Irish Theological Quarterly

http://itq.sagepub.com Albert Camus, Simone Weil and the Absurd

Rik Van Nieuwenhove Irish Theological Quarterly 2005; 70; 343 DOI: 10.1177/002114000507000403 The online version of this article can be found at: http://itq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/70/4/343

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Pontifical University, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland

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Rik Van Nieuwenhove

Albert Camus, Simone Weil and the Absurd 1

According to
Camus it is only in the face of the absurd - and through our unremitting revolt against it that meaning can be generated. Espousing the Christian faith abnegates the absurd, and with it the only possible source of meaning for modem man. This critique can be addressed by engaging with Simone Weil. She develops an original dialectic of divine absence (in the laws of indifferent necessity and affliction) and presence, which reflects the intra-Trinitarian unity and distance of the divine Persons, and which finds ultimate expression on the Cross of Christ. For her this dialectic does not induce revolt but a sophisticated kind of reconciliation that involves a selfless openness to, and engagement with, this world.
-

Albert

Camus was deeply fascinated by Christianity and by the work of Simone Weil in particular. In this paper I will re-examine the work of the early Camus and contrast it with that of Simone Weil. More specifically I will focus on the notion of the absurd and the implications it has for questions of meaning, the way we relate to God and the world. According to Camus it is only in the face of the absurd - and through our unremitting revolt against it - that meaning can be generated. In his view, espousing the Christian faith - the infamous leap of faith- does away with the absurd, and with it the only possible source of meaning for modern man. This critique, although powerful, can be addressed by engaging with Simone Weils thought. Although there are historical links between Camus and the work of Simone Well as Director of Gallimards Espoir Series, he guided some of her work towards publication after her death - I do not claim that there has been a direct influence of Weil on Camus perception and presentation of Christianity. I merely hope to show that in the writings of Weil we find a viable and profound alterriative to the critique raised by Camus. Indeed, Simone Weil develops an original dialectic of divine absence and presence, which reflects the intraTrinitarian unity and distance of the divine Persons, and which finds ultimate expression on the Cross of Christ. For her this dialectic does not induce revolt but a sophisticated kind of reconciliation that involves a selfless openness to, and engagement with, this world.

1. Part of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Irish TheoLogical Association in Drumcondra, 2005. I am grateful to those present for criticism raised, and to the Research Office at Mary Immaculate College for their generous financial assistance in preparing this paper.

343

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344

I. Camus and the absurd

as

the

only possible

source

of meaning

(a) The Plague: suffering, and reconciliation or revolt.

Camus preoccupation with Christianity found a literary expression his novel The Plague, published in 1947. The book describes the events that took place in the Algerian town of Oran. It is struck by the plague. Dr Bernard Rieux, the main protagonist, who is sick and tired of the world he lived in - although he had much liking for his fellowman has only one certitude: his daily round and his futile attempts to fight the rampant plague. The plague represents evil and senseless suffering (the absurd) - evil that is larger than life and out of place in a modem world in which people are in control of things - or so they would like to believe.2 Each citizen has to learn to live only for the present, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.3 At the heart of the book we find the religious question and the problem of theodicy. The issue is crystallized in two sermons by Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest who will be deeply transformed by his encounter with the plague. In a sermon he preaches that this calamity has been inflicted by God as a chastisement from God who, nevertheless, continues to stretch out his hand towards the sinners, calling them to change their ways: now the hour has struck to bend your thoughts to first and last things.4 This sermon then leads to one of the central dialogues in the book, between Dr Rieux and Tarrou, one of the locals who volunteers to start up sanitary squads to do the heavy work (i.e., remove corpses and assist in the quarantining of people who contracted the plague). When asked about his views on God, Rieux answers that he has seen too much suffering to relish any idea of collective punishment. He believes we must relieve human suffering before pointing out its excellence and makes the point that if he believed in an all-powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But no one in the world believed in a God of that sort; no not even Paneloux, who believed that he believed in such a God. And this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself on Providence completely.&dquo; Rieux argues that we should prefer to
2. As the narrator puts it in a revealing comment: our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists; they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isnt a thing made to mans measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogey of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesnt pass always away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all because they havent taken their precautions. Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others, they forgot to be modest - that was all - and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. Trans. by S. Gilbert from Albert Camus. The Plague (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1960) 34.
3. Ibid. 63. 4. Ibid. 80-84. 5. Ibid. 106-107. This remark by Rieux probably represents one of the most persistent misunderstandings of the Christian notion of Providence by Camus himself - as if human and divine causality and operation are somehow in competition with one another.

