| Integrity and Freedom: Paradigms and Tasks of Cuban
Theology Today
Sergio Arce
Martínez, President of the Christian Conference for Peace in Latin America and
the Caribbean
The historical phenomenon which took
place in Eastern Europe and, especially in the former USSR when the entire camp of the
misnamed "real socialism" collapsed, had grave consequences for Cuba, as was
also the case for all the underdeveloped world, the world of the countries impoverished to
the point of immiseration as a result of the world order – or disorder – which
has become an increasingly unsustainable reality. At that point, one of the most difficult
periods in the history of the Cuban Revolution began, not only because of the loss of the
Soviet market which represented an economic debacle but of greater relevance was the
disappearance of a sui géneris trade relation marked by a lofty conception of justice and
ethics. The ethical relationship as concretized in the type of trade relations between two
nations had been experienced for the first time in history, totally different to the kind
to which capitalism had accustomed us with its money fetish as the supreme value. The
relations between the USSR and Cuba were greatly misrepresented by those who have always
sought to deny their high ethical-spiritual content marked by justice which was the
prevailing aspect of the trade relations between rich and poor countries – an
impossibility under the present system which prevails in our world.
At the time of the disintegration of the
USSR, as a nation we saw ourselves affected by this trade setback, a circumstance which
the government of the United States took advantage of it to increase the aggressiveness of
its economic war against our people, thinking that in this way it would precipitate the
disappearance of the Cuban Revolution. It did not count on our people's capacity of
resistance, nor on the creativity of those who govern us or their willingness to tread
unexplored paths which, when traversed, do not lead to the abandonment of the hope to
continue creating, step by step, a society with the participation "of all for the
wellbeing of all." Those new roads do not oblige us to renounce our ideal of building
an equitable society, nor to lose the social achievements gained during the years of the
Revolution.
The situation which we have described in
very general terms today characterizes our Cuban context. Our theology, loyal to its
characteristic of being consciously grounded in its context, must be consonant with the
present Cuban reality. We do not forget that we are living at a time of the opening of
Cuba to the outside world which is so different to ours or that this poses countless
social and dangerous ethical-spiritual ambiguities for our people. This requires the
special attention of Christian believers and a specific participation in the public life.
This in turn calls for the need to theologize in function of the new characteristics of
our historical context.
The Search for an Appropriate Biblical
Paradigm
Our theology is not only consciously
contextual; it is also biblical. From this the necessity emerged to search for a specific
biblical paradigm which could serve as a spiritual foundation for our theological pursuit
in the face of the lack of precedents which were revealing themselves in the character of
our revolutionary context. In this sense, we were drawn by the moment in the history of
the Hebrew people when, due to the historical demands which are the demands of God, they
were obliged to open themselves to the world around them, a world organized on an
ideological basis and on the basis of social, political and economic structures which were
totally different to their own. As of the moment of their constitution as a Federation of
Tribes based on the equality of rights and duties they renounced an oppressor ideology
with its unjust structures and now, paradoxically, it was proposed to them that they
accept parameters they had rejected as the only solution to their survival.
Towards the end of the 10th century B.C.
the series of changes in the political, economic, social order gradually produced a change
in the original structure of the Federation of Tribes of Israel or Jehovah – which
were egalitarian, participatory and popular – to structures which were increasingly
differential, unipersonal and bureaucratic, later on giving rise to a corrupt and
unscrupulous government in which the contradictions reached a breaking point. A large part
of the theological literature from that age, basically learned, reflects the preoccupation
and the prophetic rejection of the ulterior development of that historical phenomenon
which reached a point of undermining all the prudent pragmatism of the initial
protagonists of those structural changes, initially inspired by the idea of not losing the
independence and the sovereignty of the nation.
