Resilience from the Perspective of Christian Theologies: An Essay on Current “Resilience and Humanities” Research

Resilience as a theme of Christian doctrine

In the popular understanding of the term, “resilience” usually means security mechanisms and strategies for coping in a crisis that are suitable for everyday use. Behind this, there is often a very understandable need to be able to survive the experience of a crisis as stably and unaffectedly in one’s innermost being as possible. The exact definition of “the crisis” can vary. But in any event we are talking about a situational experience with an open outcome. At the beginning and during the course of the crisis, we do not yet know how it will end. A crisis can be an individual existential experience – such as a separation, a death, or losing a job. It can be understood as a crisis of a collective or of a socially constituted group – such as after the flood disaster in the Ahr valley in 2022. It might also be experienced as a systemic crisis – such as an economic setting marked by high inflation, environmental and climate-related crisis scenarios, or the current war setting, which many in Europe perceive as unusual. In the context of the military chaplaincy or the activities of military personnel – for example during deployments in theaters of war – all three dimensions of crisis are usually implicit, although they may affect the individual person to different degrees.

In our “Resilience and Humanities” research group, which was funded from 2019 to 2022/23 as DFG-FOR 2686 “Resilience in Religion and Spirituality”, we work as an interdisciplinary and interdenominational team with colleagues in systematic theology, moral theology and philosophy, psychosomatics and psychotherapy, palliative medicine, practical theology and spiritual care. Since 2014, we have argued that resilience in a crisis situation does not simply mean individuals are “fit for the fight”, i.e. resilient a priori, completely independently of crisis experiences, and then able to use their own resilience to fight against the crisis when it eventually occurs. Although there is evidence that resilience is to some extent genetically determined, the course of crises and the development of resilience are also dependent on social, economic and personal resources. So it is impossible to predict whether and how resilience will develop in a crisis. Our research group has learned a lot from colleagues in psychological resilience research. Therefore, we are skeptical as to whether there can be such a thing as “the” resilient personality.[1] Instead, we assume for various reasons that resilience is a multifactorial process and a “crisis phenomenon par excellence”. Let us consider five of these reasons: First, because it is only by living through a crisis that it becomes apparent whether, and if so how, a person can respond resiliently or not. Second, because it is quite likely one may have paid a bitterly high price for the insight that one is able to respond resiliently in a given crisis. [2] Third, because of the processual nature of resilience, it is often only in and during a crisis that we see which personal characteristics or abilities help to cope with it, and how these can change throughout the course of the crisis.[3] Fourth, because viewing resilience as a process guards against normative expectations of the outcome, for example notions of what a “good” and “successful” life should look like. Fifth, because awareness of the processual nature protects people who do not consider themselves to be resilient from disheartening thoughts that they are being wronged by nature, fate or God.

The starting point for the idea of “resilience as a crisis phenomenon” was found not in interdisciplinary resilience research, but rather in systematic theology, and more precisely: in dogmatics. Dogmatics is the branch of theology concerned with the core themes or core statements of the Christian faith and the Christian way of life – much like the Apostles’ Creed, Lord’s Prayer and Decalogue (Ten Commandments) as expressed in the Biblical texts. Seen from the outside, it is about God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, about humans between sin and justification, about reconciliation and redemption, about the church with its sacraments and the so-called “Last Things”, i.e. about everything that could be hoped for after death. Presented with this list, many people have the impression that, in order to be true believers, they would have to believe that all of these themes or statements were true. In other words, that they would have to subscribe to them just as they put their signatures to the small print of an insurance contract. But ever since the times of the Reformation, this has not been the case in the Protestant doctrine. On the contrary, in the Protestant faith it is much more important to reflect on and constantly redefine one’s own life and relationship with God, with the aid of the core themes of Christian faith. Instead of believing in an external truth, what matters is the extent to which these core themes continually reshape or transform one’s life, i.e. throughout the entire life process. And it is here that we make the connection to the theme of resilience.

