Dangerous Memory in Johann Baptist Metz’s Political Theology

Abstract

This chapter will introduce and discuss Johann Baptist Metz’s concept of dangerous memory. The first parts of the chapter offer an overview of important steps in the development of Metz’s thought. Section 2.3 and the ones that follow focus on the concept of dangerous memory, whose introduction in 1969 marks the beginning of Metz’s mature political theology. Since Metz elaborated the concept of dangerous memory only in a programmatic form, the following reconstruction will be concerned with developing the relations between dangerous memory and the three main categories of Metz’s theology—the subject, practice, and time—in a more systematic manner. The summary and critical remarks in Sect. 2.5 capture the most important issues and point to possible problems that might arise, among other aspects, when using Metz’s approach to analyze the memory of Marielle Franco.

This chapter will introduce and discuss Johann Baptist Metz’s concept of dangerous memory. The first parts of the chapter offer an overview of important steps in the development of Metz’s thought. Section 2.3 and the ones that follow focus on the concept of dangerous memory, whose introduction in 1969 marks the beginning of Metz’s mature political theology. Since Metz elaborated the concept of dangerous memory only in a programmatic form, the following reconstruction will be concerned with developing the relations between dangerous memory and the three main categories of Metz’s theology—the subject, practice, and time—in a more systematic manner. The summary and critical remarks in Sect. 2.5 capture the most important issues and point to possible problems that might arise, among other aspects, when using Metz’s approach to analyze the memory of Marielle Franco.

2.1 Metz’s Origins

Johann Baptist Metz was born on August 5, 1928, in Northeast Bavaria and brought up in traditional Catholic surroundings. He appreciated his upbringing but frequently said that “you come from far away when you come from there.”¹ His background was a contributing factor in how he made the relationship between tradition and modernity a central topic of his theology.²

At the age of 16 and toward the end of World War II, Metz was taken out of school and forced into service in the army. One night, he was sent to deliver a message, and when he returned, he found that all his companions had been killed in an attack. Metz recalls the moment in the following way:

All those with whom I had shared children’s fears and boys’ laughter just the day before, I now could only look into their extinguished, dead faces. I remember nothing but a silent scream. That’s how I still see myself today, and behind this memory all my childhood dreams have crumbled.

What happens when the childhood dreams that had trustingly reconciled one with the world crumble? What happens when the seamless normality of life develops a crack? What happens when faith can no longer rest on natural trust? What happens when one does not go to a psychologist with such past life memories, but—to church? And what if one does not want to be talked out of these memories or appeased but wants to believe with them? Is this the beginning of the story of a lifelong lie or a story of faith? In any case, there is an air of irreconcilability hanging over this story of faith: for it, prayers are above all prayers about what is missing, about missing God. And it is comforting to it that the New Testament also ends with a scream.³

Even though Metz remained silent about this experience for a long time and only began to speak about it in the 1990s, this traumatic and life-changing experience became formative in the development of his understanding of political theology.⁴

After the war, Metz studied theology and philosophy at the University of Bamberg and the University of Innsbruck. In Innsbruck, he met Karl Rahner, who became his teacher and friend. Rahner belonged to a group of postwar Catholic theologians who pushed the boundaries of traditional scholastic (neo-Thomistic) theology and critically engaged with modern thinking.

Rahner’s thinking is characterized by the reception of contemporary philosophy of the subject and consciousness and departs from the modern subject’s autonomy in relation to the world. To Rahner, this autonomy is based on the subject’s ability to understand something through abstraction. In every act of abstraction, the subject reaches out to the absolute vastness of its possible objects, which, according to Rahner, is being in general and thus God. This anticipation of being, which Rahner also refers to as transcendence toward being or openness toward God, characterizes the human constitution. From this, Rahner deduces that the subject co-experiences God in every act of transcendence as the condition of the possibility and ground of being.⁵ As a theologian, Rahner assumes God’s universal will of salvation, according to which every person must have a genuine possibility of being saved and given the offer of God’s grace. Rahner departs from the assumption that every human being is ontologically oriented toward the grace of justification and the vision of God and calls this orientation or openness toward God supernatural existential. It is revealed and “instituted” in the human being through Godself and enables human beings to experience God’s grace, to accept it (and thus to move toward the vision of God), or to reject it in freedom. Against this background, every person can be understood as a child of God, even if only in an anonymous way.⁶

Strongly influenced by Rahner,⁷ Metz too started to critically engage with modern thinking. First, he finished a philosophical dissertation on Martin Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics.⁸ Then he also wrote a theological dissertation proposing a theologically affirmative understanding of modern anthropocentric thinking based on an original reading of Thomas Aquinas.⁹

2.2 The Emergence of Metz’s Political Theology

In 1963, Metz became a professor of fundamental theology at the University of Münster in Germany. At the same time, he started to explore new directions in his theology. Starting in the early 1960s, Metz began to frequent the Internationale Paulusgesellschaft (International Society of Saint Paul), a famous intellectual circle for Christian–Marxist dialogue that debated human dignity, freedom, and nature and how to make society more just.¹⁰

Through the Internationale Paulusgesellschaft, Metz met the neo-Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, whose utopian thinking became a great inspiration to him.¹¹ For Bloch, hope is a fundamental element within human beings. Moved by an anticipatory consciousness of the “not yet,” humans reach out and work toward the future as a “place”¹² for a better life and human liberation.¹³ Instigated by Bloch and other new dialogue partners,¹⁴ Metz started to reflect more deeply on hope, the future, and futuristic eschatology.

