Memory, embodiment, ethics: In conversation with Wentzel van Huyssteen’s work on theological anthropology

studies. As such, it presents a novel engagement that can enrich systematic theological discourse.

http://www.ve.org.za Open Access deeply empathize and identify with others … Narrative understanding thus generates a basic act of empathy whereby the self flows from itself toward the other in a free variation of imagination. The narrative imagination transforms selfregarding into a self-for-another. (eds. Van Huyssteen & Wiebe 2011a:3-4; cf. Kearney 2004:173;Ricoeur 1992: 113-139) Van Huyssteen and Wiebe thus highlight and underscore Ricoeur's claim that links personal identity to narrative and our imaginative capabilities. They also note how Ricoeur links memory and imagination and affirms his claim 'that memory is the "gateway to the self" and to personal identity and as there is always a narrative component to memory, our remembering always implies narrative experience' (eds. Van Huyssteen & Wiebe 2011a:4; cf. Ricoeur & Homans 2008:222).
In this essay, I want to build on these comments, exploring the promise that Van Huyssteen's work on theological anthropology holds in search of a 'remembering self', a self that is not disembodied and dislocated from time and history. With this in mind, the first part of the article highlights some key features of Van Huyssteen's more recent work on theological anthropology. This is followed by a discussion on how Van Huyssteen's work invites and displays the need to affirm the interconnections between embodiment, memory, vulnerability, imagination and empathy. It is argued, in addition, that his constructive proposals 'in search of self' should not be disconnected from its crucial ethical and theological impetus and contours.

Key features of Van Huyssteen's work on theological anthropology
Over the last decade or two, Van Huyssteen's work on theological anthropology has become more extensive and pronounced. The theme is of course already prominent in his published Gifford Lectures entitled Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology (Van Huyssteen 2006), and a substantial corpus of articles published hereafter builds further on the perspectives introduced and explored in this award-winning book. For our purposes here, I would like to mention three features that decisively guide and mark his reflections on theological anthropology.
A first and obvious feature is the fact that Van Huyssteen's work is defined by its interdisciplinary nature. This characteristic has always been present in his work, but it is expressed with even greater clarity and sophistication as his academic career unfolded. Indicative hereof is the first chapter of Alone in the World? That situates the question of human uniqueness as an interdisciplinary problem. In his discussion, Van Huyssteen is well aware of the problems confronting the interdisciplinary conversation between Theology and Science. He acknowledges the danger that the public can place all its trust in Science, even to the point of resulting in unabashed scientism. He also points out the reductive approach on the other side of the spectrum, namely that Theology and Philosophy can be so preoccupied with survival and an inward focus on its rich textual heritages that they become uninterested in recent developments in the Sciences (Van Huyssteen 2006:8; also with reference to Changeux & Ricoeur 2000:1). For Van Huyssteen, however, it is actually at the boundaries between disciplines that new and exciting discoveries can take place, albeit that this task requires the necessary conceptual clarity and care. As he writes: Interdisciplinary discourse, then, is an attempt to bring together disciplines or reasoning strategies that may have widely different points of reference, different epistemological foci, and different experiential resources. This 'fitting together', however, is a complex, multileveled transversal process that takes place not within the confines of any given discipline, but within the transversal spaces between disciplines. (Van Huyssteen 2006:9) The transversal spaces between disciplines signify for him an authentic public realm, and it is here where the public voice of theology amidst our cultural complexities can join in discussing shared problems and overlapping epistemological patterns (cf. Van Huyssteen 2006:310 Loubser 2015). At the heart of Van Huyssteen's project is indeed the exploration of various 'venues for an interdisciplinary theology' (Gregersen 2015:141-159) and the accompanying quest, as Daniël Veldsman points out, to tell the story of religious awareness with interdisciplinary integrity (Veldsman 2008:222-230). It should also be observed that Van Huyssteen does not seek in his interdisciplinary approach a mere mirroring of the findings of science but also holds to 'the "semantic surplus" of theology in relation to the sciences' (Van Huyssteen 2015:208).
