Some Thoughts on Three Representations of the Antichrist

From time to time, one finds Solovyov’s description of the Antichrist, as found within his work, War, Progress, and the End of History, used in a homily or sermon by one preacher or another. When this is done by someone famous, their homily is usually given a sensationalistic interpretation. Recently, Cardinal Biffi’s lenten homily, as was delivered on March 4, 2007, presented aspects of Solovyov’s description of the Antichrist. What sparked the interest of many here was when Biffi’s said, “The Antichrist will be a ‘convinced spiritualist’ Soloviev says, an admirable philanthropist, a committed, active pacifist, a practicing vegetarian, a determined defender of animal rights.”

It did not take long before reflections were written, saying that if the Antichrist is to be a philanthropist, a pacifist and a vegetarian, then there must be something inherently bad about these qualities.

Few people have actually read any Solovyov, and they do not know how and why Solovyov described the Antichrist in this fashion: they were the beliefs and practices of one of Solovyov’s theological and philosophical opponents, Leo Tolstoy. Solovyov did to Tolstoy similar to what Dante did to his enemies: he represented Tolstoy in a vilified form. But there is more to the story, more to the point than this (one can say the central point of War, Progress, and the End of Human History was a refutation of Tolstoy’s unbending ways; but the story of the Antichrist was only the ending of the work, using the Antichrist as an allegory for what can go wrong with Tolstoy’s vision –and what this is we shall see later).

Solovyov did not want to suggest that these (or similar like-minded) characteristics were evil. Separated from a holistic good, they are, certainly, but the same can be true with many other goods. Instead, because there is good in these qualities, Solovyov was showing how and why the Antichrist will not appear on the scene as if he were evil incarnate. Indeed, he will do a considerable amount of good, and that good is what will attract followers. This does not mean we should do the opposite of what the Antichrist does, but rather understand how his actions only apparently follow good, moral behavior; they do so only in a manipulative fashion: one could rather say he abuses the moral laws rather than follows them. Not only will the Antichrist appear good, he might even intend to do what he believes is good, but what he ends up doing will only be a perversion of that good.

We live in a time when speculations about the end of the world are popular, and many people look for signs and wonders which prove to them they are living at the end of human history. This is not a new phenomenon; looking back, we see it is a common theme in Christian thought. While there is some sort of temporal hubris involved (we often want to think that we live at the end of history, meaning, that we live in one of the most significant human eras ever), there is much more going on. There are reasons why our desires seem to be met: because the forces of the Antichrist continually to exist side by side with Christendom. It is easy to see the work of the Antichrist around us. Many believe that these forces will only be seen at the end, and therefore, if we see them, we must be nearing that end. There is a truth in this – from the time of Christ on, we are living out that end, however, we must not expect that the final events of history are going to be seen in our time.

In his textbook on Eschatology, Pope Benedict XVI provides us some significant insights on the antichrist. There will be a series of antichrists, living in different ages, each representing an aspect of the dark forces at work in the world; however, there will also be one final Antichrist, the culmination of all that has gone before him. The first hints of the Antichrist come from Daniel 11:36 and Ezekiel 28:2, but they are first and foremost descriptions of individuals living in the times of Daniel and Ezekiel; but these people (Antiochus Epiphanes and the Prince of Tyre) are also types of the final Antichrist. “The fact that the future antichrist is thus described with features which originally belonged to two other figures from the distant past naturally deprives him of any very well defined uniqueness. It situates the antichrist of the End within a series where a long line of predecessors have already nursed the evil that comes to its supreme intensity in him.” Joseph Ratzinger, Dogmatic Theology 9: Eschatology. Trans. Aidan Nicholas (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1988), 196.

Literature and theological speculation on the final Antichrist is difficult to write because of the rather vague description we have of him. Yet, such reflection is important. An individual author may not be able to perceive the whole of the Antichrist, but they can represent aspect of him to us. Usually they do so, like Solovyov, by raising a philosophical or theological question, and having it played out in their writings.

Within some circles, this kind of story has become very popular, and anyone writing it with a semblance of literary merit and a sufficient amount of advertising and self-promotion becomes a best-selling author. There is a now considerable amount of such literature out there, most of them are quite bad, like the Left Behind series, and for some reason or another, the best of them are often neglected. Even an author like C. S. Lewis, who is otherwise popular, has had his insights ignored by the current generation (perhaps because they do not like how his story challenges their beliefs about what the Antichrist will be like).

One of the most unusual, and most obscure, presentations of an Antichrist (the story does not decide if he is the final one or not) is in Charles Williams’ novel, Shadows of Ecstasy (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1980). Here is a story about a man, Considine, who is a superman – he has found a way to extend life indefinitely – he does not age, but he can die if shot or harmed in some similar fashion. He learned how to extend his life through esoteric means while living in Africa, but he believes them to be entirely natural, entirely human. It requires us to transform the passions we have, to keep a hold of them, and use the energy of them to preserve our life. “When your manhood’s aflame with love you will burn down with it the barriers that separate us from immortality. You waste yourselves, all of you, looking outwards; you give yourselves to the world. But the business of man is to assume the world into himself. He shall draw strength from everything that he may govern everything”(72). Through some sort of tantric-like manipulation of love and desire, we can transform the energies associated with our passions; by this method, Considine suggests that we even have the power to conquer death. “Why does a man die but because he had not driven strength into the imagination of himself as living?” Considine asks one of the heroes, Sir Bernard (73). But of course in this reshuffling, desire becomes all and nothing, it kills the spirit within while life remains within its shell. It can never be transfigured, it can only live on.

One can only live so long in this state before wanting more. Thus Considine and his followers believe that just as there is a way to extend life, death must be overcome by man. “Because I live, men shall live also. But they shall do greater works than I, or perhaps I shall do them – I do not know. To live on – that is well. To live on by the power not of food and drink but of imagination itself recalling into itself all the powers of desire –that is well too. But to die and live again, that remains to be done, and will be done” (75). Until that point, man must preserve and conserve themselves, and life becomes a living death, where one should not “waste” one’s power on because one first needs to use that power to discover and control oneself. But in the conquest of death, everything changes. “It’s possible to make out of the mere superfluity of power greater things than men now spend all their powers on. The dropping flames of that fire are greater than all your pyres of splendour. And when death itself is but a passion of ecstasy, we will make music such as you couldn’t bear to hear, and we will be the fathers of the children who shall hear it” (80).

Until it is done, Considine is training his followers (and himself) in the art of living and dying, with the belief that one follower will find the right way to overcome death itself. Considine, ever the manipulative gentleman, controls key figures throughout the world, protecting him and his experiments – experiments which require people to commit suicide and to attempt the conquest of death in themselves. One such man, Simon Rosenberg, nearly succeeds – there is a scene, days after his suicide, where his body begins to stir, and signs of life are seen by Considine’s followers: then it is over, and death claims its victim. In the end, Considine is himself killed, but we are left wondering: will he be the one – and in this fashion become the ultimate representation of man against God, that is, will he be the final Antichrist? Or does he and his followers just represent one great step along the path which leads to the Antichrist, and someone greater is yet to come?

Charles Williams, like Vladimir Solovyov, wrote upon what he knew and understood best. This, the first of his novels, perhaps best represents one of the central themes of his supernatural thrillers: the dangers of esoteric knowledge and how it can be abused. Williams, one of the Inklings, was a scholar in the field of the occult, at once intrigued by it, even drawn to it, yet with a Christian sensibility to know the danger which lurks behind it. Thus Williams’ representation of the Antichrist best represents the charismatic, hypnotic powers of such a man, and the darkness which consumes one who tries to be a humanitarian superman. It’s every bit a condemnation of the nihilism of Nietzsche as it is a condemnation of the occult, and it shows how the two ultimately are one and the same.

C. S. Lewis in The Last Battle (New York: Collier Books, 1978) represents a different approach on the Antichrist. The theme of the work is more about the significance of the end of history and what happens after we reached that end than it is a discussion of the Antichrist. Yet, it presents to us a rather unique picture of the Antichrist, in part, because it represents many of Lewis’ eschatological speculations. Lewis, like George MacDonald before him and Balthasar after him, held a high hope for the salvation of all – although, unlike MacDonald, he did not believe one can know if this hope will be achieved. Is it realistic for one to possess this hope? Won’t the Antichrist, the personal culmination of evil in the world, be too far gone to be saved? Lewis answers this question in the negative.

