What Are Theologians Saying About Christology? ['America' magazine, Sept 17, 2007]

Editor’s Note: After the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a notification March 14 on some works of the liberation theologian Jon Sobrino, S.J., the editors wondered how we might inform our readers about the questions at stake. We concluded that the most useful approach would be to set the issues in the context of contemporary Christology, explaining what major theologians, Scripture scholars and schools of theology are saying regarding the six questions about Jesus to which the congregation drew attention in its notification: method, divinity/humanity, incarnation, the kingdom of God, Jesus’ self-consciousness and soteriology (explanations of how Jesus achieved our salvation). We have asked six theologians to explain what the tradition and their colleagues are saying today about the church’s confession of Jesus as Christ and Son of God.

Alejandro Garcia-Rivera, Kevin Burke, Robert P. Imbelli, John R. Donahue, William Thompson-Uberuaga, Robert A. Krieg

Faith and the Poor

By Alejandro Garcia-Rivera

Recently I had the honor of listening to Metropolitan Kallistos Ware as he gave a talk on the Orthodox understanding of the Holy Spirit. During the question-and-answer session, a young Roman Catholic seminarian asked him what he thought of the recent Vatican notification on the works of Jon Sobrino, S.J. Bishop Ware smiled, thought for a minute and quoted this famous passage from St. John Chrysostom:

Would you see his altar?... This altar is composed of the very members of Christ, and the body of the Lord becomes an altar. This altar is more venerable even than the one which we now use. For it is…but a stone by nature; but become holy because it receives Christ’s body: but that is holy because it is itself Christ’s body…[which] you may see lying everywhere, in the alleys and in the marketplaces, and you may sacrifice upon it anytime…. When then you see a poor believer, believe that you are beholding an altar. When you see this one as a beggar, do not only refrain from insulting him, but actually give him honor, and if you witness someone else insulting him, stop him; prevent it.

Homily 20 on 2 Corinthians

Wisely Bishop Ware refused to elaborate on the quotation and left us to ponder its meaning. Its relevance to the Sobrino notification, however, has become more and more evident as I have studied the text by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The notification questions first the methodological presuppositions of Sobrino’s Christology. Father Sobrino emphasizes the social setting defined by the “church of the poor”; the notification identifies the proper context as the “faith of the Church.”

The C.D.F. apparently thinks Sobrino is playing fast and loose with the nature of the church. By identifying the church with the poor instead of with the faith, the C.D.F. warns that Sobrino’s Christ is being wrenched from his ecclesial matrix. What is feared, I suppose, is a Christ who emerges out of a social setting instead of a communion of faith. Such a Christ could be subject to political and ideological currents that have little interest in faith. Indeed, Sobrino’s method of taking the social context as the ecclesial matrix from which Christ emerges may lead to an unabashed theological pluralism where the one Lord can become a Christ of a thousand faces, each depending on its own social setting.

Such a scenario might be one reason this notification was issued. Sobrino’s method opens up a postmodern Pandora’s box of theological speculation. To ask if Jon Sobrino’s Christ is too postmodern is to ask if the C.D.F.’s primary concern is the role that truth plays in theological reflections. The notification, referring to Donum Veritatis, suggests as much: “Thus the truth revealed by God himself in Jesus Christ, and transmitted by the Church, constitutes the ultimate normative principle of theology.” Trust in the normative power of truth claims is at odds with the postmodern zeitgeist, which questions not simply the truthfulness of statements but truth itself. Such faith and the deep value it holds can legitimately be offended by the skepticism over normative claims so prevalent today. Does the notification assert that Sobrino’s Christology falls prey to such skepticism? There is reason to think so, namely, the concern for “the manner in which the author treats the major Councils of the early Church.” The notification lifts out this particular quote from Sobrino’s Christ the Liberator: “While these texts are useful theologically, besides being normative, they are also limited and even dangerous, as is widely recognized today.” While recognizing the limited character of dogmatic formulation, the notification insists that “there is no foundation for calling these formulas dangerous, since they are authentic interpretations of Revelation.”

Here the wisdom from the Orthodox tradition and the relevance of Chrysostom’s text become evident. The Orthodox warn against making dogmatic claims with too much confidence. While truth is behind all such claims, the ecclesial setting for truth is not objectivity but love. Truth is not simply about objectivity but also solidarity. And this is one of the lessons I learned from Chrysostom’s text. The Christ the church worships at its altar is also the Christ found at the altar of the world’s poor. In this sense both Sobrino and the C.D.F. appear to speak truthfully and accurately. Christ’s ecclesial matrix is the church that worships in faith. It is also the church of the poor. This is the famous both-and that marks the church as Catholic.

Having a both-and Christology is not the same as postmodern skepticism. It is the very nature of a faith that proclaims that God is one and three, that Jesus is human and divine. There is something more dangerous to the faith than a Christ who can only be grasped through multiple views; it is a view of truth as either-or.

“Definitive” truth that is not loving can bring only despair to an already nihilistic world. Postmodernism thrives precisely because it sees the suffering of this world as having reached horrendous and senseless proportions. A church that is methodologically indifferent to senseless suffering is at odds with the methods of Jesus himself. Only a Jesus who belongs to a church that is not afraid to identify itself with the suffering of this world can have any rational claim on the world itself. In other words, the normative character of the truth of the church’s faith is protected, defended and nurtured by a praxis that will not regard as normative the senseless suffering of billions. The church has two altars. The C.D.F. points rightly to one; Sobrino points to the other.

Balancing Human and Divine

By Kevin Burke

Christology is a complex discipline. It requires an intricate balancing act among assertions perennially in tension with one another. One of my first theology teachers, Brian Daly, S.J., emphasized this point in a course tellingly entitled “The Christological Controversies.” He noted how every orthodox Christological claim tends toward one or another heresy and needs to be complemented by other claims. Moreover, this process of complementing and balancing involves more than rehearsing the facts of church doctrine, for the language of faith often explodes like a riot of color in a wild garden or a true poem. As such, Christology involves evocation. Its arguments turn on the subtlest of metaphors.

And the work is always unfinished. Theology itself has to grow to stay alive. Theologians betray their vocation if they simply repeat word-for-word definitions taken from Scripture or doctrine, as if formulas could contain faith or words exhaust mystery. Every age, every culture needs to find access to Jesus Christ from within its own distinctive language and worldview. But the future of theology does not undermine the importance of its past. Theological growth needs direction to remain authentically alive. It needs Scripture (the normative witness to apostolic faith) and the Christological dogmas formulated by the theologians of the early church.

However, the teachings of Scripture and tradition are not self-interpreting. For this reason, Christology is not only complex but dangerous. Even devout believers can lose their way in the thickets of Christological reasoning. Even clear and apparently unambiguous statements like “Christians believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ” need to be interpreted in relation to other statements. Taken in isolation, without reference to the full humanity of Jesus, this statement is misleading and potentially harmful. In contrast, the classic formula developed at the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, affirms the full divinity and full humanity of the one person, Jesus Christ, “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” And even this profound and balanced definition is not the end of the matter, for inquiring minds want to know: How do we make sense of this?

In the effort to make sense of the language of faith, the choice of where to begin is crucial because it shapes the way we imagine Jesus. This, I believe, represents the key difference between the Christology of Jon Sobrino, S.J., and the logic of the Vatican notification that criticizes his work. The notification implies that theology should start “from above,” with the Nicene Creed’s affirmation of Jesus’ divinity (“one in being with the Father”). Sobrino, by contrast, begins “from below” where the synoptic Gospels begin, with Jesus as he appeared to his contemporaries (“Is this not the carpenter’s son?”). The one approach starts with doctrine. The other begins in history.

On the surface, starting from doctrine appears to be the strongest way to safeguard the faith. But throughout Christianity’s history, it is the return to Jesus that consistently protects theology from the greatest danger of all—the temptation to use its own logic to misrepresent God. Concern for this danger lies behind the commandment forbidding false images of God: God cannot be described by analogy to what we think a god ought to be like. For his part, Sobrino is wary of the assumption that “we already know what divinity is” when we apply the term to Jesus. Rather, Jesus reveals what divinity means. Starting with Jesus and moving from there to an interpretation of his being the eternal Word of God unmasks the temptation to manipulate his image (and thereby God’s image) for our own ends.

Furthermore, Sobrino begins with Jesus precisely to “make sense” of Christian faith in a world burdened by “senseless” suffering, especially the suffering that results from inhuman poverty and violent oppression. Starting with Jesus and his scandalous love for the poor provides the best way today to lead people to authentic faith in Jesus Christ. It empowers Christians to live as disciples of Jesus while confirming their claim to be advocates of a universal, integral justice. Finally, it provides a credible way of holding the tension between the divine and the human natures of Jesus. Sobrino directs the imagination to that which is most easily imaginable: Jesus as he appeared to his contemporaries. He then leads it beyond its normal limits, as theology must, in order to give a complete account of Christian hope.

The Vatican notification warns that Sobrino’s method might scandalize believers who are not sophisticated enough to follow his subtle theological ascent. If people begin by imagining Jesus in his humanity, they might remain there, with a “merely human” Jesus. Of course, a corresponding risk exists for those who start with the Nicene Creed and utilize a dogmatic imagination. This approach can lead simple believers into a heretically high Christology like Docetism, in which Jesus, the Son of God, only appears to be human.

Christology wrestles with difficult questions. In-deed, its own use of reason can be dangerous. But not every danger can be addressed by authoritative pronouncements. More-over, while it may be prudent to warn believers about the possible dangers of Sobrino’s Christology, it seems equally necessary to call attention to corresponding dangers in Christologies that begin with Jesus’ divinity. At the very least it is a mistake to think that Christologies “from below” pose the only or the greatest danger to Christian faith.

