Talking about God from the Meaning of Life: Contributions from the Thought of Juan Antonio Estrada
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Diego Fernando Bedoya Bonilla
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Carlos Arboleda Mora
Abstract
Juan Antonio Estrada, a Spanish philosopher and theologian, proposes the search for meaning in life as the theological place for a valid experience of God. The “achieved” or fully realized life, to which every human being aspires, is the proposal of salvation that Jesus makes possible with the proclamation of the Reign and that opens a hopeful future with Easter. By bringing reason and faith into dialogue, Estrada contributes to fundamental theology by talking about God, not from the traditional concepts of classical theology, but from the human experience related to the search for a deep meaning for existence. Although this author emphasizes the elements of a problematic faith with unresolved issues and doubts – including the timeless challenge of theodicy – his agonizing and perplexed position is full of confidence in the certainty that God’s salvation plan will inevitably come true. In this contingent life, everything remains incomplete; yet God in Jesus gives the ultimate meaning for life that all human beings grope for. This fundamental issue of human reflection will be developed by going deeper into Estrada’s philosophical and theological work.
1 Introduction
In the presence of God, it would be better to be silent. Silence would be more respectful before the Mystery we call God,[1] because our words are often unfaithful and useless.
Although thought resists elaborating categories to express the reality of the divine, because we are convinced that saying something about the experience of the Mystery that we sense fleeting and limited is a human duty, it is better to close our lips – even to muzzle the thought, which is the sphere of beliefs. In the words of Javier Melloni,
silencing oneself implies reaching a knowledge prior to the categorization of language. Some philosophical schools consider this subtraction impossible, as they argue that thought is made of words and without them, it would not be possible. Children of argumentative reason, it is hard for us to imagine knowledge not passing through words.[2]
Nevertheless, considering that in the biblical framework God creates and communicates through his living and active Word (Gen 1:1–12), and that Jesus Christ is considered the Word, the Logos of God (John 1:14), it is necessary to strip ourselves of all prejudice and preconceived language in order to enter through contemplation into the depths of the Mystery that is the foundation of reality. Making our own the intuitions of Meister Eckhart: “Let us pray to God that we may be free of God and achieve the full truth”.[3] Every concept, image, or word about God is not God. Every attempt to say God is reification and falsification. As Melloni says, it is necessary to kill the partial and external images of the Absolute, not to make a pact with them, to banish them from the mind in order to overcome the temptation of thought to capture the divine in human concepts.[4] Cordovilla would say it this way:
The risk of religious experience is to confuse the form of God’s appearance with God himself, the image with the essence of divinity. We must avoid both the idolatry that borders on fetishism by simply identifying the image with reality, as well as the iconoclastic tendency, which prohibits the use of images to represent God, because deep down it was unaware of the capacity of creation and man to say and express God.[5]
For all that has been said so far, we must silence ourselves, our beliefs and images of God. To silence ourselves is to disassociate ourselves from ourselves in order to make a pilgrimage to the depths of God. Ultimately, it is a matter of situating ourselves in a possibility of perception previous to the concept; it is not thinking of God, but from God.
This is the basic approach of Juan Antonio Estrada’s theology,[6] which we will develop later. The task will be to rethink the traditional images with which God has been identified, returning to the world of experience as proposed by Jesus. Only from Him, the concept, image, or narrative chosen can approximate a little of what this ineffable divine Mystery suggests.
This does not imply that ‘God’ is a concept or term empty of meaning because we can never reach the referent that would validate it. It is a symbolic name with pretensions of truth and reality, within the framework of the culture in which it is used.[7]
In the case of this study, upon knowing the God of Jesus through experience, the first thing we grasp is that He offers himself as the definitive meaning for life, since the deepest questions of human existence are clarified through him. Therefore, a new image of God, starting from Jesus, necessarily passes through this sense desired and claimed by the human heart and that only in the ineffability of God, which demands contemplation and acceptance, is it satisfactorily found.[8]
More than a rigorous method, this work approaches what is called a “research protocol,”[9] that is, an orderly and well-founded procedure, to answer a question: What is the contribution of Juan Antonio Estrada to fundamental theology? From this question, an analytical reading of his literature will be made, trying to solve the question posed from the philosophical and theological approach that the author makes to the topic of the meaning of life. This searched-and-found meaning offers a propitious field to talk about God in a new way, resorting to images that are in accordance with the life of Jesus. Thus, God is manifested as an experience to be lived and not as a concept to be understood. Thus, God is manifested as an experience to be lived and not only as a concept to be understood.
The protocol is as follows:[10] First, based on Juan Antonio Estrada’s approach, we consider that the anthropological question about the meaning of life has its theological expression in the proposal of salvation offered by Christianity. Second, considering that “life achieved” or fulfilled is what we call salvation, then, turning to the New Testament, we will present the proposal of meaning embodied and realized by Jesus of Nazareth, as the full revelation of God’s desire for man to live his existence to the fullest. Finally, we will make a reference to mercy, as a concretization of the meaning sought and found. This chosen path starts from the general anthropological perspective, travelling to – and through – the specifics of the proposal of mercy, landing in concrete life the theoretical elaboration of the first sections.
2 Juan Antonio Estrada’s Contribution to Fundamental Theology: Talking about God from the Meaning of Life
2.1 From Concept to Experience in Fundamental Theology
Fundamental theology[11] is the effort made by theology to find and present the epistemological foundation of its nature as a science.[12] We cannot forget that “theology is: the science of faith because, starting from the objective data of revealed principles, it thinks with all the instruments of reason, converted into ‘theological reason’”.[13] In this way, it cultivates “a rational scientific, theoretical, rigorous, well-founded, discursive, critical, methodical and systematic knowledge.”[14] In dialogue with philosophy and other disciplines of knowledge, he wanted to defend the scientific status of theology by clearly and rigorously exposing its object of study, the cognizing subject, the method by which it seeks the truths it defends based on its principles and the language to expose the results of its research.[15] This way of understanding fundamental theology is still valid; however, today we can think things differently. Rather than seeking to talk about God from the sources of revelation, to offer a logical and coherent discourse, the task of the theologian is to listen to how God is said in reality.[16] This word is then confronted with the authority of the testimonies of revelation: Scripture and Tradition.