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345

struggle

with all our might against death, without raising our eyes towards heaven where he sits in silence.6 Father Paneloux then joins one of the sanitary squads, which shows that he is better than his sermon, as Rieux remarks.&dquo; In this role he watches a child (who had been given an experimental serum) die after a protracted and painful agony. This brings the issue of absurd suffering and the God-question to a climax: That child, Rieux exclaims, was innocent and you know it as well as I do.8 To this Paneloux replies: That sort of thing is revolting because it passes our human understanding. But perhaps we should love what we cannot understand. Against this Rieux asserts: until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.9 Paneloux then gives a second sermon. He now talks in an inclusive sense. He states that while what he had said in the first sermon still held, it had lacked somewhat in charity. The suffering of an innocent child puts our backs to the wall. In the shadow of this wall we must face a decision : We must believe everything or deny everything. And who, I ask, amongst you would dare to deny everything?&dquo; All we can say is: Since it was Gods will, we, too, must will it.l~ We must go straight to the heart of that which is unacceptable, precisely because it is thus that we are constrained to make our choice. The sufferings of children were our bread of affliction, but without this bread our souls would die of spiritual hunger.&dquo; Only total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality can reconcile us to the suffering and the deaths of children.3 In the second sermon by Paneloux, Camus has captured an authentic expression of one kind of Christian sainthood. 14 This is, of course, not to say that Camus had much sympathy for this kind of spirituality: for him it represents a leap into irrational fideism that leads to dangerous resignation. In order to understand Camus reservations I would now like to examine his earlier treatise The Myth of Sisyphus. This will bring us to the heart of the present contribution: does Christianity necessarily imply
-

6. The Plague, 108. 7. Ibid. 126. 8. Ibid. 177. 9. Ibid. 178. 10. Ibid. 183. 11. Again this seems to be a view that we find echoed in Simone Weils work. Commenting on the speech of Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov, she writes: No reason whatever which anyone could produce to compensate for a childs tear would make me consent to that tear. Absolutely none which the mind can conceive. There is just one, however, but it is intelligible only to supernatural love: "God willed it." And for that reason I would consent to a world which was nothing but evil as readily as to a childs tear. (Gravity and Grace [London: Routledge, 1992] 68). 12. Ibid. 185. 13. Ibid. 186. 14. For Camus, the question then becomes: is it possible to attain sainthood in a world without God? This issue is explicitly raised by Tarrou and is one of the major themes of the book (see p. 208).

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346

resignation, denial of the absurd and, with it, foreclosure possible source of meaning?

on

the

only

(b) The Myth of Sisyphus

Camus published his essay The Myth of Sisyphus in 1942. The story of Sisyphus is well known: the gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. Faithful to the earth, in contempt of the gods who punished him with this absurd labour, Sisyphus represents modern man in a world devoid of illusions: Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raised rocks. [...] The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a mans heart.15 The opening sentence of the essay sets the tone for what follows: There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.16 Camus tries to answer this question by referring to the absurd: It happens that the stage-sets collapse. Rising, tram, four hours in the office or factory, meal, tram, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, according to the same rhythm - this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the &dquo;why&dquo; arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.1 A strangeness creeps in, and we make the disconcerting discovery that at the heart of all beauty there lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. [...] The world evades us because it becomes itself again.18 Men too secrete the inhuman, and this applies to ourselves too: The stranger who at certain seconds comes to meet us in a mirror, the familiar and yet alarming brother we encounter in our own photographs is also the absurd.&dquo;9 The laws and theories of science too fail to capture the world - they ultimately dissolve into poetry.20

The absurd finds its origin in the clash between our irrational and wild longing for clarity, on the one hand, and the world on the other hand. These two are bound together as only hatred can weld two creatures together.21 The absurd is therefore born of a confrontation, a discrepancy
15. A. Camus, The 16. Ibid. 11.

