lcc liberal arts studies / 2010 volume iii - LCC International University

HENRIKAS ÞUKAUSKAS / SEARCHING FOR THEOLOGY OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS
The literary image used by Kyrgiz author Chingiz Aitmatov (Aitmatov, 1983,
p. 119f) –“mankurt” –slave without memory, and thus totally controllable, is very
useful. It is a picture of a person, captive, enslaved inwardly, through eradication of
memory, by means of extreme pain. The powers of human personality striving for
survival, by the shackles of the inhumane system are forced upon themselves and
eradicate the seedbed of humanity. Especially tragic is the figure of “ mankurt's”
mother, who by her presence, words and memories tries to recreate the memory
and save the son. The end of the myth is tragic—the mother dies from the hand of
the son. The account shocks with its hopelessness. It is this hopelessness that
socio-cultural institutions and theology have to take at face value to realistically
assess different effects totalitarianism has. Aren't our attempts like the attempts of
the mother? Aren't they seeking to rehabilitate memory, or baptize into the new
memory without addressing the significant harm done to the personhood?
Churches claim that they have hope and good news for the other
communities, because of their Scriptures, signs and first of all, loyalty to God,
thinking that they evade the patterns of human and cultural destruction. However,
the historical experiences witness the sobering reality, that such communities
internalize totalitarianism as well. Fear and servility, characterizing the regimes,
invades the churches. Is it possible to account for this? Is it possible that joy, peace,
justice, stemming from the salvation by Jesus Christ is acknowledged in the
community, but its members are living in totalitarian fear? Might it be that professing
Christian faith, the erected structures promote, create and sustain a different ethos,
resembling the surrounding “totalitarian” culture and even promoting it. How is it
possible to avoid the fate of the mother of “mankurt”? What are the theological
resources to be uncovered and unleashed?
Setting the scene for engagement
French thinker Louis Althusser (1969) helps to navigate in these murky waters. As a
philosopher he does not want us to live in the world of illusions, but seeks to help us
to acquire the knowledge of reality. He uses concepts, which show, how human
thinking comes to that knowledge. “Ideological” and “the theory” are for him the
tools, whereby the experienced reality is reworked into the knowledge of the real
and practical. Theologian Clodovis Boff (1987, pp. 70 - 72) in an analogous way
reworks this insight into the production of the theological knowledge, where the first
truths of faith, through the medium of hermeneutics, are used as “theory,” reworking
the raw material of social sciences into the real knowledge of the world. So, beside
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