On Distance, Belonging, Isolation and the Quarantined Church of Today

Pablo Irizar

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350269682
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

From the closure of churches during the pandemic, and therefore in the absence of a community of worship, arises the pressing theological question: what does it mean to belong 'from a distance'? Although many have reacted to this question by providing virtual alternatives for activities and by reaffirming solidarity in times of hardship, a theological response requires articulating the effects of quarantine and distancing on what it means to belong in the Church. Fundamentally, what does it mean to belong, and is it possible to belong anew after the pandemic? This book addresses these questions by carefully drawing from the thought of Augustine of Hippo, whose life and thought fittingly echoes the course of our times.

1

The problem of belonging

To understand what it means to belong in the absence of church, and to determine whether this is possible at all, the first step is to understand what it means to belong tout court, and what absence makes of the human longing to be, of be-longing. We intuitively consider presence as an essential requirement of belonging. We belong where we are. After all, we are beings ‘of flesh and bones’,¹ and thus we are only in the places and spaces that surround, contain and define us. According to this view, since distance is perhaps the most obvious aspect of absence, it is not possible to be present in absence. This means upon first inspection that belonging from a physical distance is not possible. Considered as a metaphor for difference, however, distance suddenly becomes an inescapable aspect of belonging. This does not mean difference is necessary for belonging, but simply that difference is something to contend with in the making of belonging. On this point, the question arises, does distance frustrate belonging and is belonging from a distance possible? In other words, what is the relationship between difference and identity? Upon closer inspection, therefore, belonging – the interplay and rupture of being in longing and the longing to be – poses the problem of identity in terms of difference. The problem of identity is a question of dealing with difference and of reconciling, integrating or overcoming difference in sameness. Augustine understood well that difference is not antagonistic to identity but an inherent part of it. This reflection establishes that belonging in the church in times of pandemic and isolation is not about overcoming social distancing, or at least not primarily. Conversely, confinement is not only about physical separation. Quite on the contrary, distancing is a reminder of the difference integral to human identity and, by consequence, integral to the deep longing to being and becoming. In this sense, social distancing is a reminder of what it means to belong and of the place of belonging in unravelling the enigma of human identity. Distance is therefore not a hindrance to the actualization of presence. On the contrary, distance as difference is a condition for belonging. Identity and belonging in the absence of presence is not only possible but also the starting point of the human predicament and its itinerary towards the de-confining the truth of humanity as constitutive alterity.

Dyadic alterity

Augustine articulates the problem of identity in terms of images and in terms of the source of an image. He particularly insists on understanding how the difference and likeness of an image relate to their source. Consequently, for Augustine, the difference of an image and its likeness corresponds to an inherently divided human identity. Therefore, although human beings seek an existential unifying thread, only by looking beyond themselves is it possible to grasp the core of belonging. Specifically, identity formation consists of integrating the difference of the projected, objectified self-image or the reflection into the source of the image or the idealized subjectified self-same image. In other words, identity depends on integrating difference and sameness in the interplay of alterity. This assumes, naturally, that such integration is possible at all. However, for Augustine, it is not. Difference is irreducible to sameness and sameness resists differentiation. This gives rise to the paradoxes of alterity. In the paradox of alterity, the dynamism of difference and sameness gives rise to identity. Accordingly, the problem of belonging consists in integrating the paradoxes of alterity in identity and in preserving the interplay of difference and sameness. Failure to do so results in the entanglement of the shadows of the imagination, idolatrizing the false images of the self. In confusing the source of our images for the image itself, identity is reduced to either sameness or difference. At stake in facing our own existence in the midst of isolation during the pandemic, mainly because of distance, is the collapse of all points of reference, foregoing self-determination and ultimately failing to achieve authentic identity. Thus, to ask whether belonging is possible in the absence of presence is to ask what difference makes of us at a distance. Specifically, how do difference and sameness interact in identity? Must difference come at the expense of unity, or conversely, is the promise of identity forgone to safeguard difference? Again, is it possible to harmonize, even integrate, the interplay of alterity within identity, such that difference and sameness constitute an inherent whole? Corresponding to these questions are three responses. These are: (1) totalizing sameness, (2) absolutizing difference and (3) integrating sameness and difference within the dynamism of alterity.² According to the first two models, identity is static and clearly predetermined. That is to say, in totalizing sameness and absolutizing difference, identity is either about unity in sameness or, in the second case, about difference without a common denominator. The first relies on determination by means of rejection of difference, while the second focuses on indetermination by means of affirmation of sameness. Alternatively, the third model attempts to harmonize or even to integrate the interplay of difference and sameness into identity. Augustine follows and develops the third model. However, Augustine articulates this model only as his thought progressed and as he continued to integrate his experience as a young rhetorician, and later as a priest, bishop, pastor and speculative thinker.

