NCR Podcast: Interview with Albert Nolan

Host: Tom Fox

Part One (20:35)

Tom Fox: On the line with me today, from Johannesburg, South Africa is Dominican Father, Albert Nolan. He is the author of the newly released book from Orbis [Books]: Jesus Today—A Spirituality of Radical Freedom. Albert Nolan played a significant role in the church struggle against apartheid.

His first book, Jesus Before Christianity, sold 150,000 copies. In that classic work, Nolan stressed the political context of Jesus’ mission. Now in this new sequel, he focuses on the spirituality of Jesus and its relevance for us today. After surveying the signs of the times, he outlines the elements of Jesus’ spirituality and shows how these lessons might promote a greater communion with God and with God’s creation.

Elizabeth A. Johnson, the theologian, has written: “What Albert Nolan did 30 years ago with Jesus’ passion for justice, he does again with Jesus’ spirituality. Writing simply and clearly as a bell, he lays out the heart of the gospel in such a way that it lights up the world and ignites the heart of the reader. What a pleasure it is then to have with us, Albert Nolan.

Albert Nolan: Thank you, and I’m very pleased to meet you, even if it is on the telephone.

Tom Fox: In what year did you first write Jesus Before Christianity?

Albert Nolan: Nineteen seventy-five. I wrote it in 1975; it was published in South Africa in 1976, so it’s more than 30 years old.

Tom Fox: For our listeners today, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about what you tried to achieve in Jesus Before Christianity.

Albert Nolan: The general idea of Jesus Before Christianity was, first of all, before his time. That is to say, what would Jesus have been like to his contemporaries before Christianity or the doctrines about Jesus, et cetera? The other meaning of “before” was in terms of priority — that Jesus has priority over Christianity.

In other words, one can criticize Christianity in the name of Jesus, but Jesus has priority. That was the general idea. More specifically, I was interested in trying to show people more than 30 years ago, that Jesus, first of all, was human. That was very important, and I think very important at that time as it is today, that Jesus was fully human, as we say, in all things except sin.

Also, that Jesus was involved in the politics, economics, the crises, the ordinary, everyday things that we today would call secular or politics or economics, but were not separated out in those days. Because I lived in a country where we were struggling against apartheid and very many [Christians] were saying, “Oh, you mustn’t interfere in politics. Christianity is about the individual and being saved in order to go to heaven.” I wanted to show, no, Jesus was concerned about what was happening in his time — the politics, the economics, the social problems and all the rest.

Tom Fox: You were responding to the signs of the time in South Africa too, and to apartheid.

Albert Nolan: In that sense, yes; not specifically the signs of the times. I don’t specifically describe the situation in South Africa in that book, but I wanted to talk about Jesus in a way that would correct some of the misunderstandings about Jesus that were common in South Africa at that time, and that were making it difficult for people to oppose the racial injustice of that time.

Tom Fox: Even today, there is a sense that one hears, here in the United States and elsewhere, that Christians shouldn’t get involved in politics, that it’s a spiritual religion, and “Why are you trying to change society?”

Albert Nolan: Yes, that does remain and it, in some senses, remains in South Africa, but there is now a development. It’s not quite the same situation as it used to be because they are fundamentalist-type Christians, who do get involved in politics today and say you must get involved in politics today. So it’s a bit different from what it was before.

Those same fundamentalist Christians in the past were saying nothing to do with politics. Now, they do get involved, so it isn’t quite the same situation, but I’ll explain in a moment why we’re sickened because the situation worldwide—not only in South Africa—is different today.

Tom Fox: What inspired you to write this second book after 30-some years?

Albert Nolan: Well, as I said, the situation is different and I would describe the difference by saying that I felt that I now needed to write a book that was not simply how Jesus was understood in his time, but what Jesus might mean to us today, to our contemporaries, to ourselves, in fact, in the world in which we live today.

One of the reasons for that was that so many people don’t believe in God to start off with, but also more and more people, it seems to me, feel that Jesus is irrelevant, so I wanted to say something about the relevance of Jesus. But it wasn’t simply that.

In my own country, and I think elsewhere, we have struggled for social liberation, and having struggled for that, we discover that sometimes it doesn’t fully work out the way we expected it to because the people involved do not have personal liberation. They are not liberated as individuals; they don’t have inner freedom.

Consequently, there would be power struggles, corruption or people just trying to make more money out of it, becoming more individualistic and things like that. So it seemed to me that there’s another part of Jesus, if you like, that emphasizes the individual, the spirituality, the love and so forth, that also must go with struggling for social liberation.

If it doesn’t go with it, the social liberation alone will not be successful. That’s my experience of what’s happening here, but it’s also my experience of what’s happening, as far as I know of it, worldwide, that social liberation without personal liberation is incomplete.

Tom Fox: So you’re sensing that there’s a more holistic “Jesus answer” in a way.

Albert Nolan: Yes. The spirituality that Jesus had was more holistic but it was social and individual. He looked at the needs of society but it also looked at the needs of the individual and didn’t separate the two. I see people, again and again, separating the two.

Tom Fox: Let’s start by the subtitle, A Spirituality of Radical Freedom. I know that in the latter part of the book, in the final chapter, you’re dealing with radical freedom, but just as an introduction, perhaps you can explain why your subtitle reads Jesus Today—A Spirituality of Radical Freedom.

Albert Nolan: First of all, I wanted to emphasize that if Jesus’ spirituality is going to be in any way described or categorized, then I would call it spirituality of freedom. I think that is a characteristic of the spirituality throughout. Jesus was an amazingly free person and what he was bringing was not new constraints and so forth, not new prohibitions, et cetera, but freedom.

That, I think, is very important to say today, on the one hand, because many people look at Christianity and the church and see it as something that constrains, it prevents people from being free, it prevents people from doing things, and is generally restrictive and I think that’s a mistake. Christianity is not supposed to be like that and Jesus was not like that.

