Beyond Secular Faith: Philosophy, Economics, Politics, and Literature

1

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI on Love and Sexuality

¹²

Tracey Rowland

The nature of human love and sexuality does not feature as prominently in the oeuvre of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as it did in the publications of his predecessor, St. John Paul II. A helpful way to understand the relationship between the two is to think of Ratzinger constructing the intellectual scaffolding into which John Paul II’s moral theology and catechesis on human love (popularly known as his Theology of the Body) nestles. Foremost among these fundamental theology contributions of Ratzinger/Benedict are his understanding of the relationships between truth and love, truth and conscience, truth and freedom, and Érōs and Agápē.

The Love-Reason Relationship

At least as far back as the era of medieval Scholasticism, there has been a tension within Catholic scholarship between truth and love, objectivity and affectivity. Some scholars wanted to give priority to truth and objectivity and thus the faculty of the intellect, others wanted to prioritize the operations of the human heart, the will, affectivity, and love. Ratzinger argued that truth and love should be regarded as operating in a mutually auxiliary relationship. This means that the human heart needs to love the good and the human intellect needs to know the good so that both faculties of the human person work together in harmony. As he wrote in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate: Intelligence and love are not in separate compartments: love is rich in intelligence and intelligence is full of love.¹³ He also argued that any effort to restore the understanding of Christianity as the true religion or religion of truth must be based equally upon orthopraxis as well as orthodoxy. As he expressed the principle: Love and reason should converge with one another as the essential foundation pillars of reality: real reason is love and love is real reason. In their unity, they are the real basis and goal of all reality.¹⁴

Truth and Conscience

One contemporary approach in the field of sexual morality has been to marginalize truth by eschewing the existence of moral absolutes. It is first argued that the moral quality of sexual acts depends on so many contextual factors that each particular moral question must be examined at the tribunal of the human conscience. It is further argued that, given the enormously wide variety of contextual factors, individual persons may well reach different conclusions in their conscience from that of the official magisterial teaching, which merely offers general guidelines. Variations on this theme were found in proportionalist and consequentialist and fundamental option moral theories which were criticized by St. John Paul II in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993). With regard to such ideas, Ratzinger wrote:

It is of course undisputed that one must follow a certain conscience or at least not act against it. But whether the judgment of conscience or what one takes to be such, is always right, indeed whether it is infallible, is another question. For if this were the case, it would mean that there is no truth—at least not in moral and religious matters, which is to say, in the areas which constitute the very pillars of our existence. For judgments of conscience can contradict each other. Thus there could be at best the subject’s own truth, which would be reduced to the subject’s sincerity. No door or window would lead from the subject into the broader world of being and human solidarity. Whoever thinks this through will come to the realization that no real freedom exists then and that the supposed pronouncements of conscience are but the reflection of social circumstances. This should necessarily lead to the conclusion that placing freedom in opposition to authority overlooks something. There must be something deeper, if freedom and, therefore, human existence are to have meaning.¹⁵

Ratzinger’s ideas on the role of conscience and its relationship to truth are influenced by the theology of St. John Henry Newman (1801–90). In this context, Ratzinger observed that for Newman the middle term which establishes the connection between authority and subjectivity is truth.

Truth and Freedom

Central to Ratzinger’s moral theology is the principle that truth and freedom are never in competition, never opposed to each other, providing one begins from the understanding that the human person was created by God for freedom, which is linked to the observance of the divine law. Here Ratzinger draws on the theology of Sts. Basil the Great and Augustine. He writes:

Basil speaks in terms of the spark of divine love which has been hidden in us, an expression which was to become important in medieval mysticism. In the spirit of Johannine theology, Basil knows that love consists in keeping the commandments. For this reason, the spark of love which has been put into us by the Creator, means this: We have received interiorly beforehand the capacity and disposition for observing all divine commandments . . . These are not something imposed from without. Referring everything back to its simple core, Augustine adds: We could never judge that one thing is better than another if a basic understanding of the good had not already been instilled in us. This means that the first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true (they are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man’s being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the god-like constitution of our being, is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is, so to speak, an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from within. He sees: That’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.¹⁶

