Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining

But in the aftermath of Jesus’ death, their survival is haunted by Jesus’ words of farewell and his instructions about remaining. Survival is given shape through the curious imperative to remain and to love.

Menein is a way of communicating a different kind of presence that will be required in the wake of Jesus’ death. It is a presence that takes the form of bearing with, of enduring, and of persisting. It is an accompanying and attending presence that always carries with it the marks of suffering and death. Jesus introduces them to a series of new rel

In commentaries, a frequent interpretation of menein is that Jesus is instructing his disciples to walk in fellowship with him.40 He is asking them to maintain that relationship in the midst of all the things that are going to take place. This is often interpreted in terms of belief. Jesus is asking the disciples to continue to believe in him, even

Out of the chasm of hell—the middle space—we are pulled. We are pulled into the mystery of this miraculous rescue, whereby our new life will not be divorced from the death of godforsakenness. Instead, it will bear the marks of death. In Heart of the World, Balthasar describes this new life: “All of your past is like a dream which one can no longer

Language falters in the abyss; it fractures at the site of trauma. We need to find a different way of speaking from the depths, reclaiming the notion that language about God is always fractured language, always broken, and never complete.

Linking this text to his account of soteriology in Theo-Drama, we see that the bridge is neither fully Son nor Spirit, but some strange combination of both—a dead man and a fragile trickle of love from his wound.

I have been highlighting the difficult aspects of the witness of Mary Magdalene and the beloved disciple, suggesting that the difficulties, if recognized, tell us something significant about the relationship between death and life as it is narrated in the Christian Scriptures. It points us to what persists in the places where death and life are ind

what we have is a unique kind of survival narrative: a biblical testimony to what it means to remain in the aftermath of death without the assurance of life ahead. We can see a unique testimony arising from the biblical and theological texts: Something survives a death. Something remains, even in the depths of hell.

this handing over (paradidonai) marks a middle space of witness in which the Spirit remains in and through the witness of the disciples.