were for thinking only an example and an element of its self-relation, then the rising up [Aufgang in the original German, or ‘dawning’] of the thing would be clearly estranged from itself. Only when it has the right to show itself from itself does it show itself in a pure way. Thought which is luminous for itself knows, instead, that it is  ‘nothing more’ than the dawning of its object, consuming itself as ‘simple’ thinking again and again in ‘pure’ thinking; that it has to rid itself of what it adds to the object: wanting itself and wanting only the thing itself is the same for thinking; however it is the same precisely through the pure precedence that it gives to the thing before itself. In itself, thinking has no right to be anything more than the ‘dawning’ of its object; [thinking] is this: to let its object rise from itself.”[7]

In order to find the degree of radicality required for an emptying of the self that is open to the givenness of reality, Marion returns to Augustine’s phenomenology of self that is found in his Confessions. It is from the standpoint of Augustine that he engages in the following critique of the phenomenological tradition:

“The ego is not itself therefore by itself – neither by self-apprehension in self-consciousness (Descartes, at least in the common interpretation) nor by a performative (Descartes, in a less commonly accepted reading), nor by apperception (Kant), nor even by autoaffection (Henry) or anticipatory resoluteness (Heidegger). The ego does not even accede to itself for an other (Levinas) or as another (Ricoeur); rather, it becomes itself only by an other – in other words by a gift; for everything happens, without exception, as and by a gift: “But all these things are gifts of God to me. For I did not give them to myself” (Confessions I, 20, 31, 13, 328).”[8]

In other words, if givenness is the subsistent ground of everything then the self must be prepared to accept itself as also being given. At this point phenomenology cannot avoid the challenge of incorporating within itself a form of spiritual discipline requiring the renunciation of the autonomous ego. Marion writes:

“And if the first of the gifts consists in the very possibility of receiving one, then it is necessary that the self receives itself as a gift. But, in this case, the ego discovers itself received like one of its other gifts, contemporaneous with, not anterior to, its other gifts, not preceding them, still less conditioning them. Here we must unmask the willed illusion that pretends there must already be a preceding ego to receive the gifts and that, therefore, it itself does not fall under the jurisdiction of the gift nor happen itself as a gift as given as the others, because it would render them possible. Just the contrary must be acknowledged: since it received each thing as a gift, it is necessary that the ego itself come from a second-order gift, or rather that it receive itself first and on the most basic level, before the other gifts or exactly by accompanying them.”[9]

The fundamental terrain of phenomenology is the relationship between reality in its givenness and the subject in his/her capacity to receive what is being given. Every giving is also a revealing of what is being given. In his book Being Given, Marion affirms, “What shows itself first gives itself – this is my one and only theme”.[10] In giving itself, the rose reveals its beauty, (otherwise how could we receive it and appreciate it?). In other words, reality is “gifted” to us. This receiving what has been revealed characterizes our fundamental relationship with everything. That is why we can be surprised, delighted, amazed, left speechless, overwhelmed by what we encounter; but also shocked, disturbed, horrified. In presenting itself to us, reality takes the initiative. In listening to a piece of music we react to what we have heard; we do not hear what we have reacted to. But we can also close ourselves off to what is being given to us. Instead of receiving what reality is offering to us, we may want to construct the reality that suits us, at least on those occasions where what reality reveals stands in judgment over our thoughts, our attitudes, our actions. An essential element of the phenomenological method consists in removing any obstacles (prejudices, objectivizing reality, ideological thinking, scientism, etc.) which would prevent things in the world from manifesting themselves as they are. Marion writes: “The method does not so much provoke the apparition of what manifests itself as it clears away the obstacles that encircle it and would hide it.”[11]

Marion continually underlines the radicality of the abnegation on the part of the subject, what he calls its “terrifying simplicity”, that the method requires. He uses the analogy of the director who prepares everything for the drama to take place but then steps back to allow the performance to self-direct itself. He writes, the method “takes the initiative to give up the initiative”[12]. He terms it a challenging “apprenticeship” where “grasping” must be renounced instead of receiving. “But, to receive, in philosophy as elsewhere – what could be more arduous?”[13]