Ratzinger’s theological anthropology, especially this understanding of the truth-freedom-conscience relationship, can be seen to undergird the vision of moral theology expressed in St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993). In the first paragraph of this encyclical, St. John Paul II wrote that because of original sin there is a tendency for the human person to give himself over to relativism and skepticism and to go off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself. Nonetheless, he added that no darkness of error or of sin can totally take away from man the light of God the Creator. In the depths of his heart there always remains a yearning for absolute truth and a thirst to attain full knowledge of it.¹⁷

Érōs and Agápē in Deus Caritas Est

While the decoupling of truth from freedom is seen by Ratzinger to create one problem, so too the decoupling of love from freedom is seen as giving rise to another problem. Ratzinger calls the mentality that fosters a moral code unrelated to love as a kind of moralism. This mentality reduces Christianity to an ethical code, with a schedule of actions that are either permitted or forbidden without any reference to the relationship between human nature and freedom and between human and divine freedom. In the first encyclical of his pontificate, entitled Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI affirmed his opposition to moralism with the statement, Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice . . . but the encounter with an event, a person.¹⁸ Christian moral behavior based upon a unity of love and reason actually transforms the person and sanctifies them, making them capable of participating in the love and life of the Holy Trinity.

In Deus Caritas Est Benedict also addressed the criticism of Friedrich Nietzsche that Christianity had poisoned érōs. He responded to Nietzsche by offering an analysis of the proper relationship between érōs and agápē. Specifically, he argued that érōs without agápē reduces érōs to the status of sexual pleasure for the sake of pleasure without any intrinsic dignity of its own. Érōs needs agápē to purify it, to give it dignity and purpose, since the human person is not solely a body, but a union of body and soul. Benedict emphasized that the spiritual dimension of the person cannot be suppressed or ignored in any evaluation of sexual practices. As Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP summarized the argument:

[For those who separate érōs from agápē] the person’s subjectivity imposes a meaning on the body which each person technically manipulates in a way that treats it as a purely physical and exterior reality. . . . It disconnects the spiritual dimension of love, often reduced to a chaste amorous feeling, from sexuality, which is reduced to a purely biological function, ceasing to be a sacrament of love.¹⁹

Other authors who have written essays on Ratzinger/Benedict’s response to Nietzsche include Jarosław Merecki,²⁰ Olivier Bonnewijn,²¹ and Benjamin D. Wiker. Wiker describes the cross of Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as that of having to teach sanctity to satyrs.²²

Eucharistic Theology and the Nuptial Mystery

Wiker also draws attention to the relationship between érōs and agápē in the context of eucharistic theology. He notes that after the first Holy Thursday the imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously inconceivable: it had meant standing in God’s presence, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in Jesus’ self-gift, sharing in his body and blood. With the institution of the Eucharist, "God’s own agápē comes to us bodily, in order to continue his work in us and through us."²³

In his Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict observed that the Eucharist, as the sacrament of charity, has a particular relationship with the love of man and woman united in marriage. He noted that "by the power of the sacrament, the marriage bond is intrinsically linked to the eucharistic unity of Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church (cf. Eph 5:31–32) and further, that in the theology of St. Paul, conjugal love is a sacramental sign of Christ’s love for his Church, a love culminating in the Cross, the expression of his marriage" with humanity and at the same time the origin and heart of the Eucharist.²⁴

In an earlier pre-papal work, Ratzinger emphasized that the essential sacramentality of the Eucharist is identical with its unity and its insusceptibility to change from without and he observed that when sacramentality is attacked, so too is sacrality.²⁵ The sacraments of Eucharist and Marriage are intrinsically connected in numerous ways such that errors in the theological understanding of one of these sacraments will have serious repercussions for the other. Without an understanding of the sacramentality of marriage, there is a tendency for sexual unions to be diminished to the status of mere contractual agreements.