So that’s the reason why the word “freedom” is there. But then, I also added “radical” because I wanted to point out that it wasn’t really freedom in quite the same way as many people use that word, and it wasn’t a superficial kind of freedom from the law or something like that, or the different kinds of freedom that I described in the last chapter as not what Jesus was about.

I called the kind of freedom that Jesus was about “radical” and it goes right down to the roots of the person, and that was Jesus’ freedom. I could have called it “inner freedom” I suppose, but I wanted to make sure that people understood it as both inner and outer freedom, a really radical freedom.

In other words, the kind of freedom that people are striving for, I criticize. I say Jesus would not have had that kind of freedom because it’s not radical enough. It’s not as if one is saying that people are asking for a radical freedom and Jesus gives a little bit of it as superficial freedom. I’m saying Jesus’ freedom is far deeper, far more profound, far more radical.

Tom Fox: The book is dedicated to the memory of Thomas Merton. We all know Thomas Merton and love his writings; why Thomas Merton?

Albert Nolan: He had such a big influence on me. I became a Dominican and entered the Dominican Order after reading Thomas Merton, so his influence upon me, and I know his influence upon so many other people, but also particularly because Thomas Merton stands out for me as an absolutely honest person who developed and changed.

He changed his ideas over the years and had that kind of freedom to change. He saw that he had been incorrect or mistaken before, so he would change that attitude. The Thomas Merton who first goes into Gethsemane and the Thomas Merton who dies in Bangkok are someone who has developed a long way. That was one of the reasons why I put him in.

Thomas Fox: You have a foreword written by Timothy Radcliffe, the former head of the Dominican Order. Is there any particular reason, except for the obvious, as to why you chose Timothy Radcliffe to write the foreword?

Albert Nolan: Well, I know him and I know him well, and we have often talked about this and many other similar things. I thought he would appreciate the book and I thought if he recommended it in the preface, then people would take notice of the book. So yes, we are friends, so I asked him to do that. We are brothers in the same Dominican Order.

Thomas Fox: Remind me, what is the proper way that one addresses the head of the Dominican Order?

Albert Nolan: Master—the Master of the Order—or many people would say the Master General of the Order.

Thomas Fox: Okay. For the record, if I recall correctly, you were chosen or elected to be the Master General of the Dominican Order, but you turned it down. Is that correct?

Albert Nolan: That’s correct, yes.

Thomas Fox: What year was that, and perhaps you could explain the circumstances of that decision?

Albert Nolan: It was 1983, at what we call a “General Chapter,” an elective chapter, when we elect a new Master General and I was elected, yes. Let me explain that in our constitutions, once you are elected, you are then asked, “Do you accept?” and you are permitted to say no, you don’t accept.

Then you must give the reasons why you don’t accept. That is then debated, and then there’s another vote, and the second vote is whether the capitulars—as they call the people gathered there as voters—accept your reasons or not, and they accepted my reasons. So it was not a defiant kind of thing at all; it was quite normal procedure that doesn’t often happen.

The reasons why I asked that they accept me refusing it, or saying no, was because I thought it was much more important for me to go back to South Africa at that stage in 1983, because apartheid had been given a theological justification, and there was a desperate need for theologians who would stand up and contradict that. So I asked to be allowed to go back and do that ministry, that work, rather than to be Master of the Order, and they accepted that.

Thomas Fox: Have there been other examples in recent Dominican history where someone turns down the Master General position?

Albert Nolan: Actually, nobody knows because it has always been a secret, and this was supposed to be a secret too. When I did it, and when I discussed the whole thing and argued my case, we all thought that was going to be a secret—no one would ever know that. It’s a confidential discussion.

But it leaked and got into the newspapers, so since that, we don’t know, therefore, how often it might have happened in the past and what the results might have been, but historians will tell you, it surely did happen.

Thomas Fox: In your own preface to the book, you mention that you’re indebted to many people, and in a very special way you’re indebted to Pierre Bester for introducing you to recent psychological, spiritual authors like A.H. Almaas, Sandra Maitre, and Ken Wilber. That’s interesting. Can you say something about those three authors I particular and how they have helped you in your own formation?

Albert Nolan: Yes. Let me say that in a certain sense, it’s what’s sometimes called “secular spirituality” these days. That is to say, the kind of spirituality that is developing outside of the church, which doesn’t mean outside of any Christian or religious influence, but not specifically developing within the church the way Thomas Merton would have developed within the church.

Then let me just point out that they have developed, often, very deep insights, it seems to me, which are linked also to psychology. All three of them would be using psychology one way or another. Ken Wilber uses just about everything. It’s an incredible synthesis of everything.

Almaas, I’ll quickly explain if it interests you, is from California. He was born in Kuwait; his mother was from Iraq and his father was from Iran, I think. In any case, he came to America to study science in California and from the science and psychology, and the knowledge of religions and so forth, he’s sort of [distilled] a kind of spirituality.

That’s called the Diamond Approach and he has an institute in Berkeley that develops that. But he also is interested in the Enneagram and I’m also interested in it and how it works. Perhaps the most important thing I learned from him was about the meaning of what I call oneness, and consequences of saying we are all one, and the universe is one, and we are one with God, et cetera.

So I learned a lot, I think, in the meaning of that, which seemed to me did not contradict what Jesus said at all. Almaas—sure, he knows Hinduism and Buddhism, but particularly Sukhis and the religions of Persia, et cetera, as well as Christianity, so he’s got an incredible, broad understanding of spirituality.

Sandra Maitre comes from the same school; she’s a disciple of his. She developed it even further, and particularly the Enneagram. Ken Wilber, I’m sure many of your listeners will know. He’s very famous in the United States, a leading philosopher of today, who is also, at the same time, a mystic and a psychologist and a Buddhist, and all sorts of things. He has an incredible, synthetic mind bringing it all together.