The Saturated Phenomenon

Our normal encounter with things in the world consists in satisfying ourselves that we can give a name to what we are perceiving. There is a correspondence, an adaequatio, between the object as seen and the judgement about what is seen. There is an objective tree out there and I subjectively identify it as a tree.[14] When there is this type of correspondence between the phenomenon as it shows itself to me and the concept or signification I assign to the phenomenon, Marion calls it a “common-law” phenomenon. However, there are phenomena which flood my capacity to assign a concept, or pin them down with a definitive judgement. He gives the example of a painting which always has more to give me than I can fit into a concept of what I am seeing. Or, when a person looks at me, I cannot objectivise the look of the other because it is not me looking at the other, it is the other looking at me. Marion calls these phenomena “saturated” phenomena. By postulating the saturated phenomenon Marion opens up the possibility of going beyond the limit of the adequation between the object in reality and the judgement on the part of the subject. And it is on the side of the phenomenon that the limit is exceeded. It is as if what is given is more than we can handle. By postulating the saturated phenomenon he provides an opening for phenomenology to be applied to the data of Revelation. As already note, the Gospels are full of episodes when Jesus manifests himself in ways that are more or less hidden. When he reveals himself as one who can forgive sins, this is too much for the Pharisees.  At the same time Marion points out that phenomenology is not to be confused with the act of faith of the believer for whom the content of revelation is true.[15] What phenomenology brings to the study of revelation is a method which allows what is being revealed to show itself as it is in itself. Marion insists on the phenomenality of our world. We encounter reality as it gives itself to us, as it is gifted to us. It is in this sense that we can speak of the phenomenality of Christ whom we encounter in his giving himself to us in the form of the paradox of the invisible being made visible. Marion writes:

“Revelation, if it can ever be conceived, arises from the question of phenomenality much more than from the question of beings and their being (existence), and certainly infinitely more than from the question of a knowledge of objects (demonstration). What do we see, what can one ever see, of the invisible? That is the question.”[16]

Phenomenology and Theology

Marion has a clear sense of the need to be clear about the difference between phenomenology and theology. He writes:

“But phenomenology, which owes it to phenomenality to go this far [to allow for a phenomenology of Revelation], does not go beyond and should never pretend to decide the fact of Revelation, its historicity, its actuality, or its meaning . It should not do so, not only out of concern for distinguishing the sciences and delimiting their respective regions, but first of all, because it does not have the means to do so. The fact (if there is one) of Revelation exceeds the scope of all science, including that of phenomenology . . . Even if it had the desire to do so (and of course this would never be the case) phenomenology would not have the power to turn into theology.”[17]

In the series of Gifford Lectures which he gave in 2014 on the theme “Givenness and Revelation,” Marion devoted one of his lectures to “”an attempt at a phenomenal re-appropriation of Revelation.”[18] He does so in the context of the long and well-established tradition of theology being considered as the suitable discipline for the study of sacred scripture (of course, not excluding Biblical exegesis). In making the case for a phenomenological approach to Revelation he points to a new understanding of Revelation which is presented in the document Dei Verbum of the II Vatican Council. He suggests that this new understanding requires a putting into question of the suitability of the application of a particular type of theology to the study of Revelation. The particular type of theology that he has in mind is the one which finds its clearest expression in Francisco Suárez where Revelation is forced to become the object of a science and where that science is governed by the principles of non-contradiction and reasoned argument. Commenting on the position of Suárez, Marion notes:

“The hold of its interpretation as a science over the concept of revelation leads not only to the abstraction of the revealed statement as a propositio sufficiens independent of the adhesion of faith; it also leads to such an approximation or revelation, henceforth informative, to natural knowledge by pure reason, precisely under the relation of their common scientific character, that the dependence is, or could be, reversed between them.”[19]

Marion substantiates his point by quoting from the prologue to the Disputationes Metaphysicae in which Suárez affirms:

“In this way, these metaphysical principals and truths (haec principia et veritates metaphysicae) form a whole so coherent (cohaerent) with the theological conclusions and demonstrations that to do away with the science and the perfect knowledge of the former necessarily also involves the complete ruin of the science of the latter.”[20]

The question at issue is what sort of a theology is required which allows for revelation to express itself on its own terms. Is the very notion of theology as a “science” incompatible with the fact that in Christian revelation divine realities which are beyond our natural comprehension are being revealed? Hegel’s solution is to elevate human reason to the point where it is capable of embracing the infinite through absolute knowledge, up until, as Marion affirms, “it collapses beneath its own weight.”[21] The crucial question to be answered according to Marion is the following: “When reason unconceals the truth (alētheia), does it proceed according to the same procedures and the same operations as revelation (apokalysis) when it uncovers what it gives to be known?”[22]