2.2.1 Important Aspects of Metz’s Early Political Theology

In 1968, Metz published an article collection called Zur Theologie der Welt (translated into English as Theology of the World).¹⁵ It testifies to the prolific encounters with Ernst Bloch, among others, and became the first milestone in the development of his new political theology. A reconstruction of some of the book’s argumentation can illustrate this.¹⁶

In contrast to the traditional Catholic assessment of the secular world, Metz argues that the world’s worldliness should not be seen in opposition to Christianity but rather as a fruit of its spirit in a dialectical process. This argument is based on the belief that God assumed the world in Jesus Christ in analogy to humanity’s assumption in Jesus Christ. By embracing the world, God releases it unto itself; that is, the world becomes worldly (secular) and increasingly “a human’s world.”¹⁷ However, as Metz emphasizes, the world’s “hominization” did not automatically entail its humanization; it rather created new vulnerabilities and a loss of freedom in the face of economic and technological progress. Against this backdrop, Metz suggests rethinking the humanizing potential of the Christian faith.¹⁸ Since the contemporary world prioritizes the future over both the present and the past, Metz also calls on the Christian faith (and theology) to rediscover its own orientation toward the future, an orientation that is grounded in God’s promises as testified in scripture.¹⁹

The emphasis on the future and hope transforms theology into a political endeavor. To Metz, political theology is a critical corrective of other contemporary theologies that fail to respond adequately to the Enlightenment and Marxist critique of religion and ideology by “fleeing” into the private realm.²⁰ This critique was directed against the subject-based theologies of his contemporaries Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Rahner. In Metz’s evaluation, they focused primarily on human existence within the intimate, apolitical, and private realm of the I–you relation without taking into consideration social conditions and historical developments.²¹ To escape this trap, political theology needs to consider, according to Metz, the social and political implications of its concepts.²² Furthermore, he asks political theology to rethink the relation between knowledge and morality, reflection and revolution, theory and practice, and other conceptual pairs, in a critical, dialectical manner to give rise to a new political consciousness in theology.²³ Against this background, political theology’s theological task in a narrow sense is to reclaim the Christian consciousness of the ongoing interrelation between Christian hope in the eschatological message of the coming kingdom of God and the sociopolitical world. That does not mean that Christian hope is about realizing God’s kingdom in the present or future. Instead, it is about changing oneself and the world by living in a spirit of resistance and expectation of God’s coming.²⁴ In sum, Metz’s eschatological political theology strives to be a critical, intellectual reflection on hope that goes beyond the private realm of modern subject-based theologies, engages critically with the political, social, and technological utopias of the modern world, and is oriented toward the biblical vision of ultimate justice and universal peace.

2.2.2 Critique: An Overemphasized Future, an Underestimated Past

Metz’s emerging new political theology was enthusiastically welcomed by some and harshly criticized by others. Their main concerns and reservations are briefly outlined in this chapter.

According to Jan-Heiner Tück, some of Metz’s critics accused him of focusing mainly on God’s future promises (under the influence of Bloch’s utopian philosophy) while neglecting scriptural claims about the already present salvation. Others criticized him for disregarding the diversity of God’s promises in the scriptures and for using the Exodus story as his main framework for interpreting God’s promises.²⁵ Yet others were critical of Metz’s focus on futuristic eschatology, which, they argued, is incompatible with Christology and its central belief that God has already come in Jesus Christ.²⁶ Ultimately, some critics stressed that Metz’s lack of recognition of the past’s importance would lead him to an unspecific and uncritical examination of the present due to a lack of historical consciousness. This also creates a moral problem that the philosopher Robert Spaemann has pinpointed:

Historical hope as an object of Christian hope always seems to contain a moment of mockery of all past sufferings. Why should they be less important in view of the kingdom of God than the happiness of coming generations? Why should Christian faith claim to believe in privileging those who live later over those who live earlier?²⁷

Ultimately, this critique led to a recapitulation of Metz’s early project of political theology. Its mature phase began when he introduced the concepts of dangerous memory and memoria passionis, mortis et resurrectionis Jesu Christi as correctives against the one-sided orientation toward the future. In this context, Metz started to engage more explicitly with the challenges posed by the past and reevaluate the concept of memory as a critical resource of resistance and medium of freedom in the present.

2.2.3 Reaction: The Introduction of Memoria passionis

In 1969, Metz wrote an article titled “‘Politische Theologie’ in der Diskussion” (“‘Political theology’ in discussion”).²⁸ With it, he responded to his critics by introducing the concepts of dangerous memory and memoria passionis, mortis et resurrectionis Jesu Christi (as the specific Christian version of dangerous memory).²⁹ In the article, he argues that the Christian faith is about remembering Jesus Christ, what he did, and what he left behind:

Christian faith is thus understood here as the practice in which the human being remembers promises made and a hope lived in view of these promises and binds itself to these memories in a way that determines its life. […] In faith, Christians carry out the memoria passionis, mortis et resurrectionis Jesu Christi; in faith, they remember the testament of his love, in which the reign among us humans has manifested itself precisely because the reign among humans was initially laid down because Jesus himself avowed himself to the “insignificant,” the outcast, and the oppressed and thus manifested this coming reign of God precisely as the liberating power of unconditional love.³⁰

As this quote reflects, remembering Jesus Christ is not about putting a romantic light on the past or about “sealing the past in its pastness,” so that it no longer concerns the present.³¹ Instead, it is a way of remembering that “puts pressure on and questions our present because in it we remember an unfinished future.”³² Such memory is critical and “dangerous” for all those who have settled comfortably in the present. It is critical because it calls to mind the message of God’s coming reign as a “liberating power of unconditional love”³³ that applies to all people, including those who unjustly suffer in the present and have suffered in the past. At the same time, it is also dangerous because “[i]t reclaims unresolved repressed conflicts and unfulfilled hopes. Against the prevailing insights, it holds up experiences from former times and thus undoes the self-evidence of the present.”³⁴ In other words, dangerous memory questions how the present and everything in it is taken for granted. It unsettles the present by bringing back to mind unfulfilled hopes and unreconciled suffering from the past.

Evaluating these developments in Metz’s political theology, one can state in accordance with Benjamin Taubald that Metz’s reference to memory was introduced as a solution to various problems. It was not only meant to refer Christian experience to God’s historical revelation in Jesus Christ. It should also open the horizon of the future and orient Christian practice.³⁵ However, as Taubald also rightly states, Metz’s understanding of memory was still elaborated too little to be able to do all of this. For example, it was not clear (or explicitly stated) whose memory Metz actually meant.³⁶ For this reason, Metz spent the following years refining his concept of dangerous memory.

2.3 Dangerous Memory in Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft

In the previous pages, I have provided an overview of the genesis of Metz’s political theology up to 1969. In this chapter, I will reconstruct and discuss the concept of dangerous memory in Metz’s book Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft from 1977 (translated into English as Faith in History and Society). It is considered his main work. Later developments appear to be clarifications and refinements of what he wrote in this book.

