A Theology Course Starting from EVA
"God's in his heaven, All's right with the world."
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Komm, süsser Tod
The SCP Foundation setting includes something called “super-metaphysics.” In a world where the Hume Counter of Reality Stability is a variable, a meta-metaphysics has its reason for existence, and is in fact subsumed under metaphysics, just as dialectics is the sublation of and ascent beyond metaphysics. Seen this way, metaphysics is a monoid endofunctor in the category of worldviews.
Theology, too, is metaphysics at a different level. In antiquity, Christian theology consisted in mining proof-texts from Scripture. Modern theology, on the one hand, sublates Scripture and instead explores the meaning of God in contemporary everyday life; on the other, it studies linguistics and cultural history—Chinese theology, for example. In essence, God is merely the archetype of ultimate existence in the collective unconscious.
What is God in EVA? On one level, unlike the mysteriously named real-world Yahweh, EVA’s God is impersonal and inactive: the Tree of Life, the creator of all life. On another level, God seems to be merely a position: after performing a series of rituals, Shinji, riding an EVA, can occupy God’s place. The Human Instrumentality Project—SEELE’s people seem to want to return to God’s embrace, yet they have not the slightest reverence for God.
The Instrumentality of Humanity is unquestionably the most electrifying climax of the entire work. Instrumentality is a brilliant conceit, reflecting EVA’s understanding of human existence. Humanity dissolved into orange fluid, pooled together, still seemingly feeling and thinking, yet having lost the A.T. Field that separates individuals; if people could fully understand each other, there would be far less strife and suffering in the world—this is Anno Hideaki’s thought. Instrumentality is between life and death: not fully alive, yet not dead either; this reveals that what is truly unbearable for human beings is not the annihilation of their own consciousness, but the ceasing to exist as individuals.
In Christianity, the so-called Instrumentality is the Holy Spirit moving in you, letting the Son enter your life, merging you with the Father. The Catholic Church explains it this way: human beings are born with original sin—in EVA’s terms, the A.T. Field that prevents mutual understanding—and thus feel fear before death, because life is incomplete. Since time immemorial, humanity has tried to complete itself through various acts: studying theology, doing good works—all in vain. Only by believing in Jesus, sincerely confessing one’s sins, and then keeping them in mind always, can one claim a complete life.
Obviously, with scientific progress, one’s worldview will inevitably change; in fact, since Darwin, this Catholic account has been impossible to maintain. Protestantism makes no attempt at instrumentality at all. Calvin declares that in this world humans are utterly lost, and that salvation from God will not be visible to you until your death; God has pre-ordained who will be saved and who will perish forever in the Last Judgment, so nothing in this life means anything. This sounds like a pyramid scheme; predestination actually means nobody gets saved.
Instrumentality carries unmistakable overtones of the Last Judgment. In the Christian worldview, time has a definite beginning and end: God’s creation and the Last Judgment. In EVA, we return to the beginning and end of human history: the Black Moon’s arrival on Earth and the Fourth Impact, humanity’s Instrumentality. The final episodes 25 and 26 of the TV series, that stream of consciousness, seem also to be a judgment taking place in Shinji’s inner world.
For the naturally dying, neuroscience research shows that human physiological death has a humane character—though it is unclear why evolution would make dying humane; an inhumane death creates no selection pressure. And so each person’s final review of their life at the moment of death is, in some sense, their own Last Judgment.
The Angels, Kaworu, and Rei
In EVA’s divine genealogy, Adam is the First Angel and Lilith is the Second; the two have a special relationship as the primordial life-forms. Then come the 3rd through 16th Angels created by Adam, the 17th Angel Kaworu Nagisa—born of human body with Adam’s soul—and the 18th Angel Lilin, humanity as a whole, being-in-and-for-itself.
The word “Angel,” with its strong Christian connotation, carries quite different meaning here. In Catholicism there are saints—servants of the Lord moved by the Holy Spirit; EVA’s Angels are obviously not agents of God’s will. Their superior status is innate, more like celestial beings in the traditional sense. The Bible says little about angels; much of what we think we know comes from Jewish texts, and we should be alert that any inquiry into angels starts to look like occultism.
Kaworu as the Angel of Free Will, the 16th Angel—in him we see more divinity than in any previous Angel. Indeed, Kaworu, with his intelligence and powerful A.T. Field, is God. As Shinji Ikari’s canonical other half, Kaworu’s love for Shinji is not a possessive love but part of a love for humanity and all life; love is the bond between Kaworu and Shinji; and precisely because of that love for all life including himself, Kaworu can walk calmly toward death.
Voluntary death evokes Zarathustra’s death: “The most complete of men goes away in the fullness of life, surrounded by people full of hope and pledges.” Whether in the TV version or the Rebuild films, Kaworu’s death seems not to give Shinji hope but to devastate him further. For someone without enlightenment, the truth is cruel; from this angle, love is rather the action principle of Kaworu, this cruel angel.
