Sic et Non: Thoughts on Henri de Lubac's Thomistic Retrieval (II)

III. Sed Contra: De Lubac’s Thomism?

As we have observed, de Lubac was not simply providing a novel systematic theology of the supernatural. Restating the authentic doctrine of St. Thomas in a modern context was central to his project. And where his thought ventured beyond the path St. Thomas himself tread, de Lubac understood it to be in the spirit of Thomas and an expansion of his tradition. For almost all of his major claims about nature and the supernatural, de Lubac invoked some textual support from St. Thomas. And it seems his fundamental intuition is indeed correct: Thomas himself was thoroughly Augustinian in his theological disposition, and thus the focus of his thought focused heavily on the actual order of God’s Providence. He did not employ the theology of a hypothetical, “purely” natural order to establish grace as divine gift[1]; nor did he conceive of two distinct final ends for man, two orders of Providence (one on top of the other). An underlying principle of Thomas’s thought, and central for de Lubac, is the fundamental unity of God’s Providential economy: God’s antecedent will for humanity is a governing principle rendering extrinsicism quite foreign to his theological anthropology. For St. Thomas man is created in sanctifying grace; he is so ordered from the beginning.[2]

However, what complicates the validity of de Lubac’s self-understanding is the manner in which he cites Thomas. It is not always evident that Thomas is expressing the ideas de Lubac presumes in the passages he cites. Few provide enough context to actually establish that de Lubac’s interpretation is unambiguously faithful to the Angelic Doctor. But the most substantial problem in de Lubac’s exegesis is his selective reading. De Lubac draws upon the set of Thomas’s texts which emphasize that man’s only end is his supernatural finality: arguing that the knowledge of God’s essence is the end of every intelligent creature[3] and that no desire of this kind can be in vain.[4] De Lubac thus argues that in Thomas’ view the only end “natural” to man is the supernatural end.[5] As the end is what specifies the nature, and man has only one final end, man is essentially constituted by his supernatural finality.[6] Any thought of a human nature without this supernatural orientation is thus technically of a different species, a different nature all together (hence the failed relevance of any “pure nature”).[7]

Yet as Steven Long points out, de Lubac has overlooked another set of Thomas’s texts which clearly affirm the existence of a natural end distinct from the supernatural end.[8] For St. Thomas, it is the natural end, proportionate to natural powers, which specifies human nature as human nature. The example which makes clear this necessity is that of angelic natures. Both men and angels are graciously ordained to the same supernatural beatitude; but if the end specifies the nature, then it seems there is no metaphysical resource to distinguish man from angel. Human nature and angelic nature collapse into one another. But does this admittance of a distinct natural end condemn St. Thomas to modern extrinsicism? Not exactly. The key distinction which de Lubac fails to appropriate but which structures St. Thomas’s entire account is that between final and proximate ends. For de Lubac, any talk of a natural end can only refer to a natural final end, which thus implies a distinct (and problematic) order of Providence and a threatening alternative to the actual order of man’s divine destiny. “Natural end” is thus a category that de Lubac can only conceive of as implicating natura pura: it thus bears connotations of being enclosed and cut off, rather than fundamentally open. However, for St. Thomas, the natural proportionate end is a proximate end only: while specifying human nature in essence, it is causally ordered by God’s grace beyond itself to the supernatural finis ultimus.[9] As proximate, the distinct natural end is entirely consistent with St. Thomas’s teaching that man is ordained (by grace) from creation for one final, supernatural beatitude. It is an end that is utterly transparent to the movement toward the vision of God: no connotations of ontological enclosure attach to it. Such an end does not imply an alternative order of Providence; rather it is an integrated aspect of the one actual order unified by God’s loving intentionality.

In fact, the natural proximate end is a necessary aspect of the actual Providential order, even as de Lubac himself conceives of it. For in deemphasizing St. Thomas’s teaching on the natural end, de Lubac sacrifices the metaphysical precision which his own account requires. In his attempt to maintain the organic unity of nature and the supernatural, de Lubac speaks of the supernatural end as inscribed on man’s very being; as an “essential finality,” and as “ontological” in character. Indeed, in his account of human nature as spiritual, de Lubac acknowledges that creatures like animals and trees are “bound” and “limited” by natural ends; but human spirit in its “natural” orientation to the divine is thought of as an exception to rule of natural ends. However, there is far more of Blondel in this interpretation than of Thomas[10], for it exhibits a misunderstanding of Thomistic natural teleology. If there were really no other end than the beatific vision to define human nature, then human nature would not only be equated with angelic nature, but potentially with divine nature[11]; a metaphysical impossibility.[12] There would need to be some additional principle to specify human nature in distinction from divine and angelic natures, for the final end that they all share is incapable of doing so. De Lubac certainly desires to uphold the “solidity” of nature in distinction from the supernatural[13]; but he fails to see that a distinct natural end is precisely what is required to do just this. We must then question the rather ambiguous use of terms like “ontological” and “essential” to describe the supernatural finality; for these more properly apply to the natural end in Thomas’s view, and it is evident that de Lubac cannot be using these terms in the same sense in which they apply to the natural end without metaphysical confusion. The failure to uphold this end would seemingly imply a dangerous version of intrinsicism in which the only metaphysical principle that could ensure the real distinction between natural and supernatural would be lost!

Even the attempt to distinguish human nature by its inability to achieve the supernatural end through its own powers presupposes an intelligible natural end according to which those powers are defined. In fact, all grace presupposes the natural end in precisely this sense. It secures that upon which grace builds: secures it not in its sterility (as de Lubac thought) but in its integrity. If one were to claim that the proximate natural end were blotted out by the supernatural, and did not endure as distinct within a supernatural ordering, grace would be inherently transmutative of species[14] rather than perfective of it. If the natural end does not endure, then neither does any distinct sense of the term “man.” Grace would not then “prefect man” or “re-order man,” because what constitutes the reality as “man” simpliciter has been dissolved. Grace would actually destroy, rather than perfect nature. It would, metaphysically speaking, render us beings of a different kind. Yet we are called to experience the vision of God as graced humans; to attain the supernatural as transformed humans; to share in the divine nature as elevated humans. If grace is to perfect us as human beings, the natural end that specifies us must endure in its integrity within the order of grace.[15] Anything short of this would equate God’s grace with the cataclysmic Flood that only redeems through destruction. Thus the failure to uphold the integrity of the natural end results in an extrinsicism more radical than that which de Lubac attempts to overcome! For what could be more extrinsic to nature than a grace that cannot even be supper-added to it without destroying it? It seems then in his effort to establish the organic continuity between nature and the supernatural (by positing a supernatural finality to the exclusion of a natural proximate end), de Lubac himself falls prey to either a form of intrinsicism or of extrinsicism, both incompatible with the paradoxical character of the mystery. He thus fails to avoid Scylla or Charybdis, and the true via media that the mystery demands remains elusive.

Having missed the fundamental distinction between the proximate natural end and the final supernatural end, it becomes clearer why de Lubac’s interpretation of St. Thomas’s teaching on other points can be called into question. For instance, Thomas holds that every end has the character of the good, meaning that for a distinct natural end an imperfect felicity proportionate to natural powers is indeed attainable.[16] Contra de Lubac, St. Thomas is able to contemplate the possibilities of a pure nature in a way that is not subject to the modern perversions and yet achieves more than an abstract “similarity” with the humanity of the actual order.[17] Because for Thomas the proximate end specifies the nature, he would not agree with de Lubac that the speculative pure nature would be “another nature” entirely. Rather, the difference between the actual order and the possible, pure one is that in the latter the proximate natural end would not be proximate, but simply final. The natural end would simply never have been further ordered to the supernatural in grace. Yet with regard to essence, the natures would be equally human; just as a horse in this world and a Pegasus in an imagined possible world would both share all of the essential features of the nature “horse,” even though one is elevated to possess something more. Thus, also contra de Lubac, in such an order where the proximate end would be rendered the final end- the last stop, as it were- man would not experience the absence of the beatific vision as a punishment: just as if in our world all horses were elevated by God to be like Pegasus, and we imagined a world where they were not so ordered, a horse’s lack of wings would not be experienced as a privation in that imaginative context.[18]

Further, de Lubac’s interpretation of St. Thomas’s desiderium naturale seems mistaken: the natural dynamism that defines created spirit from all other natures is not for St. Thomas the desire for the beatific vision. It is true that materially the object of that desire is God’s inner being, and it is true that simpliciter, the only thing that will bring rest to the intellect’s natural desire will be knowledge of God’s essence given by grace.[19] However, St. Thomas’s understanding is not reducible to a Blondelian conception of natural desire. What St. Thomas means principally by the desiderium naturale is a function of the natural desire to know the essence of the Cause of finite things. It is thus principally ordered to God, but under the formality of Cause of being. Only when God reveals His essence and through His grace makes the attainment of that knowledge under a more eminent formality a realizable possibility, then is the natural desire elevated beyond its natural horizon (but not before in any specific sense).[20] The desire remains elicited and conditional upon former knowledge that God exists; and the knowledge of God under the formality of Cause provides a properly natural telos to the human spirit where in de Lubac’s account it was missing. Finally, de Lubac fails to adequately acknowledge that the capax gratiae that makes created spirit so distinctive rests in a specific obediential potency; a category that he, like Gilson, dismissed as insufficient to capture the supernatural trajectory of spirit qua spirit. However, this is precisely how St. Thomas conceives of that capacity which for de Lubac is already dynamic. According to Thomas, the possession of intellect and will exhibit a passive potency in human nature: an aptness for elevation that exists only in relation to the active power of God.[21] This capacity is, we might say, not “of” or “according to” nature, but “in” nature: it is that which ensures that man can be elevated by grace and yet remain man. By interpreting this concept too narrowly in a generic sense, de Lubac failed to apprehend this essential distinction between a dynamism that presupposes the activity of grace and one that exists in virtue of nature itself.

IV. Respondeo Quicendum Quod: Retrieving the Retrieval

We have seen then that de Lubac’s exegetical shortcomings, primarily in failing to account for the fundamental distinction between a distinct natural (proximate) end within his account of the supernatural, lead ultimately to problematic conclusions that undermine the success of his retrieval and his attempt to find the middle way demanded by fidelity to the paradoxical divine truth. However, it seems that de Lubac’s intuition in searching for answers in the thought of St. Thomas proves the wisdom of his intention: for it is precisely the distinctions of Thomas’s which de Lubac failed to treat adequately that achieve a way of articulating both the unity and the distinction of the natural and the supernatural. In fact, Thomas and de Lubac completely agree in their intention of describing the Augustinian historic nature: nature as ordained, in reality, to the supernatural. Yet Thomas simply describes the situation with greater metaphysical finesse, because only through his distinction do those words actually mean what they intend. Only if nature is distinguished by a proximate, proportionate end can one really mean something by the word “nature” when describing how it is “supernaturally ordained.” Denying the proximate end results in evacuating the term “nature” of any meaningful distinction from the “supernatural.” It would then no longer make sense to describe nature as supernaturally ordained to a supernatural final end. The sustained integrity of the natural through the affirmation of the natural end is the tool that ensures distinction.

But it does not merely distinguish. St. Thomas’s theology fulfills the Lubacian principle of “uniting in order to distinguish.” Thus the proximate natural end is only ever thought of in the context of the overarching unity of God’s Providential synthesis. Nature is not transmutated by its historical contact with sanctifying grace. Rather it is transfigured as it is upheld in its integrity while at the same time being causally ordered beyond itself to the one supernatural finis ultimus.[22] The relationship that grace has to nature is not, then, in the technical sense, “essential,” or that of an “inscription” on one’s nature. Rather, it appears that for Thomas, in order for grace to keep from destroying nature, it must necessarily be accidental to nature. The same intrinsic metaphysical structure is sustained even in the midst of the effects of sin and grace in the Providential order (sinful man is still man; and graced man is still man). But does this compromise the organic continuity? Is not an accidental relation precisely what is characteristic of the “pure nature” theology?

Sic et non: within Thomas’ framework, an accidental relation need not carry the connotations of compromising unity. “Accidental” need not mean “contingent.” For though it is technically not necessary according to the essence of man; it can easily derive a more eminent necessity from God’s antecedent will for that nature. Thus, from the perspective of faith, the accidental principle can be considered as intimate to man as his hands and his feet. It can, as accidents properly conceived are meant to do, more fully actualize that nature. Perhaps it would be helpful to think of the relationship in terms of proper accidentality: the way we would see having a right hand as intrinsic to man, yet it nonetheless stands “outside of” (extrinsic to) the essence. For if I were to lose my right hand, I would nonetheless retain my humanity. And from the perspective of God’s divine will for creation, having a right hand may be as integral in reality as having an intellect. Grace would not simply “add onto” nature, but would be intrinsic as to unfold into actuality (passive) potencies that lie dormant within nature itself qua spirit. Thus, unity is achieved, but in such a way as to maintain distinction through metaphysical precision.

Such a vision of accidental unity seems to be operative in David Braine’s interpretation of de Lubac. While noting that his chief problem is the ambiguity regarding technical philosophical terminology, Braine believes it is quite easy to separate de Lubac’s intention from his philosophical confusions.[23] Thus he also argues that his attempt to predicate the supernatural orientation (or for that matter sin) of nature is mistaken. What he intends is to predicate such an orientation of man as person in the relationship to a single spiritual community that he shares in virtue of the (accidental) relation of inheritance.[24] The finality does not arise out of human nature qua nature, but rather out of human nature as it is ordered in the divine order of Providence (or, we might say, out of nature but not in virtue of it).

Though it seems that de Lubac has not succeeded where St. Thomas has, in truth it may not be so. There may be ways in which de Lubac’s own retrieval can be retrieved from the burden of its negative conclusions. For instance, Braine suggests a hermeneutic lens with which to read de Lubac’s use of the word “nature” in a fundamentally different sense than the Aristotelian one. It is a more Augustinian sense that has precedent in St. Thomas and sees the primary meaning of “natural” as grounded in God’s antecedent providential will for creation. Thus whatever is given by God is, according to Providence, “natural.”[25] It is the way in which man is ordered by divine Providence that defines what is natural simpliciter, and the way in which man is ordered by his essence is natural only in a certain way (secundum quid). Thus according to Braine, de Lubac can be read such that he is not in fact attempting to restructure the essence of man, but rather is simply using “natural” in an analogous sense. Such a use of nature in the Augustinian idiom seems to be a positive way forward in redeeming the Lubacian perspective so that it becomes more consonant with St. Thomas’s distinctions. For as we have noted, St. Thomas is himself thinking from an Augustinian framework, while not denying the necessary integrity of the Aristotelian sense of nature within that very framework. The analogous terms must be held in tension. And it seems the most important step in retrieving de Lubac’s theological enterprise is moving beyond the technical imprecision of de Lubac himself to a position that recognizes the essential harmony between the Augustinian and Aristotelian “natures.”

Thus we have seen that de Lubac’s overall principles of attempting to find a theoretical form that upholds both poles of the mystery of the supernatural; his criticism of a perverse form of Thomist extrinsicism; and his proper intention to find the resources for his solution in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas are all aspects of de Lubac’s theology that we must commend. And despite his exegetical insufficiencies and metaphysical ambiguities which led to problematic conclusions, we have found that nonetheless the distinctions of St. Thomas provide a compelling solution and a way to remain faithful to the paradox of divine truth and to the contours of Lubacian theology (in a sense, being more Lubacian than de Lubac!). We might say that with a little touch of Thomism, de Lubac is able to properly fulfill his own aim and give reverence to the mystery of the supernatural.

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[1] Braine, pp.558-562

[2] For ease of citation, we will follow Steven Long in drawing all citations of the texts of St. Thomas Aquinas, unless otherwise noted, from the Corpus Thomisticum, S. Thomae de Aquino opera omnia, available in Latin online at http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html. Cf. Steven A. Long, “On the Loss, and the Recovery, of Nature as a Theonomic Principle: Reflection on the Nature/Grace Controversy,” in Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol.5, No.1 (2007): p.133.

[3] Summa Contra Gentiles (SCG), III, 25; Summa Theologiae (ST) I-II, Q.3, a.8. Cf. Long, p.137.

[4] ST I, Q.75, a.6.

[5] The Mystery of the Supernatural, pp.66-67.

[6] Ibid., p.63.

[7] Ibid., p.68, 71.

[8] ex. ST I, Q.75, a.7, ad.1; Questiones de anima a.7, ad.10. Cf. Long, p.137.

[9] Long, p.146.

[10] Voderholzer, pp.122-123.

[11] Long, p.148: “To say that by nature the human will directly aspires to the hidden life of God is to define it as the divine will alone may be defined. All creation is ordered to God as End, but through the medium of the proportionate natural end for each creature, which is nothing other than a mode of being like unto God.”

[12] Divine simplicity implies that there cannot be more than one divine nature; ST I, Q.11, a.3.

[13] The Mystery of the Supernatural, p.34.

[14] Long, p.153.

[15] ST I-II, Q.5, a.5, ad.3.

[16] Long, pp.140-141.

[17] Quod. I, q.4, a.3, resp.; Cf. Long, p.134.

[18] De Malo, q.5, a.1, ad.15

[19] ex. SCG, III, c.48.

[20] Braine, p.569; Long, pp.138-139.

[21] De Virtutibus, q.1, a.10, ad.13; Long, pp.162-165.

[22] A brief example may help to illustrate: if I had in my hand a small block of marble, we could say that in simply doing what it is the natural end of marble to do, it was functioning according to a natural end. What if I, from the moment of my finding this block of marble (creation), intended to make of it a rook for my chess set, and (via grace) carved it into a chess piece with the new end of performing certain moves and aiding me in winning a chess match. Does the fact that from the beginning I intended for this piece of marble a “supernatural” end involving the actions proper to a chess piece negate the fact that it is still marble, as defined by the end of what is natural for marble to be? Or is it in fact presupposed by my intention and gracious elevation that it must in fact remain distinctly marble in order to even become a chess piece?

[23] Braine, p.567.

[24] Ibid., pp.548-549

[25] Braine, p.564; De potentia, q.1, a.3, ad.1

Sic et Non: Thoughts on Henri de Lubac’s Thomistic Retrieval (I)

[Here's a paper I wrote for my class on Henri de Lubac with Reinhard Huetter. Enjoy]

I. Ad Primum Sic Proceditur: Fidelity to the Mystery

For Henri de Lubac, S.J. (1896-1991), the nature of all Christian mystery is one of paradox. The truths of Revelation inevitably take shape before the intellect in a relation of two terms whose profound harmony lies beyond (though not opposed to) the horizons of reason. It is a harmony only accessible in the shadows of faith, and thus it places upon dogmatic reflection the demand to hold seemingly irreconcilable propositions together, according to an invisible synthesis not humanly achieved[1]; for only thus are truths of divine intelligibility properly revealed. Theology is therefore formally paradoxical, requiring that “the believer should combine in thought certain realities that are clearly not mutually exclusive, even though finite human reason often cannot see how these things can be reconciled with one another.”[2] Christ is both fully God and fully man; the Church is both visible and invisible; Mary is both virgin and mother.[3] Yet for de Lubac, the foundational mystery revealed in Christ’s life, which provides the framework within which all other mysteries are received, is the mystery of man’s divine destiny: the mystery of the supernatural.[4] Here the mind must hold in tension the notion of the natural inadequacy of man’s intellectual powers for the vision of God with the fact that he is nonetheless destined from creation for this end; an end he can only desire as a free gift from God.

Confronted with any mystery, however, the intellect is tempted with a deep impatience and is often driven to abandon its vigilance to that harmony by radically favoring one pole at the expense of the other. It develops a rationalizing tendency threatening the “both/and” of the synthesis with a reductive “either/or” which, for de Lubac, constitutes the fundamental attitude of heresy. When de Lubac began writing on the subject of the supernatural as early as 1931, there were before him at least two problematic ways in which the complex character of the mystery was subject to distorting reductions.[5] The first was a form of intrinsicism equated with the immanence of Modernism, as criticized by Pope Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907).[6] Such a vision construes faith, and thus the foundation of all religion, as the outworking of internal sentiment. Accordingly religious belief achieves only a subjective character and the public significance of dogma and worship are undermined.[7] Transcendence is thus ultimately contained within the principles of the finite human spirit: in a sense, it never breaks away from the plane of the natural.[8] Modernist immanence[9] thus represents the reduction of the mysterious paradox by radically equating the natural and the supernatural, making the latter little more than a function of the former (or perhaps vice-versa[10]). It achieves unity without distinction.

The second evident threat to the synthesis moves in the opposite direction: by positing a distinction which forfeits unity, and thus reduces to a purely extrinsic opposition between the terms of the paradox. This is the cardinal sin that de Lubac sees stemming not from modern agnostics, but rather from within the Thomist theological tradition. According to de Lubac, beginning as early as the 15^th century, St. Thomas’s teaching regarding the natural and supernatural was gradually distorted as doctrines that challenged his synthesis (such as that of Denys the Carthusian, 1402-1471) were introduced into the Thomist tradition as interpretations of Thomas himself: the chief perpetrator being the well-known commentator of the Angelic Doctor, Thomas Cardinal Cajetan (1468-1534). Cajetan’s interpretation led to a conception of human nature that is fundamentally “purified” from the supernatural with an existential trajectory and finality distinct from the vision of God. Nature then becomes a self-contained and self-sufficient order unto itself, to which grace must come only as an intrusion, or an order “super-added” on top of it. The supernatural is ultimately little more than “accidental” to nature: contingent and alien to it; opposed rather than simply beyond; depriving the Catholic mantra “grace perfects nature” of its force. Ultimately in de Lubac’s eyes this brand of extrinsicism paves the way theoretically for the birth of modern atheism, naturalism, and secularism.

De Lubac thus attempts to forge with his doctrine a via media between the Scylla of Modernism and the Charybdis of extrinsicism (equally the progeny of modern error). He seeks to articulate a form of theological intrinsicism that faithfully responds to the “double burden presented by the Gospel, of an utterly gratuitous gift on God’s part coupled with the human person’s profound- non-arbitrary- desire for this gift, both of these being present already at the beginning of each creature’s existence.”[11] It is de Lubac’s task in The Mystery of the Supernatural to avoid the former perversion while adamantly attacking the latter.[12] Seeking to reclaim the fundamental unity between the natural and the supernatural, his thought is guided by a principle adapted from a well-known Scholastic maxim: to counter extrinsicism, one must not only “distinguish to unite,” for “to unite in order to distinguish, is just as inevitable.”[13] Far from a self-conscious “New Theology,” de Lubac saw this program as quite the reverse: he was attempting to recover the traditional teaching to which the Fathers of the pre-modern Church gave witness and bring it into contact with the exigencies of contemporary thought.[14] Thus de Lubac’s explication of the mystery of the supernatural cannot satisfy itself with a purely systematic treatment: it is necessarily a historical enterprise aiming to relocate the theoretical context beyond the poisonous structures of the moderniores. His goal is to reclaim a broadly Augustinian perspective of the supernatural that sufficiently counters the dualists while avoiding the excesses of Bajus and his kin. And yet, for de Lubac the faith is never truly old, never of the past, but is “always new.”[15] One cannot deny the presence of genuine theological progress in that novelty, as if the tradition were simply static and one could ignore all thought in the ages between the Fathers and ourselves. De Lubac’s retrieval of Augustinianism is a sic et non: it is not simply the voice of Augustine he wants to make heard, but more so the voices of the 13^th century Scholastics within his tradition. Thus, more properly speaking, de Lubac is seeking an Augustinian-Thomist perspective, enacting a “full return to the thought of St. Thomas and his contemporaries on the subject.”[16]

It is the true teaching of St. Thomas on the mystery of the supernatural that de Lubac intends to rescue from the accretions of Cajetan and the commentatorial tradition after him. We are then compelled to ask: to what extent does de Lubac’s teaching succeed in uniting the more Augustinian intrinsicism with the theoretical clarifications of St. Thomas? And to what extent does his reclamation aid him in faithfully remaining with the tension of the mystery’s paradox? Our affirmation of de Lubac’s response will thus also take the form of a sic et non: we will first briefly outline the general contours of de Lubac’s answer to the extrinsicist problematic; then we will raise questions about de Lubac’s exegetical accuracy with regard to St. Thomas’ distinctions and examine how his metaphysical imprecision in reclaiming the voice of Thomas could lead to conclusions consonant with the very distortions he aims to overcome; finally, we will designate the principles of de Lubac’s theology which remain valid and to which, it seems, St. Thomas may provide a more Lubacian answer.

II. Videtur Quod: Beyond Pure Nature

According to de Lubac, when the natura pura was first invoked in the 14^th century (in response to the reductive Augustinianism of Bajus), it was “aware of its own artificiality.”[17] It was the result of a hypothetical speculation about God’s omnipotence and the potential for God to have created a human nature with its ultimate end separate from God. It did not initially challenge the understanding that the actual order contained a human nature always already ordained to the beatific vision from its creation. Yet in the 15^th century, with the influence of thinkers like Denys the Carthusian- for whom man’s final end lies in contemplating created realities- the former distinction between speculation and reality was blurred. De Lubac points to a change in the conception of nature, which was now defined by an end proportionate to natural powers. In this context, Cajetan proceeded to introduce into the interpretation of St. Thomas a conception of nature radically foreign to his thought, “profoundly altering the whole meaning of St. Thomas.”[18] The important qualifications of Aristotle provided by Thomas’s Augustinianism were forgotten and nature became definitively closed-in upon itself; no “natural” exigency could exceed the bounds of its own order. Nature with the orientation to its proportionate finality became, therefore, self-sufficient; and the fundamental character of the supernatural end was undermined. Nature was thus “purified.”

This theology of natura pura was originally formulated in an effort to safeguard the gratuity of grace and the supernatural end. Yet the result, according to de Lubac, was to posit nature and grace as two complete and parallel species within the same genus. Grace could only thus appear as a kind of superstructure: something additional, something accidental, contingent, and ultimately inconsequential.[19] It could no longer perfect, transfigure, or overwhelm the natural order. Consequently, de Lubac argues, natura pura actually fails to ensure the gratuity of the supernatural. The opposition leads inevitably to the conceptual reduction of the supernatural to the natural plane: figuring it always in terms of the natural, as a copy or a “shadow” of it, because the finite end would always remain primary in concept and reality[20] (one sees here the faint specter of Modernism). Further, the theory would need to demonstrate the giftedness of the supernatural in relation to the actual, historical human nature.[21]Yet in contemplating pure nature, one is in fact imagining a wholly different order in which human nature is defined by a distinct, purified finality. It would then only bear an abstract, theoretical “resemblance” to the concrete nature in the actual historical order and would ultimately only establish the gratuity of grace relative to another nature altogether.[22] One can readily see the ultimate failure to uphold both terms of the essential paradox.

In contrast to this, de Lubac argues that a real gratuity must stem from the acknowledgment that in man there is a natural desire that exceeds the limits of natural potency: a desire for the one supernatural end that nature itself is unable to deliver. It can in fact only be desired as an entirely free gift from God.[23] The self-sufficiency of the natural order must be breached in order to be “real;” yet breached in such a way as to always maintain God’s freedom in offering grace. The operative theological principle behind de Lubac’s entire perspective is the unity of God’s Providential economy (the unity that the theology of pure nature implicitly sunders). “His sovereign liberty encloses, surpasses and causes all the bonds of intelligibility that we discover between the creature and its destiny. Nature and the supernatural are thus united, without in any sense being confused.”[24] It is God’s intentionality for His creation, revealed to man, that provides the organic unity between nature and its pre-ordained destiny in the vision of God: the simplicity of God’s antecedent will underlies the distinct gifts of nature and grace. While the natura pura theory conceives of the relationship Platonically (nature and grace relating as if two substances), de Lubac notes that the more proper analogy is hylomorphic: nature and grace relate as if two complementary principles of one substance, one order.[25] It is in their union that they are distinguished.