The question is particularly crucial for Marion because on its answer rests the decision about whether or not there is a legitimate place for engaging in a phenomenology of revelation. He argues his case by inserting his thinking in a tradition which though marginal is not without solid support. It is the tradition which reverses the priority between reason and the will, as for example in William of Saint-Thierry who states: “. . . for it is not so much the reason that draws the will [toward the evidence], as the will that draws the reason toward faith.”[23]

Pascal, referring to St Augustine writes:

“Hence, instead of speaking about human matters that they have to be known before they can be loved, which has become a proverb, the saints, speaking of divine matters, say that you have to love them in order to know them, and that you enter into truth only by charity, which they have made into one of their most useful pronouncement.”[24]

Klaus Hemmerle expresses the point in concise terms:

“. . . the dialogue of truth and love does not allow them to be torn apart, otherwise the truth is not truth and love is not love. This one being in the other [truth and love] is already the case in an elementary and fundamentally ontological sense; it is the condition of truth and naturally, also the contrary, it is the condition of love.”[25]

Following Augustine’s line of thought expressed in his commentaries on the Gospel of John, Marion presents the following dynamic of revelation and the response to revelation: charity is poured into the heart through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5,5); through charity we are drawn by the Father to Christ in his manifestation of the Father in himself. Love is in the revealing and love is in the response to the revealing. But is there any room for reason in this dynamic? Yes, if we take full account of the revelation in the Gospel of John that, “in the beginning was the Logos” (Jn 1,1). This Logos is not without logic, but it is a logic that is in harmony with love. It is a logic which goes the extra mile, which turns the other cheek. It is also a Logos which manifests itself, uncovers itself and therefore phenomenalizes itself, not as a simple object (which ordinary human reason can handle) but in the form of a man, and not just any man but a divine man. It is precisely here that phenomenology finds its opening to revelation. Whereas metaphysics can only intend objects which are within the boundaries of what human reason can know, phenomenology has no other aim than to allow a phenomenon to show itself, “from itself and in itself, . . . and in as much as it gives itself in person from itself.”[26] This is exactly what Christ did while he was among us, but particularly so after he has risen from the dead, for it is in the fullness of giving himself through his self-emptying on the cross that he bursts forth and manifests himself as the Risen Lord. It is precisely in its phenomenality that we speak of the Resurrection as an “event” and not as an object. That is also why the first reaction of those who encounter the risen Lord is not to give a theological account but to bear witness to what they have seen and heard. Marion points out that whenever we try to speak about something we have seen but which lacks every signification that would make it conceivable then:

“. . . we will talk about it, using endless hermeneutics that are ever in need of correction or completion, and without saying anything – or more precisely without significations adequate to the excess of the given over what we might understand of it, or to the excess of the given over what we can organize as a visible that shows itself. This situation of the excess of the given in itself, over the showable as visible for us, which is already banal in common experience, is verified impeccably and paradigmatically in front of the phenomenon of the manifestation of Christ.”[27]

This is precisely why only the witness is truly authorized to speak about what Christ reveals of himself. The witness reports not what she has understood through human reasoning but what has been revealed to her, what she has seen and heard. Klaus Hemmerle speaks about the witness in similar terms:

“A person becomes a witness, not through her own will but through the will of the one who is greater than her. In becoming a witness the person therefore renounces herself and this is the other side of the same reality: it’s a matter of something which is greater than her, that exceeds immeasurably her existence. Witnessing is not the presence of the witness, but the presence of what is being witnessed to, and this presence of what is being witnessed to, however, comes about precisely with and through the “I-Self” of the person.”[28]

However, when it comes to witnessing to what Christ reveals, it is not simply a matter of a verbal report of what has been physically seen or heard. The bystanders at the scene of the crucifixion reported that they heard Jesus calling on Elijah. But that is not what Marion means by witnessing. When it comes to Christ, the authentic witness paradoxically sees the invisible manifested in the visible. In the crucified figure on the cross the centurion sees the Son of God. The Samaritan woman at the well saw in Jesus someone who could possibly be the Messiah. She bore witness to what she had seen and heard, and on her word the Samaritans invited Jesus to come and stay with them. They too saw the invisible in the visible, one who was “truly the saviour of the world” (Jn. 4,42).