It is not only a speculative and argumentative exercise, but an effort to listen to and accept the Mystery given to us as infinite love and, from this same acceptance, to be able to say something that expresses it with greater authenticity. Thus, being “fundamental” does not lie in communicating words orderly and systematically, but in listening to what the Word whispers. It would be a listening theology and not only a talking theology: an effort to receive and not only to offer. To this must be added the imperative need to relativize all images of God, including those elaborated by Christian theology, in order to allow the Mystery to talk freely.
With what has been said so far, this fundamental theology is ultimately a mysticism. A contemplative experience of the Mystery that offers itself and allows itself to be subtly perceived and concretely lived in the littleness of the human. Rahner was right when he said
the Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic’, that is, a person who has ‘experienced’ something, or he will not be a Christian … It is mystagogy that will have to provide the true ‘idea of God’ starting from the accepted experience of man’s essential reference to God, the experience that the basis of man is the abyss, that God is essentially the Incomprehensible, that his incomprehensibility, instead of diminishing, increases as he becomes better known.[17]
In this line, Juan Antonio Estrada proposes a restructuring of Christianity from a new perspective based on the experience of God and a contemplative view of reality that leads to a change in the world according to God’s will. The closer man comes to God, the more human and mature the person becomes, reaching his authentic autonomy, freedom and responsible conscience of his reality.[18]
Before presenting the theological proposal of Juan Antonio Estrada, it is appropriate to present its philosophical and theological contexts.[19] The starting point of his theological approach is the realization that the plurality of currents of European nihilism coincide in a negative reference to truth and a consequent crisis of values that ends in meaninglessness as the ultimate affirmation of reality. This axiological nihilism is reflected in the lack of projects for the future, which causes a generalized crisis of metaphysics, science, religion and philosophy itself. The Frankfurt School, and in particular Adorno and Horkheimer, with their sociological, philosophy of history, and anthropological approaches to the meaning of Western civilization, have become relevant in the context of these axiological crises. This is where the question of the meaning of life appears, which is a secularized form of metaphysical and religious questions. It is a question of understanding that one cannot affirm from the outset that life has meaning, nor can one deny it in an absolute way. The question of the meaning of life accompanies the process of the constitution of man and leads to a critique of society, insofar as humanity is immersed in barbarism, instead of emerging from it. Nihilism is not simply believing in nothingness; abstract nothingness, as a question and as an answer, is rejected. The question of meaning, even from the drama of a life doomed to nothingness, must be posed in such a way that it can be analyzed in its historical process from which the question arises and detect the mediations to find answers. It is always necessary, then, to analyze social situations and to open oneself to the possibility that reality could be otherwise. This is where theology makes its contribution, offering a message of possible confident expectation of the future. Life damaged by the loss of an objective rational principle, by the reductionism of human existence and its values to mere arbitrary ends; an individual subordinated to the collective, seeking only selfish interest, opens a horizon of the need for redemption in order to cling to the still existing sense, to the remnants of humanism that survive. This is why theology appears as a globally humanizing restoration in an administered society. The search for God, whose existence cannot be affirmed, is necessary so that defeat is not total. The search for God, whose existence cannot be demonstrated, is necessary so that defeat is not total. There is no possible theodicy, but the yearning for God becomes a crucial element against resignation in the face of the negativity of the course of history.
Juan Antonio Estrada proposes, as stated in the previous paragraph, a fundamental theology that is in itself soteriology. This means that the first and main question we ask ourselves at the theological level is not about the existence of God or the compatibility of the divine Mystery with a human language capable of expressing it, but the question of the God who can save me.[20] A theology is not only valid when it is doctrinally correct, but also when its postulates have practical consequences in life and is able to present the God who responds to human dramas and sufferings; only then is it soteriology along the lines described above.[21] This practical issue is what differentiates theology from simple philosophical speculation. This does not mean that religion is irrational, but it cannot be forgotten that it also possesses an emotional dimension that cannot be ignored. It is therefore necessary to take fundamental theology out of the cold realm of speculation about God, using the tools offered by philosophy, and return it to the world of experience, proper to biblical revelation.
2.2 A Necessary Revision of the Language of Fundamental Theology to Express the Mystery of God
Language is one of the issues that must be treated as a priority in a proposal for the renewal of fundamental theology.[22] Estrada thinks that language is an essential mediation to grasp and express the structures of our rationality, including the possibility of understanding and expressing something of the Mystery of God. This instrument is not neutral but is influenced by subjectivity and social context. L. Wittgenstein states that we do not think what we want but what we can, and the limits of language also mark the limits of our world. “When we learn a language, we acquire an instrument that mediates our vision of the world, in such a way that our consciousness is stamped and socialized in a certain linguistic universe.”[23] From these affirmations, it is clear that the always-analogical language about God demands a continuous revision and an ever-new and contextualized precision, so that the approach to the divine Mystery is as close as possible to the categories of revelation. The immeasurable and ineffable nature of the divine Mystery is said in many ways and there will never be a strict correspondence between the language and the Mystery that it seeks to express; this is why it is so important to be delicate and humble when choosing the categories, always in particular contexts. Any formulation is incomplete and provisional.[24] Estrada explains it as follows: “In reality, in every representation of God there is an element of conceptual violence that has to be denied, because God is not nameable, neither adequately in a dogmatic formulation.”[25]
According to the above approach, we could say that the context that makes this saying about God possible is the event of Jesus as the Christ. If Christianity confesses that he is the definitive Word of God and about God, then all language about God must be “Christic.” It is the Son who tells us fully about God (John 1); therefore, only from Jesus of Nazareth can languages about God be revised and adjusted. The image of God that Jesus lives and manifests is the one that serves as a filter and questioning of all other images of divinity.
We will expand on this point later, emphasizing how Jesus, through his words and actions, revealed the God of meaning that he is the Abba of infinite love.
2.3 The Experience of God Based on the Question of the Meaning of Life
2.3.1 Talking of the Meaning of Life Is Talking about God
Returning to the initial topic, it could be affirmed that, when we talk of the meaning of life, we talk of God in some way. If we renew language, it must migrate from speculation to life that seeks its reason for being, its meaning: there is the place where God happens. The following is the basis for this consideration.
We are witnessing what Estrada describes as a transition from the end of the Modern era to the beginning of an era called postmodernity, late-modernity, or postmodern globalization: a time characterized by a crisis of meaning.[26] Among the multiple facets of this generalized crisis is the deconstruction of Christian humanism, so that the question of man is not answered from the horizon of Christianity, but is attempted to be offered from other philosophical, scientific, and religious horizons, without there being one that is the majority. This generates a crisis of meaning that leads to absurdity. Therefore, according to Estrada, the task is to make clear who we are and how we want to live, and to know this we must take into account the contributions of the different scientific knowledge and the contributions of the theologies coming from religions, not only Christianity.[27] Integrating, then, all these contributions, it is possible to build a bet for the desired meaning, which frees us from the absurdity of a life without clear horizons.