In expressing this fundamental unity, de Lubac sees himself as freeing St. Thomas’ traditional teaching of the desiderium naturale for the vision of God, which for de Lubac forms the foundation of continuity with the supernatural in the creature. Human nature is, from the moment of creation, called and infused with a dynamism that stretches beyond natural boundaries. For God has ordered man to a single end: as ordained to beatitude, he is specifically distinguished from all speculative hypotheses. While “pure nature” is defined by its orientation to an end proportionate to its powers, human nature as God has actually created it is defined by its orientation to a supernatural end. This orientation underlies all of man’s conscious, finite acts of intellect and will. It is, in fact, as this nature of created spirit (intellect and will) that a sense of “nature” radically foreign to the pagan philosophical concept is established.[26] For only as spirit, created in the image of God, is the concept of nature properly opened beyond its finite limitations. The natural desire for the beatific vision is thus not incidental and “supper-added,” but rather a property of human nature qua spirit: it is “inscribed” or “impressed” on man’s being, something “ontological,”[27] an “essential finality.”[28] What Cajetan and Suarez after him failed to take account of was the utterly exceptional character of the created spirit which infuses the concept of “nature” with a radically different meaning.[29] And it is through the continuity it provides that de Lubac believes he has successfully accounted for both the unity and the distinction implicit in the paradox of the mystery.

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[1] Henri de Lubac, S.J., The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), p.169: “A synthesis indeed; but for out natural intellect, it is a synthesis of paradox before being one of enlightenment.”; and p.171: “Revealed truth, then, is a mystery for us; in other words it presents that character of lofty synthesis whose final link must remain impenetrably obscure to us. It will forever resist all our efforts to unify it fully.”

[2] Rudolf Voderholzer, Meet Henri de Lubac, trans. Michael J. Miller, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), p.118; c.f. Henri de Lubac, S.J., Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard and Sister Elizabeth Englund, OCD, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), p.327.

[3] Voderholzer, p.119.

[4] The Mystery of the Supernatural, p.167.

[5] Ibid., p.xxxv.

[6] Pope Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis:Encyclical of Pope Pius X on the Doctrines of the Modernists, (St. Peter’s, Rome: Sept.8, 1907), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis_en.html

[7] David Braine, “The Debate Between Henri de Lubac and His Critics,” in Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol.6, No.3 (2008): pp.573

[8] The Mystery of the Supernatural, p.xxxv.

[9] This version of misconstruing the mystery was the distortion de Lubac’s position most clearly boiled down to in the eyes of his critics. We will examine more deeply below what foundations there are, if any, in de Lubac’s thought for such associations.

[10] An example of the supernaturalizing tendency can be found in the theology of Michael Bajus (1512-1589). It was in response to his vision of “everything is grace” that many aspects of the Thomistic distortions were likely formed.

[11] David Schindler, “Introduction to the 1998 Edition” in Henri de Lubac, S.J., The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), p.xxvii

[12] For de Lubac, the “separatist thesis” may only have just begun to bear its bitterest fruits; see The Mystery of the Supenatural, p.xxxv.

[13] Catholicism, p. 330.

[14] The Mystery of the Supernatural, p.xxxvi: “Faith must provide the needed answer, and must do so before it is too late to be of help to many.”

[15] Ibid., p.18.

[16] Ibid., p.206.

[17] Voderholzer, p.130.

[18] The Mystery of the Supernatural, p.9.

[19] Ibid., p.178.

[20] Ibid., p.36.

[21] Ibid., p.55

[22] Ibid., p.60: “You may put into this hypothetical world a man as like me as you can, but you cannot put me into it. Between that man who, by hypothesis, is not destined to see God, and the man I am in fact, between that futurable and this existing being, there remains only a theoretical, abstract identity, without the one really becoming the other at all.”

[23] Ibid., p.94. The datum optimum is fundamentally ordered to the donum perfectum; but never in such a way that the donum is guaranteed or demanded (as Bajus thought), but only freely given.

[24] Ibid., p.99.

[25] Ibid., p.32.

[26] Ibid., ch.7, pp.119-139.

[27] Ibid., pp.79-80.

[28] Ibid., p.81

[29] Ibid., ch.6, pp.101-118.

All Theology Must be Onto-theology

No, not the Heidegerrian boogeyman. I simply want to point out that there is a crucial problem with the more recent attempts by philosophers and theologians (eg. Marion, Levinas, etc.) to think God beyond the category of being: the inability to see just how pervasive the notion of being is and must be. Now of course many of the thinkers in this line are appealing to the apophatic theologies of the Neoplatonic tradition and their concern that we in no way confuse God with any of the finite conceptual idols that we inevitably construct out of "being." For surely, there is an infinite gulf between God and all of the modes of being that we ever experience (with all of the forms of composition and limitation in the orders of essence, existence, action, etc.). In this light, soemthing like "Good" becomes far more attractive as a primary name for God; and in certain respects, St. Thomas acknowledges this. No problem there. And yet still, unless we are clear, there is a serious problem with the attempt to think God without the mediation of being.

The reason this is problematic is because of a foundational fact of our epistemic condition (we might say, one of our hermeneutical horizons as incarnated intellects). As St. Thomas taught, being is the first concept conceived by the intellect. Not explicitly of course (children do not utter "esse!" before the utter "dada!" or "mama!".....though if anyone did, it was probably Thomas). But rather implicitly. No other concept can be formed without the notion of being attached to it, riding its coattails, or more appropriately, arm-in-arm with it. We might say, it is concomittant with all of our knowledge of.....well, everything.

So on the one hand, our conceptions of being are shaped and limited to all of the finite modes that we encounter (we are primarilly wired to know the essences of sensible beings, composed of matter and form, esse and essentia, etc.); and we do in a certain sense only have to work with being as it is cut-up into puzzle pieces. As differently shaped, limited pieces, they surely will not accurately apply to God by any stretch of the imagination; and thus we must eventually leave them by the way-side.

Yet on the other hand, we remain finite, incarnated intellects even when we try to think about God. And it remains that no matter what categories and concepts we use, "being" will always be analytically first among them, haunting them all. So if we try to replace being with, say, the category of "Good" or "Love" as purer, non-idolatrous concepts for God, we find that being somehow always beats them to the destination, or is always found stowing-away aboard them. This is simply implicit in the actuality of the perfections we wish to ascribe, such as "Good." Imagine if by "Good" we meant "an unreal Good" or "Good that really isn't Good" or "Good that is nothing absolutely." We would not be describing a perfection in its perfection at all. We would be describing a perfection insofar as it is somehow not a perfection. And that has got to be worse than any idol of being. We don't ever want to talk about privations when we talk about God, because there are none in him. "Being" then marks that concept which renders these other concepts in their perfection, in their reality, and not in their privation.

Even look at the way we would inevitably describe the alternative concepts in relation to God: "God is Love and not Being" for instance. We rely on the concept of being ("is") in the very predication of God's supposedly purer perfection. Its just an endless maze and at every turn, we end up finding the concept of being jumping out at us. Not only that, but we find that it is precisely what ensures the intelligibility even of our apophasis. Either 1) negative theology means that God is absolute nothingness (infinite privation) or 2) that God is nothing with regard to a certain sense or form of "being." But absolute nothingness is a phrase we use for what is inconceivable by definition. As it turns out, our language about this and other privations presupposes that we have a concept of being with which to negate. Nothingness is conceptually parasitic, and only to the degree that the concept of being precedes it is it intelligible.

So this would seem to leave option 2 as the only way to proceed. The most "nothing" we can ascribe to God is the denial of any peculiarity of our finite modes of being and knowing (composition). So why not just describe it this way? Sadly, I think, following Heidegger, too many thinkers concede that somehow "being" is entirely exhausted in its finitude. It is by definition a limited concept, encrusted in a certain limited modality. It's not the kind of thing we can strip and purify and remold when we apply it to God. But why would "Good" or "Love" be any different? In truth, we only ever encounter these concepts in finite modes (the good as perfection of things that are perfected; love as an accident of some substance). They are just as much cut-up into puzzle pieces by the world we live in as "being" is. Couldn't we just as easily write a treatise titled "God Without Good" or "God Without Love?"

No matter how they phrase it, folks like Marion do not really mean that we should think of God as nothing absolutely. What they want to describe is a perfection that somehow exceeds our modes of being and knowing, not an eternal void of empty privation. That would be the farthest thing from God imaginable (if we can even say it's imaginable!) . Even the silence and the deconstruction of the mystics implies some actuality which our finite mode of thinking cannot contain: it is a silence about God and not the silence of a tree or a stone. So if anything, the concept of being implicit in every other concept is what ensures that the most apophatic of thinkers conceive of God according to some perfection rather than as an infinite privation. Without it, folks like Marion and Dionysius would be indistinguishable from Atheists who claim that God does not exist, at all, in any sense ("there is no God").

So to put it simply, we as finite minds always grasp the concept of being first in any movement of knowledge. As human intellects, we can only conceive of everything through the concept of being. So attempts to think something, in this case God, without the concept of being seems to result in an attempt to abandon our inescapable hermeneutical limitations: in short, to think God as something other than a human thinker. It is an attempt to alter the order of knowledge that is inscirbed into us. But one could only do this by becoming a different kind of being with a different kind of knowing. Surely the extent to which we can know God must conform to the order of knowing that he inscribes into human nature and not to a struggle to negate it. I fear that too often modern negative theologians mistake negating the order of knowledge with exceeding it. They also fail to recall that theology is a human science, even negative theology. Ironically, sometimes the language of being can be far more theologically reserved than the attempt to get beyond it!

Here's the ontological Scylla and Charybdis all theologians are dealing with: If we rely on being-language, we certainly avoid any sense of applying a privation to God, but the perfection we signify tends to be limited to the finite modes of being we encounter, and we risk applying limitation to God. If we rely on nothing or non-being langauge, we certainly obliterate any risk of applying modal limitation to God, but we have suddenly opened the doorway for privation to slip back in, because we have obliterated all that distinguishes perfection from privation in our thought and talk. So its the danger of limitation or the danger of privation.

If one grants that being is intrinsically finite, then limitation will never look like a safe passage because being will always dead-end in some finite thing. But Thomas would simply ask: what compels us to assume such strictures? What if we suspend this presupposition? What if being is, actually, analogous: neither intrinsically finite nor infinite?

Grant this, and I think limitation, though always formidable, is the more managable foe. A theological ascesis can more easily purify language of the finite modes of these perfections; it seems far more dangerous to render vulnerable their very "perfectionness." It is easier to smash an idol than to make something out of nothing.

While most of the modern negative thinkers have thought that St. Thomas and those following him have not gone far enough in their apophasis, I think it rather the case that he has put his finger on the far more successfully negative approach. As long as we take seriously modal negations as the very heart and soul of conceptual mysticism, then this need not be a "wimpier" form of apophasis. It is simply a more precise, more prudent form, insofar as it is apophasis through the mediation of the concept of being. In this sense, all theology, even negative theology, must be Onto-theology; or else risk devolving into a nihilistic atheism.

Pax Christi,

Leibniz: Can't Touch This

I've read selections from the Leibniz's Monadology multiple times in the past, and I will undoubtedly have more to write on this later when I will be studying Leibniz a bit more in depth. But my hunch is that the metaphysics of the monad is a good example of what happens when one tries to address questions of substance and accidents with the blinders of the Cartesian ego tightly affixed. When the "clarity" and "distinction" of ideas (and the imagination) become the filter of all possibility, one begins to articulate a world in which substances are reclusive principles, metaphysical "shut-ins," quarantined from everything outside their doors. In an interesting twist, the distinctions drawn in our musing give birth to an exile in reality, and the intimate union between subject and accident in act which is precious to Aristotelian and Thomist realism becomes the fantasy: such things only seem to be hand-in-hand (but in truth, its all a prearranged dance of cosmic harmony, where things come only so close to touching)! Leibniz may have been trying to overcome a Cartesian problem, but by conceding so much to the fundamentals of the Cartesian turn, he doomed himself from the get-go. Repackaging occasionalism never offers anything close to an adequate description of how things really interact. That should never be appealed to, even as a last resort. It's like Sisyphus concocting more effective ways to get the boulder up the hill. Good luck, buddy!

The Monadology strikes me as a lesson why we should never presume to conflate logical possibility and real or actual possibility. One's head only dictates the full range of possibilities when one has already agreed to strip everything else of its stake in the real.

It marks a failure to think from the between, where mind and being flow into one another; where they interact on a two-way street, and do not lock each other out.

Pax Christi,

Candidate for Worst Analogy...of All Time

A lot of virtual ink is spilled over the notion of analogy around here. It is important to me and my comrades both as a tool of good reasoning and as the manner in which the metaphysical relationship between God and creation is most aptly articulated. So I thought a new game might be fun: try to come up with a worse analogy than this set of gems...

Abortion doctor LeRoy Carhart compares the murder of Dr. Tiller to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (as well as to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the Lusitania). Pro-life protesters are thus compared to the KKK. Quoted in the Washington Times (linked above)...

"I think there is absolutely no difference in putting a cross in front of a person's home because of what race they belong to than there is putting a cross in front of our homes because we do abortions."

I mean, wow. Such rock solid reasoning truly astounds. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised: the abortion debate brings out some of the most heated exchanges, and since comparisons to Hitler and the Holocaust have been throw around by the Pro-life side, I suppose it was a matter of time before those on the other side came up with something of equal inflammatory caliber. But while the Hitler analogies are certainly inflammatory, they don't suffer from the vice of being one of the worst analogies I have ever heard.

Luckily, MLK's niece, Aveda King, has responded to the comparison eloquently, noting that the basis upon which Cahart wants to compare them actually serves to drive them ever more radically apart; making even the thought of such an analogy simply laughable.

Maybe this was taken out of context. Maybe Dr. Cahart moonlights as a standup comedian?

Pax Christi,

A Note on Neoplatonic Champagne

Neoplatonic emanation has traditionally been a sticking point for Christianity. Despite some of its unifying metaphysical strengths, it seems to render created being necessary, as though God's nature requires that the diversified chorus of finitude pours forth from his lips. Suddenly, a core aspect of the created/uncreated distinction is trivialized.

The big players in the Christian tradition who sought to reap the fruits of Neoplatonism have dealt with this apparent conflict.

To put it simply, when it comes to intentionality or necessity: we must not conceive of the emanation of finite being the way a great and mighty waterfall trickles down into a river below that branches off into countless tributaries and streams. The waterfall would not be what it is if gravity did not exact this necesssity on its emanation. Or rather, it would be like every time you bought a bottle of champagne, it burst open and poured out onto everything, as you speedily try to plug the top in your unexpected panic.

God's emanation is far more like when one, celebrating an acheivement in great joy (perhaps celebrating one's own beautiful nature), shakes a giant bottle of champagne and pops the cork, allowing its bounty to flow forth into the countless and variously shaped glasses of one's guests, held out at different heights below it. And imagine, of course, that somehow this giant bottle of champagne never runs out....

Pax Christi,

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

For the Aristotelian, a severed hand is not really a hand at all. It is detached from the substantial form that secures its function and identity as hand. Apart from this, it is only analogously called a hand, much in the same way we would call a prosthetic replacement a "hand." Without the living, informed body, the severed hand is far more like a prosthetic hand or a claw or even the sculpture of a hand than it is like an organic, living hand.

Similarly, for the Aristotelian, the polis and the common good are naturally prior to the individuals that partake of them; much in the same way that the unified, substantial body is prior to its hands and its feet. It seems apparent then that in many accounts of Modern autonomy, philosophers are proposing that hands are truly hands when they are lobbed off of their arms. Body parts precede the unity of the body. Yet when Modern man is cut off from the common good and the intrinsic "political" aspect of his nature and his end, can we really call him "man?" Or is he in reality closer to a manequin or a sculpture?

Obvisouly Modern man, even in accepting such a vision of autonomy, is not cast out of human community the way an exile or a hermit might have been sundered from the polis in Aristotle's day. Now as then, people still grow and develop and depend upon the specialized skills of others in their communities. So it would be more like a bunch of severed body parts trying to move together in imitation of a real and living unified body. Imagine the child of some deity trying to create a human doll out of a bunch of dead human body parts. It's actions, it's movements, would in effect be no more than those of a doll: what Aristotle would classify as an artifact. What we have then in the extreme accounts of Modern autonomy is an argument for a political Frankenstein.

Are we willing to refer to Frankenstein (the monster) as "man" in the same sense as we would use that word of, say, Dr. Victor Frankenstein?


Pax Christi,

Kant vs. Copernicus

An Easy Essay in the Spirit of Peter Maurin, inspired by William Desmond

Kant (1724 – 1804) vs. Copernicus (1473 – 1543)

Before Copernicus, it was thought that
The sun revolved around the earth,
That man was the center of all.
But Copernicus was a revolutionary,
Whose perspicacity, like none other,
Keenly peered into the
True nature of revolution, and declared
The earth revolves around the sun.
Man was no more the center of all,
But, instead was held in the embrace of a world
Full of things whose intelligibility would lead man
To ever higher realms of existence.

Before Kant, it was known that
The earth revolved around the sun,
That man was not the center of all because
There was a world of things surrounding him.
Kant assumed the position of “revolutionary,”
And declared that he had discovered a new center –
The transcendental subject, and its conditions for thought.
Man was pushed back into the center, and all things
Were now subject to man’s cognitive dominion.
Man now held the world in his fragile embrace,
Imposing intelligibility upon things that prove themselves
To be more and more recalcitrant to man’s dominion.

But if Copernicus realized man was not in the center,
And if Kant pushed man back into the center,
It is odd that Kant declared his movement to be
A Copernican Revolution.

Uhhhhhhhhhh-Oh!!!

So today, all academic obligations for the semester are satisfied. The Lord has truly risen! I've been intending to comment more, or perhaps to think through the issue via blog, concerning the Notre Dame- Obama drama. I wanted to address specifically JB's comment about eating with sinners and tax collectors. However, for the moment, I simply had to draw people's attention to this!

I've had trouble articulating my thoughts on this issue before. Sometimes discussions with friends make me think my resistance is just nuts; other times the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. But Glendon's reasoning here seems to me eminently reasonable. It seems to point to two of the major points underlying my own stance: a commencement is not the occasion for this kind of thing; and an honorary degree is really the meat of the problem. Not to mention I think ecclesial obedience should be a factor in this discussion as well.

I'll post more on this soon. But for now: Sh*t, meet fan!

Pax Christi,

Pascha

The meaning of the Resurrection lies, rather, in Jesus' passage to a form of existence which has left death behind it once for all (Romans 6:10), and so has gone beyond, once for all, the limitations of this aeon in God (Hebrews 9:26; 1 Peter 3:18). In contrast to David, but also to those whom he himself raised from the dead, Jesus is withdrawn from corruption (Acts 13:34), he lives for God (Romans 6:10), he lives 'for evermore' and has 'the keys of Death and Hades' (Apocalypse 1:17ff). This event is, as has rightly been said time and again, without analogy. It pierces our whole world of living and dying in a unique way so that, through this breakthrough, it may open a path for us into the everlasting life of God (I Corinthians 15:21ff).

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans. Aidan Nichols, O.P., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), p.194.


Christos Aneste! Alethos Aneste!

Pax Christi,

Sabbatum Sanctum

This ultimate solidarity is the final point and the goal of that first 'descent,' so clearly described in the Scriptures, into a 'lower world' which, with Augustine, can already be characterised, by way of contrast with heaven, as infernum. Thomas Aquinas will echo Augustine here. For him, the necessity whereby Christ had to go down to Hades lies not in some insufficiency of the suffering endured on the Cross but in the fact that Christ has assumed all the defectus of sinners...Now the penalty which the sin of man brought on was not only the death of the body. It was also a penalty affected the soul, for sinning was also the soul's work, and the soul paid the price in being deprived of the vision of God. As yet unexpiated, it followed that all human beings who lived before the coming of Christ, even the holy ancestors, descended into the infernum. And so, in order to assume the entire panalty imposed upon sinners, Christ willed not only to die, but to go down, in his soul, ad infernum. As early as the Fathers of the second century, this act of sharing constituted the term and aim of the Incarnation. The 'terrors of death' into which Jesus himself falls are only dispelled when the Father raises him again...He insists on his own grounding principle, namely, that only what has been endured is healed and saved.

That the Redeemer is solidary with the dead, or, better, with this death which makes of the dead, for the first time, dead human beings in all reality- this is the final consequence of the redemptive mission he has received from the Father. His being with the dead is an existence at the utmost pitch of obedience, and because the One thus obedient is the dead Christ, it constitutes the 'obedience of a corpse' (the phrase is Francis of Assisi's) of a theologically unique kind. By it Christ takes the existential measure of everything that is sheerly contrary to God, of the entire object of the divine eschatological judgment, which here is grasped in that event in which it is 'cast down' (hormemati blethesetai, Apocalypse 18, 21; John 12; Matthew 22, 13). But at the same time, this happening gives the measure of the Father's mission in all its amplitude: the 'exploration' of Hell is an event of the (economic) Trinity...This vision of chaos by the God-man has become for us the condition of our vision of Divinity. His exploration of the ultimate depths has transformed what was a prison into a way.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans. Aidan Nichols, O.P., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), pp. 164-165, 174-175.


I wish you all a blessed Holy Saturday, and a joyous Easter.

Pax Christi,

Notre Dame, Country, God

Today it was revealed that President Obama will be the commencement speaker for the 2009 class of my beloved alma mater, Our Lady's University. He will also be receiving an honorary law degree. My initial reaction was that my class of 2008 had been deeply betrayed: we fought tooth and nail to get Stephen Colbert, the greatest satirist of our age (and a Catholic); and despite a near unanimous preference among the student body, the University big-wigs shrugged their shoulders and claimed not to carry that kind of clout. We ended up with Cardinal McCarrick and a different president: Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen), both of whom turned out to be terrific speakers.

But it didn't take long for my feelings to turn to rather serious dissappointment. I can take a certain kind of pride in the historic nature of Obama's election, and I am sympathetic to his ambition to reshape countless aspects of the country that have been far from flourishing for the last eight years (though the jury is still out on much of the "how"). On the so called "life-issues," however, President Obama stands in stark opposition to Catholic Teaching: on issues that are fundamental and the morally heaviest. I need not rant about the centrality of the abortion and embryonic stem cell issues for an acceptable culture of life and the pursuit of a comprehensive common good. These things should be clear.

Obama has simply proven to be abominable, even monstrous, on such issues. So I wonder what it says when a Catholic university that is supposedly invested in maintaining its identity as a Catholic universitas, invites a commencement speaker who, despite his prominence, is so obviously in opposition to Catholic teaching; and has arguably more power to affect contrary policies than any other person. We might immediately say that Notre Dame need not be endorsing everything the President believes by simply inviting him to speak. And along the same lines, I do not believe that those who voted for Obama necessarily incurred sin as if they formally supported everything he does. But my gut tells me that a Catholic university has a certain obligation when it comes to figures who very publicly oppose Church teaching. It seems we missed an opportunity to show publicly how intolerable Obama's stance is on life-issues is to the Church and the academy.

Imagine if there were a very well known politician who was currently riding a wave of popularity for his promises of social change, financial stability, education reform, foreign policy overhaul, whatever. But this politician was deeply committed to reintroducing the "legal right" for every white man or woman to enslave any African American, as they so "choose." Or worse (and perhaps more apropos): this politician was pushing hard to enshrine the supposed "right" for non-Jewish Americans to murder Jews as they see fit. Or maybe toddlers of any race, for that matter. You get the analogy. If this were the case, wouldn't we have an instinctual problem with a Catholic university inviting such a person to receive an honorary degree and give a speech? Despite the relative good he may have done?

Personally (and pessimistically), I fear this may be more a result of Notre Dame succumbing to the pressures of being a wannabe Ivy-league institution, trying everything it can to run with its "aspirational peers." I fear, as others have, that this requires the school thinking of itself too much as an American research university (or, as Peter Casarella has said, a "multiversity") and not enough as a Catholic university. The famous mantra of fidelity, "God, Country, Notre Dame," would seem to be inverted to "Notre Dame, Country, God." Ralph McInerney has expressed similar concerns about the size and focus of Notre Dame in the past. Kevin Hart, who also had a rich conception of Catholic higher education, fled for UVA in the night. And the university has come under the critical gaze of MacIntyre on more than one occasion (and the mission of the Catholic university is one of the only things he is interested in teaching students about nowadays).

I would like to think that this event is a sign of Obama's willingness to enter into dialogue with the Church and be shaped by its concerns. But somehow I doubt that's the case...

What do people think?

Pax Christi,

Happy Feast of Patrick!

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession
of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

I arise today through the strength of Christ with His Baptism,
through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial
through the strength of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
through the strength of His descent for the Judgment of Doom.

I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubim
in obedience of Angels, in the service of the Archangels,
in hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets,
in preachings of Apostles, in faiths of Confessors,
in innocence of Holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.

I arise today, through the strength of Heaven:
light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendour of Fire,
speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea,
stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.

I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me,
God's host to secure me:
against snares of devils, against temptations of vices,
against inclinations of nature, against everyone who
shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.

I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils):
against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose
my body and my soul,
against incantations of false prophets,
against black laws of heathenry,
against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry,
against spells of women [any witch] and smiths and wizards,
against every knowledge that endangers man's body and soul.
Christ to protect me today
against poison, against burning, against drowning,
against wounding, so that there may come abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,
Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the
Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the
Oneness of the Creator of creation.
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.
Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

Amen.

Pax Christi,

Machiavellian Agnosticism

Today one of the (in my opinion few) praiseworthy acts of the Bush administration was overturned by President Obama's executive order on funding for embryonic stem cell research. Bush's policy wasn't even perfect, and now the problematic contingency of something like an executive order on this issue comes to light. I could rant for hours about the loss of a common understanding of natural law, the common good, a shared moral culture, and basically all of the conceptual and practical resources required for an ethical appeal to something more fundamental than the whims of positive law. But I'll spare you...most of it.

One aspect of the issue that really grinds my gears is the rhetorical framing game that's going on. MacIntyre once noted that one of the deepest flaws of modern political culture is that "professional" politicians and their parties often actively discourage the kind of communal reasoning about the proper ends of politics itself. Too often they succumb to Machiavellian tendencies, framing the debates ideologically and supressing the most relevant questions from even being raised. The political gerrymandering between the parties on "life issues" is a testament to this, and today the news stations were flooded with it.

The way commentators have been spinning the issue is a bit frightening. Much of what I heard has tended to portray this as something like an issue of "science verses religion," as if the discourse of science were offering us one ethical judgment derived from the scientific method (this stuff is good), and revealed religions were offering us the negative judgment in stark contradiction to scientific methodolgy and simply as a tenet of blind belief. Underlying all of this is the problematic assumption that common moral reasoning, rational conclusions about the goodness or badness of human action, is simply an impossibility. Moral opposition here is thus part of the fabric of essentially irrational faith commitments that people are legally free to have. Yet this seems to suggest that non-believers have no good reason- no resources, in fact- to have any ethical problem with it. Why? Because the science part shows us that we can likely cure the sick if we follow it, and therefore it seems to provide some moral guidance.

Frankly, I'm not sure why the scientific part of this is even in the spotlight. It is not an aspect that should even enter the debate (because nothing scientific is being debated by rational people!). When it does, we have the voice of an empirical truth-seeking metholdolgy being employed to weigh-in on judgments that are simply "above its pay grade." Of course then what is really being imposed is a presupposed anthropology and ethics which avoid the critical gaze that an environment of common moral reasoning should be designed for. Use of the language of "science" in this kind of discussion then becomes frighteningly equivocal: shifting back and forth from referents about empirical data on the one hand and evaluative moral judgments on the other. What's scary is that when the discourse of scientific research is not complemented by a proper discourse about human action and human ends, and science is used to try and fill the void, we end up with dangerous beaurecratic logic: the question of means will eclipse questions of ends, and suddenly the utilitarian value of curing countless numbers of suffering people will eclipse the moral weight involved in killing countless unborn children in order to achieve this. This may be no problem for a Scientism, but has little to do with science per se.

The result of all of this is of course that the most relevant question is skillfully avoided: whether or not the embryo that is destroyed to fuel the research is a human life. The more we can avoid making any explicit judgments on this issue, the less the terms of the debate will be understood, the less common moral debate can happen with the promise of common understandings, and the more ideological, hidden presuppositions about ethical value can remain behind the curtain, exerting their influence through manipulation.

