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.

---

[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,