Keys of Posttraumatic Coping. Resilience, Posttraumatic Growth, Religious Coping, and Second Corinthians | Book (2020) (original) (raw)

“Religions are traditions of wisdom, reflecting on fundamental human experiences and offering sage advice on how to cope with life’s vicissitudes and how to find a connection to the sacred. It should be no surprise then that the Bible – one of the repertoires of such wisdom – is full of stories of trauma and healing. In this book, Luis Cruz-Villalobos engages with such Biblical stories, notably on the apostle Paul, and reads them with a psychological lens. The reader will glean new insights about the bible and old wisdom about trauma. A fascinating transdisciplinary endeavor!” Dr. Ruard Ganzevoort. SUMMARY: The present research is a study on posttraumatic coping in some paragraphs of the second letter to the Corinthians of the Apostle Paul. As a research in the field of practical theology, in methodological terms, this thesis follows the steps of the hermeneutical arc proposed by Ricoeur (1976, 2002, 2016), from the perspective of the Psychological Biblical Criticism (Rollins 1983, Kille, 2001, 2004; Ellens, 2012). In the first part of this study a detailed review of current research on posttraumatic coping in the field of psychology is made. Then we examine exegetically four selected texts from 2 Corinthians that describe the ways in which Paul faced various traumatic events in his life. Each paragraph is analyzed looking for the texts to show their world and their own sense, to then identify the hermeneutical keys of coping that are observed in them. After a careful analysis, eleven keys of coping present in the selected Pauline texts were categorized: 1) Paradoxical identity that marks the experience of the Apostle as a phenomenon of self-understanding that incorporates the awareness of fragility and constant vulnerability to hardship, but simultaneously united to the perception of itself as triumphant to adversity, thanks to its unconditional link with the sacred, manifested in Jesus as the Messiah; 2) Experience of faith understood as fidelity and perseverance, especially in the midst of tribulations, in such a way that resisting, overcoming and even growing out of suffering is described as an expression of authentic faith and genuine affection for Jesus as Lord; 3) Resignification of death and traumatic events, as circumstances of a negative nature that is relativized and whose harmful effects are not perceived as chronic; 4) Coping associated with an altruistic practice towards his brothers and sisters in faith; 5) Coping with a marked character of eschatological type; 6) Explicit and habitual expression of the traumatic events experienced, which implies taking charge of them, without denying nor evading them; 7) Detachment from the material or visible things, considering these aspects of life as facets of reality that are not definitive, but as manifestations of a preliminary plan that will disappear; 8) Identification with Jesus as a model of coping with extreme adversities; 9) Thanksgiving or gratitude, as a permanent practice, in both favorable and unfavorable circumstances; 10) Perception of the consoling presence of God constantly in the midst of suffering; and 11) Prayer described as a personal and community behavior of concrete beneficial influence in life. Finally, a conversation between these findings and the current psychological contributions on positive coping of trauma, allowed us to corroborate the significant similarities between the approaches of Paul regarding coping in extreme adverse events and the outcomes of this research on hardiness, resilience, posttraumatic growth and positive religious coping. Among the main conclusions reached in this investigation, we can highlight that Paul offered, in the analyzed texts of 2 Corinthians, coping modalities that showed a permanent search for "sense of coherence" (Antonovsky, 1979, 1984, 1987, 1993), which involves the comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness of adverse events, but in his case, from a fundamentally theological framework ("sense of theological coherence"). In addition, it was found, when looking for common factors in the coping keys observed in the Pauline texts, that these can be synthesized in the so called "theological virtues": faith, hope and love, besides the concept of identity in Christ, which function as dispositions that allow the religious/spiritual articulation of traumatic events, both on a personal and community level. The present study sought to develop a practical theology (defined as theological understanding of Christian praxis) of posttrau-matic coping in a Pauline perspective. We believe that this study has achieved a significant understanding of hardiness, resilience, posttraumatic growth and positive religious coping modalities, from a theological perspective, which can contribute to the development of new practices of pastoral care, especially in contexts of adversity.