Just listen to the talking points: what is emphasized, how questions are dodged and redirected, what stats are used. Note especially how the proponents attempt to appropriate their opponents' supposedly essential "religious" logic, by noting that their faith is one that respects life and encourages us to heal the sick by using this knowledge; without, of course, ever addressing whether they are taking life in order to acheive that oh so pious end.

The nail in the coffin for me was when one CNN anchor (a light in the rhetorical darkness) was bold enough to ask the only question that really mattered of his guest, a congresswoman in favor of the President's move. After her few attempts to duck and weave, he asked: but is this a human life, or only a potential human life? To which she responded: that is "above my pay grade." Here she echoes the now infamous words of President Obama on the abortion issue (which is really the issue in question here). And what this represents is a remarkably clever but remarkably monstrous kind of agnosticism. It is the queen of moral anti-reasoning and rhetorical inconsistency.

If I lived in a country like our own which (now) recognizes that NO man or woman has the right to enslave other human beings; but for some inconceivable reason (maybe extreme ignorance), I believed it to be "above" my epistemological "pay grade" to determine whether or not African Americans are in fact human beings; one would assume that I meant the jury is out, and while it is possible (in this messed up world) that they are not human, it is also certainly possible that they are. If I am committed to African Americans being even potentially human, it wouldn't make much sense to enact a bunch of Jim Crow laws or even policies protecting the right of whites to enslave them, in effect acting as though they were not humans with the same human dignity. By enacting such policies, the commitments entailed by my actions grossly betray the commitments and judgments I expressed through words. So while I say the jury is out, my actions imply a swift verdict, judge, jury, and executioner.

This isn't rocket science. If someone pleads ignorance about what is and is not a human life, but then strongly pushes policy entailing that these things are most certainly not human lives, that is monstrous deception. Anyone who claims that the jury is out, but drops the guillotine, is simply lying, and lying with a purpose.

This is clearly a kind of agnosticism designed to aid a Machiavellian, ideological policy judgment. It is an agnosticism that does not extend beyond words. It is an agnosticism that simply makes no sense. The only truly relevant question here, and the only one that can actually make it a debate, is whether or not in order to get the stem cells you are in fact murdering young human beings. A judgment on this is necessary, and it is either explicitly declared or it is deceitfully hidden. To follow the analogy: there is no policy move for the agnostic; there is only room for the atheists and the theists.

The other problem is that the implications of the judgements is, perhaps purposely, never fully illustrated. Let's use todlers. Say, for the sake or argument, that I was able to grow a batch of ten 3-year old children that sprouted up from the ground; but only one was adopted by parents and the rest will slowly die within a month. Their hearts are all amazinly strong and have the unique ability to adapt perfectly to any body they may be placed in without any signs of rejection by the host body; and in fact, those hearts can be used to clone millions of hearts just like them; but once the children die, the hearts are no good. It sure would be a shame to let those hearts go to waste especially when there are so many suffering people in need of hearts. But...how to get them. Can we harvest those hearts without, by definition, taking the lives of 9 innocent three-year olds, i.e. murdering them?

That is the question everyone must grapple with. Even if folks (like Peter Singer perhaps) say "sure, no problem," at least they've addressed the issue consistently, rather than suppressing it. This would then allow us to argue about the coherence of different ethical systems, and from this dialectic come to radically more informed conclusions about issues like this. At least people would know what is at stake...

For any ethic that houses notions of intrinsically evil actions, the murder of innocent children is an action that can never be ordered to the final human good, and thus no matter how good the result (curing countless millions), or how grim the circumstances (the kids are going to die anyway, no matter what), its never morally acceptable to take the children's lives. And this is a completely reasonable conception of morality! It is not nonsense or something only indoctrinated believers would be willing to accept. It is something that, given a culture that encourages it, reasonable people can grasp and debate.

Pax Christi,

Zombies in Bethany

Though not related to my other exegetical hijinks, I was translating parts of John 11 today for my Greek class and came across a rather disturbing discovery.

In the story of the Raising of Lazarus, Jesus proclaims in a loud voice in front of a large crowd His great confidence that the Father always listens to his prayers (John 11:41-32), and that He boldly told the people to open the tomb so that the crowd will come to believe that He is indeed sent by the Father(v.42). In effect, he says "I know you basically do whatever I ask you all the time, God; but for the sake of these people standing around, let's make some magic happen, huh? Let them know that I'm your number one man." One could interpret Jesus' words here as being rather presumptuous...

And as it turns out, this may have caused things to go horribly wrong. Everyone knows the story as it is often told: that Jesus calls for Lazarus to come out and he stumbles forth, still wrapped in his burial cloths, and Jesus says: "Loose him [lusate auton], and allow him to go away/home" (John 11:44). Jesus has successfully completed a resucitation miracle and sends the man on his way. BUT: The verb luo actually means both "to loose" and "to destroy"!!!! So by following the former meaning, exegetes have horribly misunderstood what is really happening here. This is not the story of a successful miracle, but rather the story of a botched miracle.

It's clear to me that the Father is playing a rather nasty practical joke on Jesus here: seeing that Jesus calls upon Him with all of those expectant eyes watching, the Father only restores Lazarus to an undead state, not to life. So when Jesus sees Lazarus stagger out as a freaking ZOMBIE, he and the entire crowd are struck with fear and Jesus shouts:

[AHHHH!!!!] DESTROY him (lusate auton) and get him out of here!!!!! (kai aphete auton hupagein)

How embarassing for our Lord and Savior...

Pax Christi,

Orthoidos

When writing upon the Triumph of Orthodoxy for Vox Nova this week (the post can be found here) I came to the realization that I needed to use a word, but didn't know of a word to use, and so invented one: orthoidos. The word relates to the transcendental of the beautiful in the way orthodoxy relates to the truth and orthopraxis relates to the good. I used the word eidos, Greek for form, thinking it was best suited for the task at hand (for it comprehends more within its domain than eikonos would).

I described the word itself in footnote 4, saying:

Ortho-eidos. As with the good and the truth, the concrete realization of orthoidos can differ according to circumstance; just as the concrete form of truth is found in the correctness of a statement at a given time and place, so the concrete form of the beautiful is found in how fitting a form is as it is used at a particular time and place. Thus “It is raining,” can be correct or incorrect, depending upon the time the statement is made, so a specific form of eidos, such as a specific architectural design, could be legitimate at one place, and, through a change of circumstances, not something which would be proper to reproduce. Changes in how we live will affect the forms of the buildings we construct, and what is appropriate at one time will no longer be the case later. This can be shown by the fact that we no longer need build walls to defend cities.

Anyone know of a word of similar thought and content, or did I create one of the theological missing links?

Pistisism and the Gospels

N.T. Wright argues rather persuasively in his What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman's Publishing Company, 1997) that the Apostle to the Gentiles was not the ambitious and creative "founder" of Christianity, eclipsing and misinterpreting what Jesus had originally intended to be little more than vague moral guidelines. Rather, Paul was more so a faithful "herald of the king," bearing a message in remarkable continuity with the Jesus tradition.

Well, the light of truth continues to shine upon me as it now seems quite clear that Paul's great teaching of "Justification by Faith Over Christ" was not created by Paul out of thin air, but was rather a teaching Jesus Himself seems to have taught; recorded for us in the theologies of the canonical Gospels.

As we learn from Paul, "Faith" (pistis) is not an attribute or an activity "of" people, but (like Sin) is a cosmic, elemental, transpersonal force. Except unlike Sin and Death, it establishes humanity in the proper covenant relationship with God. In the Gospels, when faith is mentioned, we see that Jesus' relationship to it is radically different from what we normally hear.

The agency of miraculous saving acts is actually attributed to Faith, not Jesus:

Matt 9:22: But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy FAITH hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.

This same pattern occurs in Matthew 9:29 and 15:28, Mark 5:34, 10:52, Luke 7:9-10, 7:50, 8:48, 17:19, 18:48. Mark 2:5 (Luke 5:20) reads:

When Jesus saw their FAITH, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.

As is clear from this passage and its parallels, the only thing that Christ "does" is see that Faith is already healing the sick man. He is just a remarkably observant guy, and his amazing sensitivity to the mysterious saving action of Faith is often mistaken as a sign that he is the agent. However the message of the Gospel is clearly different: Jesus is simply more aware than everyone else of what's really going on, and his attempts to point this out seem constantly to end in misunderstanding. Scholars have been scratching their unkempt heads for decades and decades about Mark's motif of the "Messianic Secret": why is it that Jesus seems to discourage people from proclaiming him as Messiah? NOW it is all so clear!!!

Jesus is more like a really good spectator than an athlete: he is most often described as "seeing" faith, not causing it or doing things because of it. Note the passages in which he is said to either "find" or "not find" Faith:

Matthew 8:10: When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

See also Luke 18:8.

One might notice that it sure seems as though Jesus is ascribing agency to Faith, but specifically to the individual's faith: "your faith has made you whole." This would seem to imply that faith is, after all, a kind of quality or action "of" individual people. However, as in Paul's letters, the truth is revealed when we realize that the evangelists did not use the pronoun sou ("your") here as a Possessive Genitive, but rather as a Genitive of Subordination! Hence, the REAL translation of a passage like Luke 18:42 (and its parallels) reads:

And Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; Faith OVER/HAVING DOMINION OVER YOU has made you well."

Salvation is a result of the cosmic power of Faith man-handling the believer into slave-like submission, dominating the sin out of him or her. The 1st century Judeo-Christian world was all about apocalyptic cosmic struggle, and here it is evident that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet: attempting to unveil to the world the saving action of Faith, even Faith over him.

Pax Christi,

The Sun of Righteousness

Just as when these clouds surround the sun, instead of blocking it out, add to its beauty, so when the clouds of sin surround the Sun of Righteousness at Calvalry, His glory is made even more manifest. All things work for the greater glory of God!

Oriental Orthodox in Ecumenical Dialogue 4

IV Some Final Reflections and Questions

Despite all the praiseworthy advancements that the Oriental Orthodox have made in their dialogues with the Eastern Orthodox and the West, there are still considerable problems and obstacles that need to be addressed. Early in the 1990s it looked like the Oriental Orthodox would achieve communion with the Eastern Orthodox churches. The plans were in place so that both sides would mutually lift the anathemas which divided them, and then they would have an official celebration of communion together by leaders of the churches. However, that has not yet occurred. In 2001 the Coptic and Greek Orthodox Patriarchs of Alexandria, having noticed that restoration for communion had not been achieved, found that they therefore needed to address practical pastoral issues, the chief of which was the issue of mixed marriages by those within each other’s churches.[1]

It has also been revealed that unity will require more than a top-down approach to communion. It will require more than just official dialogues and agreements between the leaders of the churches: it will require the acceptance and understanding by the laity of the different church communities. Efforts have been made to help bring this about, for example, in 2002, the Middle East Council of Churches decided that there is the need “...for the publication in local languages of three Christological agreements signed by the two families of Churches [Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, note mine]...”[2] While the union of the Oriental Orthodox with the Eastern Orthodox churches remains a much more likely possibility than with the West, this kind of activity is also needed within the Oriental Orthodox-Western Church dialogues in order to help solidify the advances which have already been made.

On the other hand, one can look at these pauses and begin to wonder how successful these dialogues will actually turn out to be in hindsight. Looking at historical examples, one can find many failed or short-lasting attempts at unity. Even in the time of St. Cyril of Alexandria, one can note that St. Cyril made an agreement with John of Antioch that looks reminiscent of the theological dialogues of our day. We can see that it was not soon after the death of St. Cyril, however, that controversy once again arose, with the result of the split at Chalcedon. As such, dialogue can be fruitful, but there is the need to make sure that the bonds of unity are stronger this time, so that it does not end up yet another historical example of where good will alone does not help keep a reunited Church.

Another question that needs to be addressed is whether or not the new definitions and agreed statements will be found to be acceptable by both sides. Once again, history provides us clear warnings of what can happen, when definitions are made, accepted, and then, when re-examined, are found insufficient theological strength to hold the union together. Probably the greatest example of this was the development of monothelite theology in the seventh century. By stating that Christ only had one “will” and one “energy,” the Byzantine Emperor and Patriarch thought that this would appease the Oriental Orthodox, which in fact it did. But it was only a short-lived reunion with the Armenians and Coptics, and some could even suggest because it was only made by a Christological word-play.[3] We must also remember it has not been merely theological problems that have to be addressed. While the Christological issue is central, we must see that the real problems behind the original schism must not be overlooked or forgotten. It is easy to see how different Christological positions often talk around each other, without recognizing the unique understanding each of the members in the dialogue possess. When an agreed Christological statement is made, it must be asked: do both sides actually understand that statement with the same intention? What is being done to make sure both sides do so? Have we truly learned from our mistakes as to the significance of culture in how it shapes our own understanding of the words said in agreement, so that it might look like there is an agreement that has been made, but we will find out, in time, as with before, that the true disagreement still remains?

Yet, we must take the positive action between the churches as a good sign. Peter Bouteneff asked, “Do we really want unity, with all the joys and also the challenges and strains that arise from an increased diversity?”[4] All indications say the answer is yes. We live in a time and an age which will work harder to make sure unity can be achieved and sustained. We can look at the Christological debates of history with hindsight; we can look at the disputes, and better understand their root causes, and work to overcome them. But, I think the question of whether we want this unity will be answered by the kind of struggle we make to create it and keep it. Instead of creating a simplified theological statement that can be ambiguously interpreted by different sides we should continue to work and confront the true social-linguistic confusions that remain. Even if the theologians and leaders of the churches can understand the theological agreements which have been made, this understanding needs to be better explained to others, especially to those who fear the ecumenical movement.[5] Those who fear a “false union” need to be shown that they really have nothing to fear, otherwise, if they are not convinced, it is quite possible they will work from within the churches to prevent the desired unity. In the end, we must ask, will good will prevail and allow the churches to be united in love, or will division continue to rule by the dictates of fear?

Footnotes
[1]Petros VII and Shenouda III, “Pastoral Agreement” (2001).
[2] Middle East Council of Churches, “Oriental Orthodox Patriarchs to Build Grass-roots Support for Inter-Orthodox Rapprochement,” MECC News Report, vol. 14, no. 1 (Summer 2002). Journal on-line. Available online http://www.mecchurches.org/newsreport/vol14_1/orthodox.asp. Accessed September 8, 2003.
[3] John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 36-7.
[4] Peter Bouteneff, 166.
[5] As an example to the concerns of many of the Orthodox for “false union,” see the introduction to Ivan N. Ostroumoff, The History of the Council of Florence. trans. Basil Popoff (Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1971). According to the introduction, the Council of Florence should be mentioned whenever talk of ecumenical union is underway – because it represents the fear that councils and reunions forced upon the churches from them can be false unions abandoning the “true faith.” Often those who look to the ecumenical movement with distaste within the different churches do so out of such fears (the fear of accepting heresy), and they use such historical examples to encourage others to follow them in this fear.

A Whole New Heresy

In New Testament studies here at Duke, Richard Hays carries a lot of clout. Hays struck academic gold with his thesis that the forms of "Pistis Christou" as found in Galatians should be translated as subjective genitives rather than objective genitives: the "faith of Christ" rather than "faith in Christ." This, of course, has theological implications for the doctrine of justification, and NT scholars have been fighting over whether the pieces fit the puzzle ever since. Intro classes here make sure to instill a sense of the eminent intelligibility of the thesis. So far, I find it convincing...

But not THAT convincing. In fact, a (very) brief glance at my Greek syntax book has opened my eyes to the real truth of the phrase. I plan to make my millions with a new trailblazing thesis that unveils what Paul REALLY meant by that phrase.

As it turns out, Hays was only partially correct. Paul was actually using a subset of the subjective genitive known as the Genitive of Subordination. It specifies that which is subordinated to or under the dominion of the head noun, and is characteristically used with nouns that lexically imply rule or authority. Well I says: faith certainly implies authority! If it is to be both the foundational principle of doctrine and of our life in the Spirit, then it sure as hell seems pretty authoritative to me!

Consequently, Paul's phrase doesn't read "faith in Christ" or even "faith of Christ," but rather "faith OVER Christ." Faith actually rules over and dominates Jesus in the scheme of justification. Paul's gospel is truly revolutionary: it prioritizes faith to such a degree that Jesus Christ is actually subject like a servant to faith! Faith, not Jesus, fills the shoes of Death and those other elemental powers that rule over the cosmos. Paul's supposed disagreement with the "Judaizers" is actually a red-herring. He agrees completely with them that Christ Jesus is definitely not the source of justification; its just that faith is way better than the Law at being better than Jesus.

Believing in Christ actually leads to faith taking its proper place over and above Christ: Galatians 2:16 thus reads:

"nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith OVER/HAVING DOMINION OVER Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith OVER/HAVING DOMINION OVER Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified.

Eat your heart out, works-righteousness! I figured this brand of heresy would be called "Fideism," but sadly that name was taken. Maybe "Pistisism."

So while you're all collecting the wood to burn me at the stake, I'll be burning in the scholarly spotlight with a wave of career-making new publications.

Cracking Open the Nutshell

Brendan has raised some thought-provoking questions in response to my attempt to present- in a nutshell- what's at stake in the analogia entis. With a teaching this complex, doesn't any bare-bones presentation risk giving birth to a legion of mistaken reductions; allowing the "monsters of concision" to feed on precisely what is left unsaid, or perhaps on what is said without adequate explanation?

In truth, I think the issue of the analogia entis cannot be presented in a nutshell without being in danger of countless reductive conclusions. In my opinion this is the case because 1) analogy is one of the most complex and most fundamental around; and 2) because the univocal mind always has a certain seductive power over us, such that seeing things through a univocal lens will always be a strong temptation. In light of all this, it seems far more likely that any simple explanation of the issue demands a certain back-and-forth and supplementation, progressively sharpening our understanding of it with a certain dialectic. Without this, the way we use language of being will always be heard improperly, and thus nothing will really be said. It's something like a theoretical pendulum, always in need of a push back in the other direction until it finally balances out. In short, it demands that the nutshell be cracked open.

As it turns out, the discussion of whether being is adequate to God or to creatures (in the way I laid it out) presupposes quite a bit about how the terms under discussion are being conceived. Lacking these presuppositions, the dichotomy between God and creatures (as it were, fighting over being) tends to cloud the fact that here we should not, and, I think, ultimately cannot, use the language of being as if we had a definition of it. In other words, it clouds the fact that being is intrinsically analogical (really and notionally).

We might approach the issue, as so many thinkers have, by assuming that being is primarily what marks the difference between us and God: being is proper to God and therefore it cannot be proper to us (resulting in the devaluing of our finite substantiality); or being is proper to us and therefore God must be thought "without" being (ultimately threatening to obscure the relationship between God and creation). Scylla meets Charybdis, and both sides attempt to uphold their primary emphases while figuring ways around their potential flaws. However, the more foundational problem is that such a dichotomy already concedes ground to a univocal vision of being: as if here "being" were functioning like a universally common concept, a "quasi-essence," a grand category, a pure "quality" or the "greatest common denominator" of things, etc. The dynamics of being here are those of genus.

However, a fundamental aspect of metaphysics for Aristotle and Aquinas is the denial that being is a genus. Simply put, differentiating things that fall under the same genus requires the addition of a principle that is external to the genus (specific difference). But here we run into a metaphysical wall: the notion of "extrinsic principle" does not adequately map onto the notion of being, precisely because the only "thing" that can be extrinsic to being is nothing. But, as is obvious, "nothing" can't function as a separate, differentiating principle, thrown into the mix with being (because IT'S NOTHING!). Therefore the kind of differences relevant to the discussion of ontology cannot be thought "outside of" the notion of being, but must rather be intrinsic to it; they must be differences OF being. The unity of being is not like that of an abstract, univocal genus, but is inherently a unity-in-difference.

The denial that being is a genus, and the realization that it is intrinsically plurivocal, completely reorients how we use our ontological language. In this context, with this understanding of being, we can say things like "being is proper to both God and creatures," without presuming that we are talking about some quality they both share, or some generic category they are both lumped under (onto-theology). What our vision implies is not that univocity leads to one speaking too much about the difference between God and creatures; rather, it fails entirely to speak it at all. With a generic conception, if we attribute being to God, any space between equality and nothing disappears, and thus all difference is ultimately conceived nihilistically. Vice-versa, if man claims being as his domain, God can only be an abyss of nothing, and any space of relation to Him vanishes: we then have a kind of nihilistic god-talk, and seemingly Nietzsche's vindication.

Further, analogy is not the attempt to overcome difference, but precisely to speak that difference at all. Analogy is the only real form that the difference takes. Being is not generic, but transgeneric. And when we speak about transgeneric realities (also good, wisdom, life, etc.) as "common" to both God and creatures, an idolatrous equation is actually not implied in our utterance. This means that when we speak about God as the "only reality that fills-out what we mean by 'being'," we are not implicitly denying the being of creatures. In this context, the ways of expressing the difference between God and creatures (uncreated and created, pure act and limited act, simple and composite, Esse Ipsum Subsistens and entia, etc.) really do all the work that so many other thinkers want the language of “being” and “non-being” to do. In fact, they do so far more adequately by avoiding the extremes of obscuring the relationship between God and creatures.

Because of being's transgeneric, non-univocal character, statements like "God has a monopoly on being" don't make a whole lot of sense; being is not the kind of thing one could have a monopoly on (given the fact that there are more than one thing in the world). But if we do say such a thing in this metaphysical context, we are actually pointing toward that which most fully embodies being. Within analogy, claims of monopoly refer to the primal instance, the point of "focal meaning" which provides the intrinsic unity that holds between all the various instances of things that are. For instance, in the order of action, substance is more adequately called "being" than accident is, because accident only "is" derivatively of substance. Likewise, in the order of being (esse), the most adequate is that which exists through itself alone, in an entirely unlimited, unqualified manner: that which just....plain....IS...(God). Composite beings (creatures, by definition) only exist derivatively, dependent upon that which IS unconditionally. Thus the unity subsisting between all the different things that we call "being" derives from the fact that all are ordered to the most fundamental and primary "instance" of being: God. And only in this way, does my former talk about God as the only one "worthy" to be called "Being" have any meaning.

That is a little more of what I think is at stake in the analogy of being....in (or out) of a nutshell.

Pax Christi,

Do you know who it is?

"He recognizes a natural and inexpungable metaphysical exigence to think beyond, to think the ultimate, even if we are denied "legitimated" theoretical knowing of its nature and being. Recall, for instance, his distinction between a "boundary" and a "limit." In our search for univocal knowing, there springs up an equivocal longing for what epistemically is denied to us. I see him bordering on a supreme tension: committed to respect what he saw as the limit, and yet impelled to think at the boundary of the limit, and indeed beyond; pulled on the one side back with the limit, driven out from finitude on the other side, but driven out without the relatively secure univocities of the former.

He is between finitude and infinity, though he often masks that intermediacy in a manner more intent on securing coherent univocity within the between, and letting the equivocal darkness beyond take care of itself. In truth, however, these two sides cannot be kept from each other in an uncontaminated purity."

Who is this person?

Oriental Orthodox in Ecumenical Dialogue 3

III-2 Agreed Statements, East and West

The Oriental and Eastern Orthodox churches have had four official dialogues. They were at Chambesy, Switzerland in 1985; the Anaba Bishoi Monastery in Egypt in 1989; and then two in Chambesy during 1990 and 1993. These dialogues and the official pronouncements made at them reflect upon and develop further the agreements made at the unofficial meetings. At the meeting in 1985, five different commonly held misunderstandings were engaged, because they were the basis by which members of both churches dealt with each other. The most important ones were Christological: that Dioscorus had been condemned by Chalcedon and that Chalcedon had repudiated the teachings of St Cyril of Alexandria.[1]

The meeting in 1989 was monumental because an official Christological declaration had been made at it. Their agreement states that both traditions have held to the one true apostolic faith: “We have inherited from our fathers in Christ the one apostolic tradition, though as churches we have been separated from each other for centuries.”[2] As to Christology, they said that both share a belief in the Logos who is consubstantial with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and that in the incarnation, the Logos had become human and consubstantial with us.[3] As to the hypostasis or person being discussed, “When we speak of one composite (synthetos) hypostasis of our Lord Jesus Christ, we do not say that in Him a divine hypostasis and a human hypostasis came together.”[4] The union is real, but the different natures must not be confused, mingled, or seen to be changed by the process of the incarnation.[5] It was suggested that this agreement could be used by both traditions, so that both could use different terminology to explain the one truth they share in common: “Those among us who speak of two natures in Christ do not thereby deny their inseparable, indivisible union; those among us who speak of one united divine-human nature in Christ do not thereby deny the continuing dynamic presence in Christ of the divine and human, without change or confusion.”[6]

After achieving a Christological definition at Bishoi, the remaining dialogues sought out to understand what this agreement meant in practicality. First it was seen that the anathemas and condemnations against each other should be lifted.[7] But this was not the only concern. For example, they had to determine how were they going to educate the laity about the meaning of their agreement. Moreover, they had to figure out the relationships between the churches, and what it meant, for example, to mixed-marriages. Last, and not least, was the question of full union – how would they go about it if doctrinal disputes were truly at an end? Two different methodologies were suggested, and both are still in the process of being examined: should they be united through a council or through local, bi-lateral dialogues that result in different churches being integrated together?[8] Current discussions, as for example between the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria and the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, have been based more upon the latter model than the former.[9]

With the West, the Oriental Orthodox have had several bi-lateral dialogues between particular Oriental Churches and Rome. As with the Orthodox, there is a general inclination to see that there is no real basis for the Christological division. But it has, to date, been established primarily by bi-lateral declarations. For example, such a declaration between Pope John Paul II and Holy Holiness Mar Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, Patriarch of Antioch and the head of the Syrian Orthodox Church stated, “Accordingly, we find today no real basis for the sad division and schism that subsequently arose between us concerning the doctrine of the incarnation.”[10] Between the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church there arose a small, simple statement of Christology in 1988. Representing the fruit of 17 years of dialogue, it reads:

We believe that our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, the Incarnate-Logos is perfect in His Divinity and perfect in His Humanity. He made His Humanity One with His Divinity without Mixture, nor Mingling, nor Confusion. His Divinity was not separated from His Humanity even for a moment or twinkling of an eye.