The Secularist Void and Teenage Depression

A secularist culture which eschews a sacramental cosmology lowers spiritual horizons and diminishes opportunities for self-transcendence. Ratzinger argued that the void which follows is never successfully filled by the pseudo-liturgies of rock concerts and the pseudo-models of exemplary humanity presented to youth by those who make their fortune marketing celebrities. Ratzinger stood alone among clerical leaders and theologians of his generation in so far as he sought to explain the links between secularist conceptions of love and sexuality, the rock music industry, and youth depression. According to Ratzinger, the evangelization of youth requires their liberation from the horizons of mass culture and an encounter with Christ which is authentically sacramental. In the following paragraph, he paternally analyzed the condition of contemporary youth culture with specific reference to the absence of the theological virtues of hope and love:

Thus today we often see in the faces of young people a remarkable bitterness, a resignation that is far removed from the enthusiasm of youthful adventures into the unknown. The deepest root of this sorrow is the lack of any great hope and the unattainability of any great love: everything one can hope for is known, and all love becomes the disappointment of finiteness in a world whose monstrous surrogates are only a pitiful disguise for profound despair.²⁶

Opposition to Jansenism

While Ratzinger feels pity for the young who are caught in Nietzschean social experiments, he also acknowledges that the older generations of Catholics were sometimes adversely affected by the influence of Jansenist attitudes to love and sexuality, which can be construed as a kind of moralism. Jansenism was a complex theological movement named after the Dutch bishop Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638). The Jansenists emphasized the effects of original sin and the problem of concupiscence. In its extreme form, Jansenism encouraged the attitude that all sexual desire was a spiritual defect and that marriage was merely a remedy for concupiscence. Such was the magnitude of the problem created by the Jansenist attitude to sexuality that Ratzinger observed that French psychiatrists had coined the phrase "maladie catholique" to describe its baneful effects on the personal development of Catholics. The maladie catholique was a special neurosis that is the product of a warped pedagogy so exclusively concentrated on the Fourth and Sixth Commandments that the resultant complex with regard to authority and purity renders the individual incapable of free self-development.²⁷

Contrary to the Jansenist mentality, Ratzinger maintains a positive stance toward human sexuality as a divine gift. He does however argue that how this particular gift is used, like all other divine gifts, is a matter of moral significance, and further, that the concept of human freedom must be read from within the Christological vision of man, who is free not when he defends himself against God, but when he accepts the union with God offered to him in Christ.²⁸ This treatment of the Christian moral life from within a christological vision is the central methodological principle governing Veritatis Splendor (1993). Ratzinger/Benedict strongly agrees with St. John Paul II that human sexuality needs to be understood within the context of a theology of the original divine offer to be sharers in the creative powers of the Trinity as narrated in the book of Genesis. This is the anthropological vision developed by St. John Paul II in his Catechesis on Human Love, which Ratzinger has remarked was sadly missing from Paul VI’s analysis of life issues in his encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968).

Stance on Humanae Vitae

In an interview published under the title Last Testament (2016), Ratzinger stated that he agreed with Humane Vitae’s negative judgement on the use of the contraceptive pill, but nonetheless he found the reasoning of the document unsatisfactory. It was too theologically slim. What Humanae Vitae lacked was a comprehensive anthropological viewpoint such as that eventually provided by St. John Paul II in the early years of his pontificate.²⁹

In an earlier 1997 interview, Ratzinger stated that the teaching of Humanae Vitae affirms three basic principles. The first is the belief that children are a blessing. The second is that sexuality should not be disconnected from procreation, and the third is that humanity cannot resolve great moral problems simply with techniques, with chemistry, but must solve them morally, with a spirituality.³⁰

In a later interview given in 2004, Ratzinger further observed that the development of the contraceptive pill has changed the vision of sexuality, the human being and the body itself. The use of the pill has separated sexuality from fecundity and this separation has profoundly changed the concept of the human life.³¹ Sexual intimacy has lost its purpose and finality with the result that all forms of human sexuality have become morally equivalent. Sexual acts no longer contain a meaning inherent in themselves. Persons imbue their sexual practices with whatever subjective meaning they choose to give them. Such meanings can include everything from recreation to reproduction. Within such a moral framework, heterosexuality is in no sense superior to homosexuality. The intellectual history of the gender ideology movement, including the fact that Facebook now recognizes over seventy different sexual orientations, can be traced back to this separation of sexuality from fecundity.