Despite its fantasy nature, Narnia is seeped in allegory, and it is very easy to spot whom Lewis made as the Antichrist and whom he made as the False Prophet. But there is a twist in the tale here: while one thinks of the Antichrist as being the one in charge, in Narnia, it is the False Prophet, the talking-Ape Shift who has the Antichrist, the talking-donkey Puzzle, as a figurehead under his control.

Puzzle was a rather decent, but easily manipulated, creature; he did whatever his friend Shift told him to do. But throughout the story, one can tell that Puzzle is always a bit perplexed, and his compassionate, good-natured self is often brought to the forefront. Shift uses it to his advantage, and always coerces Puzzle to do his will, saying how unkind or ungrateful Puzzle is if he doesn’t.

When Shift and Puzzle find a lion-skin, the difference between the two is obvious. Puzzle mourns the death of the lion and wants to bury the skin; Shift does not; rather he thinks of what use he could make of it: he wants to use it to turn Puzzle into a false-Aslan. Shift has no reverence for anyone, and no respect for his friend; he just looks for what he can get out of others. Puzzle reveres Aslan, and believes that respect should be shown to all lions because Aslan is himself a talking lion and all lions are in his image. Thus he suggests to Shift, “Even if the skin only belonged to a dumb, wild lion, oughtn’t we to give it a decent burial? I mean, aren’t all lions rather – well, rather solemn. Because of you know Who? Don’t you see?” (6) Shift only responds with contempt, saying that Puzzle is not too bright and he should just follow what Shift tells him to do. And so Puzzle does this, helping to bring about the end of Narnia itself.

Shift gathers followers around him who do his will, fighting for control over Narnia. He makes a deal with Calormenes, enemies of Narnia who worship the brutal false-god, Tash. Indeed, he tells everyone that Aslan and Tash are one and the same, and yet he does this, not to discourage false religious practices, but to encourage a false unity between the two faiths. This must be read in context with what has Aslan say in the end of The Last Battle There is some measure of truth in it – what Shift said is as true as it is false, and that truth is what gives his message some strength. For in the story we learn of one Emeth, a good Calormene, and his encounter with Aslan:

The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. (165).

The truth behind the fiction that Shift told is that one who believes they are following Tash could in truth be following Aslan; the name, though meaningful, is secondary to the heart; if one loves truth and seeks for goodness, they will find it. Even if they were led to believe the search is to be done through a falsehood such as Tash, in the end they will find what they thought to be Tash was really Aslan.

This paves the way for Lewis’ unconventional understanding of the Antichrist. Puzzle, ever beguiled by his simple but good nature, trusts his friend, and it in that trust, in the purity of his heart, that we find that goodness remains. Such goodness, Lewis suggests, can only end in triumph, and with the The Last Battle this means the salvation of Puzzle.

Like Williams, Lewis offers us a unique vision of the Antichrist, and he provides for us some things to ponder. We often believe that the Antichrist will be the one in control, and yet it is also believed that he will hold some power-mad scheme which makes him obviously evil. In Lewis, we find the exact opposite: Puzzle is kind and considerate, but he is also rather simple minded. He has no malice in his heart; yet it is because of his simple nature, that he can be used as a figurehead for evil. Evil, by its nature, can only exist in and through the good, it can only corrupt, it cannot create. The ultimate evil cannot exist without some good; it won’t be followed except for the fact it will look and appear that what it offers is not evil, but good.

This brings us back to Solovyov and his vision of the Antichrist. His representation combines elements of Williams and Lewis together. Here we have an Antichrist who begins his mission as a humanitarian; he truly wills to do good. “At that time, there was among the few believing spiritualists a remarkable person -- many called him a superman – who was equally far from both, intellect and childlike heart both. […] Conscious of the great power of spirit in himself he was always a confirmed spiritualist, and his clear intellect always showed him the truth of what one should believe in: the good, God, and the Messiah. In these he believed but he loved only himself.” Vladimir Solovyov, War, Progress, and the End of History. Trans. Alexander Bakshy, revised by Thomas Beyer (Hudson, New York: Lindisfarne Press, 1990), 165.

Here we have a superman, one with powers and skills beyond everyone else, but he has one flaw – he loved only himself. But what a flaw it is! The same flaw we have with Considine, we see in Williams’ vision of the Antichrist. But, unlike Williams, Solovyov goes forward to show the consequence of this love – to show the true power of the Antichrist. He followed the good only so far as it helped him, but he would – and did – bow to the Evil One when offered the kingdoms of the Earth. He turns from a believer of Christ to his great denier – seeing Christ as only a type of himself. His book, The Open Way to Universal Peace and Prosperity, brings about what it claims: world peace and an end to famine, with him as its ruler. “The new lord of the world was above all else a kindhearted philanthropist and not only a philanthropist, but even a philozoist, a lover of life. He was a vegetarian himself, prohibited vivisection, and instituted strict supervision over the slaughter-houses; while societies for the protection of animals received from him every encouragement. But what was more important than these details, the most fundamental form of equality was firmly established among humankind, the equality of universal society” (171).

All this appears good and holy, and yet he held for himself alone love and respect, and he had grown to hate Christ, even to fear him. To lift himself up, he must make Christ as naught; he must create a universal Christian faith which believes in nothing but has himself, not Christ, as its defender. Most Christians are fooled, but a few, including the representative heads of the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox traditions, are not. This brings down his wrath – showing the extreme bitterness and hate contained within his heart.

While Williams brings to us a superhuman, hypnotic Antichrist, filled with esoteric power, and Lewis brings us the beguiled, good-natured Antichrist, Solovyov provides for us not just an Antichrist who fools us with his apparent goodness, but with an Antichrist whose goodness is lost because of his own self-love. He who desires to be the greatest must be the least; we must die to our selves to be resurrected in Christ. In this reason we can understand Solovyov’s point. The qualities he gives to the Antichrist can be anything which we perceive to be good, but no matter what we believe them to be, they can be lost by those whose love is only themselves; and whatever good Tolstoy represents, Solovyov believed, was lost by his pride and grandiose personality. For what other reason could Tolstoy be led to claim Christ and yet reject the Church Christ established (in any objective manifestation of it)?

Trinity, Christ, and History in St. Bonaventure (part II)

III. Trinity and History[i]




Theological thought about the progression of history had been taking place in Christendom at least since the time of Augustine. However, in Bonaventure’s age, there was no theologian of history as influential and controversial as Joachim of Fiore. The abbot Joachim borrowed from Augustine’s analysis of history the scheme of the seven ages corresponding to the seven days of creation. But he broke with Augustine insofar as, for Joachim, the seventh and final age takes place in history, rather than beyond it in eternity. The sixth age is marked by the passion of Christ, and the seventh is the age of the Spirit and of a worldly, contemplative peace.

For Joachim, history and the cosmos exhibit an essentially Trinitarian structure. The procession of history is the milieu in which the interpersonal relationships of God are reflected. The seven ages, like the Trinity, have “inner relations that give history an organic dynamic and character of its own.”[ii] Thus, because of the Trinitarian relations, history takes the shape it does.

The abbot divides his account between multiple patterns within history: most notably the
“prima diffinitio” and the “secunda diffinitio.”[iii] The prima diffinitio is the pattern of three unfolded in the social structures of the church that progress through the ages. Each of three ages is characteristically associated with a social vocation (married life, clergy, and monasticism) and a Person of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit, respectively). In the final age, the age of the Spirit, the climax of history will issue in the perfect communion of spiritual men in an order of monks, living in contemplative peace. The goal of which is a society that in its communitarian love, images the Trinity socially.

The secunda diffinitio begins with two tempora of history (Old and New Testaments) beginning with Adam to the end of history, dividing the periods at Christ, who stands between as the turning point. The perfection of the New Testament time, as with the third age of the prima diffinitio, is found in a world dominated by the “viri spirituales” who derive from both periods (essentially monastics). The Trinity is exhibited in this second schema insofar as each tempora is formed by the double procession of the Holy Spirit: the first (Old Testament) from the Father’s sending of the Spirit; the second (New Testament) from the Son’s sending of the Spirit. Here, one can see that the image is imperfect, because the spiration in the immanent Trinity is one and eternal from Father and Son together. But as some scholars like E. Randolph Daniel argues, the final age for Joachim can be considered Christ’s insofar as the Spirit (who is unquestionably the dominant player in it) perfects the mystical body of Christ by uniting the various orders within the Church into a plurality in unity, thus forming the perfect image of the Trinity.[iv] In any case, one can see that for Joachim, the Spirit plays the primary role in revealing the Trinity within history: “As one who is sent by two, he could complete the self-revelation of God within history.”[v] And as the one who forms the viri spirituales, he can be seen to function with a primacy in the ascent of man and history to God. The Son, on the other hand, marks a turning point in the process of history, and rather than fully express the Trinity in His Person, He cannot Himself come to full expression in History until the Spirit completes His mystical body in the final age.