Word Incarnate

By Robert P. Imbelli

Pressed to choose but one New Testament verse to recapitulate the Good News, the Gospel within the Gospel, one might opt for the climax of the Prologue of St. John (1:14):

And the Word became flesh

and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

The Word, the eternal Son of the Father, who precedes and “pre-contains” all creation, became part of created reality, entered into human history, lived a complete human life, became one of us—even unto death.

So stupendous is this mystery that already in the first century some demurred. Surely it was unseemly for the divine to enter into the muck of humanity, confined in a body, subject to the indignities and torments to which flesh is heir. So began the perennial Gnostic revulsion against the flesh, and especially against the flesh-taking of the Holy, Immortal One.

The First Letter of John stands at the origin of the ecclesial tradition of discernment of spirits. It reiterates with insistence: “Beloved, do not trust every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Messiah has come in the flesh belongs to God” (1 Jn 4:1-2). The incarnation of the Word is not adventitious to God’s saving action; it is the very heart of salvation.

The Letter to the Hebrews sealed the canonical New Testament’s incarnational conviction. “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to God who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Heb 5:7-9).

Almost 400 years later, the great Christological Council of Chalcedon articulates, in the language of its culture and time, this core discernment and persuasion of the New Testament. Jesus the Christ is “perfect [Greek teleion] in divinity, perfect in humanity, truly God and truly human, of a rational soul and body.” In a famous formulation the council confesses the one Lord Jesus Christ “in two natures with no confusion, no change, no division, no separation...the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being.” Here the mystery of the Incarnation is neither explained nor reduced, but confessed and celebrated. Chalcedon enunciates the “deep grammar” that governs the church’s preaching, catechesis and theological reflection.

Fast-forward 1,500 years. As part of the commemoration of the anniversary of Chalcedon, Karl Rahner, S.J., wrote an essay that stands at the origin of renewed Christological reflection in the Catholic tradition. The essay, in revised form, appears in the first volume of his Theological Investigations under the title “Current Problems in Christology.” In the context of the Catholic theological world of the 1950s, these sentences rang like a manifesto:

We shall never cease to return to this formula [of Chalcedon], because whenever it is necessary to say briefly what it is that we encounter in the ineffable truth which is our salvation, we shall always have recourse to its modest, sober clarity. But we shall only really have recourse to it (and this is not at all the same thing as simply repeating it), if it is not only our end but also our beginning.

Rahner lamented that there was far too much mere repetition of creedal formulae, rather than genuine appropriation of the council’s insight. Moreover, he also judged that some of what was said in standard textbooks and in popular preaching was, often inadvertently, not consonant with Chalcedon’s measured doctrine. In particular, Rahner discerned a “crypto-monophysitism” that emphasized the divinity of Christ to the virtual exclusion of his full humanity.

In retrospect, this article (published in German in 1954 and in English in 1961) anticipated the direction of much of post-Vatican II Christological reflection by Catholic theologians. It stressed the need to do full justice to the humanity of Jesus, to return anew to the canonical range of New Testament witness rather than relying, almost exclusively, on the Gospel of John. It advocated complementing a “Christology from above” with a “Christology from below,” one that takes with utmost seriousness “the human experience of Jesus.”

Rahner already anticipated that this commitment would entail not only a focus on the human nature of the Word in some abstract, timeless fashion, but a consideration of the “flesh-taking” in its concrete historical, religious and social setting. This commitment, supported and promoted by the experience and teaching of Vatican II, led to a profusion of works in Christology: from Hans Küng to Edward Schillebeeckx, from Hans Urs von Balthasar to Walter Kasper, from Jon Sobrino to Elizabeth Johnson. Though the works of these authors certainly differ among themselves, all would echo Rahner’s claim that Chalcedon marks not only an end, but also a beginning of the church’s never-ending reflection on the mystery of its Lord.

In the present situation of Catholic theology, at least in its university setting, I think few would contend, as Rahner did 50 years ago, that there flows “an undercurrent of monophysitism.” The acknowledgement of the humanity of Jesus, of his immersion in the Jewish religious-cultural world of his time, has become an indisputable given (see Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus; N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God; Gerald O’Collins, Christology: a Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus). New archeological findings continue to “flesh out” the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth (see James H. Charlesworth, ed., Jesus and Archeology, Eerdmans, 2006). The present danger may lie, rather, in an inclination to present a Jesus who is fully, but only, human: a “Christology from below” that never quite manages to get off the ground. The church’s foundational faith in the incarnation of the only Son risks being reduced to a vague avowal of the divine inspiration of one who is a provocative prophet. Indeed, some even hint that the church’s dogmatic tradition distorts the reality of the first-century Jewish figure.

I read the recent notification of the C.D.F. on some writings of Father Jon Sobrino as a call to accountability to the grammar of Chalcedon, even as theologians probe new insights and forge new language. In the spirit of 1 John, it offers guidelines for discernment. I do not think Karl Rahner would object in principle to this admonition, though he might differ, of course, with regard to the congregation’s specific findings.

The challenge before us all, not only theologians, but preachers and parents, artists and educators, is to rekindle in our day and place the Christic imagination: to appropriate and extend Vatican II’s confident confession that Jesus is “the light of the nations” (Lumen Gentium, No. 1), that he is “the mediator and fullness of all revelation” (Dei Verbum, No. 2) and that the Holy Spirit offers to everyone “the possibility of being associated with Christ’s paschal mystery” (Gaudium et Spes, No. 22).

In pursuing this inexhaustible blessing and mission, we can do no better than take as a sure guide the Letter to the Hebrews, which so forthrightly celebrates the humanity of the Lord. For it also, with equal boldness, proclaims his unsurpassable uniqueness (Heb 1:1-2):

In times past, God spoke in partial and diverse ways to our ancestors through the prophets, but in these, the days of fulfillment, God has spoken to us through a Son, whom he has made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe.

Jesus and the Kingdom of God

By John R. Donahue

The kingdom of God assumes a central place in the notification on the works of Jon Sobrino, S.J., as it does in contemporary New Testament scholarship. A wide spectrum of New Testament scholars of all denominations significantly agrees that the central theme of the public proclamation of Jesus was the arrival of God’s powerful reign. Beyond this consensus is a virtual storm of scholarly discussion and debate. The kingdom is a major topic in three recent scholarly tomes: Jesus: A Marginal Jew, Vol. 2, by John P. Meier (reviewed in America, 4/8/95); Jesus and the Victory of God, by N. T. Wright (Am. 3/8/97); and Jesus Remembered, by James D. G. Dunn (Am. 12/3/03).

The Greek term itself, basileia tou theou (literally, “kingdom of God”), expresses the power of God active in the ministry of Jesus, but it also implies a spatial or local dimension, as in “United Kingdom.” The expression is a tensive symbol, evoking a host of associations rather than a single referent. The proclamation has a clear eschatological dimension—the final and definitive rule of God is at hand.

A host of problems accompany interpretation of this proclamation. There are three principal groups of sayings. The first stresses the presence of the kingdom; the second, its future coming; the third, its demands on people who wish to accept or enter it. A seemingly endless debate centers on which sayings are closest to the actual statements of Jesus (his ipsissima vox). Advocates of the presence of the kingdom interpret Jesus primarily as a prophet of reform (John Dominic Crossan), while the future sayings form the basis of interpreting Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher (Albert Schweitzer). Current exegesis leans toward some version of the thesis of Joachim Jeremias, that Jesus proclaims God’s reign as already at work in his ministry, while anticipating its fullest realization in the future.

Evidence for both positions is ample. Jesus inaugurates his public ministry by proclaiming that the kingdom of God is at hand and summoning people to reform and renewal (metanoia, Mk 1:16-17). Jesus also proclaims that the kingdom is “among you” (Lk 17:21), not “within you,” a translation that spawns many inaccurate appropriations. His mighty works of healing, confrontation with demons and his power over nature are the signs of God’s power now at work in his life and teaching. The kingdom is “of God,” both as gift and challenge; despite common parlance, nowhere does the New Testament speak of “building the kingdom of God.” For his part, Jesus speaks often of the kingdom in parables drawn from the ordinary lives of his hearers. Human experience is the path toward the transcendent.

Future expectation is also strong. Disciples are to pray that the kingdom will come, just as they pray for God’s will to be be done on earth as in heaven (Mt 6:10). Other sayings of Jesus reflect Jewish apocalyptic thought, with its emphasis on the end of the world, when the exalted Son of Man will reign as king to judge evildoers and restore justice to the elect (the sheep and the goats, Mt 25:31-46). According to Paul, eschatological fulfillment of the reign of God will come when at the end time the risen Jesus will hand over his kingdom to “his God and Father” (1 Cor 15:24).

The radical challenge of the kingdom is crystallized in a series of sayings on conditions for “entering” the kingdom. Rather than scandalize a child or commit other sins, one should be willing to enter the kingdom of God blind (Mk 9:47). Those who wish to enter the kingdom should be powerless like children (Mt 19:14); riches provide an overwhelming obstacle to entering (Mt 19:23-25). Disciples who seek the prestige of sitting at the right hand of Jesus in the kingdom are urged instead to become servants and slaves (Mt 20:21-25).

The powerful reign of God is not otherworldly, but embodied in history. Its arrival brings special hope to the poor, the suffering and the marginal. When Jesus calls the poor happy because “the kingdom of God is yours” (Lk 6:26), he is declaring that God’s reign is on their behalf. After the rich young man fails to heed Jesus’ call to give his wealth to the poor, Jesus comments to his disciples about the young man’s reluctance, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mk 10:23).