A Historical Analysis of the Paradigm
At the end of the 10th century the change
already mentioned occurred, basically due to the rise of the military power of a people
which had established itself in a region bordering the Israelis on the side of the
Mediterranean. The historical necessity thus arose to reorganize the nation on the basis
of parameters which could facilitate the power to resist and successfully confront the
threat of the Philistines, especially on the military front without dishonouring those of
an ideological-cultural and economic-financial nature. As a consequence of this new
condition, the project arose to create a state with certain similarities to those of the
other peoples of the area as far as its administration and organization are concerned,
without in any way abandoning its original orientation, but reorganizing the society in a
more rational way in accordance with the new circumstances and the stated objective. Many
understood that those changes were necessary in order to safeguard the unity, independence
and sovereignty of the nation. Others did not.
Now then, what was done by the Philistine
of the considerable threat to resist the organizational bases of the Federation of Tribes?
The Philistine State, besides its politico-military ideology – was the owner of a new
technology, the use of iron – which was first and foremost applied to the manufacture
of their military instruments; with the Iron Age the history of human development was
inaugurated; the discovery of its use signified in those times such radical changes in
that world comparable to those which are today caused in our world by the technique of the
use of atomic energy and what is known as "high technology." The Philistines
capitalized on their knowledge of this and they monopolized it, just as is done today by
those who possess the most advanced technologies with the aim of dominating those who are
far from possessing it. This reality in the camp of technology put the Tribes of Jehovah
at the mercy of the Philistines, a phenomenon which is today repeating itself in the
international domain which is why Cuba invests so many resources in the field of science
and technology.
The So-called "David Syndrome"
Only the ingenuity of David, the famous Old
Testament figure, saved the Hebrew people from losing their incipient national character.
In theological circles the phrase of a famous wiseman became associated with the Davidian
project. When one speaks of David it is not so much the person but his project which is
meant, as in "a nation with the David Syndrome," as Walter Brueggermann, one of
the best known biblical scholars of the Old Testament, called that period in the history
of ancient Israel. Using the most ordinary dictionary we find that the word syndrome means
"conjunction of symptoms of a disease." Such a term when applied to the Davidian
project could appear somewhat pejorative. Nonetheless, given the political-social
transcendence of the Davidian project, it is worthwhile asking ourselves what this human
project has been all about such that we cannot qualify it as "syndromatic."
Some diseases are more serious than others.
There are diseases and diseases. There are some such as the one Jesus referred to as
"a non-deadly diseases," just as there are others which is fatal and have no
cure whatsoever and for which, unfortunately, there is no worthy resurrection because they
involve an attempt against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit from which are cultivated
"justice, peace and happiness," as the New Testament writer Paul of Tarsus
pointed out. As a result, to characterize the Davidian project as a "syndrome"
is simply a form of saying that although it was a matter of a project to save Jehovah's
Revolution and the Hebrew people from a total and inescapable disappearance, this did not
mean that it was exempt from a series of dangers. These dangers can be summed up saying
that it was a matter of the danger of ignoring the need to hold high the social and
ethical-spiritual values of the mosaic tradition, since to do otherwise would signify a
veritable national failure which would entail a major defeat from the political
ideological point of view. It would bring in its wake even worse results than falling
under the domination of the Philistines, as a result of not achieving the good which was
desired – to save the nation without renouncing the values which constituted the most
significant element of the Jehowan ideology.
It is worth noting that for a long time we
had considered David and his project to be great traitors of the popular peasant
revolution which ancient Israel had given birth to as a nation in which solidarity and
distributive justice prevailed. Today, from the standpoint of the changes taking place in
our homeland, we have started evaluating the Davidian project from a different
perspective, leaving aside that revolutionary romanticism of which on occasion we are the
victims and which, on more than one occasion, does not permit us to see the problem with a
more pragmatic sense.
