In a previous DM this week we zeroed in on an all-important criticism from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. about the philosophy that supports injustice and deadens religion. It is worth repeating here.
I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
King is right to call dualism “strange” and “un-Biblical.” Dualism is un-Jewish and traces its roots in the West to Plato and Neo-Platonist philosophers like Augustine who declared that “spirit is whatever is not matter.”
It is hard to get more dualistic than that. Augustine is eliminating matter and history from spirituality. Many, alas!, have followed his lead over the centuries. About Augustine’s attitude toward history, Chenu says:
For Augustine, history was an embarrassment. People are not meant to be at home in the world much less in changing the world.
In contrast, Aquinas recognizes “time and history as a place for the holy no less than the profane.”
Contrary to Augustine’s dualism, Aquinas defined spirit as “the elan or vitality in everything”—grass and trees, animals and birds, rivers and giraffes. This non-dualism lies at the heart of creation spirituality, it is a way of declaring all creation as sacred.
It is this sense of the sacred that Thomas Berry points out is often missed in our efforts at ecological renewal.
An absence of a sense of the sacred is the basic flaw in many of our efforts at ecologically or environmentally adjusting our human presence to the natural world.
Like MLK, Chenu paid a severe price for his championing of non-dualism. His book on education was put on the Index in 1942 and he was forced to sign a document that declared that “Dogmatic formulas express a truth which is absolute and unchanging.” And Aquinas’s philosophy “does not proclaim mere relative but absolute truths.”*
This language sounds eerily like Cardinal Ratzinger’s favorite meme, that he was fighting a war against “a dictatorship of relativism.”
Chenu was a great scholar of Thomas Aquinas and wrote a classic work called Toward Understanding Saint Thomas. He lamented bluntly the destructive influence of nostalgic Thomism and “baroque theology.”
Chenu’s name for “relativism” is history. Evolution. For his work in history and his support of the worker priest movement, he was exiled from Paris to Rouen from 1954 to the year of the Council, 1962 when he arrived as a “peritus” or theological coach with a bishop from Madagascar.
*Cited in Ulrich Engel, OP, ,“The Question of Modernity in Catholic Theology. The Dispute over ‘Nouvelle Theologie’ as the Context of M-D Chenu’s Book Une Ecole de theologie: Le Saulchoir (1937) in Hilary D, Regan, ed., A Coming of God into Time and History: The Theological Project of M-D Chenu, OP, p. 12.
Adapted from M. D. Chenu, “Body and Body Politic in the Creation Spirituality of Thomas Aquinas” in Matthew Fox, ed., Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Routes, pp. 192-194.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: M.D. Chenu (“Marie-Dominique Chenu,” from biography in Backward View blog, 2/12/2012; photographer unknown) and Martin Luther King (photographed during his “I Have a Dream” speech, 8/28/1963, Wikimedia Commons).
Queries for Contemplation
How eerie is it to see a pope who died two weeks ago using the same language that was employed in a Vatican document of 1937?
Recommended Reading
Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Routes
In this book, Fox gathers scholars from various cultures and traditions such as Helen Kenik, Jon Sobrino, Nicolas Berdyaev, Rosemary Ruether, M. D. Chenu, Mary Jose Hobday, Ronald Miller, Monika Hellwig, James Kenney, Justin O’Brien and others to approach creation spirituality from many traditions and many angles.
“An exciting and important book…a pleasant alternative to the oppressive burden of the fall/redemption tradition.” ~ New Review of Books and Religion
12 thoughts on “MLK, Jr. and M. D. Chenu Oppose Dualism—and Pay a Price”
Matthew, Today you begin with a quotation by Martin Luther King, Jr. which says: “I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.” Then you say that this dualism of body and soul is totally non-Jewish and traces its roots in the West to Plato and Neo-Platonist philosophers like Augustine, who declared that, “spirit is whatever is not matter.” About Augustine’s attitude toward history, Chenu says: “For Augustine, history was an embarrassment. People are not meant to be at home in the world much less in changing the world.” You also mention that Aquinas and Thomas Berry both have a more wholistic approach as to being human, and they share a vision of creation spirituality as well. Chenu paid a severe price for his championing of non-dualism. His book on education was put on the Index in 1942 and he was forced to sign a document that declared that “Dogmatic formulas express a truth which is absolute and unchanging.” And Aquinas’s philosophy “does not proclaim mere relative but absolute truths.” This language sounds like Cardinal Ratzinger’s favorite slogan, that he was fighting a war against “a dictatorship of relativism.”
Most of what is considered ‘the truth’ is garbage and formed from opinions and limited and ignorant at times, beliefs of others or as commonly held. This is not to discount spirit-based wisdom, but it is hard to find even when one seeks it, let alone live it out.
Truth is not a series of statements, beliefs and what we tell one another. Truth is a living presence and the divinely sourced energy of existence. Truth is all about the totality of being and beings as such are not just local to a physical community but of the entire, unlimited, holistic existence. Call that residing in the ‘lap of God’. We look for security in a temporal, fragile, state ‘of the world’. As soon as we find ‘solid footing’ we go out and proclaim that as the truth. How many ‘truths’ have scientists, theologians, philosophers, all of the experts, changed their minds on? Many times, almost continuously, is it not? And even at that they are never all in agreement with their peers.
