The Drama of the World, the Drama of Theology

Abstract

Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks of a diversity of contemporary philosophies moving ‘concentrically’ toward a ‘dramatic theology’. This article affirms the coherence of this claim, by establishing some of these convergences, beginning with Gaudium et Spes, and a number of theologians, pre-eminently Balthasar. Attention is then turned to the ‘Dramatic Theology’ project of the Innsbruck School, inspired by Raymund Schwager; a conception of theodrama which builds on Balthasar’s insight, while also utilising the mimetic theory of René Girard. The third section considers ways in which the insights of the Dramatic Theology project can be enhanced, by attention to three specific insights from within dramatic theory: the possibility of expanding the Aristotelian notion of ‘tragedy’; the borrowing of ‘overacceptance’ from theatrical improvision (Wells); a wider deployment of the unsettling category of ‘tragicomedy’, as applied to Shakespeare. The convergence of these insights on ‘theodrama’ is demonstrated by a comment on the Girardian/mimetic significance of each. A distinction between Balthasar and Girard is suggested, with reference to Walter Brüggemann’s dual perspectives of ‘above the fray’ and within the fray’.

1. The ‘Theodrama’ of the Modern World

‘Dramatic Theology’ draws its rationale from the recognition of the disparity between God and human beings, such that God’s interaction with the world must always be experienced as incongruent or disjunctive- even to the point of ‘scandal’. The same conviction is found in theologies of the cross, from Paul onwards; in the ‘dialectical’ theology of Karl Barth; in Johann Baptist Metz’s notion of theology as ‘interruption’. The Second Vatican Council’s reading of the signa temporum, ‘the defining characteristics of an age’, described its ambiguities and its ‘frequently dramatic characteristics [dramatica indoles]’ (Gaudium et Spes, Article 4). Sixty years on from the Council, the dramatica indoles are more pronounced than ever.

Dramatic theologians affirm these discontinuities, and draw on the metaphor of the theatre, and on dramatic theory, as the most appropriate vehicle for exploring them:

Humanity is in real dialogue with God. They give that response to God that they want to give and that can be contrary to God’s will. … Only in a like manner can we understand the peculiar way in which God acts in the world. God’s acting throughout the history of salvation is not like a monolog that God performs on Himself, but a long dramatic dialogue between God and His creatures, in which God offers the human person the possibility to really respond to His word and thus in fact makes His own future word dependent on the free response of the human person. … History is not just a play that God enacts for Himself in which creatures would only be His puppets, but the creature is a real co-actor in this divine-human drama of history.

(Rahner 1961, p. 110 ff [translation adapted by Nikolaus Wandinger])

As we shall see, this quotation is significant for the Innsbruck rendition of the theodrama, in which ‘God exercises His Lordship over the whole of creation by entering into the world with His own personal initiative, He gives up His sovereign grandeur above everything finite by becoming a co-actor in this world Himself’ (Rahner 1961, p. 121). It is worth noting that Hans Urs von Balthasar is resistant to Rahner’s theology, precisely because, according to Balthasar, it dissolves, or is in danger of dissolving, the dramatic tension which must be at the heart of an authentic theology. Balthasar’s notorious parable of the ‘Christian and the Commissar’ in The Moment of Christian Witness (von Balthasar 1994), is a bitter castigation of theological styles- he names Karl Rahner’s ‘anonymous Christianity’- which have, in his view, surrendered the capacity for dramatic witness, that is, martyrdom. Despite this concern, Balthasar would not challenge Rahner’s statement:

In spite of its event-character, diversity and plurality, God’s acting throughout history has a coherent inner structure, an inner teleology, so that every act of this history of salvation is only intelligible as an element of the whole.

(Rahner 1961)

In his own theodrama, Balthasar asserts that the world of the theatre provides us with a set of resources which, with modification, can be used in theology. All of the principal modes of investigation seem to lead concentrically from the most diverse regions of contemporary thought toward a dramatic theory (von Balthasar 1988, p. 50). There is an affinity between them and the actor who ‘attempts a kind of transcendence’, in order to gain clarity about themself, a gesture which invites the advent of genuine revelation. As Ben Quash summarises, this clarity which the drama is uniquely able to reveal, is ‘complex, pluriform, multiply interpreted truth’. Hence, the richness of the dramatic model, which is ‘involving, particular, social and anticipatory’ (Quash 2005, p. 37). In the present age, this manifestation presents itself as a matter of urgency: the confrontation between divine and human freedom has reached a unique intensity, and has moved centre-stage.