Tom Fox: This concludes part one of an interview with Albert Nolan, the Dominican and author of Jesus Today—A Spirituality of Radical Freedom. This is Tom Fox and this has been an NCR Podcast.

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Part Two (22:34)

Tom Fox: This is part two of an interview with Father Albert Nolan, the author of the recently published Jesus Today — A Spirituality of Radical Freedom, by Orbis [Books]. We were speaking about what led to the book. We were speaking about a little bit of the history of your own work and writing. Now, I’d like to speak to you about the first section of this book.

The book is really divided into four parts. “The Signs of Our Times” is the first; “Jesus’ Spirituality” is the second; “Personal Transformation Today” is the third; and “Jesus and the Experience of Oneness” is the fourth. In this part of the interview, we’re going to speak about “The Signs of Our Times.” The first sign of the time that you list is a hunger for spirituality. Can you address that a little bit?

Albert Nolan: It comes out of the post modernism in the sense of a response to post modernism, if you’d like, but more perhaps as a response to modernity. Modernity places all the emphasis upon science and scientists that know everything or can know everything, and the material world is all that matters.

It seems to me that there is more and more disillusionment with that, and in one way or another, people are seeking a spirituality, are looking for something beyond the material, are looking beyond science and technology for answers, and so forth.

I think it’s a whole part in the sense of post modernism, the search for something beyond the material. We have been very materialistic. We have been very confined to the material world, the physical world, and money and I think people are moving beyond that now.

Tom Fox: At the very beginning of “The Signs of the Times,” you speak that we’re also living on the edge of chaos, but also, because of a giant leap forward in our history and evolution, there seems to also be a possibility of a real advance.

On the one hand, there is chaos, and on the other hand, there is this possibility of what kind of advance? Are you speaking of a social advance or spiritual advance? It is some kind of an advance. What are you trying to say?

Albert Nolan: Well, all of those things, but I think the principle thing that I had in mind was the new science. I call it the science of Einstein, understanding the universe as an unfolding universe, starting with the Big Bang and moving forward, and understanding the mystery of everything in the universe.

All of these things mean that we’re going to have a different scientific outlook in the future. We already have it in some people, but more so in the future, that it will make a very big difference to faith and religion. There will be a place for faith and religion if you like, or rather, almost a hunger for it in the new way of looking at them.

It’s a tremendous opportunity. We have a whole new way of understanding the universe, and therefore, understanding ourselves, who we are and how we fit in that has great potential for the future, and great potential, I think, for moving beyond selfishness. However, at the same time, we are going headlong into more and more selfishness and individualism.

If that wins out, then we will simply destroy ourselves, so there are these two tendencies, if you like. I said at one stage that the signs of the times today are ambiguous in that way. On the one hand, they’re leading to chaos, and on the other hand, they are opening up incredible new possibilities for the future.

Tom Fox: You put the context of life today in the post modern era, and you mention post modernism. Could you, for the sake of our listeners, define post modernism in a succinct way?

Albert Nolan: The usual understanding of post modernism is the age after modernity, and modernity stands for the rational emphasis on reason, the possibility of sorting out all our problems in the world by means of science and religion, and that we are making progress over the past. Democracy was very important in all of this, as were human rights. These were obviously very good.

That was modernity. Modernity was promising a great future where everything was going to improve. There were differences of opinion about whether it was going to be improved through capitalism or communism maybe, but nevertheless, everybody saw development, improvement and progress as inevitable.

However, what people began to gradually realize was that this rationalism, and these reasonable human beings were acting very unreasonably. We have the Nazis, the Second World War, and great civilizations that suddenly become full of violence. Even the great nations of today fail.

All the things that were promised with progress are not working. The great ideologies are all shown today to be faulty. The grand narratives, as they are called, are all falling apart. People are disillusioned. Post modernism is part of that disillusionment and disappointment.

Sometimes, it is called deconstruction, because it is deconstructing all the grand ideas, all the principles, the certainties of science and religion, and all the certainties of economic progress or whatever. All these things are not just being questioned, but being recognized as having failed us.

People are just not what they thought they were going to be when they were rational human beings. That disillusionment we call post modernism. It takes a lot of different forms. People are not interested in anything anyone says. There’s not necessarily one truth.

You can have your own truths, and you listen to somebody else’s truth. People are not even sure there is any kind of truths anymore. You just have to find what interests you, et cetera. That’s a very broad idea of what post modernism is about.

Tom Fox: Right, and you see that in many people today, especially in the area of spirituality, where they’re no longer finding the full truth within any institution, but they are [making it] piecemeal, looking a little into Buddhism, Taoism, yoga, or various different other ways, just trying to find something, and finding bits and pieces of truth in many areas.

Albert Nolan: That’s right.

Tom Fox: I heard it said that the Second Vatican Council was bringing the Catholic Church into the modern world, just as people were moving into the post modern.

Albert Nolan: That’s right. Post modern is being disillusioned with all that modernity stood for. We’ve got to face the post modern world, and ask what our faith means in these circumstances. I think the post modern world is a great opportunity myself, not just baptizing it. I don’t mean that, but I think it opens up all sorts of possibility for faith and religion.

Tom Fox: The other sign of the time that you’re mentioning in the area of spirituality is this return to the past and fundamentalism. We see that in the Catholic Church. We see that among Protestant fundamentalists. We see it among Jews and certainly among Muslims. There is this need to hold on and to become rigid somehow.

Albert Nolan: Yes, and to find absolute certainty, because in a world which is very insecure, and where all certainties, dogmas and doctrines are being questions, inevitably, there will be some people who seek this security in trying to go back to the absolute certainties that might have been there in the past.