This is Juan Antonio Estrada’s starting point to address the problem of the experience of God: the question of the meaning of life.[28] According to Estrada, the problem is that the search for God takes place in a culture that has killed God. Thus, the person who asks for God must assume the risk of feeling abandoned and foreign in an environment alien to his or her desire for transcendence. However, the Christian religion has two possibilities that should not be missed: to be a source of consolation for a disenchanted world, which only offers sorrows in the private sphere of the individual; and in the public sphere, a humanizing presence, which, with merciful attitudes and actions, helps to alleviate a little the human costs of a calculating, cold and inhuman society, the result of neoliberal capitalism, technocratic development, and scientistic neopositivism.[29] These are two fields in which it can find a space to offer its contribution of meaning from the experience of the God of Jesus.
Choosing God is always risky for the free person, who can make mistakes. For this reason, faith in God must be reasonable and responsive to man’s existential dilemmas, showing itself to be the warmest and most reasonable response of all those offered to man. In this natural and spontaneous search for meaning raised by every human being, the possibility of the acceptance of the existence of God as the definitive answer to this fundamental question of life arises. The question of meaning, which is connatural to human existence, leads to the certain possibility of finding in the mysterious and infinite reality that which we call God – the answer that is being sought.
Christians will never be completely certain and will always be doubting, but it is exactly in this searching, inquiring, questioning, where they accept the risk of their freedom. In an act of freedom and conscience, they welcome the God revealed to them by Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity then goes beyond the merely theoretical–doctrinal and becomes a living experience, since it is convinced that only in the living encounter with the word, the praxis and the destiny of Jesus that God can be found.
2.3.2 The Christian Message as a Proposal of Meaning (Salvation) for This Life
According to Estrada, today we do not seek to talk of God by justifying his existence on the basis of evidence, but rather the issue has shifted to the need to talk of God as an alternative of meaning for human life.
We all wonder about the meaning of human life in some way. This is an essential question for which a scientific answer is not enough; thus we are forced to carry out an adequate hermeneutic of the world in which we live, exploring other paths that are not reduced to the rational ones.[30] The fundamental questions of existence, which point to the dimension of meaning from which to orient life toward its desired fullness, are those that lead to religious experience. Estrada adds: “these are rational and affective questions, which concern the whole person, the reason and the heart.”[31] Therefore, religious language integrates the rational and the affective, as has already been said, for none of man’s longings and hopes remain unanswered when the person encounters the mystery of God.[32] Just as the human being meets the biological needs proper to his finite and contingent being, so too the person must “respond to the need for a project of meaning, to the search for convictions that direct behavior and to the need to discern between good and evil.”[33] The fact that the search for God is constitutive of the person has led philosophy to take a new interest in religion.
Thus, trusting that a meaning for human life is possible and that man can attain immortality, absoluteness, and fullness leads to the acceptance of the existence of God, but not God understood as a concept but as an experience that fully satisfies these longings inscribed in the human heart. This way of approaching things reflects Zubiri’s thinking.[34] Estrada, commenting on the Spanish philosopher, says: “The question of God is inevitable and man, as an animal of realities, who starts from the fundamental apprehension of reality, opens up to a horizon in which God appears as the absolute reality par excellence.”[35] Therefore, the experience of God does not only occur in the religious sphere but also in the fundamentally human sphere. From this, it can be inferred that the question of God is after all a search for the ultimate meaning of reality, where man’s existence is located. Consequently, there is a theological and non-theological experience, since the recognition of this foundational reality known as God is the reason for being of the theological as reflection.[36]
What has been said so far explains why for religious and non-religious people real life is far from the salvation preached by religions. A meaningless, destroyed life is maintained and suffered as an unbearable burden, and hoping for an eternal life after death does not compensate for the pain and anguish that some people must endure in this world. However, even though life is also made of beautiful things, the contemplation of evil leads us to question, if not the existence of God, then his being a savior.
The path of traditional theodicy is no longer enough. The arguments in its favor end up being counterproductive, because they are the cause of the unbelief of many, attacking the God they want to defend. The only way out, therefore, that Estrada proposes is to link God and salvation with the meaning of life. “Salvation is realized when life has meaning.”[37] The traditional understanding of God as “omnipotent” is called into question when we ask ourselves why, if God exists and is good, does he not act to prevent or eradicate suffering. Hence, Estrada rises to this challenge, calling the faithful “to rethink the concept of God, his predicates of goodness and omnipotence, and what kind of salvation can be expected.”[38] In this way, the finiteness and imperfection of human beings is recognized, but the value of life itself is affirmed, which would compensate for all evils. People can trust in a saving God, conqueror of death, who gives meaning to life. They no longer seek God in order to be saved in the next life, but to be happy and fully realized in this one. Faith must be then a source of meaning, fulfillment, and happiness.[39] Estrada insists that Christianity is a soteriological religion; it responds to human insecurity and anguish in the face of the groundlessness and precariousness of our existence, the fear of finitude and the imperatives of the survival instinct that are transformed in man into a desire for immortality.[40] In the end, Christianity presents itself as a response of meaning, which offers values for conduct and allows man to open himself with hope to a transforming commitment. Thus, religion is valid to the extent that it answers existential questions, gives meaning, motivates moral behavior, and energizes people’s lives in the midst of the evil and suffering inherent in man’s precarious condition.
The following section of the text will expand on what has been developed up to this point.
