The Deconstruction of Hell: a History of the Resignatio Ad Infernum Tradition
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Syracuse University SURFACE Religion - Dissertations College of Arts and Sciences 5-2013 The Deconstruction of Hell: A History of the Resignatio ad Infernum Tradition Clark R. West Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/rel_etd Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation West, Clark R., "The Deconstruction of Hell: A History of the Resignatio ad Infernum Tradition" (2013). Religion - Dissertations. 86. https://surface.syr.edu/rel_etd/86 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religion - Dissertations by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This dissertation is an historical examination of a medieval mystical tradition known as the resignatio ad infernum (willingness to be damned), which expresses a preference to be damned to hell out of love and solidarity for those the church had deemed lost. The work has six chapters and a conclusion and is divided into two parts. In the introduction to part one, I frame the discussion of the resignatio ad infernum in terms of contemporary trauma theory and Foucault’s late lectures on the concept of parrhesia. In the first two chapters, I explore the scriptural antecedents to the tradition (ch. 1), along with post-biblical 'tours of hell' (ch. 2). In the third and last chapter of Part One, I read Augustine's doctrine of hell, which becomes the normative one, as deeply embedded in his political battle with the dissident Christians known to us as the Donatists. His hell is seen as an attempt to indemnify both God and the godly self from the trauma/hell of this life. This sets the stage for the second part of the dissertation, in which the flowering of the resignatio ad infernum tradition is seen as a theo-political gesture of resistance to the theodicy of hell developed in the Augustinian context. Part Two begins with an introduction devoted to Foucault's early lectures on governmentality and the medieval practices of what he calls 'counter-conduct'. Chapter four is a detailed look at the flowering of the resignatio ad infernum tradition in the 13th century beginning with Hadewijch of Brabant. Chapter five looks at two more thirteenth- century mystics, Jacopone da Todi and Marguerite Porete, and analyzes their deployment of the resignatio themes as exemplifications of Foucauldian 'counter- conduct'. Chapter five concludes with a brief discussion of the subsequent domestication of the resignatio tradition within Catholic and Lutheran thought. Chapter six shows the resignatio tradition returning, via Dostoevsky, to the postmodern scene through the work of Levinas, Derrida, and especially Hélène Cixous. Finally, in a concluding chapter, I argue that this tradition, though residing until the twentieth century primarily in a theological register, has much in common with two political theorists influenced by Levinas and Foucault, Judith Butler and William Connolly. The Deconstruction of Hell: A History of the Resignatio ad Infernum Tradition By Clark R. West B.A. (cum laude) Williams College, 1989 M.Div. University of Chicago Divinity School, 1997 M.Phil/ Syracuse University, 2009 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Religion in the Graduate School of Syracuse University May 2013 Copyright 2013 Clark R. West All rights reserved Acknowledgements I am very thankful for the many wonderful teachers I have had through the years this project has been stirring. My first religion teachers at Williams College were Mark C. Taylor and Binks Little, who taught me to love Derrida, Foucault, and Levinas without fear of anathema. Some years later at the Harvard Divinity School chapel, G. Victor Sogen Hori forgave my many debts and taught me how to sit still and listen. At Syracuse, Jack Caputo took an “old man” in as a graduate student and has been an ideal dissertation director: patient, encouraging, passionate and committed to letting the work bloom where it will. Ed Mooney has been a faithful companion and friend throughout, rekindling my love of writing and lending me parrhesia whenever my spirits were low. William Robert has been an ideal reader and made several suggestions for improvements for which I am deeply grateful. Marcia Robinson not only helped me to see the prophetic dimensions of this work in a new way, but she has also become a dear friend to my wife and children, who now consider her, as do I, a part of our family. Albrecht Diem came in as a reader from the Syracuse History Department and made very helpful suggestions for improving the historical nuance of my thesis along with appreciating the real heart of the project. Here at Cornell, Cary Howie introduced me to Jacopone, helped me considerably with a difficult passage