They weren’t necessarily there, but they feel there were absolute certainties in the past, so people want to go back. It’s perfectly understandable that, in a development like this into the post modern world, there will be some people who want to go backwards.

Tom Fox: In the post modern world, you talk about trying to offer an appropriate spirituality, or you say at least that there is a search for the appropriate spirituality. By appropriate, do you mean a balanced spirituality? What do you mean by that?

Albert Nolan: I don’t necessarily mean balanced spirituality. Spiritualities in the past might have been balanced, too, but one that speaks to the concerns, issues, insecurities, and all the rest of people today. In other words, it doesn’t speak to the past and how people were in the past.

Some of us perhaps still have the past in us or with us, but it is one that actually has something to say to the people of today, the post modern world, the people who are struggling, the people who are looking for something and perhaps don’t even know what they’re looking for.

It needs to speak to that. It needs to speak to people who are asking for freedom and they may not know what they’re asking for. That’s why I also emphasize what freedom is, because we live in a world where people are asking for freedom. It has to speak to that, even if it contradicts the kind of freedom that some people are exercising or looking for.

Tom Fox: You also talk of growth in mysticism. Could you explain?

Albert Nolan: There has been quite mysticism in the last forty years or so that was unprecedented, because previously, the mystics would have been regarded as people who were weird or different. They didn’t have any contribution to make to the development and progress of people before, because you had to be scientific and so forth.

Mysticism did not appear to be scientific. That’s all changed, although not for everyone, of course. Generally speaking, mystics are much appreciated today. I think the reason why they are much appreciated today is precisely because they often question the kind of doctrine and dogma rigidity of the institutional church.

More importantly, I think the mystics come into their own today because the mystics are talking about experience. They’re not imposing teachings of some kind or another on you. They talk about their experience, and people want to hear about it. They want to hear about people’s experience, whether it’s experienced today or in the past. The fact that it is experience makes all the difference.

Tom Fox: This experience of God, you write that the mystics who have had this experience have certain characteristics. You write that they become happy, joyful, confident, humble, loving, free and secure.

Albert Nolan: Yes, indeed. I think so. As I’m saying, this is something that people are discovering. You may have thought that these mystics were having a strange kind of reasons and so forth and that they were irrelevant, but today, we see the consequences of that in those people.

The fruits of it are the kinds of things that people are looking for today. They will look to these mystics. People are not interested in proofs of the existence of God. People are interested in anyone who says he has experienced God.

Tom Fox: I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but you also write later in the book that the saints of today have this experience of God, but they also have a very deep commitment to healing and to the social order. They’re not just one-dimensional.

Albert Nolan: That’s right, because those dimensions don’t exist for them. It would take a long time to try and explain how originally mysticism and prophecy, or work for justice, on the one hand, and prayer and spirituality on the other hand were all one. They were not separated from one another.

That separation comes with the age of reason and enlightenment, where you separate off the secular concerns and the religious concerns. That’s a long story of its own. What I think I would want to say now is that people do not want to necessarily divide up all these things into compartments anymore.

They just want to know about people experience. Whether it’s scientific or comes out of science, or whether it comes out of a mystical experience, the two are seen as equally valid and interesting.

Tom Fox: You write that another component of this hunger for spirituality is a hunger for healing. What do you mean by that?

Albert Nolan: Let’s start with the opposite of that. I’ve tried to describe that when I talk about Jesus’ attitude to sinners. The opposite is condemnation, making people feel guilty, imposing things on people, telling them what they must do and all the terrible consequences if they don’t do it and moralizing in that sense.

That has been the kind of attitude that treats people as guilty, as sinners and condemns or blames. I’m saying that Jesus was not like that. Jesus saw people as certainly having faults, problems and so forth, but sort of more as wounded, as needing a healer or doctor, and not as needing condemnation.

It’s a totally different attitude to life. It comes up for many people in terms of the word sinner. Do we go around, looking for sin, condemning people to hell for their sins, or do we go around looking at people and seeing that we’re all struggling, that some are not very well, that they’re all wounded. In various ways, we hurt.

This is the kind of thing that Henri Nouwen was saying in his spiritual writings. We’re all wounded and hurt, though perhaps differently, but let’s help one another towards healing. To understand salvation in terms of healing would be a way that post modern people could understand. In any case, it’s the way Jesus did it.

Tom Fox: This healing, again, is a holistic healing that’s spiritual, psychological, and physical, all in one.

Albert Nolan: Once again, we need to be getting beyond all the divisions and departmentalization of things. That can have a certain value to distinguish the psychological from the physical, but in the end, we are all these things. Any particular human being or society has all of this together. Healing must be holistic in that sense.

One of the problems is the way we have separated things, and so, you get physical healing. The work that many doctors do is they treat the physical as totally separate from the spiritual or the psychological. Most people are beginning to realize that doesn’t work.

Tom Fox: The other element in spirituality that you write about is secular spirituality. You say that one of the most significant developments of our time is the separation of spirituality from religion. You hear young people say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” There seems to be an increasing separation. Why is this happening, and what does it mean?

Albert Nolan: I think it’s because once people have a genuine hunger for spirituality, they are discovering that what is offered to them in the churches, and in other religious institutions as well, does not meet that hunger. In other words, they go to Mass, but the hunger for God, meaning, inner peace, inner freedom and all these kinds of things is not being met.

This may be because perhaps they come out of it feeling terribly guilty and condemned if they don’t live up to the teaching of the Church. They are not taught how to pray when they go there. They’re not taught how to live with one another and things like that.

By and large, they either have certain doctrines and dogmas that they find very difficult to believe or there is a moral teaching that makes them feel guilty. People are not being nourished. Their hunger is not being fed by most of the things that happen in churches. Consequently, they look somewhere else.

Tom Fox: Why aren’t many of the young finding what they’re looking for in the Church today?