2. Innsbruck Dramatic Theology

The ‘dramatic theology’ project, constructed by theologians from the University of Innsbruck, takes its cue from Balthasar’s achievement, but has added another principal resource, the theologically inflected anthropology or ‘mimetic theory’ of René Girard.

Nikolaus Wandinger (2004) offers a short summary of the Innsbruck mode of dramatic theology, which is also a heartfelt tribute to its principal founder, Professor Raymund Schwager SJ (1935–2004), delivered as an address several months after Schwager’s unexpected death. This articulation of a theodramatic approach begins with the need to re-conceive our understanding of revelation, and to adjudicate biblical contradictions, ‘between the God of wrath and the God of love, the God who demands sacrifice and the God who protects victims’. Dramatic theology aims at a clear, non-contradictory perception of God- while still leaving a place for paradox and mystery. Wandinger cites the quotation from Rahner which we noted in the previous section: ‘History is not just a play that God enacts for Himself in which creatures would only be His puppets, but the creature is a real co-actor in this divine-human drama of history’ (Rahner 1961).

Schwager puts the dramatic intuition to work in Der wunderbare Tausch (Schwager 1986), an integrated study of selected controversies in the history of Christian reflection upon salvation. Schwager’s fullest exposition of the dramatic approach occurs in Jesus and the Drama of Salvation (Schwager 1999). The opening chapter, ‘Paradox and Drama’ (pp. 1–25), argues for the suitability of the theodrama for addressing theological paradox. The subsequent chapters set out Schwager’s understanding of the events of Jesus’ preaching, death, and resurrection as a five-act drama, with the Girardian mimetic dynamic at work in the transitions from each act to the succeeding one. This is true above all in the transition from Act III to Act IV; from the crucifixion to resurrection; here we find both the theological heart and the dramatic heart of the ‘theodrama’.

Schwager draws attention to the usefulness of a dramatic theology approach for unifying the theological endeavour, in the face of identity-based approaches which threaten to dissipate it (Schwager 1992). While these contemporary approaches all take their point of departure from the perspective of the marginalised or oppressed victim, there is a danger that these compete with each another for our attention, resulting in what we might call a ‘balkanisation’ of theology. Girard’s mimetic theory is commended as the only extant ‘thoroughly elaborated (anthropological, cultural, social, religious-scientific and theological) theory’ which focuses on the victim. ‘[T]heology needs a religious theory of the victim that covers all fields of human science’ (Schwager 1992, p. 355; my translation).

This ‘religious theory of the victim that covers all fields of human science’- René Girard’s cultural anthropology- is formally embedded in the key hypotheses of the dramatic theology research programme, ‘a set of instruments in order to relate in a critical analysis of human and social sciences the various religious, political and emotional experiences of people’ (Schwager and Niewiadomski 1996). However, all this is only possible if we acknowledge that God, in Jesus Christ, is the guiding factor:

Christ is the key to unlock the mystery of the play of salvation history. He is the ultimate representative of the divine author, though he is not the author. He still acts within the limitations and perspectivity of a character within the drama, but he does so in perfect unity with the author of the drama, who is the Lord of History. Therefore, he can be the key.

(Wandinger 2004)

The Innsbruck model provides the foundation of Scott Cowdell’s comprehensive study of Girard and (dramatic) theology (Cowdell 2018). Cowdell appreciates the potency of a Girardian theodramatic approach as ‘an untier of hermeneutical knots’, but attempts a broader version than Schwager’s. His alternative five-act scheme spans the whole of cosmic history, from the ‘pre-human paradise of savage innocence’, to the ‘un-theorized eschaton’; and not just the preaching, death, and resurrection of Christ, as in Schwager’s Christological scheme. While this is an important panning out of the lens, so as to include the broad arc of human evolution, it complements rather than replaces the tight scriptural focus of Schwager’s Heilsdrama.

