The “Sacramentality” Principle: Revelation of the Divinity and Humanity of God

Abstract

M presentation involves a three-way conversation between anthropology, philosophy and theology. I propose to start from the anthropological observation of the narrative, symbolic and ritual mediations carried out among the Pemon Indians of the Venezuelan Amazon. I will then ask whether this symbolic, religious order of the Pemons, imprinted with a “natural” sacredness, might provide, in addition to its anthropological dimension, entry to a theological dimension from a theological point of view. For, from the perspective of the topic of this Congress, I wanted to begin a reflection on presence by means of the transcendental opening up of the principle of “sacramentality” in the symbolic religious mediations beyond Christianity. It seems to me that this can be considered in accordance with the theology of creation and a pneumatological Christology that reminds us of the universal mediation of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit in his salvific passover, recalled in the conciliar documents of the Second Vatican Council.1 My thesis will be that if the anthropological domain is also to be the theological domain, then it is so by virtue of the principle of “sacramentality”, that is to say that God reveals Godself and communicates Godself to humankind through symbolic, narrative and ritual mediations, because creation, creatures2