The promise of salvation studied in Christology is also on the idea that, astonishingly, new life can emerge through suffering and death

The core themes of the biblical tradition and the Christian faith often relate to the idea that while life may not be all sunshine and roses, or does not endow us with happy certainty, we can still find hope and support in God. From the Creation to Job, for example, it is true that all life is of God, but God created light and darkness, day and night in equal measure, and holds life in His hands in joy and sorrow. The promise of salvation studied in Christology is also based on the idea that, astonishingly, new life can emerge through suffering and death. And finally, the very concept of the ever-faithful God from Exodus 3:14 onwards (the revelation of God’s name YHWH, which can be translated approximately as “I am that I am” or “I am that I shall become” or “I am that I shall prove to be”) is itself defined by a processual uncertainty and inaccessibility in principle: No-one can see God face to face; only Moses and much later Jesus are said to have come closer to God than other people. As distant and inaccessible as God Himself is, so is His will, which is why in the end there remains nothing to say, not even for Jesus, except “Thy will be done” (cf. Matthew 26:36-46). Just these few examples make it clear that the Christian faith, for all its confidence, is deeply permeated with ambivalence and uncertainty, which correspond to the open-endedness of crisis experiences. It is therefore no wonder, with doubt and temptation having always been so much a part of faith, that Melanchthon made Mark 9:24 one of the most important statements of the Protestant doctrine: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”[4]

Resilience as a crisis phenomenon

Our common goal in the “Resilience in Religion and Spirituality” research group was to develop a theory of resilience with interdisciplinary validity that would be sensitive to religion and spirituality, while taking into account individual and collective resilience factors, mechanisms and dynamics. For the clinical and practical needs of the medical and life sciences, the concept of resilience proved to be a diagnostic term with a positive connotation from the outset. For the humanities and social sciences, on the other hand, the concept of resilience turned out to show critical implications, because it can all too easily be misunderstood as a kind of preventive training measure: “Fit for resilience” – preferably in regular training units every year. At the latest since Jan Slaby’s political critique, we have known that such resilience training is much more likely to perpetuate mechanisms of self-exploitation than to bring awareness of structural and systemic mechanisms of exploitation and give an impetus for change.[5]

While this aspect is important in all political and economic contexts, it is likely to be vitally decisive in military contexts: If resilience were to be confused with “fit fore the fight”, it would be capable of eliminating precisely those life-protecting and life-preserving perceptions that are associated, for example, with powerlessness, fear and anxiety. But to be able to do full justice to such perceptions, both are needed – the conceptual caution of the humanities, social sciences and political science, as well as therapeutic diagnostics. The methodological challenge for our project therefore lies in the attempt to link the rich, conceptually critical potential of the humanities, at the interface with clinical psychology, psychotherapy and palliative medicine, with new approaches in hospice work and spiritual care. In short, we are interested in a general theory of resilience that is sensitive to religion and spirituality and can be used to support a corresponding practice of resilience in medicine and therapy, pastoral care and spiritual care. The benefits of this research perspective are evident wherever resilience is considered in relation to disruptive life experiences, such as in mourning processes and grief counselling, or in areas that require a professional approach with strategic caution from the outset, to deal with ambivalences, ambiguities, and destructiveness.

When we talk about resilience, we therefore distinguish between three types or levels of resilience, without the possibility, however, to state for each level which type of crisis it would clearly apply to (because what is a mild irritation for one person can be existentially threatening to another): (a) A kind of “everyday resilience” which is about learning to deal with minor or moderate irritations in one’s own routine. While having to adapt can be unpleasant, things will usually “work themselves out”. (b) In somewhat more complex life crises, we may reach a point where things working themselves out doesn’t work any longer, so we need to seek professional help and possibly make some fundamental adjustments to our lives as lived so far. (c) In the severe personal and existential life crises relevant to our project, on the other hand, the meaningfulness of our lives to date is called into question as a whole, and to such an extent that only through a long and arduous process can any calming of the crisis process be expected. If the crisis experience of this third level is so severe that it is not at all “only” about irritations to resilience anymore, but about trauma as a medically diagnosable condition, then professional medical expertise is required anyway and first of all. For our research, this means we approach resilience as a processual crisis phenomenon that can manifest itself in different ways depending on the context and situation. As a crisis phenomenon, it is shaped by numerous ambivalences and ambiguities.