The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons

Although Ratzinger/Benedict did not produce any major works on the subject of contemporary gender ideology, in his capacity as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he was responsible for the publication of one document on the subject of the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. In this document, one can find the following statements of principle:

Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.³²

Providing a basic plan for understanding this entire discussion of homosexuality is the theology of creation we find in Genesis. God, in his infinite wisdom and love, brings into existence all of reality as a reflection of his goodness. He fashions mankind, male and female, in his own image and likeness. Human beings, therefore, are nothing less than the work of God himself; and in the complementarity of the sexes, they are called to reflect the inner unity of the Creator.³³

In Genesis

3

, we find that this truth about persons being an image of God has been obscured by original sin. . . . The human body retains its spousal significance but this is now clouded by sin. Thus, in Genesis

19

:

1

–

11

, the deterioration due to sin continues in the story of the men of Sodom. There can be no doubt of the moral judgement made there against homosexual relations.³⁴

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs. . . . The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.³⁵

Therefore, the general conclusion of this document is that a homosexual inclination is a disorder but since it is not always clear what has caused the disorder—there may any number of biochemical or environmental factors operative—those who suffer from this condition should not be treated as though they are morally bad people and made the objects of violent malice or ridicule. What is condemned are homosexual actions.

In summary, Joseph Ratzinger’s publications on love and sexuality can be read as providing significant buttresses for the christocentric moral theology of St. John Paul II as expressed in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor and the Catechesis on Human Love. He developed the theological understanding of the relationships between truth and love, truth and conscience, truth and freedom, and érōs and agápē that undergird so much of St. John Paul II’s moral and anthropological vision. He also took on the task of responding to Nietzsche’s indictment of Christianity on the charge of having killed érōs.

Bibliography

Benedict XVI. Caritas in Veritate. Vatican City: Editrice Vaticane,

2009

.

———. Deus Caritas Est. http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_

20051225

_deus-caritas-est.html.

———. Last Testament: Pope Benedict XVI in His Own Words. Interview with Peter Seewald. London: Bloomsbury,

2016

.

———. Sacramentum Caritatis. Vatican City: Editrice Vaticane,

2007

.

Bonino, Serge-Thomas. "Nature and Grace in Deus Caritas Est." Nova et Vetera

5

(

2007

)

231

–

48

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Bonnewijn, Olivier. Commandment and Love: From Friedrich Nietzsche to Benedict XVI. In The Way of Love: Reflections on "Deus Caritas Est," edited by Carl Anderson and Livio Melina,

152

–

68

. San Francisco: Ignatius,

2006

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John Paul II. Veritatis Splendor. http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_

06081993

_veritatis-splendor.html.

Merecki, Jarosław. "Has Christianity Poisoned Eros?" In The Way of Love: Reflections on "Deus Caritas Est," edited by Carl Anderson and Livio Melina,

56

–

65

. San Francisco: Ignatius,

2006

.

Ratzinger, Joseph. Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia//congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_

19861001

_homosexual-persons_en.html.

———. On Conscience. San Francisco: Ignatius,

2006

.

———. Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology. San Francisco: Ignatius,

1987

.

———. "The Renewal of Moral Theology: Perspectives on Vatican II and Veritatis Splendor." Communio

32

(

2005

)

357

–

69

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———. Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium, Interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Interview with Peter Seewald. San Francisco: Ignatius,

1997

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———. Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions. San Francisco: Ignatius,

2003

.

———. The Yes of Jesus Christ. New York: Crossroad,

2005

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Rowland, Tracey. Benedetto XVI—J. Ratzinger sull’amore. In Dizionario su sesso, amore e fecondità, edited by José Noriega et al.,

65

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2019.

Wiker, Benjamin D. "Benedict Contra Nietzsche: A Reflection on Deus Caritas Est." Crisis Magazine (May

2006

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18

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Zenit News Agency. Cardinal Ratzinger on Laicism and Sexual Ethics. Zenit News Agency, November

19

,

2004

. https://zenit.org/

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/

11

/

19

/cardinal-ratzinger-on-laicism-and-sexual-ethics/.

