Overcoming Toxic Emotions: A Christian EthicalFramework for Restorative Peacebuilding.
Author: Raymond Olúsèsan Àìná
Publisher: Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock
ISBN 978-1-666-73301-3
Year: 2022 / Pages: xviii-265
Reviewer: Anselm Camillus Etokakpan
Toxicity in emotions goes beyond historical boundaries and opens a toxic route that enormously destabilizes individuals or group in any transitional society. Overcoming toxic emotions passes through the same route to liberation, healing and peacebuilding. Forgiveness is liberating, and a liberated choice. Every act of unforgivingness hibernates revenge.
In this masterpiece, Raymond Olúsèsan Àìná intelligently searches for remedy of “toxic emotions”(pp. 12-25). He moves beyond persons involved to a conscious rooting of restorative justice on a personalism that neither dissolves the individual in the community, nor substitutes the community for the individual. Restorative justice is built on such foundations. Even though it may not historically eliminate memory, which needs also to be transformed, yet it surely eliminates vengeance and restores the perpetrator-person-victim to himself and renews community. The author garners credible data and analyzes them in an intelligible and systematic manner, without becoming lost in or overwhelmed by multi-dimensional historical consciousness. As such, Àìná creatively situates theology as the basis of the hermeneutics of facts and propositions (pp. 30-58).
The book’s seven chapters present systematic analysis of historical violence, describing an unjust and pugnacious society that is not entirely limited to Nigeria, but to any multicultural and pluralistic society with multi-faceted “toxic” emotions. The facts reflect the genealogy of violence and its consequential wounds. Further, the author’s proposition of restorative justice is not abstract, because he describes its application in South Africa by Desmond Tutu, and the country’s path toward healing toxic relationship between tribes in a transitional society (pp.59-104).
The use of retributive justice may curb the offence and deter possible offenders, but the underlying relationship is alien to that process. This relationship is based on a principle different from, but not antagonistic to, that of retributive justice. Statements such as “I accept my fault”, the “I am sorry” and the “What should I do now” can only be manifested when there is transformative healing of the offended and the offender. That is why Àìná considers healing as a christian ethical hermeneutic, such that collective and individual memory can be used to lead to restorative peacebuilding and reconciliation(pp.102-104). This voids situational ethics and ethical relativism because the imperative is universal and objective and directed towards the human person and his existence. This might be expressed in a pertinent ethical responsibility: “What one protests against and rejects is not made to be experienced by one’s neighbor, either as individual or a group”, which reflects the Christian tradition on divine-human relationship (pp. 27-29). Instead, in Nigeria and other nations, a pseudo-principle of ethnic consciousness has been employed to address the toxic emotions, which tends to transfer such emotions to other ethnic groups. International laws and its courts intend to bring perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice, and to deter occurrence by instilling fear and discouraging future criminals from acting.
The author contends that the principle behind this type of justice (retributive) is utilitarian in nature. To seek “peace” in this way is tantamount to seeing peace as the absence of war.(pp. 39-58) This is the way taken by the United Nations, based on pragmatic and minimalistic concept of law. However, instead of the hardware approach, there is the software approach based on relational principle of subject/person, and aimed at reconciliation and integration of both the victim and the perpetrator of violence. This restorative justice includes rebuilding trust, and reintegration (pp. 51-58).
In articulating a notion of reconciliation, Àìná proposes a restorative justice that reflects a Christian theology of reconciliation. This is the type of healing Nigeria needs in the postbellum and post-violence society. South African’s wounds were helped to heal by Tutu’s theology of restorative justice, through the trio of confession, truth-telling, and forgiveness that predisposed justice – theology of Ubuntu (pp. 60-66). This is the same dynamism revealed between God as victim and humans as perpetrators.
Nonetheless, the author argues for a realistic Theology of Hypostatic Union that illumines the personalism in restorative justice and reconciliation (pp.107-120). This objectively presents itself as the model and, on one hand, prompts empathy in the perpetrator(s) and, on the other hand, challenges the perpetrators to seek forgiveness and peace. This mirrors the ecclesial mission and offers a way for overcoming the challenges of toxic emotions of people in transitional societies. It is one of the functions of religion to be actively involved in the building of authentic democratic States. Àìná commends the Catholic Church in Nigeria for responding to the teleology of its mission as regards national reconciliation, but proposes responses that must go beyond logic and hope to proactive engagements. Accordingly, the church being “co-creator” and member of the civil society, can tackle issues bordering on justice, restorative peacebuilding, reconciliation and human development. Hence, seeking transformation in liberation is the fundamental aim of ecclesial mission. However, this is not based on retributive justice, but on the mediating roles capable of creating “a moral-cultural foundation that honors human rights.”(pp. 178-181). Therefore, the church, especially in Nigeria, and “transitional societies will have to revisit its mission and role because the sins of the past are not past: they are still manifesting themselves today.”(pp. 177- 181). Àìná is a Nigerian and an African and draws from his experience, culture, and post-colonial history of a transitional society of his nation to articulate a restorative justice that births forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, and restoration. His conceptual framework is incisive, and capable of evoking remarkable positive change for perpetrators and victims in Africa and the global community. Àìná’s Afro-christian Ethics, founded in Theology of Hypostatic Union, offer ways to overcome relational poison and toxic emotions, which can surely be placed by a liberating emotion through restorative justice. This book is most suitable for seminaries, formation houses, educational institutions, and universities.