For Bonaventure, history and the cosmos exhibit a much more Christocentric structure. But as I mean to show: they are Trinitarian just insofar as they exhibit the Son. Daniel argues that Bonaventure breaks definitively with Augustine’s approach to history, and adopts a theory that closely resembles Joachim’s secunda diffinitio.[vi] Indeed, such an argument is convincing, and even Bernard McGinn suggests that Bonaventure, despite his criticism of the Joachite Trinitarian views (not insignificant for this discussion), displays an “original rethinking of the Joachite tradition” which fused “Joachite eschatology, Franciscan spirituality, and Scholastic passion for order.”[vii] Bonaventure’s two major influences with regard to his theology of history are no doubt Augustine and Joachim, and the degree to which each impacted his thought is difficult to fully realize. He follows Augustine in adopting the seven-day structure[viii]; he follows Joachim in 1) restricting the seventh age to an eschaton realized within history; 2) seeing the process of history in light of a Trinitarian exemplar; and 3) views the final age as one of a contemplative peace brought about through “spiritual understanding.”[ix]

Yet, unlike Joachim, Bonaventure’s account is unapologetically Christocentric. The whole of the world’s history is oriented to and centered on the Incarnation of the Son. Christ is the “center” of Scripture, time, and history: and therefore the consummation of everything within the course of the cosmos is found in Christ. Thus, the cosmos itself is brought to the completion of its creation only through its relationship to the Incarnation: “The first principle acting as restorer brought about the final completion of the universe.”[x] Here one can see the principle of the Son’s exemplarity, and the world’s dynamism through Him, shaping the relation of history to God.

We have seen that just as the Son contains within Himself the actuality of all creaturely perfections, both the world and the individual soul find their consummation in and through the Son. Because of this, scholars like Daniel and Delio have argued that one must view Bonaventure’s theology of history in the light of the mystical ascent of the Itinerarium. As Daniel has held, the Itinerarium is essentially a commentary on the theology of history found in the Hexaemeron (even though it predates it by 14 years).[xi] From the union in Christ of all worldly perfection, both whole and individual, God establishes a relationship of the soul to the world: the soul is a “microcosm” of the world, because both are ordered to Christ as the center.[xii] The destinies of the soul and of history intertwine, and can be seen in light of each other. One can see the structural similarities: in the journey of the soul, one ascends through six levels of purification and illumination (wings of the seraph) before the mystical peace that is union with Christ, while history flows through six ages (six days) before the seventh age of mystical peace; the soul’s ascent is to Christ, the Son, crucified before the believer, while history lusts for Christ as the fulfillment of all time; and the progress of the soul’s ascent is marked by levels of knowledge issuing in a love that exceeds knowledge, while the peace of the seventh age will be marked by a transition from knowledge to “spiritual understanding.” As Delio notes: “Because the journey of the soul recapitulates the journey of the world, Bonaventure indicates that both the soul and the world are destined for spiritual marriage with Christ.”[xiii]

Thus, for Bonaventure, the destiny of history is essentially Christocentric but also essentially mystical. It is the ascent of the spiritual men in Christ that ushers in the final age and thus facilitates the fulfillment of time. But while following Joachim in emphasizing the contemplative nature of the final age, Bonaventure reinterprets the concept of the viri spirituales: for Joachim, the peace of the seventh age comes by way of a future order (or orders) of contemplatives sent by God into time, which he associates with the angel of the sixth seal from Revelation 7: 2; for Bonaventure, the spiritual man is in fact Francis. Thus, the inhabitant of the final age of mystical peace is the poor mendicant who was struck with the stigmata and taken into holy ecstasy. This means that, in light of the overpowering spiritual influence of Francis, Bonaventure’s “spiritual man” is a state realizable now, not in a future age.[xiv] The seventh age takes on a parallel place in history, not a successive one. Francis, in his wounds and his exemplary Christian life, shows that the final age of mystical peace is attainable in the present. Thus, one’s mode of access to this state is not one’s place in a divinely ordained monastic order, or waiting on a future action of the Holy Spirit, but mystical union with the crucified Christ. Here, Bonaventure’s novelty is recognizable: he goes beyond Joachim in attributing the attainment of the future age to a mystical union with the Son. This, as shown in Francis’ spirituality, meets the criteria set out by Bonaventure’s Trinitarian meditations: that one’s progression toward God will be marked with an essential Christocentric element.

Because union with God (as union with Christ) becomes the hermeneutic through which the process of history comes to fulfillment, and because it also marks the immediacy of the final age for spiritual men (such as Francis), the progression of both the soul and history will be realized in the image of Christ: in other words, the signs of such progression become the signs of conformity to the crucified Christ. The perfection of the final age is no longer simply an image of a social Trinity (as with Joachim), but rather the comprehensive conforming of oneself to the Cross of Christ: meaning also the embodiment of God’s love unto death, and even the physical sign of the stigmata (which the age of the Spirit cannot itself usher in). Body and spirit are joined to Christ, and the final age is now marked by the suffering humanity of Christ. The glory of history is reinterpreted as crucifixion with Christ, just as in the Itinerarium the final stage is an ecstatic love only achieved through abandoning oneself to the Cross of Christ.[xv] All of these examples exhibit what occurs for Bonaventure’s spiritual man: such signs show one’s re-orientation in the image of Christ.

It is the concept of the image that, for Delio, marks the underlying difference between Joachim and Bonaventure. For Joachim the revelation of the Trinity in history is exhausted in the community of spiritual men and does not depend upon a fundamental Christocentricity. For Bonaventure, any image of the Trinity can only truly come by way of the image of the Son. As was shown earlier, the Son is given primacy not only as exemplar (all return through Christ) but also as the expression of the Trinity. While the vestiges of the Trinity abound in the world, not even these can ultimately be taken or understood apart from the infinite expression of the Son, and in the end the Trinity is only perfectly revealed by and in the Son. “The appearance of Christ in the final age means the realization of the kingdom; unity in the body of Christ, who is in union with the Father, will bring all those united to Him into the oneness of the Father and Son.”[xvi]

Thus, as noted earlier, the two functions of the Son as exemplar and expression shape the progress of history toward its destiny as well as the revelation of the Trinity within history. The former constitutes the necessarily mystical character of the cosmos as it moves toward its fulfillment in Christ, while the latter establishes the centrality of Christ (even Christ crucified) as the truest image of the Trinity in history. One can argue that these two, as united in Christ, are themselves intertwined: one can only come to the fullest revelation of the Trinity that comes by Christ when one is in ascent toward Christ, remade in the image of Christ, and thus mystically united to Him (since union with Christ is also union with the Father and Spirit to whom He is united, beyond any “knowledge”).[xvii] One might argue that the truest revelation of the Trinity as Trinity within history is found only in one’s participation in the destiny of that history: Christ reveals the Trinity all the more in uniting us to “It,” by uniting us to Himself (even on the Cross). Ultimately, the Christocentric character of history and the cosmos can only end in union not just with Christ (who is the rightful exemplar), but with the entire Trinity, thus revealing even more the Trinitarian structure of history.