Myth of Sisyphus (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975)

111.

17. Ibid. 19.

18. Ibid. 20.

19. Ibid. 21. 20. Ibid. 25: you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain the world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know. [...] So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art. 21. Ibid. 26.

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347

between

our expectations and an unyielding world. This observation, namely that the absurd lives on a discrepancy and unceasing confrontation or struggle has important implications. In order to solve the prob-

lem of the absurd, we must retain this tension: If I attempt to solve a problem, at least I must not by that very solution conjure away one of the terms of the problem.22 For Camus, the absurd can only be a source of meaning if it is not agreed to, if it is not being done away with.23 This, in turn, implies a total absence of hope, a continual rejection and a continuous dissatisfaction. This brings us to the heart of his critique of Christianity: as meaning can only originate when we confront the absurd face to face, Christianity (which is a form of escapism) must be rejected. The problem with Christianity and some of the thinkers Camus considers representative of it (Chestov, Kierkegaard, Jaspers) is that it affirms the absurd - only to do away with it in a leap of faith: The moment the notion [of the absurd] transforms itself into eternitys springboard, it ceases to be linked to human lucidity. The absurd is no longer that evidence that man ascertains without consenting to it. The struggle is eluded. Man integrates the absurd and in that condition causes to disappear its essential character which is opposition, laceration, and divorce. This leap is an escape.24 For Camus, the approach that Kierkegaard and other religious thinkers pursue is a kind of philosophical suicide. We should, rather, be able to remain on that dizzying crest - that is integrity and the rest is subterfuge.&dquo; Living is keeping the absurd alive. More specifically we should adopt a position of revolt. Only revolt, which Camus describes as a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity, 116 gives life its value. It is therefore essential to be defiant: the absurd man is the opposite of the reconciled man. We must live without hope, without consolations, without illusions. 27 Given his critique of Christianity throughout The Myth of Sisyphus and in other writings, it is somewhat surprising to find Camus stating, when discussing Dostoievskys hero Kirilov from The Possessed, that what contradicts the absurd in that work is not its Christian character but rather its announcing a future life. It is possible to be Christian and absurd. There are examples of Christians who do not believe in a future life.&dquo; This is an intriguing remark. It is difficult to think of a Christian author who explicitly rejects belief in the afterlife; but it is certainly possible to think of Christian authors who argue that we should live as if there is no afterlife. One of the authors that comes to mind is, of course, Simone
22. Ibid. 34. 23. Ibid. 35. 24. Ibid. 38.
25. Ibid. 50. 26. Ibid. 53. 27. Ibid. 54-62. 28. Ibid. 102.

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348

Weil,

in whose work Camus was to take a profound interest.9 At any rate, this casual remark towards the end of The Myth of Sisyphus suggests that Christianity does not necessarily imply the failure to acknowledge and retain the absurd. By engaging with the work of Simone Weil I hope to examine

this suggestion in

some more

detail.
presence of God

II. Simone

Weil, and the absence and

go any

Before

we

further, lets

summarize the main

points of Camus

critique:

(1) The absurd originates from the clash (or discrepancy) between our expectations and our desire to find meaning on the one hand, and an

unyielding world on the other. (2) The only lucid response to this absurdity is to revolt against it. (3) Christianity, by making an irrational leap of faith, does away with the absurd: one of the poles on which the absurd lives, is being denied. The first point seems hermeneutically naive: Camus does not seem to be
that it is not the case that there is a world out there which is absurd and which atheists and Christian then subsequently interpret in different ways. Rather, the very way different people interpret their worlds will depend on the presuppositions with which they approach their worlds in the first place. Leaving this critical remark aside, I still think there is some truth in Camus approach - even the Christian encounters an unyielding, absurd world at times - and I will now argue that in the work of Simone Weil ( 1909-1943 ) we encounter an author who is very much aware of the absurd and refractory character of our world, and who is not only willing to acknowledge this but puts it at the heart of her spirituality. For Weil too suffering and absurdity can yield meaning (which does not imply that they
aware are

In Weils work

intrinsically meaningful) - although not by revolting against it. we find a dialectic (both traditional and profound) of

divine transcendence (the mysteriousness and otherness of the Christian God) on the one hand, and an equally emphatic emphasis upon divine immanence or even solidarity (through the Incarnation of the Son of God) on the other. She appropriates this traditional dialectic in terms of the absence of God in a world governed by the laws of necessity and gravity, and presence of God. This dialectic evokes a particular response - one of detachment. This detachment is not to be understood as indifference but as a dying to self-centredness and possessiveness, enabling us to engage with the world in a non-idolatrous, selfless manner, as I hope to show in the remainder of this article.&dquo; 29. See Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge, 1992) 13: We must leave
on one

side the beliefs which fill up voids and

sweeten

what is bitter. The belief in immor-

tality. ( ... ) The belief in the providential ordering of events — in short the consolations which are ordinarily sought in religion. 30. I have dealt with the theme of detachment and involvement in The Religious and the Aesthetic Attitude in Literature and Theology 18/2 (2004) 160-172, especially 167-70, and Technology and Mystical Theology in M. Breen, E. Conway and B. McMillan eds., Technology and Transcendence (Dublin: Columba Press, 2003) 186-94, especially 188-92.

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349

One way of cultivating this detachment is through affliction (malheur) and suffering in a world governed by the indifferent laws of necessity. This is a major theme in the writings of Simone Weil: she can certainly not be accused of being blind to what I have called the refractory or unyielding nature of our world - or what Camus calls the absurd. As she puts it, one would have to be blind, deaf or without pity to fail to see it. Nevertheless, the Christian is aware that there is divine mercy behind the curtain of this world:

Those who have the privilege of mystical contemplation, having experienced the mercy of God, suppose that, God being mercy, the created world is a work of mercy. But as for obtaining evidence of this mercy directly from nature, it would be necessary to become blind, deaf and without pity in order to believe such a thing possible. [...] That is why mysticism is the only source of virtue for humanity. Because when men do not believe that there is infinite mercy behind the curtain of the world, or when they think that this mercy is in front of the curtain, they become cruel. 31
In other words, those who altogether deny Gods mercifulness are mistaken ; those who claim to find it in a self evident fashion are either blind or pitiless (i.e., they do not see the suffering, or they do not take it seri-

ously). The right way is to acknowledge suffering and yet to affirm belief
a merciful God. But how can we affirm the mercifulness of God behind the curtain of this world? Weil enumerates four evidences of divine mercy: the favours of God bestowed on beings capable of contemplation; the radiance of these beings and their compassion (which is really the divine compassion at work in them); the beauty of the world; and, paradoxically, the complete absence of mercy here below.32 This, then, begs the question: how can the absence of the mercy of God in this world be a manifestation of his mercy? I will attempt to answer this by examining Weils notion of necessity and the dialectic of presence and absence in the light of the Cross of Christ - itself, in turn, to be understood in the light of the unity and distance within the heart of the Trinity. These two aspects are therefore intrinsically linked: the indifference of the Father who sends affliction without distinction to the wicked and the good, reveals something of the weakness of God which finds its ultimate expression in the Cross of Christ.33 For Simone Weil, the Creator is a hidden, transcendent God who surpasses all our concepts. In order to create the world, God had to withdraw perhaps an echo of the Jewish notion of zimzum: God could only create

in

31. Gravity, 100. 32. Ibid. 100-101. 33. Ibid. 101.

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350

by hiding himself.