The socialist revolution in Cuba had its
well defined good points: it eliminated prostitution in a substantive way, one of the
saddest consequences of the great socio-economic inequalities which we suffered. For all
intents and purposes it also eliminated illiteracy, excessive profit, betting, drug
addiction and also, in a radical way, begging as a result of economic need and
assassination and torture for whatever reason. Other social ills decreased to a great
extent. We used to find ourselves fatally ill and a miracle occurred in the form of a
resurrection, at a time rationally speaking there was no hope whatever for the citizenry's
recuperation. Our theological reflection at that time corresponded to the reality of the
context of that time. The reality of today's context requires a different reflection, but
not as concerns the substantive issue.
Application of the Paradigm in the Cuba of
Today
Faced with the choice between remaining
shut in on ourselves in light of the growing aggressiveness of the economic war against
our people, magnified as a result of the disappearance of the USSR, or saving the
fundamental social gains which the Revolution had attained, our nation opted to open up to
the rest of the non-socialist world and to try to insert itself in it, without losing from
sight its fundamental aim, nor renouncing its ideology based on the principle of the need
to create a society of equals, where the human sentiment of solidarity prevails.
To open ourselves to the capitalist world
which neither shares our goal, nor takes our hopes seriously, and even less sympathizes
with the ideology which seriously accompanies these aims, may appear to some as a silly
hopeless dream. At the same time it may seem to us sufficient reason to contaminate
ourselves with a series of viruses which produce diseases against which we thought we were
effectively vaccinated. We forgot, as on one occasion Don Miguel de Unamuno put it:
"Our ancestor was a sick monkey who was unable to climb to his shelter in the
branches of his tree and he had no alternative but to learn to walk upright on his hind
legs under pain of extinction, thereby losing the security he had by living in the
tree." We should remember that to be a sick animal is a matter which pertains to
human beings. What we cannot forget, and it is to this that we devote our theological
work, is that there are illnesses which are fatal and others which are not; there are
endemic illnesses and others which are occasional; there are epidemics which infect the
great majority of the population and others that are easy to control because only a small
number of people contract them. What is important is that we vaccinate everyone against
the illnesses which are inevitably fatal.
At that crossroads in which the Hebrew
people found themselves in the 10th century there was a fundamental decision to be taken,
the option to act with integrity and real freedom. It fell to the theologians of those
days – just as today it falls on us – to reflect on that necessity. It is a
difficult task for us due to the ambiguity that the conception of freedom has taken on, as
a result of the strange multiplicity of acceptance it has today. A Christian theology only
has a real and truthful meaning if derived from the words of Jesus of Nazareth when he
affirmed: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." Real
freedom is the daughter of the knowledge of truth. In the historicist biblical-Hebrew
language to know does not have the same significance as that conveyed by the
philosophic-Hellenic metaphysical language. To know is to join oneself, marry and commit
oneself; it is to transform oneself on becoming a cognoscente by becoming of one flesh and
spirit with that which is said to be the known. Genuine freedom is the one which emanates
from our marriage with the truth, a real marriage of those who nothing breaks asunder
"until death do us part."
Thus, the truth of which Jesus spoke is a
category that belongs to the camp of history; the truth has to be looked for in the same
process of history, not in what is already finished and formally given, and, as such,
metaphysically fossilized. For the theologian, the truth is God becoming historical
reality, that which compliments itself in its own actual realization. That explains why
Jesus dared to tell himself, in a very special moment of his life, that He was the Truth.
It is to pledge ourselves for life and for death to God, which is being realized in the
very process of the historical development of yesterday and of today, and freedom is the
act of defending life, not reproducing death.
The norm of being free in terms of the
production and reproduction of life frees us of the chains which on more than one occasion
tie us to the conventions and regulations, dogmas and doctrines of the past which have
already been superseded in the process of historical evolution. The conventionalism,
regulations, dogmas and doctrines which tie us to what has already been achieved and which
do not permit us to pursue new, unexplored roads in a creative manner, are a kiss of death
given that life always has to be considered for the future, not the past. For that reason,
Jesus said: "He who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the
kingdom of God."