2.3.1 Metz’s Agenda in Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft

As elaborated in the last pages, Metz’s theology took its starting point in fundamental anthropology and the situation of the modern subject. Later he engaged more strongly with eschatology. In doing so, he did not leave his initial starting point but started to open it to the question of history, especially the future. Metz’s book Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft can be read as a continuation and radicalization of the previous work insofar as Metz increasingly turns to the problem of unreconciled suffering from the past. This is reflected in the book’s programmatic opening statement:

The intention and task of every Christian theology could be defined as an “apology of hope.” “Always be ready to give an account to anyone who asks you the reason of your hope” (1 Peter 3:15). What hope are we talking about? The solidary hope for the God of the living and the dead who calls on all people to be subjects before God. The apology of this hope is not about the dispute between subjectless ideas and conceptions. It is rather about the concrete historical, social situation of subjects, about their experiences, about their suffering and struggles, and their contradictions.³⁷

In this quote, the programmatic term apology refers to the task and concern of early Christian apologists who defended the reasonableness of faith and hope in their respective cultural contexts. For Metz, fundamental theology is a modern form of apologetics whose task is to defend the cause of religion and theology and their specific understanding of the subject by critically engaging with the present and the challenges it poses.³⁸

Furthermore, it is worth noting that, unlike in 1969, Metz’s programmatic statement no longer understands the content of hope as “the liberating power of unconditional love.”³⁹ Instead, hope is now about human beings turning into subjects.⁴⁰ This change takes up Metz’s earlier critique of that the notion of the subject in contemporary subject-based theologies was too abstract. As already mentioned, Metz argues that these theologies did not sufficiently account for the subject’s embeddedness in historical and social relations. He is critical of their tendency to reduce history to “the weak talk of historicity of the subject”⁴¹ and to redeem a conflicting subject–object dialectic on the level of transcendental experience.⁴² Against this background, Metz recalls that subjects are always concrete and involved in specific situations often experienced as contradictory or through suffering. For this reason, as will be seen later, Metz reshapes the term subject into an eschatological term, according to which there are living and dead human beings who are or were denied the possibility of becoming subjects and for whom the fulfillment of God’s promise is still pending.

As a consequence of Metz’s programmatic statement that emphasizes the concrete historical and social situation of the subject, political theology needs to diagnose the contemporary situation, reflect on its position in a global context, and gain critical awareness about its contextuality and interests.⁴³ In addition, political theologians need to account continuously for the experiences and practices that shape their thinking and to ask: “Who is doing theology where—that is, with whom—and in whose interest—that is, for whom?”⁴⁴ In the present work, I attempt to fulfill this requirement and task set by Metz by engaging in empirical research and reflecting on my role and insights gained in the field.⁴⁵

After these remarks on Metz’s understanding of the tasks of political theology, I will now turn to the concept of dangerous memory and the question of how it relates to the categories of the subject, practice, and time.

2.3.2 Dangerous Memory of the Subject

In the previous chapter, I suggested that Metz aims to engage critically with an abstract and ideological notion of the subject. In this chapter, I want to elaborate his critique and show how he attempted to arrive at another, more comprehensive understanding of it. As will be seen, Metz suggests a theological notion of the subject, according to which all people are called by God to become subjects. As a consequence, Metz understands the subject as a human being who stands in solidarity with suffering in the world. At the same time, the subject is also an object of Christian hope in God, which starts to emerge when people who are or were hindered in becoming subjects are remembered.

In his critique of the excessively abstract and ideological notion of the subject in contemporary theology, Metz first shows that it is not as socially and politically neutral as it might appear. Instead, as the formal principle of Enlightenment thinking, the subject reflects an ideological standpoint.⁴⁶ Building on the sociohistorical analysis of Lucien Goldmann,⁴⁷ Metz recalls that the Enlightenment was a movement promoted by the bourgeoisie and that the concrete historical subject behind the subject was bourgeois. He reminds the reader of how the rise of the (bourgeois) subject went along with the privatization of religion, a loss of tradition, the emergence of an understanding of authority based on competence, the crisis of (metaphysical) reason, and a new understanding of religion based on reason instead of revelation.⁴⁸ These transformations came with emerging capitalist relations of exchange, which were carried and promoted by the bourgeoisie and reshaped all existing social relations. Other more traditional values of organizing life, such as tradition or religion, were pushed into the background.⁴⁹

Evaluating this historical process, Metz does not reject these transformations. On the contrary, his theology builds on the modern separation between church and state and upholds the ideal of the subject as an individual who acts freely and responsibly.⁵⁰ But at the same time, he also asks his readers to consider the losses that came along with these transformations. In this context, he recalls that Immanuel Kant’s imperative that we make independent use of reason and escape immaturity—as fundamental characteristics of the Enlightenment subject—was not about constructing a new condition of liberty for all. Instead, Kant’s call was first and foremost directed toward those who already had the financial and political potential of emancipation, which only needed to be realized—in concrete terms: the bourgeois subject.⁵¹ Against this background, Metz recalls that there were also human beings that lacked the conditions to become emancipated subjects.⁵² Hence, if theology uncritically departs from the formal principle of the subject, it unconsciously reflects the ideological perspective of the bourgeoisie. It renders invisible the fate of many human beings and their endangered existence.

In consideration of these problematic sociohistorical foundations of the subject, Metz advances a more comprehensive understanding of the subject that is not a simple reflection of the bourgeois subject.⁵³ In this context, Metz calls for a rediscovery of religion, tradition, and authority as constitutive in the formation of the subject and its critical consciousness. As seen above, the bourgeois subject constitutes itself in demarcation to these things. Against this backdrop, Metz seeks to reconceive religion, tradition, and authority in ways that move beyond the established views and principles (such as the principle of exchange) of the bourgeois subject. In concrete terms, he argues that the memory of suffering preserved in the memory of Jesus Christ (memoria passionis, mortis et resurrectionis Jesu Christi) should be seen as the authoritative religious tradition. For him, the rediscovery of this tradition is crucial to the goal of making it possible for all human beings, including the marginalized and those suffering due to unjust power structures, to become subjects before God.⁵⁴