Albert Nolan: I think it is several things. To begin with, there is the authoritarianism of the Church. It’s a bit of an exaggeration, because it’s not all people in all churches, or in all parishes, but for post modern people, they don’t even think they need to listen to that kind of thing if it’s presented in an authoritarian way.

“You’ve got to believe or else,” doesn’t wash. It also makes people feel guilty. The authoritarianism is something that puts young people off. The other thing is that the doctrines and dogmas are not formulated in ways that would make sense to them. They are formulated in terms of philosophies or ways of thinking about life and the world that belong to the past.

They cannot identify with this, so they find it very difficult to accept the doctrines and dogmas because of the way they’re presented. There is an enormous theological task that needs to be done, which is the reformulation of almost all our doctrines and teachings.

The teachings are fine. That’s not the problem. The problem is the way it’s formulated. The Second Vatican Council started to try to do that, but it hasn’t gotten very far. Actually, it got very far with some theologians. They’ve been working at it, but the Church, by and large, hasn’t caught up with anything like that. We’ve got a long way to go.

Tom Fox: This concludes part two of an interview with Albert Nolan, the author of Jesus Today—A Spirituality of Radical Freedom. We’ve been discussing the signs of the times as he presents them in this book. This is Tom Fox, and this has been an NCR Podcast.

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Part Three (17:52)

Tom Fox: This is part three of a conversation with Dominican Father, Albert Nolan, the author of Jesus Today—A Spirituality of Radical Freedom, published by Orbis [Books]. In the earlier conversations, we were speaking of the signs of the times and a hunger for spirituality that seems to be prevalent in many parts of the world.

And in this segment, we will speak about other signs of the times, and we’ll continue to enter into part two of the book, which represents a conversation on Jesus’ spirituality. In our earlier segment, we were talking a little bit about the hunger of spirituality as one of the signs of the time, and you list three other signs.

You list the crisis of individualism, globalization from below and the science after Einstein. Could you deal with each of these, the first being the crisis of individualism and how this is leading perhaps to our own problems vis-à-vis the earth?

Albert Nolan: Yes. Well, put very, very simply, it’s the crisis has arisen because while we, in the Western world anyway, were pursuing individualism as a great ideal, being independent of everybody else and autonomous and so forth, we are beginning to discover now that that is not good for us. It’s put as simply as that.

In other words, being selfish and self-centered is our problem, not the solution to our problems. I think Robert Bella, as I quote in the book, was somebody who pointed that out very strongly and had his team of sociologists who went around interviewing people in the United States discovering all the problems that had arisen because of this cult of the individual I quoted.

So I think that is indeed a very, very big problem, and I argue that the global warming and the whole destruction of the earth can be traced back to human selfishness, that if we had not been selfish, if we’d been concerned for one another and for the future and for all of God’s creation, this would not have happened or we would have taken steps to stop it already or would do so soon. Therefore, the fundamental problem is selfishness. That is, in a nutshell, what I was trying to say.

Tom Fox: Now is the world economic system an outgrowth of this selfishness or does it reflect this selfishness or does it contribute to this selfishness?

Albert Nolan: Well, all of those things. I think, first of all, it does reflect it because our whole economic system is based upon selfishness — grab for yourself and even the whole idea of profit taking and the emphasis on private property to such an extent that somebody can accumulate much more than they can ever use while others are starving, et cetera.

Certainly, our economic system runs on that self-interest and so forth. So, yes, it reflects the selfishness. On the other hand, it perpetuates it as well because you get into an economic system where you can only almost survive by being selfish. So, certainly, the only way you can prosper in that system is to be selfish. So it perpetuates selfishness, yes.

Tom Fox: They say that the economic system is the most efficient and it leads to growth, but you’re suggesting that maybe growth is not the most important thing that we have to deal with at the moment?

Albert Nolan: Absolutely, especially when growth means growth for some people and not for others. Then growth can then become a cancerous growth. It’s not an overall growth for the common good of everyone. In any case, growth is not the issue. The issue is more the distribution of what we have and together, trying to certainly grow in this sense that there is more for all of us.

Tom Fox: Do you feel that there’s any evidence today that people are moving away from this notion of this rugged individualism?

Albert Nolan: Yes, I think there is. I think, as I say, individualism is in crisis in the sense that it is being criticized and it is criticized very much from a Third World perspective. Other cultures looking at the Western culture see it as very selfish, if you like, very self-centered. Of course there are people around the world who imitate it.

But, no, I think it’s being seen as a problem, and I think psychologists are seeing it as a problem and people who get involved in a deeper spirituality are seeing it as a problem; the church through its social teaching and all there is, is certainly beginning to see this selfish individualism as a problem that’s destroying us.

It’s not very many people, perhaps, but I think it’s growing, and I describe part of it in the next chapter under globalization as the growth in concern for justice and for peace.

Tom Fox: What do you mean by globalization from below?

Albert Nolan: Globalization is, as I explained in the book, simply spreading something throughout the globe. That in itself is neutral. It depends entirely on what you spread throughout the globe. Now what has been spread up until now has been spread from above in the sense that it is the rich and the powerful who are spreading the particular economic system and the particular understanding of trade and economic structures and so forth, and that has been called globalization.

But I’m saying that as a natural fact, there is another kind of globalization that comes from below, and that is the resistance to the globalization that comes from the top. That takes the form of people now coming together when they want to struggle for justice, globalizing that.

They have been able to have demonstrations, for example, with people from all around the world and many, many different organizations and so forth because of the Internet. So all of that globalizes the struggle against imperialism, the struggle against oppression, the struggle against injustice.

Tom Fox: Are these what you call the “new voices” who are speaking out against globalization from the top?

Albert Nolan: Yes, I think that they are the new voices. There have always been, as I explained, voices who speak for the voiceless, the humanitarian kind of people, often religious people who are concerned about the poor in others.