Resilience in the process of destructiveness, hope and ambivalence

Resilience in this concept is a kind of collective term for capacities for self-preservation and self-transformation in the face of crises that refresh and problematize particular vulnerabilities.[6] This involves examples (in accordance with our research group’s pastoral and therapeutic work contexts) of personal and existential experiences of crisis, especially in hospital chaplaincy, on the palliative care ward, in bereavement counselling, in telephone counselling or in family counselling. For each of the three levels, but particularly for the third one, a resilience model is needed that is able to constructively integrate feelings of ambivalence and destructiveness into the existential crisis experience. Only in this way can phases of fear and anxiety, doubt and failure, helplessness and powerlessness be recognized as belonging to the resilience process and generate new confidence and hope.

A resilience model is needed that is able to constructively integrate feelings of ambivalence and destructiveness into the existential crisis experience

Regardless of the type and intensity of a crisis experience, the enduring and shaping of powerlessness, fear and anxiety give expression to physical, emotional, narrative and intellectual dimensions, which all have one thing in common: They are informed by communicative traditions and interactions that are meaningful, or rather, filled with meaning, and in turn they perpetuate these traditions and interactions in every self-reflection and in every conversation. This can be seen particularly well in those examples from Judeo-Christian religion and spirituality that are still central to pastoral care today, such as the psalms of lament and thanksgiving in the Hebrew Bible,[7] or the faith-based imaginative worlds and figures of reflection of the dogmatic tradition, from the performative power of the imminent expectation of Christ’s return to Bonhoeffer’s “good forces”.[8] The fascinating thing about the texts of our tradition is that their effect radiates outward, and they manifest themselves in the ritualized practices of the churches, in the latter’s transformational forms in modern spiritualities,[9] and in their secularized guises such as in the practice of mindfulness.[10]

Meanwhile, for the deepening of resilience research in the humanities, it is crucial to note that the relationship between resilience, religion and spirituality can only be investigated on the basis of concrete texts, narratives, metaphors and symbols, rituals, and communal practices. When we analyse these using scholarly methods, then we can identify structures and processes, language patterns and semantics in them that can inform the interdisciplinary discourse on resilience. As one of our most significant findings in this respect, the following aspects emerged as central from our research on psalms and passion narratives: the struggle with destructiveness, the handling of ambivalence and tolerance of ambiguity, the integration of destructive experience into our own sense of coherence, the interweaving of physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual and, in all of these, social crisis dimensions, and the social and cultural variants of crisis management.[11]

We could even speak of “resilience narratives” as a heuristic and hermeneutic category for resilience-relevant narratives, narrations and narrativization processes. These are constantly called up anew and further formed in religious self-reflection, in theological academic work and in liturgical practice, depending on and fitted into their respective social and cultural contexts.[12] This can be shown, for example, in the narratives of the cross and the resurrection, which are conveyed through images, texts, songs, rhythmicized movement elements or spatial forms. In these narratives, aspects of the integration of negativity and ambivalent life experiences are explicitly named and/or the narratives convey an atmospheric practice,[13] in which lament and thanksgiving, pleading prayer and joyful praise can seamlessly blend into one another. It is particularly interesting to note that such resilience narratives, for example the close connection between the cross and resurrection, can also be conveyed as atmospheres that are implicitly “in the room”. The stories can be highly effective even when not everyone present is able or willing to name the narratives themselves or to acknowledge them affirmatively. In such constellations, hope can even be transmitted in a roundabout way through the hopeful self-reflection of others.

Judgment and justice: the benefit of cumbersome beliefs

Among the most striking findings of our resilience research is that the performative, resilience-promoting power of Judeo-Christian beliefs can be seen not only where “happy-go-lucky” notions are concerned, where “only” the love of God and His merciful affection is mentioned: “God loves you and therefore all is good.” For in an existential crisis experience, where there is a serious disruption and interruption of one’s life to date, the pure promise of God’s love is a confrontative counter-model that cannot be integrated into one’s own life, or at least not at this moment of crisis. In such situations, the cumbersome and hard beliefs in which our tradition finds words for the invisibility and absence of God, the opacity of His will, and the unknowable ways of His providence, to express it in the terms of religious discourse, prove to be a lot more relevant. Surprisingly often, ideas of judgment are voiced, that is, of a judging God before whom people have to answer. Indeed, it is precisely the discourse of judgment that is still present today, even if the pictorial imagining of the judgment seat of God in ecclesiastical art has receded into the background, to be replaced instead by general scenarios of the apocalypse.