3. Further Dramatising the Theodrama

The drama metaphor is compelling and fruitful, as Balthasar observes, because it manifests the various modes of human agency (whether as conflict or co-operation). As with any metaphor, however, it falls short in its capacity to mirror the divine sovereignty. The Innsbruck approach adopts the five-act framework, but otherwise there is little direct focus upon dramatic theory, let alone specific dramatists (here it contrasts with Balthasar). What Raymund Schwager and his followers propose may be most accurately described as ‘THEO-drama’. One important refinement from Cowdell is his deployment to the double agency tradition of God’s action, both in its scriptural and Thomistic exposition (Cowdell 2018, pp. 134–38). Austin Farrer and Rowan Williams are cited in support of a view of kenotic, respectful, and non-violent divine action- ‘backstage’.

Is it possible to bring the theological and the dramaturgical insights into closer, more explicit alignment? I have suggested that the transition from Act III to Act IV in Schwager’s scheme is both the theological heart and the dramatic heart of the theodrama: theological, because nothing less than the identity of the one true God is at stake at this point in the drama: in the contrast between God’s loving redemptive action, and the mendacious violence of human idolatry. It is the dramatic heart, because the transition under discussion has been famously theorised by Aristotle, and his discussion of what makes for the greatest tragedy: ‘anagnorisis, leading to peripeteia’.

The first of these, ἀναγνώρισις, is ‘a moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery’. In its original meaning, it denotes the ‘recognition’ of a person, and what they stand for. More generally, in the Aristotelian tradition it signifies the hero’s sudden awareness of a real situation, the realization of things as they stood, and finally, the hero’s insight into a relationship with an often antagonistic character. The second, peripeteia, is ‘a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity’. The impact of the theodrama depends entirely on the shock of peripeteia; the astonishing reversal by which the stone rejected by the builders becomes the corner-stone. The reversal is entirely rooted in the anagnorisis of Act IV, the unveiling of the true nature of God, as utterly beyond violence.

This is the central pivot of the Innsbruck theodramatic model. I propose three ways in which dramaturgical theory may help to reinforce this core theme, thus reaffirming the fruitfulness of a theodramatic approach. The first insight is to follow through on the Aristotelian framework implied above, and to see how contemporary scholarship on the Poetics might cohere with the mimetic insight- specifically, as to whether the theodramatic core of ‘anagnorisis, leading to peripeteia’ has to be understood in sacrificial terms. The second insight moves away from a classical framework by drawing on improvisation theory, and the practice of what Samuel Wells calls ‘overacceptance’. This very creative suggestion is considered in more detail in Cowdell’s chapter entitled ‘Divine Overaccepting’ (Cowdell 2018, pp. 173–201). To use Girard’s terminology, ‘overacceptance’, the creative cooperation of two actors, can be understood as a form of ‘non-violent reciprocity’. The third insight, stimulated by the drama of William Shakespeare, similarly departs from classical dramatic theory, insofar as Shakespeare’s plays have led scholars to describe his aesthetic as ‘tragicomic’. Once again, the possibility of non-sacrificial resolution is brought to consideration. Shakespeare is of interest, if for no other reason than his importance in the work of Balthasar and Girard.

To begin, then, with the five-act scheme of Schwager’s Heilsdrama, which seems to replicate the structure of classic western drama. In fact, the history of the five-act structure is complex: it would seem to derive from Horace’s Ars Poetica rather than Aristotle, and in its modern development owes more to nineteenth-century scholarship. Nevertheless, the vital plot twists to which Schwager refers, above all in the crucial Acts II and Act IV, are recognisable from the Poetics, though Schwager does not use Aristotle’s technical terms (anagnoresis, peripateia).

It is interesting to note, therefore, recent scholarship on the Poetics which has the potential to underscore the Girardian dimension of the Innsbruck theodramatic model. Arata Takeda discusses the history of interpretation of controverted chapters, specifically the apparently contradictory accounts of tragedy to be found in chapters 13 and 14 (Takeda 2016). The problem is briefly stated. In chapter 13, Aristotle argues that tragedy consists of a change of fortune for the worse, and should ‘end in misfortune’. In chapter 14, Aristotle declares the superiority of a plot in which the killer, on the verge of killing the victim, recognises them. The incident ends in the good fortune of the victim being spared. The ‘killing averted by recognition’ of chapter 14 seems to flatly contradict the formula of chapter 13.