At the same time, we anathematize the Doctrines of both Nestorius and Eutyches.[11]

There are, to be sure, several differences in the dialogues between Rome and the Orthodox Churches by the non-Chalcedonians. Of course, this is to be expected, in part because they have far more concerns to work out between their traditions than the Eastern Orthodox have with the Oriental Orthodox, such as, for example, the question of the filioque.[12] There has been progress and the scope of the dialogue has changed, so that in January of 2003 there was a Preparatory Committee established to help create a Joint Commission between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches,[13] and the first meeting of that commission took place in January 2004.[14]

Interestingly enough, the Oriental Orthodox churches have also begun to engage in Christological dialogue with the Anglican and Reformed Churches.[15] Jeffrey Gros points out that although there has been substantial dialogue within the World Council of Churches between the World Alliance of Reformed churches and the Oriental Orthodox churches, it was in 1991 that we find the willingness to enter into bi-lateral dialogue between the two.[16] In 1994 this resulted in an agreed Christological statement, similar in kind and substance as with the ones with the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches. However, there are others issues they felt they need to address with these traditions, such as the role of Mary. Interestingly enough, they were able to come to an agreement where Mary was to be called Theotokos, “because God the Word became incarnate and was made human, and he very conception united to himself the temple taken from her.”[17] They also agreed to the need for four areas of theological dialogue, where it was believed they needed to clarify each other’s understanding: 1) concept of history and revelation, 2) ways to interpret scripture 3) how does history affect scriptural interpretation and 4) the question of canonical books in differing traditions.[18]

Footnotes
[1] Theodore Pulcini, 43.
[2] “Damascus Papandreou, “Communique of the Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches (Anba Bishoy Monastery, Egypt, 20 – 24 June, 1989)” Greek Orthodox Theological Review, vol. 34, no.4 (Winter 1989), 394.
[3] Ibid., 395.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 396.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Theodore Pulcini, 44.
[8] John Meyendorff reflected upon both of these options. “The ideal solution would, of course, be the tenure of a joint Great Council, at which unity would be proclaimed and sealed in a joint Divine Liturgy. [...] The history of the Church has also known precedents for initiatives taken regionally. Indeed, some regional circumstances may, in fact, favor unions which cannot by initiated elsewhere.” John Meyenedorff, “Chalcedonians and Non-Chalcedonians: The Last Steps to Unity” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, vol. 33, no.4 (1989), 327-8.
[9] See Patriarch Petros VII and Pope Shenouda III, “Official Statement of the Pastoral Agreement Between the Coptic Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Patriarchates of Alexandria” (2001). Available online http://www.orthodoxunity.org/state05.html. Accessed September 8, 2003.
[10] John Paul II and Mar Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, “Common Declaration” chap. in Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level 1982 – 1998. ed. by Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, Wililam G. Rusch, Faith and Order Paper No. 187 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 691.
[11] Pope Shenouda III, The Nature of Christ. (Ottawa: N.p., 1985; Cairo: Dar El-Tabaa El Kawimia, 1991), 47.
[12]See, for example, the discussion on the filioque in the International Joint Coptic-Catholic Commission’s “Report of the International Joint Commission for Dialogue between the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church” chap. in Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level 1982 – 1998. ed. by Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, Wililam G. Rusch, Faith and Order Paper No. 187 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 695.
[13] John Paul II, “Address of John Paul II To the Members of the Preparatory Committee Charged with Preparing the Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches.” (January 28, 2003). Available on-line http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2003/january/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20030128_catholic-orthodox_en.html. Accessed September 8, 2003.
[14] Middle East Council of Churches, “Catholics, Oriental Orthodox Open Official Dialogue,” MECC News Report, vol.14, no.3-4 (Winter 2003). Journal on-line. Available online http://www.mecchurches.org/newsreport/vol14_34/dialogue.asp. Accessed September 9, 2003.
[15] The Anglican-Oriental Orthodox International Commission’s Agreed Statement on Christology was released in November 1992. An interesting section of it reads, “We agree that God the Word became incarnate by uniting to His divine uncreated nature with its natural will and energy, created human nature with its natural will and energy. The union of natures is natural, hypostatic, real and perfect. The natures are distinguished in our mind in thought alone. He who wills and acts is always the one hypostasis of the Logos incarnate with one personal will.” Joint Anglican-Orthodox International Commission, “Agreed Statement on Christology” (November 5 – 10, 2002), paragraph 7. Available online: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ecumenical/oriental/200211christology.html. Accessed September 21, 2003. With this, we can see how some other ways of reading the Christological issue have been resolved: the distinctions in Christ are logical (mental) constructions, and not real.
[16] Jeffrey Gros, “Reformed-Oriental Orthodox Dialogue: Historical Introduction” chap. in Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level 1982 – 1998. ed. by Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, Wililam G. Rusch, Faith and Order Paper No. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 291.
[17] “Agreed Statement on Christology,” (September 13, 1994) chap. in Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level 1982 – 1998. ed. by Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, Wililam G. Rusch, Faith and Order Paper No. 187 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 292.
[18] Ibid., 293.

Oriental Orthodox in Ecumenical Dialogues 2

III-1 Return to Dialogue: The Initial Contact Between the Oriental Orthodox Churches with the East and West In the Modern Era

Much has changed since the early ecumenical dialogues the Chalcedonians had with the non-Chalcedonians. In politics, the direct influence of Christianity has tremendously diminished. We can see that in our present age, as the Coptic Orthodox priest Fr. Tadros Malaty puts it, “...every church deeply desires Church unity on an ecumenical level.”[1] Many new factors have led to such a change. It is no longer fear of Islam which creates a need for churches to be united. It is the embarrassment of a divided Christianity in the wake of a secular world which makes Christians pause and think something needs to be done. And now we have new ways to engage dialogue; we have been given new hermeneutical tools which can be used to uncover what each side of the dialogue has been trying to say, and not just get bogged down by the same miscommunication that has happened before.

If we want to see what has been going on in recent times between the Oriental Orthodox Churches with Chalcedonian Churches, it’s best to go back to 1951, because that year celebrated the1500th anniversary of the Council of Chalcedon. In that year, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras, wrote an encyclical that called for a dialogue between the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches. What Patriarch Athenagoras said within it is quite interesting and relevant: even though the Oriental Orthodox churches do not use the same terminology as the Council of Chalcedon, they are to be seen as perfectly orthodox in their Christology.[2]

Although Patriarch Athenagoras called for dialogue in 1951, it took over a decade for it to materialize. It was at the Pan-Orthodox meeting at Rhodes in 1961 when both sides finally agreed to start such a dialogue. A representative was chosen by both sides to work together, and find the place and means whereby that dialogue could begin.[3] In the next several years, there were four unofficial meetings between the Oriental Orthodox and Orthodox Churches: at Aarhus, Denmark in 1964; Bristol, England in 1967; Geneva, Switzerland in 1970 and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1971.[4] At these meetings, several points were made that would find themselves restated in the much later official dialogues. The statement made Aarhus shows us the roots of the Christological agreement which would take place between the Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox. In it, it states:

On the essence of the Christological dogma we found ourselves in full agreement. Through the different terminologies used by each side, we saw the same truth expressed. Since we agree in rejecting without reservation the teaching of Eutyches as well as Nestorius, the acceptance of non-acceptance of the Council of Chalcedon does not entail the acceptance of either heresy. Both sides found themselves fundamentally following the Christological teaching of the one undivided Church as expressed by St. Cyril.[5]

The theological writings of St. Cyril of Alexandria became a link which united the Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox churches. Both sides were able to see each other as being faithful to his teachings, even if they did not portray it in the same way. They begun to understand that the intentions behind historical Christological definitions, and not just the letter of those definitions, needed to be grasped and used. For it was quite apparent that what each side understood as the meaning behind those definitions were not the same: their conflict and confusion rested in how each side had a different technical meaning for the words used in the definitions. Peter Bouteneff provides an ample demonstration of this by looking at Armenian theology, and how even within the Armenian church itself there are different understandings as to the meaning of important terms like hypostasis and prosopon (person):

A clear example of the different uses of the terms hypostasis and prosopon can be found in the Christologies of certain Armenian theologians, who teach that because it is impossible that there be a nature without a hypostasis, one cannot say that the Logos assumed human nature alone from the Virgin Mary, but a human hypostasis and prosopon. To Chalcedonian ears, at any rate, this sounds not like monophysitism but Nestorianism![6]

If it can be difficult within the same cultural background for people to have the same understanding about key terms, then it is obvious how difficult it would be to portray this in dialogues that go beyond the domains of a single culture. It is because of this that the theologians recognized that what was needed was to look at what each side was actually trying to say about Christ beyond the words they were using. When they did so, they came to the conclusion that they shared the same Christological heritage.

At Bristol, the agreement from Aarhus had not simply been restated. The meeting sought to go deeper into their Christological examination. It provided a clear statement as to the common agreement between the churches: both sides recognized in Christ there was a union of the two natures where they were united without change or confusion and yet unable to be separated or divided from each other after the incarnation.[7] At Geneva, coming into the meeting with this common understanding of Christ, the questions went beyond the Christological and into more practical concerns: can there be re-union between the churches if both sides do not agree upon the authority of the same number of Ecumenical Councils; what should be done about the saints that each side possessed who had been anathematized by the other (should they all be recognized as saints, and if so, how since one side would see the others’ saints as condemned?); lastly, since the churches often had jurisdictions in the same region, and it was seen as improper that more than one bishop should have jurisdiction in the same area, how would this jurisdictional problem be resolved if intercommunion was established.[8] The fourth conference at Addis Ababa reiterated a difficulty that had to be resolved about the saints: could the churches lift anathemas that condemned each others saints, and if so, how, since many of those anathemas came from the highest level of authority accepted by each respective church (such as an ecumenical council)? Would an ecumenical council itself be the only authority by which those anathemas could be lifted? It was also agreed by the end of this fourth meeting that something more official should be set up between the churches, and that the unofficial meetings had done as much as they could do on their own.[9]

In the 1970s, while there were occasional consultations between the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox, those official dialogues did not take place. But it was during this decade that improved relations between the West and the Oriental Orthodox began to take place. First, there were four unofficial ecumenical meetings between the Oriental Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches at the Pro Oriente Ecumenical Institute in Vienna during 1971, 1973, 1976, and 1978.[10] Secondly, several bi-lateral dialogues between the Catholic church and individual Oriental Orthodox churches had taken place, and some ended with a common declaration between the two. In Ut Unum Sint, Pope John Paul II reflected upon these dialogues and what he saw as to their success: “And precisely in relation to Christology, we have been able to join the Patriarchs of some of these Churches in declaring our common faith in Jesus Christ, true God and true man. Pope Paul VI of venerable memory signed declarations to this effect with His Holiness Shenouda III, the Coptic Orthodox Pope and Patriarch, and His Beatitude Jacoub III, the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.”[11]

Following the theological investigations, unofficial meetings, and official declarations that had been made in the 1960s and 1970s, the next two decades provided even more indications that the problems the Oriental Orthodox has had with Chalcedonian churches are either near or at an end. Huge strides have been made, although, it must be noted, not without some questions which still need to be addressed, and we will look at a few of them later.

Footnotes

[1] Tadros Malaty, Introduction to the Coptic Orthodox Church. (Alexandria: N.p., 1993), 290.
[2] Thomas Fitzgerald, “Toward the Reestablishment of Full Communion: The Orthodox-Oriental Dialogue” The Greek Orthodox Review, vol. 36, no. 2 (1991), 171.
[3] The Orthodox representative was Nikos Nissiotis and the Oriental Orthodox representative was Paul Verghese of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church. See Theodore Pulcini, “Recent Strides Towards Reunion of the Eastern and Oriental Churches: Healing the Chalcedonian Breach” Journal of Ecumenical Studies, vol. 30, no.1 (Winter 1993), 37-8.
[4] Thomas Fitzgerald, 172.
[5] Agreed Statement (August 14, 1964), The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, vol. 10, no.2 (1964-5), 14.
[6] Peter Bouteneff, “Chalcedonians and Non-Chalcedonians: Realizing Unity” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, vol. 42, no.2 (1998), 156 –7.
[7] Theodore Pulcini, 40.
[8] Ibid., 41.
[9] “Fourth Unofficial Consultation Between Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Theologians, Addis Ababa, January 22-23, 1971” Greek Orthodox Theological Review, vol. 16, no.1-2(1971), 213.
[10] Damaskinos Papandreou, “Oriental Orthodox-Roman Catholic Dialogue: Historical Introduction” chap. in Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level 1982 – 1998. ed. by Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, Wililam G. Rusch, Faith and Order Paper No. 187(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 688.
[11] Pope John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, paragraph 62.

Oriental Orthodox in Ecumenical Dialogues 1

I. Introduction

In 1995, Pope John Paul II gave bold support for the ecumenical movement.[1] He was quite clear: Christians should strive for unity, not because it was his own personal desire, but because it was Jesus’ will:

Jesus himself, at the hour of his Passion, prayed ‘that they may all be one’ (Jn 7:21). This unity, which the Lord has bestowed on his Church and in which he wishes to embrace all people, is not something added on, but stands at the very heart of Christ’s mission. Nor is it some secondary attribute of the community of his disciples. Rather, it belongs to the very essence of this community. God wills the Church, because he wills unity, and unity is an expression of the whole depth of this agape.[2]

For centuries Christians had read Jesus’ prayer for Christian unity. But, as history shows us, it did not become a motivating factor, and they did not engage it as a matter of praxis. Rivalries for power and dissentions in beliefs quickly formed within the Church. While one might point out the political struggles which helped form great divisions between Christians, and use that to suggest that such division existed because of lone individuals who thirsted for power, this would be a simplified and unjust examination of the situation We must be willing to recognize that good Christians, not seeking glory or power, but seeking truly to understand their faith, did have different views of that faith, and the reasons for these differences are as complex as the personalities involved. As we shall discover, recognizing this very fact has been, and continues to be, one of the fruits of ecumenical dialogue. This is quite noticeable when one examines the division between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian churches.[3]

While it is true that the Council of Ephesus made the first major ecclesial division,[4] there is no doubt that there is something special about Chalcedon, and the division which it created was of a greater nature than what occurred at Ephesus. For those who accepted Chalcedon’s authority, its Christological definition became the normative explanation for how one was to proclaim the personage of Jesus Christ. It was an imperative for them (the Catholic Church and most of the Western tradition, and the Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches) to follow the tenets of Chalcedon: Jesus Christ is the second person of the divine Trinity, fully divine and fully human, indivisibly one in hypostasis and without confusion in his two natures.[5] Those who rejected Chalcedon did so because they understood it as being fundamentally flawed and Nestorian in its content. For over fifteen hundred years, Chalcedon has been a dividing line which neither side has been willing to step beyond.

II Encounters and Dialogues Before 1951

Despite what occurred at Chalcedon, there have been several attempts throughout the years where one side or the other of the Chalcedonian divide tried to find an amicable solution and resolution to their theological conflict. It is also interesting to note that the rupture between the Orthodox and Catholic churches that emerged after Chalcedon helped to create ways by which both the Orthodox and the Catholics were able to enter into dialogue with one or more of the Oriental Orthodox churches.

We can see how this worked out before the modern era by looking at one of the particular Oriental Orthodox Churches: the Armenian Apostolic Church. Catholicos Karekin I’s article “Ecumenical Trends in the Armenian Church,” offers us a great amount of information. In it, he explains that the Armenian Church did not find itself entirely isolated from the rest of the Christian world (and the same can be said about most of the other Oriental Orthodox Churches, to one degree or another).[6] “Despite times of bitter controversy and confrontation, relations were pursued with the Greek and Georgian churches, with the Byzantine patriarchate of Constantinople and with Syriac communities.”[7]

Probably the most interesting example of this can be found during the twelfth century. In 1165, the Armenian Bishop Nerses the Gracious (later, the Armenian primate) had a Christological dialogue with Duke Alexis, a representative of the Byzantine Emperor.[8] Alexis was so impressed of what he heard that he asked for a written exposition and record of their dialogue. Nerses accepted the request, and he wrote what the Armenians call the Pontifical Letter of St Nerses the Gracious. Both the Byzantine Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople were intrigued by the position of Bishop Nerses, and they wanted an active dialogue with the Armenians. They believed it would be possible to bring both churches back into communion with each other. The dialogue went from 1165 through 1179, when it ended at the time of the Emperor’s death. There were many ecumenical advances that foreshadow the trends of modern dialogues. For example, the Armenian and Byzantine churches saw that the Christological caricatures each side had placed against each other had been wrong, and that neither side was heretical.[9]

On the other end of the spectrum, the Western Church actively began a reengagement with the Armenians during the Crusades. There was, as Karekin I points out, a lot of political motivation behind the Armenian dialogue with the West: “[...] the kings and political authorities of Cilician Armenia, for example, encouraged an ecclesiastical rapprochement with the West, in the hope and expectation that Western principalities would thereby extend assistance to support the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia.”[10] Sadly, since the dialogue was mostly politically motivated, and as the political alliance that the Armenians desired did not surface, the dialogues ended up being merely controversial debates on doctrinal and liturgical differences without much success in creating a mutual understanding. Yet, we must remember, as Karekin points out, this does not mean there were not any fruitful aspects to this dialogue. “The exchange [...] became a source of enrichment to the Armenians, especially with regard to science and such arts as literature and manuscript illumination, but also in certain aspects of social life.”[11]

Before entering into the modern era, we should also briefly examine one of the more important ecumenical dialogues of the late medieval era, the Council of Florence in 1438 – 1445. While the dialogue and brief reunion between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches is usually what people are interested about Florence, we must remember that the Oriental Orthodox were also present, although what was said was mostly in a side-dialogue with the Catholic Church.[12] John Meyendorff tell us that despite being a failure, the council itself “is of great theological significance.”[13] Even though the reason for the council could be seen as primarily political, nonetheless there was at the council itself a great and very active dialogue on the disputed questions between the churches. It represented both some of the best and worst approaches to ecumenism. The concessions that were had at the council by each side were many, and allowed for a great diversity of theological thought and liturgical traditions within the Church. The way the agreement had been made, mostly forced upon the East for aid against the Turks, also demonstrates to us that ecumenical unions are not always made for the right reason, nor are they always strong (as the quick demise of the union established at Florence shows).[14] Because of its failure, there is often a hesitancy by Orthodox theologians to believe that the solution to Christian division will be found within a new grand ecumenical council.

Footnotes

[1] Through the publishing of his encyclical Ut Unum Sint.
[2] John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint Of the Holy Father John Paul II On Commitment to Ecumenism. Vatican translation (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1995), paragraph 9.
[3] Those churches which are called the Oriental Orthodox Churches are the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church, and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church of India.
[4] Those who rejected the Council of Ephesus helped to form the Church of the East.
[5] See Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma. trans. Roy J. Deferrari (London: B. Herder Book Co., 1954), citation 148.
[6] It is true that the closer one of the Oriental Orthodox churches were to a different ecclesiastical community, the more interaction they would have with each other. They would share common regional problems (for example, what to do with Islam) and this would mean they had more reason to interact with each other and to support each other despite their differences.
[7] Catholicos Karekin I, “Ecumenical Trends in the Armenian Church” Ecumenical Review, vol. 51 (January 1999), 31.
[8] Ibid., 33.
[9] “A tacit consensus was actually reached that when the Armenians spoke of ‘one nature’ of Christ [...] they were neither confusing the two natures nor accepted one and rejecting the other [....] Conversely, when the Byzantines spoke of ‘two natures’, they were not separating Christ into two entities.” Ibid., 33.
[10] Ibid., 33.
[11] Ibid., 34.
[12] For example, see Denzinger citations 695 – 702 to read from the Decree for the Armenians.
[13] John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974; second edition, 1983), 109.
[14] Despite its failure, the model established at Florence became the normative way that the Catholic Church interacted with the Eastern and Oriental Churches. “In the course of the last four centuries, in various parts of the East, initiatives were taken within certain churches and impelled by outside elements, to restore communion between the church of the East and the church of the West. These initiatives led to the union of certain communities with the See of Rome, and brought with them, as a consequence, the breaking of communion with their mother churches of the East. This took place not without the interference of extra-ecclesial interests. In this way Oriental Catholic Churches came into being.” Joint International Catholic-Orthodox Commission, “Uniatism, Method of Union of the Past, and the Present Search for Full Communion,” (1993) chap. in The Quest for Unity: Orthodox and Catholics in Dialogue. ed. by John Borelli and John H. Erickson (Crestwood, N.Y.: Saint Vladimir Seminary Press,), paragraph 8.

Analogia...in a nutshell

The question of the analogia entis and analogical language in general is often posed in terms of how God could possibly be thought of as "being" (or "good" or "beautiful," or "wise," etc.). Really that's only part of the question. The real mind-blowing issue that metaphysics raises is: how can WE adequately be thought of as "being?"

"To be" is notionally pretty simple. But when we speak of the being of creatures, we describe things that do not exist by definition. That is, they do not exist simplicter; nowhere in the description of what they are will you find "exists." We are talking about things ontologically composite: because things come to be and pass away, and the world could have kept on going without them existing, what they are is something conceptually (and really) separate from that they are. "Being" said of creatures thus never means "simply to be," because coming to be and passing away is not what we really mean by "being." We always point to a limited instantiation. There is always a qualification.

But how does being come to have this limited sense? Why not imagine something that just plain IS? That fully makes-real what we mean by "to be?" In fact, we can't avoid addressing such a "thing." Because acknowledging that what the things around us are is different from the fact that they are, we implicitly acknowledge that they are created: they are caused to be. They must receive their existence from something outside of themselves (their essence). And after all of the connecting-of-the-dots that St. Thomas does in the first 11 questions of the Prima Pars, we conclude among other things that in order to be the kind of thing that causes the being of all things, this Cause cannot itself be ontologically composite. It cannot receive its existence from something else, for then we would have to look for something else that already was before. In other words, the way that this thing exists is simple.

That would be what all call God (if you hadn't guessed). The fact that He is the First Cause in the order of existence entails that He simply IS. His "whatness" and His "thatness" are identical, and He doesn't "have" Being, Goodness, Wisdom, etc. He just plain IS His Being, Goodness, Wisdom, etc.! God IS in the fullest sense of the word, he fills it out. As it turns out, He is the only "thing" worthy enough to be called being. When we say "He is," we can mean it; and when we say that other things "are," we are always speaking with a kind of inherent blasphemy.

So the question of religious language can be flipped around: acknowledging all this, we are forced to admit that God monopolizes the concept of "being;" so while we may have a word in itself completely adequate to God, we have seemingly evacuated language of the ability to talk about the things around us. Instead of negative theology, we are seemingly forced into a kind of "negative anthropology" (possibly even a "negative physics," and a "negative biology," etc.). How could any human discourse that claims "humans ARE tall/short/bipedal/good-looking/intelligent" or "trees ARE leafy/plants/tall/rooty/" really say anything meaningful if things actually "aren't?"

If we are to talk about our "being," then we do so only with an understanding of how inadequate our use of it is. Our composite nature means two things: 1) we receive our being as a gift, we are caused to exist by something outside of ourselves which simply IS; and 2) we do not exist simply but only in a very qualified, limited sense. These two statements express the same fact in different ways. As caused to be by that which fully IS, we get a limited share in being. The traditional way to say this is that we participate in being. For God to cause something to exist is inherently to give it a limited share, a taste, of what it is for Him to be. To put it technically, efficient causality implies exemplary causality.

It may be more accurate to say that we "have" our existence, rather than that we exist. But the point remains that in actuality, we are more downgrading a divine tongue when we speak ontologically about common things than we are imposing a foreign speech onto something that has nothing to do with "being" when we speak about God.

The primary meaning of the word "Being" is thus cashed out in God. But composite beings don't exist on their own, they only "have being" due to God causing it in them. That means that language of "being" can only be attributed to us in virtue of the causal relationship. There is the famous example of "healthy." We speak to the focal meaning of the word "healthy" when we use it of people (or animals): Joe is healthy because his mind and body are in a certain order. But when we describe medicine as "healthy," or say that our urine is "healthy looking," we aren't speaking in the same sense. We can only attribute "healthy" to things like medicine and urine in virtue of some relationship they have to the primary meaning: medicine causes health in a man, and urine can in cases be a sign of it.

Composite being in its very structure stands to simple Being as effect to Cause. Thus we can only speak of ourselves and other natural things as "being" because they bear an ontological relation to God.

That is one way to go about describing analogy....in a nutshell.

Pax Christi,

Can I Get a Witness?

I'm very slowly making my way through Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapid and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,2006). I still have a ways to go yet, but so far the book is really captivating. The first chapter ("From the Historical Jesus to the Jesus of Testimony") provides a good overview of his project.

Bauckham begins by addressing the relation between the "Historical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith;" though this is, in fact, a dichotomy that Bauckham himself denies. For Christians, theology and dogmatic faith have always rested upon a profound trust that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John give us access to the "real" Jesus: Jesus as He existed in history. Yet the quests for the historical Jesus (with their various sequels) have generally operated with a profound distrust of the canonical Gospel accounts. Because of more honed historical methods, the historicity of the Gospels is suddenly challenged: now tangled up in the concerns of later church communities and the countless contaminating influences affecting the authors and their agendas. The Gospels, once transparent windows into the reality of Jesus, are now more like padlocked doors. Their methodological shoddiness masks the truth of Jesus' history more than it illuminates it. The truth of the figure known as Jesus must then be sought behind, rather than in, the Gospels. And the source of Christian faith in such accounts cannot derive from the authority of text or tradition themselves, but only from the reconstruction of the historical figure that the scholar molds, passing the clay through the furnace of methodological skepticism.

But as Bauckham notes, the methodology of the quests can only result in diverse reconstructions, rather than one solid consensus on the person of Jesus. We end up with divergent historical accounts that we can intelligibly call alternative gospels: the good news according to Crossan, Borg, Meier, Wright, Sanders, etc. This is because contra historical positivism, all historiography is inherently a combination of factual data and interpretive construction. It's rather obvious in the case of the Gospels; for as written for the specific purpose of inspiring faith in their subject, they are an apparent collage of theologically interpreted history. While the Gospels are not exactly upfront about their factual errors, the modern scholarly gospels have what seems to be the opposite problem: by continually emphasizing their historical-factual precision, they tend to disguise the dimension of interpretation and intuition in their accounts. They tend to silently presume an Archimedean point of view from which they gaze plainly upon the truth of the past, often ignorant of their own hermeneutical biases. Much like the Enlightenment accounts of pristine universal reason, we often get projects acting as if there is nothing at all in the background, and nothing at all brushed under the rug.

So if all historiography is inherently an amalgam of fact and interpreted meaning, then all historical sources -ancient or modern- should be scrutinized with attention to both dimensions. And that means appraising modern reconstructions with a keen eye to what is presupposed, what conceptions about the world and about truth and even about history itself are informing the historian's work. Modern reconstructions are still profoundly similar to the Gospels, precisely because they are both constructions.

It is then rather easy to see that increased historical knowledge can only complement the Gospel accounts, for which the theological meaning of the facts may be considered more central than the facts themselves. But the crucial question for Bauckham is: can a modern reconstruction ever replace the Gospels? Can a novel attempt to do precisely what the evangelists did, but with new-and-improved historical methods, ever provide the kind of access the the reality of Jesus that the Gospels themselves do in the eyes of Christianity? Can it ever provide the same kind of foundation for dogmatic reflection?

As the path diverges in the theological forest, Bauckham refuses to follow either the way of secularized historiography or a kind of Docetic theology divorced from history. Rather, he sees the paths converging in the historical Jesus through the key category of "eyewitness testimony." The kind of historiography that the Gospels are, he claims, is a testimony that intrinsically calls for trust in its proclamation. The criteria for trusting or distrusting such a history are the same criteria for trusting or distrusting witnesses. The proper response to authentic testimony is trust.

Understood as testimony, the Gospels become a perfectly reliable means of access to the historical Jesus. Testimony, which is in some sense involved in all historical enterprises, provides a way to read the Gospels both historically and theologically without conflict. For testimony unites the reliability of an eyewitness, involved in some measure in the historical events, with the theological interpretation of the events that the eyewitness was in a unique place to provide. So while historiography remains an entangled combination of fact and interpreted meaning, the Gospels are no longer viewed as imposing much later, alien interpretive concerns on events that are factually distant from them. The paradigm for the Gospel stories is now the interpreted factual accounts of the eyewitnesses: or rather, the events as interpreted by those involved in the events themselves. The question can thus be phrased this way: can the factual precision of modern critical methods ever trump the unique interpretive vantage point of the eyewitnesses to Jesus' historical reality and their traditions? Can the meaning provided by a purer collection of historical data ever replace the meaning of the events as seen by those who were part of Jesus' story?

To secure this ideal, Bauckham must argue that the Gospel texts are much closer to stories that the eyewitnesses told than is commonly acknowledged. The editing and layers of interpretation do not obscure their fundamental faithfulness to the stories the eyewitnesses told, not nearly to the extent that most scholars have come to accept as "gospel truth." Bauckham bolsters his account by drawing from ancient Greco-Roman historical methods, in which eyewitness testimony served as the ideal source for writing about the past: participation in the events, and not a sober dispassionate perspective, was cherished above all; for their unique vantage point of interpretation was not considered an obstacle to the meaning of what really happened but rather essential to it. Eyewitnesses were as much interpreters as observers (so why not trust their combination over the research and interpretation of modern alternatives?). If this is the way historical work operated, how events were passed on, then the canonical Jesus was already an interpreted Jesus from the very first telling. Such a paradigm seems to put a grand restriction on the ambitions of modern reconstructions to get back to a Jesus that was unsullied by someone's "perspective" (since ANY material considered by the standards of the time to be reliable history would have been already an interpretation!). Remembering and retelling were themselves hermeneutical acts, and the unique authority eyewitnesses had regarding the meaning of events was key.