Jesus’ personal consciousness of the reign of God constitutes an enduring problem. Though, apart from John 18, Jesus never refers to “his kingdom” and does not accept the title “king,” he has a unique relationship to God’s reign. For decades scholars have called attention to Origen’s description of Jesus as autobasileia (literally “himself the kingdom”). Recent magisterial statements have frequently appealed to this text. While reflecting on Matt 18:23-35, Origen says that “king” refers to the Son of God. He goes on to ask: Since Jesus is “wisdom itself” (autosophia), “justice itself” (autodikaiosyne) and “truth itself” (autoasphaleia), is he not also autobasileia “the kingdom itself” (In Mt. Hom., 14:7)?

Origen prefers the spiritual sense over the literal, and his commentary is allegorical and Christological. The phrase “the kingdom itself,” therefore, is a theological expression on the trajectory that leads to the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. It is an interpretation, rather than a description of the historical Jesus.

Jesus’ Self-Consciousness

By William Thompson-Uberuaga

Regard for Jesus’ human identity and consciousness is not new. Luke 2:52 tells us that Jesus grew in wisdom. The Gospels attest to threshold moments in which Jesus’ consciousness unfolds, such as his baptism (which brings a heightened awareness of his relationship with his Father and his mission, tutored by John the Baptist), his desert experience (when he confronts his “demons” and readies himself for the struggles to come), his anointing by the Spirit (bestowing the gift of bringing good news to the poor), his transfiguration (opening up further depths of his particular person and mission) and his struggle in Gethsemane (about the will of God for him unto death).

In the second century Irenaeus wrote that the Son established a genuine communion with us through passing “through every stage of life” (Against Heresies). Still, early church councils found that they had to defend Jesus’ authentic human soul, intellect, will and vital energy against some who would deny them, so counterintuitive did it seem that God would come among us as a human being.

Since the connection between persons and their consciousnesses is an intimate one, it is reasonable to think that any special qualities of personhood would also shape one’s consciousness. Such thinking brings special challenges to our understanding of Jesus the Christ. His person, according to Christian doctrine, possesses two natures, divine and human. The communion between Jesus’ divinity and humanity, as a true communion, would entail an exchange of attributes between the two: God truly sharing the human condition. All of this is attested to by Scripture and taught by church councils. But does his divine identity and nature affect Jesus’ human consciousness? If so, in what way(s) can this happen without tampering with an integral human nature and human mind, and so risk being inconsistent with the doctrines of Chalcedon and Constantinople III?

The question is difficult and brings us to one of the fault lines among theologians today. We might argue a case deductively, based on a view of how God would act. God would never do anything to harm Jesus’ consciousness, we might say, but rather would create it and sustain it. That position uses the theological principle that God as the creator always enhances rather than curtails creation. We cannot do much without general principles like that from which to make deductions.

But we reach a limit here. For how well do we know who God is and how God should act? Some early heretics thought they knew God’s being well enough to argue that it would be inappropriate for Jesus to have a truly human intellect and will, because that would diminish the sovereignty of his divine nature, giving too much independence to his humanity. This sounded reasonable. Yet the church, following Scripture, could not accept such a view. The Word truly became human in Jesus, and being human entails the presence of a fully functioning human intellect and will. Apparently God was trying to reveal to us a different view of who he is and how he acts.

Other theologians take an inductive approach, led by the witness of revelation. Scripture teaches that Jesus was sinless (Heb 4:15), for example. Sinlessness is one of the special ways in which Jesus’ divinity enhanced his humanity. It coheres with Jesus’ mission, too, which is to be the way out of humanity’s sinful condition. Scripture teaches that Jesus possessed an extraordinary ability to discern the depths of the human heart, like the hearts of Judas, Peter and the Samaritan woman at the well. Sinlessness and deep discernment of the human heart exemplify the exchange between Jesus’ divine and human natures.

Overlapping the fault line is the theologians’ tendency either to maximize the ways in which Jesus’ divinity enhances his human consciousness or to understate them, in a more reserved way. For example, did Jesus enjoy the “full” beatific vision from the moment he was conceived—did he know as a fetus in the womb all that he would know after the resurrection? Was Jesus the only human ever able to see the Father continually creating his humanity, thus making it easier for him to be faithful to his Father’s will in accepting his death, as Bertrand de Margerie holds (“The Double Con-sciousness of Christ”)? When does the divine enhancement go too far, reducing Jesus’ humanity and leaving him with only one nature, the divine nature?

Other theologians choose to be reserved about the divine effects, unless compelled by revelation. Jesus, they suggest, enjoyed some vision of his divine nature and of his Father and the Spirit, but not the full, beatific vision of the resurrection state. Jesus’ earthly vision likely started out dim and grew in clarity as he passed through threshold experiences and matured. These theologians suggest that along with his special visionary knowledge as the Son in obedience to his Father, Jesus still was a person of faith, albeit of a unique kind. Such reasoning can be found in the work of Karl Rahner (Theological Investigations, Vol. V), Hans Urs von Balthasar (Theo-Drama, Vol. III) and Walter Kasper (Jesus the Christ) as well as Jon Sobrino (Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological View and Christ the Liberator: A View from the Victims). Gerald O’Collins (Christology) offers one of the more developed analyses of the types of faith manifested by Jesus, that of trust and that of believing certain truths, such as those about God taught him as a Jew.

My impression is that the magisterium reflects the spread of views noted among the theologians. Reflecting the reserved, inductive tendency, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, so far as I can tell, rather than attributing the beatific vision to Jesus, speaks of his knowledge of everything pertaining to God, such as an “intimate” and “immediate knowledge” of the Father and a full understanding of those plans of God he had come to reveal (Nos. 472-74). This knowledge of his Father entails his knowledge of his own unique sonship (No. 444), of course. The catechism also attributes to Jesus a “trusting commitment” to the Father (No. 2600), which seems to be faith-as-trust. By contrast, the “Notification” sent to Jon Sobrino reflects a maximalist perspective, attributing the beatific vision to Jesus and arguing that it obviates the need for any faith by Jesus.

The views expressed on both sides of the fault lines fall within a legitimate spread of interpretations of the Catholic faith. From time to time we theologians may go too far, but doing so results in error rather than heresy in faithful theologians. Occasionally “some magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies” either, as Cardinal Ratzinger has written (Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, 1990, No. 24).

Jesus as Savior

By Robert A. Krieg

How did/does Christ bring about our salvation? The question comes to mind when reading the recent notification by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith concerning the theology of Jon Sobrino, S.J. In the C.D.F.’s judgment, Sobrino’s writings contain an inadequate account of the “salvific value” of Jesus’ death.

In theology an entire subdiscipline, called soteriology, is devoted to such matters. Soteriology means critical, systematic reflection on the mystery of God’s saving activity on our behalf. In particular, it inquires into the redemptive significance of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection by examining Jesus’ own proclamation as found in the New Testament and as interpreted and transmitted in the Christian tradition, in specific church teachings and in the witness of contemporary Christians.

Today six widely held convictions shape soteriology.

1. Jesus saw his suffering and death as the price he would need to pay for remaining faithful to his proclamation of the coming of God’s reign (Mk 1:14-15). He judged his passion to be part of his mission and, along with his entire life and ministry, it had redemptive significance (Mk 8:31-33).

2. Jesus did not, however, explicitly offer a complete explanation, much less a doctrine concerning the salvific value of his life, death and resurrection. Rather, he spoke of his passion using such images as a “ransom” (Mk 10:45), a “grain of wheat” that dies and “bears much fruit” (John 12:24), the “beloved son” sent by his father to reclaim the vineyard (Mk 12:6), and his body “that is for you” and his blood “poured out for many” (1 Cor 11:24; Mk 14:23).

3. To elucidate the redemptive meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the New Testament writers employ a wide range of metaphors. Paul speaks of Jesus Christ as the “new Adam,” who lived and died in unswerving faithfulness to God, bringing grace “for the many” (Rom 5:15). Mark depicts Jesus as succumbing to death and thereby “tying up the strong man,” Satan (Mk 3:27). Matthew portrays Jesus’ passion as the death of an “innocent” and hence truly “righteous” person (Mt 27:19; Wis 2:12; 3:1). Luke perceives Jesus’ death and resurrection as the releasing of the Holy Spirit into history (Lk 24:49; Acts 2:4). John presents Jesus’ entire life, culminating in his suffering and death, as the revelation of God’s love (Jn 10:11).

4. The Christian tradition in the West similarly contains at least five different types of models or “theories” concerning the salvific value of the cross. The Christus-Victor view of St. Gregory of Nyssa (d. 395) speaks of Jesus Christ freeing us from Satan’s grasp. The “satisfaction theory” of St. Anselm (d. 1109) presents Jesus Christ initiating the restoration of right relationships in creation. According to the “penal-substitution” theory of John Calvin (d. 1564), Jesus Christ deliberately became the victim of the wrath of God that we all deserve. The sacramental view of Abelard (d. 1142) perceives Jesus’ cross as the definitive revelation of God’s love. And the representative theology of St. Irenaeus (d. 200) holds that Jesus Christ brought about the cosmic breakthrough of human faithfulness and love in response to God’s grace.

5. Although God’s saving activity in Jesus Christ happened once and for all, it is at the same time an ongoing reality. Thus it can be mediated through the sacraments, the act of faith, participation in the life of the church and care for people in need.

6. God’s redemption in Jesus Christ is a mystery, a reality that we can increasingly understand but never fully fathom. For this reason it is best understood by means of a variety of metaphors and models. In the Second Vatican Council’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church and the Modern World” (Gaudium et Spes), four distinct “theories” of how Christ saved us occur all within the same article (No. 22). Jesus Christ saved us because he is “the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love” (sacramental model); he is also identified as the “new Adam,” who “has restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured ever since the first sin” (representative model). Moreover, Christ “merited life for us by his blood, which he freely shed” (satisfaction model), and he united us with God by “freeing us from the bondage of the devil and of sin” (Christus-Victor Model).