in Marguerite’s Mirror, and has become a wonderful dialogue partner. Corey Wronski-Mayersak, now of McDaniel University, encouraged my interest in Marguerite and was a sympathetic ear on a number of occasions. The v students, faculty and members of the Episcopal Church at Cornell endured with good cheer more sermons on hell than anyone deserves. This project, while finding its home in an academic context, has been inspired by and helped along by a large number of friends and colleagues. The Rev. Dr. Han van den Blink provided me a lifeline through trauma one Monday, for which I am forever grateful. Dr. Ted Papperman taught me what it means to “titrate” trauma and how essential that is for survival. My old Williams friends Evan Davis and Phil Jordan were always with me in spirit, even if we failed too often at getting together in the flesh. Cynthia Bowman’s most generous offer of her guest cottage in the wilds outside of Ithaca made writing the last two chapters far more pleasant than I could have imagined. My parents Judith and Russell West supported me in more ways than anyone could ask or imagine. My wife Sarah and my children Cecilia, Annie, and Amos are quite simply my heaven on earth. Embraced by their love, “I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.” Finally, I dedicate this work to all clergy abuse survivors and especially to those whose loving witness helped to conceive, challenge, and sustain this project: Anne, Scot, and the people of Trinity Church, Geneva. Quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum… vi Table of Contents Part One Acknowledgements v Introduction to Part One 1 Four Versions of the Resignatio ad infernum 4 Theoretical Lens I: Hell and trauma theory 9 Theoretical Lens II: Foucault on parrhesia 17 Job’s parrhesia 29 Hell before hell 35 Chapter One Biblical Sources of the resignatio ad infernum 39 The Contested Ground of hell 39 Moses’ parrhesia before God 42 Love and Hell in the Song of Songs 47 Paul’s willingness to be damned in Rom. 9:2-3 63 Chapter Two The Birth of the resignatio ad infernum tradition 77 4 Ezra: Theology in Conflict 79 The Apocalypse of Peter 88 The Apocalypse of Paul 93 The Greek Apocalypse of the Virgin Mary 100 Conclusion: A Traumatized Grotesque 106 Chapter Three Augustine, Fugitive from Hell 121 Augustine as theologian of trauma 121 Permixta Omnia: the sack of Rome 125 Donatist Controversy and the problem of identity 128 Ordo Caritatis, hell, and Romans 9-11 137 Rom. 9:2-3’s (Dis)appearance in City of God 144 Of Flesh and the Abyss 1: Gaudentius 149 Of Flesh and the Abyss 2: Monica 157 Conclusion: What dreams may come 164 vii Part Two Introduction to Part Two 169 Summary of Part One 169 Overview of Part Two 174 Theoretical Lens I: Foucault and Tradition 176 Theoretical Lens II: Mystical Counter-conduct 182 Chapter Four The Flowering of the Tradition Part One 192 Historical Context: vita apostolica 192 Gervais and the Albigensian Crusade 195 Béziers 198 Beguine Counter-Conduct: Hadewijch 202 Augustine’s Heaven vs. Hadewijch’s Hell 219 Chapter Five The Flowering of the Tradition Part Two 237 Jacopone da Todi 237 Jacopone’s Amor esmesurato 243 Marguerite Porete 253 Was Marguerite a Quietist? 268 The simple soul performs her martyrdom 280 The domestication of the tradition 300 Chapter Six The Postmodern Return of the Resignatio ad infernum 309 Hell in Levinas and Derrida 309 Dostoevsky’s Resignatio ad infernum 318 Hélène Cixous: The infernal paradise of Algeria 339 Conclusion The Resignatio ad Infernum As Resonance-Machine 353 Bibliography 369 Vita 388 viii 1 Introduction to Part One The inspiration for this project came from two distinct sources. The first source I will simply call by a name. Sally was a survivor of years of sexual abuse at the hands of a clergy person. I came to know her through my work as a pastor and in the many hours I spoke with Sally or conversed with her by email and letter, I came to understand that hell as I had been taught it in divinity school was a pale abstraction compared to the searing and repeated traumas Sally had known and with which she continued to do battle. Hell, she convinced me, is real. It is a physical, moral, and spiritual landscape she traversed every day in anguished love and tears. Remarkably, given the utter failure of the church to acknowledge the reality of this hell in her heart and in the church, she had remained a deeply committed woman of prayer whose relationship with the God of her understanding was steadfast and deep. While the churches Sally attended liked to say that hell was an outdated concept unworthy of a loving God, Sally responded by insisting that true love does not fear hell but fights with ‘sweet and bitter’ on its terrain, out of love for the betrayed child and the anguished adult who bears that child’s name.