Propuesta de mejora específica (Propuesta A)

Harmsen, after listening to Arrernte informants and reading MSC archives closely, concluded that the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart had at Little Flower and Santa Teresa adopted a “cunning sort of diplomacy,”669_{a paternalistic practice whereby they made it appear that they}

were listening to the Arrernte but were in fact manipulating them. This thesis seeks to tweak Harmsen’s view into subtler shape. It takes a clue from Carl Strehlow’s ethnography, which very early identified the subtlety of the WesternArrernte at the interface between newcomer and Arrernte on the frontier and demonstrated that WesternArrernte were keen to absorb and utilise a variety of new ideas, rites and approaches in their daily and religious lives. Strehlow showed that WesternArrernte were keen readers of those things which they anticipated their

668 _{Myers, Pintubi Country, Pintubi Self, inside front cover, underlining as in the original.}

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interlocuters would be interested in and shaped their discourse accordingly. Rather than being manipulated, it seems the WesternArrernte were capable of making their own imaginary out of the missionaries’ teachings, combining Christianity with their own Altyerre.F.W. Albrecht thought that Altyerre offered no future to the WesternArrernte and told them so. Henson says, “He understood the importance of the ceremonies … but thought it was impossible to reconcile them with a Christian understanding.” An unidentified Arrernte replies, “He wasn’t interested, so we didn’t talk about it to him. Kept that part to ourselves.”670 _{The Western}

Arrernte made a hero and a ngkarte out of Albrecht as they did of Carl Strehlow, but they did not slavishly follow either man.

The process of engagement at the frontier by Western, CentralMparntwe and Eastern Arrernte is a tribute to their continuing commitment to the dynamism of Altyerre. All Arrernte had a long tradition of incorporating ideas from the outside. Incorporation is an Arrernte lifestyle. The Eastern and MparntweArrernte were subjected to huge disruptive forces. Their Altyerre values were subjected not just to new ideas, but to contrasting ideas, powerful, aggressive ideas. These forces were apparently overpowering, yet they were effectively resisted. Perhaps their cause was assisted when the Catholic missionaries allowed themselves to become agents of government assimilation policy, thus compromising the trust of the Arrernte, who then, in a manner not dissimilar to the method of the Western Arrernte, adopted a clever policy of concealment in order to retain their identity and vitality.

The result was the development of a unique form of Eastern and Mparntwe Arrernte Catholicism which adopted ritual, devotions and prayer practices from Catholicism and planted them in the fertile ground of the Altyerre tradition. The Healing Spring anecdote confirms this long-standing facility. The written works of Wenten Rubuntja, M.K. Turner, Margaret Heffernan and Kathleen Kemarre Wallace were responsible for the elucidation of a new level of sophistication of Mparntwe Arrernte Catholic thought. However, this progress was based on earlier developments in the oral fashioning of this unique imaginary by Catholic Mparntwe Arrernte people such as Leonie Palmer, Therese Ryder, Teresa Webb, Basil Stevens and Thomas Stevens.

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M.K. Turner thus posits creation as the centre of her religious viewpoint rather than a creator, but in deference to her Christian audience she offers an amalgam of traditional Catholic teaching within her predominant Altyerre world-view: “I’m saying here that I’m strong in Catholicism, and I’m strong in my culture.”671 _{Her conclusion bears quoting in full:}

That’s what it’s like for me as a Catholic. As a Catholic person, I really love my Land. You asked me a couple of times, alere (son),672 _{just how I see God and the Land}

fitting in with each other. Well, that’s a very hard question. We just see how God created us and God created everything, and how our Creation is to the Land, and how we treat Land in the eyes of those Beings in the Land, you know the Little People of the Land … He created us to look after the Land … God gave us our Land673 to look after it, to guide it. God will also Himself guide the Little People of our grandfather’s Land so that they can look after us … So that we are just like joint guardians of the country, maybe joint custodians … So that God can see our spirit, given in our own way, and so that He can see in His way, we say it and sing it in a different style to the white people, how we see God.674

God as creator is not here central to M.K.’s religion, but the Creation and caring for the Land are. The creator is a given of orthodox Catholicism. M.K. has tacitly accepted that and

incorporated the creator into her model. To her God is not a controller or manipulator675 but a chaperon – “God will also Himself guide the Little People of our grandfather’s Land so that they can look after us”. M.K.’s final point is about arntarntareme/caring. In the subtlest of ways M.K. has incorporated the creator into the aknganentye/creation. The apmere/land is the centre of her thinking; apmere/land is the source and resting place of utnenge/spirit which is the caring/regenerative/creative centre of all life.

671 _{Turner, Iwenhe Tyerrtye, 220.}

672 _{M.K. incorporates her co-author in the anpernirrentye/kinship system within her discourse. She is doing the}

same to her reader.

673 _{Here we see M.K.’s discourse, “God gave us our Land” in close parallel to Harmsen’s thesis topic, “You}

gave us the Dreaming” and Wenten Rubuntja’s phrase, “God gave us the Dreaming”.

674 _{Turner, Iwenhe Tyerrtye, 219.}

675 _{Here M.K.’s comment may be compared to Carl Strehlow’s agonised response on his deathbed, “God doesn’t}

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The task ahead at this point is to examine Christian creation theology and Christology, particularly with respect to the implications of the theology of the Cosmic Christ, in order to demonstrate the convergence in the development of Christian and Arrernte imaginaries.

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Part Three: The Cosmic Christ

Introduction

For the purposes of this thesis, the Cosmic Christ is taken to mean that understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ as implicitly expressed by St Paul, “The fullness of the one who fills all things in every way” (Ephesians 1:23), and as explicitly developed by Teilhard de Chardin in the 20th century, “There is also He who, in his … being, gathers up the whole of creation [in] His third ‘nature’ of Christ (neither human nor divine, but cosmic)”.676 In this understanding, while priority is given to Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnation of God, the person and work of Christ is understood to proceed and be immanent in the whole of creation from start to finish. As Teilhard says, “Christian tradition is unanimous that there is more in the total Christ than man and God.”677

In Part Three the focus of research moves from explorations of Altyerre to the theology of the Cosmic Christ in order to prepare for a deeper exploration of Altyerre in Part Four. Chapter 8 demonstrates that there are developing and varied understandings of creator and creation in the Bible, and that these understandings can be seen as pointing to the Cosmic Christ, in whom all things in heaven and on earth were created (see Colossians 1:16), the one through whom all things came into being (see John 1:3). Chapter 9 explores 20th-century theologies of the Cosmic Christ through the writings of Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Rahner and Jürgen Moltmann, with particular reference to the Trinity and to creation. Deep in this theology is an appreciation of the revelation of Christ throughout the history of the Cosmos. Chapter 10 considers the recent eco-theology of Denis Edwards and Elizabeth Johnson and lays further foundations for the ensuing dialogue between Altyerre and Catholic Christianity.

It is not the purpose of this thesis, nor is there space, to provide a detailed study of creation theologies in the Hebrew Bible and Christian tradition. The aim of Part Three is to

demonstrate the orthodoxy of the theology of the Cosmic Christ in relation to the theologies of creation, Trinity and incarnation and so set a framework for identifying the deep

complementarities in contemporary Altyerre-Catholicism.

676 _{Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Christic” in The Heart of Matter (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,}

1978), 93.

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