To Metz, reconceptualizing the subject under these premises is not self-evident. Instead, it is about expressing a practical “option, namely, of being able to be a subject and having to become a subject for all human beings.”⁵⁵ This option is similar to liberation theology’s option for the poor. Both options are about taking a position for and doing theology in solidarity with the most vulnerable living beings in God’s creation. For liberation theology, it is the poor who suffer from an unjust economic system.⁵⁶ In Metz, it was not entirely clear at first whom he had in mind. However, as shown below, in his later theological development, he increasingly paid attention to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

According to Metz, the option of subjecthood for all is grounded in scripture. To Metz, the Old Testament and, in a paradigmatic manner, the Exodus story tell about how a people and its members become subjects called by God in a situation of danger and fear.⁵⁷ In such a context, he argues, religion “is not an additional phenomenon but involved in the construction of subjecthood.”⁵⁸ Unfortunately, Metz leaves open how exactly the particularity of the biblical tradition and the universality of the assumption that religion contributes to the constitution of the subject are to be put into relation.⁵⁹

For Metz, the option of subjecthood for all is not only (biblical) orthodoxy but should also stimulate orthopraxy. When Christians live in the spirit of the option of subjecthood for all, their lives and practices acquire an explicit political connotation. According to Metz, Christians cannot claim that everyone is called to be a subject before God without becoming involved in the fight against oppression and different forms of misanthropy that hinder the subject formation of individuals, communities, and whole populations.⁶⁰

To summarize this chapter, Metz disrupts the uncritical use of the subject in theology that reflects bourgeois ideology. Instead, he calls on theology to take a religious option of subjecthood for all. Consequently, in political theology the subject is no longer about a neutral entity but turns into a task and an object of Christian hope. Those who already are subjects are called on to act in solidarity with those who are or were denied the possibility of becoming subjects.⁶¹ This practical call leads to the second focal point of Metz’s theology and critical engagement with the subject: practice.

2.3.3 Dangerous Memory as Practice

This chapter will start with an initial reflection on Metz’s understanding of practice. Then I will focus on memory, narration, and solidarity as its most central modes.

2.3.3.1 Characteristics of Christian Practice

For Metz, becoming and being a subject is deeply integrated with practice. In his work, Metz does not provide a comprehensive definition of practice, but for a preliminary understanding of it, one can think of all human activity that creates meaning.⁶²

The interrelation between being a subject and practice is reflected in, among other aspects, Metz’s remarks on the relationship between discipleship and theology (Christology). For Metz, God is a practical thought as manifested in biblical stories of metanoia and Exodus or Christ’s call to follow him. In his view, these stories are not simple ornamentations of an essentially “pure” (theoretical) theology but constitute Christian’s talk and reflection about God in a fundamental way.⁶³ For Metz, this is especially true for Christological knowledge, which is grounded in discipleship. Hence, discipleship is not a secondary application of Christological knowledge. Instead, it is only through following Christ that one can experience and know oneself.⁶⁴ In this context, it is important to note that Metz does not distinguish between Christological knowledge (as second-order theological knowledge) and knowing Christ (as first-order spiritual knowledge). This is a programmatic decision that makes sense if one aims at interrelating spirituality (practice) and theology more strongly. However, depending on the context, this may not be easily implemented.⁶⁵

Against this background, Metz points out three elementary characteristics of Christian practice. First, Christian practice that advocates subjecthood for all exceeds the realm of individual moral practice. Instead, it is also about social moral practice concerned with the conditions in which everyone would be able to become a subject.⁶⁶ The individual and social dimensions of practice and the respective dimensions of individual and social responsibilities should not be merged together.⁶⁷ In this way, Metz attempts to assess subjects’ social embeddedness without reducing them to being products of their contexts.

Second, for Metz, Christian social moral practice is not a reflection of current social and economic interests. Instead, it is shaped and inspired by “a surplus of historical determinations that are not a derived function of the ruling social totality.”⁶⁸ The source of innovative social practice, and therefore also the source of innovative Christian social practice, are utopias of liberation transmitted through dangerous memory.⁶⁹ To illustrate this point, it is worth considering Metz’s remark that remembering Jesus Christ opens and anticipates the future of those who were deprived of their call to become or be a subject. The memory of Jesus Christ, he says, “contains a certain anticipation of the future as a future of the hopeless, the failed, and the oppressed. It is thus a dangerous and liberating memory that puts pressure on and questions the present, because it reminds us not of just any open future but precisely of this future, and because it forces believers to change themselves constantly in order to take this future into account.”⁷⁰

Third, Christian social practice has not only an active but also a passive, even pathic dimension.⁷¹ In modern times, practice is often understood as actively doing something—in a prototypical form: dominating nature. By contrast, Christian social practice reminds us that practice is also about passively experiencing something, including suffering, which questions the identification of practice and domination.⁷² As will be seen below, remembering and narrating painful experiences and solidarizing with those who suffer is central to passive Christian social practice. It subverts any attempt to override or conceal suffered injustices.⁷³

Against this background, it is now possible to gloss the three main categories of Metz’s political theology: memory, narrative, and solidarity. These three categories are not exhaustive, but they do allow an initial elementary systematization of his approach.⁷⁴

• Metz’s understanding of memory is connected with his understanding of Christian practice as individual and social moral practice. Memory is not simply a private and individual resource for orienting oneself in the present but also has social and even political dimensions.⁷⁵

• Memory can be conveyed through various media.⁷⁶ Yet, as to be seen, Metz is primarily interested in memory transmitted through narration, which is difficult to “tame.” That is, it is characterized by a surplus of meaning that opposes the ruling interests. Narratives contain alternatives to what is taken for granted or considered possible in the present, and they might provoke insights or inspire visions of alternative futures that are not simply continuations and derivatives of the present. The significance of narration derives from the second characteristic of Christian practice, namely, that it is inspired by utopias of liberation.

• The importance of solidarity derives from the third description of Christian practice. It is an expression of compassion for other people’s suffering, which is why it is connected with the pathic dimension of Christian practice.

As an interim conclusion, memory, narration, and solidarity can be understood as the means through which Christian social practice, as understood by Metz, becomes operative.

2.3.3.2 Memory, Narration, and Solidarity

For Metz, memory, narration, and solidarity are fundamental for his political theology as they serve as “media” for remaining or becoming a subject. For this reason, the three categories can be understood as “categories of salvation”⁷⁷ since they reassure and eventually save the threatened identity of subjects in their specific historical contexts. Yet it is evident that not every way of remembering, narrating, or solidarizing saves a threatened identity in a historical context.⁷⁸ For this reason, it is important to address a specific structure present in Metz’s theology.