Marion introduces a Trinitarian dimension to giving witness to what has been revealed in the encounter with Christ. In the most profound aspect of his phenomenality Christ is always revealed in his relationship with the Father. To see Christ is to see the Father. And it is precisely the role of the Spirit which allows the one to whom Christ has manifested himself to see this “I and the Father are one”. Marion writes:

“For in fact, the question is not only that of seeing Jesus, but that of looking upon his face as that of Christ, or recognizing in that face the depths of the Son – that is to say, of knowing in it, by viewing it through a certain angle, the icon of the invisible Father . . .”[29]

And it is the Spirit who places within the viewer the correct angle from which to see the Father in the Son. Marion explains:

“Indeed, the Spirit positions the human gaze at the exact place and point of view where the visible face of Christ (Jesus as Son) can at once, with a sudden and perfect precision be uncovered as the very axis where the gaze of the Father on the Son and the Son at the Father pass . . .”[30]

 A Phenomenology of Jesus Forsaken

Applying the method of phenomenology to Jesus’ cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, following the line of Marion, means reducing our perception of the event to that form of “nothingness” which allows Jesus to reveal himself in his forsakenness as he is in himself. If knowledge is a form of possession, or even an adequation between the knowing and the known, then phenomenology asks us not to “know” Jesus forsaken in this sense because that would mean having some hold on him which restricts his capacity for manifesting himself as he is in himself independently of our knowing. Phenomenology places us in the attitude of that form of receiving which allows a phenomenon to manifest itself as it is in itself. However, this is not to be understood as a form of “tabula rasa” of empiricism. The receiving we are talking about is an “active” receiving based on a conscious decision to be open to receiving. It is a “welcoming” receiving which means in essence that it is that form of loving which opens itself to the gift that is being given in the manifestation of the other. If we adhere to this attitude of not imposing our own interpretation of what is being revealed then it must be Jesus himself who tells us what he is revealing. In other words, no one can say what is being revealed when Jesus cries out on the cross, accept the one to whom it has been granted to know what is being revealed. It’s at this point that the role of the witness becomes crucial. When it comes to revelation, only the witness is qualified to speak, because the definition of the witness to revelation is precisely that of one who has seen because he or she has been granted the grace to see what others are not able to see.[31] This is exactly what happened with the disciples at Emmaus who were granted the grace to recognize Jesus after having receiving the blessed bread ( cf. Lk. 24:30-31).

So, who are the witnesses of Jesus’s cry of abandonment on the cross? For no one else can speak with authority[32]. If we search the Gospels and look for one who saw what no one else could see, and who shows signs of having received a grace to see what was being revealed as Jesus died on the cross we can only point to the centurion: “When the centurion who stood facing him saw how he breathed his last he said, “‘ruly this man was the Son of God!’” (Mk, 15,39).

However, it is not clear from the text whether in his witnessing the centurion is specifically referring to Jesus in his cry of abandonment, or to the whole sequence of his passion and death. If we look to the other Gospels and the New Testament letters we find no direct witnessing, (that is, one who has been given the grace to see what is being revealed) of Jesus’ cry. There is no doubt that Paul was given a special grace to see in Christ crucified one who had been made “sin,” (2 Cor: 5,21). But he says nothing that would indicate that  this was revealed to him precisely in the figure of the forsaken Jesus.

We do not have to restrict ourselves to the New Testament, even though revelation in terms of its canonical authority concludes there. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit Jesus has continued to “reveal” himself in the hearts of men and women down through the centuries.[33] It’s at this point that we need a particular sensitivity to the distinction between witnessing and theology. Take, for example, the following text of St. Thomas Aquinas:

“Such forsaking is not to be referred to the dissolving of the personal union, but to this, that God the Father gave Him up to the Passion: hence there ‘to forsake’ means simply not to protect from persecutors. or else He says there that He is forsaken, with reference to the prayer He had made: ‘Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass away from Me,’ as Augustine explains it” (De Gratia Novi Test.). (ST, III, 50, 2).