The history of the discussion is complex, with ingenuous possible explanations being offered, including the suggestion that Aristotle simply changed his mind. What is of interest is the possibility that ‘misfortune’ may not, after all, be essential to the greatest tragedy. The tenacity with which the western tradition has clung to the ‘sacrificial’ reading of tragedy (i.e., the necessity for a victim to be destroyed) is worthy of an investigation in itself. What matters here, however, is an expansive non-destructive (=non-sacrificial) understanding of tragedy, one which allows for ‘near misses’. Such an understanding opens up common ground with the biblical tradition, and with a Christian world-view more generally. Girard’s mimetic biblical ‘canon’ consists of texts which narrate the avoidance of sacrificial immolation: whether by divine protective decree (the mark of Cain); or by substitution (the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac); or by an act of mercy (Joseph’s foregoing retribution against his brothers). The insistent undertow of the scriptures, as Girard reads them, is God’s pulling his people away from mimetic entanglements and violent reciprocity. The undertow swells toward the drama of Holy Week, which God intends as a divine comedy, not misfortune.

Girard identified his own approach as ‘anti-Nietzschean’, insofar as he opposes Nietzsche’s hostile dismissal of the ‘pseudo-humanity’ of Christianity, and its consequence that ‘no-one would any longer be sacrificed’. For both thinkers, the elimination of sacrifice, as achieved by the Crucified, is indeed the essence of Christianity; though Girard welcomes this, while Nietzsche is appalled by it. Takeda’s examination, through a Girardian lens, of a long-standing debate about the true nature of tragedy, holds out the possibility of a ‘non-sacrificial’ re-reading of the western dramatic tradition. Such a re-reading may provide fresh resources for the dialogue between theology and the dramatic imagination.

The second insight, offered by theologian Samuel Wells, and taken up by William T. Cavanaugh and Scott Cowdell, moves in a different direction. Wells considers drama not as the enactment of a pre-written script, or as the exemplification of a pre-conceived theory, but through the improvisation technique of actors, working solely with their own creative resources (Wells 2006). ‘Overacceptance’ is a theatrical term referring to the technique of overlaying or interrupting a dramatic piece with an alternative, improvised performance, in such a way that the trajectory of the overall meaning is changed. A skilled improviser can ‘overaccept’, or build upon, the performance of his or her partner. The alternatives to overacceptance are simply blocking the other’s creativity, or merely ‘accepting’ it, i.e., suppressing one’s own creativity. Wells gives the charming example of a concert pianist who skilfully incorporates the discordant banging of a young child by playing alongside her (Wells 2006, pp. 131–32). He neither ‘blocks’ the child’s performance- by sending her away- nor ‘accepts’ it- by letting her carry on disrupting the concert.

‘Overaccepting is accepting in the light of a larger story’. (Wells 2006, p. 131). The theological resonance here is that God’s ‘script’ is skilful and generous enough to find room for and include our own, even when it is wildly incongruous. God’s ‘performance’ in the world is aimed at nudging human actions, which are the stuff of tragedy and destruction, in the direction of ‘divine’ comedy. The concept allows for a theodrama which takes seriously the wretchedness of the human predicament- our alienation from God- without disfiguring God with our distorting projections: avoiding distorted projections.

Through all these learned habitus of overaccepting, the Theodrama allows us to reclaim our present, and our past, beyond the twofold paralysis of accepting or blocking the tragedy and suffering of life. Likewise, by overaccepting harsh traditional language about divine wrath and disapproval, which has attached itself to the Christian message over time, we can retain all that powerful imagery for the divine project of human liberation while detoxifying the conception of God that it implies.