In the end, (as Delio argues convincingly), and as I’ve attempted to show, the different accounts of history found in Joachim and Bonaventure respectively derive from two distinct understandings of the Trinity. Delio suggests that while Joachim employs a fundamentally Augustinian conception of the Trinity and views history as “a multi-dimensional pattern of relationships that reaches its consummation in perfect unity-in-diversity,” it is Bonaventure’s preference for the eastern model and the self-diffusive Good that allows him to view Christ as the mediator between Father and Spirit and the center of history, “the center of emanation and return in creation.” She concludes: “The two distinct theologies of the Trinity, therefore, may give rise to two distinct eschatologies, one prophetic in nature and Trinitarian in image, the other mystical in nature and Christoformic in image.”[xviii] Bonaventure’s account of the Trinity allows not only for the expression of the Trinity as Trinity externally, but also allows for the Son’s unique place as the mediator of that revelation. And this function of the Son is united in Christ with His role as exemplar of creation, producing an intriguing complementary relationship between the soul’s (and history’s) ascent to God (in Christ) and the revelation of Triunity (in Christ). It is this interplay that seemingly protects Bonaventure’s “eastern” account of the Trinity from being overly economic in nature, such that problems of subordinationism and tri-theism would become problematic. For there is no pure “diffusion” of the three Persons in history to the human intellect, no unqualified revelation. For Bonaventure, any revelation of Trinity in the economy, in a sense open to metaphysical speculations and judgments, is always continuously purified and surpassed until they are succeeded altogether by the paradigm of union. Because Christ is both telos of creaturely ascent and expression of the divine, there is no revelation of the Trinity that does not accompany a transformation in the receiver via union, in love that surpasses knowledge. Thus, the preference for the economic (as three) does not exclude or disregard an understanding of the immanent Trinity, but is only ever revealed in/through the believer’s mystical ascent: because the milieu in which revelation occurs is always in a world and to a soul that are both already dynamically progressing toward God the Son (in their very being). Thus the Trinity’s economic revelation cannot be seen outside of the mystical progress of men towards God, and ultimately, cannot be properly conceived apart from the “burning love of the crucified.”


[i] For this section, I am greatly indebted to the work of Ilia Delio in her “From Prophecy to Mysticism: Bonaventure’s Eschatology in Light of Joachim of Fiore” in Traditio. vol. 52, 1997: p. 153
[ii] Delio, p. 154
[iii] Ibid. p. 156
[iv] Cited in Delio, p. 156
[v] Delio, p. 158
[vi] Ibid. p. 159
[vii] McGinn, Bernard. “The Abbott and the Doctors : Scholastic Reactions to the Radical Eschatology of Joachim of Fiore” in Church History. vol. 40. 01. 1971: p. 43
[viii] Bonaventure. Breviloquium. Trans. de Vinck, Jose. Paterson, N.J. St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963: IV, chap. 4
[ix] McGinn, p.43
[x] Breviloquium. IV, chap.4: p. 154
[xi] Cited in Delio, p. 160
[xii] Ibid. p. 160; cf. Hexaemeron. I, 11
[xiii] Delio, p. 162
[xiv] Ibid. p.164
[xv] Itinerarium. Chap.7
[xvi] Delio, p.173
[xvii] Itinerarium. Chap. 7. 5
[xviii] Delio, p. 176

Trinity, Christ, and History in St. Bonaventure (part I)

This is the first part of a paper I did a few semesters back for Cyril O’Regan’s class on the Trinity

I. Introduction:

Bonaventure, as a Trinitarian thinker, can be seen in many lights; as a champion of the Augustinian tradition, with ample regard for divine simplicity, unity, and the problem of appropriations; in another sense, as a unique integrator of eastern Trinitarian views into the western mindset, having been exposed to the rich Greek heritage “emanating” westward from such bountiful “fonts” such as Denys, Maximus, and the Cappadocians (through Eriugena)[i]. One may note as well his notably Franciscan spirituality: emphasizing poverty, humility, and Christ crucified, all likely deriving from the very wounds of his spiritual father Francis. And as a thinker interested in the ends of history, the great doctor shows signs not only of Augustine but even of the controversial vision of Joachim of Fiore, whom he (and the Church) criticized.
From this considerably rich deposit, consisting of some of the most intriguing and central issues to his theology, we can draw out two factors that definitively characterize his theology of history and its relation to the rest of his thought: his unabashed devotion to Christ and the fundamental relationship he draws between the Trinitarian processions and the created world. From these, one can see the role that the revelation of the Trinity has in relation to the unfolding of finite history. First we shall examine some foundational principles of Bonaventure’s Trinitarian thought (deriving key features from Neo-Platonic sources) that come to affect the status of the world and of history; and by then analyzing some notable characteristics of his vision of history in comparison to Joachim’s, one can see more clearly how his conception of the Trinity weighs upon and shapes the direction and path upon which the cosmos progresses toward its end; ultimately revealing not only the Christocentric aspects of the world and history, but also its fundamentally Trinitarian orientation.

II. Trinity and World:

The Triunity of God is revealed in Christian Revelation, and nowhere is Bonaventure so bold as to reduce the richness of that Revelation to a preambula fidei, that the intellect should have stumbled upon on its own. The Trinity does however express itself within human reasoning, weds itself to the rational, in the principle that the perfection of being entails a bringing forth of that which is of the same kind. Being in its height is ecstatic. The highest being requires the highest form of self-communication (which in Christian terms takes the form of an infinitely selfless love). Thus, Bonaventure’s “dynamic” vision of the Trinity, flowing from the “emanation tradition” of the Eastern Fathers: God is supremely dynamic insofar as the generation and diffusion of being from the Father (fontalis plenitudo) amount to eternal processes: generation of the Son and spiration of the Spirit. And yet Bonaventure (the good westerner that he is) does not shirk the unity of the Divine essence in favor of a Greek infatuation with Persons: he notes that because of God’s absolute simplicity, the self-communication(s) of this highest being must in some sense be compatible with divine unity. Both simplicity and the principle of a self-diffusive perfection of being characterize Bonaventure’s speculation upon the Trinity, and it is because of the former that one establishes an absolute uniqueness of God from other beings; and because of the latter that one can say the Trinitarian emanations are in a real sense “intrinsically necessary.”[ii] And as von Balthasar points out, it is the combination of Biblical Revelation and the Neo-Platonic principles that draws the self-diffusion of being up into the divine Being before all else: “The old Platonic axiom bonum diffusivum sui now in the light of Christian revelation no longer refers simply to God’s relationship with the world but to his absolute being itself…” He continues, drawing out the consequences of this move: “and this opens the way for an explanation of the structure that belongs to the natural kinds in the world, makes it possible to trace them back to their origin without absorbing them monistically into the rays of the light that is their source.”[iii]

In this application of the self-diffusion principle and its connection with the perfection of Being, one can see not only the “intrinsic necessity” of the Trinitarian relations, but also the necessity of the Trinity as foundation of the world and its relations. Because God is diffusive of created being only insofar as He is (as Father) diffusive of eternal emanations, there is no possibility of considering God’s relation to the world outside of or prior to God’s internal relation to Himself in the Trinitarian Persons. This is also evident in that, for Bonaventure, diverging from Augustine, the Greek preference for Persons commands an essentially un-Augustinian understanding of God’s relation to the world.[iv] God acts toward the world as He is in se, as Trinitarian. While for both Augustine and Denys, the Triunity of God is in many respects restricted to a divine height beyond expression in the world, for Bonaventure real expression occurs: “Rather, the Trinity is truly revealed in its overflow into the world (in creation and the Incarnation of Christ), and shows itself thereby to be the a priori ground of everything that exists in the world.”[v] The places of the Persons are preserved externally just as they are in the heart of God’s Being, and appropriation comes to signal the propria of the Persons in God’s communication of Himself: “This means nothing less than the grounding of the act of creation in the act of generation in the Godhead…”[vi] Bonaventure attempts here to forge a middle-way between subordinationism (the danger always lurking about the emanation tradition of the Greek Fathers) and a conflation of natural and supernatural.

The emanations within God, then, as eternal and infinite, become the exemplars which all external expressions image (i.e. creation). Bonaventure even holds that the many finite processions within creation all point to eternal processions. But for the Seraphic Doctor, the emanation of the Son is given a primacy as exemplar. In the generation of the Son, the Father expresses Himself: fully and completely, in all His power and capacity. In the Son the self-diffusion is relentlessly self-abandoning (yet not to the Father’s dissolution): for the Son is the perfect realization of the Father and His power in a way that no creature could achieve. And because the Father’s capacity in diffusion includes the capacity of everything real and possible, it includes all of creation as well. In the Son, the Father’s infinitely possible capacity becomes actualized perfectly. As von Balthasar writes: “If the Father has really given expression in the Son to His whole being and capacity, then in the Son everything that is possible through God has taken on reality: if anything else outside God is realized through God, it can have possibility and reality only through and in the Son.”[vii] For Bonaventure the second Person of the Trinity is therefore the archetype of the world, the exemplar of all creatures: to put it in Neo-Platonic terms (from which Bonaventure likely drew for much of his analysis of God’s relation to the world) the realm of the eternal or divine ideas of the created order is essentially swept up into the reality of the Son, such that all ideas of the creatures are eternally actual in the Son’s Being.[viii] Thus, as for Neo-Platonic philosophy (broadly speaking), the realm of these ideas contain a greater ontological density than the created “shadows,” the Son as perfectly embodying all of the Father’s capacity in creation marks a unique “place” in the divine being of exemplarity: such that, as emanation of creatures implies a certain “falling” in degrees of reality from the ideas, so too do creatures in their being descend from the (infinitely) ontologically richer reality of the Son. And as there is a built-in dynamism of reditus in the imperfect creature toward the ideal, there is thus an essentially Christocentric element to the dynamics of all creaturely being. There is an energetic eros in creatures to seek their perfection, their ideal; and this can only be found in the Son, in whom all of the perfections of creatures exist in actu. The Neo-Platonic cyclical “flow” is baptized here and shines forth the undeniable relationship that all creation has with the Son as exemplar; and thus the undeniable relation the Son has to all progression of creation toward God (including the mystical one).