A second feature of Van Huyssteen's work on theological anthropology relates to the notion of embodiment. For him, a post-foundational view of embodied persons implies that the locus of rationality should be embodied persons and not abstract beliefs. As he writes: We, as rational agents, are thus always socially and contextually embedded. Moreover, it is as embodied rational agents that we perform rationally by making informed and responsible judgments in very specific personal, communal, but also disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts. (

Memory, vulnerable embodiment and empathy
Van Huyssteen's focus on interdisciplinarity, embodiment and vulnerability holds in my view much promise for a mutually enriching encounter with work being carried out in memory studies, including attempts to reflect on an ethics and theology of memory. In line with Van Huyssteen's plea for an interdisciplinary approach for theology, one can add that philosophical and theological reflection on the ubiquitous and slippery concept of memory too should seek cross-contextual and crossdisciplinary conversations, albeit with the awareness of the different reasoning strategies of the various disciplines. In this regard, it is useful to view 'memory' as a travelling concept, as a concept that is not fixed but can travel 'between disciplines, between historical periods and between geographically dispersed academic communities' (Bal 2002:24;cf. Whitehead 2009:4 In his article, Van Huyssteen is especially interested in how to conceive of the embodied human self in prehistory, and it is his conviction that archeological data 'will find the key for overcoming contemporary challenges to the idea of multidimensional, holistic notions of self and personhood' and that it will be helpful 'for an understanding of the evolution of symbolic behaviour, especially religious and ritual behaviour' (Van Huyssteen 2014a:110). He considers, for instance, the conclusion that scholars draw from the archaeological evidence that people remembered where individual bodies were buried because they later retrieved the bodies with great precision. In the typical houses at Çatalhöyük, Van Huyssteen (2014a) writes, the prehistoric self was, therefore: [S]ituated in complex webs of memories: not only would a person who moved around the house have known about who was buried there, but individuals who were buried were remembered and as such would acquire over time a very clear narrative identity. (p. 114) Drawing further on Ian Hodder's work on burial practices, reference is made that the remembered dead selves were also partible and for Van Huyssteen (2014b) this archaeological evidence suggests that: [N]ot the atomized and highly individualized self of our own world, but rather a self that was mutable, that can be divided physically; a self that can transform; a self that can become an ancestor, or even a bird or other animal. (p. 115;cf. Hodder 2011:61) Van Huyssteen also draws on the work of Ian Kuijt to indicate that the social construction of personal identity is most often expressed through imagery and ritual that links the living to the dead (such as the plastering and painting of human skulls as ritual heirlooms). Without going into the details of Van Huyssteen's discussion of Kuijt's work on secondary mortuary practices and how it explores the possible interweaving of social memory and ritual practice, it is revealing to observe that this research raises for him questions about Neolithic memory and commemoration. Memories are therefore understood as linked to ritual action, and commemoration is coupled with the production of shared memories within specific communities. Van Huyssteen argues that it is the repetitiveness in ritual (linked to memory and commemoration) 'that gave this historical depth to selves that were constructed in this particular space in Neolithic prehistory' (Van Huyssteen 2014:116;cf. Kuijt 2008:173). The connection between memory, historical depth and its materiality should furthermore not be seen as static because the ongoing incorporation of objects in ritual practice keeps on generating historical meaning and in this sense 'memory itself is transformed and modified through time' (Van Huyssteen 2014:116).
What I want to highlight from Van Huyssteen's discussion in his article is how it portrays an understanding of self that is linked to memory and historical depth. He also sees correspondences with Ricoeur's analysis that defines the self by time and narrative. In this regard, Van Huyssteen affirms Ricoeur's insight that this narrative and historical dimension 'not only enables us to envision new projects, to evaluate motivations, to initiate viable courses of action but to empathize and identify deeply with others' (Van Huyssteen 2014:117). What Van Huyssteen hereby affirms, and which is in line with the remarks in the introduction to In Search of Self referred to earlier, is that a narrative understanding of self generates empathy through memory and imagination that 'ultimately liberates us from all-consuming narcissistic interest without liquidating our identity as selves' (Van Huyssteen 2014:117). In this sense, then, memory is for Ricoeur (and Van Huyssteen) the 'gateway to the self' (Van Huyssteen 2014:118; cf. Ricoeur & Homans 2008:222).
What emerges from these insights for Van Huyssteen is that the 'historical' self is 'articulated and constructed solely through the temporal and relational dimensions of embodied human existence' (Van Huyssteen 2014:118). For Van Huyssteen (as for Ricoeur), the categories of memory, imagination, embodiment and empathy are therefore inextricably linked as vital for the understanding of self and personal identity. Hence, an adequate theological anthropology should affirm and explore these interconnections.
As I have already observed, Van Huyssteen linked embodiment to vulnerability in his theological anthropology. This has of course also implications for a narrative understanding of the self that highlights memory and imagination. The link between memory and vulnerability can be seen in the fact that memory -like history and archaeology -provides fragile epistemological routes to the past because these ways of accessing the past are 'distorted by selective perception, intervening circumstance and hindsight' (Lowenthal 1995:xxii). Yet, we should not only approach memory in terms of its abuses and deficiencies but also in terms of its capacities to serve as a bridge between the present and the past, because 'we have nothing better than memory to signify that something has taken place' (Ricoeur 2004:21;cf. Vosloo 2017:33-34).