As the C.D.F. rightly states, Catholic theologians must uphold “the normative value of the affirmations of the New Testament as well as those of the great Councils of the early Church” (Explanatory Note, No. 3). Yet the C.D.F. neglects to clarify that theologians serve the church by exploring the soteriological implications of these “affirmations,” especially since the church possesses no complete and final doctrinal formulation concerning the theological value of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

An evaluation of an individual theologian’s soteriology is a complex endeavor. It requires analyzing the scholar’s entire use of redemptive metaphors and classic theories, and then locating this theological configuration within the spectrum of soteriological positions contained in Scripture, tradition and church teachings.

On the one hand, Sobrino’s work contains some soteriological statements that are inadequate or ambiguous, especially when they are extracted from their texts. For example, Sobrino wrote in Jesus the Liberator, as the C.D.F. notes, “Let it be said from the start that the historical Jesus did not interpret his death in terms of salvation....” This statement by itself is inadequate. When it is completed by its subordinate clause, it becomes more acceptable, but remains ambiguous: “Let it be said from the start that the historical Jesus did not interpret his death in terms of salvation, in terms of the soteriological models later developed by the New Testament, such as expiatory sacrifice or vicarious satisfaction” (P. 201). Also problematic, as the C.D.F. has observed, is the following statement concerning Jesus’ death: “This saving efficacy is shown more in the form of an exemplary cause than an efficient cause” (P. 230). Is Jesus Christ no more than an example or role model of a life of love?

On the other hand, the notification understates the merits of the Jesuit theologian’s critical, systematic reflections on salvation in Jesus Christ. In Jesus the Liberator Sobrino unites three of the classical “theories” of Jesus Christ as redeemer—Christ the victor who remained faithful to the true God amid “the battle of the divinities and their mediators,” and thereby overcame death by “bearing the evil from which we have to be redeemed” (Pp. 219, 217); Jesus the new Adam, “the revelation of the homo verus, the true and complete human being...depicted by the New Testament as one who ‘goes about doing good,’ who was ‘faithful and merciful,’ who came ‘not to be served but to serve’” (P. 229); and the cross as sacramental: “Jesus’ cross is the expression of God’s love.... And God chose this way of showing himself, because he could not find any clearer way of telling us human beings that he really wills our salvation” (P. 231).

Taken as a whole, Sobrino’s writings express a rich—though not flawless—Catholic soteriology. Father Sobrino deserves the church’s gratitude, not its suspicion.

Alejandro Garcia-Rivera is a professor of systematic theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif.

Kevin Burke, S.J., is academic dean of the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif.

The Rev. Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, teaches systematic theology at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Mass.

John R. Donahue, S.J., is the Raymond E. Brown Distinguished Professor of New Testament Studies (emeritus) at St. Mary’s Seminary and University, Baltimore, Md., and was author of America’s The Word column from 1999 to 2002.

William Thompson-Uberuaga is a professor of systematic theology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Robert A. Krieg is a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.

The Message of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to Atheists

From "TheWesternConfucian"

Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, asks, "She became poor to serve the materially poor — did she similarly share the sufferings of the spiritually poor?"─The ‘Atheism’ of Mother Teresa. An excerpt:

The world of today knows a new category of people: the atheists in good faith, those who live painfully the situation of the silence of God, who do not believe in God but do not boast about it; rather they experience the existential anguish and the lack of meaning of everything: They too, in their own way, live in the dark night of the spirit.Albert Camus called them “the saints without God.” The mystics exist above all for them; they are their travel and table companions. Like Jesus, they “sat down at the table of sinners and ate with them” (see Luke 15:2).This explains the passion in which certain atheists, once converted, pore over the writings of the mystics: Claudel, Bernanos, the two Maritains, L. Bloy, the writer J.K. Huysmans and so many others over the writings of Angela of Foligno; T.S. Eliot on those of Julian of Norwich.There they find again the same scenery that they had left, but this time illuminated by the sun. Few know that Samuel Beckett, the author of Waiting for Godot, the most representative drama of the theater of the absurd, in his free time read St. John of the Cross.

The word “atheist” can have an active and a passive meaning. It can indicate someone who rejects God, but also one who — at least so it seems to him — is rejected by God. In the first case, it is a blameworthy atheism (when it is not in good faith), in the second an atheism of sorrow or of expiation. In the latter sense, we can say that the mystics, in the night of the spirit, are “a-theist,” that Jesus himself on the cross was an “a-theist”, without-God. Mother Teresa has words that no one would have suspected of her: “They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God. ... In my soul I feel just this terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing. Jesus please forgive the blasphemy.”But one is aware of the different nature, of solidarity and of expiation, of this “atheism” of hers: “I wish to live in this world that is so far from God, which has turned so much from the light of Jesus, to help them — to take upon myself something of their suffering.”

The clearest sign that this is an atheism of a completely different nature is the unbearable suffering that it causes to the mystics. Normal atheists don’t torment themselves because of the absence of God. The mystics arrived within a step of the world of those who live without God; they have experienced the dizziness of throwing themselves down. Again, Mother Teresa who writes to her spiritual father: “I have been on the verge of saying — No. ... I feel as if something will break in me one day. ... Pray for me that I may not refuse God in this hour — I don’t want to do it, but I am afraid I may do it.”Because of this the mystics are the ideal evangelizers in the post-modern world, where one lives etsi Deus non daretur (as if God did not exist). They remind the honest atheists that they are not “far from the Kingdom of God”; that it would be enough for them to jump to find themselves on the side of the mystics, passing from nothingness to the All. [link via The New Beginning]

The Simpler Way

From "TheWesternConfucian" blog


From Australia, a book that advocates a return to the above─Review: Renewable energy cannot sustain a consumer society. An except from the book:
…the essential factor in our global predicament is over-consumption… [so] we must move to far more materially simple lifestyles…We have to come to see as enjoyable living frugally, recycling, growing food, ‘husbanding’ resources, making rather than buying, composting, repairing, bottling fruit, giving surpluses and old things to others, making things last, and running a relatively self-sufficient household economy. The Buddhist goal is a life ‘simple in means and rich in ends’.I'm reminded of the most famous chapter of Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, explained in this 1977 article by Charles Fager─Small Is Beautiful, and So Is Rome: Surprising Faith of E.F. Schumacher:
He readily owned up to being a Catholic, a certified convert as of five years ago. This item is not mentioned in his book; in fact, one of the most frequently cited chapters, “Buddhist Economics,” almost made it appear as if he were deeply involved in Eastern religions. But wasn’t this chapter, I inquired, really more informed by the Catholic writings and thinkers he mentioned so frequently elsewhere in the book -- the papal encyclicals, Newman, Gilson and, above all, Thomas Aquinas?Schumacher grinned. “Of course. But if I had called the chapter ‘Christian Economics,’ nobody would have paid any attention!” [emphasis mine]

American Workers being Overworked

H/T VoxNova:


And then we wonder why there are so many divorces and broken families…

From CNN:

• The American worker has the least vacation time of any modern, developed society.
• In 2005, 33 percent of workers said they would be checking in with the office while on vacation.
• One-half of workers reported they feel a great deal of stress on the job.
• Forty-four percent of working moms admit to being preoccupied about work while at home and one-fourth say they bring home projects at least one day a week.
• Nineteen percent of working moms reported they often or always work weekends.
• Thirty-seven percent of all working dads said they would consider the option of taking a new job with less pay if it offered a better work/life balance.
• Thirty-six percent of working dads reported they bring work home at least one day a week and 30 percent say they often or always work weekends.

Heavenly Hurling

Sunday, 02 September 2007 15:30
More from this writer..
Chronicles

Heavenly Hurling

There is a perennially sun dappled corner of Heaven where the hurling people gather, writes An Fear Rua…Whenever your turn comes, I hope you’ll mosey round there. True, you may be tempted to linger along the way by the opportunity of shaking the hand of the great Abe Lincoln and chatting about his Gettysburg Address or spend endless hours with a truculent Bonaparte as he – yet again – pores over the map of a little Flemish village called Waterloo and wonders where it all went wrong. Sipping cool white whine by the banks of a babbling brook with Helen of Troy, no doubt, has its attractions as indeed might a few sessions with the flame-haired Grace O’Malley as she recalls her greatest military exploits against the invader.Still, if it has to be for an eternity, wouldn’t it be better to spend it pucking around a sliothar, coaching an Under Fourteen side to success in Féile or discussing the relative merits of, say, Ring and Mackey with the great men themselves?It won’t be too hard to find that hurling corner. You’ll probably hear the distinctive ‘tick … tock’ of ash on leather through the still warmth of evening air. The intermittent shouts from beyond the high hedgerows. Sometimes of approval or encouragement. Occasionally, with a hint of derision. If there’s a game on, there may be an oul lad at the gate, with a bit of a limp, a heavy overcoat and a flat cap thrust close to his pate, even though the sun is splitting the proverbial rocks nearby. More than likely, he’ll be standing beside a kitchen chair with a Jacobs ‘Marietta’ tin box plonked on it and a few forlorn notes and coins nestling in its silvery bosom. ... CONTINUE

"The Trouble With Our State: A Collection of Audio Poems", by Daniel Berrigan

Just saw this. If anyone ever wants to buy me a present, it is now on my ever expanding amazon list [see sidebar link 'buy me a book']

Follow up to 8/25 post "A response to Mark Lilla, by Dean Brackley, SJ "

Just noticed this comment over at the dotCommonweal post "A response to Mark Lilla, by Dean Brackley, SJ "

Posted by
Tom F Driver on August 27, 2007, 8:27 am

"The worst thing about Lilla's article is its distortion of religion's public record. Viewing it as almost entirely negative, he has fired off a cheap shot. One could write an equally distorted article about "humanism" or "secularism," claiming them to be disastrous when they get involved in politics. The principal cases in point would be the terrors committed by the French and the Russian revolutions, but there could also be many more examples.