3 A New Understanding of the Mystery of God Based on the Meaning of Life Offered by Jesus of Nazareth
3.1 For a Renewal of the Images of God: A Dialogue between Philosophy and Theology
As mentioned above, a secular society has emerged as a result of the confluence of the scientific and technical revolution, the enlightened critique of religion, and the development of a consumer and welfare society. This new paradigm of society, which claims to be secular, emancipates all social orders, especially the State, from all religious beliefs, imposing on culture and society what Estrada calls “second secularization,” which criticizes and radicalizes the first. Society appears as independent and neutral of religions. In the new generations, there is a mixture of agnosticism and religious indifference, as strong theistic and atheistic beliefs give way to skepticism and the process of postmodern deconstruction.[41]
In this complex context, Christianity has a big challenge: to maintain itself as a proposal of meaning in the midst of a pluralistic and democratic society, where scientific and technological reason prevails. Metaphysics, ethics, humanism, and religion are in crisis, because their postulates lack foundation and empirical verification. There is a disenchantment with the world, society, and people. Traditional society, its values and spiritual goods, which embodied the good and the truth, are relativized in a culture threatened by nihilism. In addition, the same human values, originally linked to Christianity, are now part of the culture.[42]
This second secularization questions the traditional affirmations of Christianity and its foundations. The God revealed in the Judeo-Christian tradition does not seem credible, because many of the representations and images with which he is usually portrayed, conflict with the current moral sensibility, with rationality, and with humanism. “It is necessary to learn to talk about God in a different way, in a culture where religion has been displaced by science as a paradigmatic reference.”[43]
Estrada’s great contribution to the configuration of a new fundamental theology that talks about God from new and significant categories for today’s men and women lies in the relationship between faith and reason.[44] His task has been to deepen the dialogue between philosophy and theology, between the categories of revelation and the contributions of the sciences. Only in this way will it be possible to speak of God in such a way that what is said about him can be heard in the pluriverse of knowledge and disciplines. Moreover, only from this dialogue between the divine logos and the human logos is it possible to find new images of God and new categories of language to be expressed with coherence and fidelity to the event of the historical revelation of God as captured by the Judeo-Christian tradition.[45] In that sense, Estrada recognizes the normal tension between philosophy and Christian theology (which, based on faith, constitutes a hermeneutic of meaning for life from Jesus Christ).
Therefore, in philosophy we speak of reason and in religion we speak of faith as theology is the “science of faith.” It is not necessary to “deny knowledge in order to make room for faith,” as Kant proposed, but rather “to link and interrelate them.”[46]
The great contribution of philosophy will be in the new ways of asking questions about God and in the analysis of theological proposals, both in their theoretical content and in their practical consequences. Thus, philosophy would make a necessary and timely critique of theological presuppositions and contents, since “philosophical reason rejects knowledge without foundations, truth claims without arguments, and dogmatic assertions based on the authority of the position.”[47] Two activities then come together: 1) presenting rational justifications for religious beliefs (characteristic of theological philosophy) and 2) critically evaluating these justifications (the task of skeptical philosophy).[48]
In the following paragraphs, some of the services that, according to Estrada, philosophy renders to theology will be presented:
First, it questions religious representations, highlighting their irrational contents. It also allows a critical reading of the sources of revelation (in the case of Christianity), warning against the danger of a naive and unreflective hermeneutics.
Second, philosophy has allowed for a critical dialogue between the sciences and theology,[49] facilitating a dialogue between them and the acceptance of scientific progress by theology. The problems of meaning always arise after the scientific problems have been solved.
A very important contribution of philosophical reason is the revision of the concept of experience of God and of the possibility of a historical revelation of God, since it has shown the impossibility of reaching the divine absolute with human categories, thus grounding the illusion of theology of speaking of God in definitive terms, wanting to enclose it in a system of thought. “The fact that philosophy has had to defend the God of theologies who was mistaken for its representations of the divine is a paradox.”[50] One can only speak of God humanly and this language is loaded with contingency and historicity. In that sense, with the help of philosophy, Estrada makes it clear that it is not possible to identify the Mystery of God and the categories by which it is expressed from its human understanding. God escapes the systems of thought that seek to enclose him in theological concepts that are just as contingent as the one who proposes them. While it is true that this ineffable Mystery of the divine has been revealed in history and has allowed us to know it through experience, it never stops being absolute. And every representation of God is provisional and dangerous in itself. In this way, theology humbly recognizes that it is relative in its propositions and must always be open to the contributions of other religions and spiritualities, since no theological system can fully know the divine Mystery and even less pretend to encapsulate it or exhaust it in words that will always be human. Therefore, according to Estrada, “our way of speaking of a personal God can never be confused with divinity itself. The known God is also the imagined God. The divine initiative, if there is one, is channeled through human interpretation.”[51]
Philosophy cannot decide on the religions’ understanding of God, but it can analyze its concrete consequences in the life of those who affirm a faith option (in this case Christianity), so that it may be reasonable, credible, respectful, and argued. Likewise, theology has the fundamental task of adding a credible voice to any religious debate and to any confrontation with the world of science and knowledge.[52] Theology is as relevant today as it was in the time of St. Thomas Aquinas, who called it “queen of the sciences,” although modern sciences do not seem to agree. However, theology can improve links with the past, search for explanations and solutions to current problems, and produce guidelines for future research through a multi- and interdisciplinary discourse. In addition, it must influence people to become actors of positive change, reformulate the way the message of salvation is brought to the world in changing circumstances, and be at the forefront of the progressive transformation of society.[53] Thus, by its very identity and mission, it becomes a carrier of meaning.