The process of the world’s history is for the great doctor one such dynamic that is ultimately only conceivable as destined to the Son: “…we can affirm that the highest and noblest perfection in the universe is not attained until such a time as the nature that contains the germs that make for the spirits (rationes seminales) and the nature that contains the concepts of reason (rationes intellectuals) and the nature that contains the archetypical designs of the world (rationes ideales) are united to form one single person: and this happened at the Incarnation of the Son of God.”[ix] As we shall see, from this concept Bonaventure draws the conclusion that Christ is the “center” of all history.

A certain primacy is also given to the Son by Bonaventure with reference to the world in revelation. The Son, the Word, is the universal expression of the Father. The Holy Spirit is construed as the Father’s giving. Insofar as these notions are distinguishable, one can see how the primacy of second Person functions with regard to revelation. The Son is God as He is perfectly expressed, and thus this “manner” of being within the Godhead affords the Son’s appropriation of “truth” in its most fundamental sense. The Word is the dynamic revealing of the Father, and thus the entire substance of God perfectly outpoured (within Himself). And as we have seen, because He contains the fullness of the Father’s infinite capacities, the Son is at one and the same time the universal expression of all that is created. For Bonaventure, there is no expression or revelation of anything apart from the primal and eternal revelation of the Father in the Son. All created expressions can only express themselves because of that Original expression.

And the Son is not only the perfect “representing” of the Father, but also of the Spirit’s relation to the Father. In this sense, the Son is Himself the perfect “revelation” (if revelation has meaning within God) of the Trinity within the Godhead. And in terms of gracious revelation of God as three Persons, the perfect “witness” to the Trinitarian relations can only be He who is Himself the infinite expression of the three: “this witness (of the Father, Son, and Spirit) is expressed only by the Word, for the Word gives expression to the Father and to itself and to the Holy spirit, and to everything else.”[x] The Son gives expression to His begottenness from the Father as well as His spiration of the Spirit with the Father. No doubt here the notion of the “filioque” plays a key role in Bonaventure’s positioning of the Son as “unifying center between Father and Spirit”: who leads back to the Father and in that “leading back” (love) constitutes the spiration of the Holy Spirit. The Son, insofar as He is “God as truth” and thus is the expression of the Trinity itself, renders all revelation of the Trinity in history, covenant, economy, etc. of an intrinsically Christocentric nature. The fullest expression and revelation of the Trinitarian Persons, insofar as (following the Greek paradigm) they are expressed in the world as they are Personally, nevertheless are only so revealed through the second Person, and thus through Christ. The image of Christ, as we shall see, will function for Bonaventure as the truest image of the Trinity. Revelation of Trinity and its meaning for history centers around Jesus Christ.

The two complementary Christocentric notions of 1) the Son as exemplar of creaturely reality (rendering all reditus toward God inherently through Christ) and 2) the Son as supreme expression of the Trinity (rendering all Trinitarian revelation ultimately through Christ) are what give Bonaventure’s account of history its radically Christocentric flavor while at the same time and only in this way characterizing the fullest expression of the Trinity in relation to the destiny of the world. As will be illustrated, in Bonaventure’s account of history, the two “poles” of ascent through Christ and revealing through Christ intertwine and are joined in the one Person of Christ who, for Bonaventure, is the dramatic “center” of all history. By a brief examination of some features of Bonaventure’s theology of history, one will be able to see how these Trinitarian principles shape the theological account of the process of the world.



[i] Woo, Esther. “Theophanic Cosmic Order in Saint Bonaventure” in Franciscan Studies: vol. 31 annual IX. Franciscan Institute. St. Bonaventure, NY. 1971
[ii] Bonaventure. Interarium Mentis in Deum (The Journey of the Mind to God). Trans. Boehner, Philotheus O.F.M. Indianapolis. Hackett Publishing, 1990. Chap. 6. 2
[iii] von Balthasar, Hans Urs. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics vol. II: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Style. Trans. Louth, Andrew. San Francisco. Ignatius Press, 1984. p. 285
[iv] This is not to suggest an incompatibility between a rich Trinitarian view of God’s relation to the world and Augustine’s “preference” for divine unity in the economy. Any way of phrasing the difference in the thinkers seems to fail in articulating their continuity…
[v] Ibid. p.261
[vi] Ibid. p.291
[vii] Ibid. p.292
[viii] Woo, p.308
[ix] Bonaventure. De Red. Art. 20: V 324b. cited in: von Balthasar, p. 309
[x] von Balthasar, p.290; cf. Bonaventure. Collationes in Hexaemeron: 9. 2

The Creation of Beauty as a Meaning of History

If the final destiny of humanity lies in eternity, is there any role or significance to history? Does our work and accomplishments upon the earth actually matter? What role are Christians to play in the world – should they live out their eschatological end by renouncing the world and all that is within it because of its transitory nature? Time and again these and similar questions have been asked, and time and again Christians have struggled to answer them without giving away to any oversimplification. This is because of the paradoxical nature of our lives – we know we are made for eternal life -- we are made to be partakers of the divine life in the beatific vision. However, we live here and now, in history, and we are not called to reject the world; the world was created by God, and he called it good. To forsake it would suggest that God made a mistake – both in creating the world, but also in putting us here in the world, in its history. Any answer to this question must understand that while our destiny is eternity, what we do here and now relates to eternity, such as the world and its history, in the end, will not be destroyed but transfigured with us, as we enter into eternity. “The Christian attitude toward the world can never be either an ascetic or eschatological negation. It is always an eschatological affirmation, that is, the constant going beyond the here and now toward the end point,” Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty. Trans, Steven Bigham (Redono Beach, California: Oakwood Publications, 1996), 64-5. Thus what we do here is important; we should not despair and think that what we do in our lives is meaningless.

What, then, is it that we are expected to do? Possibly one of the best answers we have was one given to us by William Morris: the goal of life is to make the world beautiful, to leave behind us a legacy of beauty, and anything less than this and its realization makes us less than human (cf. William Morris, “The Beauty of Life,” in William Morris On Art and Socialism, ed. by Norman Kelvin (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1999), 37). To make the world a better place, to make it a more beautiful place, does not mean we all must become artists in the most specific sense of the word (that is, we don’t have to become painters, sculptors, or the like). While the work of the artist is a very important way of realizing our role in the world, it is not the only way; there are many other ways to make the world more beautiful. We must realize that beauty is inherent in our nature, and we need only let ourselves be ourselves (which is only possible once we have abandoned sin) in order to accomplish our task. Beauty is created when we make the world a better place to live in, when we treat others with kindness and respect, when we become the stewards of the earth God meant us to be. Beauty generates love; love is experienced through beauty; by being lovers of each other and of the world around us, beauty will follow. “Love alone, properly speaking, proves that the human person is in the image of God, by making his self-determination submit to reason, not bending reason under it, and persuading the inclination to follow nature and not in any way to be at variance with the logos of nature.” St Maximus the Confessor, “Letter 2” in Maximus the Confessor. Trans. and ed. Andrew Louth (London: Routledge, 1996), 86 -7.