Like many people today, Lilla supposes that there is some form of human life that is NOT political. But you cannot escape politics unless you remove yourself from society. Yes, you can become a passive rather than an active player, but play you must. As James Cone and others have put it: "Not to choose is to choose." So Lilla's advice to religion amounts to this: "Shut up and be conservative." Too much religion already follows that advice, with the result that reactionary and theocratic religionists, anything but passive, are having a field day.

The cure for BAD religion is not NO religion. It is religion aspiring to its better, not its lower, mandates. In this regard humanism has an important role to play in helping to critique religious superstition and fanaticism, but it cannot do this if it sets out to confine religion to the closet.Lilla should ponder the life and example of people like William Sloane Coffin, who once put matters this way when interviewed on PBS: “... my understanding of Christianity is that it underlies all progressive moves to implement more justice. Get a higher degree of peace in the world, you know? And although people don't see it, that's what I mean by politically-committed spirituality."

Emmanuel Charles McCarthy podcast: Behold the Lamb

Pie and Coffee Podcasts Emmanuel Charles McCarthy podcast: Behold the Lamb

Here’s Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy’s recorded retreat “Behold the Lamb” in podcast form: podcast feed list of recordings

“He takes as his central theme the Nonviolent Lamb of God and focuses on this biblical symbol and reality as the true icon and transcendental model for encountering God as revealed by Jesus, and for understanding and following the Way of God as taught by Jesus.”
More info at the Center for Christian Nonviolence site.
At a time when I had more or less convinced myself nonviolence was the way to go, I attended a small talk by Father McCarthy which sent me racing down that path.
Here’s the first part of the series, to whet your appetite:
Behold the Lamb pt 1: Hide Player Play in Popup

"Corruptio Optimi Pessima"

"Corruptio Optimi Pessima"
The corruption of the best is the worst. (Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

Speaking of right wing hypocricy, today's Gospel is instructive:

Mt 23,23-26:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. (But) these you should have done, without neglecting the others. Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean."

Republican Family Values

From 'The Patriot':

So, yet another self-hating gay Republican Senator was nailed with his hand in the cookie jar the other day. Larry Craig, the junior Senator from Idaho was arrested playing footsie with an undercover police office in a bathroom stall in the Minneapolis St. Paul airport back in June. He pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct on Monday. The CNN story can be found here.The disgusting part of the story isn’t what Craig was doing in the bathroom stall. Hell, the Patriot doesn’t care who or even what Republican Senators decide to have sexual relations with on their own time. And maybe the diversion of a sexual encounter in an airport bathroom helped the man reduce some tension caused by waiting in a 2 hour line to get through security. Hell, flying sucks these days and everybody knows it. No, the truly disturbing part of this story is that Craig was one of the most ardent senators when it came to pushing so-called “family-values” issues while all the while he’s been trolling airport men’s rooms for blow jobs. Craig is a morality crypto fascist; a conservative who believes that the government should stay out of the financial markets but install a camera in your bedroom. Craig's voting record has earned him top ratings from social conservative groups such as the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council. He has also supported a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In 1996, Craig also voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition to same-sex marriages and prevents states from being forced to recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples legally performed in other states. Talk about self-hating!The other chuckle to come out of this story is that Craig now regrets his guilty plea and claims he was railroaded into it because he didn’t have the advice of a lawyer. How a Republican Senator can say that kind of thing with a straight face is beyond me. The tough-on-crime Republican party has tried to do away with the right to counsel for years from their assault on Miranda to their gutting of the Constitution. How quick the little rats are to run behind the tattered document when it’s their own sorry ass in the sling.
Posted by Mark at 2:06 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Where Fisk Goes Wrong about 911

By Winter Patriot

The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America

By Peter Dale Scott

Published: Tuesday August 14th, 2007
In this exclusive excerpt from his powerful new book, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), UC Berkeley professor emeritus Peter Dale Scott asks whether there is a connection between America’s historical use of terror as a political weapon and the recent moves by the Bush administration to suspend the Constitution and create a “shadow government” in the wake of the next terrorist attack: CONTINUE

Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

Published: 25 August 2007, The Independent

[could be better written. Some of the comments are good]

Evangelical Meditates on Nationalistic Blasphemy

By Morning's Minion, at VoxNova

Greg Boyd is a pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Something that happened in 1992 changed his life. Visiting a July fourth "worship service" in one of the huge evangelical megachurches, he saw something that shocked and appalled him to the core. He watched a video featuring a high ranking member of the military talk about how God is on America's side, and how that was evident during the (first) Gulf war. The video ended with three crosses on a hill with an American flag in the background. Patriotic music played. All of a sudden, four fighter jets thundered over the crosses, and split apart. The crowd loved it. Greg Boyd did not. In his words:

"How could the cross and the sword have been so thoroughly fused without anyone seeming to notice? How could Jesus' self-sacrificial death be linked with flying killing machines? How could the kingdom of God be reduced to this sort of violent, nationalistic tribalism?...

The evangelical church in America has, to a large extent, become intoxicated with the Constantinian, nationalistic, violent mindset of imperialistic Christendom. ... Among other things this nationalistic myth blinds us to the way in which our most basic and cherished cultural assumptions are diametrically opposed to the kingdom way of life taught by Jesus and his disciples. Instead of living out the radically countercultural mandate of the kingdom of God, this myth has inclined us to Christianize many pagan aspects of our culture. Instead of providing the culture with a radically alternative way of life, we largely present it with a religious version of what it already is. The myth clouds our vision of God's distinctively beautiful kingdom and undermines our motivation to live as set-apart (holy) disciples of this kingdom.

The myth harms the church's primary mission. For many in America and around the world, the American flag has smothered the glory of the cross, and the ugliness of our American version of Caesar has squelched the radiant love of Christ. Because the myth that America is a Christian nation has led many to associate America with Christ, many now hear the good news of Jesus only as American news, capitalistic news, imperialistic news, exploitive news, antigay news, or Republican news. And whether justified or not, many people want nothing to do with any of it."

Reading the writings of some prominent American Catholics over the past few years, staking out nationalist positions on war that diverged markedly from what the Church was teaching, makes me wonder if this is not just an evangelical issue.

It reminds me of Adolf von Harnack, the leading German Protestant theologian of his day, who also thought that God was on the side of the Kaiser in 1914...

Posted by Morning's Minion at 7:02 PM Comments (12) | Trackback Links to this post

A response to Mark Lilla, by Dean Brackley, SJ

good post and discussion at dotCommoneal

Nicholas Lash, “Where Does The God Delusion Come From?”

New Blackfriars
A Review: Edited by the Dominicans of the English Province

Volume 88 Issue 1017 Page 507-521, September 2007

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.We would like to skip the intermediate stages.We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability - and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually - let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time, (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ:

Is the "Pro-Life Movement" Really Concerned with Reducing Abortion?

Great post from MorningsMinion over at VoxNova. Here's an excerpt:

How easy it is to be pro-life! All you need do is talk about picking the kinds of judges that would (maybe) overturn Roe v. Wade and voting against (or vetoing) some marginal legislation with minimal impact on abortion rates. In the meantime, none of the core economic beliefs of that party are challenged. On the contrary, those very judges who are supposed to be pro-life are also the ones who vote solidly on pro-business lines (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), and also (for pro-lifers) have a curious attachment to the death penalty. And the unborn keep dying.Can we do better? Yes, we can. We can develop a strategy that could even attain bi-partisan support. We need to encourage people not to have abortions. We start by saying that the ideal abortion rate is a zero rate. We must also acknowledge that economics matters. I showed in an earlier post that there is a statistical association between poverty and abortion rates and ratios. The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level. And when asked to give reasons for abortion, three-quarters of women say that cannot afford a child. At the same time, black women are almost four times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are two and a half life times as likely.The pro-life movement needs to address these issues. It needs to push for a reduction in poverty. We need universal health insurance and adequate maternal primary health care. We need mandated maternity leave. We need subsidized childcare for families where both parents need to work. So far, so standard. Perhaps we need something far more radical. Maybe the government can offer a cash sum to all pregnant mothers who agree to bring their unborn child to term (this sum could be proportionately greater for women below the poverty level, or for those victims of rape and incest). The government could also give significant subsidies (through the tax code or directly) to families willing to adopt. And, as a last resort, the government must stand ready to fund orphanages willing to raise unwanted children with dignity and care, providing for all their basic needs. And the government need not do this directly: it could provide funds to churches to do it. This is real "compassionate conservatism", not the con game peddled by Bush back in 2000.Here's the problem: everything I have mentioned costs money, a lot of money. It would call for hikes in taxes, perhaps substantially. And this is precisely why the current Republican party would never in a million years go near these proposals. For them, free market individualism and monetary gain trumps the gospel of life. But should that be true for Catholics too? We are all too painfully aware of the limitations of the Democrats on this matter, but this does not mean we should conned by sweet talk of the other side either. We need to think outside the box.

Caesarism raises its head once again..

Some great comments...

The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth - Book Review

Just picked this book up...

Tales of Angst, Alienation and Martial Law: Roasting Marshmallows on the American Reichstag Fire to Come

I need a beer after this...

"There is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?"

some good comments too...