In this way, when theology enters into dialogue with philosophy, and the epistemological differences between them aside, these two sciences find themselves on a common ground, which is prior to any epistemic approach: the question of the meaning of life.[54]
3.2 Life with Meaning as a Theological Place. The revelation of God as an Event of Meaning for Human Life
Christianity assures that man’s experience of God, as inspired, becomes revelation. There is no direct access to God, but a divine inspiration in which man plays a determining role. Therefore, the images of God depend on God’s witnesses and their subjective religious experiences; thus, the revelation grows and takes on new dimensions, always referring to historical experiences, until it reaches the culminating and irrefutable moment, which is the event of Jesus Christ. On this matter, Andrés Torres Queiruga affirms that revelation should be understood not as a datum but as an event: a shocking experience that is interpreted in the light of a special religious sensibility; there, in the event, the presence of God is discovered and, based on this discovery, the situation of the interpreting subject is understood in a new way and a line of meaning is established, reconfiguring everything toward the future with unsuspected force.[55] According to Torres Queiruga:
Revelation – whatever it may be in its intimate essence – did not appear as a ready-made word, as an oracle of a divinity heard by a seer or fortune-teller, but as a “living experience”, as a “falling into awareness” based on the suggestions and needs of the environment and supported by the mysterious contact with the sacred.[56]
In the area of revealed religions, there is also a criticism on the part of the philosophy developed by Estrada. It is about recognizing the possibility of a manifestation of God to people, from which the beliefs that make explicit the internal perception that one has of God arise and which will always be subject to the subjectivity of the one who lives it and his/her concrete cultural context. The task of philosophy is to help distinguish between the reality that is grasped and the categorization of what is captured, avoiding confusion; thus, the subject to whom God communicates somehow manages to distinguish between what God manifests to him/her and what he/she has understood. As Estrada puts it: “never in communication is there a clear correspondence between the intentionality of the god who reveals himself and the intellection of the one who has revealed himself/herself to him.”[57]
Put in these terms, there would not be a pure revelation, free of historical and subjective conditioning. Therefore, philosophical criticism does not go against theology, but rather relativizes its claim to absolute truth, its monopolizing conceptualizations of the divine, and the identification of revelation with dogmatic beliefs.[58]
In the specific case of Christianity, it is understood as an option of faith for the God of Jesus Christ that involves a hermeneutic of life. This understanding of life can be criticized with the tools of philosophy. Christianity is not only a set of doctrines, precepts, and rites, it is also a proposal of meaning referred to Jesus, recognized as the Lord, dead and risen; a historical project of meaning as a form of real salvation, as we said before. In this case, it is very important to underline that “the content of the term God is not given by theological or philosophical speculation, but by reflection on Jesus Christ.”[59] The story of Jesus is therefore the one that serves to speak of God and the one that can be rationally criticized.[60] In this order of ideas, Estrada asserts:
The Christian claim of universal salvation can only be realized from an open revelation, in dialogue and capable of maintaining a tense balance between the Christology of the God incarnate and a God of all, who has not disregarded non-Christians.[61]
Dialogue between religions is very important for what is expressed here. The tension between the particular substantive contents of a religion such as Christianity with its claim to universality and absoluteness is becoming more nuanced every day, as it is understood that today the universality that is proclaimed does not imply renouncing one’s own identity and culture, but is affirmed on the basis of the recognition of differences, along the lines of interculturalism.[62] It all starts from a belief, in this case the Christian one, and from it others are interpreted, always having in mind that the reading of the other is conditioned by one’s own subjectivity. Estrada suggests that the only possible universality is that of multicultural openness, which recognizes in all religions legitimate ways of searching for God from the human being, who questions and searches. From this basis, monotheisms provide the data and experiences of their specific way of understanding the Mystery of God and his revelation. Thus, there would be a factual and moral recognition of the other religions. Finally, this must be concretely demonstrated by the capacity of each religion to inculturate itself in different historical contexts. “It has to do with its own identity as something open and dynamic, in constant evolution and interaction, which allows it to modify its own credo based on other contributions coming from the outside.”[63] It testifies to its universal potential, to the extent that it integrates foreign elements, evolves and remains itself, despite the changes. “Every religion that opens itself to the universal is enriched, assimilates and integrates contributions from other beliefs, to the same extent that it offers itself to them as an alternative and as an invitation.”[64] If a religion claims to be the one chosen by God for all humanity, thus being true and universal, in theory and in practice, it must show its capacity to evolve and remain faithful to its identity, despite changes.
God is not controlled by anyone, neither by a people nor by a religion, and individuals must be open to grasp the divine action outside their own sphere, the search for God by other nations and the partial, fragmentary, and incomplete character of its own revelation, given that history continues and there are still possibilities in it for new divine communications.[65]
On this point, there may be objections, since Christianity considers Jesus Christ as the fullness of God’s revelation, in whom God has said himself in a definitive way; what does occur is a deepening of this revelation and a progress, always open and in dialogue, in the capture in time and in the different historical contexts of the scope of this revelation that has occurred once and for all in Jesus Christ.
3.3 Jesus of Nazareth Revealed the God of Meaning for Human Life. We have been Visited by Meaning
3.3.1 The Encounter with Jesus is the Encounter with the Mystery of God, the Giver of Meaning for Life
Jesus, the Word of God, is the incarnate Word that engenders the authentic experience of God. Therefore, it is necessary to return to Jesus. He is the only Word who says everything about God without exhausting him, springing from his eternal silence[66] and entering through incarnation into our finitude (John 1:14). A Word pronounced in our categories and, from which, all talk about God begins to be true. When we return to the origin, carefully and cautiously, in order to avoid profanation based on our projections and needs, we reach Jesus in the cleanest and most unprepared way possible; thus, the Mystery is not the indecipherable but the inexhaustible. By silencing words, thoughts, and concepts, a new space of divine experience emerges: the encounter. But it is not an encounter with our own self in a state of reflection, but with the adorable person of Jesus Christ, in whom we recognize the definitive Word and the unsurpassable revelation of God. With Jesus, the whole Mystery of God demands acceptance and only from there can words appear, enabling us to express it in some way. We do not start from a previous conception of God to frame Jesus in it; on the contrary, from the teachings, actions, options, and values of Jesus, it is possible to talk about God.
Let’s start with Estrada’s several faith convictions when it comes to explaining the elements that make Christianity different from other religions and spiritualities.
Christianity does not simply believe in God, but in the God of Jesus. The imitation and the following of Christ constitute the backbone of Christianity, which confesses a paternal and merciful God, revealed by Jesus of Nazareth. Personal reference to Jesus and the inspiration of the Spirit, the inner God who inhabits man, are the basic mediations of Christianity.[67]
Up to this point, everything is clear. However, defending these postulates collides with one of the issues that Estrada works on most in his proposal: the affirmation of the existence and action of a God, the merciful Father, and the problem of evil that has always questioned believers, the issue of theodicy.
Estrada starts from the same traditional approach: how to “justify” the fact of evil with the existence of a good God. The author poses the problem, first from a philosophical dimension and then from the theological field. Basically, his approach is that God does not need lawyers to justify his existence before the court of reason, which is weak in the face of his Mystery. God is above all our approaches, difficulties, and errors, and this even in the face of the problem of evil. It is we who must strive to understand God’s action in the world. His proposal is summarized in this statement: “Theodicy, as a speculative attempt to justify the existing evil and make it rationally compatible with the postulate of a good and omnipotent God, is a failure.”[68]
It is striking that Estrada presents the hope of the Resurrection as a Christian solution to the problem of evil. This hope is not based on the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, but on the message of Jesus (not in the Christ of faith, but in the earthly Jesus). It passes from the theoretical to the pragmatic terrain, since the only thing that man can do in dealing with evil is to fight against it, as Jesus did.