Is this a witnessing in the phenomenological sense or is it a theological statement? It seems clearly to be placed within the domain of theology. This does not mean that Jesus did not reveal himself in his forsakenness to St. Thomas or that he did not fully open himself to receive that revelation. It is just that in this text he is making a theological statement and not giving witness to what he has been manifested to him. The same point can be illustrated by examining a text which comes from Moltmann where he speaks of:

” . . . the deadly aspect of the event between the Father who forsakes and the Son who is forsaken, and conversely the living aspect of the event between the Father who loves and the Son who loves. The Son suffers in his love being forsaken by the Father as he dies. The Father suffers in his love the grief of the death of the Son. In that case, whatever proceeds from the event between the Father and the Son must be understood as the spirit of the surrender of the Father and the Son, as the spirit which creates love for forsaken men, as the spirit which brings the dead alive.”[34]

Once again, we are in the domain of a theological statement and not a testimony to an event in the phenomenological sense. Where can we find such testimonies? Remember, we are looking for evidence of the articulation of an encounter with the forsaken Jesus in a form in which nothing has been added to how he manifested himself. It may seem that we might find something of this in the writings of the mystics who are in direct contact with God without any mediating theological reasoning. Thus, St.Thérèse of Lisieux writes:

“[God] allowed my soul to be overwhelmed with darkness, and the thought of Heaven, which had consoled me from my earliest childhood, now became a subject of conflict and torture. This trial did not last merely for days or weeks; I have been suffering for months, and I still await deliverance. I wish I could express what I feel, but it is beyond me. One must have passed through this dark tunnel to understand its blackness.”[35]

What we have here is an articulation of Thérèse’s experience which is surely linked to her contemplation of the crucified and forsaken Jesus. However, it is not a description of Jesus forsaken in himself as he manifested himself to her.

Poetry may come close to what we are looking for as it is a genre which allows for the direct expression of an inner vision or inspiration bypassing any imposition of concepts or significations with their potential for interfering with the “in-itself” of what has been experienced. We can see something of this in a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning  which was written while contemplating the grave of William Cowper whom she greatly admired. When considering the redemptive grace at work in Cowper’s life, she reflects on how the forsaken Jesus cried out in his abandonment so as to take away the desolation of all the world:

 

Deserted! Who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested,                   

Upon the Victim’s hidden face no love was manifested?        

What frantic hands outstretched have e’er the atoning drops averted?        

What tears have washed them from the soul, that one should be deserted?           

Deserted! God could separate from His own essence rather;

And Adam’s sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father:                 

Yea, once, Immanuel’s orphaned cry His universe hath shaken—   

It went up single, echoless, “My God, I am forsaken!” 

 

It went up from the Holy’s lips amid His lost creation,  

That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation!         

That earth’s worst phrenzies, marring hope, should mar not hope’s fruition,                  

And I, on Cowper’s grave, should see his rapture in a vision. [36]

 

While there are obvious theological concepts underlying some of the thoughts, the power of the poetic expression takes precedence in suggesting that the poet has through her reading of scripture had a real encounter with Jesus forsaken who manifested himself to her in his echoless cry of “My God, I am forsaken!” Barrett Browning has removed herself from the scene so as to allow Jesus forsaken to be almost visibly present before our eyes crying out his utter desolation as the fatherless orphan whose universe has been shaken.

A Witness of Our Times

Chiara Lubich[37] who passed away in 2008 left behind her a remarkable set of writings centered on her encounter with Jesus forsaken. The writings have many of the hallmarks of giving witness to this encounter in a phenomenological sense. Her first encounter can be described as a definite “event”: it occurred at a particular time and place; it was unforeseen; there is a “before” and an “after” the event. It wasn’t “constructed” by Chiara, it “happened” to her. Dori Zamboni, a companion of Chiara Lubich, narrates the following episode which took place on 24th January 1944. Dori was sick and a priest had come to her house to give her communion. Chiara  was with her at the time. She continues:

“During my thanksgiving after communion, the priest asked Chiara when, in her opinion, Jesus suffered most during the passion. She replied that she had always heard that it was the agony he had suffered in the garden of Gethsemane. But the priest said, I believe instead that it was his suffering on the cross when he cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

As soon as the priest had left, having heard Chiara’s words I turned to her, sure she would give me an explanation. Instead she said, if Jesus’ greatest suffering was when he was forsaken by his Father, we will choose him like this as our Ideal and will follow him in this way.[38]

What is interesting here is that we can begin our study of Chiara’s witnessing with an account which in itself is phenomenological. Zamboni is an excellent witness of what she saw and heard without adding anything of her own interpretation. Not only, but the priest himself does not communicate a concept but presents to Chiara what can be described as an icon, the face of the forsaken Jesus at the apex of his suffering.