Most ‘truth’ is temporal at best and is formulated to maintain some sort of societal order and control. And are these not the same societal structures and institutions that give us the most grief and suffering?
Truth should not be about certainty. What value is the ‘state of unknowing’ if it relies upon its foundation as being a mountain of truth? Truth is tearing apart all foundations and living trustfully, faithfully and lovingly in the Mystery.
What struck me is…”History is not to be distained, but rather history stirs us to be actors of change; moving beyond history, to make our own.” In all honesty, sometimes it’s really challenging not to be distained by what has taken place, as well as what is currently unfolding within the so called history of the evolution of humanity. It often seems, as if we take a few steps forward and then fall back even further. In some areas of the world, especially regarding the liberation of the sacred feminine, change seems stagnant, stuck in the history of the utter barbaric.
This difficult reality doesn’t always stir me to action, but rather sucks me into a dark vortex of many negative thoughts and emotions in which I sometimes feel utterly ashamed to be apart of the human race.
It’s in these painfilled moments the sacred Mother Earth calls out to me, to comfort and console my tired and weary soul, awakening me to see the unfolding, emerging beauty of Her many blessings; which moves me beyond all the sorrow and the suffering… as Spirit works to shift my attitude and approach, awakening me to other potential possibilities to be seen… unfolding, evolving and emerging from the muck and the mire… as She wisely counsels me to keep moving beyond not only our collective past human history, but also my own personal past history… encouraging me to make the most of what I can, with my own Herstory!
Jeanette,
I relate strongly to your lament that “This difficult reality doesn’t always stir me to action, but rather sucks me into a dark vortex of many negative thoughts and emotions in which I sometimes feel utterly ashamed to be apart of the human race.”
Choosing to stay on the path of light- step by step day by day – is a gift you give yourself and each person you meet along the way. Matthew shines a bright light on those who have taken that path before us and currently with us. We have to trust the promise that “darkness will not overcome the light.”
Jeanette, Today you write: “In all honesty, sometimes it’s really challenging not to be distained by what has taken place, as well as what is currently unfolding within the so called history of the evolution of humanity.” If you’d like an amazing prediction of where we are going to end up based on all of the facts available today, check out my friend, Michael Dowd on youtube.com. Dowd is a “refired” United Church of Christ minister, as I am, and author of: Thank God for Evolution.
Thank you Matthew for bringing MD Chenu to life for me. I have long
wanted to know more about this intriguing teacher of yours. In my
youth, I was transversing a library when his book about Nature, Man
and Society in the 12th Century fell off the shelf at my feet. It was
strange that I became mesmerized by this book which is so relevant
to our society today. If only the Western world had maintained the
values of the golden age of the 12 thCentury: a cosmological view of
the universe, the Divine Feminine, and dialogue with other cultures,
to name a few.
marijo, I too found it interesting to learn more of the man who contributed to so much to Matthew’s thinking and spirituality. It helps me to better understand where he was headed since their paths crossed…
I have to read Matthew’s recommended book, “Western Spirituality,” to continue deepening my understanding and appreciation of the deep ecumenism of Creation Spirituality!
🔥💜🌎🙏
Damian, Its a great book !!! As all of his books are !!!
For me, it’s bizarre to see contemporary formal Catholic theologians still clinging to the pagan, dualistic mindframe that was contradicted by Jesus, his Jewish roots, and the mystical revelation in Augustine’s Neoplatonic mysticism. Two thousand years, and they still don’t understand their mysticism, and/or they don’t really WANT to take a chance on it “contaminating” their dualistic tradition. Too bad. It’s there, in both Old and New Testaments.
And Augustine is NOT a good exemplar of the full range of Neoplatonism. It was a mystical experience that might have healed more of his mental anguish CAUSED by the dualism he had deeply embraced prior to his conversions to Neoplatonism and subsequent Christianity. He had an opportunity to stretch deeper into the holistic, healing nondualistic mysticism of Jesus’s example and revealed in the mystical experience. Instead, he clung to his pagan dualism. He didn’t have the benefit of someone like Meister Eckhart and later Neoplatonists, showing him the bigger, deeper picture.
Maybe Augustine wasn’t ready or able to integrate the (Biblically-endorsed) Neoplatonic mystical revelation over a millenium ago.
Are we ready yet?
Melinda, You write today: “For me, it’s bizarre to see contemporary formal Catholic theologians still clinging to the pagan, dualistic mindframe that was contradicted by Jesus, his Jewish roots, and the mystical revelation in Augustine’s Neoplatonic mysticism.” Before being a Christian, Augustine was a Manichaein. Manichaeism is a religion founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian prophet Mani. Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. It was definitely a dualistic religion. And Augustine was also influenced by Plato and Neo-Platonism. In fact, as Aristotle was the secular source for Aquinas’s theology, Plato was the secular source of Augustine’s theology…
Melinda, You write today: “For me, it’s bizarre to see contemporary formal Catholic theologians still clinging to the pagan, dualistic mindframe that was contradicted by Jesus, his Jewish roots, and the mystical revelation in Augustine’s Neoplatonic mysticism.” Before being a Christian, Augustine was a Manichaein. Manichaeism is a religion founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian prophet Mani. Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. It was definitely a dualistic religion. And Augustine was also influenced by Plato and Neo-Platonism. In fact, as Aristotle was the secular source for Aquinas’s theology, Plato was the secular source of Augustine’s theology…