To Fight Against the Virus of Death: Our
Theological Task Today
Unfortunately, the acute illnesses and
those potential illnesses which are not necessarily fatal in the David of the
"Davidian Project" were converted into chronic illnesses which in the end under
Solomon led to the death of the nation. In the Solomonic project the positive which was
achieved by means of the Davidian Project was perverted and the negative in David
prevailed. Solomon, who ascended to the throne in a sort of coup d'etat, forgot all that
made ancient Israel a genuinely great nation. He conceived of the national grandeur in
military-financial terms. The most immediate consequence of his policy was the division of
the nation and finally the loss of its sovereignty and independence.
The primary symptom manifested by the virus
of death with which Solomon inoculated his people was to set his project of unlimited and
grandiose ambitions in the military-financial field against the social and
ethical-spiritual values which are what really make nations great. This Solomonic
deviation is a warning sign for the peoples but we specifically cannot forget it in our
case, at a time we are opening ourselves to a world in which the genuine social and
spiritual-ethical values do not count in the face of the preponderance of the false
financial-military values that radiate from the laws of the capitalist market. Our
theological task today is to bring forth the prophetic truth in the sense that history
does not forgive when it is a matter of structuring a unequal society politically and
financially, where a few have many privileges and riches and the large majorities remain
excluded from the system.
The theologians of the 10th century, wise
from within and without the Jehovah tradition, reflected on the morality which resulted
from putting the economic-financial means as the end of the politics of a nation, of a
system and of a regime. When the economic-financial measures stop being a means and become
an end in itself, a fetish, as the theologians of antiquity pointed out, it is a death
which kills the real life of the peoples. Closer to us it was pointed out by Jesus of
Nazareth and, during a time even closer to our own, by Karl Marx. The Old Testament
theology assumed a critical attitude which our theology must not abandon in the present
Cuban context.
Today, we underscore the dangers which
exist should we forget the basic contradiction between
"Mammon-fetish-money-wealth" and "God-love-justice." Solomon forgot it
as do many others in today's world, the world of the capitalist market to which we are
opening ourselves as an urgent necessity so as not to perish. Our Cuban theology today has
to make efforts to open the eyes of the churches, their believers and all the people, in
the face of the dangers we face as we insert ourselves into the contemporary world, so
that we not lose ourselves in the ethical-spiritual AIDS that threatens to lead the human
race to its total demise, along with that of our Mother Earth.
One of the deadly viruses which fatally
poisoned the Solomonic project prompted first of all the death of the ethical-spiritual
aspect and in the long term the demise of the political-economic life of the nation. It
consisted in the degeneration of falling into a cultural-ideological relativism, foreign
and opposite to the Jehovah ideology and culture which had constituted the genuine
ethical-spiritual substratum of that nation, as conceived by Moses and consolidated by
Joshua. Today our opening to the globalized world – not only economically-financially
speaking – but also ideologically-culturally speaking must at all costs avoid any
attempt to do so in the Solomonic way. José Martí did not speak of grafting the culture
of other peoples to our tree, but said that the trunk and the roots always had to be and
remain ours, meaning by this that those categories of an ideological-cultural and
spiritual-ethical character that constitute the foundation of our nationality must be
carefully preserved and cultivated without contaminating them in any way whatsoever.
As we theologize those ethical-spiritual
and ideological-cultural categories not only must we care for them but also help them
grow. What does not grow, dies. Our Cuban theology today is bound to the transcendental
task of nurturing in the Church and in the people – whether they be believers or not
– the values which comprise the fundamentals of our Cuban nationality which are none
other than the ethical-spiritual values of effective love and equitable justice. It is not
irrelevant to us that those were the values which Jesus of Nazareth espoused as his life
project, in the tradition of the Prophet Isaiah, as we read in the Evangelism of Saint
Luke: "The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good
news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of
sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's
favour."
September/2003
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