Friday, October 5, 2012

Being-Toward-the-Other: the Ontological Constitution of Salvation in Christian Soteriology


In the salvific transfiguration of being that results from an encounter with the Sacred vis-à-vis the symbolic medium of Jesus of Nazareth, a fundamental reorientation of self radically alters the path of the individual's vocation. The will is no longer fundamentally oriented toward Ego but toward the Other. Along with Heidegger's ontological constitutions of being-in-the-world and being-toward-death, along with Ricoeur's being-interpreted, another existential configuration comes into focus: being-toward-Other.

Through this traumatic encounter, the Gaze of being finds dissatisfaction in the objective horizon of its consciousness -- a field of idolized phenomena violently assimilated and reduced to objects of personal gratification. Under the vocationally tyrannical and objectifying Gaze of being the Other is mutilated and reduced to an enslaved other, no longer an Other but another shadow that is otherwise than Other, otherwise than being, a mere icon idolatrously mistaken for the Real. So this horizon of consciousness is realized as a killing field populated by shadow objects of Ego, fenced off from that which is beyond the perceptive horizon of consciousness -- the traumatizing Real, the Other, the irreducible and ineffable, along with its penetrating Gaze that commands our attention, sinking into the black voids at the centers of our eyes, invisibly crossing our Gazes in an ineffable and commanding commonality, soliciting our attention and reverence and caution.

So the traumatic encounter with the Sacred Other leads to a reverence for every other Other, a being-toward-Other which demands that we draw out of ourselves under the Gaze of the Other and respect and love the ineffability of the Other, symbolized in the black and bottomless commanding abyss at the centers of their Gaze, which is the locus of their irreducible singularity. 

But how does the Sacred Other function within the symbolic medium of Jesus Christ? How does it succeed in reconstituting our being? First, in the teachings of Jesus. Through the medium of evocative parable we are drawn into the experiences of the Other -- the desperation of the prodigal, the suffering of a man mugged and left in a ditch. But more importantly, the unconditionality of love behind these stories -- the celebratory love of a father for a son who took away his livelihood and destroyed his honor and fortunes, the dishonorable and scandalous love of a hated enemy who helps his enemy out of a ditch and pays for his healthcare anyway. Love draws us out of ourselves and beyond the boundaries Ego selfishly establishes. But what about the actions of Jesus? He heals the sick, raises the dead, and loves his enemies, embracing those who have been othered by the elites. He is unjustly murdered and crucified, and when we stand before the image of this figure in our minds, we stand before a naked and bleeding body, bearing the scars of our selfish world on his own flesh, a world we have contributed to ourselves. His blood cries out to us, his wails and cries screaming at our injustice, calling us to crucify our own Egos that crucify his body. And as the bleeding body of the Other, reduced to a mocked and derided other, he calls us toward himself to embody this cruciform love, to go out toward the body of the Other, lift it from the ditch, pay for its healthcare, and forgive it of what it has ostensibly taken from us.
 

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