(Cowdell 2018, p. 200)

In short, we ‘preserve every bit of divine seriousness about humanity’s need for transformation’ (ibid.). Something similar is at stake in the third insight, which proposes the ‘tragicomedy’ as the appropriate description of ‘divine seriousness’. This argument is inevitably more tenuous, because its source- Shakespearean drama- is full of pitfalls for anyone attempting to discern traces of religious meaning within dramatic structure. Proceeding cautiously, it is fair to claim that Shakespearean theatre is not easily encompassed in Aristotelean categories. Just as we noted above the possibility of a ‘non-destructive’ conception of tragedy (Takeda), so the category which has been deployed by Shakespearean scholars, ‘tragicomedy’, invites a further emancipation from classical categories. The term specifies the four ‘last plays’ or romances, are labelled ‘tragicomedies’ (Dillon 2010); it has been extended to include other plays in the canon, such as the middle comedies; finally (and one might say contentiously) it describes Shakespeare’s ‘vision’ as a whole (Hartwig 1972).

Venturing into biographical speculation is unwise. Nevertheless, Hans Urs von Balthasar and René Girard- the two principal interlocutors for proponents of the dramatic theology model- have devoted careful attention to Shakespeare, each showing a fearlessness in the face of the taboo against ‘autobiographical criticism’. Girard consistently referred to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex as a kind of Ur-text for mimetic theory; and yet he is equally fascinated by Shakespeare, declaring in his collection of essays A Theatre of Envy that Shakespeare’s drama is ‘absolutely inseparable from everything I ever wrote’ (Girard 1991, p. 1). He considers a number of plays in-depth: for their exposition of the dynamics of mimetic desire (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), the conspiratio of the scapegoating process (Julius Caesar), and the grace-filled reconciliation when mimetic conflict has been overcome (A Winter’s Tale). Girard has comparatively little to say about the main tragedies, and even less to say about the history plays, which is unfortunate, since the two historical tetralogies, which deal with the ‘civil butchery’ of factional conflict, are full of carefully plotted instances of undifferentiation and mimetic doubling (Reichert 2001).

While speculation about Shakespeare’s own religious allegiance is unwise; nevertheless, the religious overtones and symbolism of the late plays (the ‘tragicomedies’ in the strict sense) are unmistakeable. Both Girard and Balthasar are drawn to the ‘resurrection’ scene of A Winter’s Tale, in which Hermione, the wronged wife of Leontes, is seemingly miraculously brought back to life. No doubt each of these thinkers has seriously transgressed academic convention, each finding in the playwright’s life the confirmation they seek: of the mimetic insight, and of the Christian world-view, respectively. Ben Quash alerts us to the danger that Balthasar’s ‘belief in the divine realm of glory, beyond all Being and bestowing all Being’, will shape our reading of particular plays, and assimilate them to something like a meta-narrative. Even when we are speaking of the free and sovereign God there is a danger of ‘smoothing out of the folds’ of the complexity of human situations (Quash 1997, p. 303).

For all that the ‘tragicomedies’ allude to patterns of providence and redemption- Balthasar calls Measure for Measure a ‘Christian mystery play’- they resist easy resolution, and are charged with a tragic potential which is not entirely eliminated. This is certainly true of the ‘problem plays’ or middle comedies, such as Measure for Measure, but perhaps above all of the unresolved tensions and aborted ‘sacrifice’ of The Merchant of Venice. Indeed, Shakespeare’s corpus as a whole does not look to be promising territory for theodrama’s insistence on a ‘clear, non-contradictory perception of God’. Shakespearean drama does not bear unambiguous witness to a loving divine providence; many of the plays suggest just the opposite, espousing a kind of negative theology, where divine goodness and order are alluded to by way of human cruelty, chaos, and disintegration.

Karl Rahner wrote of God’s acting throughout history as having ‘a coherent inner structure, an inner teleology’. Balthasar asserted the convergence of very diverse approaches in contemporary thought toward a dramatic theory. In this section I have identified three possible resources from such a theory. They exemplify something of this teleology and this convergence, and yet at the same time resist a ‘smoothing-out of the folds’. A non-destructive understanding of the tragic, as suggested by Takeda’s alternative readings of the Poetics, holds out a possibility of integrating the ‘near- misses’ of biblical narratives into broader discussions of tragedy in the classical and modern western traditions. Samuel Wells’ resort to the practice of theatrical improvisation offers a fresh and joyful articulation of the creative interplay of divine and human freedom. The notion of ‘tragi-comedy’, as a descriptor both of a subset of his plays, and of Shakespeare’s elusive ‘vision’ or ‘world-view’, may permit a re-balancing of the ‘theodramatic’ model, insofar as the latter risks an over-emphasis on the divine rather than human actors.