God is beautiful, and this beauty is manifested in his holiness; being in the image of God, we are beautiful; in our essence, in our core, this beauty shines out, and no one can destroy it. No matter what we have done, no matter how ugly our physical appearance might at first seem to others, behind it all is the beautiful image of God. Those more attuned to the things of the soul see no one is ugly, because they see the image of God in everyone reflecting the loveliness of God. “For the beauty of any person pleases the soul not insofar as it lies in external matter, but insofar as an image of it is comprehended or grasped by the soul through sight,” Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love. Trans. Sears Jayne (Woodstock, Connecticut: Spring Publications, 1994), 87.

Scripture tells us, however, that we are more than in the image of God, but also in God’s likeness. God’s image is his potentiality, God’s likeness his actuality. In the creation of humanity, like God, our potentiality and actuality were one; we were created to be free, to be given a choice. That integrity could not be preserved by us alone; in order to keep it, we needed to be open to the work of God in our life. When we believed we could do it alone, when we cut ourselves from God and tried to make ourselves into God, sin replaced the presence of God, and with the advent of sin, we could no longer actualize our potential While that potentiality still remains within, that is the image of God has not been rubbed out, we destroyed the likeness we had of God. Our new likeness reveals who we have made ourselves to be. What does this mean? No one, not even ourselves, can destroy the God-given beauty we have at the core of our being; but we are given free reign in how we manifest it: we can create a rather ugly persona, if we so wish. It can be so ugly, that we no longer seem to radiate God’s beauty. When this happens, we no longer know ourselves as we should be; all that we see and feel is the ugliness we have created for our lives. Such ugliness can even make it feel as if God’s presence has been eradicated from our lives.

Our life history is, in part, the record of how we have manifested our internal beauty. God in his likeness is as beautiful as he is in his image: his image and likeness are one, how he is in potentiality is how he is in actuality. We should aim for the same. “Let us always, therefore, contemplate that image of God that we can be transformed to his likeness,” Origen, “Homily on Genesis I,” in Origen. Homilies on Genesis and Exodus.. Trans. Ronald Heine (Washington, DC: Catholic University Of America Press, 1982), 66. When we again manifest our internal nature perfectly (and this can only be done with God’s grace), then the likeness of God, which we once had and then lost, is said to return. Then like God, we will once again unite our potentiality with our actuality.

We are called to beautify the world, but how are we to do this? It is true that our mere existence begins the process, because our mere existence radiates the image of God, however obscured we have made it by our deeds. However, we are called to do more than this; we have been put into the world to represent God to the world, to act out that portion of God’s image within us, to show the world the reason God created us in his image. This means we are called to do the deeds God made us for. Contemplating the fact that our existence is temporal, something fascinating is revealed. While in our origin we contain the potential to be something great, if we had continued to live in and with God, that potential itself would have grown: it would have been deified. The world, however, is the same – it was created good and beautiful by God, but the full realization of what it was meant to be is not to be found at its origin, but only in its consummation, only in its eschatological, transfigured end. We have been put into the world, not only to actualize our own potential, but also to help bring out the world’s potential as well, and with the world, all that lies within it – including each other. “The world was created with time, and this means that at the beginning, it had not reached its full development; it was only an embryo. The purpose of this type of creation is to allow the prophets and ‘good workers’ to arise throughout history and lead creation toward a synergy, that is, cooperative labor, of human and divine activity. This common work is to continue until the Day when the embryo will attain its full maturity,” Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, 57. We have been put into time to help in the development of the world; because we are a part of it, what we do to improve ourselves will help in improving the world. This does not mean we should go off into some corner, hide ourselves from the rest of humanity, and try to be reach perfection in isolation. Because we are beings who exist only in relation to others, to be the most of who we can be, we must not cut ourselves from the rest of the world; our perfection can only be found when we raise it with us. We are called to contribute to creation, not hide from it, to be co-creators in the world in union with God, helping the world achieve its final end, seeing it perfectly united with our own.

As we are called to share in the loving work of God, we must not abuse this vocation, that is, we must not think it gives us a right to overrule what God has done. Instead, our task must take into account God’s divine plan; we must look for it, and not thwart it. Then we can realize that this task is not ours alone, but the task of all creation:

But wisdom, being in ground and principle one and the same, is expressed differently in different creatures, just as the rays of the sun, which in their essence are one and the same, acquire different colors in different glasses, and just as water acquires different colors from the different colors of the plants contained in it. That is why we must investigate the Creator’s creation from the small to the great in order to discover in them the signs of wisdom hidden in them. That is why we must penetrate into them and meditate on them to receive a more or less clear understanding of them.
--Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 204.

There is no monistic answer for how we should live. There is no one way to be human, even as there is not just one kind of flower – the world would be a boring, dull, and even ugly place if everyone acted the same way and did the same thing. Thus, even in the world, there are many ways of expressing what it means to be human, many ways of beautifying the world, with each person representing a different quality or characteristic of divinity. Thus, while humanity helps finish creation, to do so properly, humans need to freely discern what their own individual vocation is, what their own individual expression of divinity is, and what way they can best express it. This means that we must accept there are indeed some called to the religious life, to a monastic, celibate existence. This call comes much responsibility but even greater temptation: their existence lies in the fact that they express self-denial in imitation of Christ, however, in that self-denial, it is so easy to turn their denial into destruction, and asceticism to rejection of the world. When this happens, they no longer are true to the religious life they have been given. “The genuine Christian ascetic is essentially connected with all of creation and does not despise anything that belongs to creation,” Pavel Florensky, Pillar and Ground of the Truth, 199. Monastic life, if lived properly, seeks in their self-renunciation a vision of God which can only be found in the very center of their being, once all their egoism has been removed. This is done so at last they can let God live through them, radiating through them, transfiguring the world through them. The goal of any monk or nun is the same with the rest of us, but the way they go about it is just one of the many ways this can be achieved. Moreover, their vocation reminds us that humanity is itself not self-sufficient, and should never be confused as being something more than it is – in their self-renunciation they show us that human expression can only finally be affirmed outside the self, only with God.

Beauty can manifest itself in many ways, revealing many glorious aspects to its nature. When we look at a great work of art, when we listen to a wonderful piece of music, when a forest reveals itself in its glory to us, what is it that attracts us, what is it which makes it beautiful? Analyzing what we experience, and dividing it into its constituent parts, do we find that all the parts are equally beautiful? Or do we find that it is their integral unity which generates beauty by harmonizing its diverse elements together? A banging sound by itself might be rather crude; put in its proper place in the middle of a symphony it lifts up the spirit of the listener. Beauty reveals more of itself when divergent parts are brought together as one, but they can only be one if there some mediating principle which unites them. What is ugly by itself reveals an inner beauty when it is placed in its proper context.

When our lives are lived out selfishly, we try to set ourselves up as self-subsistent entities; our life is out of balance, our inner and external harmony is lost. The proper balance which lets our own individual uniqueness and glory shine through is lost; sin creates a defiled life, it makes our life ugly; holiness is a beautiful life lived out in all its splendor. Proper balance requires for us to have an openness to the world and its mediating principle – call it the Tao, the Dharma, or the Logos; we must let that principle guide us as it suggest a multitude of opportunities for our lives, each of which could lead us to our own proper fulfillment, to our own happiness. “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God” (John 1:1). This Logos is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). We learn that the Logos is not merely a guiding force, but a guiding person, who, as the express image of the Father, reveals to the world the transcendent glory of the Father (John 14:9). Taking on the flesh of man, the Logos mediates between God and man, by being both in one person – the God-man Jesus Christ. There is only one such God-man, one such mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5 -6), and as mediator, Jesus seeks to restore us to our inner beauty, to bring us back into a holistic, balanced life. When we have ignored his gentle, loving call in the past and sinned, it should come of no surprise that our life loses all sense of meaning, and we feel hopeless, stricken in grief, in the ugliness we have created. But there is hope, because the Logos does not give up on us; he has not left our side; he still mediates for us, calling us back to its loving ways. If we listen to his call, he is willing to heal our spiritual infirmities, transforming us to show us how even our most ugly of actions can be made beautiful in his loving, harmonizing hands.

But let us not forget if we are created in the image and likeness of God then this mediating role of the Logos is itself something we are to imitate, to follow through in our own life. “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1). While we are not the God-man, we are godlike in existence, and called to act as mediators in the world; history is meant to be the process of our mediation in the world, where it build it up and beautify as a pure act of worship and love for God.

“Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so as depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12: 16-18). One way we can live out our role as mediator is in how we build relationships with others, from how we build up our families, to how we build up our society. “When men and women provide for themselves and their families in such a way as to be of service to the community as well, they can rightly look upon their word as a prolongation of the work of the creator, a service to other men and women, and their personal contribution to the fulfillment in history of the divine plan,” Gaudium et Spes in Vatican Council II: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations. Ed. Austin Flannery, O.P. (Northport, New York: Costello Publishing Company, 1996), paragraph 34.

But as mediators, we must be like the God-Man, the Mediator, who thoughtfully guides us and shows us our way, by acting out the role of mediator to the rest of creation, harmonizing its divergent parts so it can reveal its inner glory, a glory was given to it by God the Father. “Already in creation God the Father has bonded himself to all his creatures, since he has handed over to them as their own the very powers and laws that make them what they are,” Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Christian Form,” in Explorations in Theology IV: Spirit and Institution. Trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 58. If we are to be mediators to the world, to be the stewards of creation that God meant us to be, we must find a way to experience the mark of God hidden in all things. “I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that everywhere, wherever you may be, the least plant may bring to you the clear resemblance of the Creator,” St Basil, The Hexameron. Trans. Blomfield Jackson in Basil: Letters and Select Works Volume 8 in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Series Two (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishing, 1994), 76. Attuned to the world in this manner, we can find the simple joy of St Francis of Assisi as our own; that troubadour of God was loved by the people because of the artistic way he was able to guide the world to reveal its inner beauty. Ask an artist what it is that inspires them to create, and more often than not, they will say they only revealed to the world what was already there. “Artistic inspiration is a mode of letting-be, of letting the outlines of form slowly dawn according to their own terms. It gathers disparate elements into a form and gives them the movement of life,” Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Christian Form,”60. In the same way, as the Logos guides and shapes us to let us reveal true nature and selves to the world, so we must in our creative guidance of the world, give room for the world to reveal itself, with just the slightest nudges here and there to keep everything in beautiful balance, centered upon the spirit of life.

The path to the Deathless is awareness;
Unawareness, the path of death.
They who are aware do not die;
They who are unaware are as
dead.
--The Dhammapada. Trans. John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana (New York: Book of the Month Club, 1992), 16 (Ch II.21)

To do our task properly, we need to center ourselves upon our true center: God. We need to open ourselves up to the Logos, to the guidance the Logos is willing to give us. We need moments of silence, with no external distraction; then we can become aware of the most gentle, most loving embrace of God upon our lives, nourishing our heart and soul, giving it the peace and rest which we strongly desire. This is the meaning of prayer, where we are open to the fullness of God in our lives, and God in his heartfelt love for us, is open to us, open to feel our pain and sorrow, our wants and desires, to be moved by them even as we are moved by him. When St Paul exhorts us to be in perpetual prayer, he is exhorting us to be in perpetual communion with God, having learned to feel the joy of his presence wherever we are, in whatever we do. But when we fully encounter God, we join in with God’s love so that our love is God and God is our love. Then, as Balthasar points out, “Christian contemplation encounters the love of God in no other way than in its commitment for the world,” Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Beyond Contemplation and Action?” in Explorations in Theology IV: Spirit and Institution. Trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 303. God’s love reaches into the world, and is committed to beautifying it; thus when we center ourselves upon God, not only does this give us the strength and rest we all so desperately seek, but it does more – it leads us back into the world, leads us with a stronger commitment to the world, to be the mediator in the world God wants us to be. We become like Christ to the world. “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them” (John 14:21).

The Sermon on the Mount is a commentary on love; it reveals to the world not only what God expects out of us, but also the rewards we will receive when we live out this love. Blessed are they who follow the commandments, for they shall see the kingdom of God within themselves, radiating out, transforming the world. Blessed are they who love so much that they are poor in spirit and hunger after righteousness; that desire will be fulfilled. They will be made pure at heart, they shall see God! But who exactly are they who shall see God? They are God’s children, the peacemakers, meek and humble ones who have inherited a stewardship over all the earth. In the madness and folly of their love, they will go so far as to give their very lives for the world, renouncing all claims to the world themselves but finding that it is God and God’s call which is all they need. By losing their life in love, God returns it to them; they are resurrected in eternal, heavenly glory, and have a life more beautiful than they ever could imagine; the foretaste of this is enough to transform even the greatest of sinner into a saint. They find out, holiness is not theirs alone, it is not something which can be grasped and stoppered up as if in a bottle. It spreads, and touches all those who come in contact with the saint. “Spread over and permeating the whole person, the light of Divine love also sanctifies the boundary of the person, the body, and, from there, radiates into the nature that is outside the person. Through the root by which the spiritual person reaches into the heavens, grace also sanctifies all that surrounds the ascetic and flows into the core of all creation.” Pavel Florensky, Pillar and Ground of the Truth,198.

Here, at last, we return where we started, we return to our original answer. What is the meaning of life? It is to be like holy artists, making the world beautiful, and this is done by turning ourselves into incarnations of love, imitating the Logos who is The Incarnation of Love. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:16). Or, as Nicholas Cabasilas says, “What then may life be more fittingly called than love? For that which alone survives and does not allow the living to die when all things have been taken away is life – and such is love. When all things have been passed away in the age to come as Paul says (1 Cor. 13:8, 10), love remains, and it alone suffices for life in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is due all glory for ever.” Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ. Trans. Carmino J. deCatanzara (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 229.

The Vision of God

To truly experience God, our eye of contemplation
Must turn its focus, and all its consideration
Deep within the soul to find what we have sown,
In hidden compartments, previously unknown,
Where our habits reside, flourish and reproduce.
Those unhealthy desires which once did seduce,
Have now left us, yet we continue in their snare
Until from all we wrestle free – an act we must dare.
Then and only then, what will be seen,
Is the soul in its glory pristine,
And God will be reflected within, because his image
Is what we shall encounter in our purified visage.

Eternal Memory

Eternal memory. Eternal memory. Grant, 0 Lord, to Your servant blessed repose and eternal memory.

In the Byzantine tradition, both funeral services and memorial services for the dead, except during the Paschal season, end with prayers asking for the deceased to be in God’s eternal memory. For many unfamiliar with this tradition, this request might seem strange. Is it possible for an omniscient God to forget someone?

The problem lies with the way we understand memory. For us, memory is merely the mental recollection of a phenomenon we have previously experienced. To remember someone is to think about them, bringing to mind whatever qualities and characteristics which we associate with their being. We might ponder the way they looked, how they used to act, or some spectacular deed they did. Yet, there are always aspects we forget. Memory is an imperfect mental reconstruction of the past which is now non-existent. Once a moment of time has past, it is gone. Only the now is real. Thinking about the past does not make it come back to life.

While a reflection of people, places and things which once existed in the past is indeed a part of the process of memory, to consider memory solely in this fashion is not to understand what the ancient world, and therefore the authors of Scripture (and their heirs who developed the Christian liturgical tradition), meant by it. Memory was an act of presence: to be in God’s memory was to be present with God. Those who remembered you preserved your presence on the earth. It was a great blessing to be remembered, because while someone remembered who you were, you continued to live. To be forgotten was to perish. “The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot” (Proverbs 10:7, NRSV). When God remembers someone, he preserves them. “But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark” (Genesis 8:1). When God remembers a covenant, he acts upon it, doing whatever is necessary to keep it intact. “After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites and God took notice of them” (Exodus 2:23-25). In the Torah, we find the blotting out of one’s memory to be God’s greatest curse. When Israel was attacked by Amalek, God’s response was to say, “I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven” (Exodus 17:14b).

The Torah calls us to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. It is not a command to merely reflect upon some past Sabbath day, it is a call to re-experience the holiness of the Sabbath each and every Sabbath. When the Passover was celebrated by the Israelites, it was understood that they were re-experiencing the original Passover.

We can understand many of the words of the prophets in this context. Recognizing Israel’s apostasy, they asked God to remember his covenant with the patriarchs. “We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord, the iniquities of our ancestors, for we have sinned against you. Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake; do not dishonor your glorious throne; remember and do not break your covenant with us” (Jeremiah 14:20 -21). Yet, how is God to do this when Israel has sinned against him? Did he not promise retribution for disobedience? When sin is remembered by God, it is in his presence, and it will bring out his wrath.