But the new phenomenon that I see as one of the signs of the times is that the poor women, indigenous people and so forth, are not just allowing someone else to speak on their behalf, but they are speaking themselves.

They develop more and more organizations and movements, and these come together in the world’s social forum now so that they then have more of a voice in the world. So the voices are acquiring a voice globally, and that’s another kind of globalization.

Tom Fox: So the final sign of the time after hunger for spirituality, crisis of individualism and globalization from below, you list science after Einstein. What do you mean by the “new science” and how does this fit into one of these four signs of the time?

Albert Nolan: Well, first of all, perhaps it’s easier to say what you mean by the new science by explaining what it is not. It is not the mechanistic science, I call it, of the past, which tended to see the universe as a kind of machine and tended to see human beings and other living things as sophisticated machines.

The new science is beginning to see that it is not as simple as that at all. In fact, they’re very different from machines. The universe doesn’t operate like a machine, and with Einstein and relativity and his time, space and all that kind of thing, we’re beginning to see that the whole thing is far more mysterious, that the whole thing is beyond our understanding.

I think scientists have reached the point where they’re able to say, “We don’t know, we don’t understand, and many things we don’t understand.” Quantum physicists particularly will tell you what they don’t understand. So I think this is a whole new attitude on the part of scientists.

It’s a whole new approach to the universe, to the world, to human beings, to everything—that it is mysterious, we can see something of how it works, that there’s a great deal we don’t understand, and the more we understand, the more we realize that it’s very mysterious, and it’s certainly not like the things we manufacture, namely, machines.

Tom Fox: I take it that you are of the opinion that as we learn more and more about the new cosmology, it’s a kind of revelation, a divine revelation?

Albert Nolan: Yes.

Tom Fox: The new science then becomes another kind of divine revelation?

Albert Nolan: Well, another kind of—I would hesitate to quite say that. It is a divine revelation and has always been seen as a divine revelation. In other words, that God reveals God’s self first of all, in creation and only later in the revelations that we have in the Bible and so forth. So, yes, God speaks to us through the universe. Now, the new thing is that we know much more about that universe.

It’s almost as if we’ve suddenly been able to discover a whole lot more about the language that God speaks, but it’s not new because the language was always there and we always knew that we learned something of the glory of God from God’s creatures and the whole of creation. But now we see that the whole of creation is more magnificent than we ever imagined. In other words, therefore, God is speaking more loudly and more clearly through that than before.

Tom Fox: So in the first part of your book under “Signs of Our Times,” you choose four topics, and in our own conversations, you’ve said that you could’ve chosen others as well. But these topics you chose because they relate directly to Part Two in Jesus’ Spirituality. So tie together those four signs with this hunger or this overarching need to understand Jesus’ spirituality.

Albert Nolan: Let me say that it wouldn’t work out quite as mechanically as you seem to put it. Now, I looked at the signs of the times. I looked at where things were moving today, whether it looked as if it was for good or for bad, and then I looked at Jesus, and what I said about Jesus doesn’t relate point by point to a particular sign of the times.

I avoided trying to do that. I simply wanted to give people Jesus’ spirit, if you like, his spirituality, so that they could see how with that, we can see this whole world that we’re in differently. That’s why the first chapter is about—I call it a revolution—Jesus turning the values of his time, which are largely still the values of our time, upside down.

That was extremely important. So what I wanted to say was this is the world we have, this is the selfishness we have, this is the suffering that we have, this is the hopeful things that we have and all there is, and Jesus comes along and he sees the whole thing differently. He sees the whole thing upside down or right side up as I say later on.

So that what we have to begin to do is what people regard as often a great success or a great achievement or a person of very high status or all sorts of things like that, Jesus turns on its head and looks at the humble, looks at the people who have forgotten, looks at the opposite, the poor and so forth.

So he turns all these things on their head. Now, the first thing that I’m saying in that particular chapter is we need to learn to turn things on their head to see the world as it really is. In fact, whether it’s Jesus’ world or our world—but we need to see our world as it really is right-side up.

Now that doesn’t relate to any particular sign of the times. Later on when I come to love and oneness and so forth, that contradicts the individualism, that’s true, and Jesus’ consent for the poor and the ones who are below, you could relate that, et cetera. But it’s not the point in that first chapter. The first chapter is Jesus turning our whole view of reality upside down.

Now why that’s particularly important is because he didn’t come to add something to what we already know and the world as it is, which is often the way revelation is understood, that he came and added something. I’m saying, no, he came to give us a perspective from the world that’s different from the perspective we now have on the same world, if you like, not another world. Does any of that make sense?

Tom Fox: Yes, it does. Once you have this first element in the first chapter of the revolution, or seeing the world upside down as Jesus has suggested that we do, you say another element in Jesus’ Spirituality is that of prophet and mystic. It’s interesting that you combine prophet and mystic. Normally, these are not necessarily linked but you’re linking them here.

Albert Nolan: Purposely, yes. I’m purposely linking them because they have very often been “divorced,” I think is the word I would prefer; that the mystical side, the prayer, the contemplation, has often been divorced from the act of prophetic speaking art, activism, and I think that’s a mistake. Prayer and justice should never have been separated like that. So it’s intentional that I put those two together, and I tried to show that there is no such divorce or contradiction in Jesus.

Tom Fox: We’ve been speaking with Dominican Father, Albert Nolan, and our conversation today is focused on Jesus Today—A Spirituality of Radical Freedom, his new book by Orbis [Books], and in this part, we’ve been talking about Jesus’ own spirituality and the way he came to turn the world upside down.

In his presentation on Jesus’ spirituality, Nolan also joins together the mystic and prophet, the social justice element with the prayerful, contemplative element. This is Tom Fox, and this has been an NCR Podcast.