That the notion of image proved for Augustine a useful tool to conceptualized identity is not surprising particularly because of what images denoted during his time. Some of these reasons are obvious. For example, even today, to the extent that images represent (something about) who we are, that is, to the extent we identify to them, images capture identity. In Augustine’s language, images are signs or traces of the thing they signify.³ Within Augustine’s cultural context, images of the emperor, for instance, secured the power of the monarch in absentia. This means that images not only represent but also in a sense have the power to conjure a presence and even to com mand a corresponding authority and respect. This is not far-fetched when we think about the image of a loved one on the wall or on our desk. They are reminders of the person they represent and somehow command respect based on who they are to us. For this reason, we would not stump (at least not deliberately) on the picture of our wife or husband, for instance. Similarly, the sculpted images of deities in the Pantheon commanded respect. A Roman practice consisted of enduring the memory and presence of a deceased ancestor by means of displaying their image in the atrium or family garden. Images also denoted for Augustine something ambivalent. Masks were images used in Greek theatre to represent a face or person (πρόσωπον), which the actor would adopt for a performance. In other words, the mask was a tool for personification. Thus, images on masks were means of deceitfulness, concealment, uncertainty and ambivalence. Finally, images were inherent to the life of worship in Antiquity. After all, the prevalent popular understanding of deity, even in North African Christian circles, was a material one.⁴ That gods were material, even the Christian God, warranted their depictions for veneration. This sparked much controversy in the seventeenth century called iconoclasm, where some contested the possibility of iconic signification and argued accordingly against the legitimacy of images as idols. The legitimacy of images and their incarnational function was championed by the likes of John Damascène, who wrote in the aftermath of iconoclasm:

I do not venerate matter, but the Creator of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to live in matter and bring about my salvation through matter. I will not cease therefore to venerate matter through which my salvation was achieved. But I do not venerate it in absolute terms as God! [. . .] Do not, therefore, offend matter: it is not contemptible, because nothing that God has made is contemptible.⁵

These varied notions and functions related to images – representation, signification, remembrance, worship, corporeality, presence and ambivalence – are central to thinking about identity.

For these reasons, it was easy for Augustine, based on his cultural milieu, to adopt the rich symbolism of images as a ready tool to capture and conceptualize questions of identity. Moreover, the rich symbolic import of the notion of image to conceptualize identity fitted quite well in light of Augustine’s exposure and commitment to Platonist philosophies, his later biblical study and reading of the letters of Paul and, most importantly, in view of Augustine’s tireless and impressive efforts to harmonize faith, culture and philosophy. In his early days of conversion, intellectual and spiritual, the unrefined language of the Bible proved a stumbling obstacle for the talented young professor of rhetoric in Milan. Compared to the eloquence and elegance of the Roman poets, Augustine complains in the Confessions, the Bible clearly could not bear a message of truth. Eventually, Augustine came to understand that there is eloquence in humility also, and that the simplicity of scripture was an antidote to the pride of life. Augustine would then embrace the humility of truth found in the love of God, neighbour and self, as an alternative path to the restless and reckless thirst for the power of persuasion. However, in his youth, Augustine found the Bible too unsophisticated for his taste. This was the fruit of much spiritual and intellectual labour, however. As a youngster flirting with new ideas in Carthage, the young North African turned to Manicheanism, a gnostic religion founded by Mani in Persia, for answers instead. Augustine quickly adopted the Manichean ridicule of the creation story in Genesis, for instance. Indeed, one of the arguments for discarding the Old Testament and its conception of God was the incredulity of the creation story, particularly the claim that human beings were fashioned according to the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1.26). The problem was not only one of cosmogony – the narrative of the world’s origin – but primarily one of theology – what does the creation story reveals about its creator, about God – and of philosophy – for the search of wisdom in Antiquity was not divorced from a practical commitment to a way of life. The Manichean dualistic ontology, according to which all things spiritual are good and all things material are evil, required that a good God be void of materiality. Thus, the Manicheans would reason, if human beings somehow resemble God, by implication God too must somehow resemble humans. However, God can resemble humans only in that humans are material, because God is by nature spiritual. Thus, to say human beings resemble God implies God is material. Since matter is evil, then God must be evil. Therefore, the Manicheans reasoned, human beings cannot resemble God. Following this line of thought, which depends on a dualistic ontology, Augustine struggled to reconcile materiality and the idea that humans have a divine likeness. How this was possible, however, without anthropomorphizing the gods on the one hand, or without divinizing human beings on the other hand, Augustine articulated only later in terms of a non-dualistic Platonic ontology of image. Augustine begins to wrestle with the problem of identity by articulating human identity as the image of God in terms of a Plotinian image ontology. The convergence of an image ontology and the interpretation of Gen. 1.26, humanity’s divine image and likeness, begins in Augustine’s earliest extant writings, when he was around thirty-three years old. There, the foreground to the question of identity is not one of ontology, however, but a question of determining the truth of things and, specifically, the truth of images in perception. Identity begins as a question of truth and of falsehood. According to a school of philosophy in Late Antiquity called the Sceptics or Academics, since nothing from perception can be determined with certainty, the only attitude appropriate to the seeker of wisdom consists in suspending judgement by acquiring equipollence. Equipollence means equal power. The equal power of persuasion in considering a thesis and its antithesis would inevitably result, upon conducting an honest assessment, in suspending judgement. This, in turn, would produce peace of mind, free from disturbances (ἀταραξία). This was the sceptic’s antidote to the restlessness of upholding a proposition in the absence of complete certainty. After all, philosophy was not about theoretical speculation but about a way of life and the search for happiness. For the sceptic, happiness consisted in ac hieving peace of mind. In arriving at this approach to life and reality, the chief consideration for the sceptic consisted in noting the unreliability of sense perception. The images of perception (φαντασίαι) that the senses yield, and which is the basis for making judgements, is unreliable. The senses are prone to distortion of sensual contingencies. Thus if the images obtained by sense perception are potentially faulty, how is it possible to draw conclusions about reality based on them? More importantly, how can the most important question of all, namely how to live a good and happy life, depend on flimsy sense perception? This problem leads the sceptic to the inevitable question, what is the criterion of truth and is the truth of images possible at all? The sceptic was not interested in finding an Archimedean point to build a sure system of knowledge, as was the case centuries later for Descartes. For the sceptic, the mistrust of the senses was part of a larger methodical attitude and practice of life. By acknowledging the unreliability of images and their ambivalent character in sense perception, the sceptic recommended suspending judgement. Although at one point in his life, soon after parting ways with the Manicheans, Augustine adopts scepticism, he later found in Platonism a powerful system to secure the truth of images. In other words, thanks to the Platonic ontology, images not only were inherently ambivalent outcomes of sense perception but could, due to their inherent volatility, which was in turn captured by a rich spectrum of likeness, account for truth, falsehood and dynamic resemblance. Augustine learnt about the ontology of images through Ambrose, at whose hand Augustine received baptism. Ambrose and the ‘books of the Platonists’⁶ in Milan taught Augustine that error in perception is due to judgement, not sensation, and that images are not only a static, material and unreliable entity but complex and dynamic, immaterial and objects of signification. Thus, there was a major shift in considering images from a question of perception, or epistemology, to a question of the constitution of reality, or ontology and metaphysics. This afforded Augustine the tools to interpret the truth of human identity and its falsehood also, in terms of a likeness to the divine image as per Gen. 1.26. However, eventually, Platonism would commit Augustine to a dyadic treatment of alterity, which, though initially proved expedient, even to inspire his conversion, would later require reconsideration in light of the Trinity. This was only years later.