One can also approach the question of the vulnerability of memory in the light of how it is connected to the reality of forgetting. Concerning this aspect, some important contributions have been made by the neurosciences, as is seen for instance in the fascinating discussion between Paul Ricoeur and Jean-Pierre Changeux on the question of memory (Changeux & Ricoeur 2000:138-154). Changeux points out how memory distortions often occur and that illusionary memories can even 'be created in vulnerable patients, leading them to invent a false biography' (Changeux & Ricoeur 2000:148). Ricoeur agrees but also complements this perspective by asking whether the intentionality of memory does not give us 'a sense of the depth of time' (Changeux & Ricoeur 2000:150).
Van Huyssteen too wants to affirm the capacity of memory. He points out that humans have developed a high degree of symbolic memory and that we are probably the only species that can use our remarkable memory 'to shape our own identities through mental images of past, present, and future events' (Van Huyssteen 2006:268). But Van Huyssteen is also aware that given the direct association between memory and imagination 'our recollection of our pasts are liable to distortion, and by implications our personal identities are fragile' (eds. Van Huyssteen & Wiebe 2011a:5). What the fragility of our memory and identity implies for Van Huyssteen, moreover, is also a sense of our interdependency. What emerges from the given brief discussion is Van Huyssteen's conviction that an interdisciplinary approach can provide vital perspectives for an understanding of the self that links memory, imagination, embodiment, vulnerability and the future, and that this emphasis has rich ethical implications. A central ethical notion for Van Huyssteen in this regard is empathy. In drawing on the work of Majorie Hewitt Suchocki and what she calls emphatic transcendence (Suchocki 1999:40), Van Huyssteen too seeks a form of emphatic existence that does not absolutise the self or the other but affirms the enrichment of both in a dynamic way in which 'both self and the other are at the same time transformed and preserved' (Van Huyssteen & Wiebe 2011a:9). For Van Huyssteen, empathy creates a mutuality that allows for a differentiation that honors subjectivity and otherness. The concepts of memory, imagination and empathy condition each other on this score in important ways that can transform the self. Hence Van Huyssteen and Wiebe (2011a) wrote, with reference to Suchocki: Empathy is, therefore, the de-absolutization of the self and therefore the transcendence of the self by knowing the self as one center among many centers. Empathy requires a 'feeling-with' that mediates exactly this sense of interconnectedness. It is, however, through the transcendence of memory that one differentiates oneself from a pathological absorption in the past by allowing the past to be past. (p. 9) This brings to mind Ricoeur's understanding of the differentiated relationship between self and other in his Gifford lectures published as Oneself as Another (Ricoeur 1992). One can also mention in this regard Ricoeur's (1992) admittance in a footnote of the enchantment exerted on him by a passage from the end of Georges Bernanos' novel Journal d'un cure de compagne: It is easier that one thinks to hate oneself. Grace means forgetting oneself. But if all pride were dead in us, the grace of grace would be to love oneself humbly, as one would any of the suffering members of Jesus Christ. (p. 24) In his work on the evolution of morality Van Huyssteen has often highlighted -drawing, for instance, on the work of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone -that the embodied roots of morality indicate that empathy 'goes to the evolutionary heart of human personhood' and that our ability to empathise is 'essential in the development of moral awareness and the realisation of a fully resonant human being' (Van Huyssteen 2013:299: cf. Sheets-Johnstone 2008. The emphasis on the emergence of a deeply embodied sense of empathy is also to be understood dynamically; it is about the body in movement because in empathy 'we move in ways we are moved to move' (Van Huyssteen 2013:299). For Van Huyssteen (2013), it is exactly the revisioning of such a profoundly embodied understanding of empathy: [T]hat will eventually become a crucial building block for understanding the evolution of morality, of notions of good and evil, and … a responsible way of thinking about the evolution of religion. (p. 301) Much more needs to be said on how memory, embodiment, vulnerability and intersubjectivity are interwoven, but suffice it to say that Van Huyssteen's work with its emphasis on the embodied self convincingly reminds us -along the lines of Ricoeur's thought -that memory: As such the search for an adequate ethics and theology of memory will benefit richly from an engagement with Van Huyssteen's interdisciplinary work. And thinking with Van Huyssteen about questions related to theological anthropology might also, in turn, invite further reflection on how an embodied view of memory and imagination relates to a theory of action and initiative in the context of concrete social and political challenges. One can also ask questions concerning the ethical and theological implications thereof that humanity, as being in the image of God, is called -as Michael Welker discusses in his 2019/2020 Gifford lectures published as In God's Image: An Anthropology of Spirit -to justice, freedom, truth and peace (Welker 2021:44-131).