Here is an account which Chiara herself gives of the encounter:

“I remember having heard a priest speak of the Passion of Jesus and say that perhaps Jesus suffered more when he had cried out ‘My God, why have you forsaken me’ and I remember not having reasoned so much, but to have returned to my companions and to have told them: ‘If it is true that Jesus suffered most in that pain then we will love him like this’: It was a push of His Grace.”

“And my companions and I welcomed it as we could. Since that day, there has been a change in our soul and also in the way we see the world. All the sufferings of life have taken on a particular hue, and all have taken on a single face: the face of our Crucified and Forsaken Love, of Jesus crying: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.'”[39]

She states that she hadn’t reasoned so much about what the encounter, but immediately went back to her companions to give witness to what she had seen in “the face of our Crucified and Forsaken Love.” It is precisely this witnessing which gives authenticity to her encounter in its phenomenality. On the 30th of January 1944, just six days after the encounter with Jesus forsaken, in a letter to her younger sister she writes:

“Above all, take instruction from only one book – and if only you would understand me as I wish you would – take instruction from the crucified Jesus who was left abandoned by all and cried out: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Oh if only that divine face twisted in pain, those eyes all bloodshot but gazing at you with such kindness, forgetting our sins which reduced Him to such conditions, were always in front of your eyes . . .”[40]

Chiara’s relationship with Jesus forsaken remains within the horizon of phenomenality. He is not an abstract idea, he is the one suffering on the cross. She encourages her sister to fix her eyes on Jesus’ bloodshot eyes as he gazes at her with kindness and mercy. Chiara finds herself at the foot of the cross listening to Jesus as he tells her the depths of suffering contained in his abandonment. In a letter of Christmas 1944 to a friend she writes:

“He’s infused a great Passion within my heart: Jesus Crucified and Abandoned! From high on the cross he says to me: ‘. . . I let all that I was fade away . . . all of it! I’m no longer beautiful; no longer strong; I have no peace; justice has disappeared; science is unknowing; truth has vanished. All that is left is my love, which longs to give away my Godly wealth  for you . . .'”[41]

In the years which followed the initial encounter, Chiara enters ever more deeply into a reciprocal relationship with Jesus forsaken who reveals ever more of himself to her. On the 20th of September 1949 she outlines the path for the rest of her life:

 

I have only one spouse on earth: Jesus forsaken.

I have no other God but him.

In him there is the whole of paradise with the Trinity

And the whole of the earth with humanity.

Therefore what is his is mine and nothing else.

. . .

So it will be for the years I have left: athirst for suffering,

Anguish, despair, separation, exile, forsakenness, torment –

for all that is him,

and he is sin, hell.[42]  

 

In terms of phenomenality Chiara’s response to her encounter with Jesus forsaken is genuinely authentic. She realizes that Jesus forsaken has given himself to her. In front of him she must give way. Her task is not to explain Jesus forsaken to the world, for that would mean bringing into play her ego with its own power of thinking and judging. Instead, what is required of her is that she bear witness to what has been given to her.[43] In one of her spiritual meditations she writes:

I wish to bear witness before the world that Jesus forsaken has filled every void, illuminated every darkness, accompanied every solitude, annulled every suffering, cancelled every sin.[44]

Chiara’s writings make it clear that she did not have a once-off encounter with Jesus forsaken. Throughout her life she gave witness to numerous moments when he revealed himself to her in ever varied ways. In another of her texts we read:

 

He is the image of the blind; he does not see.

Of the deaf; he cannot hear.

He is the one exhausted who laments.

He seems on the edge of despair.

He is the one who starves, starves for union with God.

He is the image of the disillusioned, the failed, the betrayed.

He is fearful, bewildered.

Jesus forsaken is darkness, melancholy, conflict, the image of all that is strange, indefinable, bordering on the monstrous, because he is a God who cries for help! He is non-sense.[45]

 

In her writings we can find texts which move from the phenomenological to the existential to the theological. So far we have seen those which tend towards the phenomenological, that is, which put in light Jesus forsaken as he manifested himself. However, in the following text Chiara gives expression to her own participation in the forsakenness of Jesus. She is narrating and experience that occurred around 1951-1952:

 

And the night came.  Terrible, as only one who suffers it can know.

It took away all I had: God-Love as I had known him in former years. And life both physical and spiritual.

I lost my  health, in the crudest manner, and I lost my peace…

In those days I understood how charity is everything: how life is love. When I lost love I lost life.