How does Augustine first encounter the Platonic ontology of images? The earliest traces of Augustine’s commitment to a Platonic ontology of image and the discovery of its rich import to consider identity appear in an early dialogue called the Soliloquy, composed around 386. In it, Augustine defines the notion of identity as the truth of images. ‘If, then, [images] were true by reason of their appearing perfectly similar to the true, so that nothing whatever differentiates them from the true, and false by reason of corresponding or other differences, must it not be admitted also that similitude is the mother of Truth and dissimilitude of Falisty?’⁷ This rich passage presents two defining characteristics of images for Augustine. First, images, considered not only culturally but now also ontologically, can be deceitful in representation. For this reason, Augustine spent much time thinking about how to distinguish an image from reality. To explore this question, he explores a number of scenarios. Four examples recur often. First, the comparisons of two eggs, which appear similar but are different. This illustrates similarity does not imply equality. Second, Augustine notes that dreams resemble reality. However, when awake, it is clear that dreams are not reality; otherwise, it would not be possible to recognize dreams and reality as such. From this, Augustine recognizes the clear possibility of truth, and the reality of falsehood. Third, Augustine often puzzles over the power of memory and its ability to conjure, by recollection, images greater than the human spirit is able to contain. For instance, the image of Carthage, a city far away, suddenly and effortlessly arises in the imagination. This shows, in Augustine’s words, that the memory is a place that is no place, where images of memory and imagination do not take up a place to convey reality. In other words, images are immaterial and extend beyond space. Lastly, and this is his favourite analogy to explore the deceitful aspect of images, Augustine often considers how mirror images resemble the reality of their sources. This leads him to ponder, how is it possible to discern between an image and its source? After much intrigue, he concludes, the source of the image has life, movement and being, while the reflection does not. These analogies deal with the deceitful aspect of images and allow Augustine, in considering falsehood not in isolation but in relation to truth and reality, to focus on resemblance as the pivotal function of images and the core of identity. Therefore, the passage above reveals, second, that images are inescapable mechanisms to discover and articulate the inherent alterity of identity. Yet this is not yet fully evident. Although eventually the metaphor of mirror images becomes the metaphor par excellence to explore the human predicament, this passage restricts the definition of truth to sameness. An image is true, only when it resembles exactly what it is representing. The truth of identity is therefore perfect likeness or equality. Identity is void of difference. Conversely, the false is what is not self-same or an image that resembles what it represents but not perfectly so. By implication, Augustine treats difference (to a source) as synonymous with falsehood and, therefore, as contrary to identity. Augustine then provides his most accurate definition of falsehood: ‘nothing remains which can justly be called false, save that which deigns ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Texts and translations
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The problem of belonging
• 2 The structure of belonging
• 3 The making of belonging
• 4 The manifestation of belonging
• 5 The metamorphosis of belonging
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Copyright