Otherwise there could be nothing but himself.34 One aspect of this withdrawal is the space God gives to the indifferent and deterministic laws of nature (including the blind arbitrariness with which good and bad fortune are handed out to us). Weil calls this necessity. The free play that necessity enjoys in this world is a kind of divine analogy to the human virtue of obedience.&dquo; Creation is thus a kind of divine renunciation. God renounces being everything: Necessity is the screen set between God and us so that we can be.36 If we were exposed to the direct radiance of Gods love, without the protection of space, time, and of matter, we would evaporate like water in the sun: there would not be enough &dquo;I&dquo; in us to make it possible to surrender the &dquo;I&dquo; for loves sake. This is why God can only be present in creation under the form of absence.37 However, what Weil calls necessity is, from a different perspective (from the other side of the curtain) obedience.

If, however, we transport our hearts beyond ourselves, beyond the universe, beyond space and time to where our Father dwells, and if from there we behold this mechanism, it appears quite different. What seemed to be necessity becomes obedience. [...] In the beauty of the world rude necessity becomes an obj ect of love. What is more beautiful than the action of weight on the fugitive waves of the sea as they fall in ever-moving folds, or the almost eternal folds of the mountains? The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked. On the contrary, this adds to its beauty.38 As creatures we cannot escape from obedience to God. Our only choice is to desire obedience or not to desire it.39 Welts approach may seem to come close to the Stoic notion of amor fati. However, it is different - perhaps more different than she herself realized.40 For what she proposes is more than a mere acceptance of the refractory necessity that rules our world; it becomes a personal obedience to the merciful God behind the curtain of this world. It becomes surrender to a personal God who revealed and bestowed himself in Christ rather than a mere acceptance of that which we cannot change. Whereas the Stoic ideal of apatheia has been unmasked by some as a technique of preserving oneself from sorrow, Weil actually proposes a total gift of oneself to a personal God of
34. Ibid. 33. Earlier (p. 11) in the same book she had written: The world must be regarded as containing something of a void in order that it may have need of God. That presupposes evil. 35. Ibid. 94. 36. Ibid. 28. 37. Gravity, 99. 38. Waiting on God, 70. 39. Ibid. 71. 40. In a Letter addressed to Father Perrin (from: Waiting on God 45) Simone Weil wrote: "I know from experience that the virtues of the Stoics and that of the Christians are one and the same virtue." We could raise critical questions about this view.

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351

love who dwells behind this refractory world.41 Surrendering ourselves in obedience to the mechanism of necessity operative in this world - itself only a veil of God - allows us to become open to the radiant beauty of this world. To see the world in this way requires time and effort, like an apprenticeship. In this kind of apprenticeship our bodiliness, our corporeality (and its inevitable openness to suffering), plays a major role: on the plane of physical sensibility, suffering alone gives us contact with that necessity which constitutes the order of the world.42 Weils spirituality is deeply enfleshed, incarnated. We must thus mirror Gods renunciation by renouncing ourselves, or as she puts it: we respond to, and participate in, the creation of the world by de-creating ourselves.43 De-creation means making something created pass into the uncreated. We only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes from us.44 This de-creation is described in terms of self-effacement and detachment. It makes us perfect instruments of Gods love, free from possessiveness and self-centredness: Pure love of creatures is not love in God, but love which has passed through God as through fire. Love which detaches itself completely from creatures to ascend to God and comes down again associated with the creative love of God.45 Thus we attain a state of inactive action.46 We leam to love creatures in an utterly selfless manner, allowing the divine love to pass through us: The soul does not love like a creature with created love. The love within it is divine, uncreated; for it is the love of God for God which is passing through it. We can only consent to give up our own feelings so as to allow free passage in our soul for this love. That is the meaning of denying oneself. 141 The self is only a shadow that sin and error cast by stopping the light of God .4 God can love in us only our consent to withdraw in order to make way for him, just as he himself withdrew when creating the world in order that we might come into being.49 One way of effecting this selfeffacement or renunciation is by carrying out the ordinary human duty.So The renunciation that Weil propounds does not lead to a world-hostile

spirituality.
41. H.U. von Balthasar makes this point about Meister Eckhart in The Glory of the Lord. Vol. V. The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modem Age (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991)
37-38.