Contra form criticism, Bauckham vigorously attacks the notion that the Evangelists were removed from the first-hand accounts of the events by a long process of anonymous transmission of the traditions; arguing rather that the Evangelists were more likely in direct contact with eyewitnesses. Bauckham seems to have exposed a chink in the armor of form criticism by noting that, if they got it right, how then explain the disappearance of the disciples and their stories from the historical map? Are we to believe that the individuals whom Christ chose to carry on his message did not tell their story, did not attract followers who heard them and respected them with the authority of an eyewitness (common to ancient times), and that the way the Christian movement interpreted the life of their founder would be so remarkably detached from the way the very first followers told the tale? It is far more likely, according to Bauckham, that the disciples would have traveled, taught, preached, and told their stories to the communities they founded. And their versions of Jesus' teachings and life story would naturally have taken precedent in the communities over those of followers more historically or geographically removed. In place of "anonymous tradition," the stories were likely attached to specific, personal tradents who became authoritative figures. Further, the Gospels were likely written within living memory of the events they recount, not nearly as separated in time as many scholars assume; probably put in writing so that once the eyewitnesses passed, their stories would not be forgotten or distorted. The accounts of anonymous oral transmission analogous to folklore traditions simply presuppose a patently unrealistic temporal and spatial gulf: communities were not nearly widespread enough and not nearly enough time had passed to be comparable!

Bauckham makes a number of unpopular scholarly claims, ones with a heavy argumentative burden on their shoulders. He spends pretty much the rest of the book providing analysis and historical evidence to back up these claims. Apart from the staggering scope of his project, and the mountain of opposition needed to be scaled, his arguments are eminently convincing. They ring with a certain reasonableness and certainly shatter the presumed hegemony of the modern quests in my mind. Overall, the book has been clear, well-argued, and simply exciting. Bauckham seems to be fighting inch by inch to reclaim a little space, a bit of breathing room, for the fundamental reliability of the Gospels. All while maintaining allegiance to historical-critical standards and theological potency. It is, without doubt, a work to be talked about for some time to come.

For those interested, the latest issue of Nova et Vetera contains a number of essays discussing the book, along with Bauckham's responses.

Pax Christi,

What is the Home in Our Modern World?

The following is written in the spirit of Peter Maurin's Easy Essays, and was inspired by Wendel Berry:
(My apologies for its rather melancholy tone...)

What is the Home in Our Modern World?

Is it a place of instruction,
Where the young mind first
Begins to ask the great questions,
And education, arising in the context
Of parental love, is a joy, a blessing, and a gift?
No, in our modern world, we leave education
To the state-determined specialists whose
Business of “knowledge” can only occur
Within the confines of a sterile, insipid
State-sanctioned classroom, and
Education is little more than
Another joyless commodity,
Bought and sold only
To ensure future
Buying and
Selling.

Is it a place of nourishment,
Where the human body comes
To know itself in its relationship with
The Earth and land that brought forth its
Beautiful fruits from its generous plenitude?
No, in our modern world, we leave nourishment
To the grocer, the restaurateur, the manufacturer
Of foods, whose first interest is not the local,
Nor the individual, but the increase of profit,
Even if that means sacrificing the good of
Local community to expansionism, or
The good of nutrition to the chemical
Preservation of productivity, or
The good of the individual
To the mass anonymity
Of statistical data and
Sample groups.

Is it a place of work, where
The goodness, truth and beauty
Of human activity, ingenuity and
Effort finds fertile soil out of which
An authentic appreciation of the human
Participation in the artistic emergence of
The human family can become visible in all
It glorious, illuminative, redemptive splendor?
No, in our modern world, we leave our “work”
As far away as possible, secluding it and
Our 9 to 5 vestiges in a lifeless cubicle,
Incarcerated within the dungeons of
Corporate palaces, where we labor
Day after day, unhappily slaving
To buy time to get away from
The very work upon which
We have come to depend,
Which has reinvested the
Holiness of Sunday with
Monday’s lonely
Currency.

Is it a place of hospitality,
Where strangers become friends,
And friends become family, where
Comfort is sought in the generous act
Of opening one’s door, one’s pantry, one’s
Very heart to those divine ambassadors left out in the
Cold margins, interrupting the systematic security of civility?
No, in our modern world, we leave “hospitality”
To the soup kitchens, the nursing homes,
The orphanages, the shelters, whose
Generosity has become our most
Efficient security system since
It really shelters us against
All those who would
Threaten our hard-
Earned financial
Security.


So what is the home in our Modern world?
Apparently, it has become a fall out
Shelter, a place to flee from the
Truth of education, the beauty
Of nourishment and the good
Of work, where all of us
Can finally escape from
The divine interruption
Of the marginalized
Poor who threaten
Our secure
Civility.

A Few More Thoughts...

If in fact we are beings whose mode of knowing is born from contact with the sensible, then one should expect all philosophical thought to analogously employ relations of the imagination. And it seems to me that very interesting ways of imagining traditional metaphysical concepts crop up all across the history of Western thought, especially in the rather dramatic narratives documenting where philosophy and theology have gone wrong and where they need to go from now on. But after reading even a fraction of the most well known pre-modern thinkers with a hermeneutic of generosity and a little sensitivity to historical context, I've come to wonder: how many of these narratives accurately draw out the real implications of what they critique? How many are based on "pictures" of the philosophical concepts that are actually contrary to the ways they were imagined before?

I tend to follow MacIntyre (loosely) in determining precisely what it means for any tradition of enquiry to progress and develop: crisis---the tradition lacks the intellectual resources to provide answers---draws from other traditions, expanding the tradition beyond its former borders; such a process would reasonably mark the way forward. So it seems that the grand narratives of metaphysical failure either accurately point out the real weakness of certain concepts or systems, allowing us to look beyond them and advance the tradition; or the weaknesses are imagined, based on relations the concepts themselves do not essentially imply, in which case a move away from such concepts could mark the regression of the tradition and the consequential rebirth of problems the concepts in question formerly solved.

It’s obvious that really bad imagining stems from some fundamental conceptual errors, and it may be that the failure to grasp the concepts in the first place leads to the perpetuation of a distorted metaphysical “picture.” But we are part of a tradition of enquiry. We are also embodied beings, encultured beings, and our intellectual development is influenced by so many aesthetic and non-conceptual elements. It is thus beyond doubt that the resources of our imagination form an essential part of what governs our proper reception of concepts from our philosophical forefathers. And it seems before any real conceptual agreement is reached, the first thing that becomes clear in discussion with others is the difference in how our imaginations are influencing our ideas.

So perhaps we should only offer our damning genealogies once we have, as a part of our thinking, done the proper hermeneutical step of regaining the ways in which our concepts are truly meant to be imagined. We may in fact expose fundamental disharmonies on the conceptual and imaginary planes, revealing that in fact our pictures do not match up with a rotten philosophical core. But the generosity has to be there, the waters have to be tested.

So many examples of the tales come to mind which I now view as hermeneutical failures, working with distorted metaphysical imaginations. I can list some rapid-fire (in no real order). Much of Descartes' legacy seems to provide a context in which the Scholasticism it inherited becomes literally unimaginable in the proper sense. There are the radical differences between Locke and Aquinas on divine nomination, and how radically different a vision of God results. There is the nature/grace extrinsicism that de Lubac critiques (though arguably without sufficient nuance) and its vision of a "layer-cake," "two-tier" order or Providence. There is Nietzsche and the reduction to the "will-to-power": the real man-behind-the curtain of metaphysics. When power enters the picture as a principle, suddenly metaphysical knowledge takes on a shade of staggering greed and possessiveness. The mind no longer gazes but now grabs, takes, and imposes.

Heidegger and those after him stand out as big ones, with the framing of "metaphysics" as stemming from an isolating, alienating, theoretical perspective abstracted from the real and the proper window of Being's revelation; the claim that underlying the notions of substance is a conception of false, timeless presence which creates a kind of "frozen" picture of being; the reduction of metaphysics and its talk of God under causal formality to "onto-theology" is a big one, and one that countless philosophers (and theologians) of the past century have accepted without question and spilled much ink to overcome; his dialectical and seemingly tragic vision of the ontological difference with its phenomenological lens of presence and absence; and of course the overall nihilistic destiny of metaphysics. And on top of this the folks like Derrida who seem to radicalize the tendencies and group a whole slew of traditional metaphysical concepts into one grand conspiracy of "presence" illegitimately dominating difference; with the "centre" imposing itself as a kind of inherently unwelcome god donning many masks and an insecure vantage point on which truth-claims struggle to balance themselves. In this line, and with figures like Gianni Vattimo, the traditional metaphysical concepts are inherently violent. The minds ascent to first principles is recast as the dislodging of truths from their true home in the Heraclitian flux of the real. It is an attempt to impose, to master the unmasterable, and is doomed to failure.

How far from the Fathers and the Scholastics! I do wonder if any of them, or Aristotle or Plato or countless others, would even recognize the metaphysical monsters these later thinkers are describing as their progeny!

I now take it as axiomatic that any decent philosopher or theologian simply must address the place of the metaphysical imagination in these narratives and their claims. And he must examine the concepts to see whether or not such images really do express them. So far in my own research I have found much of what these later ontologies attempt to overcome is actually sufficiently addressed by the theories they diagnose as flawed. I have found so very much that can be imagined in ways that are not only profoundly beautiful, but also address our modern philosophical concerns in ways that the via moderna claims to have sole dominion over. Perhaps what we need, and what we are largely missing, is an attempt not just to reclaim more traditional philosophical approaches, but to integrate them with modern ways of imagining. What life and vibrancy could come from theories and concepts thought to be long dead and buried! I say let the phoenix rise from the ashes if it may; and let us not be so quick to stamp it out before it does.

I am also far more convinced now of the absolute centrality of beauty for attaining truth (natural and supernatural). It is simply the kind of being that we are. If our imaginations are deformed, and we cannot recognize beauty in the harmonies of the bodily, the phenomenological, the sensible; then how can we hope to develop the resources to recognize true relations of the concepts our intellect attains to? Balthasar seems to be vindicated, at least in a general sense: with the loss of the Beautiful, the loss of the True and the Good follow. Theology as a whole, and Revelation itself, are thereby fundamentally hindered.

I also wonder, as Balthasar did: how many of the major problems in modern theology are due to the crises of the metaphysical imagination witnessed to in the narratives of modern philosophers?

Pax Christi,

Some Thoughts on Metaphysical Imagination

Heidegger had a fascinating reflection on brokenness as a precondition for theoretical contemplation: man is caught-up in his projects, his tools, his possibilities, and only when a tool breaks down does it register before his consciousness as a distinct object of reflection. Similarly, it seems, all one needs is a break-down in communication for his words, his conceptual "tools," to suddenly appear before him in their brokenness.

It's become rather obvious to me that in a few conversations with friends of different theological and philosophical persuasions, very little conversing was actually taking place. A good deal of talking-past one another, however, was taking place. Even after acknowledging that the vocabulary was commonly held, equivocity was rampant. The metaphysical words and concepts I was employing struck the ears of my compatriots with quite a different ring than they did my own, with startlingly different implications. This is, of course, an experience common to anyone engaged in real dialogue; but in these particular instances, it was clear that our misunderstandings stemmed from very different ways of imagining these concepts.

So I began to think more about this as a hermeneutical issue: it seems that the imagination has an often unspoken role in our metaphysical judgments and conceptual abstractions. In the abstract, our concepts are never beyond the "spin," the "light" of certain "shapes" and "shades" that are seemingly essential to the act of understanding. They bear the mark, as it were, of our mode of knowing, which must always arise from within the dynamis of sensation. We often understand the relations between concepts analogously in terms of the relations between spatial, sensible things present to the imagination. This is natural because in a real sense the latter relations are more "well known" to us than the former.

Yet while analogy with the imagination opens for us the possibility of rational reflection with abstract notions, the imagination also has the ability to mask the real relations between concepts and thus hinder understanding. In one conversation, a Barthian friend and I were discussing the possibilities of knowing God. He immediately objected to my use of metaphysical language concerning God ala Aquinas, because he was quite convinced that the notions of "essence," "nature," and "substance" implied that the Angelic Doctor was positing a dangerous "residue" of God separated from His actions; a stale, frozen, immutable "sub-stance" "behind" His activities, splitting God in two. Barth's post-metaphysical "actualism" takes its cue from such a perceived dilemma and seeks to posit the inseparability between essence and existence, being and action, in God (in a way that "substantialist," metaphysical theologies cannot).

This struck me as a rather odd charge, especially because it is precisely Aquinas's metaphysical theology which ensures that such a dilemma is radically foreign to God. Aquinas's vision of God as Pure Act renders any distinction between nature and action in God, quite literally, unreal. It was clear that in my friend's mind, the relationships between the metaphysical concepts were imagined in such a way that notions of "substance" were adorned with images of frozen stasis, impersonal abstraction, radical separation from the realm of the living, moving, acting reality. Such a thing can surely have no place in God; so we must think of Him in "unmetaphysical ways." Yet a relatively-close reading of Aquinas reveals that he did not at all imagine substance in this light when applied to God. In fact, it is Aquinas's metaphysical "actualism" that allows us to imagine God's substance in ways more radically active, dynamic, and personal than approaches which fail to account for his distinctions. For St. Thomas, all thoughts of stasis, residue, rigidity, and inaction stem from the principle of potentia; yet God's substance is completely devoid of potentia. It is all actus: that principle of ontological life, vibrancy, action, dynamis, reality. Actus is the very energy of being. Aquinas has the resources to show that God is not static, but nor is he "active" or "affective" in the imperfect ways that finite beings are. He is only "immobile" because he is waaaayyyyyy too dynamic: He is more active than we could ever properly imagine, and this because His substance IS His action. So according to Aquinas, his metaphysical principles imply a "picture" of God that is the complete opposite of what my friend believed.

Other such metaphysical imaginings came to the fore in other discussions. Metaphysical participation in the doctrine of creation, for instance, was suspect because participation was imagined as a kind of "robbery" of God's Being and an attempt to "grasp" and "possess," to "withhold" something from God that was rightfully His. Imagined thus, participation and the analogia entis were out. Further, as I've heard it charged, the analogy of being set up a philosophical mediator between God and man that challenges the unique mediating role of Christ; and is therefore an attempt to replace Christ with metaphysics. Again, we find traditional metaphysical concepts imbued with certain imagined relations and implications they simply never had. The hidden premise in this case is a univocal ontology, wherein God's Being is implicitly thought of as taking up the same kind of "space" as finite being, even when the theologian wants to think of God in completely equivocal terms. If "being" is imagined as a univocal, seamless garment, than it is no wonder theologians would be forced to conclude (in quasi-Maimonidean fashion) that God's Being (whatever we mean by this) must be entirely unrelated to finite being, paradoxical as it sounds. The mistaken univocity unfolds into the equally mistaken equivocity, ending with the inevitable conclusion that God is entirely unknowable and His creatures reveal nothing of Him. Aquinas and his kin would have been dumbfounded by the claim that an analogy of being were somehow incompatible with the mediation of Christ, as if one had to choose between a metaphysical truth or the Son of God. Rather, I'd venture to say that for the Aquinas the former mediation (ontological) is presupposed by the latter (the Christological). One could indeed argue that, in the mind/eternal intention of God, the Christological mediation is primary (eternally preceding actual creation), nonetheless it in no way implies that somehow ontological participation is thereby an idolatrous replacement. It is, rather, simply what is implied by the doctrine of creation if one is to avoid reducing this doctrine to nonsense.

So it seems that perhaps a vital part of truly understanding the theories of the past is actually understanding how we should imagine the concepts that the theories employ. And if in fact we simply read the texts but fail to attend to how we conceive these concepts according to analogy with what is imagined, than we could completely misunderstand what our concepts imply. We would then judge them and their value improperly. We may end up sending metaphysics to the gallows for crimes it simply did not and does not commit (but actually protects against)!

Pax Christi,

Merry Christmas!

"Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you Good News of a great joy... This day is born the Savior", that is, he who, as Son of God and Son of the Father, has traveled (in obedience to the Father) the path that leads away from the Father and into the darkness of the world. Behind him omnipotence and freedom; before, powerlessness, bonds and obedience. Behind him the comprehensive divine vision; before him the prospect of the meaninglessness of death on the Cross between two criminals, Behind him the bliss of life with the Father; before him, grievous solidarity with all who do not know the Father, do not want to know him and deny his existence. Rejoice then, for God himself has passed this way! The Son took with him the awareness of doing the Father's will. He took with him the unceasing prayer that the Father's will would be done on the dark earth as in the brightness of heaven. He took with him his rejoicing that the Father had hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to babes, to the simple and the poor. "I am the way", and this way is "the truth" for you; along this way you will find "the life". Along "the way" that I am you will learn to lose your life in order to find it; you will learn to grow beyond yourselves and your insincerity into a truth that is greater than you are. From a worldly point of view everything may seem very dark; your dedication may seem unproductive and a failure. But do not be afraid: you are on God's path. "Let not your hearts be troubled: believe in God; believe also in me." I am walking on ahead of you and blazing the trail of Christian love for you. It leads to your most inaccessible brother, the person most forsaken by God. But it is the path of divine love itself. You are on the right path. All who deny themselves in order to carry out love's commission are on the right path.

Miracles happen along this path. Apparently insignificant miracles, noticed by hardly anyone. The very finding of a Child wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger—is this not a miracle in itself? Then there is the miracle when a particular mission, hidden in a person's heart, really reaches its goal, bringing God's peace and joy where there were nothing but despair and resignation; when someone succeeds in striking a tiny light in the midst of an overpowering darkness. When joy irradiates a heart that no longer dared to believe in it. Now and again we ourselves are assured that the angel's word we are trying to obey will bring us to the place where God's Word and Son is already made man. We are assured that, in spite of all the noise and nonsense, today, December 25, is Christmas just as truly as two millennia ago. Once and for all God has started out on his journey toward us, and nothing, till the world's end, will stop him from coming to us and abiding in us.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Setting Out into the Dark with God” in You Crown the Year With Your Goodness: Sermons Through the Liturgical Year, trans. Graham Harrison, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), pp.275-279

Sed Contra, Barth

I regard the doctrine of the analogy of being as the invention of Antichrist and hold that precisely because of this doctrine one cannot become a Catholic. At the same time, I believe that all other reasons that one can have for not becoming a Catholic are shortsighted and frivolous.[1]

Then again....

Rejection of the analogy of being, properly understood, is a denial that creation is an act of grace that really expresses God's love, rather than a moment of alienation or dialectical negation; it is a rejection, that is, of Acts 17:28, and ultimately of Genesis 1:1 (and everything that follows from it). If the rejection of the analogia entis were in some sense the very core of Protestant theology, as Barth believed, one would still be obliged to observe that it is also the invention of antichrist, and so would have to be accounted the most compelling reason for not becoming a Protestant.[2]

---

[1] Karl Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik (KD) I/i: Die Lehre vom Wort Gottes. Teil I. (1932), pp.viii-ix; cited in Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward T. Oakes, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), p.49.

[2] David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003), p.242.

Beware the Monsters of Concision

Below the light of struggle
And the glow of real thought,
Where the mind and heart find challenge
In the beauty always sought;

Lurk the monsters of concision,
A Hydra talking head,
Squeezing “truths” from nature’s bounty
Nothing heard and nothing said.

And the forkéd tongues of triumph
Whip the backs of pregnant words,
Until meaning is miscarried
And only noise is heard.

Truth usurped by information
Money’s ugly hungry grip,
All the wizards behind curtains
Hiding corporate sponsorship.

Selling stories and desire
Till the masses have all spent;
Clothing truth in fitted progress
Manufacturing Consent.

Within a fast-food nation,
Soundbites rotting every tooth,
With a hunger so familiar,
There’s no more appetite for truth.

So beware the monsters of concision,
That feed upon the common mind,
Take up the heart as sword and shield,
And no truth is left behind.

The Flame Imperishable: A Short Reflection for the Feast of St Gregory Palamas

(Cross-posted on Vox-Nova)

Organ of wisdom, clear trumpet of theology, Gregory of divine speech, we praise thee. As thou dost stand before the Primordial Mind direct our minds to Him that we may cry: Rejoice, O Gregory, herald of grace!
– Kontakion of the Feast of St Gregory Palamas (Nov. 14).

In the notes accompanying the dialogue, Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth, Tolkien has the following to say about the mysterious “Flame Imperishable,” mentioned in other sources, especially at the beginning of The Silmarillion:

This appears to be the main, Creative activity of Eru (in some sense distinct from or within Him), by which things could be given a ‘real’ and independent (though derivative and created) existence. This Flame Imperishable is sent out from Eru, to dwell in the heart of the world, and the world then Is, on the same plane as the Ainur, and they can enter into it. But this is not, of course, the same as the re-entry of Eru to defeat Melkor. It refers rather to the mystery of ‘authorship’ by which the author, while remaining ‘outside’ and independent of his work, also ‘indwells’ in it, on its derivative plane, below that of his own being, as the source and guarantee of its being.[1]

It does not take much to change around what is said above to find the Christian meaning behind the text. Eru is God. Melkor is Satan. The Ainur are the angels. But what are we to say about the Flame Imperishable itself? How are we to understand it? As an Eastern, I come to this text with a theological tradition which Tolkien was not entirely familiar with, and yet one which seems too similar to what Tolkien wrote here to ignore: that of hesychasm and its notion of the uncreated energy of God. If used as a hermeneutical lens, it provides a rather clear way for us to appreciate Tolkien’s theological point. More importantly, it will allow for a better way to judge the kind of theological depth which lay behind Tolkien’s life-work. Finally, it will point out that there might be more underlying unity to the mystical theology of the East with Western scholastic thought than might ordinarilly appear to be the case (as Tolkien’s Catholic education was shaped in great part by the Western scholastic tradition).

It is important to note the importance of St Maximus the Confessor in the hesychast tradition, for his exploration on the question of Jesus’ human and divine energies is the dogmatic ground by which hesychasm was able to establish itself as an authentic witness of the Christian faith. And it is clear St Maximus believed that for every nature, there is an equivalent energy which operates; it is by it’s operation that a given nature is manifested to us.[2] For the divinity, that means there is a divine energy. This, the energy of God, must be, like God, uncreated and eternal. The sixth ecumenical council, III Constantinople, confirmed St Maximus’ general thesis, making it more than mere speculation.[3]

St Gregory Palamas must be understood as one who is simply taking this tradition and confirming its theological significance when he says our knowledge of God, and our experience of God, is related to God’s interaction with us. God’s being is manifested to us by his energy, while God is, in essence, transcendent and beyond our comprehension. Our knowledge is true, since it is truly God we experience, but we must not limit God to that which we can understand or experience. “Thus, neither the uncreated goodness, nor the eternal glory, nor the divine life nor the things akin to them are simply the superessential essence of God, for God transcends them all as Cause. But we say He is life, goodness and so forth, and give Him these names, because of the revelatory energies and powers of the Superessential.”[4]

Tolkien’s idea of the Flame Imperishable is amazingly similar to the thought of St Gregory Palamas on the uncreated energy of God. He wanted to explain how God as a creator worked in the world while not being comprehended by it. His understanding of the notion of sub-creation, and the relationship between an author and the work he or she writes, allowed him to see and understand, by analogy, how God must relate to the world. It is doubtful Tolkien had much, if any, direct connection to the thought of Palamas. But it is interesting to note, on this, the Feast of St Gregory Palamas, how Tolkien, reflecting upon God and creation, ended up with a similar theological point. How is this possible unless there is more that unites the Western tradition with the East than is often claimed in theological debates? Obviously, as Hans Urs von Balthasar would point out, there are some issues one might want to address with St Gregory Palamas.[5] How are we to understand what has been said in relation to modern personalism? Do we not experience the very essence of God through his divine persons? Is there not some true communication of the divine essence by the economic Trinity? But this is at best an issue of qualifying the language being used, making sure the tradition does not turn into agnosticism or atheism.

Footnotes

[1] J. R. R. Tolkien, Morgoth’s Ring. Ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993), 345.
[2] See for example his Disputation with Pyrrhus for a rather clear presentation of this fact.
[3] III Constantinople says of Jesus Christ, “But we glorify two natural operations [energies] indivisibly, inconvertibly, unfusedly, inseparably in our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, our true God, that is, the divine operation [energy] and the human operation [energy] [...] each nature indivisibly and without confusion willed and performed its own works…” DZ 292.
[4] St Gregory Palamas, The Triads. Trans. Nicholas Gendle (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1983), 95.
[5] See, for example, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic III: The Spirit of Truth. trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 128 - 130.

Mystical Messiah IV: Conclusion

The Hidden Death and Resurrection

For Paul, solidarity or fellowship with Jesus in this life creates a “coporeity” with Jesus that ensures one will share with Him the resurrected state of being. It is one’s union with the historically determined Christ that provides the pattern for His union with the Mystical Christ. This is confirmed by Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels (Mt 5:11-12; Mk 8:35-38; Mt 6:6). Paul comes to identify this corporeity with the (mystical) “Body of Christ” and with the church: Jesus Himself is the firstborn of a new creation, the first to attain the resurrected state among many who are predestined (employing the Jewish understanding of the elect or true people of God) to share in the Kingdom with Him.

But how can one man’s body be thought of as encompassing an entire group of individual people, all with their own animated bodies? As we have seen, the glorified bodily existence of Christ is a spiritual reality that does not conform to natural spatio-temporal limitations; thus, it is possible for Paul to extend the meaning of one person’s body to incorporate a communal sharing in the effects that His spiritual presence has on them. Because the Spirit (or life-giving breath) of Christ is in each of them, their bodies are in a real sense Christ’s: His spiritual body becomes identified with all that is united to His Spirit.

This identification is crucial because it is Christ’s body that underwent crucifixion and resurrection, and as we have seen, these are events that must be transferred to those who hope to attain the resurrection state of existence. As Schweitzer notes:

The Body of Christ is no longer thought of by him [Paul] as an isolated entity, but as the point from which the dying and rising again, which began with Christ, passes over to the Elect who are united with Him; just as, on the other hand, the Elect no longer carry on an independent existence, but are now only the Body of Christ.[1]

In order for Christians to enter the Kingdom, they must undergo death and resurrection just as Jesus did: the pattern enacted in Jesus’ earthly life is carried across space and time into the very life of the believer, and it is according to this pattern alone that he can attain the union he seeks. But for those who are alive, this death and resurrection must have somehow occurred without them actually dying and rising in the physical sense. Thus, it is through sharing in the Body of Christ that the death and resurrection of Jesus Himself is actually transferred to the life of the believer. It is re-lived, re-performed in a new life that is now thought of as Christ’s life, in a new body that is thought of as Christ’s body. The Christian undergoes the very death and resurrection of Jesus in a hidden manner:

But whereas this dying and rising again has been openly manifested in Jesus, in the Elect it goes forward secretly but nonetheless really. Since in the nature of the their corporeity they are now assimilated to Jesus Christ, they become, through His death and resurrection, beings in whom dying and rising again have already begun, although the outward seeming of their natural existence remains unchanged.[2]

The Christian becomes, like Christ, a supernatural being, but in a way that is not yet manifest.

Paul’s mysticism is not only ecclesial in nature (as only occurring through the Body of Christ understood communally), but also has an intrinsically sacramental element. Baptism is the means by which this dying and rising is first enacted, for that is the manner of entering into the corporeity with Jesus. The symbolic structure of Baptism betrays this mystical teaching (as dying and rising). In undergoing a mystical death, the Christian dies to the existential state of “sin,” “flesh,” “the world,” “the Law,” and “death.” Insofar as he is in the Body of Christ, he achieves the status of being on the level of the “in Christ”; the dynamic of a hidden dying and rising is the mechanism through which this occurs.

Mysticism for Paul, then, can be described as the eschatology looked at from within. It is developed from an analysis of the effects that the resurrection of Christ has on traditional Jewish eschatology, and thus is lived out between Resurrection and Return. In this context, the understanding of a spiritual Messiah comes to light: His indwelling (“Christ in us”) takes the form of re-presenting His very death and resurrection in a hidden way within the believer to bring him to the resurrected state; and on the side of the believer (“in Christ”), this can only occur as one partakes of His spiritual body, which is identified with a communal reality (the ecclesia).