Metz distinguishes two ideal modes of how human beings remember, narrate, and solidarize with others. These modes pervade and structure all Metz’s thinking.⁷⁹ One mode qualifies as what I call an instrumental understanding of memory, narration, and solidarity. This mode reflects the perspective of the ruling classes and seeks the preservation of the present order that is beneficial to their interests. This mode is not interested in the option of subjecthood for all, as presented above, because it risks destabilizing the given power structures. By contrast, the other mode of remembering, narrating, and solidarizing, which Metz calls the “dangerous” mode, seeks to live Christian faith in a way that asks for humanizing the world in the face of unjust suffering. This mode represents human beings’ longing for God as just and loving. It is critical of dominant interests that make the victims of past injustices invisible, victims who are also called on to become subjects before God. After these preliminary remarks, it is now possible to turn to the different understandings of memory in Metz.

For Metz, memory (or more precisely, dangerous memory in his terminology) is “not only the object but the inner enabling moment of every critical consciousness that seeks to enlighten itself about itself.”⁸⁰ This understanding of memory is shaped by the insights of representatives and pioneers of critical theory,⁸¹ who worked on the subversive potential of memory (especially the memory of suffering) as it brings back the “right of the possible against the existing.”⁸² Therefore, “critique actually means about the same thing as memory,” as Theodor W. Adorno states, “namely, mobilizing in phenomena how they have become what they have become and thereby becoming aware of the possibilities that they could have also become something else and thereby be something else.”⁸³ Against this background, Metz understands the remembrance of suffering as a medium for mediating a practice of freedom that is critically directed against an understanding of freedom constituted through domination or oppression.⁸⁴ This understanding of memory represents the mode that is interested in humanizing the world, as expressed above. It has to be distinguished from the other, instrumental mode of memory that serves as an “opiate in the present”⁸⁵ by glorifying the past.

Metz’s understanding of dangerous memory needs to be further concretized as narratively constituted. Memory’s connection to narration is vital because narration expresses, appropriates, and conveys experiences, as pointed out by Walter Benjamin.⁸⁶ Building on John L. Austin’s theory of performative language, Metz further highlights that narratives also performatively reenact experiences.⁸⁷ Narratives thereby put those who tell, hear, or listen to them to the test.⁸⁸ Against this background, one can say that as narration, dangerous memory challenges those who tell and listen to it and can motivate people to review their assumptions about the present. This mode (and use) of narration must be differentiated from the other, instrumental mode of narration, which is used to create the illusion of an alternative world to escape to, like a “rosy past.”⁸⁹ Hence, while the first mode of narration leads to a critical confrontation with the present, the second mode suspends it.

For Metz, narration is not only important for dangerous memory but also for theology in a more general way. He argues that experiences of faith become indeterminate when theology falls short of narration. Since beginnings and ends can only be represented through narration, central experiences of faith are bound to narration and cannot be communicated adequately through argumentation alone. Such central experiences of faith include experiences of the “new” (such as Jesus Christ’s resurrection), the “beginning” (creation), or the “end” (death).⁹⁰ Metz’s point is not to abandon or question the role of argumentation and reason in theology. Instead, he is concerned with reclaiming narratives and myths as media of critique and enlightenment that make the experience of salvation communicable.⁹¹

Finally, the interplay of Metz’s categories of narration and memory aims at solidarity with the suffering and victims in the history of the victors (Siegergeschichte).⁹² Metz problematizes the common understanding of solidarity in today’s societies, where it is conceived as an alliance solidarity (Bündnissolidarität) that follows the logic of “I will support your concerns, and you will support mine.”⁹³ This understanding of solidarity represents the instrumental mode of solidarity. In contrast, solidarity with the dead and suffering (through remembering them) does not build on the equivalence and competence of alliance partners. It cannot count on a possible return. This understanding of solidarity is decisive for Metz’s political theology. Critically engaging with Jürgen Habermas and appropriating a phrase from Kuno Füssel, Metz demands that “not reasonableness but ‘neediness is made the decisive precondition for recognizing the subjectivity of the other.’”⁹⁴ Ultimately, this leads to “the demanding authority of suffering,”⁹⁵ which is transmitted and upheld through memory and narration. Such memory of suffering becomes authoritative insofar as it advocates for victimized people who were hindered from being or becoming a subject.

Summarizing the arguments of the previous pages, one arrives at a specific understanding of Christian solidarity that is rooted in memory and narration and puts a critical light on every instrumental logic in the present:

Christian solidarity with the dead by remembering them is not defined by an abstract interest and also not primarily by the concern of what happens “to me” in death but by the concern of what happens “to you” in death, that is, to others, especially to those who suffer (and only in connection with this by the concern for one’s own identity in death). In its mystical, political double structure, solidarity thus emerges as a category for saving subjects where they are threatened by forgetting, by oppression, by death; as a category of commitment for human beings to become and remain subjects.⁹⁶

According to Metz, the true extent of this solidarity can only be experienced when considered on a global scale. In the face of global injustices that make it difficult or impossible for many to become subjects, Christians cannot abstain from supporting the struggles of the poor and marginalized.⁹⁷

Having completed this overview of Metz’s basic categories, I will now turn to the question of how Christian memory relates to time, which runs on endlessly, indifferent to the suffering that occurs. The following chapter will also help to clarify the meaning of danger in dangerous memory.

2.3.4 Dangerous Memory and Time

This section will discuss how Metz understands (dangerous) memory in relation to time. As seen above, Metz distinguishes between two modes of memory. The first—dangerous memory—recalls people who suffered in the past and challenges the present with the unfulfilled and silenced hopes of those who are gone. As will be seen in this chapter, this kind of memory disrupts an understanding of history as progress and of time as an endless continuum. The other mode of memory helps to flee the present and its challenges by going back to a better past. This mode of memory does not affect our understanding of time as an endless continuum.

