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Violence, Trauma, and Resistance: A Feminist Appraisal of Metz's Mysticism of Suffering unto God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Johann M. Vento
Johann M. Vento
Affiliation:
Georgian Court College
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Abstract

The trauma that results from violence against women presents a challenge to theological reflection on the meaning of suffering. The mysticism of suffering unto God in the theology of J.B. Metz offers an essential contribution to this reflection. There is a remarkable compatibility between women's experiences of trauma and healing and Metz's understanding of suffering unto God, especially in its refusal to glorify suffering. Further, Metz's understanding presents a much needed mystical-political dimension to theological reflection on violence against women, because of its capacity to nurture on going resistance to the victimization of all women, past and present. Metz's mystical stance, holding together both anguish and radical hope, challenges feminist theology, in its treatment of violence against women, to attend to the relationship between the mystical and political.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , Spring 2002 , pp. 7 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2002

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References

1 Metz, Johann Baptist, “Political Theology: A New Paradigm of Theology?” in Civil Religion and Political Theology, ed. Rouner, Leroy S. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 149.Google Scholar

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5 Ibid., 143.

6 Metz argues against the theologies of Jürgen Moltmann and Hans Urs von Balthasar, among others, who speak of the suffering of God or of suffering within the Trinitarian God. Metz wishes to distance his own understanding from these. He argues that there is a danger in these perspectives of eternalizing suffering or of a “secret aes-theticization of all suffering.” Metz warns that these perspectives evidence a Hegelian sublation of the negativity of suffering that reduces suffering once again to its concept. See Metz, Johann Baptist, “Suffering unto God,” trans. Matthew Ashley, J., Critical Inquiry 20/4 (Summer 1994): 619.Google Scholar

7 Ibid. See also Metz, Johann Baptist, “Theology as Theodicy?” in A Passion For God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity, trans. Matthew Ashley, J. (New York: Paulist, 1998), 54–71.Google Scholar

8 See Ashley's translator's note in Metz, , “Suffering unto God,” 611.Google Scholar

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14 Seifert, Ruth, “War and Rape: A Preliminary Analysis,” in Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ed. Stiglmayer, Alexandra (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 56.Google Scholar

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18 Ibid., 23–49.

19 Ibid., 22.

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21 It must be noted that victims, during and in the immediate aftermath of the victimization will often minimize what is happening through dissociation and memory loss as part of a survival strategy. Victims should not be criticized for doing this, since it is a coping strategy that functions to protect the victim from the immediacy of the event. Facing the full impact of the suffering and working through the trauma can only take place some time after the traumatic event in a protected environment, once physical safety has been established.

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28 Ibid., 7.

29 See Cooper-White, Pamela, The Cry of Tamar: Violence Against Women and the Church's Response (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 94Google Scholar; and Fortune, Marie M., “The Transformation of Suffering: A Biblical and Theological Perspective,” in Violence Against Women: A Christian Sourcebook, 85–91.Google Scholar

30 Fortune, Marie, “Violence Against Women: The Way Things Are is Not the Way They Have to Be,” in Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection, eds. Nelson, James B. and Longfellow, Sandra P.. (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994), 326–34.Google Scholar