Arising
It
can appear sometimes in the euphoric register and sometimes in the
catastrophic one. Too joyful or too disconcerting. Face to the 'same'
one, the 'other' one is always surprise. Birth or dead. Failure or
success. Joy or sorrow. Sin or grace… Right in the middle of our
establishments the other one makes irruption under the species of the
new, of the unforeseen, of the encounter, of the accident, of
'chance' or 'bad luck'.
Otherness emerges in rupture. Radical otherness is thinkable only in extreme cases. The 'other' emerges where the circles break and where the loops cannot be buckled. The natural tendency of the human spirit goes on the side of continuities. Only continuities are assimilable and integrable by the reason. Ruptures, on the contrary, are by nature disobedient. They resist. You cannot circumvent them.
So that the other
can emerge, the same
one
must be broken. Rupture of continuities and logical necessities with
their deductive or inductive sequences. Rupture of the 'long chains'
by which the reason tends to buckle and to integrate reality so it
can become 'master and owner' of it. Rupture of the 'labels' which
want to classify the other one and put it into the jail of the
identity of the same one.
To
exist... Ex-sist!
The 'other' one arises out
of
nothingness.
Not yet a 'what' you can take possession of but a 'that' emerging in
pure gratuity. Not first what
are the things but the fact that
they are. 'What' - what
is a circle, for example, - is explained and is defined. One can
deduce it and reduce it. It to some extent logically necessary once
given its definition. 'That', on the contrary, you cannot explain it
nor define it. It emerges 'there'. Like an insult to
logic.
To exist, it is to emerge in rupture and gratuity. Any questioning on
this 'act' of surging or emerging brings you back to this impossible
to circumvent gaping
which can be called 'contingency'. Tireless
and heroic effort of man in search of consistency through the
negation of contingency. Contingency.
What
is happening. What
occurs like 'event'. The surging act
of being. Actuality of what could not be. Ultimately in its nudity:
'to be'.
Creation.
That nothing could be... and nevertheless something 'is'! The
assertion of creation is from the start on the most enormous
assertion and most scandalous face to the pagan reason. You cannot
think 'creation' without something like a salto mortalis. To think
creation is indeed not possible in continuity. Between 'nothing' and
'being' there is an infinite fault. Creation is thus in rupture. It
is starting from an act,
a
gratuitous act putting being into existence.
An original ontological act of an absolute 'poietes' (creator). Between
God and the world there is no logical bond of necessity. It is thus
contingent
what is to say that it 'floats' to some extent gratuitously in
contingency. The creative 'fiat',
'that' it be.
Creation
is not emanation of a same one from a same one. Creation is giving
rise to an 'other'
one absolutely new and original.
Ex
nihilo…
To try to understand this divine creation 'ex
nihilo' it is necessary to start by
thinking its absolute difference compared to a 'manufactured'
creation. Human 'creation' always begins with something like a raw
material or first elements that man articulates according to the idea
of a new production. 'Ex nihilo'
is a matter for disproportion. For the Greeks, proportion is an
absolute requirement. It is identified with the logos, that is the
proportion itself of cosmos and anthropos. Hybris is disproportion
and thus sin and even an absolute one and as such it cannot remain
unpunished. For the Bible, proportion is only relative. It is in
dependence of the personal will on an 'I' who reveals itself as Agape
with his radical disproportion.
Resurrection.
Not immortality
of the soul but resurrection of the
flesh. For the Christian, the power of
the Spirit makes fun, as says Origen, of the coarse
materialist speculations.
Immortality
is in continuity. Resurrection is in rupture. Immortality lets die
the body to guarantee the survival of the 'soul'. Resurrection makes
die the entire man to let him totally raise from the dead. Pagan
immortality is by nature; Christian resurrection is by grace. The
soul is not immortal by itself. Man is created mortal, in his body
and his heart. At the same time it is created with the capacity of
immortality. Resurrection means new radical sudden appearance through
a rupture. New creation. It means also rupture of all the vicious
circles of the logical necessity, of determinism, of violence, of
blocking systems, of natural laws… It means opening of sense, of
history, of future…
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