II. Conclusion

We have now successfully located in a modern Christology a coherent mystical logic and proceeded to trace its key principles back to their foundational concepts and phrases in the writings of Paul. We then went further and examined these original concepts in light of their concomitant presuppositions and broader theological context. Hopefully, our analysis has formed the first step in a process of illumination by which the mystical dialect of modern spirituality can become more intelligible. In this regard, we see this current project as serving at least three more comprehensive goals: The first is that it lays the foundation of a mystical Christology of the kind that Balthasar constructs: understanding more about the nature of Christ from His mystical relationship with and presence manifest in the lives of believers. Understanding the origin and context of its key notions leads to a deeper understanding of the “spiritual” dimension of Christ’s very being. And no account of Jesus will be complete if it ignores the unique spiritual dimension of His being that is a consequence of His enduring presence in the lives of believers. Secondly, such a study provides a greater understanding of the Christian mystical tradition of the kind exemplified by Maximus, Bernard, Bonaventure, and Julian: making its writings more intelligible and therefore more fruitful for the spiritual growth of the Church. It allows us to understand why and how they articulate the ascent to union with God in terms of partaking in the experiences of Christ, for we now know the precedent set by Paul. These writings can therefore be seen as developments of a theological tradition that goes before them.

Finally, and most importantly, this study has the potential to contribute to the enrichment of spirituality for modern Christianity: making spirituality intelligible for self-understanding, allowing one to more greatly understand and foster a relationship with Christ, to live according to the movements of the Spirit, and to understand one’s own life as grafted into the narrative of Christ’s very life. Indeed, according to Schweitzer, without a general understanding of this mystical element, we cannot have the proper conception of ourselves as Christians.[3] The notions like those that Balthasar puts forth, of seeing the fulfillment of one’s existence in the sharing of Christ’s life and story, this now, according to Paul’s logic, at least becomes a rationally coherent vision and thus a conceptual possibility (not mere fluff or gibberish). If we can make sense of the view that we are in Christ and He is in us, then our entire lives can be consciously structured according to Christ’s. This mysticism provides a means of re-interpretation of all of our experiences, inflecting them with radically new depth and meaning. A primary instance of this potential transformation can be found in our suffering.[4]

If one conceives of his own life as driven by a hidden re-living of Christ’s life, then all of his suffering takes on a new value, a new role, in reference to that hidden reality. It gets grafted, as it were, into the story of Christ. All of our suffering which tends toward the destruction of life is rethought as the expression of that mystical, hidden “dying” with Christ that marks the diminishing of only the natural state of existence. Suffering is reinterpreted as one moment in the eschatological drama, one stage in our transformation into a supernatural state that follows the pattern of Christ’s transformation (death before resurrection). All suffering becomes tied to the hope of resurrection. This is only one instance in which all of life’s experiences gain new and enduring value when one sees his own story as only complete, only properly told, as a sequel; or better yet, a creative retelling of Christ’s story with new characters. Because in reality, Christ truly succeeds in making His story our own.

---

[1] Schweitzer, p.118

[2] Ibid., p.110

[3] Schweitzer, p.377-379

[4] Ibid., pp.141-160; 385

The End of the Sociological Critique of Religion

The following is a presentation I recently gave at a conference on Religion and the Polis:

[I] The sociological critique of religion has influenced the contemporary religious imagination so much so that it is perhaps easier to find those who believe that Jesus was the husband of Mary Magdelene, or the no-longer-interested boyfriend of Judas Iscariot, than that he suffered, died, was buried, rose on the third day and instituted a Church in his Spirit. Advocates of sociology would perhaps be quick to point out why this is so: a married Jesus, or a homosexual Jesus, emerges out of a scientific and historical investigation into the evidence, while that other stuff about him resurrecting and instituting a Church comes from faith. After all, sociology conceives itself as a science that investigates the nature of social evolution and that has as its object ‘the social’ as such. In his monograph titled Sociology, Giddens defines sociology as “the study of human social life, groups and societies,” and quickly moves from definition to characterization adding, “it is a dazzling and compelling enterprise, having as its subject matter our own behavior as social beings.” Max Weber in his Sociological Writings states that sociology is “a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects.” The British Sociological Association, in explaining what sociologists do, states, "Sociology is the one social science which embraces the whole range of human activities and this makes it a very wide field of study.” The ‘whole range of human activities’ … Indeed, that does make it a wide field. It is so wide, that one wonders how this science, finding itself in every human activity, has managed to avoid an identity crisis.

More particularly, John Milbank wondered how sociology has avoided an identity crisis, which is what perhaps led him to investigate its genealogy, its history and its philosophical/theological assumptions. In his highly influential, though intellectually exhausting, 1990 publication Theology and Social Theory, Beyond Secular Reason, Milbank provides the only existing comprehensive treatment of the relation between theology and scientific ‘discourses’ about society. While his conclusions are many, they may be summed up with the observation that, at the end of part II, Milbank himself makes and that many have conceded: namely, that once the historical, philosophical and especially theological roots of sociology are exposed, the sociology of religion must come to an end. It is the purpose of this presentation to examine the contours of this claim and illuminate its more salient features. It is my hope that those who feel in any way burdened by an apparent need for a sociological justification for their beliefs will find their load somewhat lightened, and that those who concede the validity of a sociological critique of religion will find some grounds for self-reflection.

[II] To begin, we must clarify the meaning of the sociological critique of religion. We have already seen some of the ways in which sociologists understand their enterprise: as the science that studies: human behavior, or the causes of social development, or even, the ‘whole range of human activities.’ It is difficult to suppress the way that the identity emerging from these definitions elevates sociology to the status of a metanarrative perched transcendentally beyond the corpus humanum, ever revealing society to itself, seeing itself as the referent to which all human activities must relate for their own self-understanding. In fact, Peter Berger, the modern American sociologist, proposes a definition of sociology that, with respect to religion, enthusiastically endorses this view: “sociology,” he claims “is now the name of the scientific and humanist critique of religion, the fiery brook through which contemporary theology must pass.”[Peter Berger, A Rumour of Angels (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) 44-45.] Drawing out what was always tacitly present in sociology, this definition transforms the sociology of religions into the sociological critique of religions. As it is commonly understood, “critique” indicates, following Kant, the cognitive process that aspires to establish an object in its purity by clearing away those elements that have merely been added to its essence. In the preface to the first edition of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes, “our age is properly the age of critique, and to critique everything must submit.”[Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A, xi.] It is through critique that the power of reason may establish the purity of a thing beyond all experience, since experience distorts a thing’s true essence, or so Kant thought. For Kant, human knowledge must be set on “the secure path of science,”[William Desmond, Philosophy and Its Others, Ways of Being and Mind (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990) 30.] since only then can our knowledge acquire the certainty and solidity it supposedly needs to move forward. Most modern sciences, and especially the social sciences, have followed Kant down this path like children following the Pied Piper. Where Kant used the principles of human reason as the referent or criteria by which to establish purity, sociology uses the principles discovered within the process of social development itself. Consequently, sociology has adopted the sense of critique in two interrelated ways. First, it has adopted the fundamental assumption that grounds the critical process, namely, that there are such pure states of objects, independent of experience, and available to human ken in their purity. Second, as Berger’s assertion makes clear, it has taken up the Kantian critical process as a fundamental inspiration and impulse. It believes that part of its task in investigating social evolution is to in fact discover the essence of various social phenomena in their pure state, in order that it may more clearly establish their place within social evolution. This pure state is measured by the principles abstracted from the social process itself. In sum, then, what is meant by the sociological critique of religion is this: any attempt by the sociologist to characterize, or render a judgment about, the essence of the religious and its place in social evolution by appealing to the ‘social fact’ as a fundamental, a priori, normative criteria of truth. Or we might say it is the giving of a social explanation for various features of religion, generated largely by the view that while on the one hand with respect to social development religions are problematic, the ‘social’ and ‘society’ are obvious and self-evident.

[III] All this involves a multitude of assumptions, though a few of the more prominent are worth mentioning. As already alluded to, there is the assumption that there is such a thing as “pure essence of religion” beyond all experience. Another is that the religious enters into social evolution in its own way, giving rise to a separate sphere within society called the ‘religious.’ Related to these first two, there is the assumption that there are cognitive instruments of verifiability available to the sociologist that remain outside this ‘religious’ sphere, and so are unavailable to the ‘religious’ person unless she relinquishes her religious standing and adopts a neutral perspective. With these assumptions in mind, along with their variances, we are in a position to examine how it is one may argue for the end of the sociological critique of religion.

[IV.a.1] Understanding the end of the sociological critique of religion requires that we return to the beginning of the social construction of the religious. In his Theopoligical Imagination, William Cavanaugh argues against the view that the modern state was created to exert control over warring religious factions spurred on by opposing doctrinal loyalties. Instead, Cavanaugh insists that “to call these conflicts ‘Wars of Religion’ is an anachronism, for what was at issue in these wars was the very creation of religion as a set of privately held beliefs without direct political relevance.”[Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination, 22.] It was a time of advances within many arenas of human pursuit, and a new conception of power was being forged alongside a new understanding of human autonomy. Consequently, governing authorities, beginning to rise above ecclesial influence and direction, were confronted by the need to secure sovereignty over their subjects. The privatization of religion was simultaneously the privatization of the Church, driven by and resulting in desire for a larger share of power for non-ecclesial governing bodies. The public space was, therefore, stripped of its once recognizable sacredness leaving a vacuum that was quickly filled when the secular, once understood as the time between fall and eschaton, was reimagined as that space itself. As Milbank tells it, the discovery of this so-called secular domain won widespread approval largely because it was theologically promoted as a sphere where human making, or the made (factum), reflected human knowledge and power as self-government, self-determination and autonomy. But this was an entirely arbitrary interpretation of human power since it was selected over other views that, like the Baroque theories or idea-mannerist theories of art, viewed human making from the perspective of participation in the Good. Rejecting these, thinkers promoting the secular construed it as an artificial (as in humanly made) space, constituted by the interpretation that the conflict for power is ontologically fundamental.

[IV.a.ii] This interpretation took primarily two forms. The first, which abstracted the power play and applied the term ‘politics’ to it, brought about a new science of politics that “tried to deduce conclusions from the demiurgic wills of human individuals.”[Milbank, TST, 27]. This created a political view based essentially upon the unilateral relation of the individual to the whole, driven by a ‘natural rights’ perspective that, suspended between the isolated individual and the sovereign power, had to resort to theories of original contract for explanation. Importantly, it was a political view promoted largely by a voluntarist theology that sought to deduce social development from repeated patters of human volition in reference to state power. But because it was unable to account for the spontaneous collaboration of individuals between themselves, a second interpretation arose that, reducing this spontaneity to the ‘operations of the market,’ developed into the science of political economy. This science arose on the belief that the new science of politics neglected and insulted divine providence. Consequently, political economy sought to overcome this by recognizing God’s immediate presence in the social sphere: “..in political economy the field of social relations between individuals falls under a ‘providential’ discourse about how bad or self-interested actions can have good long-term outcomes…”[TST, 51]. In this way, political economy serves the role of a theodicy, which Milbank sees as evidence that the early phases of the construction of the secular was not an emancipation from theology, but a shift within theology: from Christendom, which saw God’s presence both in and beyond the natural order, to ‘secular society,’ which legitimated autonomous reason through a voluntarism that proposed human power and choice as a reflection of God’s all-powerful will, whose interventions into the natural order reflected a form of theodicy.

[IV.a.iii] The emergence of the social as a concept, then, must be located within the emergence of the secular and its attempt to legitimate itself. The new science of politics, influenced especially by Hobbes, Locke and Machiavelli, abstracted the ‘political,’ stimulating not only the desire to understand human power but also the desire to acquire it, while political economy, under the formation of Adam Smith, James Stewart, Adam Ferguson, and others shifted what was once the desire for wealth to the promotion of desire itself. In either case, what is revealed is that the emergence of the secular as an artificial space of human autonomy was, for the most part, generated by both the discourse concerning human power within politics and the discourse concerning human desire within economics. But both discourses ultimately remained focused on power: politics concerned the active pursuit of power, while economics concerned the preservation of power by disseminating it in order to bind the individual subject to the central authority. Since the ‘object’ of these new sciences was abstract power and abstract desire, the attempts to concretize them meant that there was a new ‘city’ being imagined into existence, which would eventually become circumscribed by the notion of ‘society’. And, as Milbank notes, “Secular scientific understanding of society was, from the outset, only the self-knowledge of the self-construction of the secular as power”[TST, 10]. Thus, the emergence of the ‘social’ as a concept occurs alongside the emergence of the secular sphere’s attempt to legitimate itself on theological foundations.

[IV.a.iv] The emergence of a new social space meant the emergence of a new process under which it could be investigated. Milbank traces two fundamental courses that this process underwent, both of which continued to develop the character of sociology while more and more covering up its theological origins. The first course has its origins in the French tradition and a new form of social theology whose metaphysical assumptions, heavily influenced by the novelty of positivism, advanced the idea that because an individual is always already situated within society, the ‘social’ must be positively understood as an ‘aspect of the original divine creation.’ “New scientific approaches focused upon the new object ‘society’,” explains Milbank, “were not, therefore, trying to explain social phenomena as liberalism had sought to explain political and economic phenomena: instead they sought to identify and describe the social as a ‘positive’ datum and to explain other phenomena in relation to this general facticity”[TST, 51]. The second course originates with the German intervention into sociological development, which, although successful in its desire to overcome scientific aspects of the influence of positivism in sociology, unwittingly maintained other metaphysical features of positivism. Milbank notes a few of the more prominent: the association of the ‘social’ with given, permanent categories; a dualistic conception of humanity as caught between ‘real’ nature and ‘spiritual’ values; an identification of the ‘religious’ with irrational and arbitrary forces which are irreducible and unexplainable; an emphasis on functional causality; and an empirical approach to ‘facts’[cf. TST, 75]. Both of these courses, the German and the French, can be viewed as two sides of the same coin: in the French tradition, “the problem with [the] ‘social’ explanation turned out to be that ‘religion’ and ‘the social’ were really identical, [with the Germans] the problem is precisely the opposite: the ‘religious’ and the ‘social’ are conceived of as always and forever categorically separate realms"[TST,76]. In both cases, ‘religion’ is domesticated by the new conception of the ‘social’ giving the impression that the social is prior and thus superior to religion. As Milbank understands it, then, the French and the German sociological traditions were two sides of a coin that was used to purchase the ‘social’ as a transcendental reality positively given.

The preceding is, in a very small nutshell, the historical evidence presented to account for the roots of modern sociology. These roots should reveal to us how modern sociology is planted firmly in the soil of theology, fertilized with very questionable philosophical assumptions. In a time when sociologists believe themselves alone to be scientifically capable of illuminating the truth of the ‘whole range of human activities,’ one wonders how many sociologists have contracted a degree of amnesia of their own history. Consequently, it seems more than valid to assert, as Milbank does, that “sociology is only able to explain, or even illuminate religion, to the extent that it conceals its own theological borrowings and its own quasi-religious status"[TST, 52]. The historical evidence offers an antidote to this amnesia, but for those unwilling to swallow such a pill, there is another antidote in the form of the philosophical evidence.

[IV.b.i] The philosophical evidence begins with what Milbank calls ‘meta-suspicion’, which is a form of suspicion that questions the grounds of suspicion itself. The sociological grounding that his meta-suspicion calls into question is the existence of the ‘social’ as conceived by sociology. Rather than merely questioning the functional reduction of religion to the social, meta-suspicion asks, is there a transcendental, a priori category called the ‘social’ that may serve as a reference for societal constituents like religion? Given the abstract terms of the question, a definitive and determinate answer either way does not seem possible. But we can find a way forward by recalling the various modes of demonstrating the truth set forth by Aquinas.

[IV.b.ii] St. Thomas maintained that when arguing on the grounds of human reason, one may either demonstrate the opposite position to be in error, or one may demonstrate that it is not necessary. By demonstrating that a position is not necessary, it means that it is a position held by contingent reasoning, which can also be described by saying one assents to the truth of the position from a quasi-faith perspective. In light of this, arguing against the existence of the ‘social’ as sociology conceives it does not require that we positively demonstrate that there is no transcendentally, a priori, ‘social’ category. Instead, all that is required is to demonstrate that such a view is not itself necessarily true, but is contingent upon the sociologist’s perspective and thus posited as a revealed principle of sociological “faith.”

[IV.b.iii] This becomes possible when we examine the Platonic-Kantian impulse that energizes belief in a transcendentally a priori social category. Following the Platonic impulse, sociology, whether implicitly or explicitly, subscribes to the idea that there exists some ideal form of the social unadulterated by the various images or concretions that make it visible. Following the Kantian impulse, it believes this ‘unadulterated category of the social’ to be transcendentally a priori, giving it a quasi-revealed status discernible only by the specialist, the sociologist, who abstracts the ‘social’ from every interaction, particular custom and ritual, linguistic structure etc. Because it is impossible to point to the ‘social’ as such, it must be abstracted from all societies over space and time. And since a given society is constituted by a relative infinity of particulars, this abstraction must be supplemented by a value-inference on the part of the abstractor as to what particulars of a given society are given emphasis and what particulars are not. In order to be objective, however, “one must try to uncover the unique value-perspective that is constitutive of a particular culture, and which derives form the non-historical, a priori realm of valuation"[TST, 80]. Moreover, the value system applied must be universally and unconditionally applicable, which involves applying the Kantian test for a genuine categorical imperative, asking ‘am I able to universalize what I value at this point for all people?’ But this position assumes that all societies are constituted in such a way that they can be abstracted and easily fit into a Kantian value-structure.
For example, both Durkheim and Weber tend to categorize various societies in terms of the relation of the individual to the whole, which reflects a very Modern political value – what Cavanaugh calls ‘centripetal politics’ – and neglects the way that many societies understood themselves in a hierarchical ordering. Even when this hierarchical ordering is acknowledged, it is so only in a negative way, “in terms of the observation that organic and hierarchical societies exercise strong ‘control’ over the individual, as if the member of this [hierarchical] society were secretly shadowed by the presence of the modern, self-determining subject"[TST, 103].
In order for the ‘social’ to do the work that sociology claims it does, it must be a concept free from the debris of subjective value. Otherwise, as a category, it becomes merely the ambassador for the sociologist’s own value-laden worldview, and in effect, another religious perspective. And precisely here is the contradiction: for the ‘social’ to become a concept, it must be abstracted from a variety of manifestations; this abstraction cannot avoid being supplemented with a value-inferential interpretation provided by the sociologist’s own particular experience of the ‘social’. Consequently, the ‘social’ is either nothing more than a reified abstraction, accepted from a subjective point of view as to what values should constitute a society, or a principle revealed from a transcendental, ahistorical and a priori realm. In either case, sociology is exposed as a religious narrative that offers explanations of societal constitution based upon what is accepted through revelation, rather than based upon what is necessarily true or self-evident. The sociologist that believes herself capable of critiquing religion, then, is like a Buddhist who explains the resurrection in terms of Nirvana.

[V.] Admittedly, this compact presentation has attempted to deliver a thesis whose complexity requires much more space to expound. For such an exposition, I yield to Milbank, Cavanaugh and others. Nevertheless, I hope that what has been presented enables theologians to stand firm against the criticism – as common as it is unexamined – that theology is no longer possible since it grounds itself upon revelation rather than scientific, or sociological findings. This is not to say that there is no value to be found in the sociological enterprise. After all, a Buddhist who explains the resurrection in terms of Nirvana may shed light on aspects of this event that may have gone unnoticed. But in this case, it becomes an aesthetic, or narrative, encounter between the Christian and the Buddhist, and not a scientific one. For sociology to enter into the religious conversation, it too must see itself for what it is: another narrative that seeks to tell the story of the world, the origins of human existence, the roots of evil and the best way to be saved from evil, using principles of human reason, but also using principles it faithfully accepts as revealed. Therefore, theology no longer needs to acquiesce to sociology, for as Milbank rightly observes, “in effect, theology encounters in sociology only a theology, and indeed a church in disguise, but a theology and a church dedicated to promoting a certain secular consensus"[TST, 4].

A New Recruit

As Henry wrote about two years back, The Well At The World's End, in the spirit of the Inklings, is designed to take on-board new authors who have shown interest in the blog and have proven that they can provide meaningful contributions. So it is with joy that I welcome Andrew Haines to the ranks here. Andrew is a Roman Catholic student currently working towards his Masters in philosophy. He writes for the blog In Umbris Sancti Petri, where he has shown himself to be a serious and thoughtful dialogue partner. His knoweldge of things philosophical and theological will, no doubt, only enrich the discussions brewing here at the Well.

I look forward to reading his reflections and continuing in the pursuit of Truth and Beauty with him.

Welcome, Andrew!

Pax Christi,

The Mystical Messiah III

Between Resurrection and Return: Eschatology as Context

Scholars have sought to illuminate Paul’s mystical thought in light of different and varied sources: such as the Greek philosophical mysticism, or the Hellenistic-Jewish mysticism of Philo, or even Gnosticism. But according to Albert Schweitzer, the only context that can make Paul’s mysticism fully intelligible is Late 2^nd Temple Jewish eschatology; for what distinguishes Paul’s mystical concepts is that they “stand in close relation with the cosmic events which were to mark the times of the end”[1] Paul’s mysticism develops as a solution to certain problems inherent in Paul’s eschatology. As a Shammaite Pharisee,[2] Paul’s belief of the end time unfolds along the lines of the Apocalyptic literature (such as the Apocalypses of Baruch and Ezra), according to which the Messiah will come in glory, ushering in the Messianic Kingdom. This Kingdom will be experienced as a transient reality by those living in flesh and blood, and will end with the resurrection of all and the final Messianic judgment. Resurrection will only occur when the dominion of the Angel of Death (a cosmic force that holds men in the grip of mortality) will end, as the Messiah attains complete dominion over all cosmic forces.

The problems begin to arise when Paul is (literally?) knocked off of his horse: in the “Damascus event,” he experiences Christ in His risen, glorified state. He concludes that because Jesus is risen, he is one who has escaped the dominion of Death and therefore must be the true Messiah. Paul is therefore able to conceive of a second resurrection:[3] because the Messiah experiences the resurrected state now, it is possible for the righteous as well to escape the dominion of death before the final judgment, and they can thus be raised to enjoy the Messianic Kingdom with Jesus. There is thus one resurrection for all at the end of time and one for those who somehow share in Christ’s new reality and thereby escape the dominion of Death, possessing now the Messianic Kingdom. Further, the nature of the resurrection of the just is altered by Paul: the “resurrection state” of existence (glorified, spiritual existence beyond corruptibility and mortality) is reserved for the just after the final judgment. Yet Paul has come face-to-face with a man who was risen as a spiritual, glorified body. Thus those who are raised to the Kingdom will, like Christ, already experience the post-judgment supernatural state of being.[4] Thus the goal of Paul’s mysticism is the attainment of the Resurrection mode of existence which Christ now possesses and which is promised to those “in Christ.” This is that new level of existence which being “in Christ” signifies.

Yet as we have noted, the resurrection state was only supposed to occur when the supernatural age had dawned. Yet Jesus, having died, rose and experiences that state in the present. In short, because of Jesus, Paul is forced to conclude that the supernatural age is dawning even now: between Jesus’ resurrection and return, the natural world-age is intact according to outward appearance; but in reality the powers of the supernatural, resurrected age are already at work transforming the natural world. Between resurrection and return, the natural and supernatural worlds are thought to be intermingled: the natural subsists according to appearance, but the powers of the supernatural are at work in a “hidden”[5] and unmanifest way, as a stage is transformed behind a curtain. This intermingling of the transient and eternal worlds and the dialectic of the hidden and the manifest that result, create the proper conditions for a peculiarly Christ-centered mysticism. It is easier now to see why Paul was forced to conclude to his mystical doctrine as a result of early Christian beliefs about the end time.

In this context, in which Christ functions as the glorified Messiah, the centrality of Jesus for one’s mystical union makes perfect sense. If Jesus expresses the resurrected supernatural state, it is only “in Him” that the powers of that supernatural state can begin to transform the believer in a hidden, spiritual manner. Participation in Christ, the indwelling of His Spirit and living on the new plane of existence that He characterizes become the necessary conditions for attaining one’s destined glory and union with God. Yet, we have stressed the enduring value of Jesus’ earthly experience and the pattern that this lends to His personal presence in the believer. What shape, then, would this necessary participation in Christ take? Jesus Himself did not attain this state by being rapt away to the heavenly realm (as Enoch or Elijah did); but only by suffering, dying, and rising again. It follows that this experience would seemingly have to be repeated by all believers in order to attain that state. This is easy for Paul to conceive of for those already dead; but what of those who are alive? Will they have to die and rise again in order to attain the state of the Kingdom when Christ comes again?

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[1] Schweitzer, p.39

[2] N.T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdsmans Publishing Company, 1997), pp.26-29

[3] Schweitzer, p. 92-94

[4] Ibid., p.95

[5] One must recall that the original meaning of the term “mystical” simply denoted something “hidden.” It is in this broad sense that Paul’s thought can be designated as mystical.

Dialogue of the Soul

"Pascal suggests that Atheism displays a certain vigor of soul, but also that there is a religious faith whose vigor exceeds even this atheistic vigor. The dialogue of the soul with itself is the dialogue of the soul with what is other to it, with what exceeds it. Our dialogue with what transcends us will never cease, even when we say there is nothing there. The conversation, holy and unholy, is resurrected in the emptiness. We find vigor for it because we are first invigorated. The promise of being religious is recurrently resurrected because it is constitutive of what we are, what we are given to be, and what we are to be."

-William Desmond, God and the Between, (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), p.xii

The Master...


Pax Christi,

An Exegetical Question...

Bear with me...

Take the famous tale attributed to Aesop, The Tortoise and the Hare. Let's assume for the sake of argument that thousands of years have passed and a manuscript of this tale has been unearthed once again. In the only manuscript we possess of the story, the well-known moral, "Slow and steady wins the race," is missing from the story's conclusion.

Exegete 1: "The historical veracity of the tale is implausible. Hares do not sleep under trees. Hares and tortoises are not known to interact, nor is there any evidence of trans-species competitive behavior for group dominance or territory. If there were, the most probable outcome of such rituals would favor the hare. We are thus reading very bad science: perhaps the observation of what the author(s) presumed was a competitive race between the two animals when in fact they were projecting human practices onto them. In drawing such rash conclusions from one set of data, we are looking at some very bad science."

Exegete 2: "This is an obvious story heavily influenced by an unjustified cultural prejudice against hares, probably written by a community of tortoisephiles which the text suggests was active at that time in history, identifying with their long experience of inferiority in the drama of natural selection. The stereotypes common among anti-Hare tortoisephiles is all over the page: the hare is depicted as cocky and cruel with a terrible sense of judgment. Hares that we observe exhibit no such qualities. The tortoise obviously represents an idealization of its species, not only possessing the sound judgment to be secure in his future victory, but also rising up to claim from the hare what natural selection has obviously denied him. It is a culturally transgressive narrative, obviously from an anti-Hare perspective. Hare-lovers have nothing to gain from this Aesop.

Exegete 3: "The story is actually trans-valuation literature. It was obviously written by a community of fat people and falls within the genre of encouraging propaganda, reinforcing them that obesity is in fact no hindrance to grand victory in athletic competitions. The values of the culture of healthy bullies is thus recast as inevitably causing their own ruin. Obesity is transformed into the new physical ideal. It is because of stories like this, and not (as scientists have surmised) television, video games, inactivity, and McDonalds that all Americans of our generation are unbelievably fat."

Exegete 4: "I don't see much about female hares and female tortoises. It is obviously the literature of the male elites and the silence of the feminine voice represents a sincere lack of balance. We can only read this as a story representing an oppressive patriarchy and its misogynistic values. Aesop is a pig!"