Metz reflects on Christian practice and, therefore, also on memory, narration, and solidarity within an apocalyptic horizon. Before elaborating Metz’s understanding of apocalypticism, it is essential to recall the general characteristics of apocalypticism to mind. The main message of apocalypticism is that God is the Lord of time and will save God’s creatures at the end of time. This message often aligns with the idea that a battle between God and his adversaries is taking place in history and that they will eventually be defeated. Those who share this idea that God has set a goal for history can assess historical developments and events critically and take a position for or against God.⁹⁸

Twentieth-century Western European theology has been rather cautious about apocalypticism, accusing it of dramatizing and vividly speculating about a catastrophic end, which could mislead Christian hope in the present.⁹⁹ Unlike many of his contemporaries, Metz takes a different approach to apocalypticism. For him, apocalypticism is not about the catastrophic end of the world but provides an imaginary that corresponds to a reality experienced as crisis. In his words:

Apocalypticism is and must remain a mystical correspondence to experienced political reality. A look at the history of religion and especially at the New Testament teaches what this political reality is: it is the times of crisis, the times of suffered persecution, of massive injustice and inhumanity that drive the pious to apocalyptic longing.¹⁰⁰

Against this background, apocalypticism provides a perspective of hope for those who are suffering under the present conditions and do not have any prospect of a better future. Apocalyptic longing is a subtle expression of hope that this time and this world will not go on forever and that suffering will come to an end. It is a lived “hope against all hope” that motivates to act and “put[s] signs of hope where hope is not lived.”¹⁰¹

To summarize what has been said so far, Metz’s engagement with apocalypticism is programmatic. It aims to challenge a specific understanding of time and to motivate Christians to act. This becomes particularly evident in a series of 35 theses that are part of Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft.¹⁰² Since Metz’s theses are similar to and refer to Walter Benjamin’s theses “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” (translated into English as On the Concept of History), it is helpful to start with an overview of Benjamin’s theses.¹⁰³

2.3.4.1 Walter Benjamin on Memory and History

In his theses, Benjamin criticizes, among other things, the historicist understanding of history.¹⁰⁴ In historicism, history is seen as a temporal and causal arrangement of facts of “how it actually was,” facts that “fill up” time, which is understood as an empty continuum.¹⁰⁵ Yet, to Benjamin, such an understanding of history is neither objective nor neutral but primarily reflects the perspective of the victors of that history.¹⁰⁶ By contrast, the voices of the oppressed on the underside of history, as liberation theologians say, teach that “the state of exception” is the (invisible) normality of history that the oppressed experience every day.¹⁰⁷ From their point of view, one is able to recognize the catastrophic character of time and history in the understanding of historicism. Unaffected by the suffering of the victims and dead, time and history go on and on.¹⁰⁸

Benjamin’s understanding of history attempts to account for the experience of the oppressed. He argues that the “facts” about the past are actually products of the present and need to be seen in this context.¹⁰⁹ Against this background, Benjamin understands history as a construction of the “present time” (Jetztzeit).¹¹⁰ In moments of existential danger, memory imposes itself on endangered subjects.¹¹¹ In the “image”¹¹² of the past that reveals itself to these subjects, they recognize themselves as addressees of what the memory is about.¹¹³ Such memory is “a sign of messianic suspension of what is happening,”¹¹⁴ as it interrupts time as a continuous progression. Through such disruptive memory arises the chance for an alternative history that liberates the suppressed past, the dead, and the lost.¹¹⁵

Benjamin’s approach discloses that time and history are not simply given. Instead, our notions of them are powerful constructs and expressions of dominant discourses in the present (such as historicism in Benjamin’s time), which represent the interests of those in power. This becomes evident from the perspective of those who are considered the victims or “losers of history.” In times of danger, when the victims are put in contact with the unfulfilled hopes and dreams of the past, history and time (as understood in historicism) lose their character as fated or determined. It becomes clear that history could have also been different and that the victims could be something else. To sum up, “he [Benjamin, KM] inverts the domination of the past over the present and calls for an awareness that one does not have to see the past as an authority one is subjected to; it can rather also be understood as an ally that provides handles for interrupting the course of history.”¹¹⁶

2.3.4.2 Johann Baptist Metz in Dialogue with Walter Benjamin

Based on this overview of Benjamin’s understanding of history and time, I will now turn to Metz’s theses about time and apocalypticism. Benjamin’s approach will serve as a foil and dialogue partner.

According to Metz’s diagnosis, today’s understanding of reality is characterized by a “conception of time as an empty continuum growing evolutionarily into infinity, into which everything is mercilessly enclosed.”¹¹⁷ Just like Benjamin, Metz understands time as merciless toward human beings in their vulnerability and suffering, in that it simply passes over them and goes on regardless of what happens and of what people experience. Hence, time appears like Chronos, the God and personification of time in Ancient Greek mythology, who consumes his children. Against such a conception of time, Metz holds that religion offers a potential for resistance, as “religion’s shortest definition” is “interruption.”¹¹⁸ Metz’s understanding of interruption as a means against timelessness is further outlined in thesis 7:

First categories of interruption: love, solidarity that “takes” its time (M. Theunissen); memory that remembers not only what has been successful but also what has been destroyed, not only what has been realized but also what has been lost, and thus turns against the victoriousness of what has been and what exists: dangerous memory that in just this way saves the “Christian continuum.”¹¹⁹

Here, even though the choice of words is similar to Benjamin’s, Metz seems to have a slightly different understanding of memory. In Benjamin, memory is primarily about survival in the present. In Metz, memory is about solidarizing and remembering the suffering and losses of the past. In both cases, memory is a means of resistance, but the two depart from different situations. Benjamin’s work reflects the situation of a subject in a moment of existential danger. By contrast, Metz’s work reflects the situation of a subject that is not directly endangered. However, as the present becomes increasingly insensitive to suffering, there is also a risk that subjects who are not directly endangered today may be endangered in the future.¹²⁰ The memory of suffering is thus maintained as a critical corrective to present developments.