12

. This work was originally published in Italian: Rowland, Benedetto XVI—J. Ratzinger sull’amore. It is included here with permission in honor of the

2014

International Symposium—Beyond Secular Faith The Body: Theological, Philosophical and Political Implications, where I presented on the magisterial teaching of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

13

. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, §

30

.

14

. Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance,

183

.

15

. Ratzinger, On Conscience,

12

.

16

. Ratzinger, On Conscience,

31

–

32

.

17

. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, §

1

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18

. Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §

1

.

19

. Bonino, Nature and Grace,

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20

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21

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22

. Wiker, Benedict Contra Nietzsche,

22

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23

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23

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24

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34

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35

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10

.

2

King-Spirit

The Dramatic Conversion of Juliusz Słowacki and Karol Wojtyła

³⁶

Michał Łuczewski

In 1991, during his pilgrimage to independent Poland, John Paul II had a great improvisational moment. In the main square of Krakow, toward the end of the Mass for the beatification of Angela Salawa (1881–1922; a simple maid and nurse who embodied Franciscan spirituality with her life), he handed over the newly-constituted Third Republic of Poland to the patronage of the King-Spirits. Wojtyła always had great tact and control, but on this occasion he hesitated, stumbling and uncertain, as if he was surprised by his own words, as if they didn’t come from him. This was so unusual that nobody in the tens of thousands of people gathered there knew exactly what was going on. No one understood him. But Wojtyła’s words were strong and loud:

We offer you, blessed Angela, we offer those great, holy and blessed, those great spirits, the King-Spirits of our nation, we offer this Third Republic of Poland, in order that she can cope. We ask thee . . . : teach us to be free.³⁷

The Polish people were cheering, yet they didn’t understand exactly what had just happened—since the King-Spirit is the principle of evil incarnated in Polish history.

History as Holocaust

In his great improvisation, Karol Wojtyła was unmistakably referring to King-Spirit (Król-Duch), a poem by his beloved Romantic poet, Juliusz Słowacki (1809–49). The Polish bard, one of the founding fathers of the modern Polish nation, considered this poem to be his intellectual and artistic testament, the last and greatest work he wanted to share with posterity, his ticket to immortality. Despite the fact that the poem’s title gained the status of aurea dicta in the Polish language, the poem itself has remained arcane and dark. Zygmunt Krasiński, his friend and another Romantic bard, wrote upon the publication of the first part of King-Spirit:

In

500

stanzas, if I understood

20

, that would already be a lot. . . . The words are phonetically pleasant, and the images are beautifully grasped. . . . There are a few stanzas, which are splendid, delicious, but the rest, however, are without connection, beginning, end, development. At times it seems as if he [Słowacki] was drunk when he wrote it, at others an idiot, at times he seems to be scoffing at the reader, it is as if he blindly took phrases without thinking and threw them together, and whatever was the result, he published.³⁸

This criticism was reiterated quite recently by one the greatest Słowacki experts, a leading Polish poet named Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz. In his fundamental Słowacki. Encyklopedia, he opined:

Słowacki wrote King-Spirit in a state of complete madness. In other words, it is a crazy madman’s work. Any attempts to reconstruct the whole or plot of the work or its continuity . . . cannot succeed, not only because such a whole or plot or continuity does not exist and has never existed, but above all, because we are unable to comprehend what the madman considers as a whole and what for a madman can be a plot.³⁹

Although Słowacki died having received the last rites, and his body was eventually buried in the Wawel Cathedral—the Polish sanctum sanctorum—the poem strikes some strangely unorthodox tones. In it, Słowacki describes the history of Poland as the reincarnation of spirits and their transformation through blood, sacrifice, and death. The world was based upon an eternally recurring burnt offering, or holocaust. For Słowacki, in line with his vision of reincarnation, the blood was spilled with each subsequent incarnation of the King-Spirits.

According to the Polish poet, the first incarnation of the King-Spirit was Popiel, the legendary ruler from the beginning of the ninth century. He was of the West Slavic tribe of Goplans and Polans and the last member of the Popielids, the mythical dynasty that preceded the Piasts, the first historical Polish dynasty. This is how Popiel describes his death and resurrection:

I wake up—A woman hovering over me

Sang her bewitched runes.