The solution was simple. Sin had to be blotted out. “Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me” (Psalm 51: 10 – 11). Sin is forgotten by God, that is, he removes it from his presence. “I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25).Fundamentally, there is an ontological change in the subject, and the sin itself no longer exists. We are told he does this because he remembers his first covenant. It is from the first and its continuation that a second is established. “Yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish with you an everlasting covenant […] I will establish my covenant with you and you shall know that I am the Lord, in order that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I forgive you all that you have done, says the Lord God” (Ezekiel 16:60; 62-3).

When we turn to the New Testament, we continue to see memory understood by this Semitic approach. We also see a development of what it means to remember coming from the Hellenistic context in which the New Testament was written. We find in the Apocalypse a very Jewish approach towards salvation and damnation. Here the saved are found written in the Lamb’s Book of Life (cf. Rev 3:5; 20:12; 20; 21:27). Their names are remembered, giving them life eternal. In the Torah, God said, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book” (Exodus 32:33). In the Apocalypse we see what will happen if that threat is carried out: “anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). One whose name is forgotten perishes; one who is remembered will be given the heavenly reward – they will experience eternal life in the very presence of God.

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendent of David – that is my gospel” (2 Timothy 2:8). Only by this traditional understanding of memory as presence, can the gospel be said to be established by the remembrance of Jesus. While the presence of Jesus in our life is established interiorly through our memory, we find his presence in our community through our communal memory. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). Just as we found out that the preservation of our names in the Book of Life indicates God’s remembrance of who we are, to be gathered in Jesus’ name is to gather so we can remember him. It is through remembrance we get his presence. It is also through remembrance we have communion, one with another, in the Lord. “We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 1: 2-3).

While memory signifies presence, we must admit that there are many ways we can experience this presence. Even when we are physically before one another, we can experience each other’s presence in a multitude of ways. Each way is unique. However, the greatest, purest act of remembrance of Christ comes through the new paschal meal he established before his death. He told us that when we come together, we are to perform this meal in remembrance of him. To fully understand the New Testament understanding of remembrance, we must appreciate the implications of the Greek work anamnesis which is being used. “It is a recollection of the past that enlivens and empowers the present as well. Such memory is not restricted to the mental activity of individuals; it is found above all in the ritual and verbal activity of communities” Luke Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 114-5. It is truly a re-collection, re-establishment, a re animating or “member”-ing of Jesus’ presence, the ongoing presence of Jesus as the bread of life (John 6:51).

Our memory is imperfect. Through memory we experience the presence of others relative to how well we remember them. But, through the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, that which is imperfect is perfected. The Spirit, through the order established by God the Father, through the work of his Son, is fully capable of bringing that Son, Jesus, to us. The bread we bring to share with one another as the remembrance or re-collection of Jesus becomes that very presence through the work of the same Spirit who turned dust into life. In communion we find not only the perfect presence of Christ, but the perfection and end of memory itself. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have entered eternal life, and I will rise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink” (John 6:54-5). In our communal remembrance of Christ, we find Christ remembers us – in communion we find eternal life, that is, eternal memory. Remember me, O Lord, when you shall come into your kingdom!

The Spirit's Breath

It has been said that in Christ all aspects of our life, even the dark terrors we face daily, and the horror of death, find their proper place. Therefore, in a work of Christian aesthetics, even the darkness can and should be represented. Ours hopes as well as our fears find their life and fulfillment in the incarnation, from the joy of the nativity to the grotesque glory of the cross.

A poet and dear friend of mine, using the pen name of Shea Jacobs, is ever fascinated with the crucifix. This is often manifested in her poetry. It is not without surprise that we see her write with the mix of beauty and sorrow that one finds in the cross. Her love for humanity manifests itself especially in her fascination with the glorious works of art we have, as a race, created; yet, not unlike Jesus following the path to the cross, we see her write with great sorrow and despair. What has been made can be destroyed. Do we have what it takes to preserve our glorious heritage and the earth we live on? There is much to learn here, much to contemplate, and it is without further introduction I give to you her poem, this on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Worship the Tin God: From Genesis to Revelation.

Worship the Tin God

From Genesis to Revelation

Brooding Spirit breathes

The darkness shone

Night as dark - Day as light

Crepuscular glowings

Aqueous ripples of Spirits breath,

Gihon, Pishon, Euphrates

Green planted, blue saturated

The brooding Spirit sang ! – a falsetto range

Permeating echoes

Ticking time awoken !

Genesis of man

Of all !

Teeming embryos, growing, changing

The waltz beganExploring, loving orgasmic rhythm

Seed planted

Womb fattens

Man from manEozoic finger of Buonarroti’s Adam

Pointing to his makerArising from dust to glory

Life is sweet.

Silently the slippery serpent slides

Tricking, tempting, taking, turning,

Envy, greed, jealously.

The spirit sighs.

Wait for the Lamb, He is coming!

“Love one another’

Is killed

RISES!!!

Sins of the father live on,

Killing plundering warring

Riches unshared

Land raped

Waters soiled

One invidious World Power

Scrapers burners pushers cutters

Warrers haters killers hurters

The mantle groans

The white flash – melting all to shadow

Buonarroti’s Adam, fallen – gone for all time

Oceans boiled, faeces rise to break the surface

No arc of Noah nor olive branch

No dove of peace nor saving grace

That inverse globe of deadened life

Inert, sent spiralling to the sun.

And the timekeeper stopped the clock

And the Spirit wept.

What Are We To Make Of The Sign of Jonah?

38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, ‘Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.’ 39 But he answered them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth. 41 The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here! 42 The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! (Matthew 12:38 – 42).


In one of Jesus’ more interesting speeches, he tells us that the sign he will give to us to validate his ministry is the sign of Jonah. Following his initial remarks about the sign, Christians tradionally interpreted it as a prophecy of Jesus’ death and subsequent resurrection. While certainly correct, I have often pondered whether or not this answer is a bit too simple, and we have not fully understood what Jesus was telling us.

Indeed, what Jesus said about Jonah should tell us that there is more to the story than Jonah's journey at sea. Jonah had been given a warning to deliver to the people of Nineveh: repent or face destruction. Because they repented, the predicted doom did not occur. We do not see Jonah as a false prophet because what he said did not come to pass. He was a preacher of righteousness who understood the final consequences of sin. It is self-destructive. If it is left unchecked, it will destroy everything in its path.

Perhaps the sign should be seen within a holistic interpretation of Jonah’s life. It is not only his journey into the belly of the beast, into the abyss as it were, that we need to see as a sign of Christ, but also the final repentance of the people of Nineveh and God’s mercy towards them. Without Jonah’s warning, they would not have turned away from their wickedness.

In his ministry to the people of Israel, Jesus not only came as healer, but as a preacher of righteousness. His morality was the law of love. All other rules, all other regulations, come from the demands of love. Sin as a violation of God’s law is seen as a violation of the law of love. In his prediction of the Last Judgment, Jesus tells us that there will be two classes of people, those who lived out the law of love, the sheep, and those who violated its dictates, the goats.

Many people, when reading this prophecy, see it as if Jesus were giving us a glimpse of future history: what is said in it must come to pass. If Jesus says that there will be people sent to eternal perdition, then that is the end of all debate. Hell exists and people will be sent to there. If not, Jesus is a liar and we should not believe what he tells us.

However, are they reading this prophecy correctly? If Jesus gives us his life as the sign of Jonah, then perhaps, just perhaps, what he tells us about the Last Judgment should be read in this light. Jonah showed what sin does to society: Jesus tells us what sin does to the soul. However, he did not come to bring us a message of doom, his message was a message of hope, “I came not to judge the world, but to save it” (John 12:47b). Perhaps, like Fedorov, we can say:

…we dare to think that the prophecy of the Last Judgment is conditional, like that of the prophet Jonah and like all prophecies, because every prophecy has an educational purpose – the purpose of reforming those who to whom it is addressed; it cannot sentence to irrevocable perdition those who have not even been born yet. If that were the case, what sense, what purpose, could such a prophecy have, and could it accord with the will of a God, who, as already stated, wishes all to be saved, all to come to true reason and not to perish? -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, What Was Man Created For? The Philosophy of the Common Task. Trans. Elisabeth Koutaissof and Marilyn Minto (Lausanne, Switzerland: Honeyglen Publishing, 1990), p.129-30.

Looking at Jonah’s life holistically as a sign of Jesus’ own mission suggests that Balthasar’s daring hope for the salvation of all might indeed come to pass. We do not know the fate of the world. We have only been given possibilities. If it were a certainty that there are souls destined for eternal perdition, how could we pray, “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have the most need of your mercy”?