According to Metz’s further analysis, the idea that time never ends is also present in modern disciplines, including theology.¹²¹ Biblical imminent expectation (Naherwartung) appears to be an archaic relic.¹²² Against this background, Metz asks in thesis 20:

Are a boundary and an end to time still conceivable at all—or hasn’t the expectation of an end to time long become an expression of mythical eschatology, because time itself has now become a homogeneous, surprise-free continuum for us, a bad infinity in which everything and anything can happen except this one thing: namely, that a second “becomes the gate through which the Messiah enters history” (W. Benjamin […]) and in which it therefore becomes time for the time?¹²³

Taking inspiration from Benjamin’s memory as a messianic interruption of the continuum of time,¹²⁴ Metz argues that theology and Christian practice should return more strongly to the memory of past suffering that is kept awake in the horizon of apocalyptic longing.¹²⁵ Taking the legacy of apocalypticism seriously would help theology break with an understanding of the future that simply prolongs and extends a problematic present based on suffering in the past. As Metz continues to emphasize, apocalypticism is concerned not with a coming catastrophe but with the destructive nature of time itself.¹²⁶ If theology ignores apocalypticism and human suffering in and through history and time, it becomes an ideology that reflects the interests of the victors of that history. In this sense, Metz states in thesis 25:

Christology without apocalypticism becomes a victorious ideology. Haven’t precisely those whose apocalyptic traditions have been far too victoriously suppressed by Christianity—the Jews—had to experience this painfully enough?¹²⁷

As far as I know, this is the first place in Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft where Metz explicitly mentions the suffering of the Jewish people under Christianity. As will be seen below, Metz later elaborated this point systematically and concretized his political theology “after Auschwitz.”¹²⁸ For him, the memory of Jewish victims of World War II was the dangerous memory in postwar Germany.

To return to a point made above, Metz also calls on theology to recover the apocalyptic horizon so as to move Christians to action. In Metz’s words: “the passionate expectation of the ‘Day of the Lord’ […] brings the pressure of time and action into Christian life.”¹²⁹ In this context, apocalyptic expectation does not paralyze us from taking over responsibility but justifies doing so and urges us to face the suffering of “the lowliest.”¹³⁰

Here, one might also observe many similarities between Metz and Benjamin. Both highlight the disruptive and mobilizing potential of memory, which changes our understanding of time and history. Yet it is again the concrete situation of the subject that is different. Metz speaks from the situation of a subject whose humanity is indirectly threatened in the face of anonymous suffering: “If we submit for too long to the meaninglessness of death and to indifference toward the dead, we will end up with nothing but banal promises for the living as well.”¹³¹ He intends to interrupt time as a continuum on religious grounds, which move subjects to act in favor of their “lowliest brothers.” This break in the continuum is deliberate and intended to correct some tendencies and developments in European society and liberal theology. Benjamin, by contrast, speaks from the perspective of subjects whose existence is more directly threatened. Here, time as a continuum is disrupted in a moment of danger that threatens these subjects. This type of rupture is imposed by concrete living conditions and not brought about programmatically.

2.3.5 “How Much Longer, My God?”

These reflections lead—last but not least—to the question of how Christian practice and theory should address and relate to God in the face of suffering. Considering what has been said, it is clear that Metz’s political theology is not about whether concrete suffering should be faced theologically but rather how. In this context, one can distinguish two options for theologically facing and dealing with suffering. One seeks soteriological closure; the other resists a hasty theological answer, which runs the risk of being given too quickly to those in pain.¹³² These two options can be exemplified with Jürgen Moltmann and Metz’s critique of him.

Moltmann’s book Der gekreuzigte Gott (translated into English as The Crucified God) might be understood as a material elaboration of Christianity’s dangerous memory, which questions current developments of progress that forget about past suffering. In his book, Moltmann offers a Trinitarian approach to the experience of suffering in political, social, and religious contexts. He defines God’s being as love, which is why God cannot be apathetic. Instead, God is affected by what happens to God’s loved ones. Against this background, Moltmann argues that both Jesus Christ as God’s son and God as his father suffered on the Cross. When Jesus Christ died, a person inside God also died. From this, Moltmann deduces that God, through Jesus Christ, identifies with all human experiences of suffering and death.¹³³ Metz is critical of this solution since it is based on a “confusion between the negativity of suffering and the negativity of the dialectically mediated concept of suffering.”¹³⁴ In Metz’s evaluation, Moltmann does not take suffering in its negativity seriously enough, as it is always already dialectically overcome as a moment of nonidentity.

Metz’s own approach to the problem of suffering emphasizes the roots of theology in practice and experience. Reflecting on Metz’s own biography, it is easy to see how his theology is based on this and how it focuses on experiences that resist the rational and conceptual and that can only be hinted at in silence, in sighing, or in lament before God. Such a theology holds its “poverty in spirit”¹³⁵ in high regard. It is a theology that is grounded in the experience of suffering unto God (“why, my God?”) and that refuses to be “rashly consoled” through renouncing God’s attribute of omnipotence, as Moltmann exemplarily does. Against such a position, Metz asserts that it is important to maintain God’s attribute of omnipotence, even if only in the mode of missing it and waiting for its manifestation, because it is the condition of the possibility of justice for the dead. The price of this is to cry: “How much longer, my God?”¹³⁶

To summarize, for Metz, theology is grounded in a mysticism of suffering unto God that holds to prayer and asks God to be, to come, and to reveal Godself as the loving and just God of Christian hope.¹³⁷ Metz’s approach does not leave the question of theodicy completely open, as he is sometimes accused of doing.¹³⁸ His answer is neither purely affirmative nor purely negative. His answer is a longing for God the Almighty in the future and above all time.

2.4 Concretization in Postwar Germany: Dangerous Memory of Jewish Victims

In later years, Metz refined his reflections from Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Unfortunately, the majority of these developments cannot be considered in this study.¹³⁹ But it is important to note how Metz started to engage with the memory of Jewish people’s suffering during World War II.