Your homeland, she screamed, "is dead;

I’m the only one alive . . . And you, instead of the poison

You had my life. Covered with ashes

And fertilized by dust and wormwood

I delivered you to be an avenger!

A Son of ashes, named Popiel.⁴⁰

According to Romantic etymology, Popiel means a man of ash. In his transmutation of Poland’s origin myth, Słowacki links Popiel with the genesis of humanity. This time, however, it was not God who breathed life into matter, it was matter itself that came alive. On Popiel’s right side stood an angel of gold, / On the left, one of blood and turmoil,⁴¹ but Popiel listened only to the latter:

I am not yet grown, but already the food of the soul

To me was revenge, and treachery was education . . .

Sometimes it falls on my breast with a thud,

My hand trembles, my knife draws itself.⁴²

In his journey, Popiel went on to break both the divine law and the law of nature. First, he burnt his mother alive, who sang to him lullabies of a magical nature:

My mother from the forest was brought to me . . .

And instead of lying down at her feet . . .

I used her body for the wick of a tar candle.⁴³

Next, he commanded that his mentor, the poet Zorian, be sacrificed.

He handed me the letter . . . and I rested

My crooked iron sword on his leg

And I felt that I was passing between his bones . . .

And I, without removing the sword from his wound,

Yes, driving it deeper into the body . . .

When he was burned, he was quieter than a lamb.⁴⁴

Moving further and further into his crimes, Popiel didn’t even spare his beloved Queen Wanda, whose corpse he burned on the Vistula River.

Słowacki bestowed the King-Spirit with messianic attributes, which were transformed into the signs of the Antichrist. Christ said, Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.⁴⁵ Those who realize this desire back to front, by setting fire to the earth, are King-Spirits. Christ said, I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.⁴⁶ However, when the King-Spirit says, I have overcome the world, he doesn’t bring peace but is the sole source of suffering. In the book of Revelation, St. John paints a picture of a conquering virgin: She brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne.⁴⁷ The King-Spirit takes this divine right into his own hands and tells the nations, I am the terrible, divine whip.⁴⁸ At the center of the dark reality of Satan’s capital,⁴⁹ one finds a rock of sacrifice and a pile of offerings. The King-Spirit falls from heaven like a lightning bolt,⁵⁰ is a murderer from the beginning,⁵¹ Lucifer, Satan, the ruler of this world.⁵² He comes in glory as Popiel and incarnates himself into Polish history, soaking it with blood. Yet, as in Yeats’s The Second Coming, Popiel is not the luminous lord but a beast. To the innumerous murders from the past, he adds his own. He descends into the depths of hell.

And it was to such King-Spirits that Karol Wojtyła was offering the Third Republic of Poland.

Słowacki as a Historical Materialist

At first glance, Słowacki was departing from Christian orthodoxy by articulating a belief in reincarnation and writing an erroneous apology of the demonic, violent, and transgressive. Yet, for the author, King-Spirit wasn’t a mythical tale but the unfolding of Christian revelation. This is why Popiel recounted his history, not for vain fame but for the confession of his sins.⁵³ In this, he reveals that he is the Antichrist, Christ’s murderer, in order that he can go and follow Christ.

Słowacki considered himself to be a modern Christian prophet, the interpreter of the Word, the Logos. Though Zygmunt Krasiński, the third Polish bard, deemed his poem incomprehensible, for Cyprian Kamil Norwid—another great Polish poet—King-Spirit was an exemplary Christian phenomenological epic on par with Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, and Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz.⁵⁴ According to Norwid, while the three latter epics represent the light of Christianity, Słowacki’s epic was the first attempt at representing a dark, northern, apocalyptic, Gothic apology of Christianity, the moment of the lunar solstice. In Norwid’s interpretation, Słowacki demonstrates the absoluteness of Christianity in a negative way by showing the brutality, violence, and darkness of life without Christ. In this view, Słowacki’s greatness lies in overcoming the triumphalist vision of history while giving voice to its victims, to their tears, suffering, and tortures. It was reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s famous image of a historical materialist who tries to

seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. . . . In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.⁵⁵

