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

Resilience is commonly understood to mean a preventive “fitness to fight in a crisis” that is suitable for everyday use. This corresponds to the understandable need to survive personal, collective or systemic crises unscathed. “Resilience and Humanities” is an interdisciplinary research project that posits a processual understanding contrary to this view. As a crisis phenomenon, resilience can only develop and demonstrate itself through the context-dependent interaction of a multitude of factors. These factors only come into play in confrontation with events which are perceived to be a crisis. The existence of a “resilient personality type” is therefore doubted.

Along with many insights from psychosomatics, psychology and palliative medicine, the starting point for this hypothesis can be found in dogmatics, whose core statements and themes precisely do not constitute “easy-to-believe” content. Rather, they are intended to enable an examination of one’s own life and relationship with God – including when life is existentially threatened. For all its confidence, the Christian faith is permeated by ambivalence, uncertainty and a fundamental “inaccessibility” of God. A viable and critical interdisciplinary resilience model is needed, especially for spiritual care in severe or traumatic life crises. It should not block out experiences of doubt, uncertainty, powerlessness, fear and anxiety, but instead constructively integrate them. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, there is a rich fund of texts, narratives, metaphors and symbols, rituals and communal practices. In the juxtaposition of lament and thanksgiving, they reflect precisely this struggle with destructiveness and ambivalence, which is necessary so that hope and affirmation of life can (re-)emerge. Even cumbersome beliefs that symbolize the inscrutability and incomprehensible hardships of life – such as belief in divine judgment – should therefore not be rejected or suppressed a priori in spiritual care practice.