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Part Four (26:59)

Tom Fox: This is part four of a conversation with Dominican Father, Albert Nolan. We’re talking about Jesus Today, his recent book published by Orbis [Books]. In the earlier segments, we spoke about the signs of the times. In the last segment, we began to speak about Jesus’ own spirituality as presented by Father Nolan in the book. We now continue with that discussion.

Albert, in the last segment, we were talking about Jesus’ spirituality. Two points you made were that Jesus really didn’t come to add but he came to overthrow, or to turn upside down, to create a revolution in the way one looked at the world.

The second point you were trying to make, I think, was that it’s important to bring together both the prophetic and the mystic because both are required in Jesus. Do you want to add anything to those two points before we go on?

Albert Nolan: No, except to perhaps emphasize, again, that the revelation he brings is another perspective on the world and universe and everything, rather than an addition, as I said. I think that is important. We tend to think he introduced another world or something.

That is important. The other part of that is reading the signs of the times. He looked at what was happening in his time and he understood it differently from the way others had understood what was going on in his own time. If we’re going to do the same today, we need to read the signs of our times and try to understand the world right side up instead of upside down as it’s generally understood.

Then the other side was the mysticism, that is the clue of how Jesus did this or was able to see this was his union with God, his oneness with God, which is what the Mystics always talk about—union with God. In his case, it seems that he experienced that or expressed that experience as God being his Abba, God being intimately his Father, but in the sense that he was a loving Father from whom he learned everything.

Tom Fox: Another element in your presentation of Jesus’ spirituality is the spirituality of healing. Can you address that, please?

Albert Nolan: Yes, I think it’s very important that what Jesus tried to do for people was not to condemn, to blame, to punish, judge, or any of those things, but quite clearly to heal. He says that people need, the sinners need a physician. They need a doctor. They need a healer. He comes with that attitude of healing, which is very important for understanding the healing miracles, but also for understanding his introduction of forgiveness and so forth.

Healing is very important, I’m saying, for Jesus and it’s a way of understanding what he actually contributed, what he brought, what salvation is all about. In fact, it is healing body and soul. Healing the human, and in that way, healing the universe.

Tom Fox: In part three of your book, you shift the focus from the signs of our times and the spirituality of Jesus in his time to a practical spirituality for today and you begin with a segment on silence and solitude.

Albert Nolan: That’s right. What I’m trying to do in that whole section, part three, is trying to make what I’ve been saying practical for today as a practical spirituality. How do we go about this? It would be very easy to just write a theoretical relationship between Jesus’ spirituality and the problems, all the rest of our times.

I start, therefore, by a very, very practical thing of each of us have to find time for silence and solitude in the way that Jesus did, otherwise, transformation just doesn’t happen. It’s all very nice. It remains in the head unless we can set aside time for prayer, for meditation, for just being present to the world and to ourselves and to God.

Tom Fox: How much of that is required?

Albert Nolan: Well, that is impossible to lay down for everybody in the world. It just means we’ve got to do something like that. The point I think I’m making there is many of us are just so busy and we distract ourselves from what really matters by being busy in all sorts of ways, maybe doing very, very good things.

If we’re constantly distracted, we’ll never see the world right side up. We will always be part of understanding the world upside down, the way most people do, even if we’re morally good and whatever else.

Tom Fox: So you need to step out of it?

Albert Nolan: In a certain sense step out of it is you could put it like that, step back if you like. But it is having the silence and the solitude to start looking at it properly with all our thoughts being simply distraction-less. We’re distracted with the practical things that need to be done every day, which obviously do need to be done. The point is that we’ve get a space that we can just look at life, ourselves, the world, God.

Tom Fox: You make the point that the usual recommendation is that we meditate for 20 minutes twice a day, but that you don’t want to create yet another burden or yet another obligation.

Albert Nolan: Yes, that’s right. Yes, I’m trying all the way not to be prescriptive in that kind of sense. You’ve got to do it 20 minutes a day or twice 20 minutes a day or you’ve got to have so much time in the morning or something else like that. It’s so different for different people. What’s possible for different people also varies from place to place and time to time.

Tom Fox: While we’re talking about meditation, do you have any advice on how practically one starts a meditation, for the novice or for a person who maybe hasn’t practiced meditation?

Albert Nolan: Yes. There are so many different methods. I, myself, prefer the mantra kind of meditation, just to say we’re teaching the word or a set of words as a way of focusing the mind, as a way of bringing the mind away from all the distractions to get it focused, if you like, but it’s much more than focused.

In any case, it is this moving away from a life of being superficial because we’re always distracted from reality. A method for doing that would be to use a mantra words like that, but other people would probably prefer to just try to be quiet. Some people prefer sound like “Ohm” or something like that. Others prefer reading a passage and repeating some words of the passage or scripture or some other way like that.

Tom Fox: The next step, and this follows from the meditation, I believe, is as you say, getting to know yourself. Could you explain that?

Albert Nolan: Well, one of the problems of what I’m now calling the distraction and seeing the world therefore in the wrong way, up, is that we don’t look at ourselves. We don’t stop to examine ourselves and look at what we’re doing and why we’re doing and why we’re doing things and what our motives are and what our ego is doing, et cetera.

The place we have to start in getting in touch with reality and getting in touch with reality about ourselves, we begin to see the truth of the world. We begin to see the world right side up, first beginning to see ourselves right side up, if you like, beginning to see what’s really happening in all humility, understanding ourselves.

Not all spiritualities, all spiritual traditions will tell you that you must get to know yourself. If you don’t know yourself, you will simply fool yourself thinking you know what’s going on when you don’t.

Tom Fox: What do you mean by getting to know yourself?

Albert Nolan: Beginning to recognize, for example, my motives for doing things, beginning to recognize that I’m projecting my problems onto other people, beginning to recognize that I have a false image of myself and that I’m projecting, perhaps, a false image of myself, getting to recognize that there are very good things in me as well, what I call the true self, that sometimes come out.