Wednesday, 15 August 2007, Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven

Woman of the magnificat, servant-singer, lowly and lovely Lady, coming in haste with the compassion of God surging beneath your flesh, gather us under your cloak. Remind us that there is room for all of us and there is welcome abundance of Mercy. Let us rejoice with you, tell of the deeds of God again and again and cry out with you of the honour of God, the care of the poor and the coming of justice. You, Mary are the music of God. Your presence moves on all the roads and you step first over the thresholds of the homes of the poor. In your dark countenance and strong hands God's flesh is exposed and we know we are loved, saved and embraced by God in the light that dawns upon us in your great "Yes." In imitation of your stance before God, may we stand open hearted with arms extended towards one another. May we who are born of grace be the beloved children of God and your children who walk to every corner of the earth. We ask this in the name of the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the gracious Spirit.
Amen Amen Alleluia.
Megan McKenna
-------------

Mary's Magnificat:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.
For he has looked with favour on his lowly servant, and from this day all generations will call me blessed. Yes, the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his name.


He has mercy on those who honour him, from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm and has scattered the proud in their conceit,

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

Gospel of Luke, Chapter 1

Free book: "FAITH: SECURITY & RISK..." by Richard W. Kropf

I just saw the book in the library earlier and it prompted me to find this site again. Worth bookmarking...

FAITH: SECURITY & RISK:
The Dynamics of Spiritual Growth

By Richard W. Kropf

(Originally published by Paulist Press,
Mahwah, New Jersey, 1990)
Copyright: 1990, Richard W. Kropf

---

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Faith and Happiness:
Faith and the Search for Meaning
The Quest for Self-Fulfillment
Meaning and Transcendence

Chapter 2: The Meaning of Faith:
Models of Faith
The Anatomy of Faith
Faith, Hope, and Love

Chapter 3: The Beginnings of Faith
The Stages of Faith
"Undifferentiated" or Instinctive Faith
Intuitive Faith

Chapter 4: Literal Faith
Myth and Belief
Fundamentalism and Biblical "Inerrancy"
Faith and Morality

Chapter 5: Conventional Faith
Adolescence and Conventional Faith
Society and Security
Conscientious Conformism
Catholic Traditionalism

Chapter 6: Personal Faith
Crisis and Conversion
Excesses and Regressions in Personal Faith
The Refusal of Faith
The Risk of Commitment

Chapter 7: Conjunctive Faith
Personal Integration and Conjunctive Faith
Ecumenical Faith
Openness or Indifference?
The Risk of Risking

Chapter 8: Unitive Faith
The Perfection of Faith
The Risks of Sanctity
The Night of Faith
Faith Beyond Beliefs

Epilogue: Can There Be a Universal Faith?

Bibliography

---

Return to DIALOGOS Issue #12

Jaroslav Pelikan on NPR's "Speaking Of Faith"

Another Excerpt from "Religion in a violent age"

[EXCERPT]

...THE LACK AT THE ORIGIN

A Jewish psychoanalytical writer, born in Morocco, Daniel Sibony, has probed the dark side of monotheism. His work can be read in tandem with Karen Armstrong’s work on Jewish, Christian and Islamic fundamentalism. Both writers help Christians to self-knowledge by showing them their own reflection in pathological aspects of Judaism and Islam.
All three religions live by a myth of the purity of their origins, a myth that breeds violence when it is threatened. Each religion offers a supremely satisfying identity, and the last word about the riddles of life and death. But supposing the identity is based on denial, on a papering over of cracks and flaws in its original construction? Some will attain intellectual and spiritual growth by opening up honestly to a recognition of these cracks and flaws. Others will see such honesty as apostasy and will bunker down in traditionalism and absolutism. The repressed insecurity of threatened identity will show itself in hostility to the rival who embodies the threat and becomes a scapegoat, as the Jews were for Christians throughout history. Throughout the centuries each of the three monotheisms proclaimed its own legitimacy in refuting that of the others. This fruitless apologetical debate is itself a fixational behaviour that indicates the true nature of the three religions. The splitting of human community into elect and reprobate, sheep and goats, is an intrinsically violent structure, pervasive in Scripture. The teaching of Jesus, “love your enemies”, and his reaching across barriers to build inclusive community, go against this, but this is a virtuality that has to be drawn out of the texts by dint of careful spiritual and ethical discernment. In time of friction, this aspect of Scripture is ignored; “love your enemies” has hardly been the favoured slogan of the USA since 9/11. Instead the old dualism of good and evil comes into play.
The more relaxed vision of Vatican II marks a certain retreat of the question of identity, under the auspices of an inclusivism invoking the universality of grace and of divine self-revelation, in the spirit of the stories of Cornelius or of Paul’s preaching at Athens in Acts and of the broad Logos-theology of the Apologists and the Alexandrian theologians of the second and third centuries. Unfortunately the spirit of sectarianism has revived as part of the general regression from the vision of Vatican II, tainting various Vatican documents such as Dominus Iesus (2000). The renewed worry about rival claims, which is causing ecumenism to flounder, perhaps indicates that ecumenical idealism about shared origins is bound to collapse back into the old game of “my origin is better than yours”. Sibony proposes an alternative:
.
Perhaps these three monotheistic currents will one day tolerate and pardon one another not because they derive from the same God and are ‘brothers’ (that kind of fraternity produces more wars than agreements, more rendings than ententes), but because they will find in themselves the same deficiency, the same type of infidelity to what founds them; because they will recognize themselves as children of the same original lack: each marked by a flaw at the origin, a flaw imputable to no one, in any case not to one’s neighbour, a flaw intrinsic to the human and which other humans outside the religious field face as best they can. (Les trois monothéismes : Juifs, Chrétiens, Musulmans entre leurs sources et leurs destins , Seuil, 1997, 10)
.
A recognition of lack at the origin has surfaced occasionally in theology, only to meet with sharp repression, notably in the Modernist controversy. Some space must be made for what Dominus Iesus rejects, the sense that Christianity on its own is a broken and incomplete project, which needs to reach out humbly to other spiritual paths to find its proper role. Christ may be complete, but Christianity enjoys in practice only a very partial understanding of Christ and has to work on its legacy of deadly misunderstandings.
Recognition of the historical and unfinished nature of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic projects, and of the violent foreclosures that launched all three and that recur throughout their career, would certainly have a humbling effect on these traditions. Renouncing absolutism, they would think of themselves as modest and imperfect paths, and would refrain from brandishing the name of the God who unites and divides them as a warrant of legitimacy and superiority. Our construction of God is a powerful fiction, into which we have invested all sorts of delusive passions as well as the higher spiritual discernment that overcomes those passions. The voice of God in Scripture is in the first place the voice of a dialectic going on within human consciousness, both individual and collective. The scandals of this discourse, even when canonized as infallible, bear witness to the divine in a negative mode : “the ultimate is not here, seek it elsewhere”, or perhaps, “do not seek the ultimate at all, but live modestly in the conventional; do not seek certitude, but abide with questions”. This, of course, brings us into the vicinity of Buddhism, especially the Madhyamaka philosophy of conventional and ultimate reality and the Zen saying, “If you meet the Buddha, slay the Buddha”. [FULL PIECE HERE]

"Religion in a Violent Age"

By Joseph O'Leary, S.J.

[EXCERPT]

...Christians judge the Bible not only from the standpoint of the modern conscience, but also under the impulsion of the Holy Spirit. The real, spiritual authority of Scripture – its capacity to elicit faith and inspire hope – emerges when they wrestle with it in prayer and loving debate. They are moved to correct, in charity, Paul’s occasional sexist, homophobic or anti-Semitic remarks, but they do so in order to free the core teachings of the Apostle and make them audible today. They work on biblical traditions, cleansing them of their toxins, in order to retrieve them as living traditions for today.

The Christian Church has always enjoyed freedom over against Scripture, seeing it as a book to be used. Revelation is not handed to one on a plate; it is an event that occurs when one reads Scripture in community and in dialogue with the “signs of the times”, the phenomena of human joy and hope, war and reconciliation, need and promise, which were an essential point of reference in the theological thinking of the Hebrew prophets and which were again pointed to as an essential frame of reference by Vatican II. The theological claims about inspiration and inerrancy must be nuanced and modified in light of the actual dealings of the community with the hallowed text. These dealings have always been marked by selectivity; the community has trusted in its own instincts and in the leading of the Holy Spirit in deciding which texts in Scripture spoke loudly and clearly and which others were best consigned to a decent obscurity.

For Christians the New Testament has been Scripture in a more immediate sense than the old (as Joseph Ratzinger insists, in K. Rahner and J. Ratzinger, Revelation and Tradition, New York, Herder and Herder, 1966), and its message has not been passed through the filter of allegorization and other domesticating devices. Thus it is harder for Christians to attain a critical distance over against the New Testament. But gradually we are realizing that no written words can be immediately identified with the Word of God. The words of Scripture are exposed to all the vicissitudes of ancient historical writings, even at the level of textual transmission, and even such sublime writers as Paul and John were men of their time, using conceptual instruments that no longer fit contemporary mentalities. With Karl Barth we come to see Scripture as attesting the Word of God, as a trace left by the long wrestling with the divine of the peoples of the old and new Covenants. We continue to develop that tradition, but critically, not taking any text of the past as a blueprint to be followed blindly. The same Spirit that confers on Scripture its power is at work in the use and interpretation of Scripture in the Church today.

Fundamentalists in the Anglican Communion accuse alleged liberals of rejecting the sovereign authority of Scripture over Church. Yet the Church has always lived in a perichoretic relationship to Scripture. Scripture founds the Church and embraces it; yet it is the Church that established the Canon of Scripture and it is the present community of faithful who embrace Scripture with their understanding and bring forth its sense for today. What in Scripture becomes obtuse and unmeaningful cannot be cited as exemplifying that authority which Scripture has over the Church. There is no need to seek divine meaning in words that can perfectly well be explained by reference to the mores and mindsets of the ancient cultures in which they were formulated.