In this sense, Słowacki was a historical materialist who described the works of the Antichrist and showed the Messiah as his subduer and redeemer. Słowacki was representing the struggle between demonic chaos (as embodied by the King-Spirits) and the Logos. His world was the one awaiting redemption, as St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now.⁵⁶

Słowacki’s revelation was a modern one. He didn’t want to confine himself to recounting old myths. Just as he combined the Genesis origin story with the latest paleological discoveries in his mystical Genesis from the Spirit (Genezis z Ducha), he combined Slavic myths with the latest historical and archeological advancements in King-Spirit. For him, King-Spirit was a lesson in the mathematics of faith, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.⁵⁷ It was not only meant to complement Christian revelation but also to substantiate it with the achievements of modern historical scholarship. It had both revelatory and scientific ambitions. Under the demonic face of the King-Spirit, Słowacki wanted to reveal not only the need for redemption but also the anthropological truth.

The Anthropology of the Cross

To cast light on Słowacki’s anthropological truth, I will juxtapose his thought with that of René Girard, who one century later had the same ambition of establishing a scientific apology of Christianity. The parallels between them are striking indeed. In King-Spirit, Słowacki recognized a social, constitutive mechanism based on founding murders, which Girard then elaborated in the form of mimetic theory and the scapegoat mechanism. Girard described his project as an anthropology of the cross, which could be attributed to Słowacki’s thought since the history of the King-Spirit is that of the bodies taken down from the cross.⁵⁸

In Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, his first ground-breaking work, Girard defended the novelistic truth that humans are guided by what the author called a metaphysical desire—a desire for the fullness of being, a desire to be some earthly god—against the Romantic lie. This desire is based on ontological sickness, the realization that we as human beings are incomplete and lacking. To satisfy the metaphysical desire and recover from our ontological sickness, we imitate models whom we consider to participate in being on a higher level than we do. Thus, metaphysical desire gives rise to mimetic desire, the desire to mimic others in order to possess the qualities they have. As Girard demonstrated, great artists are extremely mimetic, just like snobs and dandies.⁵⁹ This description fits Słowacki perfectly, as he was a Romantic, snob, and dandy, finding himself embroiled in constant rivalries and struggles for greatness.

In further of Girard’s works, the fundamental premise concerning the mimetic nature of our desire lays the groundwork for one of the most ambitious theories of human culture. Imitation leads to conflicts and violence, social disintegration, the war of all against all: a social crisis, dubbed by Girard as the crisis of undifferentiation, where all social differences and hierarchies dissolve. In myths, this crisis is described through apocalyptic tales about plague and contagion or motifs of warring brothers, such as Remus and Romulus, Cain and Abel, and Jacob and Esau.⁶⁰

In the next phase, society is in search of its lost unity and looking for a scapegoat, who would be blamed for the disintegration and consecutively expulsed and executed. Thus, the dynamics of all against all turns into the dynamics of all against one. When the one to be sacrificed is singled out and convicted, society regains its peace and begins to form the rituals and laws that give shape to all religions. Victims are always demonized firstly as the source of the evil in the social group; it is only afterwards that they are deified and held up as gods and heroes who, in the moment of death, miraculously bestowed upon the group a sudden unity and peace.

The mechanism of scapegoating isn’t, however, recognized as such. The sacrificial victims are represented as gods and heroes so that no one asks who killed them. According to Girard, all myths cover up the crowd’s complicity in the founding murders. Thus, violence is inextricably linked with the sacred.

According to Girard, the condition of the possibility of the recognition of complicity is found solely in Christian revelation. It is only Christ—as the innocent victim—who does not cross over into violence. He was the first to show us that it is the community that bears responsibility for the evil that befalls it, not the scapegoat upon which the community has tried to lay the blame. Christ was the one to teach us to pray to God, And forgive us our debts / As we also have forgiven our debtors.⁶¹

Indeed, from this perspective, King-Spirit is not a myth but a Christian epic. In the poem, the dynamics of all against all is represented as the conflict between Bolesław and Stanisław, who take on the role of the warring brothers, one of the most ancient and universal tropes. The all-against-one dynamic, for its part, is represented by the consecutive murders of innocent victims. In accordance with Christian revelation, however, Słowacki recognizes that no scapegoat expulsion can be a durable source of unity and that the sacred is based on violence.