According to Estrada, the life of Jesus, in which God is incarnated, is valid and credible by itself. In Jesus we discover the true face of God. Jesus is then in his intimate Mystery: the ultimate manifestation of what man is and what God is.
It is not the Resurrection that legitimizes the life of Jesus, but his life and doctrine that makes the proclamation of the Resurrection credible.[69] This faith, as has been said before, is not only for the future but also for the present, where it is efficient when fighting against evil in this world, in a particular way, when transforming the interior of the subject. At this point, we cannot forget that the fundamental kerygma of Jesus in Galilee (Mark 1:14–15) is an invitation to conversion as a change of mentality. The first thing that Jesus recovers is the person from his most intimate structure. The change of the world that Jesus dreams of and brings about in the name of his Father begins in the heart of the person: there, where the person really is. Therefore, the Resurrection as the fullness of life begins in the interior of the human being who is open to the event of God (what Jesus called the Reign of God).
3.3.2 The Reign of God as an Offer of Meaning for Life from God
Let us expand a little on what Estrada says about the Reign of God. According to the Spanish thinker, the Reign announced and made present by Jesus of Nazareth is approaching and, at the same time, is already present. God, faced with the (physical and moral) evil that exists in the world, intervenes to end this situation. This present order of things is not willed by God. Therefore, the Reign of God is Jesus’ (and God’s from him) answer to the problem of evil and all its manifestations. God’s intervention is not from the outside, but from within people (Jesus and those who accept his message and believe him), energizing all the processes of transformation of reality. The programmatic announcement of Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth (Luke 4:18–21) makes it evident that the messianic activity is carried out from the concrete suffering of men: sickness, oppression, poverty, and anguish. The decision made by Jesus for the poor and suffering reveals how Jesus opts for the most deteriorated of the human condition, to express in this decision, the universal salvific will of God. Exactly here, in all this dignifying, healing, and liberating activity, the new image of God is revealed.[70] God is how Jesus acts. In his way of being, in his way of facing the suffering realities of the human being that he found in first century Palestine, in his clear and forceful decisions and actions in favor of the poor, the sick, the marginalized and sinners, the most genuine image of God is shown. Jesus acts God; he makes God come true; he draws God in people’s lives and in the world. Thus, the idea of God that Jesus lives is one of forgiveness and love, rejecting that of a legalistic and severe God. In the demand of justice (which appears outlined in the Beatitudes Matt. 5) is the foundation of the salvation that God offers.
God’s struggle against evil encompasses all dimensions; however, moral evil (injustice and revenge) is for Estrada what most opposes the Reign of God. That is why the whole life of Jesus seeks to present this Reign as good news, in which from trust in God we can assume the good and the bad of life. The story of Jesus is the way that God and we have to face evil. God is thus involved in this struggle. The story of Jesus becomes credible, convincing, inspiring, and motivating for people to fight against evil. Jesus’ faith, his absolute trust in God as the Father of infinite love (expressed in the category Abba), and his behavior against the evils he encountered is what causes him to be followed and what is presented as a meaningful response for man.[71] Although God does not solve the enigma of evil, he did offer a horizon of hope and meaning.[72] The eschatological event of the Resurrection, from the love and saving power of God, illuminates with new light the problem of evil. For Estrada, the Resurrection is the beginning of the new creation. Hope is possible for the victims of history and this hope is achieved when one lives and dies as Jesus did. Jesus makes the affirmation of the existence of God convincing, but not of a simple God but of a good and omnipotent God.[73] Jesus’ life is the core of the Christian response to evil, and Resurrection is its divine seal.[74] Contrary to what we might consider a certain theological pessimism regarding a satisfactory theoretical answer to the enigma of evil, Andrés Torres Queiruga goes further in this approach, when he talks about the Reign of God as anti-evil; it is possible to solve the enigma and overcome evil. The Passover of Jesus confirms it.
Let us expand a little on Andrés Torres Queiruga’s proposal to contrast it with that of Juan Antonio Estrada.[75]
The first thing Queiruga does is to address the problem of evil as inevitable in a finite world. This finiteness is not evil in itself, but the condition of possibility of evil.[76] Faced with this inescapable reality of evil, the best response or explanation found by believers is their faith in God (pisteodicea). Understanding the impossibility of a world without evil and realizing that the Christian response is one among others, there are two ways within Christianity: the short way of theodicy, by which believers, trusting in the infinite love of God, have the certainty that there can be nothing to disprove this love. God does not want and cannot want evil, and if evil exists in reality, it is because it cannot be otherwise.[77] In the same Christian sphere, Queiruga proposes the so-called “long way of theodicy.” In this path, he takes up the short way already proposed: given that a world without evil is meaningless, the question is: why has God created a world that implies the presence of evil? And the answer is, despite evil, the world is worthwhile because it has been created out of love. God, as creative love, sustains, accompanies, and supports the struggle against evil in this same reality and assures us of the ultimate victory.[78] Having thus posed the situation, Torres Queiruga sees the need for a theoretical deepening of the matter, in contrast to Estrada, who considers it irrelevant. In any case, both of them end up in the struggle against evil based on the proposal of the Reign of God made by Jesus of Nazareth and which reaches its fullness with Easter.
Faith assures us that God created us out of love, with the sole purpose of making us participants in his happiness. For us to be fully happy, we must exist, and exist as finites. That is why we are exposed to evil, but wrapped in the creative love of God, supported by his always active and kind presence, knowing that meaning is assured with the final victory over suffering, sin, evil, and even death itself.[79]
At this point, like Estrada, Torres Queiruga presents Jesus and his paschal destiny as the verification of the true meaning and efficacy of the God recognized as the anti-evil one. In the incarnate Son of God, particularly in his cross, God has revealed himself as the one who is at our side, supporting our struggle against evil and assuring our hope. And in Resurrection, faith discovered and proclaimed that death does not have the last word on human life, but that the victory is for a full and fulfilled life, as it happened with Jesus of Nazareth (1 Cor 15:26).[80]
From this whole reflection, we can conclude that, despite the differences in the approach to the matter, Estrada (the author in question) invites us to live as Christians with an unresolved theodicy, emphasizing the practical factor: the fight against evil as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. The speculative path is a failure because all the proposals are ambiguous and contradictory with the image of Jesus’ God. We can talk about God from human categories, but never about the world from God, since God overflows and transcends us, unless we put our reason in the place of God, and the result would be an image of God to our convenience, an idol ultimately.[81] It is better to go to practice and not to waste time in lucubrations with no way out.[82]
It is worth highlighting a study of Estrada’s position on the enigma of evil and the meaning of life, what we could call his tragic line, the elements of a problematic faith with unresolved questions and doubts, the aspect of eschatological incompleteness that subsists in the choice for Jesus and in the faith in the Risen One. His stance is more agonistic and perplexed.[83] The mysterium iniquitatis always remains, beyond the longed-for “happy ending” because, even in the proposal of definitive redemption, there is much sadness, negativity, and mourning that seem irreparable. When trust and certainty have been lost, the faint light of an always threatened hope and a love that is stronger than reason and that overcomes even death itself arises.[84]
Our position is to understand the path of both authors, without having to choose one to the detriment of the other. When a theoretical deepening is necessary, we follow Torres Queiruga’s path; when we wish to go to the concrete of life, where God manifests himself as infinite love, as Jesus fully reveals, we follow Estrada’s clear path.