Starting in the 1980s, Metz explicitly understood Auschwitz—a symbol of the horror that cost millions of Jewish lives—as the new, inescapable starting point for European theology. This was not self-evident to everyone. Many people in Metz’s context thought that Auschwitz was an “operational accident, even if a regrettable one”¹⁴⁰ or something to overcome.¹⁴¹ By contrast, to Metz, it was a catastrophe that concerned humanity in general because it was about the incomprehensible silence of God and the way humans watched the horror or looked away.¹⁴² Doing theology after Auschwitz was not about to gleaning meaning from Auschwitz but about confronting people’s apathy, which remained without explanation.¹⁴³

Subsequently, Metz elaborated various principles for a Christian theology after Auschwitz, of which I will mention those that focus on how to deal with suffering, that is, those that are also relevant to this project.¹⁴⁴

First of all, Metz demands that Christians listen to the Jewish victims and let them speak instead of silencing them by jumping in with their own ideas and preconceptions.¹⁴⁵ Furthermore, he asks Christian theology to critically question its “excess of answers and corresponding lack of passionate questions.”¹⁴⁶ He asserts that Christian theology should critically reconsider its own ideological view and status as a “victors’ religion.”¹⁴⁷ In addition, he also calls on Christian theology to rediscover its own “messianic weakness,” fragile hopes, and naked fears.¹⁴⁸ For Metz, this rediscovery is crucial since a Christianity that forgets its messianic orientation and overcomes its apocalyptic longing risks becoming too comfortable in the world and, as a consequence, losing its sensitivity to dangerous situations and catastrophic circumstances that pose a threat to human life.¹⁴⁹ For Metz, this loss of sensitivity is reflected in, among other aspects, the history of Western European churches, in which there are only a few examples of resistance against political authority. Against this backdrop, Metz recalls that Christianity does not primarily consist of internalized and individualized doctrines of faith but teaches a practice to be lived in a radical way.¹⁵⁰

According to Metz, a Christology after Auschwitz must have certain material features.¹⁵¹ They include, among other things, not opposing Christology to biblical monotheism. Instead, Christology should depart from the messianic traditions of speech to and about God that is sensitive to suffering.¹⁵² In solidarity with the victims and the dead of the human “history of progress,” Christology is not primarily about soteriology, forgiveness, and reconciliation between victims and perpetrators.¹⁵³ Rather, the theodicean question of justice for those who suffer innocently must be at its center.¹⁵⁴ Theological encounters with Christ’s suffering and the Cross should not be internalized, individualized, or isolated from humanity’s history of suffering. For Metz, these encounters happen not only in the religious space of the church but also in the profane space of history.¹⁵⁵

2.5 Summary, Critique, and Open Questions

Metz’s understanding of dangerous memory can be summarized in the following way. As a specifically Christian dangerous memory, the memoria passionis, mortis et resurrectionis Jesu Christi contains the promise of subjecthood for all. In a context where socially valid knowledge is the knowledge of domination (Herrschaftswissen), remembering and narrating Christ’s story means cultivating some sort of a counter-knowledge that unmasks the ideological identification of practice and knowledge. It also means telling stories from the underside of history and remembering unrealized alternatives of history. In this sense, the memoria Jesu Christi and also other dangerous memories possess a future content (Zukunftsgehalt) that might challenge or even haunt the present.¹⁵⁶

As seen above, various critical objections to Metz have been raised. At this point, I would like to (re-)address the main points of criticism and raise questions particularly relevant for the topic of this study. These primarily concern Metz’s understanding of the subject and, relatedly, of practice.

The first critique concerns the relative vagueness of Metz’s understanding of the subject.¹⁵⁷ This has to do with his attempt to break from a purely philosophical (strongly idealistic and transcendental) understanding of the subject. As shown, he does not understand the subject as a given a priori that enables cognition. He rather attempts to critically reflect on its historical and social genesis and its “open wounds” and brokenness (through experiences of suffering that cannot be integrated into a subject’s identity) under contemporary conditions. Thus, many of his reflections point in the direction of critical and postmodern approaches that understand the subject more strongly as something “subjected,” as an entity that does not autonomously set and freely shape itself.¹⁵⁸ Unfortunately, Metz remains programmatic and does not think his reflections through to the end. For this reason, clarifying and elaborating his understanding of the subject in the concept of dangerous memory remains an open task for further research.¹⁵⁹ In Chap. 4, this study will try to take this point into account.

Second, it appears as if Metz is not dealing critically enough with the subject. As described above, Metz reconstructs the sociohistorical connection between the subject and the bourgeoisie. But he does not address the fact that the bourgeois subject is male, white, and “civilized” (European), as more recent research in cultural sociology and gender studies has shown.¹⁶⁰

Third, as a consequence of the prior point, Metz can also be criticized for not being more specific about the practices that constitute the bourgeois subject. He recalls the process of the bourgeoisie’s emancipation from the old social order and the role of capitalism in this process, but he pays too little attention to the challenges posed to the identity of the rising bourgeoisie and its individuals. Through the economization of all relationships, individuals become, in principle, interchangeable. This challenges their identities as bearers of individual desires and goals.¹⁶¹ Under these conditions, bourgeois individuals developed strategies of self-assurance. According to Andreas Reckwitz, these strategies consist of practices of moralization and self-control.¹⁶² Through distinguishing themselves from others such as “the decadent aristocrat” or the “undisciplined and lazy worker,” bourgeois individuals constitute themselves as free (sovereign and self-determined), rational, and responsible subjects.¹⁶³ Against this background, it is worthwhile to critically reconsider the functions of the practices that Metz refers to (memory, narration, and solidarity). Is dangerous memory really about others’ suffering, as Metz suggests?¹⁶⁴ Or does the memory of others’ suffering serve the self-constitution of a moral subject? In his reflections on a theology after Auschwitz, Metz suggests what might help guarantee that dangerous memory is about the suffering of others. As seen above, Metz demands that we listen to the victims of unjust suffering. This leads to a question left open by Metz: What role do the surviving victims play in the constitution of a dangerous memory?

Fourth, from a theological standpoint, I would like to note that Metz appears to focus on the Cross and to neglect the resurrection. For Metz, the memoria passionis, mortis et resurrectionis Jesu Christi is the paradigmatic memory for Christian theology and its engagement with human suffering. From his point of view, this memory encompasses belief in resurrection as manifested in how subjects counterfactually turn to the victims and dead of the past. Believing in Jesus Christ’s resurrection means to believe that God can also change the fate of the dead.¹⁶⁵ Yet when stated like this, Metz appears to understand belief in the resurrection as a purely theoretical principle, according to which one must reckon with the possibility of resurrection. Thinking about the mass mobilization after Franco’s murder and the feeling of witnessing a resurrection, as described in Sect. 1.2, I ask myself if this is enough. What about experiences that fragmentarily anticipate resurrection?

All these points are meant to create awareness of the problems that arise when using Metz’s concept as a lens for analyzing an empirical case from a non-European context, as I will do in this study. I will come back to these questions in Chap. 4, which interprets the data on Marielle Franco.