The Bible is a record of growth in the understanding of God from a primitive beginning, but the continuation of that growth depends on our own mature and responsible reading of the Bible. The Bible is a fictional machine for making God speak, by putting him on the stage in dialogue with human agents. Unless the dialogue continues today, the voice of God in Scripture becomes a dead letter, or a crushing imposition.

Magical thinking stands in the way of this mature Christian use of Sacred Scripture. Such thinking embraces a literal understanding of scriptural sentences ripped from their contexts and thought to be transparently meaningful today. The sentences may be sheer absurdities – but that makes them all the more satisfying to one who brings the heuristic approach of magical thinking. A classic instance of magical literalism is Origen’s alleged implementation of the Gospel saying about becoming eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom.
To be sure, an element of magical thinking may be essential to religion: icons, relics, texts are merely what they are, but devoted love projects onto them numinous power, and they then indeed do become sites of healing and illumination. We must not banish such magic, but must translate it from the register of irrationality or superstition into that of a wise handling of “skilful means”.

Some will resist the application in scriptural hermeneutics of wimpy contemporary notions of political correctness. They are happy that Scripture is so full of blood, as it ensures the realism of the scriptural record. Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, is praised on similar grounds, as bringing the terror of demonic violence, as unleashed against Christ, closer to modern consciousness. A sanitized Bible, pacifist and feminist and gay-friendly, would be as tasteless as the Pali Canon.

Yet the bloodlessness of Buddhist scriptures speaks a quiet word of reproach to us, urging us to advance to a new level of critical discernment in handling our own scriptures. Gloating over the defeat of enemies, even if they are God’s enemies, and reveling in threats and fantasies of punishment, are attitudes that belong to a warlike culture. Scripture was born within such a culture, but ultimately tends to its overcoming, just as Buddhism overcomes the warlike culture of earlier Indian religion. CONTINUE

Designing Life

By John F. Kavanaugh

The Case Against Perfection
By Michael J. Sandel
Belknap Press. 176p $18.95 (hardcover)

A t first I did not want to review this rather slight treatment of such a weighty topic. But as it turns out, Michael Sandel’s dive into the sea of genetic engineering provides a great tasty gulp of contemporary ethical controversy. Quickly read, The Case Against Perfection is nonetheless dense with challenging quandaries, loaded with moral puzzles and filled with facts. An inveterate highlighter, I underlined half the book.

In his first essay, “The Ethics of Enhancement,” Sandel, professor of government at Harvard University, raises the question whether “curing” is different from “improving.” Do plastic surgery and Botox injections heal us or improve us? And if there is little difference, why do they seem acceptable, while muscle enhancement through steroids or blood doping is not? If growth hormones are permitted for children whose projected height is under 5 feet, why are they not acceptable for a possible 6-footer who wants to be a power forward? If reproductive autonomy is so important, why should it be prohibited for parents who want sex selection? He applies these questions more specifically to athletic enhancement, both low-tech assistance by better shoes and golf clubs, through Lasik surgery on to blood transfusions and hormone injections.

While discussing athletes, Sandel surfaces the theme that will mark his later discussion of “designer children” and his final chapter, called “Mastery and Gift.”

To acknowledge the giftedness of life is to recognize that our talents and powers are not wholly our own doing, nor even fully ours…. It is also to recognize that not everything in the world is open to any use we may desire or devise. An appreciation of the giftedness of life constrains the Promethean project and conduces to a certain humility.

Thus, in discussing children, Sandel warns that they must be appreciated and accepted as gifts, not as objects to be manipulated for utilitarian or egoistic goals. He suggests that there is the danger of radical pride in trying to design or control. Concurring with William May, he holds that the “transforming love” of guiding, forming and enhancing a child must be balanced with “accepting love” that embraces children for their own intrinsic, not performative, goodness. While Sandel offers no hard and fast line of difference between (a) specialized training and the best schools, (b) growth hormones and orthodontics and (c) eugenics (a “presumably bad thing”), the drive to mastery and control could extinguish our appreciation of life as a gift.

The dangers of reproductive mastery are horrifically sketched in the book’s best chapter, a treatment of the “old” eugenics and the “new.” The old eugenics of forced sterilization in the United States and racial cleansing in the Third Reich, having been replaced by a seemingly more benign combination of market-based and liberal eugenics, still haunts our contemporary consciousness. Insistence on atomistic autonomy in reproduction and fixation on desired traits are a flight from the contingency and connectedness of our common humanity and a refusal to accept our existence as a gift. These are Sandel’s ideas most worthy of development and elaboration, perhaps in concert with his interlocutors, William May, Leon Kass, Charles Taylor and Jurgen Habermas.

As for myself, I would want to engage Sandel over his epilogue, the longest section of the book, titled “Embryo Ethics: The Stem Cell Debate.” This serious and insightful attempt to prove that an individual human life, and surely human personhood, is incorrectly attributed to early stage embryos, should be read by anyone who holds the conception criterion for the beginning of an individual human being. His arguments, while not being the traditional ones that are made concerning undifferentiated cells, twinning and the high number of spontaneous abortions, are telling. Our collecting of “spare” embryos, our apparent acceptance of in vitro fertilization, our lack of mourning for all the supposed tiny persons lost, President Bush’s eager willingness to say he is not banning the use of private funds for embryonic stem cell research all indicate that we really do not believe we are dealing with persons. This is indeed a powerful critique of the present confusion. But it does not address what exactly a human being is. Surely, as Sandel says, an acorn is not a full-blown oak. Neither is it a sapling. The acorn, however, is the start of a tree’s existence. An embryo, similarly, is neither a grandmother nor a toddler; but every piece of genetic evidence we have reveals that at conception we have the beginning of a unique human career (or two, if it is so programmed from the beginning to twin).

As you read this book, you might imagine yourself sitting in on one of Sandel’s classes of a thousand Harvard students. It is said that he can be mesmerizing with his probing questions and tricky sample cases. Another thing you might imagine is sitting with him at a meeting of the President’s Council on Bioethics, engaging the likes of William Hurlbut and Leon Kass—both strongly disagreeing with him at times, but hearing what he has to say and being honestly heard in return.

The Case Against Perfection, consequently, is open to a very wide audience indeed. It will introduce the novice to some of the knotty problems in genetic therapy and enhancement. It will propose thoughtful challenges to the college undergraduate. As for scholars, it will unsettle those who may have too easily or ideologically arrived at unwarranted conclusions. And it will challenge those of us who disagree with him on the status of the human embryo to provide our most cogent and well-evidenced arguments.

Caught between chaos and promise: Fr. Albert Nolan Pocasts

Listen!

Episode 1: Jesus was amazingly free (21 min.)

Episode 2: People are disillusioned (22 min.)

Episode 3: New voices give hope and the ‘new science’ (17 min.)

Episode 4: Jesus’ spirituality (26 min.)

Episode 5: In the presence of colossal mystery (21 min.)

Episode 6: The sharing Jesus had in mind (22 min)

Dominican Fr. Albert Nolan, 73, was born in Cape Town, South Africa as a fourth-generation South African of English descent. Reading the works of Thomas Merton, Nolan became attracted to the idea of religious life. Eventually he joined the Dominican Order in 1954, and studied in South Africa and Rome, where he received a doctorate. From 1976 to 1984, he was Vicar-General of the Dominicans in South Africa. In 1984, he was elected the Master of the Dominican Order. He however declined the office which would have meant transferring to his order's Rome headquarters, preferring to remain in South Africa during this decade of intense political and social transition. In the 1990s, as a result of his conviction that theology must come from the grassroots level and not an academic, he started a radical church magazine called Challenge, of which he was the editor for many years. From 2000-2004, Nolan served a third term as Vicar-General of the Dominicans in South Africa.

He is the author of Jesus Before Christianity, which is the best selling book ever published by Orbis Books, and last year, Jesus Today, A Spirituality of Radical Freedom.

Philosophers, Artists, Saints.

A great post from a blog I just found: [ http://afterthefuture.typepad.com/afterthefuture/ ]

The growing rush and the disappearance of contemplation and simplicity from modern life [are] the symptoms of a complete uprooting of culture. The waters of religion retreat and leave behind pools and bogs. The sciences . . . atomize old beliefs. The civilized classes and nations are swept away by the grand rush for contemptible wealth. Never was the world worldlier, never was it emptier of love and goodness. . . . Everything, modern art and science included, prepares us for the coming barbarism. . . .Everything on earth will be decided by the crudest and most evil powers, by the selfishness of grasping men and military dictators.
Nietzsche, Thoughts out of Season, 1873-76

Nietzsche lamented the loss of the philosopher, artist, and saint as bourgeois modernity replaced the older aristocratic culture of the premodern west. And I lament it , too. Not the loss of the aristocratic social order, but the loss of the culture-wide aspiration toward the More that the philosopher, artist, and saint used to symbolize. N's antidote to the leveling forces of modern culture was his promotion of the idea of the uebermensch or superman, but that creates as many problems as it solves.

But he recognized the problem--which was the loss of the aspiration toward transcendence as a universal cultural ideal. I have always taken his famous statement that "God is dead . . . We have killed him" to be simply a description of the culture's loss of what has been an intuitive certainty in every culture until the 19th century in the modern west. The sky darkened and all there was left was man alone. And it was not a pretty sight. So the uebermensch was his attempt to reinvent the philosopher, artist, saint on this now bleak, godless planet where otherwise human culture devolves into eat or be eaten barbarism of the Social Darwinists.