Exegete 5: "The text appears to represent patriarchal values, but it is in fact a socially revolutionary tale attempting to reclaim a distinctively feminine voice. Though the author makes use only of the masculine pronouns to refer to the characters, it is likely that the tortoise is intended to represent a woman. Male and female tortoises look very similar and it would be easy to mistake a female tortoise for a male one. The author may have been intentionally ambiguous, so as to disguise a story with dangerous social implications in an oppressively masculine culture. The tortoise embodies distinctly feminine values: a calm demeanor, sound judgment, slowness, and steadiness. The hare, on the other hand, obviously exhibits typically masculine vices: rashness, poor judgment, pride, cruelty, and a bad temper. It is clear that this story is a counter-cultural story aimed at reclaiming the voices of women. We may even surmise, on this evidence, that Aesop was a woman."

Fundamentalist investing the story with religious authority: "The text depicts animals talking to one another and organizing races. It is clear then that when this text was written, tortoises and hares were imbued with the ability to speak and with the rationality to organize races. Somewhere between that day and our own, they lost those abilities (most likely God punished them). You evolution nuts are crazy to think otherwise. Good enough for Aesop, good enough for me."

Unrestricted Spiritual Interpretation: "It is obvious that the true meaning of the hare is angel, as the two long ears of the animal correspond to the two wings of the heavenly messenger. The race is a figure of the long and narrow road to salvation and resurrection, as the glory received after races can be likened to spiritual victory (does not the Apostle make such a comparison?). The hare "shooting ahead for some time" refers to the time in which the angels reign superior to man in intimacy with God; a time that refers to the age of the cosmos, and has now come to an end when Christ rose from the dead and raised human nature above the angels. The tortoise therefore refers to the human nature which is slow, burdened with matter and sin and must slowly be drawn into future perfection. Thus, the true meaning which before Christ lay dormant in the story and only now comes to true fruition as its deepest meaning: Christ's resurrection carries humanity above the angels, restoring it to the image of God. Aesop was truly writing of Christ."

Dan Brown: "After the tortoise won the race, he was safely transported to France where he was later buried. The truth that he won the race, as well as his philosophy of "taking it easy," had to be protected by a secret society when the hare majority took over and claimed that the hare had actually won. Centuries of killing to suppress the truth have elapsed, but the secret was passed on by artists like Botticelli in his painting Birth of Aphrodite: the shell obviously is a symbol for a tortoise shell; the cloak to Aphrodite's side is the tape at the finish line; and the wind gods, whose wings loom above their heads like rabbit ears, obviously stand for the hare trailing behind. Only now with the discovery of this text is the truth finally revealed to the masses!"



.........to which Aesop responds: YOU HAVE COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT!!!!!

Moral: As far as I can tell, the first step of exegesis is learning how to ask the right questions.


Pax Christi,

Ecce Mater

Yesterday the Church celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. It is under this title that Mary was designated patroness of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, so I was able to celebrate the feast consistently during my time at Notre Dame (the Holy Cross priests put on a very nice mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart). I came to identify more and more with this feast and decided that under this title I would have my own devotion to Mary. In short, this feast is particularly meaningful for my spirituality. The Mater Dolorosa has been the primary image I've had of Mary for some time now.

The image of the sorrowful Mary is drawn from passages such as Luke 2:35, wherein Simeon meets the mother and her child at the Temple, and prophesies that the boy would be a sign of opposition causing the rise and fall of many in Israel; and that even Mary's heart will be pierced by a sword. The one who was not to bring peace, but the sword (Matt 10:33-35) did not even spare his mother from its edge. The heart that treasured all of the things of Christ (Luke 2:51) would be split open. Simeon, guided by the Spirit (Luke 2:25) reveals to Mary her own share in Israel's Tribulation.

There is then, of course, John 19: which depicts Mary at the foot of the cross. Here the "beloved disciple" takes the place of Jesus Himself in the familial bond with his mother. Mary, unlike the Eleven (or Ten, if the "beloved" is identified as John), remains with her son as He hangs in agony from a tree, undergoing in Himself the climactic judgment of God upon Israel. The depths of this, I surely cannot fathom. Whereas Hagar exclaimed "Let me not see the child die!" as she turned from the starving Ishmael (Gen 21:16), Mary does not take her eyes off of her dying son, even when He gives up His spirit.

I believe it is here, at the Cross, that Mary shows her true colors. It is where she is at her "most Biblical," in my opinion. In a conversation with a Methodist friend a few weeks ago, I was reminded that the Gospels are not exactly brimming with explicit, dogmatic pronunciations about the Holy Mother of God. There are even passages that seem to cast Mary to the margins: for instance, Matt 12:48 depicts Jesus calling Mary's status as family into question. Who is my mother, he asks (fourth commandment, anyone?!). Yet in John's Gospel, it is at the foot of the cross that Christ confirms Mary as his true mother precisely when He presents her as the mother of His beloved disciple (John 19:25).

I recently read Jon Levenson's fantastic book The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son. In the last chapter, "The Revisioning of God in the Image of Abraham," Levenson describes beautifully how the Gospels pick up on the ancient Canaanite myths of gods sacrificing their sons and receving them back again; though filtered, as it were, through long-standing Jewish tradition and specifically the famous story of the "binding" of Isaac. John 3:16 recalls the Canaanite trope, but refashioned in the image of Abraham. For as with Abraham, the sacrifice of the beloved son is not a matter of military conquest or survival, but a matter of love:

Here, as in Rom 8:32, the underlying identification of Jesus as the son of God has brought about a refashioning of God in the image of the father who gives his son in sacrifice. The father's gift to God has been transformed into the gift of God the Father.[1]

This got me thinking: it seems that in many ways, the Gospel vision of Mary could be seen as fashioned in the image of Abraham as well. The parallels are by no means perfect, but they are intriguing. Both Abraham and Mary receive promises from God about the miraculous conception of their children in seemingly impossible circumstances. Mary is a virgin, Abraham is a geezer, and Sarah is aged and barren. Both promises speak of the future glory of their children: kings of people will come from Abraham by Sarah (Gen 17:6, 16) and the one born of Mary will be given the throne of David and rule over the house of Jacob with an unending kingdom (Luke 1:32-33). Abraham's reaction of utter disbelief ("Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old ? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?"- Gen 17:17) is mirrored by Mary's more moderate response: "How can this be, for I am a virgin?" (Luke 1:34). In either case, the chosen figures are called to trust in the unimaginable power of God: "Is anything beyond YHWH?"(Gen 18:14); "Nothing will be impossible with God" (Luke 1:37). And both characters come to embody the response of total trust that God will fulfill His promises: Abraham's "Here I am" (Gen 22:1) and Mary's "Behold, the bondslave of the Lord..." (Luke 1:38).

If such parallels point to a common trope, then it follows that Mary's experience at the cross can be read in terms of Abraham's call to offer his "beloved son" as a sacrifice. In Genesis, God has attempted a new means of spreading His primal blessing to the world of His creation: election. Abraham was chosen as the vehicle of God's blessing to all of the nations. In a very real sense, God has taken a risk: the blessing of all of creation depends upon the faithfulness of Abraham to his God. In this context, the story of the aqedah or binding of Isaac becomes the supreme test of Abraham's covenant-fidelity (Gen 22:1). God is commanding Abraham to bleed and burn the "only" son whom God has promised as the future of Abraham's line and glory. To both slaughter his child and believe that the promise will come true nonetheless requires the boundless faith in nothing less than this: that nothing, absolutely nothing, is beyond the power of YHWH. Abraham thus proves his faith to God, proves that he is "in awe of God" (Gen 22:12), by raising his hand against his son and truly offering him as a sacrifice; and God is able to save the child's life, returning him to his father "resurrected," as it were. God then emphatically reaffirms that he has made the right choice with this man, and reestablishes him as the vessel of blessing and future glory (Gen 22:16-18).

What then of Mary's faithfulness to the promises given her? Much like in Abraham's case, the situation presented by God is practically unthinkable. God had assured Mary that her only, beloved son would reign on the throne of Israel and His Kingdom would never fall. Yet this same son hangs before her with flesh beatern and torn, dying the death of a criminal alongside criminals. It is almost a sick joke on God's part: the throne he promised turns out to be a cross and the crown that was to be Jesus' is laced with thorns. The INRI rests above his head in the ultimate irony. If Mary is then to watch her son die and still believe that God will make good on His promise, she can do nothing short of believing this: that nothing is impossible for God.

We might then see Mary's place at the crucifixion as a trial similar to that of the aqedah, in which she too is faced with the sacrifice of her only son and must not "withold"Him from God (Gen 22:12), but rather give Him up (as God Himself does). Granted, in contrast to the story of Abraham, Mary is not actually performing the sacrifice of her child. There was little Mary could have done about the crucifixion. And yet, the scene can still be described as a testing of Mary's faithfulness to God's promise and His plan for her. This, it seems, is what Simeon meant when he told her that her heart would be pierced: the passage speaks of the sword as an instrument of judgment or testing, something that reveals what is truly in the heart. In seeing her only son suffer and die, God is testing her heart as if dissecting it with a sword. Christ taught that He would not be ashamed of those who were not ashamed of Him when he came in His Glory (Luke 9:26); the Apostles were ashamed and abandoned him. Yet Mary was not ashamed. Christ taught that only those who do the will of God are His brothers and His mother; His so-called brothers hid themselves from His face like Adam and Eve hid from the face of God (Gen 3:8). Yet Mary remained face-to-face with Him and thereby enacted her trust that God was not mistaken about her son. Mary's presence signaled her trust that, against all appearances, the cross did not prove Jesus' kingship impossible. She thereby, like Abraham, enacted her faithfulness, fulfilling the pledge of trust she made when God's promise was proclaimed to her. In a very real sense, she does the will of God for her: and it is thus only at the cross that Mary proves herself to be the mother of Christ.

Yet Abraham was stopped short of killing his son. His faith only had to stretch so far. Mary's, on the other hand, was called to prove itself even in the face of her son's death! He not only suffered humiliation and defeat, but succumbed to death! How great her trust had to be! And miraculously, it is rewarded: just as Abraham received His son back and his vocation as the vehicle of blessing was reaffirmed, so too does Mary receive her son back to life anew. Resurrected, the promise of God is fulfilled when Christ ascends to the throne of God.

The sorrows of Mary's passion, I believe, are therefore of great import. I think it is in this sense that we are called to a Marian spirituality in the Church: a call that is at the same time the fulfillment of that covenant-faith, that reckless trust in God, that began with Abraham. Through Mary's faithfulness, the blessings of Christ extend to the whole world. We as members of the new covenant are called to enact the same radical fidelity to the promises God has given us. We are, in this sense, called to live our lives from the Cross. Even our theology is meant to be, in this sense, Marian in nature. Henri de Lubac describes all theology as Theologia a Cruce: theology from the cross: "For it is the Cross which disperses the cloud which until then is hiding the truth."[2] The space which we are called to occupy is that of Mary at the foot of the cross, in her sorrow. For that is simply to embody the kind of faithfulness that God the Father Himself lived out in sacrificing His Son for the love of the world. Here, Mary is transparent to God: she is the way to imitating Him. And if we can embody that nearly senseless trust in God, we will receive the Son back again, resurrected and fulfilling the promises that God has made to all Christians. As the "beloved disciple" can be seen as the ideal disciple of Christ, John is showing us precisely where we are to receive Mary as our mother.

Our Lady of Sorrows represents for me a Mariology that is truly Scriptural and, well, truly true.

May she pray for us all, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ...

Pax Christi,

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[1] Jon Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993); p.225

[2] Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard and Sr. Elizabeth Englund, OCD (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988); p.179

The Mystical Messiah II

But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1Corinthians 15: 46-49)[1]

I. The Fundamentals of Paul’s Mystical Thought

A. “Christ in Us”

The mystical utterances that speak of Christ somehow living once more in the believer can be traced back to the core mystical concept in Paul designated by the phrase “Christ in us.” This phrase occurs in a number of contexts with slight variations in form, such as in Rom 8:9-10: “And if Christ be in you, the body indeed is dead, because of sin…” Parallels include Eph 3:16: “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,” and 2 Cor 13:5: “Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you…” With this phrase, we see a concept of Jesus somehow dwelling within believers in varying degrees. Indeed, it is a concept of Christ’s life actually enduring in the very life of the believer, the supreme example being Gal 2:19: “with Christ I am nailed to the cross. And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me…” Here one can see the connection with a real participation in Christ’s crucifixion. Further, Alfred Wikenhauser identifies the “inward man” (ό εσω ανθρωπος) of 2 Cor 4:16 with “Christ in us” of Gal 2:20 and Col 3:4, as well as with the “new man” of Col 3:19 and Eph 4:23. Somehow Christ’s very life becomes present in the living of the believer (Phil 1:21: “for to me, to live is Christ”). According to Wikenhauser, Paul believes that “along with Christ a new vital power enters into men, and, unless it is impeded, this power gives Christians the form of Christ.”[2] The birth of the “new man” marks the presence of Christ within the believer, insofar as he bears a new life that springs from Christ and indeed is identical with Christ’s life. Yet how is this indwelling even conceivable? In what sense for Paul can a person (Jesus) “dwell within” another man?

According to Wikenhauser, the indwelling of Christ is equivalent to the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9; Gal 4:6), which is also identified with the Spirit of God in men (1 Cor 2:16). Thus to call Christ one’s vital principle, the source of this new life, is truly to designate Christ’s Spirit as one’s vital and animating principle. Spirit is, as it were, the mode that Christ’ life has when we say that it is “in” someone.

This identification with the phrase “Spirit of God” is of the utmost importance for Paul’s mystical vision. Paul seems to employ it in a few different contexts which suggest different referents. For instance, it can denote the impersonal and all-pervading power of God in things (2 Cor 6:16; cf. 3 Kgs 18:46 and Ez 3:22). Other passages suggest it is a distinct Personal entity (consistent with the Gospel vision) which orthodox Christianity came to formulate explicitly and dogmatically. Though Paul uses the concepts of the indwelling of the Spirit and the indwelling of Christ seemingly interchangeably, there are a number of passages which highlight the distinction between the two, as certain predicates and actions can only apply to Christ. For instance, the Father achieved redemption through the Son; Christ died on the Cross, not the Spirit; man is conformed to the image of the Son, not the image of the Spirit, etc.[3] Yet according to Wikenhauser the term can also refer to the Spiritual Christ: referring to the supernatural state that Christ possesses in His glory. Paul does not ascribe to any Platonic dualism of body and soul; Christ as a glorified body simply is a living spiritual being in a state of existence beyond spatio-temporal bounds. Evidence for this reference to Christ’s supernatural state can be found in 2 Cor 3:17: “The Lord is a Spirit;”[4] as well as 1 Cor 15:45: “the last Adam [was made] into a quickening spirit,” referring to His freedom from the state of corruptible flesh, space, time, age, and death.[5] As Wikenhauser notes:

Paul can use the expressions which he does, because he regarded Christ Triumphant as a spiritual being free from the limitations of time and place which bound Christ during his life on earth.[6]

Thus, for Christ to be “at the right hand of the Father” and “in all believers” are not incompatible states, because His embodied state is of the form of an entirely new creation; a new infusion of divine breath into flesh. His is a body whose relation to spatio-temporal bounds has been radically redefined. So the glorified Christ, as a spiritual entity, can be “present” in a way the earthly, pre-Resurrection Jesus cannot; i.e. in many places and enduring across time.

Because Christ is conceived of as a spiritual being, His indwelling can be considered as analogous to the indwelling of other spiritual beings in Paul’s historical-religious context. One paradigm with which to compare it is the “indwelling” of demonic possession: a demon is said to be “in” someone because it is not an entity governed by the same constraints of space and time, and is thus able to localize itself to a person’s body and enact an influence over the entire physical, psychological, and spiritual being of the man. The demon is as a ungodly wind breathed into the flesh, moving its members like branches in the breeze. Paul conceived of Christ’s indwelling in much the same way, as a living and operative reality within man that is nonetheless distinct from him (Rom 8:16: “the Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit…”) yet enacts a profound influence over his ethical life. Thus, being a Christian can be thought of in terms of being morally possessed by the Spirit of Christ.

It is important to note that in His glorified state, Christ is identified with the power/Spirit of God, but not in a pantheistic way in which He is absorbed and his personality is jettisoned. Rather, it is crucial for Paul that the Christ who dwells in men retains his essential peculiarity. It is his unique vision (likely drawn from the resources of Jewish Apocalypticism) in which the spiritual Jesus does not leave His bodily existence behind, but His flesh, His wounds, and all the particularity of His earthly existence are translated into the spiritual state and integrated with it. The shift to the spiritual state somehow upholds the peculiar features and experiences that defined Jesus within space and time, within a historical and cosmic narrative. It is like a story now becoming legendary and timeless but retaining all of its contextual idiosyncrasies. As Wikenhauser points out:

Christ who is present in Paul is not merely a power or some kind of principle, He is the historical person with His individual character and His own experiences. When Paul says that Christ is in him, he means that this individual person is present in him.[7]

It is as if the historically bound events of Christ’s life were now inscribed into a state beyond time and space. This enduring peculiarity of Christ’s earthly experience in the glorification of His flesh accounts for the way in which Paul’s union is experienced in terms of a “re-living” of the events of Christ’s earthly life. Further, this identification allows for a conception of what we might call the Mystical Messiah: the peculiar narrative of Christ as Messiah can be relocated and re-presented in the lives of others in virtue of Christ’s spiritual state and His ability to, as it were, relocate Himself into the lives of others.

B. Being “In Christ”

The far more common mystical phrase in Paul’s writings is “in Christ,” which occurs 164 times in his Epistles! This notion is intimately linked with “Christ in us,” just as for Balthasar Christ’s re-living presence in believers was mirrored by the participation of those believers in Christ. For Paul, it is only because Christ Triumphant is a spiritual being that he can conceive of men “participating” in the reality of Jesus. Thus, as before, the notion is used in conjunction with the phrase “in the Spirit” (Rom 8:9).

In Pauline theology, to be “in Christ” always refers to the principle of one’s life and action, and is contrasted with the phrases “in the flesh,” “in sin,” “in the Law,” etc. (Rom 7:5; Rom 8:8; Col 2:20; Rom 2:12; Rom 3:19; Rom 6:2). Consistent with Paul’s understanding of spiritual indwelling, the word “in” in each of the above notions can be replaced with the phrase “under the influence of.”[8] When Paul says the Christian is “in Christ,” he means that now the Christian lives on a new plane of existence ushered in by the presence that the Spirit of Christ attains in him. Christ’s spiritual indwelling means that Christ’s Spirit (which is God’s Spirit), or rather His life-principle, becomes the life and breath of the Christian, and the animating force of his actions and being. If we see how the notion of spirit in the Old Testament is often tied to “breath,” and thus life-force, it is easy to see that if Christ’s Spirit becomes our inner breath, we are quite literally new creations. This divides life across two contrasted periods: 1) the level in which the principle of one’s life is “sin,” “flesh,” “the world,” “death,” etc., a condition which for the Christian is in the past; and 2) the level in which the principle of one’s life is Christ’s vital power (also described as being “in the Spirit”). Thus being “in Christ” can be described as a new state of existence in which one’s entire being is under the influence and power of the Spirit of Christ which really and truly dwells in him as a non-physical entity: a personal force principally expressed through motivation in the ethical realm.

We now know broadly the logic behind Paul’s mystical rhetoric. But we don’t as yet know where these concepts come from or the context in which they were born. And this context could provide certain constraints or new horizons: how we can and cannot employ these terms in a constructive theological project. So we must now turn to the context within the context: the conceptual milieu in which Paul found himself.

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[1] Props to Didymus IV for bringing the 1 Cor 15 passage (ad the Blake painting) to my attention: http://paultocorinth.blogspot.com/2007/09/but-it-is-not-spiritual-that-is-first.html

[2] Alfred Wikenhauser, Pauline Mysticism: Christ in the Mystical Teaching of St. Paul (New York: Herder and Herder, 1960), p.44

[3] Taking into account passages of distinction, Wikenhauser holds that the unity of Christ and the distinct Person called the Holy Spirit occurs in their coincidence of activity: it is only through the work of the Holy Spirit that the spiritual Christ becomes present in believers. Cf. Ibid., p.84; see also George Maloney, S.J., The Mystery of Christ in You: The Mystical Vision of Saint Paul (New York: Alba House, 1998), p.64-65

[4] Traditionally, in the Old Testament, the spirit is the mode through which God dwells in and acts through men.

[5] See also the following 1 Cor 15:46-49

[6] Wikenhauser, p.89

[7] Ibid., p.74

[8] Ibid., p.52

The Mystical Messiah I

The following will make up a series of posts drawn from some research I did last semester on mystical theology and spirituality. It is, in large part, little more than a reflection on Alfred Wikenhauser's Pauline Mysticism: Christ in the Mystical Teaching of St. Paul and Albert Schweitzer's The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, which I was deeply struck by. It will be evident to anyone who has read this work that for the sake of space I limited my focus to only certain dimensions of Schweitzer's account. This topic is rich enough, as Schweitzer's account makes clear, to encompass detailed treatments of ecclesiology, sacraments, ethics, and eschatology. To draw these out fully is a project for another day (or career). This is, then, incomplete in nature. Since I began writing, I have begun to read more and more on Paul and am only now beginning to obtain the kind of familiarity necessary to point out with any justification where Schweitzer's account may be lacking or incomplete. So I may in fact disagree now on certain matters, from a historical-critical perspective, which I was unable to accurately question before. Nonetheless, I thought it would be good to post and perhaps spark some interesting discussion....

When I reflect on what sources have influenced my own personal spirituality, there is little doubt that the great mystics of the Catholic tradition play a prominent role. In particular my heart sees kindred spirits in those holy men and women whose mysticism is utterly saturated with and shaped by the person of Jesus Christ in all the concrete dimensions of his humanity. It is this obsessive focus upon the Word Incarnate that I believe most visibly separates these saints from the mystics of the pagan schools (like Neoplatonism), because here the ascent to union with God can only be properly conceived of in terms of Christ. In many ways Jesus is the most fitting locus of any mysticism, insofar as He embodies in His very flesh the most radical union of God and man, and His sojourn into an earthly life was characterized by a mystical union: of embracing humanity and carrying it back to the Father. Jesus Himself can thus be said to be the first true mystic (the Cross being the greatest of His “dark nights”). Indeed, from the days of Christianity’s birth, the path of holiness was thought of through the dynamic of discipleship: Christian spiritual life was simply a “following” of Christ and a deepening share in His very life. It is therefore unsurprising that in figures as diverse as Maximus, Bonaventure, Bernard, and Julian, the mystical path is described precisely as a profound participation in the experiences of Christ. It seems then that Christ’s experience naturally lends itself to imitation, as the truest exemplification of what Christian spirituality means.

However, much of the language surrounding these mystical accounts of Christ is notoriously ambiguous and theoretically unintelligible. Many phrases and descriptions of spirituality, which have become common in the broader Christian tradition, seem to strike the ear with a deceiving familiarity. For they truly signal a divorce from their original home, the context in which the concepts and words were rendered intelligible. They are, it seems, much like immigrant concepts: all around and familiar yet always somehow foreign. For I have long wondered what exactly people mean when they ask “Do you have Christ Jesus in your heart?” or when they say “I am united with God in the spirit.” It seems obvious that the supernatural content of these utterances require a stretching of language beyond our normal meanings and senses. But an account of how this language is stretched and how to make it intelligible is rarely provided. While the tradition has preserved the concepts and the rhetoric of the past, it has not always preserved the context which those concepts and that rhetoric grew out of. We shall thus seek to discover the precedent within the Christian theological tradition for these mystical concepts that center around Christ specifically. Yet to gain a clearer understanding of how these notions function within our own time, before turning to the origins, we shall use as a point of departure for our study the Christology of Hans Urs von Balthasar.

A. Balthasar and Christology “From Within”

Hans Urs von Balthasar conceives of Christology in a way that is unique in modern theology. Rather than approach the Gospels with a hermeneutic geared toward emphasizing Christ’s divinity (“Christology from above”) or His humanity (“Christology from below”), he offers an approach that bridges the false dichotomy by exploring the insight about Christ that is revealed in the lives of the saints and mystics of the Christian tradition: what Mark McIntosh calls a “Christology from within.”[1] According to Balthasar, the saints and mystics have a special access to the inner reality of Christ because their existence is defined by a dramatic participation in Christ. They therefore become icons to the Church, windows into the reality of Christ providing data for the systematic reflection of Christology analogous to and consistent with the Scriptural deposit. They offer a vantage point of Christ’s divine-human existence from the inside out. This Christology is then a study of Christ insofar as He is made present in the very lives of believers.

Balthasar is able to think along these lines because according to Him Christ has a uniquely open and inclusive existence: He is able to offer participation in Himself and even in the experiences of His earthly life. As Balthasar puts it: “The individual historical existence of Christ can be so universalized as to become the immediate norm of every individual existence.”[2] This is no external imitation, but a profound sharing of Jesus’ own consciousness. Just as the sacraments (namely, the Eucharist) make present events of Christ’s life that stand in new relations of time and space, holiness in Christians is seen as a constant re-presencing of Christ unfolding in every age. And for Balthasar, the saints and mystics are given to us for the sole purpose of enlightening the Church about the inner reality of Christ, that our understanding of the faith may increase as well as our charity. As every Christology bears the imprint of some community’s experience of Jesus, Balthasar’s Christology can be said to emerge from the community’s experience of Jesus in the mystical union which somehow shares His life with the holy. McIntosh notes:

Through the saints, each moment of Christ’s existence is made continually and really present in His Body, and it is von Balthasar’s aim to enlist these experiences in deepening the Body’s understanding of what has taken place in its Head…von Balthasar is claiming the right to draw on the saints’ own grace of participation in Christ as a direct source for theological construction. [3]

Christ, then, according to Balthasar, possesses an existence with the unique capacity to include souls within Himself, making it possible for them to share in the very experience of His earthly life.[4] Yet how is this possible? Balthasar grounds this capacity in Christ’s kenotic self-giving, which has two aspects. Christ is self-giving in the act of creation, insofar as all things are created through Christ; and Christ is self-giving in the economy of salvation, as He is poured-out in His incarnation. These two aspects are intimately related for Balthasar, and therefore the contours of Christ’s earthly life are by no means accidental. All creation bears in some way the mark of Christ, and thus the patterns of Christ’s earthly life actually give expression to God the Son such that they also reveal the inherent, foundational structures of created historical existence. Creation is…

…shaped and structured and completely conditioned by certain categories. The framework of its meanings is constructed of the situations (the interior situations) of Christ’s earthly existence. Man cannot fall out of this space which is Christ’s, nor out of the structural form created by his life.[5]

Thus, the pattern of Christ’s saving actions informs and reveals the very structures of fulfillment written into the nature of man from His creation. The believer only finds the actualization of his own existence to the extent that he lives according to this mysterious union, allowing the life of Christ to structure his entire being. Christ’s salvific acts have the capacity to actively generate related situations in the life of the believer, such that his transformation and union with God can only be thought of as a movement from self to “Christ-self,” from revealing only oneself to making Christ’s life present again through one’s own life. This is the very nature of the unique Christian mystical ascent.

We can thus see how Balthasar finds resources for a unique Christology and for an account of spirituality that can only be articulated in terms of this union with and participation in the life of Christ. He grounds these accounts on notions of Christ’s life as uniquely open to participation, somehow beyond time and space, able to exist again in the very lives of believers and create in them related situations (such as his dying and rising). Further, he provides an account of how the self-realization of all created humanity comes only through conforming to these patterns of Christ’s life and by making Him present once more. His theory is coherent and illuminating, and represents the kind of constructive theology of Jesus that the Christ-centered mystics presuppose. But our pursuit of intelligibility cannot rest in the immediate theological justification. We are forced to ask: what foundation does such an enterprise have in the theological tradition? What precedent is there for conceiving of Christ’s existence as mysteriously “open to participation” and of the believer as partaking of Christ’s very life? How can one “participate” in someone else’s life that has already been lived? What is the nature of this union and what implications does it have for the existence of the believer? In short, Balthasar’s account presupposes the intelligibility of these concepts within their native context. We must then trace them back to understand what lends this theological dialect its coherence in the first place.