Returning to the initial approach, in Estrada’s proposal, the search for a meaningful existence that moves every human being is realized in Jesus. In his life and the Mystery he embodies, we find what God expects of man: Jesus, the Son of realized life based on the metaphor of the Reign of God. According to Estrada’s doctrine, this Reign does not only refer to the definitive intervention of God in history, but also to the fact that this Reign is built here and now. This Reign does not replace man as a historical agent, but rather inspires and empowers him, making each person responsible with God in the struggle against evil.[85]
Based on Jesus’ decisions that make present the Reign of God, Estrada makes it clear that God is revealed in the poor and the foreigner: the excluded, the stranger, and the spiritually and morally self-degraded. These are all the people for whom Jesus chooses and who become the “irrational” places in which the God of Jesus takes place.
When Jesus proclaims the coming of the Reign of God, he does not announce the irruption of a spiritual reality that leaves earthly realities untouched. The signs of the Reign, the healings, the exorcisms, and, above all, the meals make present the reality of this event of salvation of God. The solidarity lived with the poor and marginalized, responding to basic bodily needs, showed how these needs are actually spiritual.[86] In the name of transcendence, the things of the earth must be lived radically with all their inherent conflict, building a new society based on God’s entry into history.
The historical contingency of every plan of salvation, limited and ultimately unsuccessful, must be assumed. The Christian God is not the omnipotent one who has triumphed and conquered evil in history, but the one who reveals himself in the crucified one with a proclamation of forgiveness, love, and fraternity.[87]
From Easter onward, but already from the historical behavior of Jesus of Nazareth, God reveals himself as the God of the victims, accompanying man’s struggle against evil and suffering, so that salvation may be established here and now. The world is not redeemed from outside, but from within, participating in human suffering, without losing the horizon of transcendence that is revealed in the Resurrection of the Crucified One, a horizon that offers an intramundane meaning to all the crucified in history.
From God incarnate, the only admissible proposal of perfection is that which looks for humanization. And not because the Reign of God is reduced to an ethic or a humanism, but because a valid message of Christianity cannot be understood without a proposal for the dignified life of all people. A humanization that is fully achieved by the action of God. It is not a Promethean achievement of man, but a gift that God gives to the human being who opens himself to his creative and saving action in him. God empowers the human project from within, helping him to reach the full realization of his aspirations and desires. Meaning is found in God and he is the guarantor of this meaning found and deepened throughout life.
4 Mercy: Concrete Experience of the Meaning of Life from God
Through Juan Antonio Estrada’s thinking, we have affirmed that an authentic experience of God is only possible from the encounter with Jesus Christ. This encounter immediately refers to the metaphor of the Reign of God as Jesus of Nazareth’s concrete way of revealing God as the possibility of full meaning for life, or what the Christian tradition has called salvation. In this way, salvation is understood not only as forgiveness of sins or liberation from eternal damnation to live forever in Heaven, but also as a true and possible offer of total fulfillment of human life, in the midst of the conditions of finitude.
The human being is aware of his contingency, his finitude, and his lack of foundation. He experiences himself as a defenseless and helpless being, who looks for protection and who dreams of fullness (happiness), in which he projects his longing for immortality and infinity.[88]
By this desire and longing for existence, man is the terrain of the divinity. Therefore, it is not possible to understand a revelation of God that does not take place in man and from man becoming aware of this irruption of the divine Mystery in his own life and history. In this way, an adequate deepening of the event of the Reign of God shows that there cannot be a real experience of salvation without a decisive choice for the other. There is no encounter with God without an encounter with Jesus and an encounter with Jesus is not possible without a relationship with the other recognized as a brother. In other words, the other saves me because by treating him with love, he offers me the meaning I am looking for. Estrada puts it this way: “Hence the importance of the relationship with the other, the recognition of the different, which opens for us new perspectives of self-understanding.”[89] For this reason, in order to develop this issue of the other as a path of meaning for life, it is necessary to turn to narrative, experiential language. This was the language Jesus used to speak of God as he experienced him in his own life. That is why the parables, as the language of the Reign of God, are living narratives that caused the listeners to become aware of concrete things that gave them a definitive direction in life. Through parables, Jesus succeeded in making God a real event, not a simple concept. In a particular way, the parable of the merciful Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) shows that the “other,” in a situation of tragedy and suffering, is the place where God manifests himself.
Commenting a little on Luke’s parable, we note that it begins with a dialogue between Jesus and a Teacher of the Law who stands up to test him with a question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life” (Luke 10:25). This is a fundamental question that not only has a religious scope, but can also be understood from an existential point of view: What must I do to give meaning to life? What must I do to live in fullness? Here the word life does not refer to eternity after death, but to the life of God in us that is offered as a gift in this limited and finite existence. In this text, the question of salvation is the question of the ultimate meaning of life: to look for a life that is good and always worth living.
Jesus refers the layman to the path of the Scriptures, where the will of God is expressed for Israel; and this Teacher cites two texts that summarize the main commandments: to love God (Deut. 6) and to love one’s neighbor (Lev. 19). It is about the possibility of welcoming God as the meaning of life, who lovingly takes place in the lives of those who freely receive him. In the love of God and neighbor lies the meaning and human salvation.
Since the legist is not completely satisfied, he decides, in order to justify himself, to ask about who his neighbor is. From this question, without entering into academic discussions or speculative discourse, Jesus immerses his interlocutor in the wonderful world of the living metaphor,[90] of the parable, so that, by becoming involved in the narrative, he will understand that true life is attained when we act as the Samaritan of Luke 10:25–37. If the whole revelation of God culminates in Jesus, only a meaningful life can be admitted which is marked by mercy. No human being can be saved without doing something for his neighbor, without being merciful as God is. Meaning, salvation and mercy are deeply related from what God manifested in Jesus.