Theological discourse and the capacity and fragility of embodied existence
Wentzel van Huyssteen's interdisciplinary approach to theological anthropology rethinks personhood in conversations with human aspects such as the evolution of cognition, imagination, music and language, sexuality, morality and the religious disposition. What is clear from his exploration is that human nature is not viewed in an esoteric and abstract way; hence his plea for: [A] return to radically embodied notions of humanness, where our sexuality and embodied moral awareness are tied directly to our embodied self-transcendence as creatures who are predisposed to religious belief. (Van Huyssteen 2017a:9) Van Huyssteen is therefore also interested in the movement from embodied empathy to embodied faith (see Van Huyssteen 2017c). He even thinks that cognitive science provides evidence that humans have embodied propensities towards believing in some kind of God (Van Huyssteen 2017c:13). And he refers to Calvin's conviction 'that some sense of God 'is naturally inborn in all, and is fixed deep within, as it were, in the very marrow' (I.iii.1), adding: 'In the light of contemporary discussions on the evolution of religion, it certainly does not get more embodied than this!' (Van Huyssteen 2017c:13).
Although the focus of this article is not on Van Huyssteen's recent explorations in Christology, I can add that given the centrality of embodiment in Van Huyssteen's anthropology, it is also not surprising that his more recent engagement with the theme of Christology also utilises an evolutionary epistemology (Van Huyssteen 2008, 2010. And again his discussion is not devoid of ethical intent, and therefore his interest in the evolution of morality is seen as naturally close to the question of how Christology relates to ethics. He explains concerning this relationship: For me this can be resolved only by first asking how exactly, in the case of Jesus, God's revelation can be located not just in history, but specifically in evolutionary history. The evolutionary history of our species … should not only directly affect notions of our own embodied personhood, but also what it would mean to understand Jesus' embodied mind, and his self-awareness as defining his personhood. (Van Huyssteen 2010:151) Thus we see that not only Van Huyssteen's work in theological anthropology but also the related explorations in Christology and Christian faith are marked by deep historicity and embodiment. And as has already been mentioned, his emphasis on embodied existence leads to his appreciation for Ricoeur's view that understands the self as defined by time, narrative, historical depth and empathy. As such, this narrative understanding of the self, that is, marked by memory and imagination, 'provides us with a philosophical bridge theory from evolutionary anthropology to interdisciplinary theology' (Van Huyssteen 2017b:1).
In his essay 'The Addressee of Religion: The Capable Human Being', Ricoeur argues that the hermeneutics of selfhood is intertwined with the idea of capacity on every level. He writes: All the answers to the question 'who?' the central question of the problem of personal identity -lead to designating the self as the one who can; the one who can speak, who can initiate a sequence of events …, who can pull together in a coherent or at least acceptable narrative the story of his or her life. (Ricoeur 2016:270) But Ricoeur also observes that these abilities also correspond a type of inability and incapacity 'whose open-ended list gives content to the idea of fragility, of vulnerability' (Ricoeur 2016:271). Questions of ethics and religion, one can say, rest on a deep level on this dual reality of human capability and fragility.
This emphasis on the capability and vulnerability of the self, as a self-constituted by time and narrative through memory and imagination, is also, in my view, at the heart of Van Huyssteen's theological anthropology. And it is on this level that theological discourse, with its 'semantic surplus', can contribute with disciplinary integrity to the discussion on what it means to be human -both in terms of our distinctive particularity and our embeddedness in a broader narrative of creaturely existence.
As Van Huyssteen (2006) expresses it eloquently in the theologically rich final paragraphs of Alone in the World?: The distinguishing characteristic of Homo sapiens is not solely a remarkable embodied brain, a stunning mental cognitive fluidity expressed in imagination, creativity, linguistic abilities, and symbolic propensities. But even more, as real-life, embodied persons of flesh and blood, Homo sapiens -we humans -are also affected by hostility, arrogance, vulnerability and dependence, ruthlessness and cunning, and therefore are inescapably caught between what we have come to call 'good and evil '. (p. 325) Theology can therefore offer a promising key for understanding the tragic dimensions of human existence, as well as Van Huyssteen concludes, 'why religious belief has provided our distant ancestors, and us, with dimensions of hope, redemption and grace' (Van Huyssteen 2006:325).
Van Huyssteen's theological anthropology, we can conclude, is not interested in an esoteric and abstract account of what it means to be human. Rather, it is deeply historical and embodied. It takes cognisance, one can say, of archaeology and artichokes. It reckons thoroughly with human existence in all its fullness, complexity, vulnerability and symbolic propensities.
What Craig Barnes writes in his moving foreword to Human Origins and the Image of God: Essays in Honor of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen about the book's essays can therefore also be seen as an apt description of Wentzel's views on theological anthropology because it too 'help us to understand what it is about a human life that makes it unique, and therefore a fragile beauty' (eds. Lilley & Pedersen 2017:xi).