For some pastors, and even more so for colleagues in psychology and psychotherapy, such ideas are alarming, so they tend to quieten or even silence them – and in so doing, they fail to recognize the potential for comfort that lies in these unwieldy ideas. In the biblical tradition, judgment is not an arbitrary act of a God who high-handedly dispenses punishment and retribution. Rather, in the Hebrew Bible, God “judges” by “saving”, because God’s judgment correlates with his mercy (cf. Exodus 22:20-26, Genesis 6:5-8,22, Hosea 11:8-11, Jeremiah 31:20 or Psalms 3:5, 4:8). This expresses the bitter experience of human history that right and justice are unfortunately not always identical, but God is the only one who is able, through his righteousness, to restore justice – to those who experience injustice here and now.

We were hopefully able to make it clear once again how such narrations and narratives give expression to the dynamics of destructiveness, hope and ambivalence, which we regard as being characteristic of the resilience process in our research. It would be extremely interesting to find out in a deeper conversation with colleagues in the military chaplaincy what other themes, narratives and practices they would bring to resilience research and how this would change the understanding of resilience as “fit for the fight” in the long term.

“Resilience and Humanities” was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (project no. 348851031).

[1] Hiebel, Nina, Rabe, Milena, Maus, Katja and Geiser, Franziska (2021): Gibt es die „resiliente Persönlichkeit“? In: Spiritual Care, 10(2), pp. 117−127, DOI: 10.1515/spircare-2020-0125.

[2] Cf. Richter, Cornelia (2015): Das Selbst als Balanceakt von Physis und Psyche in Leiblichkeit, Ratio und Affektivität. In: Gräb-Schmidt, E. (ed.): Was heißt Natur? Philosophischer Ort und Begründungsfunktion des Naturbegriffs. Leipzig, pp. 157−173.

[3] Cf. Hiebel, Nina et al., see Endnote 1.

[4] Vgl. Melanchthon, Philipp (2002): Heubtartikel Christlicher Lere. Melanchthons deutsche Fassung seiner LOCI THEOLOGICI, nach dem Autograph und dem Originaldruck von 1553 hg. v. Ralf Jenett und Johannes Schilling. Leipzig, 153-159.

[5] Slaby, Jan (2016): Kritik der Resilienz. In: Wüschner ,P. and Kurbacher, F. A. (eds.): Was ist Haltung? Würzburg, pp. 273−298.

[6] Breyer, Thiemo (2017): Selbstsorge und Fürsorge zwischen Vulnerabilität und Resilienz. In: Richter, C. (ed.): Ohnmacht und Angst aushalten. Kritik der Resilienz in Theologie und Philosophie. Stuttgart (RuG 1), pp. 119−132; Gärtner, Judith (2020): Vulnerabilität und Resilienz. Psalm 38 als Beispiel einer Verhältnisbestimmung. In: Keul, Hildegund (ed.): Theologische Vulnerabilitätsforschung. Gesellschaftsrelevant und interdisziplinär. Stuttgart, pp. 137–156.

[7] Cf. Gärtner, Judith (2019): Eine Frage der Gerechtigkeit? Identität durch Transformation am Beispiel der Gnadenformel in den späten Psalmen. In: Ebach, R. and Leuenberger, M. (eds.): Tradition(en) im Alten Israel. Konstruktion, Transmission und Transformation. Tübingen (FAT II 127), pp. 233–252; Gärtner, Judith (2021): „Und mein Schmerz steht mir immer vor Augen“ (Ps 38,18). Schmerz als Ausdrucksform der Klage. In: Bauks, M. and Olyan, S. (eds): Pain in Biblical Texts and Other Materials of the Ancient Mediterranean. Tübingen (FAT II 130), pp. 85–104; Gärtner, Judith (2022): Resilienz [Art.]. In: Grund-Wittenberg, A., Janowski, B. und Neumann-Gorsolke, U. (Hg.): Handbuch Alttestamentliche Anthropologie. Tübingen; Gärtner, Judith and Petersen, Mirja (2021): Klagen, beten, das Leben beweinen – Die Bedeutung der alttestamentlichen Forschung für das interdisziplinäre Gespräch im 21. Jahrhundert. In: Richter, C. (Hg.): An den Grenzen des Messbaren. Die Kraft von Religion und Spiritualität in Lebenskrisen. Stuttgart (RuG 3), pp. 79–96; Gärtner, Judith and Petersen, Mirja (2021): Zwischen Aushalten und Gestalten: Resilienznarrative im Alten Testament 30.01.–01.02.2020. Ein Tagungsbericht aus Rostock. In: Spiritual Care 10/2, pp. 165–167; Gärtner, Judith and Richter, Cornelia (2022): Der (post-)moderne Begriff der Resilienz und die jüdisch-christliche Tradition. In: Gärtner, J. und Schmitz, B. (eds.): Resilienznarrative im Alten Testament. Tübingen (FAT 156), pp. 1–21.