The word "transcendence" is not a word often used in our day-to-day lives, and so let's be clear about its meaning. As suggested above I mean by it the "More" to which human beings aspire. By "More" I mean that dimension of our humanity that goes beyond our instinctual life. It's most often thought of as spiritual. Barbarism, on the other hand, is life lived completely circumscribed by instinctuality. An effective religious practice is the soul work people do to transform their instinctual lives by a form of training or discipline, a work which is inspired by this fundamental transcendent aspiration.

"Transcending" is is the human project by which the lower is transformed into the higher. It can't be done if there is no higher and that humans are nothing more than animals with a highly developed cerebral cortex. Higher just means more complex. More efficient at getting needs met. It's a vision of the human as machine rthr than soul, and it leads to the kind of cyborgian future that is already being talked about as the next evolutionary step. For Nietzsche, the prospect of a cyborgian future would have been appalling. Deep down he knew, as all of us know, that we are more than that no matter how "modern" our sensibility. Transcendence calls us to become that More. It's a call to become completed, a call to realize that which we were created to become.

A healthy culture provides a trellis upon which the souls of the people born into it can grow upward toward the More that calls us to be More. Unhealthy or decadent cultures like ours have only the memory of a trellis, or if there is one, it is at best rickety, neglected, and unused. Unused mainly because most people have ceased to believe that it leads anywhere. And so without a trellis upon which to give shape to one's growth, humans develop aimlessly in whatever direction along the ground, living their lives driven primarily by the three basic instinctual drivers symbolized by sex, power, and money. To the degree that these three shape our cultural life uninfluenced by the aspiration to transcend their limitations, to that degree a society is barbaric.

Look at our youth culture--its monotonous music, its obsession with violent video games, sex and drugs. It's a swamp. And what you have there is Nietzsche's nightmare of the barbarism of the Last Man. So I could imagine that many people think that the kind of "redneck" culture or the subcultures that are built around rightwing Christianity are more preferable--at least they give lipservice to traditional virtues out of which the trellis was constructed. But I would say that they are two sides of the same Last-Man coin. There are left-wing and right-wing Last Men. Both are equal as attitudinal social systems in promoting a blindness to transcendence. The former is the condition of the younger brother in the gospel story of the prodigal son, the latter the condition of the older brother. More on that later.

How can I say that any Christian group is blind to transcendence? Isn't that the whole point of faith--it's openness to the transcendent, the absolute, superabundant More of God? Yes, but I think it's fair to ask whether that's what these Christian groups are about, and whether, despite their purported commitment to truth that speaks through the Bible, they have in fact developed an attitude that closes them off more than it opens them up to it. By their fruits you will know them.

The archetypal form of such blindness is Phariseeism--Jesus described the Pharisees of his day as whited sepulchers, pristine clean on the outside, enclosing what what was dead and rotten on the inside. But as they were a type of religious personality then, so have they been through history in all religions.

The Pharisee is the man of faith who has no faith--and doesn't know it. He's someone who is going through the motions because in his doing so he thinks that he is a better than others who don't. The whole goal of the Pharisee is to create a false identity that makes him appear good rather than being truly good. Pharisees can be but are not necessarily hypocrites. They can be very sincere and intense in their project to appear morally blameless. St. Paul was such a one before his conversion.

But this kind of project is really a compulsive disorder, and has very little to do with real faith, even though this type of person is attracted to religion and often plays an important role in its institutions. One of the major themes of the Gospels is is to warn about the dangers of becoming such a person. These are the wolves in sheep's clothing.

The gospel repeatedly contrasts the blindness of these self-righteous prigs with the supple-hearted people who often enough are scandalous sinners. The point that the gospel makes is that the most important trait that a human being can have is not to be morally perfect but to have the cognitive capacity to see with one's heart. The Samaritans, tax collectors, prostitutes, and other sinners recognized in Jesus what the Pharisees simply could not see. Why? Their minds and hearts had not rigidified in the way that the Pharisees' had.

I don't think that the point is to validate moral libertinism, but to say something important about religious psychology. Usually the people who recognize God in their lives are the ones who one way or another have come to realize their need of Him. There are all kinds of people who think they have no need of God in their lives, but the toughest cases are those who think they have no need of God because they already possess Him. This is the condition of the Pharisee, and it's a form of mental illness and cold heartedness parading as normalcy that is so severe that when the very incarnation of truth and goodness appears in their midst, the Pharisee has no capacity for recognizing Him.

And his cluelessness is the same as that of the older brother in the story of the Prodigal Son. Remember how it goes? The younger son asks his father for his inheritance and goes to a far off country where he squanders it. Impoverished and abandoned, he figures he would do better if he returns to his father, tells him that he was a fool, and asks for a job as a servant. The father, overjoyed at his son's return instead throws a big party and returns him to his place of honor. The older son, however, who was the boy scout who followed all the rules, seethes with resentment. Are there no consequences? How can this be fair? This resentment is one of the chief symptoms of 'whited sepulcher syndrome.' It's a picture of the soul rotting inside.
For those suffering from it are blinded by their inability to understand what is really going on. He misses the point, because the story is about the discovery of the need for the More. Nothing else matters. The Father is overjoyed not because his younger son lived a life of depravity, but because he survived the shipwreck that was necessary to awaken him to a deeper understanding of the way things really are.

The older son hadn't awakened yet. If the older son had, he would have been as overjoyed as his father to learn that his younger brother had found it too. The younger son has made a discovery that the older has not yet made, and no matter how it's done, making this discovery is the only thing that matters. The gospels are full of stories about something being lost and then found. The only important thing is the finding. Everything else is secondary.

Now the finding does not mean that things become safe and secure for the finder. Certainty, safety, and security are the obsessions of the Pharisees. The goal is not peace and serenity as it is in the Eastern religions. The finding means that one becomes a disciple and that means being called to go places where one would rather not go. It means having an awakened conscience which requires in a very real sense dying to the normal understanding world, and not living as normal people do. I think this plays out for different people in different ways. But one of the fruits is a growth in freedom and individuality and an increased capacity for love. This is what we mean by a saint, which brings us back to where we started.

As the philosopher is a prodigy of thinking about what's true, and the artist a prodigy of the feeling for beauty and the making of what is beautiful, the saint is the prodigy in the use his or her will for the doing of what is good and of becoming someone who is truly, deeply good. Not just nice. Not just decent--but someone who is terribly good. The whole idea of truth, beauty, and goodness as transcendent ideals that call us to be More has become something of a joke, something to which we refer only with irony. And so one of the great signs of the decadence of our culture is that genuine prodigies of truth, beauty, and goodness are no longer recognized or honored. They have always been rare, but now they have become invisible.

The rest of us suffer for it because we rarely meet such prodigies who can inspire us by what they have become to realize the unrealized possibilities in our own lives. We need that inspiration, because without it it's so easy to give up, and to believe that nothing More is a real possibility for us or for anyone.

If there were a living tradition, it would produce the kind of people who would realize those possibilities and show those of us who follow how to become what they have become. Instead our philosophers and artists have no feeling for the transcendent. And our religious leaders are for the most part Pharisees or lightweights. And the rest of us are mired in mediocrity as a result. The only prodigies these days are the prodigies of barbarism.

There is no trellis there anymore for us to climb up out of the swamps of barbarism, so the job, I suppose, is for us to build one. For the religious right, for the most part, offers us not a trellis, but a whited sepulcher.

Rebelling against a culture of porn

Today, the sexualization of girls begins in infancy with 12-month sizedrompers announcing, "I'm too sexy for my diaper." At age four, it's The BratzBabyz, singing "You've gotta look hotter than hot! Show what you've got!" At sixit's a pouty, scantily dressed My Scene Bling Bling Barbie draped in diamonds.By 12, it's Ludacris singing ( Ruff sex): "make it hurt in the garden." Fullybrainwashed by 13, lap dancer is by then considered a more desirable professionthan teacher, as one British survey of 1,000 teenage girls found to be the caseby a 7-1 ratio.

The Porn Myth - In the end, porn doesn’t whet men’s appetites—it turns them off the real thing.

By Naomi Wolf
[H/T tp Winnipeg Catholic]

Law School Fraud - Despite What The Glossy Brochures May Say, It Is Actually Tough Out There For Most Law Grads.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

For most law school graduates huge salaries are a long shot. Most law grads face low pay, high debt, and substandard working conditions. Unfortunately, law schools hide this fact because US News & World Report which tracks employment information, may be prompting schools to create an artificially bright employment picture.http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1183712786622
Posted by helpme123 at 1:28 PM

24 comments:

Cork vs Waterford - 2007 All Ireland QF Replay

Profile of a Gypsy Cop

Texas 'justice'...

The Pope and the interpretation of the Council

Good discussion at dotCommonweal. Much of it is over my head, but still very informative...

Spotlight: Transforming Energy, a New Film by Chuck Davis

Eugene McCarraher on the enchantments of mammon

[Picture: Fritz Eichenberg, "Pax Vobiscum" (1969) ][Woodblock Etching]

The Hedge Fund Class and the French Revolution

HatTip to Godspy

“Is it right or even admissible in the human conscience that while teachers, emergency room technicians, police and firefighters are taxed at full earned-income rates — and often underpaid — that the highest-earning people in this country should pay at either very low tax rates or none at all? …[O]ne of the causes of the French Revolution was the sad truth that the aristocracy was not taxed at all, while the workers and burghers were taxed highly. Is this our future? Let’s keep it real: Congress can take notice of a mammoth inequity in taxation during wartime and make the tax on private equity and hedge funds approximate the treatment of other highly paid people — or it can continue down the road to the Bastille.” [NY Times]

Obama and Foreign Policy

By Morning's Minion at VOX NOVA