Jesus’s death was also voluntary, paying with his own death for the sins of others so they could be forgiven. Yet by the principle of proportional punishment—crimes are matched by their sentences—such a death cannot manifest God’s justice from a modern perspective; it looks more like the self-consolation of people who killed the true Son of God, terrified of divine retribution.
For Rei Ayanami, death seems familiar. The death of the child Rei lets her see the evil of the human animal, which she determines should be annihilated. The First Rei is first moved by Ikari Gendo, then moved by Shinji Ikari, and finally dies protecting Shinji. The former seems arbitrary; the latter leaves a lingering ache. In the Rebuild films, Black Rei—after experiencing human warmth, feeling and experiencing ordinary human life, finally being given emotions—says “I want to be with the people I like. Farewell” before dissolving into orange fluid, which finally evokes a sense of wistful loss; yet for Rei herself, to disappear this way is a kind of completion. It is hard to imagine what an undying Rei would do: continue to pilot EVA and fight NERV? Either way would feel awkward.
In Christianity, baptism does not cleanse sin; only sincere faith unto death brings forgiveness and absolution. Yet later the “holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” found this restriction too severe for religious propagation and changed it: a deathbed confession suffices to enter heaven. This corresponds to Jesus’s resurrection. But one who truly has faith—why would they begrudge dying?
Shinji’s Self-Redemption, Asuka’s Self-Completion
The stream of consciousness in the TV finale, though electrifying, is maddeningly vague. Shinji is named “Son of God” yet unlike the true divine children Rei and Kaworu. He absolutely could not know how he, as a high schooler, ended up being chosen to pilot Unit-01. So when Ikari Gendo says “NERV has decided; you will pilot Unit-01,” Shinji says please find someone else. One’s fate thus depends both on personal struggle and on the course of history.
The final awakening in the TV version is no more than Shinji’s willingness to step out of his cowardly corner and become a normal person; and so the normal people applaud him. Perhaps society sees this as a correction—transforming a useless person into a useful one—but for Shinji it feels more like being disciplined, his true self dissolved.
In The End of Evangelion, the Instrumentality led by Shinji is a mess. Shinji, after destroying Kaworu, dissolves his personality and becomes the Tree of Life; in the LCL ocean he seeks help from Asuka, but Asuka, having already completed herself, naturally disdains him; Shinji’s ego completely collapses. Perhaps eliminating the A.T. Field can redeem all of humanity, but humanity, which has already felt sick from mutual understanding before that point, cannot expect to be redeemed together with others. Hell is other people—even if only Shinji and Asuka remain, these new Adam and Eve of the new world are like this.
In the Rebuild films, Shinji similarly falls into a spiritual crisis after Kaworu’s death, but unlike before when at least Misato gave him a grown-up’s kiss, this time he drags through the days under everyone’s icy glares. Yet this time he can proactively walk out, open his heart to his father; though “a single conversation turns him completely around” is a stretch, we can see Shinji’s growth.
And in EVA, my favorite is still Asuka Langley Soryu—the girl in the red dress, forever proud. After her parents’ abandonment, Asuka simply competed to prove herself. In NERV, after losing her raison d’être, isolated and wounded, in the lake at the bottom, feeling so-called maternal love, Asuka finally completed herself. Did she truly feel that maternal love? One might say it was merely her own self-projection. Yet human beings must live thus—dependent on illusion—even if the one who deeply loves you and hopes you’ll live is the self within your subconscious. This is not only self-awareness like Rei’s but a powerful A.T. Field—a fierce sense of self, consciousness of one’s difference from others. This superhuman spirit is what allows the two, meeting after Instrumentality, to forgive each other.
Yet in the Rebuild films, Shikinami Asuka has become banal. Existing as a clone, lacking parents and craving love; her love for Shinji, her attention, anger, and helplessness—perhaps it affirms the value of being human, yet lacks the value of being Asuka; perhaps, as she herself says, it is merely what the code inscribed in her genes determines. The responsibility she bears is also not of her own choosing.
Christianity has a powerful anthropocentrism, believing humanity to be God’s representative, manifesting His glory. But NERV’s motto is precisely anti-divine, anti-religious: God’s in his heaven, All’s right with the world. Human development shows that humanity itself can master the world. God is dead; now, we await the coming of the Übermensch.
Modern people are actually in a state of philosophical poverty: abundant information deconstructs the authority of information, and defining the self in time—which distinctly differs from how the ancients defined the self through position and events—is a notable characteristic. Yet this is a good thing; the existence of the self is being-in-itself. The various religions originating in antiquity place humans as straying lambs, foolish monkeys, commoners without spiritual affinity. Natural theology, while establishing God’s position as absolute reason, also codifies the rationality of human emotion—which is perverse. When Kant established the categories of sensibility, understanding, and reason, he simultaneously confined God to an unknowable domain, accessible only through faith. Perhaps, as some modern philosophers say, only after reducing all grand questions—transcendence, ultimacy, eternity—to meaninglessness can the self have meaning.