I accepted as God knows, among indescribable pains, this darkness where nothing anymore had any value.[46]

 

The text serves to back up the authenticity of her being a witness to Jesus forsaken because for Chiara Jesus forsaken manifests himself in the form of an icon, that is a face not only to be looked upon, but more powerfully a face which looks down at Chiara inviting her to participate in his forsakenness. Even when she tends towards a more theological form of expression she still maintains traces of the phenomenological and the experiential. In a text from 1949 she writes:

“Jesus is Jesus forsaken. Because Jesus is the Saviour, the Redeemer. And he redeems when he pours out the divine upon humanity through the wound of his forsakenness, which is the pupil of God’s eye upon the world: an infinite void through which God looks at us: the window of God opened upon the world, and the window of humanity through which we see God.”[47]

Conclusion

In this essay, the method of phenomenology as it is found in the thought of Jean Luc Marion has been first explained, distinguished from theology, and then used to indicate a way of identifying and reflecting on texts which witness (in the phenomenological sense) to an encounter with Jesus forsaken. Chiara Lubich has left us with a rich patrimony of such texts which are notable for their vivid descriptions of what she saw (in the phenomenological sense of seeing) when she  looked up at his suffering, desolate countenance. Because of the limited scope of the essay only a representative sample of such texts were examined. A more detailed study would undoubtedly prove fruitful in completing the mosaic of Jesus forsaken which has begun to emerge in the texts which have been presented.

 

Notes

[1] For a good exposition of the tradition see, Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology, Routledge, 2000.

[2] Edmund Husserl, Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983, §19, p.35

[3] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Blackwell, 1962, p. 58.

[4] Jean Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, Stanford University Press, 2002 (kindle edition), p. 7.

[5] In relation to Heidegger, Marion writes: “ [Despite Heidegger’s attempt at a radical destruction of the transcendental subject], in fact, the reflective characteristics of Dasein – to resolve itself, to put itself at stake, to precede itself, to agonize over itself, and each time for nothing other than itself (for the nothing and the Self) – are such good imitations of the transcendental subject’s reflexivity that they should also suggest the character of subsisting ground for Dasein.” Jean Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, Stanford University Press, 2002 (kindle edition), p. 261. In other words, Heidegger is still literally self-centered.

[6] In order to better understand Marion’s phenomenological method we can contrast it with Francis Bacon’s promotion of the method of active experimentation on nature thus “forcing” nature to give up its secrets. In The Wisdom of the Ancients, Bacon writes: “. . . that method of binding, torturing, or detaining, will prove the most effectual and expeditious, which makes use of manacles and fetters; that is, lays hold and works upon matter in extremist degrees” (Chap. XIII).

[7] Klaus Hemmerle, Un pensare ri-conoscente, Città Nuova, Roma, 2018, p.63,65.

[8] Jean Luc Marion, In the Self’s Place – The Approach of Saint Augustine, Standford University Press, 2012, p. 85

[9] Ibid. pp. 285-286.

[10] Op. cit. p. 5.

[11] Ibid. p. 10.

[12] Ibid. p. 10.

[13] Ibid. p. 321.

[14] Speaking of the relationship between subject and object may bring to mind Bernard Lonergan’s Insight (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983). Lonergan views phenomenology as a less than successful attempt to correct the errors of the method of empiricism. See his Insight, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1983, p. 415. However, it must be said that Lonergan is primarily referring to the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, and he is judging it in the light of his own very technical elaboration of a method in metaphysics grounded in the position of critical realism. Once phenomenology becomes existential as in Heidegger, or hermeneutical as in Gadamer, Lonergan is no longer critical of its methods simply because in Insight his focus is on positions and counter-positions regarding knowledge, objectivity and the real. For a useful comparative study of the subject-object relationship in Lonergan and Edmund Husserl see, William F.J. Ryan S.J. The Notion of Objectivity in Edmund Husserl and Bernard Longergan, Ph.D. disertation, Regis College, Toronto, 1971. However, Marion has moved far enough from Husserl to warrant a separate comparative study of Lonergan and Marion.