The key is “go and do the same” (Luke 10:37). If one wants to find life, if one wants a fully realized life, responding to the deepest longings of the heart, it is necessary to do the same as the Samaritan in the parable. A theoretical knowledge of the love of God and neighbor, as the Teacher of the Law had, is not enough. It is necessary to go to life itself, and to behave with mercy, so that, in the donation of one’s own existence out of love, the life to which one aspires may be found. In the giving of life, it is in accepting it as a realized gift. This is the strange logic of Jesus, which reveals God’s desire for humanity.
5 Conclusion
Theology, by its very nature, takes us to the final question of human fulfillment and salvation. It is even necessary to affirm that it does not only ask for meaning but also for the ultimate meaning, for the absolute destiny of the human being. Its great contribution is to allow the human being to have access to meaning as a gift, as a grace.[91] In other words, theology, as Schillebeeckx states, is concerned with “actualizing in the present the meaning of our existence proclaimed once in history.”[92]
Fundamental theology, in the way proposed, must understand that the word God does not refer to a concept but to an event. When we say God, we are narrating a lived experience that is translated into its own language, but that does not exhaust the reality it indicates. “The content of the idea of God arises in a historical and cultural tradition, based on interpretations of religious experiences, which, in turn, serve as a criterion for evaluating statements about God.”[93] Such language is more descriptive and expressive than simply indicative, because what we affirm about God does not fully coincide with the Mystery that is given and whose full manifestation is Jesus Christ.
Christianity makes the human the key to the divine, since we affirm the humanization of God from the key of the life, surrender, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. The discussion about who and how God is, characteristic of all religions, no longer refers to theological speculations but to a concrete project of life, which can be applied to one’s own existence. Salvation is translated into a program of life that can actually be lived. And the way to do this is by practicing mercy toward others. Proceeding as the Samaritan proceeded with the wounded man by the side of the path, allowing himself to be involved in the misfortune of the badly wounded man (see Luke 10:33), feeling compassion and acting from his possibilities to save his life (Luke 10:34–35). By saving others, by being merciful to them like God, we find the meaning of life and save ourselves from the absurdity of an existence closed in its own contingency that ends inexorably with death.
If salvation is to be in function of the other, totally dedicated, overflowing toward the service and needs of a community where one lives, it follows, then, that the commitment of the theologian is to make others see this reality of need and to bear witness to it himself. It is here that theology becomes liberating insofar as it “unties” man from himself and “turns” him outward.[94]
The proposal of Christianity is a project of meaning that facilitates the person’s growth as a free and autonomous being in this finite history, and opens him or her with certain hope to a definitive salvation beyond death. This project is not a theoretical proposal, but a way of life that Jesus has as its main point of reference. Jesus is the man who found meaning in his life and therefore presents himself as the fully realized human being, the paradigm of all human aspirations.
The longing for happiness is connatural to human existence. We cannot live without ideals, even if the way they are proposed and valued is not the same everywhere. The meaning of life and history respond to the internal dynamics of reality, which tends to look for an ultimate purpose in everything; hence the significance of Jesus’ project and his message of the Reign of God, which offers a definitive meaning for life, in which there is an inversion of current social values in favor of the last ones, of those who are the subjects marked by meaninglessness. The God of Jesus offers a life fulfilled, achieved, sanctioned by a hope that surpasses death itself.
Therefore, the content of the divine is given by the life of Jesus, not by philosophical speculation. It is not simply that God becomes present in Jesus, but that one cannot assume images of God that contradict the values for which he lived and died. The criterion of the divine is a way of life.[95]
Therefore, if the historical revelation of God culminates in the Christ event, as affirmed by Christianity, only in him is the meaning of life for every human being who comes into this world.
This has been an open and flexible work. This means that other research results and complementary positions can be incorporated to enrich the contributions of this research. This is a topic that requires contextualization, typical of qualitative research, since everything presented here is subject to the necessary extensions and clarifications.
The theme of the meaning of life should be further deepened and confronted with other authors (Routledge, Crystal, and others) who have recently addressed the issue. This discussion was not carried out since it was not included in the limits set in the objective of the article, but it is proposed for the future.
To conclude this work, there are many pending issues for future research: a proposal of meaning that emerges from clear and real (not only theoretical) consensus between religions and forms of spirituality. Another necessary issue to be expanded is an in-depth dialogue with the social and human sciences.[96] Here, only brief references were made and we stopped at the philosophy of religion, but psychology has much to contribute in this topic of the configuration of an authentic and achievable project of a successful life for people. Another issue is the exegetical and hermeneutical development of some biblical themes and theological issues, which will clarify the intuitions of this work; for example, an updated reading of the parable of the Samaritan that was cited in the body of the proposal.
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Conflict of interest: Authors state no conflict of interest.
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- Topical issue: Political Theology and the State of Exception: Critical Readings on the Centenary of “Political Theology” and “Roman Catholicism and Political Form” by Carl Schmitt, edited by Guillermo Andrés Duque Silva
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- The Metaphysical Contention of Political Theology
- Secularism as Theopolitics: Jalāl ud-Dīn Akbar and the Theological Underpinnings of the State in South Asia
- Apophatic Confrontation: von Balthasar’s Thought on Kenosis and Community as a Veiled Response to the “Trend” of Political Theology
- Weak Decisionism and Political Polytheology: The Neutralization of Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology by Hans Blumenberg and the Ritter School
- Topical issue: Religion and Spirituality in Everyday Life, edited by Joana Bahia, Cecilia Bastos, and María Pilar García Bossio
- If You Have Faith, Exu Responds on-line: The Day-to-Day Life of Quimbanda on Social Networks
- Media and the Sacralization of Leaders and Events: The Construction of a Religious Public Sphere
- Exploring Twenty-First-Century Catholic Traditionalist Resistance Movement through Digital Cartoons of Pope Francis
- Contemporary Filiality and Popular Religion: An Ethnographic Study of Filiality Among Chinese University Students and their Parents
- Ritual Sweat Bath in a Cross-Cultural Perspective
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- Naturalism Fails an Empirical Test: Darwin’s “Dangerous” Idea in Retrospect
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