[8] Richter, Cornelia (2016): Resilienz im Kontext von Kirche und Theologie. In: Richter, C. and Pohl-Patalong, U.: Resilienz – Problemanzeige und Sehnsuchtsbegriff. Themenheft der Zeitschrift Praktische Theologie 51(2), pp. 69–74; Richter, Cornelia (2016): Situative Polyvalenz, Figuration und Performanz. Was die Dogmatik immer wieder von der Schrift lernen kann. In: Roth, U. and Seip, J. (Hg.): Schriftinszenierungen. Bibelhermeneutische und texttheoretische Zugänge zur Predigt. Festgabe für G. Ulrich und E. Garhammer. Munich (Ökumenische Studien zur Predigt 10), pp. 59–78; Richter, Cornelia und Alles, Thorben (2021): „... und ganz gewiss an jedem neuen Tag.“ Bonhoeffer als „role-model“ für Resilienz? In: Spiritual Care 10/2, pp. 156–164; Richter, Cornelia and Geiser, Franziska (2021): „Hilft der Glaube oder hilft er nicht?“ Von den Herausforderungen, Religion und Spiritualität im interdisziplinären Gespräch über Resilienz zu erforschen. In: Richter, C. (ed.): An den Grenzen des Messbaren. Stuttgart (RuG 3), pp. 9–36.

[9] Opalka, Katharina (2021): Hilft der Segen? Glaubenspraxen und -erfahrungen im Resilienzdiskurs. In: Praxis Gemeindepädagogik, 74(4), pp. 36−37; id. (2021): Trost an den Grenzen des Sagbaren. In: Magazin Bestattungskultur (Dec.).

[10] Sautermeister, Jochen (2021): Sinnverheißende Gegenwart?! Achtsamkeit zwischen Therapie und spiritueller Lebensform. In: Richter, C. (ed.): An den Grenzen des Messbaren. Die Kraft von Religion und Spiritualität in Lebenskrisen. Stuttgart (RuG 3): pp. 59−77.

[11] Cf. Gärtner, Judith (2021) and (2022), see endnote 7; Sautermeister, Jochen (2021), see endnote 10; Richter, Cornelia (2021): Integration of Negativity, Powerlessness and the Role of the Mediopassive: Resilience Factors and Mechanisms in the Perspective of Religion and Spirituality. In: JRAT 7, 2021/2, pp. 491−513, www.brill.com/view/journals/jrat/7/2/jrat.7.issue-2.xml.

[12] Opalka, Katharina (2021): “On Healing”. Paul Tillich’s Contribution to Current Research on Resilience. In: Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society, 7(2), pp. 473−490, DOI: 10.30965/23642807-bja10020; id. (2021): Was man erzählen kann, wenn man an seine Grenzen kommt. Zur Bedeutung der Narrativität im Resilienzdiskurs. In: C. Richter (ed.): An den Grenzen des Messbaren. Die Kraft von Religion und Spiritualität in Lebenskrisen. Stuttgart (RuG 3), pp. 97−115; Gärtner, Judith und Richter, Cornelia (2022), see Endnote 7.

[13] Albrecht, Clemens (2017): Atmosphäre statt Sinn. Offene Räume in der interferenten Kultur. In: Lessenich, S. (ed.): Geschlossene Gesellschaften. Verhandlungen des 38. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Bamberg 2016. Essen; id. (2017): Atmosphären operationalisieren. In: Sociologia Internationalis, 55(2), pp. 141−166. doi.org/10.3790/sint.55.2.141.