42. Waiting on God, 72. 43. Gravity, 29. 44. Ibid. 29. See also p. 30: He emptied himself of his divinity. We should empty ourselves of the false divinity with which we were bom. Once we have understood that we are nothing, the object of all our efforts is to become nothing. It is for this that we suffer with resignation, it is for this that we act, it is for this that we pray. May God grant me to become nothing. In so far as I become nothing, God loves himself through me. 45. Ibid. 57. 46. Ibid. 39. 47. Waiting on God, 74. 48. Gravity, 35. 49. Ibid. 35.
50. Ibid. 36.

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352

The theme of imitating the renunciation of God brings us to a second, closely associated theme: we encounter God in the very absence of God. In Gravity and Grace, she provides us with a memorable analogy to clarify this point: Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a &dquo;link ...... This dialectic of presence in absence operates in a number of fields. First, as suggested earlier, it can be discemed in the created world where the divine mercy operates behind the curtain of the world - behind the indifferent laws of necessity that govem this world. This dialectic explains that the necessity that characterizes our world is both impersonal and personal: just like a work of art has an author (who puts his individual stamp on it) and yet, when it is perfect, it has something essentially anonymous about it. In the same way the necessity of the laws of nature manifest a God who is both personal and impersonal at the same times This dialectic of presence and absence operates also on a more existential level, and more specifically when we suffer affliction. In a bold and strikingly innovative move, well ahead of its time, Weil links this dialectic with a profound theology of the Trinity. Indeed, in The Love of God and Affliction - one of her most searching essays in the collection Waiting on God - Weil describes the indifferent, unyielding necessity of this world in terms of the distance between the Father and the Son within the heart of the Trinity - a distance that manifested itself utmost on the Cross: This universe where we are living, and of which we form a tiny particle, is the distance put by Love between God and God. We are a point in this distance. Space, time and the mechanism that govems matter are the distance. Everything that we call evil is only this mechanism.&dquo; But this separation from God (or his absence in a world of indifferent laws of nature, and of suffering) can only be understood in the light of a more profound unity that grounds it: it is a separation of unity (in the same sense that friends, although absent from one another, are nevertheless united in their friendship, and this qualifies the nature of their separation). Again, ZXleil develops this from a Trinitarian perspective: Before all things God loves himself. This love, this friendship of God, is the Trinity. Between the terms united by this relation of divine love there is more neamess; there is infinite nearness or identity. But, resulting from the creation, the Incarnation and the Passion, there is also infinite distance. The totality of space and the totality of time, interposing their immensity, put an infinite distance between God and God. 54
51. 52. 53. 54. Ibid. 132. Ibid. 136.

Waiting on God, 69.

Ibid. 68.