[15] The application of the method of phenomenology in the study of the Gospels cannot be taken for granted. For example, Thomas White expresses some reservations in this regard, arguing the case for the the necessity of a philosophical underpinning of theology, insisting that it must be based on a “robustly metaphysical form of thinking about Jesus,” characteristically within the Thomistic tradition. He gives a concrete example of what he means when he writes:

“In 1967 Schillebeeckx’s thought began to change largely in dialogue with hermeneutical and post-metaphysical theory. He was reading the work of Heidegger avidly, but also Bultmann, Gadamer, Dilthey, and Ricoeur. It was at this time that he composed his famously controversial work The Eucharist, in which he more or less overtly proposed the necessity of a post-metaphysical, semantic, and phenomenological interpretation of the real presence of Christ in the eucharist . . . In such a context, [the post-metaphysical], however, the project of a dogmatic theology would evidently be futile. In any event, it is clear that once we adopt a post-metaphysical hermeneutical methodology, the claims of a perennial Christian truth seem deeply compromised, and the aspirations to any form [White’s italics] of perennial theological tradition are irrevocably undermined.” See his Thomas Joseph White, The Incarnate Lord, The Catholic University of America Press, 2015, p. 485.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to attempt to answer White’s concerns. Marion’s arguments for a phenomenological approach to scripture can be found in his: Jean Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, Oxford, 2016.

[16] Jean Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, Oxford, 2016,(kindle edition) p.5.

[17] Jean Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, Stanford University Press, 2002 (kindle edition), p. 367, n. 90.

[18] Jean Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, Oxford, 2016.

[19] Ibid. p.22.

[20] Ibid. p. 24.

[21] Ibid. p. 33.

[22] Ibid. p. 33. When Marion speaks of reason unconcealing the truth (alētheia) he has Heidegger in mind.

[23] Quoted in Marion, op cit. p. 35.

[24] Quoted in Marion, op cit. p. 36.

[25] Hemmerle, op.cit. p.387.

[26] Ibid. p. 48.

[27] Ibid. p. 50

[28] Hemmerle, op.cit. p.215.

[29] Givenness and Revelation, op.cit. p.89.

[30] Ibid. p. 108.

[31] “And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” (Jn. 14,21). At the same time, the witness can only speak using human language so it is still crucial to remember that the phenomenological reduction must take us to the point of saying that in order that nothing be added to what has been revealed in itself, then the truest form of witness must be silence. And yet, God gives the witness the authority, indeed the command to speak in God’s name: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor: 9,16).

[32] As we have seen with Augustine, the theologian’s authority to speak derives solely from belief in the “divine testimonies.”

[33] Here too phenomenology helps us to avoid the error of attributing to a private revelation some “new” revelation. St Francis of Assisi does not reveal anything new about the poverty of Christ. Only Christ reveals his own poverty. St. Francis is merely a witness to what has already been revealed. Phenomenology as a discipline continually brings us back to the absolute priority of what is being revealed in itself over the one to whom it is being revealed.

[34] Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, Fortress Press, 2015 (Kindle edition), pp.361.

[35] http://biblehub.com/library/martin/the_story_of_a_soul/chapter_ix_the_night_of.htm.

[36] http://www.bartleby.com/293/79.html

[37] Chiara Lubich who was born in Trent, Italy in 1920 was the founder of the Fococlare Movement, one of the new ecclesial movements in the Catholic Church. See www.focolare.org.

[38] See, Chiara Lubich, Why Have You Forsaken Me, New City London, 1985, p.49.

[39] Unpublished talk. Author’s translation from the original Italian.

[40] Chiara Lubich, Early Letters, New City Press, NY, 2012, p. 5.

[41] Ibid. p. 31.

[42] Chiara Lubich, Essential Writings, New City Press, New York, 2007, p.95.

[43] For a phenomenology of the witness see Givenness and Revelation, pp. 52-57, kindle edition.

[44] Chiara Lubich, Meditations, New City London, 1989, p.33.

[45] Chiara Lubich, The Cry, New City Press, New York, 2001, p.47. In this text we can also note that witnessing what she saw in Jesus forsaken without any mediating theological concepts allows Chiara to go beyond the theological challenge of attempting to explain a God who “suffers”, a God who is “non-sense”. Because she is writing in the mode of a witness, there can be no question of controversies about any hint of theological unorthodoxy on her part. The real question concerns her authenticity as a witness.

[46] Ibid. p. 65.

[47] Ibid. p. 136.

 

Also see “The Forsaken Jesus and the Black Sun of Atheism.”

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Robbie Young has his doctorate degree in education and is interested in philosophy, history, politics, and contemporary cultural issues. He studied under Brendan Purcell at the University of Dublin and is living in Nairobi, Kenya where he directs programs of integral human and spiritual formation for young people.

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