Christ Crucified. A detail of a modern fresco of the Crucificion
Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art. Bilbao, Spain
Miloz Zizek: "This brings us to the third position above and beyond the first two (the sovereign God, the finite God), that of a suffering God: not a triumphalist God who always wins at the end, although "his ways are mysterious," since he secretly pulls all the strings; not a God who exerts cold justice, since he is by definition always right; but a God who – like the suffering Christ on the Cross - is agonized, assumes the burden of suffering, in solidarity with the human misery. [1] It was already Schelling who wrote: "God is a life, not merely a being. But all life has a fate and is subject to suffering and becoming. /.../ Without the concept of a humanly suffering God /.../ all of history remains incomprehensible." [2] Why? Because God’s suffering implies that He is involved in history, affected by it, not just a transcendent Master pulling the strings from above: God’s suffering means that human history is not just a theater of shadows, but the place of the real struggle, the struggle in which the Absolute itself is involved and its fate is decided. This is the philosophical background of Dietrich Bonhoffer’s deep insight that, after shoah [Evil], "only a suffering God can help us now" [3] – a proper supplement to Heidegger’s "Only a God can still save us!" from his last interview. [4] One should therefore take the statement that "the unspeakable suffering of the six millions is also the voice of the suffering of God" [5] quite literally: the very excess of this suffering over any "normal" human measure makes it divine."
****
During Passover week, and today, again, on Good Friday, I just reread Zizek's surprising reinterpretation yet consolidation of an intuition early blinking in human consciousness, yielding slowly through aeons of dawning awareness, incremental, chronic, barely, yet significantly, yet not significantly enough collectively, that "only a Suffering God can save us." Lest pomos (post moderns) repel in reaction to this let them ponder the Buddha's 4 Noble Truths since his teaching is now more "the rage" in the West, which, chief principle, rage, being the coin of the day focus grouped for commercial success, alas, aulterates, if not undoes, the authentic facts revealed experientially in historical and present human history as well as that of creation itself, viz St. Paul's poetic utterance, that the "entire Creation, all creatures great and small, groan/yearn after its/their Originating Source/Force."
More simply, Thomas Merton's, "My heart yearns for its Referent."
This yearning a love-sickness most mundane and divine or, rather, within its mundanity divinity resides, in its hiding it, love, is present all the more. And as there is a "resent" in "p-resent" part of that love-sickness/suffering is resentment at absence. And eventually, rage. Suffering, indeed.
Zizek's essay is a Good Friday medtitation, for sure. An ongoing enigma, for sure. Zizek's not at all a F(undamentalist of any stripe or (un)kind. Thus the reason I was shocked, surprised, pleased, disturbed, moved when I first accidentally came upon this brief in my 2019 re-study (re as in REal study) of Hegel.
Zizek's use of one of the last recordings by Johnny Cash, When the Man Comes Around, to amplify his thesis, brilliant. See the link to Cash's performance in the comment section below this post.
Lastly -
Geoffrey Hill's, a bit, some verses from his "Tenebrae", perfect for a culture of gluttony verily toxically ungluton free and bloated:
. . . .
O light of light, supreme delight;
grace on our lips to our disgrace.
Time roosts on all such golden wrists;
our leanness is our luxury.
. . . .
This is the ash-pit of the lily-fire,
this is the questioning at the long tables,
this is true marriage of the self-in-self,
this is a raging solitude of desire,
this is the chorus of obscene consent,
this is a single voice of purest praise.
. . . .
He wounds with ecstasy. All
the wounds are his own.
He wears the martyr’s crown.
He is the Lord of Misrule.
He is the Master of the Leaping Figures,
the motley factions.
Revelling in auguries
he is the Weeper of the Valedictions.
O light of light, supreme delight;
grace on our lips to our disgrace.
Time roosts on all such golden wrists;
our leanness is our luxury.
. . . .
This is the ash-pit of the lily-fire,
this is the questioning at the long tables,
this is true marriage of the self-in-self,
this is a raging solitude of desire,
this is the chorus of obscene consent,
this is a single voice of purest praise.
. . . .
He wounds with ecstasy. All
the wounds are his own.
He wears the martyr’s crown.
He is the Lord of Misrule.
He is the Master of the Leaping Figures,
the motley factions.
Revelling in auguries
he is the Weeper of the Valedictions.
Cathedral Repairs, Remote, Side Road, Gers. France
* * * *
Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around
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