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353

Just like two friends are united, even when far apart, so too the absence of God implies a presence - which, in turn, mirrors the infinite nearness and distance between the divine Persons at the heart of the Trinity. Our misery gives us the infinitely precious privilege of sharing in the distance placed between the Son and the Father. This distance or separation, although painful, is good, because it is love.55 Developing a deeply traditional theme of sharing in the Passion of Christ, Weil asserts that there can be no greater good for us than to share in the distress of the abandoned Christ: For those who love, separation, although painful, is a good, because it is love. Even the distress of the abandoned Christ is a good. There can never be a greater good for us on earth than to share in it. God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. This is the only possibility of perfection for us on earth. That is why the Cross is our only hope. 116 In the Cross, the point of intersection of creation and its Creator, the Trinitarian dialectic of absence and presence, distance and nearness, reaches its climax.&dquo; This explains why the abandonment the dying Christ suffers reveals an abyss of love on both sides.s8 It is through the Cross that we too enter into the presence of God. At the moment when we feel most abandoned - at that very moment - we are nearest to God. Extreme affliction is like a nail that pierces the soul, but it is this affliction that can bring us into the presence of God:
a dimension which does not belong to space, which is not time, which is indeed quite a different dimension, this nail has pierced a hole through all creation, through the thickness of the screen which separates the soul from God. In this marvellous dimension, the soul, without leaving the place and the instant where the body to which it is united is situated, can cross the totality of space and time and come into the very presence of God. It is at the intersection of creation and its Creator. This point of intersection is the point of intersection of the branches of the Cross.9

In

legitimation of suffering. Nor should unhealthy self-indulgent dolorousness. It is not an explanation of suffering, for to explain suffering is to console it; therefore it must not be explained.6 Moreover, we must eliminate affliction as much as we can from social life for affliction only serves the
as a

None of this should be taken

seen as an

it be

instance

of

55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60.

Ibid. 69. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 76.

Gravity, 79. Waiting on God, 76. Gravity, 102.

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354 purposes of grace and

society

is not

society of the elect. There will

always be enough affliction for the elect.&dquo;

III.

Concluding observations

Meaningless suffering and the absurdity it entails are as central to Weil they are to Camus. Unlike Camus, however, Weil does not revolt in the face of affliction. Rather, she proposes a complex kind of reconciliation, a reconciliation on a higher plane. She calls it the pulsation of sorrowjoy:62 Suffering is violence, joy is gentleness, but joy is the stronger. True saintliness consists of simultaneous existence of incompatible things in the souls bearing; balance which leans both ways at once.63 I suspect what she has in mind is a strange mixture of sorrow and bliss, a smiling through the tears: Felicity is beyond the realm of consolation and pain.64 This disposition then reflects the Christian hope that there is mercy
as

behind the curtain of this world. Thus, Simone Weil is well aware of the refractory or absurd character of this world. For her embracing the Christian faith does not result in abnegating the absurd or denying its existence. However, it does not lead to revolt either but to obedience and renunciation of self - a renunciation that should not be mistaken for political apathy or passivity. It is an obedience that culminates in a strange joy in the middle of suffering: reconciliation. Therefore, a case can be made against Camus and others (following Nietzsche) who claim that Christianity renounces the world for the Beyond in an irrational leap of faith. On the contrary, the fact that God is both radically transcendent and yet freely identifies himself with this world through the Incarnation of his Son allows the Christian to engage with the world without losing herself in it; it allows her to challenge it without renouncing it. In the writings of Simone Weil, this dialectic at the heart of Christianity was reformulated in terms of absence of God (in a deterministic, mechanistic world) and presence of God - a dialectic that mirrors the Trinitarian unity and distance between the divine Persons, and which finds its ultimate expression on the Cross of Christ. It is in the midst of our affliction, when God seems most absent, that we are drawn into his presence. In the light of this dialectic the Christian will adopt an attitude or disposition of obedience and detachment - but this detachment should not be interpreted as escapism, denial or world-alienation. Rather, it implies an involvement with this world, an attachment to all without possessiveness.
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61. Ibid. 143. Similarly, she makes it clear that we should search out suffering: We must seek the void, for it would be tempting God if we counted on supernatural bread to fill it. We must not run away from it either. Weil is very much aware that there is affliction that can destroy us. It is in this context that she speaks of affliction that destroys the I from outside - and there is nothing worse than that. It leads to annihilation according to the atheistic or materialistic conception (Gravity, 23). We should, rather, attempt to destroy the I from within - that is through detachment. 62. Gravity, 92 63. Ibid. 92. 64. Ibid. 22.

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