Until I see what’s happening there, I am, like Jesus would say, a person with a huge log in their eye. Therefore, they cannot see straight anything outside because there’s something blocking. They’re blinded by something. Until we can see, yes, there is a log in my eye.

I do need to remove that log in order to see clearly. I am, what shall we say, prejudice or whatever else, or my ego, which is setting myself up as the center of the universe and everything must happen for me, to please me, and what’s best for me, is putting myself in the center of the world. That is, of course, false. I’m not the center of the world. As long as I see myself as the center of the world, I don’t know myself.

Tom Fox: Albert, there seems to be two traditions that one is to face our sins, our shortcomings, or whatever you call them, and to try to rid ourselves of those. Another is this whole notion of acceptance and trying to befriend, in a way, our weaknesses perhaps as a means of accepting ourselves. I’m wondering if you could address or try to resolve those two points.

Albert Nolan: As you may notice, I don’t put the emphasis on sin and guilt because I believe Jesus didn’t do that. When I’m talking about getting to know yourself, it’s not the traditional examination of conscience, what’s sins have I committed, because maybe I discover something about myself, but it leads to feelings of guilt, et cetera.

The problem with that is you then begin to reject yourself or part of yourself as you understand it, et cetera. When you’re just simply trying to get to know yourself without blaming yourself, without imputing guilt even to yourself or to anyone else, one begins to see what’s actually happening without any guilt trips.

As you see what’s happening, you see that there are some things that perhaps you wouldn’t be very proud of exactly, because you see that you are selfish in your motives for doing this, that, and the other thing, but then recognizing that’s me, that’s my shadow, if you like. That’s part of who and what I am.

Just in the same way as Jesus did not go around blaming people, so we mustn’t blame ourselves all the time. We must rather just see what’s there. That will lead to action. That will lead us to want to try and change some things, of course. It will, first of all, lead us to learn to accept ourselves as we are and to love ourselves because God loves us as we are. So far as something needs to change or be improved, of course we’ll do that too, but not out of this desperate sense of guilt.

Tom Fox: One of the traditional problems that we face is the sense of lust or desire of the flesh. It’s so human. Where do you place that?

Albert Nolan: I have said in one place that desire is not wrong, sinful, bad, or any of those things. Of course, when you talk about guilt, that’s one of the main things that when we begin to know ourselves and we begin to see our own desires, sometimes we feel guilty and we shouldn’t. Desires in themselves are good, as many spiritual writers are saying today.

We must recognize that they are excellent, they are good. What’s wrong is when we use any desire, any desire at all, in a selfish way. Lust, the word generally means that you have a sexual desire but you are indulging it in a way that is selfish. If you do not indulge it in a way that is selfish, then it is not in itself wrong.

It’s not wrong because it’s sex. That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s wrong because it’s selfish. If I have to change, then it’s not my sexual desires or any other desire for food or whatever else that has to change, it is my misuse of those desires that has to change.

Tom Fox: I’m talking today to Dominican Father, Albert Nolan the author of Jesus Today—A Spirituality of Radical Freedom published by Orbis [Books]. This is Tom Fox. So much of what you write about addresses the effort of trying to find, understand, come to terms, the true self.

At one point you write, “There’s no way you can simply conquer your ego or annihilate it, as many ascetics have tried to do. Such efforts only strengthen the ego because it is your ego that does the fighting or conquering. You cannot destroy it but you can sideline it and transcend it.” It’s a taming of the ego, is that it?

Albert Nolan: Taming may be one way of looking at it. I think you kind of objectify the ego and then do not identify with it. If I have a false image of myself as the center of the world, I need to recognize that that image is there, that temptation, if you like, is there, but I’m not going to identify with that.

I am going to disassociate, if you like, myself from that way of looking at life, because it’s not true anyway. It’s an illusion. It’s objectifying and becoming what some people call a witness to stand back and look at that and see what is happening and then say, “That’s not what I want to pursue.

That’s not the image of myself that I would regard as true.” It’s a false image. It’s a mistake or whatever you like. It’s this business of ability to distance oneself, if you like, from it but still look at it and still recognize that it’s there and still recognize that it may come up again and again as a temptation. I cannot just simply destroy it.

Tom Fox: Now, in this section on personal transformation, you come to something that is another practical element here and you hear it other places. You say, “You’re trying to live with a grateful heart as Jesus lived with a grateful heart.” That whole sense of gratitude, living with gratitude, can you explain that a little bit?

Albert Nolan: Well, expand on what I did. The issue is how we see everything in life. We can see things in life in terms of, “I deserve it,” or “I don’t deserve it,” or something else like that. “I possess it. I have it. I want it. Someone else has it. I want it,” or one can look at everything in life more truthfully and that is to see it all as a gift.

Everything is a gift. Everything in my life, starting with my own existence, is a gift. I didn’t earn my existence or merit it or anything like that. It was a gift. Everything that happens to me is a gift. It’s true I do do some things, that is perfectly true. But if whatever I do is, what shall we say, successful or a good thing, then I need to recognize too that that’s a gift too.

I need to be grateful for that. What it does, in affect, is it enables me to look at the whole world differently, a whole different attitude to everything in life, which is what opens ones eyes to truth again, to seeing the world right side up. When I no longer see the world in terms of what I merit, deserve, should have, achieved, et cetera.

Tom Fox: So many other spirituals writers, it seems, and you quote a number of them, are saying that the deepest prayer or the deepest way to live is to live gratefully.

Albert Nolan: That’s right, to look at everything in terms of a gift and therefore ones attitude is always, “Thank you,” gratitude.

Tom Fox: You go on then to talk about this and living like a little child. Help us to understand what it means to live like a little child.

Albert Nolan: I’m going to keep relating it, which I didn’t do in the book, actually, but now that you ask, r