The Romantic bard shows that it isn’t that the King-Spirit is behind the murders, it is rather that the murderers give rise to the sacred represented by the King-Spirits: "Under oppression—under the rottenness of hunger / Murder sprang forth—the first God of nations."⁶² It isn’t just any god that leads one to sacrifice; rather, murder itself becomes a bloody god. That bloody god makes his presence known only after the sacrifice is completed. Concerning Wanda—whose body was being prepared as the burnt offering—Słowacki wrote, And fear magnified the corpse in the eyes of the community.⁶³ Fear associated with the sacrificial offering formed a community, a nation, and, at the same time, magnified the corpse; it bestowed divine characteristics upon the sacrifice, making her a queen, spirit, a King-Spirit.⁶⁴ In other words, all murders are sacralized and imagined as being the work of a god, while they remain all-too-human.

Even though Girard understands his theory to be a Christian apology, there is an unsettling rift within it. He seems to suggest that we had to wait until Christ’s coming to recognize murders as murders, that previously people lived as if God didn’t exist and died as if God didn’t care. The French-American anthropologist put Christ at the center of his theory because he most perfectly portrays the mechanism of violence, who stood at the beginning of our culture and humanity; for Słowacki, on the other hand, Christ isn’t only the center of history but is also the Alpha and the Omega.⁶⁵ In King-Spirit, Christ was with us from the beginning of the world. To recognize the King-Spirit as the Antichrist, we first have to know (or at least recognize) who Christ himself was. King-Spirit thus shows us that murders, eternal recurrences of transgressions, have been with us from the very beginning, but at the same time from the beginning they were futile. It is in this sense that Girard’s theory is contained in the poet’s vision.

Thus, murders will always remain murders and they will never bring peace to any community. Not even the greatest transgressions of the King-Spirit will ever bring true unity. The killer is conscious that his offerings are chosen arbitrarily, and their justifications are always fictional. In order to justify murdering his mother, Popiel consciously gives false testimony:

I exclaimed to the people that she bewitched me,

That she ate my heart, that she poisoned my wives.⁶⁶

In this sense, the King-Spirit’s recognition was based on Christ’s revelation. Unlike the perpetrators who targeted innocent victims, he knew that his victims were innocent. He knew well what he was doing, but it was precisely this knowledge that was the source of his despair. When summoned by blood, the true God does not respond but turns away. There are no sacrifices, not even the most creative, that can create a true sacrum. There is no end to the transgressions of the King-Spirit, but they do show us that the true God doesn’t want bloody sacrifices, that ancient rituals are only empty acts devoid of meaning. That no god comes forth from blood—only more blood.

The King-Spirit as Conversion

From Girard’s perspective, that Słowacki was able to demonstrate the futility of violence made him a great artist, and great artists transcend their mimetic desires and Promethean pride. Girard describes this process as novelistic conversion,

a reconciliation between the individual and the world, between man and the sacred. The multiple universe of passion decomposes and returns to simplicity. Novelistic conversion calls to mind the analusis of the Greeks and the Christian rebirth. In this final moment the novelist reaches the heights of Western literature; he merges with the great religious ethics and the most elevated forms of humanism, those which have chosen the least accessible part of man.⁶⁷

In the final analysis, King-Spirit—a seemingly arcane and dark poem that is full of passion on the surface—appears to be a message of simplicity and reconciliation, reaching that least accessible part of man. As Girard shows, the message of a great work of art reflects the life of a great artist. At times, great artists undergo conversions through their last works, often written on their deathbed. Girard points to the intimate relationship between the conversion of a work’s main protagonist and its author, as the author discovers that his heroes are not flattering doubles⁶⁸ who are full of divinity, passion, and power, but weak human beings dependent on others, slaves of their mediators:

In renouncing divinity the hero renounces slavery. Every level of his existence is inverted, all the effects of metaphysical desire are replaced by contrary effects. Deception gives way to truth, anguish to