4. Conclusions

All three trajectories considered above are enriched by a Girardian hermeneutic, and in turn enable an improved version of this hermeneutic. If this is correct, then the inclusion of mimetic theory as a fundamental methodological apparatus in the dramatic theology’s ‘research programme’ (Schwager and Niewiadomski 1996) is further justified.

Arata Takeda’s hypothesis of a ‘non-sacrificial tragedy’, which is implied by an acceptance of chapter 14 of the Poetics over chapter 13, is entirely consonant with the Girardian ‘exodus from sacrifice’: that is, with the titanic struggle of humanity to free itself from a fascination with the deceitful mystique of ‘creative’ immolation, and the myth of redemptive or healing violence.

Samuel Wells’ theological adaptation of ‘overacceptance’, taken up by Cowdell and others, allows us to picture what Girard calls ‘positive reciprocity’. This is the opposite of two rivals whose sterile copying of each other’s hostile gestures turns them into mirror-images of their mutual hostility- to use Girard’s term, ‘monstrous doubles’. ‘Overaccepting imitates the manner of God’s reign’; God does not block or override his creation, neither does he accept creation on its own terms; he overaccepts it. ‘One can see the whole sweep of the scriptural narrative as a long story of overaccepting’ (Wells 2006, p. 134). Both Girard and Wells envisage what is possible, when God is no longer viewed as a competitor or rival of humanity.

The perplexing category of the ‘tragi-comic’, can, after suitable modification (as Balthasar would say), be a vehicle for dramatic and theological paradox. The Shakespeare plays thus designated, especially the last plays or ‘romances’, explore a vast diversity of human possibilities for entrapment and liberation, which refuse to be fully ‘smoothed-out’. Tragicomedy resists any facile theological resolution, just as the genre itself resists easy definition. One aspect of this worth noting, from a Girardian perspective, is the irrelevance of death as a defining characteristic (Dillon 2010, pp. 120–21). The genre is defined neither by the absence of death (as in comedy), nor its inevitability (as in tragedy). Deaths of significant characters do occur in A Winters Tale; emphatically no-one dies in The Tempest. Here, is a genre which accepts death as a human reality, but not as necessary sacrifice; a genre, moreover, which is able to acknowledge the proximity of catastrophe, experienced, once again, as a ‘near-miss’.

This ambiguous state seems to be completely at odds with the ideal of the Innsbruck dramatic theologians, of a ‘clear, non-contradictory perception of God’. The two can be reconciled, perhaps with the help of a distinction put forward by the Old Testament theologian Walter Brüggemann, between seeing things from ‘above the fray’, and from ‘within the fray’ (Brüggemann 1985a, 1985b; Linafelt and Beal 1998). These are the perspectives of canonical criticism of the bible, and socio-literary criticism, respectively. Both perspectives are necessary.

Dramatic theology seeks to witness to a God who is ‘above the fray’. God is utterly beyond our imagination, which has been twisted out of shape and is incapable of seeing God straight. At the same time, God chooses to enter into the maelstrom of human mimetic entanglement, in the person of the Son, and to work our salvation from within it. When Girard speaks of biblical texts which extol or condone human or divine violence, he speaks of ‘texts in travail’; or, in other words, ‘in the fray’.

Brüggemann’s distinction may even help to distinguish Girard and Balthasar, in terms of their respective readings of the Shakespearean corpus, but also in their approaches in general. Girard would admit that his interest in mimetic desire and its violent configurations amounted to something of an ‘obsession’. This is a misleading picture; nevertheless, A Theatre of Envy shows his fascination with ‘the underground’ at least as much as the ‘resurrection’ (to cite the title of Girard’s book on Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Girard 2012)).

Balthasar, by contrast, seems to operate from ‘above the fray’; his attention is drawn to Shakespeare’s final plays, and their intimations of successful grace, rather than the cosmic and moral turmoil of the tragedies and histories.

As Walter Brüggemann suggests, it is important to recognise that both perspectives have their place. A play requires enthralled spectators as well as actors.