B. Paul as Source of a Theological Tradition

The first signs of a mysticism that is oriented specifically to a mystical union with Christ is found in the theology of St. Paul. The term “mysticism” used in the context of Pauline thought does not carry the same connotations presumed in most modern ramblings about mysticism, such as the dichotomy between individual and community, private revelation vs. public revelation, etc. Paul’s mysticism is irreducible to a series of psychological phenomena. And in contrast to pagan “God-mysticism” (as with pantheistic strains in Hellenism, Buddhism, among others), it is obvious that for Paul whatever we mean by union with God has to come through a personal union with Jesus. It is, as Albert Schweitzer notes, more accurately termed a “Christ-mysticism.”[6] The essence of mysticism for Paul is an intimate and mysterious union with Jesus Christ Triumphant; the nature of which Paul develops not in any single systematic treatment, but through recurrent concepts that underlie his theology across many of his Epistles. Therefore, we shall turn to the writings of Paul to discover the origin of a “mystical” conception of Christ and how such a conception is made intelligible in its original New Testament context. This we deem to be the source of the theological-mystical tradition that runs through such thinkers as St. Maximus, St. Bernard, and St. Bonaventure.

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[1] Mark McIntosh, Christology From Within: Spirituality and the Incarnation in Hans Urs von Balthasar (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), p.21

[2] Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History, 2^nd ed. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), p.79-80; cited in McIntosh, p.21

[3] McIntosh, p.26

[4] Ibid., p.25: “saints have been granted a capacity to witness to the ever-new, ever-deeper dimensions of Christ’s living, dying, and rising.”

[5] Ibid., p.22

[6] Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1956), p.13

On The Horizon....

Things have been, obviously, rather slow around here as of late. I'd venture to guess that all of the contributors (especially yours truly) have been drowning under the weight of academic workloads for some time. Not to mention the burdens of "real life," assuming such a thing exists. Now that the semester is underway again and I am in a new and foreign land (the South!), things are crazier than ever.

But fear not. My summer was a very fruitful one, and my appetite for things divine was more voracious than ever. I was a theological sponge during my time off, and I have countless topics for good discussion bouncing around upstairs. I have also begun classes on Theological Exegesis, North African Theology, and Henri de Lubac. The plate is full, but all good things to eat!

So keep an eye out for posts on Biblical Hermeneutics, Historical Jesus, New Testament Theologies, Old Testament exegesis, some book reviews, and, well, de Lubac!

Be patient though. As Tertullian says, patience is the very nature of God.

(Back to the books....)


Pax Christi,

Theology and Childhood

What does it mean to be a child in Christ's sense? Is it not a simple and total confidence in the Father? Does it not include the faithful abandon and freedom of a pure imagination--pure receptivity and creativity--placed in the service of the Lord? The honesty and righteousness of a pure child. "Unless you become like one of these little ones, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven." The recovery of wonder, innocence, beauty, imagination, deep curiosity, love for truth and goodness, littleness... All of these are dimensions wrapped up in a "theology of childhood" meant to be lived but so often forgotten in the face of pressures, deadlines, anxieties, failures, and sins. Lord Jesus, You want us to have the heart of a child. You want us to strive after this heart in response to the gift of Your own Heart. "Create in me a clean heart, O Lord..."

Can theology be a science of integrity without this constant striving after the heart of a child?

There Is A Fine Line

There is a fine line
Between Of and In,
“Be In the world
Not Of it,”
But I fear that the state
That the State is now in,
Too many people
Now love it.

Loving the state,
State Of being In love?
It’s oft hard to know -
Of or In?
And those not in love,
Where might they go?
The ugliest answer
Our Histories show:
The confusion in Of,
The unknowing of In,
Burn these less Stately souls
In an Of-In.

Sergius Bulgakov Blog Conference

An online conference to examine and honor the thought of Sergius Bulgakov is being prepared by the hosts of The Land of Unlikeness.

The conference presentation will be September 2008.

There is still time to submit a paper of your own if you are interested in participating. For more information, read the details here.

Emerson's Romantic Christology

No, my friends: the Well has not dried up (though there is far less water being drawn from it as there once was). Here is a reflection I wrote after reading some of Emerson's religious works...

I. Introduction

On July 15^th, 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson was asked to give an address to his religious kin, men after his own heart: the young “Unitarian Champions” at the Harvard Divinity School. For Emerson, this was the long-awaited opportunity to sermonize on a religious vision he had developed as early as 1826. Yet it was not immediately apparent to him how far from kinsmen his hosts at Harvard were; far less apparent was it to the Unitarians how radically Emerson’s heart had changed since his early days as a preacher. For in his now infamous address, Emerson preached a divisive message about the distinction between spiritual and traditional Christianity, noting the absolute value of the former and the merely accidental worth of the latter. This was a vision that paid homage to the primal religious impulse in man and sought to expose historical Christianity as a “monster” and a “myth”[i]: an edifice worthy of the iconoclast’s hammer. Suffice it to say, this message provoked a zealous outcry, including charges of “heresy,” “pantheism,” “atheism,” and ultimately culminated in the end of Emerson’s preaching career and the subsequent retreat “into his cloud.”[ii] Yet as stark a contrast as Emerson painted, and as much dogma as he cast away; he nonetheless refused to entirely exorcise Christ from the theological landscape, fixing a place for him within the ranks of spiritual religion. Thus, we find in Emerson an appropriation and re-contextualizing of Jesus and His message within a non-traditional conceptual framework. And by analyzing his philosophical and theological presuppositions, one is able to make the unique Christology in Emerson’s work intelligible.

II. Transcendentalism as Hermeneutic: Between “Reason” and Revelation

In order to grasp the development of Emerson’s religious thought, one must first understand his engagement with the Unitarian tradition. When he began his career as a preacher, the Unitarians represented the “extreme liberal wing” of Christianity in New England. Through his ministry in the church, Emerson thereby entered into a tradition in the midst of a sectarian debate: the Unitarians, who were heavily influenced by the rationalism of the 18^th century, drew from that conception of reason to justify their rejection of the doctrines of fundamentalist Calvinism. Particularly unacceptable was the Calvinist doctrine of the total depravity of nature, and it seems likely that Emerson’s own reverence for nature may have grown out of the initial reaction to this discountenance. While subjecting the claims of revelation to the crucible of modern reason, the Unitarians maintained a devotion to the unique historical deposit of Christian faith. However, the philosophy from which the Unitarians drew support in interpreting their revelation had also cleared a path for the rejection of the Christian tradition in favor of a “rational religion” that built up certain tenets (moral law, immortality of the soul, the existence of God) based on the singular authority of reason. Even more radically, that philosophy spawned figures like Hume who employed its principles against traditional Christianity as well as any religion built upon reason. Emerson thus, as Stephen Whicher notes, found himself attempting to navigate through a “spiritual emergency.”[iii] Both the groundless fundamentalism of the Calvinists and the Enlightenment’s “rational religion,” relying as it did on a truncated view of reason, were equally unsavory paths.

Emerson’s response to this crisis was definitive for the shape of his entire religious vision. Both the authority of historically defined revelation and the authority of empirical, rationalist reason had been shaken.[iv] Emerson was then able to draw from modern philosophy itself in order to justify an alternative source of faith as well as his rejection of a dangerous historical tradition (as seen in Calvinism) and a rationality prone to atheism. Through the mediation (and alteration) of Coleridge, Emerson discovered a distinction in the epistemology of Immanuel Kant between “Understanding” (Verstand) and “Reason” (Vernuft) which proved to be foundational.[v] For Emerson, Verstand is the logical and practical intelligence, concerned with facts and overall empirical data. Its world is one of “a mechanical system of necessity” and “collections of atoms,” in which man is a product of forces and not their source. Vernuft, however, is immediate intuition, dealing with absolute truths transcending sense perception. Its world is that of a new dimension beyond the mechanical, ripe with the promise of freedom and spirit. Though Kant had not intended Reason to serve as a source of certain truths beyond the limits of sense experience, Coleridge (following some of Kant’s German successors) gave a definitively Platonic rendering of the distinction before it reached American shores. This resulted in a “two truth theory,” making Reason a new source of truth in intuition, distinct from the overly empirical eyes of the Understanding. In Reason, man was able to impose a spirit of freedom upon the landscape of the Newtonian universe, as well as a distinctive identity and purpose.

Reason, then, served as an alternative font for religion distinct from both historical revelation and empiricism masquerading as “reason.”[vi] That which is immediately present to Reason became the sole standard of truth for Emerson, and thus lead unsurprisingly to a drastic interiorization. This took the form of an idealism, which he identified with true Transcendentalism. Accordingly, every reality exists with meaning in the gaze of the intuition, and thus one can only “behold the procession of facts you call the world, as flowing perpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded center in himself….”[vii] Transcendentalism (its name taken from Kantian vocabulary) names this shift to the “other world” of absolute truths: it is the “tendency to respect the intuitions and to give them, at least in our creed, all authority over our experience…”[viii] From this point of view, Reason simply is revelation. The true site of religious truth is not a historical event or a canon of books, but rather the inner depths of one’s spirit. “Faith” then is simply this internal “light” of revelation and the allegiance to the truths it illuminates: “…Transcendentalism is the…excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity…”[ix] The unveiling of God occurs not out-there, but always in the dynamic flow of the inner soul. Therefore, God need not make use of prophets and covenants and Scriptures to mediate His encounter with man; in the Transcendentalist scheme, the intuition simply is the place of theophany, the holy ground: “bid the invaders take the shoes off their feet, for God is here within.”[x] God is not the absolutely transcendent Being who comes to us through an economy of supernatural grace; Emerson’s God is radically immanent.[xi] The free mind is hallowed as the true temple and Holy of Holies. Indeed, Emerson was so bold as to identify the Reason with God Himself (one thinks of Eckhart)![xii] The Transcendentalist God is the “God Within.” Divinity, then, becomes a slippery predicate, potentially attributable to all who exercise the Reason and draw from more than discursive reason (for in that beyond, God is present). One cannot pray to this God as an external “other” who is able to grant “particular commodities” upon request: in this context, prayer is not a “means to effect a private end” (which is “meaningless and theft”), but rather “the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul.”[xiii] One is able to pray insofar as this God is present in every action flowing from the Transcendentalist attitude. This is without doubt the God of 1 Cor15:28, who is “all in all.” And the idealist “other world” this God inhabits becomes the sole foundation for Emerson’s religion.

As revelation is centered within the dynamic nature of the intuitive Reason, and as this Reason is the soul arbiter of absolute truth, Emerson gives primacy to the temporal present. That which has value has it only in the idealist gaze at the moment of intuition: “truth existed, lived only in a present act of vision and ceased to live as that ended…what mattered, then, was not so much truth as truth-making, not thoughts but thinking.”[xiv] Only that which has the power to affect the soul, to enliven the spirit, in intuitive presence is worthy of the name revelation. The faith of the soul is then a dynamic and continuous revelation that is new at every moment. All concepts of revelation as an event in history, as having occurred once and for all that we must approach through memory, are jettisoned. As Emerson notes: “Life only prevails, not the having lived.”[xv]

What then is the content of this internal revelation? How does one concretely encounter the “God Within?” For Emerson, the primary objects of insight are the spiritual laws of nature, laws he identifies with the divine laws. To be in touch with God inside is to be in contact with the Moral Nature, which “introduce greatness-yea, God Himself-into the open soul…”[xvi]scientia, but rather a sentiment: an engagement of the entire person and not a single faculty. This “sentiment of virtue” or “moral sentiment” is a revelation of cosmic harmony, and actually brings the believer into harmony with Nature: creating justice immediately in the soul which Emerson conceives of as cooperation with the one spirit of Nature.[xvii] This and this alone makes for true holiness and deification; and its absence makes for wickedness. Further, this moral sentiment is intuitive, and thus cannot be mediated by another, cannot be received secondhand.[xviii] Emerson also notes: “the perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness.”[xix] Thus, it is the experience of the moral sentiment that lies at the heart of all religious expression: it is “the essence of all religion.” [xx] All dogmatic, creedal forms of worship and ritual have this as their foundation, and are only limited expressions of this primal experience of the divine that all potentially share. Thus, in a move reminiscent of Kant’s religion of morality, for Emerson all religion is properly founded on the “moral science.” These are not laws of the Understanding that govern the flow of atoms and solid masses; they are laws of spirit. And this contact is not one of theoretical

Overall, then, Emerson’s Transcendentalism emerges from a spiritual crisis which gives his religion the following contours: 1) it is founded on a Platonic reading of Kant’s Vernunft which opened up a world of spiritual freedom and absolute truths beyond sense perception; 2) as Reason is elevated to prominence, it is marked by a radical interiorization and idealism; 3) in this milieu, the source of revelation is interiorized; “reason” is thus rethought as a reservoir of faith flowing from within oneself. 4) God’s contact with the believer is immediate and immanent; so immanent one can identify this “God Within” with the intuitive Reason in oneself; 4) as immediate intuition is the absolute source of truth, there results a privileging of the temporally present and a devaluing of any revelation that is mediated from the past; 5) and finally, one’s encounter with the “God Within” is an experience of the moral sentiment, which is identified with a religious sentiment that underlies all systems and traditions of religious expression. All of these factors color Emerson’s engagement with historical Christianity and form the hermeneutic upon which his appropriation of Christ is based.

III. Christ, the Church, and the “God Within”

The first point to consider in approaching Emerson’s Christology is: what resources his Transcendentalism gives him to critique the authority of historical Christianity. For in undermining the authority of the traditional revelation, he is thereby able to deconstruct the historical figuration of Jesus and clear the way for his positive reclamation.

Having established the moral sentiment as the foundation of all religion, and that all creedal forms of worship give expression to this, it follows that the standard for judging the merit of any positive religion is its adherence to the Transcendentist God and the laws of Nature. All expressions are sacred and lasting only in proportion to this purity, insofar as in varied ways they proclaim the “God Within”; and any divergence from the core of spiritual religion constitutes a break with orthodoxy. Therefore, as one expression among others, the exceptionality of historical Christianity is radically called into question, and even rendered accidental. Only a Christianity that persists in the “faith” that is the moral sentiment endures. Thus, the historical event of revelation in the Christian narrative cannot offer any exclusive truth above and beyond the interior revelation. Emerson notes that “as men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the inellect.” Creeds are particular classifications of the primal spirit made by a powerful mind “acting on the elemental thought of duty and man’s relation to the highest.”[xxi] But as intuition is only real in the present, so too are such systems and expressions only valued insofar as the mind that expresses them lives and breathes. They naturally tend to corruption, back into the undetermined mass of sentiment, to be expressed again in different ways. Yet failing to grasp this notion of intuition as the source of truth, historical systems idolize their expressions and institute them as timeless, giving them a life well beyond their justification. Here language, titles, concepts, and practices are carried across time and are thereby disconnected from their original context: “wholly insulated from anything now extant in the life and business of the people.”[xxii]This is, for Emerson, one of the great defects of historical Christianity.[xxiii]

Thus, it follows also from the nature of intuition and its privileging of revelation in the “now” that Christianity as tradition is automatically evacuated of its value. One cannot look to the past for a legitimate unveiling of the divine, because the place of revelation is within. As one must experience the truths in intuition himself, any religious knowledge must be immediate and cannot be received on the authority of another. Thus the traditional conception of revelatory authority existing in the Church as apostolic community no longer carries weight. One must find true in oneself what one hears from another: “and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.”[xxiv] And further: “Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away-means, teachers, texts, temples fall…”[xxv] It follows also that the Church, traditionally understood as mediator of revelation between God and man, is rendered obsolete: because the locus of revelation is within, no external mediator is possible.[xxvi] The irrelevance of any truth passed on over time, accepted on the authority of others, and as the prime site of revelation, renders historical Christianity exceedingly impotent. And as the tropes, concepts, and language of the tradition fall, so falls the interpretation of Christ that they constitute.

The problem with Christianity’s vision of Christ is that, detached from the moral sentiment, the Church has applied its idolized expressions to Jesus, forming “not the doctrine of the soul but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual” and “a noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus.” Because Christianity focuses on the centrality of the person of Christ, the collection of its titles and concepts for Him “paints a demigod.”[xxvii] Jesus is elevated so high that the divine nature is uniquely predicated of Him, and man subordinates his nature to Christ’s. This subordination is without merit for Emerson, and even stifles the fulfillment of true humanity: if Christians spoke from the moral sentiment and the Transcendentalist frame of mind, they would see that the divine nature is not attributable to Christ alone, but is communicated (potentially) to all. He notes: “if a man is at heart just, then insofar is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice.”[xxviii] In this way, Christ’s divinity is radically refigured by Emerson: because God is within, and can be identified with the Reason, He is just as close to me as he is to Christ. Jesus is only “unique” in the limited sense that He may be actually more in touch with the moral sentiment than others. The divine nature is more His only in an accidental manner.

Thus in this way the entire Incarnation is radically rethought. Jesus is not Jehovah revealed in the flesh; this is the myth of historical faith that clings to Christ’s language and figures and rhetoric more than his truth.[xxix] Rather, God incarnates Himself in every man through the Reason, harmonizing his actions. Christ’s person, as noted, has no value to revelation; only his example is of use. Emerson ranks Him among the “true race of prophets” as an icon of the moral sentiment, who lived the very presence of the “God Within.”[xxx] He also considers Jesus to be “the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of man.”[xxxi] Yet this distinction only derives from His intimacy with the moral sentiment: only a divine accomplishment insofar as it is the vocation of every true man. Everyone of us has the potential to become “Christ”: “a true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”[xxxii]imitatio Christi: Christ, no longer a personality, is a paradigm, an icon of the potentially divine within us. This is a way of naturalizing the Christian concept of

This therefore contributes to a radical rereading of the Christian understanding of salvation. Christ the person’s life, death, and resurrection are not seen as acts that open the divine life to humanity in a new way. Rather, “…by his holy thoughts, Jesus serves us, and thus alone.”[xxxiii] This conception of salvation is quasi-Gnostic in character, insofar as Christ’s actions are not efficacious for our redemption, but rather His ability to enlighten us to the divine nature that we all share alike.[xxxiv] Jesus is only savior in the sense that His example helps us to realize our own potential divinity. This is the role of the “divine bard”: one who inspires my virtue, my intellect, my strength.[xxxv] Yet he is not mediator between God and man as traditionally understood (we are called by Emerson to “dare to love God without mediator or veil”).[xxxvi] Nor is His mediation carried across time through His enduring presence in His Mystical Body. Jesus did not outlive His death in any significant fashion to affect us (sacramentally) in the present. His presence, power, and personality are significantly limited. Christ is simply rethought as the poet and priest of Nature and sentiment, and thus what we find in Emerson’s work is a truly Romantic Christology.

Thus, we have seen how the specific tenets of Emerson’s Transcendentalism, forged out of spiritual dilemma, constitute a hermeneutic lens through which traditional Christianity is critiqued and reinterpreted. The interiorization of revelation, faith, and God Himself leads to a rejection of historical authority, external mediation, and tradition. Similarly, the move to the “God Within” leads to a radical reinterpretation of the role of Christ with regard to divinity, incarnation, mediation, and salvation. What is left for Emerson to positively affirm is a figure who serves as icon; who shakes us into the realization of our own power and the intimacy with God that all share. As a prophet, priest, and poet at one with the moral sentiment, Christ is above all “a dear friend” who helps us to hear “the severe music of the bards that have sung of the true God in all ages.”[xxxvii]

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[i] Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Divinity School Address” in Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Organic Anthology. Ed. Stephen E. Whicher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957. p.105

[ii] Whicher, Stephen E. Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Organic Anthology. Ed. Stephen E. Whicher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957. p.97-98

[iii] Ibid., p.xv

[iv] Ibid., p.xvi

[v] Ibid., p.470

[vi] Ibid., p.xvi: “Abandoning with relief all allegiance to historical Christianity, he rested his faith on the ‘other world’ of God and freedom assured him by his own immediate intuiton.”

[vii] Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Transcendentalist” in Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Organic Anthology. Ed. Stephen E. Whicher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957. p.195

[viii] Ibid., p.198

[ix] Ibid., p.197

[x] Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Self-Reliance” in Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Organic Anthology. Ed. Stephen E. Whicher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957. p.159

[xi] Ibid., p.157: “The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.”

[xii] Whicher, p.470

[xiii] “Self-Reliance,” p.162

[xiv] Whicher, p.xviii

[xv] “Self-Reliance,” p.158

[xvi] “The Divinity School Address,” p.107

[xvii] Ibid., p.103

[xviii] Ibid., p.104

[xix] Ibid., p.103

[xx] Ibid., p.102

[xxi] “Self-Reliance,” p.163

[xxii] “The Divinity School Address,” p.108

[xxiii] Though Emerson does note that among the various expressions of the moral sentiment, Christianity may be the purest despite its many flaws. See Ibid., p.104

[xxiv] Ibid., p.104

[xxv] “Self-Reliance,” p.157

[xxvi] Ibid., p. 149: “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?”

[xxvii] “The Divinity School Address,” p.106

[xxviii] Ibid., p.102

[xxix] Ibid., p.105

[xxx] Ibid., p.105

[xxxi] Ibid., p.106

[xxxii] Ibid., p.107

[xxxiii] Ibid., p.107

[xxxiv] I have used the term “quasi-Gnostic” because it is important to note that, unlike the Gnostics who thought such enlightenment was reserved for an elite few, Emerson speaks of the potential for all men to come to such a revelation.

[xxxv] “The Divinity School Address,” p.106

[xxxvi] Ibid., p.112

[xxxvii] Ibid., p.107

Singing the Unity of Love

Let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth!
More delightful is your love than wine!
Your name spoken is a spreading perfume-
That is why the maidens love you.
Draw me!

Thus begins one of the most important books of the set of Scriptures used by Jews and Christians. That’s right, I quoted from Sacred Scripture, not a cheap grocery store novel. Still, when I say erôs, I imagine that some of you think of things that shouldn’t be mentioned, while others of you think of things that are probably more or less OK for discussing with friends, but not appropriate for a Sunday school talk like today. Consider what would happen if you typed “erotic” into a web-search. In one way of speaking, the results “wouldn’t be pretty,” but in another way of thinking, they’d be “all about prettiness.” To cut to my point, the whole topic of erôs is full of tension. It’s a bag mixed with good things and troubled things, pleasure and pain, fear and love. Some of that tension does resolve to the issues of sin and sinfulness. I’m certainly not here to give you an X-rated talk, and I’m not really even here to give you thoughts on sin. But still, it’s at the heart of Catholicism to see that sin is a perversion of a deeper gift. I intend to talk about that deeper gift this morning. My way of going about doing this is to consider a book of Scripture, the Song of Songs. I hope many of you found it in the Old Testament and read it before today. With notes and commentary, it comes to less than 7 faces of a page in my edition of the Bible. That is, it’s short enough to read in one sitting. If you haven’t read it recently, I can only encourage you to read it this afternoon. But I don’t want simply to discuss the book of the Bible; I am not a Scripture scholar. Rather, I’m something of a theologian and historian. Besides that, Catholics understand that Scripture and Tradition are married, and so, I cannot talk about the Song of Songs without also talking about commentaries on the Song. As with all Scripture, we must pay attention to how it is used. Finally, I want to take some queues from our current Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Charitas Est - God is Love, and discuss the unity of love.

The Song is one of the oldest books of the Bible. It seems to be a series of love songs that would have been sung at a wedding. The amorous images, phrases, and praises speak of the love between a man and a woman. Even though some of the language might not be the best way to frame it in American English, for example, it probably wouldn’t work out too well for a young man to say to a woman,

your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down the mountains of Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of ewes to be shorn, which come up from the washing, all of them big with twins, none of them thin and barren…Your neck is like David’s tower girt with battlements; a thousand bucklers hang upon it, all the shields of valiant men,

-even though this might be an odd way to go about expressing love - we can easily understand most of the imagery, for example,

set me as a seal on your heart,
As a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love,
Relentless as the nether world is devotion;
Its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
Nor floods sweep it away.
Were one to offer all he owns to purchase love,

The theme of love is timeless, and the Song captures many elements of the way we experience and understand that theme. Still, many puzzle over the fact that this book of the Bible does not mention God directly. Nor does it tell the history of Israel directly, like the familiar stories from Genesis and Exodus. Instead, it seems to offer an expression of love that can be understood on many levels: the love between spouses which is both passionate and steadied; the love between Jesus and the Church, the love between the Father and his people, the love between God and the individual soul, and even the love of Mary. Most Jewish interpretation either understands the Song as that expression “of love between God and Israel given to Moses with the law at Mount Sinai or as the song of love revealed at the building of the ark of the covenant.” A famous first century Rabbi said “the whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the Scriptures are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.” Christian use of the Song does not differ much from his understanding.

Origen, a Christian born in the second century, was a brilliant man who sought holiness within a period of time marked by persecutions of Christians. He studied with Jewish and pagan scholars in Alexandria. Though some of his speculations were later understood as heretical, he led the way in many fields of theology, especially commentary on Scripture. His Commentary on the Song of Songs is a very important text for theology. Written in Greek, it was translated and widely read in Latin as early as the 4th century. Since he is the first Christian to write at length on the Song, I’d like to quote at length from his introduction to the Song:
Before we come to consider the things that are written in this book…it seems to me necessary to say a few things first about love itself, which is the main theme of this Scripture; then about the order of the books of Solomon, among which we find that this one is put third; then about the name of the book itself…and, lastly for what apparent reason it is written in dramatic form and, like a story that is acted on the stage, with dialogue between the characters.

Among the Greeks, indeed, many of the sages, desiring to pursue the search for truth in regard to the nature of love, produced a great variety of writings in this dialogue form, the object of which was to show that the power of love is none other than that which leads the soul from earth to the lofty heights of heaven, and that the heights of beatitude can only be attained under the stimulus of love’s desire. Moreover, the disputations on this subject are represented as taking place at meals, between persons whose banquet, I think, consists of words and not of meats. And others also have left us written accounts of certain arts, by which this love might be generated and augmented in the soul. But carnal men have perverted these arts to foster vicious longings and the secrets of sinful love.

You must not be surprised, therefore, if we call the discussion of the nature of love difficult and likely to be dangerous also for ourselves, among whom there are as many inexperienced folk as there are people of the simpler sort; seeing that even among the Greeks, who seem so wise and learned, there have none the less been some who did not understand what was said about love in the sense in which it was written, but took occasion from it to rush into carnal sins and down the steep places of immodesty, either by taking some suggestions and recommendations out of what had been written, as we said above, or else by using what the ancients wrote as a cloak for their own lack of self-control.

Origen obviously references Plato’s Symposium, and probably has other dialogues in mind, as well as many Greek poems that address the theme of love. Plato had written about the process of moving from a particular beautiful body to the beauty of ideas and even to beholding Beauty Itself. In Origen’s Commentary, pages of discussion continue before he concludes his introductory section as follows:

The Scripture before us, therefore, speaks of this love with which the blessed soul is kindled and inflamed towards the Word of God; it sings by the Spirit the song of the marriage whereby the Church is joined and allied to Christ the heavenly Bridegroom, desiring to be united to Him through the Word, so that she may conceive by Him and be saved through this chaste begetting of children, when they - conceived as they are indeed of the seed of the Word of God, and born and brought forth by the spotless Church, or by the soul that seeks nothing bodily, nothing material, but is aflame with the single love of the Word of God - shall have persevered in faith and holiness with sobriety.

These are the considerations that have occurred to us thus far regarding the love or charity that is set forth in this marriage-hymn that is the Song of Songs. But we must realize how many things there are that ought to be said about this charity, what great things also about God, since He is Charity Himself. For, as no one know[s] the Father but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him, so also no one knows Charity except the Son. In the same way also, no one know[s] the Son, since He Himself likewise is Charity, except the Father, and in like manner, because He is called Charity, it is the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, who alone knows what is in God; just as the spirit of man knows what is in man. Wherefore this Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth who proceed[s] from the Father, goes about trying to find souls worthy and able to receive the greatness of this charity, that is of God, that He desires to reveal to them.

Origen warns us of the dangers that lie in store if we misunderstan